Lucrezia Floriani, page 12
And Karol, exhausted by this ardent declaration, fell at Lucrezia’s feet and lay there writhing and wringing his hands with such violence that he tore them till they bled.
“Love him! Love him! Have pity on him,” cried Salvator. He had sought the prince in vain in his room and throughout the house and had just entered here. Terrified he had overheard Karol’s last words. “Love him, Lucrezia, or you are no longer yourself – or a horrible egoism has withered your generous heart He is dying, save him! He has never loved. Restore him to life or I curse you.”
And this man, strangely generous and impetuous despite his personal zest for the pleasures of life, this priceless friend who preferred Karol to everything, to Madame Floriani and himself, raised him from the floor where he lay convulsed in some kind of death agony and, as it were, flinging him into Lucrezia’s arms, he rushed towards the door as if not to hear her reply or witness a happiness which he could not renounce without effort.
Lucrezia, distraught, held Karol and clasped him to her heart tenderly, but more terrified than conquered, she indicated with a peremptory gesture to Salvator that he must on no account go. “I shall love him,” she said, pressing a long, firm kiss on the prince’s pale brow, “but it will be as his mother loved him – as passionately and as steadfastly, I swear it. I can see that he has a need to be loved thus and I know that he deserves it This motherly love, which I had developed for him instinctively and without thinking of prolonging beyond his recovery, I swear to give to him for ever and to the exclusion of all other men. For you, my son, I renew the vow of chastity and devotion which I made for Celio and my other children. I shall keep the portrait of your betrothed piously and respectfully, and when you wish to look at it we shall speak of her together. We shall weep together over your beloved mother, and finding her heart in mine you will not forget her. I accept your love on those terms, and I believe in that love, however disillusioned I may be about all others. That is the greatest proof of affection I can give you.”
This promise appeared to Salvator to be a very incomplete remedy and more dangerous than useful He was about to say something more, when the prince, regaining his strength and his speech cried: “Be blessed, adored woman! I shall never ask for anything more and my happiness is so great that I have no words to thank you.”
Bursting into tears as he spoke he prostrated himself at her feet and embraced her knees passionately. Then tearing himself away from her he followed Salvator, and that night slept more calmly than he had ever done before.
“What a strange and hopeless predicament,” said Salvator, trying to fall asleep too.
13.
I hope that the reader already knows what is about to happen in this chapter, and that nothing that has occurred hitherto in the monotonous course of this story has caused him the slightest surprise. I should like to be present when he approaches the outcome of each stage of some novel or other he happens to be reading, for then, according to his forecasts, I would be able to say whether the book in question is following the path of logic and truth. I greatly mistrust a denouement impossible to foresee by anyone but the author, because there are no two courses to be taken by any given characters; there is only one, and if no one suspects it, it is because the characters are false and impossible.
Perhaps you will tell me that Prince Karol has been shown yielding to an outburst of emotion and an unleashing of passion utterly outside his nature as I have described it hitherto. But I am sure that you will not make such a naive observation, for I would refer you to yourself and I would ask you if in matters of love what seems to us the very opposite of our own tastes and faculties is not precisely what we rush to embrace with the greatest fervour and whether in such cases the impossible is not the inevitable.
Indeed life as it takes place before our eyes is certainly insane and odd enough; the human heart as God has made it is fickle and inconsistent enough; in the natural course of events there are disorders, cataclysms, storms, disasters and accidents enough for it to be unnecessary to torture one’s brain so as to devise strange facts and exceptional characters. All that one needs is to narrate. Moreover, what are these exceptional characters which the novelist is constantly seeking so as to surprise and interest his public? Aren’t we all exceptions in relation to others, in the infinite detail of our make-up? If certain general laws make humanity a single being, when we analyse this great synthesis, do we not find as many distinct and dissimilar beings as there are individualities? Genesis tells us that God made man from a little clay and water in order to show us that the same elementary matter was used to create us all. But in the combination of the constituent parts of this matter lies eternal and infinite diversity and this explains why it is impossible to encounter two identical leaves in the vegetable kingdom, and why it is futile to seek two identical hearts in the human race. Let us then recognise this commonplace: that each one of us is an unknown world to his fellows, and he could relate a history of himself which is similar to, yet not the same as that of anyone else.
The novel is not required to do more than to relate faithfully one of these personal histories and to make it as clear as possible. I have no objections when the writer adds a large number of external facts and there is much interplay of varied personalities, but for me such additions complicate the novelist’s work considerably without much benefit to the reader’s moral instruction. Besides, it makes it very tiring for the reader, who is lazy! Let my lazy reader be happy then in discovering a writer even lazier than he!
