Fantasy: A Novel by Matilde Serao - HTML preview

 

PART III.

I.

As the trains arrived from Rome and Naples, a sea of human beings poured out of the dirty, wretched, little Caserta station, flooding the wide, dusty road that is bordered by two fields, where the garrison horses graze. The scorching sun shone down on black evening coats, framing expensive white shirt-fronts, as well as on dittos of light summer cloth, and blue-and-white striped linen costumes, by which the gilded youth of Naples—with metropolitan irreverence for matters provincial—implied their intention of ignoring the Hall of the Inauguration. It shone, too, on overcoats that represented tentative provincial elegance. Under the domes of their large white sunshades came ladies of every degree, in every shade of light, fresh, aërial dresses. They came from Naples, from Santa Maria, from Capua, from Maddaloni; chattering together, and gesticulating with their fans, and sniffing at their huge posies: the provincials quieter than the others, whom they watched and strove to imitate. The sun shone with all its might on that bright September day, and the ladies stepped out bravely, in their polished leather shoes with bright buckles.

In front of them towered the Palace, the poetic dream to which Vanvitelli has given architectural reality. It maintained its imposing air of majesty, due to purity of line, exquisite sobriety of ornament, and the severe harmony of its pale, unfaded colouring, with which time had dealt so gently. The windows of the first story were wide open, and so were the three huge doorways which traversed the whole body of the edifice. And all along the road waved the standard of the province, the Campania Felice, with the Horn of Plenty pouring out the riches of the Earth: and the national banners waved in unison.

Onward went the crowd, as if agriculture were the end and aim of its existence. This September function was in truth a rural feast, a pretext for journeys by road or rail, and for enjoying the coolness of the vast regal saloons.... Besides, the Prime Minister was coming to prove the love of a northern statesman for a southern province. To many he was unknown, and they were glad of a chance of seeing him in the pride and pomp of his ministerial uniform. The more sentimental among them, those who knew him to be eloquent, came to hear him speak. The ladies were there for the mysterious, unfathomable reason for which they go everywhere, especially where they are most likely to be bored. At the middle entrance, the chief porter, in the royal livery, with a plume waving in his carabineer’s hat, and a gold-headed wand in his hand, impassively faced the crowd. People passing out of the dazzling light and dry heat into the grey twilight and moist freshness of the Hall, felt a sense of relief on entering it. The majesty of the Palazzo Reale lent composure to their countenances and subdued their voices; constraining admiration for its solidity of construction, the elegance of its arched ceiling, the strength of the quadruple pillars, and the eurythmy of the four triangular courts that grew out of its centre.

“It resembles a construction of the Romans,” remarked the Mayor of Arpino—a fat personage with his badge of office slung across his portly figure, and gold spectacles, behind which he perpetually blinked—to the Mayor of Aversa, a lawyer of fox-like cunning and squat, sturdy appearance.

There was a murmur of argument and protestation at the foot of the grand staircase; the ushers were politely inflexible. Unless you wore evening dress, you might not enter the Hall of Inauguration. Many of the uninitiated appeared in their overcoats. A tall, fair, burly exhibitor, brick-red in the face, with a diamond flashing on his little finger, had come in a cutaway jacket.

“I exhibit a bull, two cows, two sheep, and twelve fowls: I shall pass in,” he repeated; “besides, I’ve got my wife with me, I must escort her.”

“No one can enter here without evening dress,” replied the ushers.

“I don’t mind being alone, Mimi,” murmured his wife, a buxom provincial, dressed in mourning, with an enormous train, a hat and feathers, and superb brilliants in her ears.

“Well, go up then, Rosalia. I’ll go and have a look at the fowls. You’ll find me in the park after the speechifying in evening dress is over.”

And thus did the overcoats disappear in the courtyards or the park, while men in evening attire and ladies slowly ascended the broad, low, milk-white marble steps of the majestic stair. The ladies heaved sighs of content, they revelled in the gradual ascent to regal magnificence and the charmed silence stirred by a luxurious silken rustle. Triumphant gentlemen in their black coats crowded upon them, hiding behind their opera-hats the self-satisfied ecstasy of their smile. The old Palace, which had witnessed the splendour of Carlo III., the folly of Maria Carolina, the military fêtes of Murat, the popular ones of Ferdinand I., was awakening for an hour to the luxury of modern dress, the perfume of youth and beauty, the cold lustre of precious stones and all the lavish pomp of a court. That feast of the people, of the peasants—that feast of the soil, of its fruits, and cereals, and animals, that should have been so humbly prosaic and commonplace—was like a refined and courtly function, the birth of an hereditary prince or an official New Year’s reception.

“What victory for democracy, to have enthroned itself within the tyrant’s halls, there to celebrate a rural feast,” quoth the tun-bellied, squint-eyed lawyer Galante, from Cassino—he was bald, and the only Socialist the province boasted—to the monarchical chancellor, who was duly scandalised.

The inauguration was to take place in the vast Farnese Hall with its four windows on the façade; between the windows was the ministerial platform, covered with green velvet adorned with gold cord, and furnished with a bell, an inkstand, three glasses, a water-bottle, and a sugar-basin, all pregnant with meaning. Around them were grouped five red velvet armchairs. A step lower, between the ministerial platform and the body of the Hall, was the presidential platform, furnished with a grey carpet and five antique leather chairs. To the right, to the left, and in front, rows of chairs for those who had received invitations, three rows of armchairs for the ladies, and rush-bottomed ones for the men.

When Lucia Altimare-Sanna and Caterina Lieti appeared at the entrance, escorted by a single squire, Alberto Sanna, of the worn and gruesome countenance, Andrea Lieti hastily stepped down from the presidential eminence, darted through the crowd, and offered his arm to Lucia.

“Follow me with Caterina, Alberto; I’ll find you a good place.”

A murmur followed Andrea and Lucia as they passed through the crowd. Lucia in her long white satin robe, that clung to her and gleamed like steel in the sun, where it was not swathed with antique lace, was truly lovely and captivating. On the loose plaits of dark hair which waved on her forehead was draped a priceless veil of finest Venetian point, in lieu of a bonnet; it wound round her neck and was fastened under one ear by three white roses, fresh and dewy, with shell-pink hearts. No jewels. The same tint flushed her cheek, which was fuller than of yore; the red lips, now no longer parched, were fuller too. She smiled on her tall, strong knight, who bent his handsome person protectingly towards her.

“Who is she?” “The wife of Lieti?” “No, a relation of his wife’s.” “She is beautiful!” “Too thin, but pleasing!” “Too much dressed!” “Che! it’s an official function.” “She is beautiful!” “Beautiful!” “Beautiful!”

The couple that followed in their wake passed unheeded through the murmur, which, however, was not lost on either of them. Caterina was simply dressed in lilac. She wore a feather of the same pale colour on her tiny bonnet, and in her ears enormous diamond solitaires, “to please Andrea.” But she was small, modest, and obscured by her friend’s lustre, as if she had tried to hide herself behind it, and her escort was undersized and undistinguished by either badge or decoration. He and she heard the “Bella, bella, bella!” that hovered in whispers on people’s lips.

“They admire Lucia,” whispered Alberto, in the pride of his heart.

“Of course, she is, and always has been, very beautiful,” said Caterina, in placid and persistent admiration of her friend.

“Oh! not as she used to be. She was not nearly so attractive before her marriage. Now she is another woman. Happiness....”

“Lucia is an angel,” declared Alberto, gravely. “I am not worthy of her.”

By this time they reached their places in the front row, opposite the platform.

There were two armchairs for the ladies, who took their seats, while the men remained standing; Andrea by the side of Lucia, Alberto by Caterina. Lucia’s train fell at her feet in a fluffy heap of silk and lace, just allowing a glimpse of a tiny foot shod in white, silver-worked leather; she fanned herself, for it was very hot. From time to time Andrea bent down to speak to her, and she raised her eyes as if to answer him in low tones, while a smile raised the corners of her lips and showed her teeth. Alberto, who was at a loss for a seat, was soon bored and wearied; he had a presentiment of a lengthy ceremony. Caterina, who had been elected a member of the jury for needlework, in the Didactic section, was somewhat preoccupied. The office appeared to her to be an onerous and important one; what would they expect of her, and what if she proved inadequate?

“Who is that immensely tall man, rather bald, with the long black whiskers, who has just entered? How tall he is? Who is he, Signor Andrea?”

“He is the Member for Santa Maria.”

“Dio mio! he is taller than you. I did not think that was possible. Will he speak?”

“I think not.”

“How sorry I am that you are not going to speak, Lieti. If I were your wife, I should have insisted on your speaking.”

Caterina started. “I did not think of it,” she murmured, her mind running absently on the meeting of the ladies of the jury.

“Alberto mio, are you too warm? How do you feel? Will you have my fan?”

“I don’t feel the heat; I wish I could sit down. Thanks, dear.”

“Lieti, will you find a chair for Alberto; he gets so soon tired. I could not stay here, if he had to stand.”

Andrea sought, until he at last succeeded in finding a seat for Alberto in the next row, between two old ladies who sat behind Caterina.

Alberto, with visible satisfaction, tucked himself between their skirts.

“Are you comfortable now?”

“Very, dearest.”

“Will you have a lozenge?”

“No, by-and-by. Don’t think of me: look about you, chatter, amuse yourself, Lucia.”

“My poor Alberto,” said Lucia—speaking so that only Andrea could hear her—“is a continual source of torment to me. I would give my blood to enrich his.”

“You are good,” said Andrea.

Meanwhile the people were arriving in crowds, and filling every nook and corner, even to the recesses in the window, and the steps of the platform. In one corner sat a group of young men chatting without lowering their voices; one of them was scribbling notes in a pocket-book, another making telegraphic signs to the secretary of the committee, another yawning. Among them was a young woman, simply dressed in mourning; her face, under her black-brimmed hat, was pale and sickly.

“Those are the journalists,” said Andrea to Lucia. “There are the correspondents of the Liberta, the Popolo Romano, the Fanfulla, for Rome; of the Pungolo and the Piccolo, for Naples.”

“And is she a journalist?”

“I think so, but I don’t know her name.”

“I envy her, if she is intelligent; she at least has an aim.”

“Bah! you would rather be a woman.”

“Glory is worth having.”

“But love is better,” he continued, in a serious tone.

“... Love?”

Caterina did not hear. She was thinking of home, where she fancied she had left the jewel-safe open. With these fashionable gowns it was impossible to put your keys in your pocket. Despite her confidence in her servants at Centurano, she could not help feeling a little anxious.

“Do you remember, Lucia, if I locked the jewel-safe?”

“No, dear, I do not remember. It will be quite safe, even if you have not locked it.”

“Do you, Signor Sanna?”

“Yes; you locked it, and put the key under the clock.”

“Thanks, thank you; you take a load off my mind.”

“Signora Lucia, Caterina, I must go and speak to the Prime Minister.”

“Are you going to leave us?”

“I shall be here opposite to you. Caterina, don’t yawn, child, remember that you are the wife of the vice-president of a committee.”

She smiled absently, and nodded to him.

A treble hedge of ladies, and then a multitude of black coats, on which the light dresses stood out like splashes of colour: a vivid, undulating crowd, disported itself under the gildings of the regal ceiling.

“Oh! it’s lovely, Caterina,” said Lucia, flushed with excitement. At that moment there came from the staircase a suppressed sound of applause. A flutter stirred the whole assembly as it turned to face the Prime Minister, who entered, leaning on the arm of his friend, the Member for Caserta. He was lame on the one leg that had been wounded in battle; he stooped slightly. His massive head was covered with thick iron-grey locks, well planted on a square brow: the head of a faithful watch-dog, with bold, honest eyes, wide nostrils and a firm jaw. The grey moustache covered a mouth of almost infantile sweetness, to which the impériale lent a certain meditative seriousness. He bowed, taking evident pleasure in the prolonged applause, one of the few pleasures of official life; then ascended the platform, and after once more responding to the ovation, seated himself in its centre.

“He is a brave man: he has fought in every battle; he comes of a family of heroes,” explained Lucia to Caterina.

Then came the chorus of coughing, throat-scraping, and clearing of voices which precedes all speeches. Next to the Premier was seated the Member for Sora, a white-haired veteran whose chin was fringed with a white beard, a financier of somewhat furtive expression of countenance. On the left sat the Member for Capua, cool, composed, and distinguished-looking as ever. Two empty places. The Member for Caserta mingled with the crowd. The Prime Minister raised his voice to speak, amid breathless silence.

To tell the truth, the collar of his uniform came up too high at the back of his neck and gave him an appearance of awkwardness. He leant forward while he spoke, gazing fixedly at one point in the Hall, losing himself and his words from sheer absence of mind, and occasionally indulging in long pauses that passed for oratorical effects, but were probably due to the same cause. He pointed one hand on the table, while the right described a vague circular gesture, as if he were setting a clock.

