CHAPTER VI

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One day the lovers came back from Lake Nemi somewhat fatigued. They had dined at the Cesarini Villa, beneath showy camellias in bloom. Alone, with the emotion felt only by him who contemplates the most secret of secret things, they had contemplated the Mirror of Diana, as cold, as impenetrable to the view as the deep blue of a glacier.

As usual, they ordered tea. Hippolyte, who was looking for something in a valise, turned suddenly towards George, showing him a packet tied with a ribbon.

"You see, these are your letters. They never leave me."

George, with visible satisfaction, cried: "All? have you kept all?"

"Yes, all. I have even the notes--even the telegrams. The only one missing is the little note which I threw into the fire to prevent its falling into my husband's hands. But I saved the burnt fragments; you can still read a few words."

"Let me see, will you?" said George.

But, with a jealous movement, she hid the package. Then, as George advanced towards her with a smile, she fled into the adjoining room.

"No, no; you shall see nothing. I won't let you."

She refused, partly in jest, partly too because, having always guarded them preciously as a hidden treasure, with pride and fear, it was repugnant to her to show them even to him who had written them.

"Let me see them, I beg of you. I am so curious to reread my letters of two years ago. What did I write you?"

"Words of fire."

"Please let me see them."

She finally consented, laughing, vanquished by her friend's persuasive caresses.

"Let us wait at least until the tea is brought; then we will reread them together. Shall I light a fire for you?"

"No," he replied, "it is almost hot to-day."

It was a cloudless day, with silvery reflections diffused through the inert atmosphere. The waning day was softened in its passage through the gauze curtains. Fragrant violets, gathered at the Villa Cesarini, had already perfumed the entire chamber. Someone knocked at the door.

"Here is Pancrazio," said Hippolyte.

The worthy domestic, Pancrazio, brought in his inexhaustible tea, and his inextinguishable smile. He placed the tea-things on the table, promised something good for dinner, and withdrew with light and elastic steps. All bald as he was, he preserved a juvenile air. Extraordinarily obliging, he had, like certain Japanese gods, eyes that were laughing, long, narrow, and somewhat oblique.

"Pancrazio is more amusing than his tea," said George.

In fact, the tea had no aroma, but the accessories lent it a strange taste. The sugar-bowl and cups had a form and capacity never before seen; the tea-service was decorated with the history of an amorous pastoral; the plate, garnished with small slices of lemon, bore on its centre a rhymed enigma, done in black letters.

Hippolyte poured out the tea, and the cups steamed like censers. Then she untied the package! The letters appeared, properly classified, divided into small bundles.

"What a quantity!" cried George.

"There are not so many; only two hundred and ninety-four. And in two years, dear one, there are seven hundred and thirty days."

They both smiled, sat down side by side near a table, and began to read. In the presence of these documents of his love, George felt come over him a strange emotion--an emotion delicate yet strong. The first letters perplexed him.

Such or such an extreme state of mind, of which the letters bore the imprint, at first seemed to him incomprehensible. The lyric flight of such and such a phrase filled him almost with stupor. The violence and tumult of his early passion caused in him a sort of terror, by contrast with the calm which possessed him now, in this modest and quiet house.

One of the letters said: "How my heart sighed for you that night! A gloomy anguish overwhelmed me, even during the short intervals of slumber; and I reopened my eyes in order to escape the phantoms which rose from the depths of my soul. I have now but one thought--only one thought, which tortures me--that you might go far away from me. Never, no, never, has this possibility pierced my soul with a more maddening pain and terror. At this moment I have the _certitude_, the positive, clear, evident certitude, that without you life for me is an impossibility. When I think that I might lose you, the day becomes suddenly dark--the sunlight becomes odious to me, the earth appears to me like a bottomless tomb, I enter a state of death." Another letter, written after Hippolyte's departure, read: "I make an enormous effort to hold my pen. I have no more energy, no will. I succumb to such discouragement that the only sensation which remains to me of my external existence is an insupportable loathing of life. The day is gray, suffocating, heavy as lead; a day to kill in, so to speak. The hours pass with inexorable slowness, and my misery grows, second by second, always more horrible and more savage. It seems to me that at the bottom of my being are pools of stagnant water, dead, and deadly. Is this a physical or moral suffering? I do not know. I live on, stupid and inert beneath a burden which crushes me, without killing me." Another letter read: "At last, to-day, at four o'clock, when almost hopeless, I have received your reply. I have read and reread it a thousand times, to find between your words the inexpressible--what you could not express--your soul's secret, something more alive and sweeter than the words written on the soulless paper. I am possessed with a terrible desire for you."