You already have the feeling that when Madame Floriani made the agreement with Prince Karol she was committing herself more than she thought and that a platonic yet passionate maternal love could not continue endlessly between a man of twenty-four and a woman of thirty, both of them beautiful, both of them warmly emotional and hungry for love. It lasted six weeks, possibly two months, during which time they were both blissfully serene, and this, it must be mentioned, was the most beautiful period of their lives. Then came the storm and it was in the young man’s soul that it broke first Then came a few hours of rapture when for both of them heaven seemed to descend and absorb the earth. But when human happiness has reached its peak it is nearing its end The inexorable law which rules our fate has ordained it so, and it would be the greatest folly to urge man to aspire to a state of absolute happiness without telling him that this happiness cannot be anything but a flash of lightning in the course of his life, and that he must be reconciled to vegetating for the remainder of his days, tolerably content with some hope or some memory.
It is the same in real life as it is in the novel; for life to be perfect one would have to die the moment after the greatest ecstasy. In order for the novel to flatter the imagination it is usually ended on the wedding day, in other words, in the course of a number of more or less masterly volumes the writer aspires towards the sight of a shining light, whose brilliance and beauty no art can express and which the reader colours according to his own fancy, for that is the point at which the author puts down his pen and takes his leave.
Well, to make some attempt to leave the beaten track, we shall not end the book at this fatal page. We shall pause for a moment at the top of the hill which we have seen climbed and we shall descend it again at a later stage – but the reader may be excused from accompanying us on this part of the journey if he does not like sad stories and painful truths.
So the reader has been given fair warning. He knows everything which is still to happen. I repeat stop here, if you wish. You know the synthesis of these two existences who have come together from the two opposite ends of the social horizon. Details are my concern, and if you are not interested in them, leave me to write in peace. Do you think that a writer is always obliged to bear you in mind and that he can never give himself the pleasure of forgetting you and writing for himself? You rarely feel any embarrassment when you forget him, which makes us quits…
When she renounced love and sought solitude, Madame Floriani had been mistaken about the stage she had reached in her life. At that moment she was absolutely convinced that the calm of old age had come miraculously to bring her its benefits prematurely. The fifteen years of passion and torture she had undergone seemed so cruel and burdensome to her that she deluded herself into thinking that they would be counted as double that time by the great Dispenser of our trials. But implacable destiny was not satisfied. Because she had been mistaken in her choices, because she had given sublime affection to beings who pleased her without deserving to please her, because she could not love those who deserved her love without pleasing her, because she had loved too well those whom Jesus Christ wished to redeem, and because she had not sought the tranquillity, security and calm triumph of the elect – the intolerable righteous ones who from their golden seats look down in scorn on the miseries and sufferings of humanity – for all these reasons this poor sinner was to expiate her past misfortunes by more and more misfortunes. Become a sister of mercy, go and gather the broken bodies scattered on the field of battle, drive the filthy flies away from the wounded left to die – and you will be killed by a bullet or treated like a camp-follower by the brutal conqueror! But live with those who are perfect, love none but the beautiful, the rich, the wise, the happy ones of this world, steep your delicate soul in an ethereal atmosphere, be like a flower in its garden, like Princess Lucie on her cloud, and you will be canonised!
So Madame Floriani was deluding herself greatly when she imagined that she would escape so lightly and that henceforth she would be able to live for her children, her old father and herself A heart which has experienced such terrible suffering as she had undergone is not cured by a few months of rest and solitude. Solitude and inaction are perhaps the very things which are not advisable. The transition had taken place too abruptly and by accepting her cure as a fait accompli Lucrezia in her simplicity had not been sufficiently aware of her own character. When instead of the exacting personal love which had been the tragedy of her life, the noble romantic Prince de Roswald offered her absolute devotion and respect worthy of a saint and when he not merely accepted, but accepted with rapture her vow of chaste friendship, she thought she was saved. Was it permitted for a woman burdened with so many lapses to be deluded to such an extent and really imagine that Providence was about to reward her for her errors instead of punishing her for them? No, it was not permitted, yet Lucrezia accepted everything with her usual naïvety.
At the beginning she found utter happiness and unadulterated joy in the arrangement. Karol was so unassertive, so submissive, he had pledged himself so completely, he was so greatly under her spell that a single word, a glance, an innocent caress was sufficient to send him to the heights of indescribable ecstasy. At the surface of his being there was angelic purity, and the acrid passions which were fermenting unknown and latent in the depths of his soul did not awaken immediately. He had never burned with the flame of love, he had never felt the heart of a woman beat against his, and the first emotions of this nature were sharper and deeper for him than for an adolescent at the first awakening of the senses.
These desires had been growing in him for a long time now, but he did not wish to recognise them. He had deceived them with the help of poetry and the religious feeling he had entertained for his beloved Lucie whose hand had barely ever brushed his own. Therefore his dreams came into contact with reality in all their freshness, timidity and tremulousness. He still had the terrors of a child, but also the energies of a man. This mixture of modesty and latent passion gave him an irresistible charm which Lucrezia had never yet encountered. And so, every day he stirred her with an ever increasing sympathy, admiration and finally ardour of which she was utterly unaware.