“He is unwinding the thread of his eloquence,” quoth Lucia, with much emotion.

He expressed himself poetically, here and there falling into the rhetorical, ready-made phrases which strike so pleasantly on the ear of an attentive crowd. “Yes, he was indeed happy to put aside for a moment the cares of State and the burden of politics, to be present at this festival of labour—of labour that, despite its humility, is so ennobling to the horny hand of the peasant....”

No effect. The Hall was filled with well-dressed landowners, who did not appreciate this sentimentalism.

“Besides,” he continued, “this festival assumes an historic character. The Romans, ladies and gentlemen, our great ancestors, who were gifted with the very poetry of diction, named this province the Campania Felice....”

Here the assembly, moved by the music of his words, broke into thunders of applause. The journalists scribbled in their note-books, supporting them with an air of infinite importance either on their knees or against the wall.

“We have named it Terra di Lavoro, a yet more poetic name, indicating as it does the daily call of man on his mother earth, on that earth—that earth—that Alma Demeter to whom of yore the labourers’ hymns were raised. We also salute her, the beneficent mother, inexhaustible fount of social well-being, blessed bosom that nourishes us without stint or weariness.”

Here, being tired, he sipped. A thrill of satisfaction ran through the assembly, well pleased with its statesman. He began again, shrugging his shoulders imperceptibly as if resigned to their burden, and resumed. The moral atmosphere was cold, it needed warming. Then rang out the sonorous words and broad phrases of little meaning that floated like a vision before the mind’s eye of the somewhat bewildered company. He spoke confusedly of enterprise, the new machinery we owe to England, the contadino, the vast future of agriculture; on Bentham, on universal suffrage, primary instruction, the Horn of Plenty, and decentralisation. He slipped for a moment on “Regionalism,” but caught himself up; then lost his way and became absorbed in thought, with one hand suspended in mid-air, arrested midway while describing a circle. Slowly he came to himself again, referring to la patria and the fight for independence. The Hall rang with applause.

“This magnificent Exhibition, which unites to the sheaf of corn of the poor contadino, the domestic animal trained by the aged dame, the flower cultivated by the fine lady, the school exercise written by the labourer’s child, is a happy manifestation of every energy, of every—yes, of every force....”

And transported and intoxicated by his own words, his hand described so rapid a circle that the face of the invisible clock appeared to be in imminent danger; he had knocked down the bell and an empty glass. He referred to the Government, to efface the impression produced by this disaster.

“The Government, ladies and gentlemen—and especially the Minister for Agriculture, whom a slight indisposition has debarred from being here to-day—says to you by my lips that this festival, a living proof of fecund prosperity and of useful activity, is a national festival. The affluence of every single commune is the affluence of the State; this is the ideal the Government has in view. It will do its utmost within the limits of the means at its disposal, and the power it wields, to help this brave and laborious country where Garibaldi has fought and....”

“Viva Garibaldi!” cried the company.

“And where landed proprietors work together with their tenants for the good of the community. The Government is imbued with good intentions that in the course of time will become facts. But what appears to me to be the feature the most touching in its beauty is the holding of this domestic feast in the Palace of the banished Bourbons—is this triumph of the people, where the people have so suffered....”

“Beneeee!”

“Only under a constitutional country like ours, only under the beneficent rule of the House of Savoy, a race of knightly soldiers, could this miracle be accomplished. I call upon you to join with me in the cry, Viva il Re! Viva la Regina!”

He fell back tired, his eye dull under its flaccid lid, while his under-lip hung slack. Mechanically he wiped his brow, while the crowd continued to applaud; the Deputies closed up around him, and there was some congratulatory hand-shaking. He thanked them with studied courtesy, bestowing Ministerial hand-shakes and endeavouring to ensure his jeopardised majority.

In the bustle which ensued Andrea hastened to join the ladies.

“You liked it, didn’t you? Splendid voice!”

“He said some stupendous things that the stupid people did not understand,” pronounced Lucia, disdainfully.

And she opened her fan, so that she succeeded in attracting the notice of the group of journalists; perhaps they would mention her in their reports.

“Are you bored, Caterina?” queried Andrea.

“No, it’s like the Chamber of Deputies,” she replied, with placid resignation.

“Are you hungry?” asked Andrea of Alberto, whose yawns were savagely distending the pallid lips of his wide mouth.

“Hungry indeed! I wish I were!”

Then all resumed their seats, for the Member for Capua had advanced to the front of the platform, so that his entire person was visible; he waited for silence, to read his paper. The Prime Minister had seated himself opposite to him, in that attitude of mock attention whose assumption is so notable a faculty in a statesman.

The clear light eyes of the tall, distinguished-looking Deputy looked at the crowd. He wore the riband of the order of SS. Maurizzio and Lazzero round his neck, and many foreign decorations at his button-hole. With his powerful torso, erect carriage, and a countenance so impassive that it neither expressed sound nor hearing, he was a perfect type of the ex-soldier. There was no denying that his appearance was more correct than that of the Prime Minister, his features more refined, and his gestures more artistic. There was something British in the grave composure and sobriety of his diction. He read slowly, giving out every word with a high-bred voice that was almost acid in its sharpness. And, strange to say, his speech, which had been written beforehand, was a flat contradiction of the Prime Minister’s rhetorical improvisation. He made short work of the poetry of the Horn of Plenty and the Sweat of the Brow. He said that the Exhibition was a step in the right direction, but it was not everything; that the economic and financial movement had not yet begun to work among the labouring classes; that its impetus must necessarily be deadened as long as the present harsh fiscal system continued to prevail; that certain experiments in English cultivation and model-farming had been unsuccessful. He said that it was of no avail to demand of the land more than it could yield: that only meant exhaustion. He added that the agricultural question was a far more serious one than it appeared to be, but that the splendour of southern skies and a mild climate softened the hardships of meridional provinces. This was the only concession to poetry made by this poet—for he was, above all, a poet. But the unbiassed conscience of a wealthy and experienced landowner spoke higher in him than sentiment. The Minister listened, nodding his approval, as if all these ideas had been his own, instead of a frank and decided contradiction to everything he had said. The Member added, after a telling pause, and with a smile—his first—that he did not wish to preach pessimism on a day of rejoicing, and that this insight into genuine agricultural life was in itself of some moment. The province tendered its thanks to His Majesty’s Government, in the person of its Premier, for promises on which it built hopes of sure fulfilment, for he who made them was a hero, a patriot, and a brave soldier. Ever sensitive to praise, the Prime Minister flushed like a boy with the pleasure of it; then the Member calmly and quietly brought his speech to a close, without having sipped a drop of water or shown any signs of fatigue. The applause was prolonged, steady, and enthusiastic. The speech had been cold and lacking in sonorous rumble; but the audience had felt the truth of it. The Prime Minister all but embraced his beloved Deputy, who in the last division had voted against him. He accepted the demonstration quietly. The spectators could decipher no meaning on his high-bred sphinx-like face. In profile he was more soldier-like than ever, and the only trace of nervousness about him was a slight involuntary movement of one shoulder. The public rose to salute the departing Prime Minister; leaning on the Prefect’s arm, he passed through the applause of the front rows, dragging the leg that had been wounded at Palermo, one of the personal glories that helped him to govern. Behind him came the Mayors and other functionaries, and all the journalists, in a bustle of importance. On the stairs there was a second, weak, scant attempt at applause.

“The Member for Capua was fine, but cold, Caterina,” said Lucia, who was standing to see the people pass.

“Do you think so?” said Caterina, who held no opinion on the subject, with indifference.

“Oh! cold,” added Alberto, who always adopted the opinion of his wife.

“Shall we go?”

“I,” said Caterina, timidly, “have to go to the Didactic Exhibition; their first meeting is for to-day.”

“Then Alberto and I will take a turn in the Exhibition, until you and your husband have shaken off these onerous duties.”

“Sai, Lucia, I am tired, and I shan’t take a turn in the Exhibition.”

“Then we will go to the park.”

“Worse than ever, because of the sun,” he persisted, beginning to sulk. Lucia smiled as if in resignation. Caterina was embarrassed, for until the meeting was over and the Prime Minister took his departure, she and her husband were not at liberty.

“Well, Alberto mio, what will you do?”

“Drink an iced lemonade and go home. I shall sleep until dinner-time.”

“Bene, I will go home with you;” she suppressed a sigh.

“Oh! my poor heart, what a continual sacrifice,” whispered Caterina, as she embraced her friend.

A little later, Alberto passed alone through the Didactic section, and calling Caterina aside, said to her:

“When you have finished, Signora Lieti, you will find Lucia in the park, quite alone, near the lake; she is there thinking, dear soul. She pined for air, so I took her there and left her. I’m not a selfish man, and I’m going away to sleep. Can you go soon?”

“As soon as I can.”

Alberto went off on those weak legs of his, of which the trousers were always baggy, turning up the collar of his coat because he was perspiring. He came upon Andrea in the Hemp section, in the midst of a group of exhibitors who were accompanying the Prime Minister.

“When you’ve done here, go into the park, where you’ll find your Signora with mine, awaiting you in the little shrubbery by the lake. But make haste. I’m going home to sleep. Is there a bar here?”

“Yes, on the ground-floor.”

“I want a glass of Marsala. Shall you be home in time for dinner?”

“To be sure; pleasant dreams to you.”

He watched him depart with pity for an existence so poor in health and strength, useless alike to himself and others. But this Minister was insatiable. As if he knew anything about madder, or dried beans, or yellow gourds! Now it’s the turn of the cocoons! Andrea was beginning to weary: while the Prime Minister was engaged in conversation with the Prefect and the Member for Nola with that cadaverous face and ambiguous blond hair, he wouldn’t be likely to speak to him. Andrea would have liked to leave; he was getting bored with the official circle and the stupid march of inspection throughout the building. Besides, he suffered from the heat, and how cool it must be out there in the park! Yet he lingered, a victim of his ambition, in the hope that the Minister would speak to him at last.

“In the Grain section, I shall bolt, unless he sends for me before we get there,” said he to himself. They passed not only the grain, but the fodder. Andrea felt his anger rising as they passed through the Hall of the Oils, upon which the sun cast yellow rays. “I shall leave him at the Wines,” he thought; he was incensed and quite red in the face. But in the Wine section, in front of a pyramid of bottles, the Minister called out:

“Signor Lieti!”

“Your Excellency!”

“You are a brave worker in the common cause: here is some of your wine. Fine Italian wines should be cultivated, if only out of patriotism. We drink too much Bordeaux and Champagne; France intoxicates us.”

“Your Excellency....”

“The congratulations of the Government are due to you, as an influential citizen, who utilises his activity in this public service ... to which I add my personal compliments.”

Andrea bowed low, in mingled pride and shyness. He had had his share: the Minister was now flattering the Member for Cassino also on his wines. Besides, they had been all over the Exhibition; now they were about to inspect the cattle and poultry in the park.

“Now he has spoken to me he won’t say anything to me about my fowls; I shall take to my heels.” Contented, with the blood once more running freely through his veins, fanning himself with his gibus, his gloves stuck in his waistcoat, he slipped away by a back staircase which shortened the distance.

“He will say nothing to me ... nothing to me ... nothing to me ... nothing about the fowls,” he hummed, as he crossed the courtyard.

Once in the park, he walked rapidly, but was disappointed in not meeting with any one at the lake of the Castelluccia.

“Where can they have got to?” he murmured, with flagging spirits. He went the round of the wide, oval shrubbery that fringes the little lake. In one corner, in a thin streak of light under the dome of her white, red-lined sunshade, sat Lucia, on a rustic bench. She was alone, and sat with her face turned away from him. Andrea thought he would turn back; yet Caterina could not be far off. So he approached rather shyly, intimidated by the white figure, crowned with blonde rays, their radiance playing on her cheeks and on the rustic background. Lucia did not hear his steps, despite the rustle in the dry leaves. She uttered a cry when he appeared before her.

“Oh! how easily you are frightened!” he said, with an assumed ease of manner.

She held out a trembling hand to him. Andrea, feeling rather awkward, remained standing before her.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“No; I’m not tired.”

“Has it been a long affair?”

“Have you been long waiting?”

“I think so; at least, it seemed long to me;” she smiled a melancholy smile. “How beautiful it is here, Lieti!”

“Oh! beautiful. What a fool I must look in evening clothes in the midst of this green country!”

“No; for this country is artificial, it savours of powder and patches. The branches of these trees look as if they had been trimmed with scissors. Oh! who will give me Nature—real great, omnipotent Nature?”

“When your voice falls in longing, it is enchanting,” said Andrea, with admiration in his eyes.