So the love-letters cried and groaned, on the table covered with a table-cloth, and loaded with rustic cups in which an innocent infusion peacefully steamed.

"You remember," said Hippolyte. "It was the first time that I left Rome, and only for fifteen days."

George was absorbed in the memories of his mad infatuation; he sought to revive it within him, and to understand it. But the environing comfort was unfavorable for internal effort.

The sensation of this comfort imprisoned his soul, enveloping it loosely. The veiled sunlight, the hot drink, the perfume of the violets, the contact of Hippolyte, benumbed him. "Am I, then, so far from the ardor of former days?" he thought. "No, because during her last absence my anguish was not less cruel." But he did not succeed in filling the interval between the _I_ of long ago and the _I_ of to-day.

In spite of all, he could no longer identify himself with the same man of whom those written phrases attested such consternation and despair; he felt that these effusions of his love had become strangers to him, and he also felt all the emptiness of the words. These letters resembled the epitaphs which one reads in cemeteries. Just as the epitaphs give a coarse, false idea of the dead, so these letters represented inaccurately the divers conditions of the soul through which his love had passed. He knew well the singular fever which seizes a lover when writing a love-letter. In the heat of this fever, all the different waves of sentiment are agitated and mixed in a confused turmoil. The lover does not know precisely what he wishes to express, and he is embarrassed by the material insufficiency of the terms of endearment; so he gives up trying to describe his internal passion such as it is, and attempts to express its intensity by the exaggeration of the phrases and by the employment of vulgar rhetorical effects. This is the reason why all amorous correspondences resemble each other, and why the language of the most exalted passion is almost as poor as jargon.

"In these letters," thought George, "all is violence, excess, convulsion. But where are my delicate feelings? Where my exquisite and complex melancholies? Where my profound and sinuous sorrows, in which my soul went astray as in an inextricable labyrinth?" He now had the regret to perceive that his letters lacked the rarest qualities of his mind--those which he had always cultivated with the greatest care. In the course of his reading, he began to skip the long passages of pure eloquence, and sought instead the indication of particulars--the details of events that had occurred--the allusions to memorable episodes.

He found in one letter: "Towards six o'clock I entered mechanically the usual place, the Morteo Garden, where I had seen you so many evenings. The thirty-five minutes that preceded the exact hour of your departure were a torture for me. You left, yes, you left without my having been able to bid you good-by, to cover your face with kisses, to repeat to you once more, 'Don't forget! don't forget!' Towards eleven o'clock a kind of instinct made me turn round. Your husband entered with his friend, and the lady who usually accompanies them. Without any doubt, they had come back from seeing you home. I had then such a cruel spasm of pain that I was soon forced to rise and go out. The presence of these three persons, who spoke and laughed as on other evenings, as if nothing new had happened, exasperated me. Their presence was for me the visible and indubitable proof that you were gone, irremissibly gone."

He thought over more of the summer evenings, when he had seen Hippolyte seated at a table, between her husband and a captain of infantry, opposite to a little, insignificant woman. He did not know any of these three persons, but he suffered at each of their gestures, at each of their attitudes, and at all that was vulgar in their appearance; and in imagination he pictured to himself the imbecility of the talk to which his refined mistress appeared to pay sustained attention.

In another letter he found: "I am in doubt. To-day I feel hostile towards you; I am filled with a dull anger."

"That," said Hippolyte, "was the time when I was at Rimini: August and September--what tempestuous months they were! Do you remember when you finally arrived on the _Don Juan_?"

"Here is a letter written on board ship: 'To-day at two o'clock we have anchored at Ancona, having sailed from Porto San Giorgio. Your prayers and wishes have sent us a favorable wind. Marvellous sailing, which I will recount to you. At the break of day we shall again make the offing. The _Don Juan_ is the king of coasters. Your flag floats from the mast-head. Addio--maybe till to-morrow. September 2d.'"

"We saw one another again; but what days of suffering! Do you remember? We were watched incessantly. Oh, that good sister! Do you recall our visit to the Temple of the Malatestas? Do you remember our pilgrimage to the Church of San Giuliano, the evening before your departure?"