Always brave to the point of recklessness and careless of herself in relation to those whom she loved she did not see the storm approach. Why should she believe anything save what he told her and why should she worry about a future which seemed as if it must inevitably be the indefinite continuation of the present celestial love?
This sweet yet terrible young man who, utterly vanquished and consumed by passion, could still not believe in it, who had lived on illusions and relied on the power of words without appreciating the subtleties of the ideas and facts they represent – this sweet yet terrible young man was deceiving himself and the woman he loved. When he had addressed her as ‘mother’, when he had pressed the hem of her garment to his burning lips, when he had said as he fell asleep: “I would rather die than profane you with my thoughts”, he judged himself to be stronger than human nature and scorned the storm which was muttering in his breast.
And she, the blind girl – for she was a child even more ingenuous and credulous than Karol – this woman whom one would have described in accepted language as a fallen woman, she believed in this calm which seemed so beautiful, so new and so wholesome to her. She experienced it in herself because lassitude and disgust had calmed her blood and protected her from any sudden emotional onslaught.
And yet, through this mutual trust, so absolute and sincere that the presence of Salvator did not embarrass them, and their chaste kisses hardly feared the children’s glances, an abyss was being dug, widening with the passing of the days. Karol no longer existed through himself. His family, his faith, his mother, his betrothed, his instincts, his tastes, his associations – he had lost sight of them all He only breathed through Lucrezia’s breath; he did not breathe nor did he see, he did not understand nor did he think unless she stood between him and the outer world. His intoxication was so complete that he could no longer take a single step in life by himself. The future meant as little to him as the past The idea of departing from her had no sense for him. It seemed as if this frail, diaphanous being had been consumed and absorbed in the furnace of love.
Gradually however the flames emerged from the clouds of perfume which concealed them. Lightning traversed the sky, the voice of passion rang out like a cry of distress, like a question of life and death. An unconscious neglect of all fear and all caution had gradually brought about the imminent defeat of that reason whose supremacy had been Lucrezia’s great pride. As for Karol, an invincible attraction, a progression of delicate, consuming sensations, the delights of a strange, all-powerful intoxication had silenced and annihilated one by one his religious fears, and this triumph of the senses which he had thought would be degrading for both of them, gave his love an added exultation and intensity.
He had spent his life duelling in the name of the spirit against the flesh. In the sanctification of marriage and the blessed union of two chaste beings he had seen the only possible rehabilitation of an act which was only divine in his eyes because it was necessary. For a long time he had thought that to ask for this expression of love from a woman who gave her favours easily, or even from a woman who had had intimate knowledge of only one other man would be an irreparable moral fall for which he could never forgive himself. But now he was greatly surprised to feel flooded with so much joy that his conscience was dumb; and when he questioned this same conscience he found that it was intoxicated; and when it did answer him it was to the effect that it was not concerned with his sin, that it felt at ease, that it did not know why he had always wanted to prevent it from making common cause with his heart, in short, that it thirsted for fresh delights and would talk morality and wisdom to him when it would be satiated.
Lucrezia who had never made these metaphysical distinctions, who had only renounced love because hers had caused unhappiness to others, felt very calm and very proud when, infected by the illusions of her lover, she thought that he was and would remain the happiest of men. She did not even regret her beautiful dream of being stoical and becoming old at an early age. Her pride did not reproach her and she did not mourn over its fall. Always naïve and trusting she only answered Salvator’s fears by asking him if Karol had any regrets or cause to complain. And as Karol at that moment was dwelling in the highest heaven of bliss and Salvator himself was stupefied with astonishment, jealousy and admiration, he could find nothing to say.
Our good friend Count Albani who would not have felt this happiness with the same force as his young friend, but who on the other hand would not have suffered from it as cruelly later, was seriously troubled by the entire affair. He was so perturbed by it that he lost his sleep and nearly all his appetite and gaiety. But his soul was so noble and his friendship so loyal that he triumphed over himself. He thanked Lucrezia effusively if not for curing the mind and heart of Karol for ever (which he did not think possible in such conditions) at least for initiating him into a happiness which no other woman would have ever shown him. Then excusing himself on the grounds of important business in Venice he departed, without making any definite plans with them for the future. “I shall return in a fortnight,” he said, “and you will tell me then what you have decided”
The fact was that he could not continue to endure the sight of such happiness, although he approved of it and encouraged it with all his heart He set off without telling them that he was going to seek philosophical distraction with a certain dancer who had given him an encouraging sign from the wings of La Scala in Milan….
“I would never have thought,” he said to himself as the coach left, “that my young Puritan would eat the forbidden fruit with such violence and such forgetfulness of the past Lucrezia is certainly more of a temptress than was the serpent, for Adam wept immediately over his sin, whereas Karol glories in his … Well, may Heaven grant that it lasts and that on my return I do not find him full of shame and despair.”
The reader will soon know what happened, if he does not know already, and if he does not wish to remain suspended between the gates of heaven and hell.
14.