“Do not you long for real country?”

“Eh! it is not always poetic. Sometimes it is barren, at others it smells too much of lime. But I know where to find your ideal; the dark wood, the narrow paths, the lake hidden in the thicket....”

“Dio! ... You know where all that is, Andrea!” And she crossed her hands on her bosom, her voice trembling from desire.

“Here, in the English Garden.”

“Far, far, far?”

“No; near, three-quarters of an hour’s walk.”

They looked fixedly at each other as if they were debating something. She cast a glance around her, and then bowed her head and sighed in resignation. Andrea felt inclined to sigh too, there was a weight upon his chest. With a gesture familiar to him, he threw down his hat and passed his hand through his curly hair. She stretched out a little foot whose jewelled buckle shone in the sun.

“You are too beautiful to-day. It is quite insufferable,” said Andrea, with a forced laugh.

“To please Alberto.... I am not fond of dressing extravagantly; I cannot see the pleasure of it. I am, as you know, inaccessible to vanity.”

“I know ... but I think Alberto is a fool.”

“Don’t say so, Signor Andrea; poor Alberto, he is but unhappy.”

“You don’t understand me. Why does he make you dress like that? Every one looks at you. Isn’t he jealous?”

“No; I think not.”

“If I were your husband I should be madly jealous,” he cried.

For the space of a second, Lucia was startled and shrank back. Then she broke into her habitual smile, a smile of voluptuous and seductive melancholy.

“I am always frightening you,” said Andrea, troubled, in a lamentable voice.

“No; I know it’s only your way.”

“It’s my temperament; sometimes the blood goes to my head, and mad ideas get into it. Listen, let me say all. If I were your husband, I should be madly jealous, jealous to insanity. I feel that I should beat you, strangle you....”

Lucia closed her eyes, inebriated.

“And listen, listen,” he gasped; “I want to tell you what I have never dared to say to you until now ... to ask your pardon for that evening ... when I behaved like a brute.... Have you forgiven me?” Thrilling with the mere thought of the scene he had evoked, his entreaty was as passionate as the emotion caused by memory.

“Yes,” she replied, a barely audible “yes,” that came after some hesitation.

“You do really forgive me?”

“I forgive you. Do not let us talk about it.”

“One word more. Did you say anything to....”

“To whom?”

“... to Alberto?”

“No, nothing.”

“Thank you.”

He drew himself up as if he were both relieved and satisfied: there was a secret between them about which they could talk without being understood by any one else—about which neither could think without knowing that the other shared the thought. Lucia started imperceptibly, and then turned and asked him:

“And you?”

“What?”

“Have you spoken of it?”

“To whom?”

“To Caterina, to your Nini?”

“No, no...!” in evident agitation.

“You might have told her,” she replied slowly, “you who love her so much.”

“It would have pained her ... and....”

“Pained her for whom? For your sake, perhaps.”

“For yours. She loves you.”

“True. Caterina is an excellent creature, Signor Andrea: her good qualities are remarkable, although they make no show. Love her ever, for she deserves it; love her with all your might. Before my marriage, I used to fear that my Caterina, my sweet friend, was unhappy. She loves you above all; make her happy....”

Caterina was coming towards them, smiling, and a little out of breath.

“Have I kept you waiting very long? Have you been here long, Andrea?”

“No; not very long.”

“Did the Prime Minister speak to you?”

“Yes; he was very complimentary.”

“About the wheat?”

“No, about the wine made on the new system.”

“And the fowls?”

“Nothing, I didn’t go there. And what have you done, Nini?”

“Talkee, talkee, nothing settled. The worst of it is that I shall have to go there every morning.”

“For how many days?”

“I don’t know; eight or ten, perhaps.”

“A bore, Nini; but you are kind and patient.”

“That is what we were saying,” observed Lucia; “that you are an angel and worthy of adoration.”

“An angel and worthy of adoration,” repeated Andrea, mechanically.

II.

The Princess Caracciolo, the great benefactress of the poor, the aged, and the children, presided. She reigned in the Hall of Maria Carolina, where the ladies of the jury were assembled, with the mingled air of regal hauteur and amiable piety peculiar to her. An ascetic pallor had left her cheeks colourless and her lips faded; while her person retained the seductive grace of the woman who had loved, and loved to be beautiful. She had left her own poor and her children, for the sake of these other children. The thirty ladies had, with one voice, elected her as their president. There was only one man, the secretary, among them—a professor, a pedagogue, saturated with the principles of Froebel and of Pick; a bald, ambiguous-looking, and perfectly innocuous being. The ladies of the jury sat in a circle, on brocaded couches, where the most opposite types were brought into juxtaposition. Three German teachers had come from Naples: one, tall, thin and brick-coloured, with her hair in a green net; another, older, stout, florid, and dressed in black; the third was a deal plank, with a waxen head stuck on the end of it; all three had gold spectacles and guide-books. They were talking, with animation, to each other, in their own language, the deal plank ejaculating rapid ja’s by fits and starts. Then there were the Directresses of the Institutes of Caserta, Santa Maria, and Maddaloni; all frills and cheap trinkets, black silk dresses, starched collars and light gloves. A couple of professors’ wives, of the genus that teaches, brings children into the world, and does the cooking. They had pale, emaciated faces, were flat where they should have been round, and protuberant where they should have been flat. Then eight or ten wealthy ladies from the neighbourhood, provincial aristocracy or plutocracy, wives of landed proprietors or communal councillors; with bored, inexpressive faces, and toilets that had come from Naples, some being worn awkwardly and others with supreme elegance. Among the notabilities were the Contessa Brambilla, a fresh-looking young woman, with perfectly white hair and very bright eyes; the illustrious poetess Nina, small, fragile and vivacious as a grain of pepper; the wife of the Member for Santa Maria, a calm austere woman, with full pensive eyes. All these ladies inspected each other with a curiosity they endeavoured to dissemble, while they discussed the relative merits of hand-made stockings, hand-stitched shirts, and darns in felt. Some of them carried special communications to and fro from the presidential platform.

Caterina was the most silent of them all; she was reading, or pretending to read, in her little note-book. It was a present of the day before from her husband; on its morocco binding was the name Nini. Andrea had become more tenderly affectionate of late, and in this tenderness she sunned herself with devout collectedness and the absence of demonstration that characterised her. When they were alone, Andrea would take her on his knee or carry her round their room in his arms, murmuring “Nini, Nini,” ever “Nini,” while he kissed her. And it sometimes happened that on these occasions his voice trembled from emotion; he no longer laughed his noisy laugh that used to make the house ring with its mirth. Perhaps it was because of the guests who had been with them for the last fortnight. Caterina had long known that Andrea’s character had all the delicacy of a woman’s. In the presence of those two sickly beings, Alberto, a martyr to his cough, and Lucia, a prey to latent or pronounced nevrose, Andrea restrained the exuberance of his perfect health. When he went out he abstained, from delicacy, from kissing Caterina in their presence; for Alberto never kissed Lucia in public. Perhaps that was why Andrea made such enthusiastic love to her when they were alone, to make up for all the time they passed in a friendly partie carrée.

Caterina was not less bored than the other eight or ten ladies of her set. She could not appreciate the needlework exhibits: stockings in coarse, yellowish thread, knitted with rusty needles; shirts covered with the fly-marks accumulated during the six months they had been in hand, sewn with big, inexpert stitches, ill-cut and folded in coarse material; interminable productions in every kind of crochet, darns done with hair, miracles of patience, that made her sick. The exhibits had been sent in in heaps, badly arranged and catalogued, from rural schools, in which the teachers laboured, almost in vain, to teach the use of the needle to poor fingers hardened by the use of the spade—rural schools that can neither provide needles, thread, irons, nor material wherewith to work. Caterina with her instinctive love of pure, fine, sweet-smelling linen, felt a sort of physical disgust in inspecting these objects of dubious whiteness. Besides, what did she know about it? These humble accomplishments had not been taught her. She felt her own ignorance, and offered up inward thanks that it had saved her from the vice-presidency of a district.

Meanwhile the meeting continued in academic form, in discussion that was at once official and colloquial. The vice-presidents read lengthy accounts of their own districts, and insisted on prizes being distributed to everybody: the poetess suggested buying materials for those pupils who were too poor to do so for themselves: the professor read letters of sympathy and adhesion from pedagoguish clubs and committees; but Caterina heard not a word of it all. There was the cook, who did just as he chose lately. Since Lucia and Alberto had come to pass the villa season with her, Caterina was more particular than ever as to her table. Those two were so delicate; they needed strong bouillon and light dishes; quite a different diet from Andrea’s, which was also hers. She and Andrea ate underdone meat and refreshing salads; and the fish question was a serious one at Caserta, an inland town, where the fish had to be sent from Naples and Gaeta, and was not always fresh. One day, in fact one evening, Caterina had sent Peppino, a labourer, to Naples, for soles; her two guests often partook of this delicate, innocuous fish. And now, what with official entertainments, banquets, and hotels filled to overflowing, the market was cleared out in a moment.

Mouzu Giovanni, with whom she held a consultation every morning, shook his head doubtfully on the slightest provocation, saying sceptically:

“If we can get any! If there is any in the market! If it isn’t all gone.”

This was the difficult question which Caterina was debating, while the Princess Caracciolo requested the ladies to proceed to the election of a vice-president, who in one report would combine those of six divisions. Caterina was in continual fear of not having sufficiently mastered the study of Lucia’s tastes, poor nervous creature that she was, whose digestion was completely destroyed. She had arranged a pretty, fresh, airy room for her—hung with Pompadour cretonne, a room full of pretty nicknacks, to please her. But she believed that in secret Lucia hankered after her prie-dieu, which she had taken away from her father’s house to her own in Via Bisignano. One afternoon, when Alberto and Andrea had gone out riding, Caterina had entered the room and found Lucia on her knees before a chair, just as she used to kneel at school. If she could but arrange with Alberto to send Peppino to Naples to fetch the prie-dieu, what a pleasant surprise for Lucia! It could surely be managed without much difficulty, and it would give her so much pleasure! Ah, she must remember to write to Naples for good tea—Souchong; for Lucia said that from September on she could only drink tea in the evening: coffee was too exciting for her nerves. The question was whether she should write to Caflish or to Van Bol for Souchong; Andrea would know; he was always well posted in such matters.

“Signora Lieti, will you come and vote?” broke in the Princess Caracciolo, gently.

Caterina, scarcely realising what she was doing, wrote the first name that occurred to her on her script, which she then rolled up and dropped in the crystal bowl. Looking at her little gold watch, she returned to her place. It was getting late; they had been there, losing their time, for nearly three hours.

Elsewhere, at home for instance, she could have employed it usefully. The washerwoman had brought home an enormous pile of washing, and Caterina never allowed it to be ironed until she had carefully examined it and ascertained where a button or a tape was missing. The linen was new, but she suspected the washerwoman of using potash, because of certain tiny holes she had discovered therein. She had taxed her with it, and the woman had replied that she was incapable of such deception, and that all she used was pure wood-ash and soap.

At last there was a stir in the meeting. The result of the voting was uncertain; it was even remarkable for divergence of opinion. Each lady appeared either to have given her vote to herself or to the person who happened to be sitting next her. The Princess read out each scrip with the same indulgent smile. She was a woman of unerring tact, who saw and noted all that befell in her presence. She requested the ladies to do their voting over again, and to make up their minds to one name, so that some result might be attained. They then formed into groups; the Colonel’s wife went from one juror to the other, talking to each in an undertone.

“Signora Lieti, would you like to vote for the Member’s wife? We ought to get an unanimous vote.”

“I will vote for any one you please. Will the meeting last much longer?”

“Don’t talk about it; it’s torture. To-day I am supposed to be at home to the superior officers, and my husband is there waiting for me, and I shall find him furious. Shall we decide on that name?”

“I am quite of your opinion.”

Andrea, Alberto, and Lucia were walking up and down the agricultural show. They had driven over to Caserta after luncheon, leaving Caterina in the Hall of the Didactic Jury, and promising to call for her soon. That day Alberto had declared that he felt perfectly well and strong, and he intended to see everything. Lucia, on the contrary, happened to be in a bad humour; still she had vouchsafed a smile of melancholy joy when the news was broken to her. Andrea was happy in his summer garments—a great relief to him after the evening attire which had sat so heavily on him the day before. He felt at his ease, free and content, and frequently addressed himself to Alberto. Lucia, walking between them, listened in silence. They stopped before everything of interest—she longer than her companions—so that she did not always keep up with them.

“Are you in low spirits to-day?” queried Andrea at last.

“No, no,” she replied, shaking her head.

“Do you feel ill?”

“Not worse than usual.”

“Then what is it?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing ... is too little.”