"Here is another from Venice."

They read it together, with equal palpitation.

"Since the ninth, I am at Venice, sadder than ever. Venice stupefies me. The most radiant of dreams does not equal in magnificence this dream of marble which emerges from the waves and blossoms in an illusionary sky. I am dying of melancholy and desire. Why are you not here? Oh! if you had come! If you had only executed your former project! Maybe we should have been able to steal one hour from espionage; and in the treasury of our souvenirs we should have counted one more, the most divine amongst them all." On another leaf they read again: "I have a strange thought, which, from time to time, pierces my soul like a lightning flash, and disturbs my whole being; a foolish thought--a dream. I think that you could come here, suddenly, alone, to be entirely mine!" Further on again: "The beauty of Venice is the natural frame of your beauty. The colors of your complexion, so rich and warm--all pale amber and dull gold, in which are mixed possibly several shades of drooping rose--are the ideal colors which harmonize the most happily with the Venetian air. I do not know how Catherine Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, looked; but, I do not know why, I imagine she resembled you."

"You see," said Hippolyte, "it was a continual seduction, refined and irresistible. I suffered more than you can imagine. Instead of sleeping, I passed nights in seeking a means of going out alone, without awakening the suspicions of my guests. I was a prodigy of cleverness. I no longer know what I did. When I found myself alone with you in the gondola, on the Grand Canal, that September dawn, I did not believe that it was real. Do you recollect? I burst into sobs, unable to say a word to you."

"But I--I was waiting for you. I was sure that you would come, at any cost."

"And that was the first of our great imprudences."

"It is true."

"What does it matter?" murmured the young woman. "Was it not better so? Was it not better so, now that I belong to you entirely? For my part, I regret nothing."

George kissed her on the temple. She spoke for a long time of this episode, which was one of the most pleasant and extraordinary among their souvenirs. They lived over again, minute by minute, the two days of their secret stay at the Hotel Danieli--two days of oblivion, supreme intoxication, in which it seemed as if they had both lost all notion of the world, and all consciousness of their previous being.

Those days had marked the commencement of Hippolyte's ruin. The letters which followed alluded to her first trials. "When I think that I am the initial cause of your sufferings and of all your domestic troubles, an inexpressible remorse torments me; and in order to obtain pardon for the ill of which I am the cause, I want you to know the entire depth of my passion. Do you know my passion? Are you sure that my love will be able to repay you for your long anguish? Are you sure of it--certain--deeply convinced of it?" The ardor went on increasing page by page. Then, from April to July, there was an obscure interval without documents. It was during these four months that the catastrophe happened. The husband, too weak, not having found any means of conquering Hippolyte's open and obstinate rebellion, had, so to say, taken flight, and left behind him very much involved business affairs, in which he had sunk the greater part of his fortune. Hippolyte had sought refuge with her mother, then with her sister at Caronno, in a country-house. And then a terrible malady from which she had already suffered in her infancy--a nervous malady analogous to epilepsy--seized upon her. The letters dated in August spoke of it: "No, you could never conceive the fright that my mind is in. What tortures me above all is the implacable lucidity of my imaginary vision. I _see_ you writhing--I _see_ your face become distorted and pallid--I _see_ your eyes roll hopelessly beneath their lids; I see your hands shrivelled and shrunk, and between your fingers the curl of torn-out hair; and, whatever effort I make, I cannot succeed in dispelling the terrible vision. And then, I _hear_ you call me; I have actually in my ears the sound of your voice--a hoarse and lamentable sound--the voice of a person who calls for help without the hope of being helped." A little way further on: "You write me: 'If this illness should seize me when I am in your arms! No, no, I will not see you again! I do not wish to see you again!' Were you mad when you wrote that? Did you think of what you wrote? It is as if you had taken my life, as if I could no longer breathe. Quick, another letter! Tell me you will recover, that you still hope, that you want to see me again. _You must_ recover. Do you hear, Hippolyte? _You must_ recover."

During the convalescence, the letters were gentle and playful. "I send you a flower gathered on the sands. It is a species of wild lily, marvellous when growing, and of an odor so penetrating that I often find at the bottom of the chalice an insect in a swoon of intoxication. The whole coast is covered with these passionate lilies, which, beneath the torrid sun, on the broiling sand, flower in one minute, and only live a few hours. See how charming this flower is, even when dead! See how delicate it is, and fine, and feminine!"