“It is nothing that spoils my life for me.”

“Don’t ask her questions,” said Alberto to Andrea, as they went on in front; “it’s one of her bad days.”

“What do you do when she is in one of her bad days?”

“Nothing. If she doesn’t care to speak, I ask her no questions; if she speaks, I don’t contradict her. It’s the least I can do for her. Do you realise the sacrifice she has made in marrying me?”

“What an idea!”

“No, no; I am right. She is an angel, Andrea, an angel! and a woman at the same time. If I could but tell you.... No lemons or oranges here, are there, Andrea?”

“No, Alberto. You must know that the soil is unfavourable to them. Besides, we are too far inland; they thrive well along the coast. Have you many at Sorrento?”

“Oh, a good many; and, sai, they yield six per cent. free of income-tax, while other produce only yields two and a half.”

Lucia broke in with her faint, dragging intonation:

“Alberto, why don’t we build a villa at Sorrento?”

“Eh! It wouldn’t be a bad plan. I have thought of it sometimes myself; but building runs away with time and money....”

“Not a palace; no big useless edifice. What would be the good of it? But a microscopic villa, a nest for us two, with three or four rooms flooded with sun; a conservatory, and an underground kitchen that would not destroy the poetry of the house; no dining-room, but a porch hung with jasmin and passion-flowers; an aviary, where singing-birds would pipe and birds of Paradise hop from branch to branch—and go together, we two alone, into that fragrant land, washed by that divine sea, and stay there together, apart from the world: thou restored to health, I dedicating myself to thee....”

She said all this to Alberto, looking the while at Andrea, who was rather embarrassed by such a demonstration of conjugal affection. He pretended to be immersed in the study of onions, but not one of the slow, chiselled, seductive words escaped him.

“You are right; it would be delightful, Lucia. We will think about it when we get back to Naples. Oh! we really must build this nest. But where do you find these strange notions that would never occur to me? Who suggests them to you?”

“The heart, Alberto. Shall we sit down?”

“By no means; I am not a bit tired. I am flourishing—almost inclined for a ride. You are tired, perhaps?”

“I am never tired,” was the grave, deliberate answer. “Sometimes, Signor Andrea, I ask myself what the people would do without bread.”

“Eh!” he exclaimed.

“If the wheat were to fail...! Who can have invented bread?”

They turned to her in amazement; Alberto attempted a joke.

“You should be able to tell us, Lucia. They must have taught you that at school, where you learnt so many things.”

“No; there is nothing that I know. I am always thinking, but I know nothing.”

She was looking singularly youthful, in her simple cotton frock, striped white and blue, confined at the waist by a leather band, from which hung a small bag; with a straw hat with a blue veil which the sun mottled with luminous spots; her chin was half buried in folds of the gauze that was tied under it.

They had halted before a large panel, a marvel of patience, whose frame consisted of dried beans strung together. Along it ran a design executed in split peas in relief; the ground of the tablet itself was in fine wheat, threaded grain by grain. On it, in letters formed of lentils, might be read: “A MARGHERITA DI SAVOIA: REGINA D’ITALIA.”

“Whose work is it?” asked Lucia.

“Two young ladies, daughters of a landowner at San Leucio.”

“How old are they?”

“I think ... about twenty eight or thirty.”

“Are they beautiful?”

“Oh, no; but so good.”

“That I am sure of. Do you know that in that tablet I can decipher a romance? Poor creatures! passing their lonely winter evenings imprisoned within their own walls, and finding their recreation in this lowly, provincial, inartistic work. And perhaps, labouring over it, they sighed for unrequited love ... an affection which their avaricious parents refused to sanction. Oh! they foresaw their own existence—an old maid’s dull life. Poor picture! I should like to buy it.”

“It’s not for sale. Perhaps it will be sent to the Queen.”

By degrees her melancholy was infecting her companions by the contact of her fascinating sadness. Andrea shrugged his shoulders in an effort to regain his good humour, but he had not the power to recall it—the spring was gone. Alberto, tugging at his scanty moustache, tried to shake off the impression of fatigue that had stolen upon him.

“Is there much more to be seen?” he inquired of Andrea.

“I,” observed Lucia, “have no will of my own. Take me where you please. Do you know that I belong to the ladies’ jury for flowers? Yesterday I received the appointment.”

“These juries are an epidemic,” exclaimed Alberto. “They take our wives away from us. The Signora Caterina has become invisible; now they want to sequestrate mine. I refuse my consent.”

“Have your own way; I will do whatever you choose,” said Lucia, with a smile. “Still the flower jury is a pretty idea.... To feel the delight of colour, perfume, exquisite form: to examine the most delicate, mysterious, extraordinary of flowers, and among them to seek the beautiful, the perfect one, the flower of flowers.”

“After all, there would be no harm in your accepting ... Lucia,” suggested Alberto.

“Very well, then; I will accept for your sake—to please you, Signor Andrea, what do you think about it?”

“I am not a competent judge,” said Andrea, drily.

Lucia, as if from fatigue, then slipped her arm through his, and leant on it. He started, smiled, and then quickened his step, as if he would run away with her.... They were about to enter the hemp-room: there it was, in the rough, in bundles, then combed, spun and made up in skeins; a complete exhibition of it in every stage.

“Look, look at this mass of hemp; it is like the tresses of a Scandinavian maiden looking down from her balcony on the Baltic, awaiting her unknown lover. And this, paler still, so finely spun; might it not be the hair of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? Oh, how full of meaning are all these things for me!”

“She sees things that people like us never see,” said Alberto, as if to himself. “Tell me, Signor Andrea, is it true that the lives of the hemp-spinners are as wretched as those of the unfortunate peasants who work in the rice plantations?”

“Not quite so bad, but nearly, Signora Lucia. Hemp-netting is done at midsummer, in the dog-days; a kind of heat that causes the exhalation of miasma. The water in which the hemp lies becomes putrid and poisons the atmosphere.”

“But do you know that what you’re telling me is odious? Do you know that our artificial life, that feeds on rural life, is an anthropophagous one? Do you know that the daily homicide.... Oh! let us go away, away from this place. This exhibition represents to me a place of human butchery.”

“There is a little exaggeration in this view of it,” he replied, not daring to contradict her flatly. “For the disease is decreasing, and fatal cases are growing less frequent. Landowners supply quinine gratis to the women who fall ill. Besides, if we think seriously on all things mundane, we shall perceive that human life needs these obscure sacrifices. Progress....”

“You are as odious as you are wicked. I cannot bear you; go away.”

She dropped his arm, as if in horror. Alberto sniggered at Andrea’s sudden discomfiture.

“Oh! poor Andrea, didn’t you know that Lucia was a humanitarian?”

“I did not know it,” he replied, gravely.

“Oh! my heart is full of love for the disinherited of life; for the poor, down-trodden ones; for the pariahs of this cruel world. I love them deeply, warmly; my heart burns with love for them.”

Andrea felt pained. He felt the weakness of Lucia’s argument, but dared not prove it to her: he felt the predominance she usurped in conversation and over those who approached her, and shrank from it as from a danger. When she had leant on his arm he had throbbed, in every vein, with a full and exquisite pleasure. When she had dropped it, he had experienced a strange loneliness, he had felt himself shrink into something poorer and weaker, and was almost tempted to feel his arm, so that he might revive the sensation of the hand that had been withdrawn. Now Alberto was laughing at him, and that irritated him beyond measure.... That little Alberto, a being as stupid as he appeared innocuous, was capable of biting, when the spirit moved him. He could be poisonous, when he chose, the consumptive insect! Why shouldn’t he crush his head against the wall? Andrea took off his light grey hat and fanned his face to disperse the mist of blind rage that clouded his brain. All three pursued their walk in silence, as if isolated by their own thoughts. The embarrassing silence prolonged itself. Alberto had an idea.

“Make peace with Andrea, Lucia.”

“No; he is a bad-hearted egotist.”

“Via, make it up. Don’t you see he is sorry?”

“Are you sorry for what you said just now, Signor Andrea?”

“Mah! ...”

“Repent at once, and we will be friends again, and you shall once more be my knight of the Exhibition. You do repent? Here is my pledge of peace.”

She separated a spray of lilies of the valley from the bunch at her waist and gave it to him. He placed it in his button-hole, and, taking her hand in his, tucked it under his arm....

“And you, Alberto, who are the mediator between us, will you have some lilies?”

“What should I do with them? I have no button-hole to this overcoat. You shall give me another pledge—a kiss ... when we get home.”

Andrea squeezed the arm that rested on his, so hard that it was all she could do to suppress a cry.

“Yes, yes,” she stammered, trembling.

“What is the average value of the Wine Show?” inquired Alberto, who possessed vineyards in Puglia which produced the noted Lagarese. This he said with the air of a connoisseur....

“Not much,” replied Andrea, with forced composure. “For the vine-growers have not all sent exhibits. You see, there are the special viticultural expositions. But there’s some good in that too.”

“Is this your wine, that the Prime Minister praised you for?”

“Yes; and there is some more over there.”

“Does this wine intoxicate, Signor Andrea?” inquired Lucia.

“That’s according; I have some of greater strength.”

“Intoxicating?”

“Yes.”

“Wine is an excellent and beneficent gift. It gives intoxication and forgetfulness,” she said, slowly.

“Forgetfulness,” murmured Alberto; “and the Signora Caterina, whom we are forgetting.”

The other two exchanged a rapid glance. They had indeed forgotten Caterina, who had been waiting for them for an hour in the Maria Carolina saloon, whence the other ladies had departed.

At table, between the roast and the salad, Lucia mentioned that she had been, and was, still in low spirits on account of poor Galimberti. The impending misfortune took her appetite away.

“What misfortune?” asked Caterina.

“His sister writes me that he begins to show signs of mental alienation.”

“Oh! poor, poor man!”

“Most unhappy being, victim of blind fate, of cruel destiny. The case is not hopeless, but he has never been quite all there. In addition to this, they are poor, and do not like to confess their poverty.”

“Have you sent money?”

“They would be offended. I wrote to them.”

A shiver ran through the circle. When they separated for the night, Andrea was pensive.

“What is the matter with you?” said Caterina, who was plaiting her hair.

“I am thinking of that unfortunate Galimberti. Let us send him something, anonymously.”

“Yes, let us send!”

“All the more ... all the more because his misfortune might befall any of us,” he added, so low that she did not hear him. A sudden terror had blanched his face.

III.

“This morning I feel so well, that I shall go for a ride.”

“It would be imprudent, Alberto,” said his wife, from her sofa.

“No, no; it will do me good. I shall ride Tetillo, a quiet horse that Andrea is having saddled for me. A two hours’ ride on the Naples road....”

“It is too sunny, dear Alberto.”

“The sun will warm my blood. I am recovering my health, Lucia mia. I am getting quite fat. What are your plans?”

“I don’t care for anything. Perhaps I shan’t go out. I am bored.”

“Bad day,” murmured Alberto, as, clanking the silver spurs on his polished boots, he took his departure.

Later on Caterina knocked at her door.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to the Exhibition?”

“No; it bores me.”

“You will be more bored, all alone here. Alberto won’t come home till late; Andrea and I are sure to be late. Come!”

“I won’t go; the Exhibition bores me. I can never be with you for a moment there.”

“We can’t help that. I feel it too, but it’s not my fault.”

“And to-day, if I went, I should have to pace up and down those huge rooms alone.”

“Andrea might stay with you,” urged Caterina, timidly, ever conscious of their latent antipathy.

“We should quarrel.”

“Still?” said the other, pained and surprised.

“That’s how it is; we cannot agree.”

Caterina was silent; after a pause, she said:

“But surely, to-day is the flower day?”

“To-day? I think not.... True, it is to-day.”

“Then you cannot avoid going.”

“I can pretend to be ill.”

“It’s a bad pretext.”

“Well, I see I must sacrifice myself, and come.” There was irritation in her voice and manner as she hurriedly proceeded to dress. Caterina felt as humiliated, while she was waiting for her, as if she were to blame for the annoyance. During the drive from Centurano to Caserta, Lucia was silent, with a harsh expression on her face, keeping her eyes closed and her parasol down as if she neither wished to see nor hear.

Caterina congratulated herself on having sent Andrea on before, while Lucia’s insufferable fit of ill temper lasted. They arrived at the Palace at half-past twelve. They separated, without exchanging many words, appointing to meet each other at four. Caterina mounted the stairs leading to the Didactic Exhibition, and Lucia passed through the garden to the flower-show. There were crowds of fashionably attired ladies and gentlemen in those regions. Lucia moved slowly along the gravelled path to the right, under the chestnut-trees, and those whom she met turned to gaze at her. She wore a dress of darkest green brocade, short, close-fitting, and well draped; it showed her little black shoes and open-work, green silk stockings. On her head was an aërial bonnet of palest pink tulle—a cloud, a breath, without feathers or flowers, like a pink froth. Now Caterina had left her, she was smiling at her own thoughts. The smile became more accentuated when, on turning the palisades of the Floral Exhibition to enter the conservatory containing the exotics, she met Andrea.

“My dear Lieti, where are you going to?”

“Nowhere,” he replied, with embarrassment; “I was looking for a friend from Maddaloni.”

“And have you found him?” with an ironical smile.

“No; he hasn’t come. I shall wait for him. And you?”

“Oh! you know all about me. I have come to the flower jury.”

“But it doesn’t meet till two.”

“Really? Oh! what a feather-head! and what shall I do till two? I may not go to the 'Didactics,’ and the 'Agrarians’ bore me.”

“Stay with me,” he entreated.

“Alone?”

“Here....”

“Without doing anything? Every one will notice it.”

“Who do you think is going to gape and watch?”

“Every one, my friend.”

“They will look at you,” he said, bitterly; although the words “my friend” delighted him.

“And if they do, we must provide against it; this is a scurrilous province. It hides its own bourgeois vices and slanders the innocent.”

“Listen,” murmured Andrea, taking her arm in his. “Why don’t you come with me to the English Garden?”

“No....”

“It is so beautiful. The great trees cast their shadows over it, the paths rise, fall, and lose themselves among the roses; under the water-lilies lies the still crystal water; under the reeds, the water murmurs as it flows; there is no one there, and it is so cool....”

“Do not speak to me like that,” she whispered, faintly.

“Come, Lucia, come. That is the frame for your beauty. You are like a rose to-day; come, and take your place among the roses.”

“Do not talk to me like that, for pity’s sake, or you will kill me....” Her teeth chattered as if from ague.

He felt that she was losing consciousness, that she was going to faint. People were passing to and fro; he was seized with a fear of ridicule.

“Fear nothing; I will not say another word. Come to yourself, I beseech you. If you care for me at all, come to yourself. Shall we go to the cattle-show? It is crowded. You will be safe there. Will you come?”

“Lead me where you please,” she replied faintly, while her bosom heaved and her nostrils quivered in the struggle for breath.

They did not exchange a word on the way. They met several persons, who, seeing Andrea with a lady, bowed profoundly to him. Two young men made whispered remarks to each other.

“They take me for your wife.”

“Do not say that to me, I entreat you.”

“You are not brave, Signor Lieti; you are afraid to hear the truth.”

“You have called me your friend....”

“Do you wish to make me repent it?”

“Oh! don’t torment me. Dialectics are your strong point; your thoughts are deep, weird, and often too cruel for me to fathom. I am at your mercy. You invest me, you capture me, and then you torture me. Remember that I am a child, an ignorant child—a child all muscle and no imagination. Spare me.”

He raised his hand to his collar as if he were choking; while he spoke, the tears had gathered in his eyes and voice.

“Forgive me; I will spare you,” she said, sweetly humbling herself in her triumph.

They passed under a great avenue of chestnut-trees where the sun cast little circles of golden light upon the ground. The heat was increasing. Some of the passers-by were fanning their flushed faces with their straw hats; ladies unfurled their fans as they moved languidly along, overcome by the weight of the atmosphere. They spoke but little to each other, looking down like two persons who were a prey to ennui. They turned and came to the first section. A walk led all round an immense rectangular meadow, which was enclosed by a stout palisade of medium height, divided into compartments for each animal. There was a little rack with a ring and a cord for each head of cattle; the animals stood stolid and motionless, facing the spectators. The cows had good stupid heads, benevolent eyes, and their ribs showed through their thin flanks.

“Poor beasts,” she whispered. “How ugly they are!”

“Ugly, but useful. They are hardy animals, and all the better for being thin; the milk is all the better for it. They are not so liable to disease, and they yield five hundred per cent, of their value.”

“You are fond of animals?”

“Very; they are strong, useful, and docile. We humans do not always combine the same qualities.”

“But we have intellect.”

“You mean, egoism.”

“Well; love is a species of egoism,” affirmed Lucia, crossly.

They progressed slowly. From behind the palisade the oxen gazed at them with serene eyes that were almost indicative of thought. Some of them bending their necks, under the sun that struck their hides, browsed bunches of grass. Now and again the dull impatient thud of their hoofs struck the scanty down-trodden grass of the meadow. The flies settled on the hard rough hides with their many seams. Sometimes an ox would strike his neck with his tongue and his flank with his tail, to rid himself of them; but the flies returned insolently to the attack, buzzing in the stifling atmosphere. Lucia opened a large Japanese fan, all gold-dust on a black ground, and fanned herself rapidly.

“Do you feel the heat?”

“Very much. And how suffocating it is here!”

“Shall we sit down?”

“No; I am beginning to feel interested in the cattle. Besides, I feel the sun broiling my shoulders. I would rather walk.”

“Here are the buffaloes,” explained Andrea. “You cannot have seen any before. They are of a nobler breed than these cows. Look at them; don’t you see how wild they look? They are shaking those heads with the twisted horns. They are of a powerful, sanguine temperament; their blood is black and smoking. Have you ever drunk blood?”

“No,” she replied, in amazement, yet sucking her lips with a kind of longing. “What is it like?”

“A potent drink that puts strength into your veins. A drink for soldiers, sportsmen, and brave men trained to corporal exercises. A cup of blood expands one’s life.”

By degrees, while he spoke, Lucia’s enthusiasm grew for the plenitude of strength expressed in Andrea’s whole personality for the vigour of his powerful frame and the plastic animalism that found in him its supreme and perfect development. A buffalo, in sudden rage, proceeded to bump its head against the wall. Lucia gazed in growing astonishment at the magnitude of these stalls built in the open air, and at the motley show of sturdy brutes.

“Are these buffaloes savage?” she inquired, timidly.

“Very: the blood goes to their heads, as it might to the brain of a strong man. They are subject to fits of sanguine madness. They loathe red, it sends incendiary fumes to their brain.”

Lucia raised her perfumed handkerchief to her lips and stopped her nose with it. “This smell of cattle is not unhealthy,” said Andrea, naïvely. “Indeed, it is good for the health. Doctors prescribe it for consumptive people. Your perfumes are far more injurious, they deprave the senses and shatter the nerves.”

“Depravity is human.”

“That is why I prefer the beasts, whose instincts are always healthy. We have come to the end of this section. Here the finest of them all.”

It was a bull, a black bull with a white mark on its forehead, between its superb horns; a sturdy, majestic creature, contemptuous of its rack, to whom had been given a long cord and a wide enclosure: he tramped up and down his habitation without taking any notice of the onlookers, who expressed their timid admiration by whispered eulogies.

“Oh! how beautiful, how splendid!” cried Lucia.

“He is magnificent. He belongs to Piccirilli, of Casapulla we shall give him the prize. He is the pure exceptional type, the perfection of the breed. A masterpiece, Lucia ... What is the matter?”

“I feel rather faint, take me down there to the water. The sun is burning my arms, and my brain is on fire.”

They went as far as the little fountain, under a tree, where there was a wooden cup. He dipped a handkerchief in water and applied it to her forehead.

“Thank you, I am better; I felt as though I were dying. Let us return, or rather let us continue walking here, we are too isolated.”

They passed by the horse-boxes, a row of little wooden houses that were closed that day. They could hear the frequent neighings that came from under the semi-obscurity, under the wooden roofs that were grilled by the midday sun, and the restless impatient pawing of many hoofs.

“Those are the stallions, accustomed to free gallops across their native plains. They cannot bear inaction. Some of them can hear the mares neighing in the adjoining boxes. And they answer them by neighing and beating their tails against the walls.”

She turned pale again while he spoke.

“Is it the sun again?” he inquired.

“The heat, the heat....”

Dark flushes dyed her cheeks, leaving them paler than before, with a feverish pallor. She tried to moisten her lips with the wet handkerchief; they were as dry as if the wind had cut them. The arm that rested on Andrea’s weighed heavily.

“Shall we enter that large building, Signor Andrea? At least we shall be out of the sun there. Do you know what I feel? Myriads of pricks under my skin, as close together and as sharp as needle-points. I think the cool shade will stop it.”

They entered a sort of large ground-floor barn with a slanting roof, where every species of domestic animal disported itself in cages or little hutches. The grave white rabbits, with their pink noses and comic, pendant ears, were rolled up like bundles of cotton-wool at the back of their hutches. You could not see them without stooping, and then they edged still farther back in terror at not being able to run away. The fowls had a long compartment to themselves, a large wired pen, divided into many smaller ones. Big, fat, and motionless, their round eyes, watchful, disappeared now and then under the yellowish, flabby membrane that covered them. They butted their heads against the wire and pecked languidly at bran and barley prepared in little troughs for them, pecking at each other under the wing and cackling loudly, as if that cry were the yawn of a much bored fowl. The turkeys wore a more serious aspect; they never stirred, maintaining their dignified composure.

“Look, Lucia; I always think that turkey-hens pipe for their chicks out in the world.”

“I have never seen one before. Are there no doves here?”

“No, only animals for agricultural purposes. Doves are luxuries. Are you fond of them?”

“Yes. I had one, but it died when I was a little girl.”

“I am sorry there are none here.”

A cock awakening from his torpor, and perceiving a ray of sunlight that had filtered through one of the windows, began to crow lustily—cock-a-doodle-doo; then another answered in deeper tones, and a third broke in immediately. And the hens began to perform in high soprano, the turkey-hens in contralto, while the turkeys and their kin gobbled in deep bass. Crescendo, staccato, swelled the discordant symphony; and patient visitors stopped their ears, while nervous ones ran away. Lucia’s grasp tightened on Andrea’s arm; she leant her head against his shoulder to deaden the sound, stunned, coughing, laughing hysterically, struggling in vain for speech, while he smiled his good-tempered, phlegmatic smile at the animal chorus. Then by degrees came a decrescendo; some of the performers suddenly stopped, others waxed fainter; a few solitary ones held on, and, as if run down, stopped all at once. Lucia was still convulsed with laughter.

“Have you never heard this before?”

A fat merino, of the height of a donkey, with abundant, dirty wool, disported himself in solitary state in his pen. Farther on, a greyish pig, with bright pink splotches that looked as if he had scratched them that colour, stood forgotten and unclassed, away from his fellows, like an exceptional and monstrous being that eschews all social intercourse.

“Come away, come away,” said Lucia, whose nerves had been shaken, dragging her companion away; “I won’t look at anything else.” She was seized with cramps and violent stitches, alternating with a stinging sensation which almost paralysed her. All the fire which the sun had transfused into her veins seemed to have concentrated itself at the nape and set her nerves in combustion. Andrea, who knew nothing of atmospheric effects, who could bask in the sun and walk through two rows of animals without discomfort, was unconscious of these painful sensations; he was as sane as Nature herself. They passed out into the garden, past the horse-boxes, where a ray of sun was beginning to broaden. Lucia hastened along with bowed head; now the pain was in the top of her skull, the fluffy bonnet weighed like a leaden helmet; she could scarcely resist a longing to loosen her plaits and throw it off.

“I am burning, burning!” she kept saying to Andrea.

“What’s to be done about the jury?”

“I’ll go there. Oh! this sun will kill me.”

“What can I do for you; dip the handkerchief in water again?”

“Yes, yes; or rather let us hasten on.”

They crossed the enclosure, where the bull was now resting on his haunches, apparently infuriated by the sun, pawing the ground with one of his forefeet. Then came the whole show once more, with the buzzing flies, the glorious sun, and the animals’ sleepy heads bowed under it. Lucia stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and nostrils until she could hardly breathe. When she reached the cool anteroom next to the conservatory, her face was flushed, her lips blanched, and the brightness gone from her eyes.

“I thought I should have died,” she said, after a while, to Andrea, who stood waiting in dismay and remorse. “Go away now, the ladies are coming.”