Up to the month of November the letters followed one another without interruption; but, little by little, they became bitter, full of suspicions, doubts, reproaches.

"How far you have gone from me! I am tortured by something else than the chagrin of mere material separation. It seems to me that your soul has also left and abandoned me. Your fragrance makes others happy. To look at you, to hear you, is not that--to enjoy you? Write to me; tell me that you belong entirely to me, in all your acts, in all your thoughts, and that you desire me, and that you regret me, and that, separated from me, you find no beauty in any instant of life." Further on: "I think, I think, and my thought goads me; and the sting of this thought causes in me an abominable suffering. At times I am seized with a frenzied desire to pluck from my throbbing temples this impalpable thing, which is, however, stronger and more inflexible than a dart. To breathe is an insupportable fatigue for me, and the throbbing of my arteries goes through me as would the sound of hammer blows that I might be condemned to hear. Is that love? Oh, no. It is a kind of monstrous infirmity which can blossom only in me, for my joy and my martyrdom. I please myself by believing that no other human creature has ever felt as I do." Further on: "Never, no, never, shall I have complete peace and complete security. I could be content only on one condition--that I absorbed all, all your being; that you and I no longer were more than a single being; that I lived your life; that I thought your thoughts. Or, at least, I would wish that your senses were closed to all sensations that did not originate in me. I am a poor, ill patient. My days are but a long agony. I have rarely desired them to end, as much as I desire and pray for it now. The sun is about to set, and the night which descends on my soul envelops me in a thousand horrors. The shadows issue from every corner of my room and advance towards me as would a live person whose footsteps and breathing I could hear, whose hostile attitude I 'could see.'"

To await Hippolyte's return, George had returned to Rome in the first days of November; and the letters dated at that time alluded to a very unhappy and dismal episode. "You wrote me: 'I have had great difficulty in remaining true to you!' What do you mean by that? What were the _terrible events_ which have upset you? My God! How you are changed! It makes me suffer inexpressibly, and my pride is irritated at my suffering. Between my eyebrows is a furrow, deep as the cleft of a wound, in which is heaped my repressed anger, in which gathers all the bitterness of my doubts, my suspicions, my disgusts. I believe that even your kisses would not suffice to rid me of it. Your letters, trembling with desires, disturb me. I am not grateful to you for them. For two or three days, I have something _against you_ in my heart. I do not know what it is. Perhaps a presentiment? Perhaps a divination?"

While he read, George suffered as from a wound reopened. Hippolyte would have liked to stop him from continuing. She remembered that evening when her husband had called unexpectedly at the house in Caronno, with a cold, calm face, but with the look of a madman, declaring that he had come to take her back; she recalled the moment when she was alone with him, face to face, in an out-of-the-way room, the window curtains of which were blown about by the wind--in which the light abruptly flared up and then decreased--to which the moaning of the trees was borne up from below; she remembered the silent, savage fight sustained then against that man who had suddenly clasped her--horror!--in order to take her by force.

"Enough! enough!" she said, drawing George's head to her. "Enough! Don't let us read any more."

But he wanted to continue. "I cannot understand the reappearance of that man, and I cannot prevent a feeling of anger which is directed even at you, too. But, to spare you pain, I will abstain from writing you my thoughts on this subject. They are bitter and gloomy thoughts. I feel that my affection is poisoned for some time. It were better, I think, if you never saw me again. If you wish to avoid useless pain, do not return now. Now I am not in a good frame of mind. My soul loves you to adoration; but my thought rends and sullies you. It is a contrast which recommences incessantly, and which will never end." In the next day's letter he wrote: "A pain, an atrocious pain, intolerable, never felt before! O Hippolyte, come back! come back! I want to see you, to speak to you, to caress you. I love you more than ever. Yet, spare me the sight of your bruises. I am incapable of thinking of them without fear and without anger. I feel that, if I saw the marks impressed in your flesh by the hands of that man, my heart would break. It is horrible!"

"Enough, George! don't let us read anymore!" begged Hippolyte again, taking the loved one's head between her hands, and kissing his eyes. "Please, George!"

She succeeded in drawing him away from the table. He smiled that indefinable smile, which sometimes invalids have when they yield to the entreaties of others, knowing full well that the remedy is late and useless.

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