The Duchess of San Celso had come to attend the flower jury from her villa. The veteran mondaine was, if that were possible, more painted than usual; her flabby charms draped in a youthful gown, and her dyed hair crowned by a small white bonnet; she passed to and fro with bent back, crooked neck, and a liberal display of feet that were presentable. Three or four ladies of the Neapolitan aristocracy had arrived: the Cantelmo, tall, fair and opulent of form; Fanny Aldemoresco, small, dark and zingaresque, with hooked nose, olive skin, and dazzling eyes, attired in deep crimson; the Della Mara, with her fair cadaverous face, dull, leaden eyes, and pale hair; there was besides a Capuan Countess, with a head like a viper; the fat, insignificant wife of the Prefect, addicted to low curtseys and ceremonious salutations; a general’s widow; and Lucia Altimare-Sanna. These ladies had taken several turns round where the beds were planted, and were inspecting them through the tortoiseshell lorgnettes poised on their noses, with upturned chin and severe judicial eye, turning to discuss them with the young men who followed in their train, and chatting vivaciously with each other. A little expanse of many-hued verbena was admired; Fanny Aldemoresco pronounced it “mignon.” The Altimare-Sanna, with whom she was acquainted, and to whom she addressed herself, replied that she hated verbena. She much preferred those musk-roses that grew so close and sweet-smelling, those large flesh-coloured ones with the curled petals. The Duchess of San Celso was of the same opinion; indeed, she took a rose and placed it in the V-shaped opening of her dress, against her skinny throat. That little animated group of ladies, with waving fans and parasols and floating laces, the bright-coloured group whence came the sound of silvery laughter and little cries like the bickerings of tomtits, was beginning to attract a court around it.

There was the oldest, perhaps the first, lover of the Duchess; he also had dyed hair, rouged cheeks, waxed moustachios of dubious flaxen hue, and flabby hanging cheeks; and her young lover, handsome but very pale, with insolent black eyes, a sensual mouth, and the elegance of a poor young man enriched by her Grace’s bounty. There was Mimi d’Allemagna, who had come for the Cantelmo, and Cicillo Filomarina, her unavowed adorer, who had also come for her sake, and many others, either to keep appointments or for the fête or for fun. The Prefect, in evening dress, was always by the Duchess’s side. These people came and went, to and fro, forming into little groups, yet always keeping together; exhaling an odour of veloutine and a mondain murmur, from under the great horse-chestnut-trees. The judgment of the bedding-out plants was soon over. When questioned as to their votes, the ladies assumed a very serious air.

“We shall see ... we must consider ... we must decide....” said the Aldemoresco, as serious as a politician who declines to be compromised.

They entered the great conservatory, in which cut flowers and bouquets and delicate exotics were exhibited. It had been provided by the Prefect with blue sun-blinds, and as the day wore on a gentle breeze cooled the air. In the centre, under a group of palms, a fountain had been erected for the occasion; stools, wicker-chairs, and benches were hidden in the profusion of flowers that bloomed in every corner. The ladies, as they entered, uttered sighs of satisfaction and relief. Outside, the sun had scorched and the dust had choked them, and bedding-out flowers were of minor interest. Inside, the atmosphere was full of perfume and softened light. Pleasure beamed in their smiles; Lucia shivered and her nostrils dilated. Turning, the better to observe a great bush of heliotrope, she perceived Andrea in the doorway, where he was chatting with Enrico Cantelmo; she affected not to see him, but stooped to inhale a longer draught of its perfume. His eyes followed her absently, while he discussed horses with Cantelmo. Then he had a sudden inspiration: she turned round, and approaching a group of orchids, found herself in close proximity to the door; Andrea understood her. He left Cantelmo, advanced towards her, and held out his hand as if they met for the first time in the course of the day. They conversed with the coolness of ordinary acquaintances.

“How are you?”

“Better, thank you. Why have you returned?”

“... I happened to pass this way. Besides, the place is full of people; there is no reason why I should not pass through it.”

“Stay here, you must be fond of flowers.”

“No; I don’t care for them. This atmosphere is heavy with perfume.”

“Do you think so? I don’t notice it.”

“Oh! it is overpowering. I don’t know how so many ladies can endure it.”

“I will exchange explanations with you, Signor Andrea. I adore these flowers and appreciate them. Look at this jasmin; it is a star-like Spanish flower of strong perfume—a creeper that will cling as tenaciously as humble, constant love.”

“What do you know of love?” said Andrea, ironically.

“What is unknown to others, and what you do not know,” she replied. “Look, look, how beautiful is that large sheaf of white and tea-roses, how light and delicate its colouring!”

“You wore the same flowers at the Casacalenda ball, and at the Inauguration the other day.”

“You have a good memory. Does this inspection weary you?”

“No,” he replied, with an effort, as if his mind had been wandering.

“Lamarra’s exhibits are the best, Signora Sanna,” said the Cantelmo, stopping to talk to her. “We will award the prize to him. Just look at this flower-carpet.”

She passed on. Andrea and Lucia crossed to the extreme end of the great conservatory, where the flower-carpet was. Stretched on the ground was a long rectangular rug, entirely composed of heartsease in varied but funereal shades of velvety violet and yellow, streaked with black; some of them large, with luscious petals, and others no bigger than your nail: no leaves. This funereal carpet was divided down its centre by a large cross formed of snowy gardenias which stood out in bold relief.

“It looks like the covering of a tomb,” she said. “I remember a picture of Morelli’s: 'The Daughter of Jairus.’ The carpet which is stretched on the ground and cuts the picture in two runs across the whole canvas.”

“You take too much delight in sadness,” said he, wearily.

“Because the world is sad. These Neapolitan Lamarras are uneducated people, yet they have a feeling for art; they understand that a flower may express joy, but that it often expresses sorrow. Gardenias are refined flowers; they remind me of double, or rather of glorified, jasmin. The gardenia might almost have a soul, it certainly is not devoid of individuality. Sometimes it is small and insignificant, with tightly curled petals; at others as tall and delicate as an eighteen-year old maiden, and of transparent purity; or it is full and nobly developed and of a passionate whiteness. And when it fades it turns yellow, and when it dies it looks as if it had been consumed by fire.”

She was drawn to her full height before the mortuary carpet when she said this to him, absently and in an undertone, as if telling herself the story of the flowers. She was very pale, but her eyes were suffused with tenderness. A strong perfume rose from the gardenias so pungent that Andrea felt it prick his nostrils, mount to his brain and beat in his temples, where it seemed to him that the blood rushed heavily and swiftly.

“Here,” he said, wishing to get away from the funereal carpet and the sight of the cross that stood out in such dazzling whiteness on its dark background of pansies; “here is a beautiful bouquet.”

“Yes, yes, it is pretty,” said Lucia, approaching to examine it critically, and then moving away the better to observe its effect; “really charming, with a discreet virginal charm of its own. Don’t you think so? It is composed of the most delicate and youthful-looking of exotics: the heart of the bouquet of minute fragrant mignonette; then a broad band of heliotrope, contrasting the pale lilac of its lace-like blossoms with the green of the mignonette, and over all cloud-like sprays of heather which give an effect of distance to the whole. Heather is a northern flower, lacking perfume and brilliancy, but reposeful and grateful.... Here at least is a group of pure and innocuous flowers.”

Yet Andrea felt ill at ease while inhaling the delicate fragrance of mignonette and heliotrope. He felt as if his breath were failing him, with an unwonted oppression and a sensation of fatigue as if he had passed the night at a ball.

“What do you say to Kruepper, Signora Sanna?” said the San Celso, who passed, leaning on the arm of her young adorer, like a ruin about to fall to pieces.

“I haven’t yet seen it, Duchess.”

“Pray look at it: that German has something in him, he is inspired; don’t you think so, Gargiulo?”

“You always express yourself so well and artistically,” replied the latter, with a tender inflexion in his voice, bending to kiss the bare skinny arm and hand which displayed the swollen veins of old age.

They passed on. The crowd increased. The murmur of voices waxed louder; they smiled and jested more freely amid the luxuriant bloom; some of them disappeared amid the shrubs and blossoming plants to chat with their friends, to reappear with flushed faces and laughing behind their fans. The atmosphere grew heavier and more than ever charged with ylang-ylang, opoponax, new-mown hay, and other pungent feminine odours, and the perfume exhaled by silken stuffs, silken tresses, and lace that had lain amid sachets of orris. Those women were so many artificial flowers, with lips and cheeks tinted like their petals, with eyes as dark as the velvet heartsease, and skins as white and fragrant as gardenias. And it seemed as if the vitiated atmosphere suited their morbid brains and lungs, refreshed their sickly blood, and revived their worn-out nerves. Lucia’s face was tinted with pink in patches; her melancholy, leaden eyelids were raised, unveiling the lightning of her glance; pleasure acute as it was intense imprinted the smile on her lips.

Andrea began to see the spectacle as in a dream. He could no longer struggle against the torpor that was numbing his overtaxed brain. He made violent efforts to shake it off, but in vain, for he was mastered by a prostration that seemed to break his joints. As to his legs, they felt like cotton-wool, lifeless and powerless. He could only feel the leaden weight of his head, and he feared that it would fall upon his chest because the throat had ceased to support it. Unconsciously he wiped great beads of perspiration from his forehead, while his listless eyes still followed Lucia.

“Here is Kruepper, of Naples,” said Lucia. “Oh! look, look, Andrea.”

Kruepper, of Naples, exhibited many gradations of vases, wherein a monstrous tropical vegetation of cactus contorted itself with the twists and bends of a venomous green serpent: its pricks might have been fangs, its branches reared themselves or fell back as if their spine had been broken, or turned on one side as if overcome with sleep. These horror-inspiring branches supported a rich cup-like flower of transparent texture and yellow pistils, or a white blossom like a lily: superb flowers that lived with splendour and intensity for twenty-four hours, chalices wherein burned strong incense. Lucia bent over one of them to inspire its perfume, as if she would fain have drawn all its essence from it. When she raised her head, her lips were powdered with fine yellow dust.

“Smell them, Andrea, they are intoxicating.”

“No, it would make me ill,” he said, rubbing his eyes to clear them of the mist that veiled them. The truth was that he would have given anything to sit down and go to sleep, or rather to stretch his full length on a sofa, or throw himself prone on the ground. Sleep was gradually creeping on him while he strove with all his might, but in vain, to keep awake. He kept his eyes open by force and squeezed one hand in the other, trying to think of something to keep himself awake with. But he longed to lay his head somewhere, no matter where, against something, only to sleep for five minutes. Five minutes would have sufficed, he knew it; he was nodding already. The passers-by looked more than ever like phantoms gliding over the ground; there was no noise, only an ever increasing haze, in which the flowers dilated, expanded and contracted, assuming fantastic aspects, strange colours and perfumes. Oh! the perfume. Andrea felt it more acutely than anything else. It burned in his head like a flame, it filtered through the recesses and blended with the phosphorus of his brain. His nerves vibrated until exhaustion supervened, and then somnolence, and that all-compelling catalepsy from which his prisoned will struggled in vain to free itself.

All at once he turned: Lucia had disappeared. His pain at this discovery was so intense, that he would have uttered a loud cry but that his voice failed him. Then some of these female phantoms disappeared silently, as if the earth had swallowed them up. Could he get five minutes’ sleep now, quietly? No; a shade had approached him. Cantelmo was talking of flowers, of Kruepper again, and the warlike sound of the barbarous name annoyed him. What did he think of the hyacinths?

The hyacinths reared their stately heads in a jardinière of golden trellis-work. There were pink hyacinths, lilac ones and white, blending and uniting their voluptuous fragrance. Next to them, in a large Venetian amphora, stood a bunch of ten magnolias, exhaling the strongest perfume of them all.

In the lethargy that was upon him Andrea saw Lucia appear under the doorway. In her dark green dress, with her pink bonnet, she looked like a rose, a woman turned into a flower, a flower-made woman. To that flower Andrea felt all his being drawn—and he longed ... sole, supreme desire, to seize that flower, press it to his lips, and drink in its life with its perfume.

IV.

The fountain Michelangelo Viglia....

... SUL AUGUSTO ESEMPIO
 LO DO AD ALTRUIDA ME,

dripped tranquilly into its grey stone basin. The second part of the inscription:

IL PELEGRINO, IL VILLICO,
 IL CITTADINO L’AVRA.
 VENITE, DISSETATEVI,
 FRESCA PER VOI QUI STA....[1]

could not incite any one to accept its invitation. In the silent darkness of the night the solitary fountain repeated its purling cadence, for Centurano was asleep; its grey, white, and yellow houses had all their shutters barred. The first lights to be extinguished had been those of the architect Maranca, who rose earlier than any one else to superintend the repairs of the dome of Caserta. Next to his, those of lawyer Marini, who had to plead a case on the morrow at the Court of Santa Maria; and then those of Judge Scardanaglia, with whom they had been keeping rather late hours to play at mediatore, and because on the following day there was no sitting for him in the law courts. The friends of the Member for Santa Maria had driven off towards Caserta after an exchange of salutations from the road to the balcony, in two sleepy carriage-loads—lights, coachmen, and horses. The last lights to go out were those of Casa Lieti, at the corner, overlooking the fountain. The drawing-room had subsided into darkness; lights had appeared in the two sleeping apartments, divided from each other by an intermediate room, each having balconies that overlooked the street. Large and small shadows—tall, thin ones, pygmies, and Colossi—had flitted across the window-panes, defining themselves against the curtains. Then darkness.

A dark night, dark with the profound density of meridional nights. A gleam of stars, a shining dust spread haphazard, hither and thither, with a beating motion, a palpitation of the constellations. Under them, amid the black fields, a whitish line was perceptible; the lane that led to the high road towards Caserta. The lamps were out. Suddenly the first balcony to the left opened; noiselessly, from the narrow opening, a slight white form emerged, remaining motionless on the balcony; it was unrecognisable. It stood still, leaning again the balustrade. Was it gazing at the sky or at the soil? Impossible to tell, nothing could be seen of it except that every now and then the hem of the white garment stirred as if an impatient foot had moved it. Behind that form, which appeared elongated against the dark background of the night, the window remained ajar. It maintained its immobility and its attitude of contemplation. The parish clock struck the quarter, and the calm sound rang out gently on the silent air. Then, with a slight creaking of hinges, the window to the right opened wide. A black mass, that melted into the general darkness, appeared; but nothing was defined. A luminous point glowed, the end of a lighted cigar. At every breath drawn by the person smoking, the lighted end glowed brighter, casting a little light on a heavy moustache, and emitting a light cloud of smoke. Suddenly the glowing ember sped like a star, from the balcony to the road, and the dark mass passed to the extreme end of the balcony to approach the one on the left. The white shadow fluctuated and trembled; it moved towards the right, standing at the corner motionless, then a breath traversed the space between them.

“Lucia.”

The faintest breath made answer: “Andrea.”

That was all, except that the fountain, ever fresh and young, continued singing its eternal song. Above shimmered the Milky Way that overhung Caserta. They, immersed in the profound darkness of the night, gazed at each other athwart its shade, straining their sight to see each other through it. Not a movement, not a word. And so the time passed, and again the parish clock struck the quarter—and they stood shrouded in darkness, without notion of space or time, losing themselves in the gloom, lost in the thought of searching each other’s features. Once or twice the white figure leant over the balustrade, as if overcome by fatigue; once or twice the dark, massive one leant over it as if to measure its height from the ground. But they drew back and fell into their former attitudes. Once or twice the figures hanging over the sides of their respective balconies appeared to stretch out their arms towards each other, but they fell back again, as if discouraged; condemned to inaction, to the torture of unfulfilled desire; parts of that immovable, pitiless balcony, turned into statues of stone and iron. How long did it last, that torture of the minimum of distance, which in the night seemed immeasurable, the torture of not seeing, while knowing each other to be so near? At last a faint breath whispered: “Andrea.” And a passionate one made answer: “Lucia.”

Through the air projected by a trembling hand flew a white object, from one balcony to the other. He caught it on the edge of the balustrade, just as it was about to fall. From a neighbouring ruin, an owl screeched three times; a hoarse cry of terror answered from the left, and the white figure suddenly disappeared: the window closed. On the balcony to the right, the dark mass stood waiting and watching.

When Andrea re-entered his room, he found the lamp lighted and Caterina standing by the bed in slippers, fastening her wrapper.

“What ails you, Andrea?”

“Nothing; that’s to say, I feel the heat.”

“Are you feverish, like last night?”

“No, no; I was getting a little air on the balcony; go back to bed, Caterina.”

“What is it?”

“Nothing; Nini, you have been dreaming.”

“The cold air woke me. And when I felt for you, I found you missing.”

“Were you frightened? Try to go to sleep again.”

She threw the wrapper off; her mind was at rest.

“To-morrow—have you to rise early, Andrea?”

“Yes, early.”

“At seven?”

“Yes.”

“Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

Caterina put out the light, crossed herself, and immediately fell asleep, according to her wont. Andrea had waited, throbbing for that moment, to press to his heart the lace scarf, warm from the neck of Lucia, to kiss it, to put his teeth into it, to wind it round his hands and his throat, to cool his temples, and cover his eyes with it, during his long vigil.

Next morning Alberto alarmed the whole household by his sighs and groans. On rising he had coughed three times, and while washing his face he had coughed again. His throat was rough and relaxed, and he complained of an oppression on his chest.

“Where can I have caught cold? Where can I have caught it? I who am so cautious. I always wear a silk handkerchief round my neck, and a flannel shirt. A draught, I suppose.”

He gave vent to his feelings in front of the glass, which reflected a pale face; putting out his tongue, trying to see down his throat, drawing long breaths to discover any possible obstruction. Lucia comforted him sweetly.

“Do you think I am ill? Do I look very seedy?”

“Why, no; don’t indulge in fancies. You have your everyday face. Often, when I’m quite well, I cough on getting out of bed.”

“Even when you wash your face?”

“Oh! always.”

“Oh! really? But I am so delicate....”

“No, indeed, you are much stronger since we came here.”

“True, but I must take care not to get ill. Listen, Lucia; I should like to go to Naples, to-day.”

“What for?”

“For Carderelli to examine my chest thoroughly.”

“And leave me alone?”

“For a short time, dear. Sai, just to reassure myself.”

“I shall weary for you, Alberto mio. When do you return?”

“To-day, at half-past six, in time for dinner.”

“Without fail, caro mio?”

“Why, of course! When I arrive at the station, I shall breakfast; then go home for a moment; then to Carderelli, and back again.”

“Return, Alberto mio. I shall not move from this room; I shall await thee here, counting the hours. Listen, my heart; don’t you think you caught this cold riding the day before yesterday?”

“True, true; you are right, I am a fool; you tried to persuade me not to go. I never take your advice, my Lucia. You are my good angel. I will tell Carderelli of my carelessness.”

“Ask him also if we are to stay on here.”

“Why? I like being here. And you?”

“I am well wherever you are.”

Lucia appeared at breakfast with red eyes, and hardly ate anything. Andrea was silent, and so was Caterina; they exchanged looks of pity for the poor thing. Lucia recounted with much sadness the risk Alberto had run in insisting on riding, the cold he had caught by getting overheated, and her sorrow when she heard his harsh cough that morning.

“I felt knives in my own chest,” she concluded, with a fresh fit of weeping.

Nobody ate another morsel. Caterina sat down beside her, trying to comfort her, holding her hands in hers, in memory of their school-days. Andrea stood by her side without finding a word to say to her. She regained her composure later.

Caterina had to go to that never-ending “jury”; luckily it was only to sit for two days longer. Lucia was so cast down that she did not even venture to propose that she should accompany her. Andrea, too, was obliged to go to Caserta, on business. Husband and wife took leave of her, Caterina kissed her cheek, Lucia sobbed and wept. This delayed their departure. Andrea was getting impatient, and Caterina feared that Lucia would perceive it. They bade her good-bye.

“Return soon, my friends; return soon,” she said with intense languor. They turned to go. She called them back. They reappeared in the doorway.

“Whatever happens, you, my friends, will always love me?”

This question was addressed to both of them. They looked at each other: Caterina smiling, Andrea confused.

“Yes, yes, yes; I answer for him and for myself,” cried Caterina.

“You, too, Andrea?”

“Yes,” he replied, curtly.

“Lucia appears ... rather queer to you?” said Caterina, in the carriage, to her husband.

“To me...? No.”

“She is so unhappy.”

“I know....”

“How preoccupied you are!”

“In the Faete vineyards—you know where they are—the vines have gone wrong.”

“Oh, dear! Tell me all about it.”

The custodian of the English Garden bowed low to the pale lady in black, opened the gate for her, and inquired if she needed a guide. She refused, saying that she knew her way. Indeed, she trod the broad level path, whence branched many narrow ones, as deliberately as if she were accustomed to walk there. She had closed her black lace parasol, allowing the sun to warm her arms and shoulders under the slightly transparent gauze of her dress. Her black lace bonnet was fastened on with hammer-headed jet pins, like a veil. She hesitated when she reached the spot where the paths diverged. She turned and looked at the closed gate; through it she could catch a glimpse of the park, before her the enchanting incline of the walks, sloping under green boughs. She turned slowly into one that was bordered by a hedge of green myrtle, treading so lightly that her high heels hardly touched the cool ground. The trees formed a verdant arch, like the walls of a grotto, and far off, at the end of the walk, a hole let in the light. She wandered on through the grey twilight, suffering a stray leaf that dropped from overhead to rest on her garments, standing to watch the lizards at play. Then she resumed her rhythmic walk, while her dress brushed the myrtle hedge, and her gaze wandered through the murmuring solitude.

At the end of the slanting walk there was a little vale where other walks met and crossed; in its midst was a shady valley, shut in by dark hilly ground that was seamed in every direction by the yellow lines of the gravel. All round her stood horse-chestnuts, dwarf oaks, and tall, meagre, dusty eucalypti: complete solitude. She bent her steps towards the field, but all at once stopped midway, frightened and trembling, for Andrea had suddenly appeared before her. Without speaking, they looked into each other’s eyes. He had come from below: she must have appeared to him like a Madonna, descending from the clouds.

They did not speak, but went on side by side, without looking at each other. They went down into the vale; Andrea, aggrieved because she was not hanging on his arm, yet not daring to ask her to do so.

“How is it that you are here?” she asked, suddenly and curtly.

“I can’t tell you. Down there the heat and the boredom were enough to kill one.”

“For no other reason?”

“I ... thought you would come here.”

“And you were right; it is fate.”

She looked tragic under her black veil, in her black gown, with the little silver dagger hanging from her waistband. The violet lines under her eyes gave them a voluptuous and sinister expression.

“If Caterina were to come ...” she said, grinding her teeth.

“She will not come....”

“It would be better that she came; I could kill myself here.”

“Oh, Lucia!”

“Do not call me by my name. I hate you.”

Her tone was so passionate in its anger, her lips so livid, that he turned pale, and took off his hat to pass his hand across his forehead. Then suddenly two big tears burst from his frank, sorrowful eyes, ran down his honest, despairing face, and melted on his hands.

“Oh! Andrea, for pity’s sake do not weep. Oh! I implore you, do not make me so unhappy, so unhappy!”

“Che! I am not weeping,” he said, recovering himself and smiling. “It was a passing impression. It used to happen to me with my mother when I was a boy. Will you take my arm? I will take you all over this place.”

“Where the shadow is deepest, where there is a sound of rushing water, where no one will think of coming,” she murmured, in a melting mood. Leaning on his arm, in a narrow lane where the hedges were high, she gathered sheaves of wild anemones and stuck bunches of them in her waistband, in the lace round her throat, and the ribbons of her parasol.

Those hedges, blooming in the shade, pierced here and there by faint rays of sun, were full of wild anemones. She slipped some into the pockets of his coat and others in his button-hole. Andrea laughed silently, delightedly; happy in the sensation of the touch of those light fingers on the cloth. They said nothing to each other, but because of the narrow path she kept very close to him. A little bird lightly grazed her brow. Lucia uttered a cry, started away from him, and ran on.

“Come, come, Andrea; how enchanting!”

They had reached a platform, a sort of green terrace that looked down over another valley. High up, from the side of the rock, rushed a dancing, foaming torrent, falling straight down like a white, flaky cataract, and forming far below a wide, limpid, but shallow stream, that ran like a nameless river to an unknown sea, between two rows of poplars. From the terrace they could look down on the little northern landscape, the placid stream, and pale verdure: while the fine spray refreshed their faces, and they revelled in the grateful moisture and the soft breeze from the falling water.

“Oh! how beautiful, how beautiful,” said Lucia, absorbed.

“This is better than your drawing-rooms, where one cannot breathe,” he said, with a long breath.

“It is beautiful ...” murmured Lucia. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and he thrilled at the slight contact. Her hair was turned up high under the black lace, leaving the white nape bare; her arm was bare under the silken gauze, and on the slightest pressure he could feel the rustle of the crisp diaphanous stuff.

“Let us try to get down to the stream, to see where it goes,” said Lucia.

“There is no road down here.”

“Let us find a way, an unknown way.”

“We shall lose ourselves.”

“Let us lose ourselves, for this is Paradise.”

Soon they were making their way along an endless narrow path. They laughed as they hastened along. They came to an interminable avenue of exotic trees, ending in a square with a group of palms in its centre. They turned into a walk without knowing whither it led; she, who had relapsed into her melancholy languor, allowing herself to be dragged.

“You are tired; let us sit on the ground, instead of looking for the stream.”

“Shall we die here?”

“Perhaps some one will pass.”

“No, do not say that any one may pass; you frighten me—how you frighten me! Let us look for the stream.”

At last they found it; shallower, narrower, slower than at its source, as if dying out under the trees. They stood by its edge, bending over it; Lucia leant down to gaze at its grey bed where green weeds waved mysteriously. A green light was reflected on her face. She cast her anemones into the water, watching them disappear and following them with her eyes; then she threw down others, interested and preoccupied in their destruction. When there were no more of her own, she took back those she had given to Andrea; he tried to oppose her.

“No, no; away with it all, all,” said Lucia, harshly.

And she threw them away in bunches, closing her eyes. When her hands were empty, she made a gesture as if to let herself go after them.

“What are you doing?” he said, seizing her wrists. “Let us sit here, will you?”

“Not here. Let us find a secret place, that no one knows of; a beautiful green place that the sun cannot reach, where we cannot see the sky; I am afraid of all those things.”

They began the search again eagerly, climbing steep ascents and descending little precipices; he supporting her by passing an arm round her waist. They crossed broad meadows, where the damp grass wetted Lucia’s little shoes; holding each other by the hand, almost in each other’s arms, with eyes averted, subdued by the innocent intoxication of verdant Nature. They came to a tiny stream; Andrea took Lucia in his arms and placed her on the other side; when he put her down his light pressure made her utter a cry.

“Have I hurt you?” he asked in contrition.

“No.”

They had to stoop to pass under low-hanging boughs that knitted into each other like those of a virgin forest. A hare rushed by at full speed, to Lucia’s great surprise.

“Ah!” cried Andrea, biting his forefinger, “if I had but a gun.”

“Wicked, cruel, how can you long for the death of an innocent animal?”

“Oh! it is rapture; you cannot understand the wild excitement of a man on the track of a hare. It is a combat of animal cunning; the man does not always get the best of it. But when he does hit his prey, and the animal falls in the death struggle, and the hot blood rushes out in floods....”

“It is horrible, horrible!”

“Why?” said the other, ingenuously.

“You have no heart, you have no feeling!”

“You are jesting?”

“Che! I am in earnest. Do not say these cruel, blood-thirsty things to me. You can only realise hate, torture, revenge. You know nothing of love.”

“But I neither hate nor love the hare. I kill it for the pleasure of the thing.”

“Pleasure! a great word; that which you sacrifice everything to; it is brutality.”

“I cannot argue with you,” he said, humbly. “You always conquer me by saying things that pain me.”

“I wish you were good and tender-hearted,” murmured Lucia, vaguely. “You men have bursts of violent but short-lived passion; but women have constant, enduring tenderness.”

“That is why love is so beautiful,” he cried, triumphantly.

To save her from being scratched by a straggling briar, Andrea drew her towards him, murmuring close to her ear: “Love ... love.”

She permitted him to do so at first, and tolerated his breath on her cheeks, but all at once freed herself in alarm, with eyes apparently fixed on a terrible vision.

“I want to go away, away from here,” stamping her feet nervously, gasping from terror.

“Let us go,” he said, bowing his head, subjugated, incapable of having any other will than Lucia’s. He tried to find a way out, and went as far as the turning, where he disappeared amid the trees. Then he returned to Lucia, whom the thought of going away had already calmed.

“Over there,” he said, “is the little lake I told you of, and the way out besides. We can get there by a short cut.”

They wended their way in silence, he playing with the parasol, as if he meant to break it, while he tried to subdue his anger. They found themselves, by means of a descent so steep that it seemed as if it must lead underground, at the spot for which they had been seeking, but which they now no longer cared for.

It was a tiny, round lake; its clear water was of a transparent tint—deep-set in the wooded hills of the English Garden, which screened it from sight and made it difficult of approach; invisible, except to those who stood on its margin. This margin was planted with pale-leaved acacias, and tall, lean, dull-green poplars. Bending into its waters from the shore, a desolate, nymph-like weeping willow laved its pale-green hair. The ground was covered with short, close turf, studded here and there with bunches of shamrock. Flowerless, velvet-leaved aquatic plants floated on the surface of its still waters. In one spot, close to the shore, a Ninfea had risen from its depths to display the large white blossom that lures the male flowers, its lovers, to break from their roots and die. The landscape was steeped in a grey light, so soft that it appeared to fall through an awning; a mere reflection of the sun, toned down and attenuated. No sound, complete forgetfulness; the cool, unknown, ideal spot where none came nor went. A hint of far-off, pale, blue distance, high up among the trees.... She stood in speechless contemplation on the shore.

“What is the name of this lake?” she asked, without turning to Andrea.

“Bagno di Venere.”

“Why?”

“Look there.”

Behind the weeping willow there rose out of the waters of the lake a marble statue of the goddess. She was white and of life-size; her head, like that of every other Venus, was too small and had the beauty of this imperfection. Her hair was partly bound to her nape, partly hanging on her neck. The water came up to her waist, hiding the lower part of her body; under the surface, reeds and other aquatic plants formed a pedestal for the white bust. The full-throated Venus leant forward to gaze placidly into the water, her still bosom inflated with delight, as if she had no cause of complaint against it, or the plants held her bound in their enchantments. When Lucia turned from the apparition to Andrea, her expression had undergone a change. Thought was on her brow, in her eyes, on her lips.

“And what is there over there, Andrea?”

“Come and see.”

It was something hidden in the trees. They went round the lake to it and found the ruin of a mock portico, with eight or ten columns, falling into utter decay, and a hole made in the roof through which the weeds grew in abundance. The cracked walls, after the antique, were peeling; the ivy was devouring the mock ruin in good earnest; some of its stones had fallen. Under the damp shelter of the portico there was a musty smell that made one shudder, like the air of a vault.

“And this, Andrea?”

“The ruin of a portico.”

“There must have been a temple?”

“Yes; the temple of Venus.”

“Venus, who at night descends from her altar to bathe in the lake,” she said, dreamily. “One night, jealous Dian enchanted her and bound her in the waters. Never more did Venus return to the temple; the temple, reft of the goddess, fell, and was no more. All that is left of it is the portico; that will also fall. For all eternity, through the moon’s spell, Venus is a prisoner amid the waters that gnaw her feet and the reeds that pierce her sides. One fatal day the rotten pedestal will give way, and fallen Venus will lie drowned at the bottom of the lake.”

She was silent.

“Speak on, speak,” whispered Andrea, taking her hand in his; “your voice is music, and you say strange, harmonious things.”

She left her gloved hand in his, but did not add another word, keeping her eyes fixed on the hole in the roof which let in the light. His fingers strayed idly to her wrist, and thence to where the glove joined the sleeve of her dress.

“Have you a pencil?” she said.

Andrea took a gold pencil-case off his watch-chain and gave it to her. She sought the darkest corner of the portico, and thereon traced the outline of a heart. Inside she wrote:

A VENERE DEA
 LUCIA,

and gave Andrea back the pencil. He stooped to read her inscription, and thus wrote his own name:

A VENERE DEA
 LUCIA

ANDREA.

“Fate, fate,” she cried, escaping from Andrea’s outstretched arms.

She had seated herself on the ground, with her little feet almost in the water, so that the white lace of her petticoats peeped out from under the skirt of her dress. Her parasol lay on the ground, at some distance. She picked up little pellets of earth with her black-gloved hands and threw them into the lake, watching them dissolve in the water, and the concentric circles that widened around them like wrinkles. Beside her sat Andrea, noting the curves of her white throat, and the movements of the arm and fingers that played with the soil. He had cast aside his hat to let the cool, moist air play on his heated brow. Although she did not turn towards him, she appeared to feel the influence of that passionate gaze, for every now and then she swayed towards him as if to fall into his arms. He hardly dared to move, under the spell of a new and exquisite emotion, inspired by a woman as fragile as she was seductive. When she was tired of throwing grassy pellets into the water, she let her hand lie on the turf. Andrea took the hand and began gently to unbutton her glove, looking sideways at her, fearful of angering her. But no, Lucia closed her eyes as if she were going to sleep. When he had got one glove off, he thrilled with triumph; then, reaching out a little further, he as gently took off the other. He threw them on the grass, near to his hat and the parasol. When he as gently stroked her arm through the transparent sleeve, Lucia drew it away, but without smile or anger; she was looking at the Venus Anadyomene, through the green screen of the willow. Then she slowly unfastened the black lace scarf that fastened her bonnet under the chin and cast the ends behind her: she drew out the hammer-headed pins and stuck them in the turf, as if it were a pincushion, and, taking off her bonnet, sent it to join the gloves and parasol. Then she rose, bent over the water, and smiling took up some in the hollow of her hand and bathed her temples with it, her lips aflame, and her hair dripping. He lost his head, and, rising to his full height, clasped her in his arms and kissed her wildly on eyes, throat, and wrists.... She struggled in his embrace, but uttered no cry; her eyes were dilated, and her lips tightly drawn; with hair dishevelled, she screened her face.

“Leave me, leave me.”

“No, love.... my love....”

“Leave me, I implore you.”

“Oh! my beautiful love, love of my life.”

“Andrea, for the love I bear you, let me go.”

He instantly loosed his hold on her. The lace round her neck was torn, and there were red marks on her throat and wrists; her breath came short and quick, yet she looked at him with the triumphant pride of a queen. Andrea, with nerves and senses calmed after the outburst, smiled in humble rapture. They resumed their places on the turf, she reclining, with one arm under her head, to keep it off the ground, looking up at the sky; he crosswise, so that his head scarcely reached her knee. Lucia still gazing at the sky, stroked his hair with a gesture that was almost maternal, while he rubbed his head against the hand that toyed with his curls, like a cat who is being petted. Then under the stillness of the great trees, a voice rang out, cool and clear:

“Andrea, what we are doing is infamous.”

“Why, my sainted love?”

“If you do not realise our infamy, I cannot explain it to you. Remember two innocent beings who love us, who will suffer through us—Alberto and Caterina.”

“They will never know.”

“Maybe, but the infamy and the treachery will be ours. We are not meant to love each other.”

“Why, if I love you? You are my heart, my sweetness, my perfume....”

“Hold your peace. This love is a sin, Andrea.”

“I know nothing about it. I love you, you are fond of me; you have said so.”

“I adore you,” she said, coldly. “I feel that this love is driving me mad; but it must cease. It is a sin before God, a crime in the eyes of man, a felony in the sight of the law.”

“What care I for God, or man, or law? I love you....”

“We are guilty sinners. Every tribunal, human and divine, condemns us....”

“What matter...? I love you!”

“We are full of deceit, bad faith, and iniquity.”

“Love, cast these nightmares aside. Give me a kiss; no one sees us.”

“No, it is a sacrilege. I belong to another man; you to another woman.”

“Then what have we come here for?” he whined like a child. “Why did you give me your scarf last night? Why did you make me love you? What am I to do now? Must I die? I cannot live without you, without kissing you. I cannot live if you are not mine. You are beautiful, and I love you; it is not my fault.”

“It is fate,” she concluded, funereally crossing both hands under her head, and closing her eyes as if awaiting death.

“Lucia,” broke in Andrea, in the tones of a melancholy child.

“Well?”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Say it: 'I love you.’”

“I love you,” she repeated, monotonously.

“And how much do you love me, dear love?”

“I cannot measure it.”

“Tell me, about how much,” he persisted, childishly.

“Let me think,” she said, crossly.

“What are you thinking of? Lucia bella, Lucia mia, tell me what you are thinking of?”

“Of you, rash boy,” said Lucia, starting suddenly into an upright posture, and taking his head between her hands to look him straight in the eyes.... “Of you, unthinking creature, who are about to commit a terrible act, with nothing but love in your heart: neither fear nor remorse....”

“Why remorse? I love you, I want but you, naught besides.”

“Bravo! how straight to the goal! You will have your way. Do you know what you leave behind you? Do you gauge all that you lose or what the future holds in store for you?”

“No, neither do I care; I only care to know that you love me....”

“Be a man, Andrea. Love is so serious a thing, passion is so terrible. Beware; there is great danger for you, in loving, in being loved, by me.”

“I know it; that is what tempts me.”

“I am not speaking for myself. I am an unhappy, suffering being, a defenceless prey to human passion. I love you, and I yield to this my love, even if it is to cost me my life. It is for you that I speak. I am a fatal woman: I shall bring misfortune upon you.”

“So be it. I love you.”

“This love is madness, Andrea.”

“So be it. I will have it so.”

“You are binding yourself for life, Andrea.”

“Oh! Lucia; tell me that you love me.”

She moved towards the shore, and spread her arms as if in invocation:

“Oh! distant sky, oh! passing clouds, oh! trees that crowd together to mirror yourselves in the lake, bear witness that I have told him the truth. Oh! sorrowing willow, oh! still waters, oh! reeds and lilies, you have heard my words. Oh! Mother, Venus, Goddess, I have read the future for him. Thou Nature, who liest not, bear witness that I have not lied. ’Tis he will have it so.”

“How divine you are, joy of my life!”

She turned, and throwing her arms round his neck, gave him kiss for kiss. Then, as if everything were irrevocably settled, she calmly picked up her things.

“It is fate,” she added. Then the tall, haughty, queen-like figure moved slowly down the path, followed by her love-lorn vassal.