Lucrezia Floriani, page 13
In spite of the affection which the prince bore the count, in spite of the gratitude inspired in him by his devotion, his fond attentions and the approval he had just given to his happiness, happiness is so selfish that Karol saw Albani leave with something akin to joy. The presence of a friend always tends to hamper the continual effusions of an impassioned heart and although the prince had been utterly unrestrained in proclaiming the strength of his love in the presence of Salvator, it is no less true that he was somewhat displeased when he did not see him welcome with absolute certainty his own conviction that this felicity was to last for ever and would not be marred by a single cloud.
A soul less pure and less loyal than his would have been humiliated to appear so different from its usual self in front of a friend who could compare the present with the past and accuse him of inconsistency, or merely smile to see him so suddenly swept off his feet, just as he had smiled in the past at his exaggerated restraint But if the prince’s character contained certain elements of narrow-mindedness, they were never of a mean and shabby nature – indeed, they could have been described as touches of a charming childishness. He too was artless, but it was less obvious and less extensive than in Lucrezia, and his was more subtle and interesting in contrast to the basis of his character. Thus, he did not deny that he had been a rigorist in the past and that he was now blinded by passion; but it was impossible for him to admit it He did not remember it and was almost unaware of his transformation. He persisted in the belief that he hated the transports of a mind without rules or restraint and if anyone had spoken to him of a woman exactly resembling Madame Floriani in behaviour and experience but not possessing that mysterious charm which enthralled him, he would have averted his eyes from her in horror and disgust. In short, his eyes were covered by the bandage which the poets of antiquity, those masters of the art of symbolising the passions, placed over the eyes of Cupid. His mind had not changed, but his heart and his imagination adorned his idol with all the virtues which he wished to adore.
Understandably, Madame Floriani grew easily accustomed to being the object of a worship which she had never believed to exist. To be sure, she had been loved and she herself had loved very passionately. But people of such delicate sensibilities as Karol are very rare and she had never encountered any. As she had told Salvator, she had loved only poor creatures, that is men without family, fortune or fame. A shy kind of pride had always made her repulse the attentions of men in high society. Anything remotely resembling an intimate relationship based on considerations of fortune, success or vanity had always found her mistrustful and almost haughty. Given the excessive kindness of her nature, the care she took to flee and reject great lords and great artists had appeared odd; but in fact it was a consequence of her courageous and independent character, possibly too of the maternal instinct which prevailed in all she did. The idea of being protected was unendurable to her. She preferred to be subject to the quirks of a lover with refinement than to undergo the pompous discipline of a perfumed pedagogue.
Basically it had been she who had always protected and rehabilitated, saved or attempted to save the men she cherished. Chiding their vices with tenderness, rectifying their faults with devotion, she had almost made gods of these mere mortals. But she had sacrificed herself too completely to succeed. Since Christ, crucified for having loved too much, until the present day, such is the story of all devotion. The one who imposes it on himself is its inevitable victim, and as Lucrezia was, after all, only a woman, she had practised patience to the point of self-destruction. Moreover, she had harboured too many loves in her heart simultaneously, that is to say, she had wished to be the mother of her children, and these two affections, always battling with one another, had inevitably to resolve their conflict by the extinction of the less persistent of the two. It was the children who always triumphed and, to speak metaphorically, the lovers who had been taken from the orphanages of life, were destined to return there sooner or later.
The result was that she was often hated and cursed by the men who owed her everything and who after being spoilt by her, could not understand that, being weary and dispirited, she was trying to recover herself. They accused her of being capricious, pitiless and mad in her haste both to surrender and withdraw herself, (the latter complaint was not entirely ill-founded). Madame Floriani cannot therefore seem to the reader to be exactly perfect, and my intention was never to make you see her as the divine being of Karol’s dreams. It is a human being that I am analysing here, with its noble intentions and its feeble achievements, its vast enterprises and its limited means.
There were many charming men who thought her rude, absent-minded, odd and undiscerning because she did not welcome their insipid compliments. Had she the right to gain the respect of these people, she who chose the objects of her preference so badly and soon broke with them only to choose others who were even worse?
So she had enemies, but because she had even more friends, she was hardly aware of them and she completely ignored what people said of her because her heart was engrossed by so many warm affections. But all this did not prevent her from continuing to regard noblemen and privileged personages as her natural enemies. She had remained a woman of the people to the backbone even at the height of her stage career, and in the very course of acquiring social graces she retained an element of savage pride against society. If the circumstances required it she could display true distinction of manners and when she acted on the stage or wrote for the theatre one would have said that the had been born on a throne. But she could not tolerate the thought that it should be assumed tht she owed this noble air and superior style of speech to association with titled people. She was convinced that she derived her nobility from her own sense of the high rules of her art, from her instinct of what constituted true elegance and from the innate pride of her mind. She laughed heartily when a marquis with common features and ridiculous appearance came to her dressing room to tell her what people admired most in her was her ability to guess good breeding. One day when a great lady (who unfortunately had a raucous voice, purple hands and a bearded chin) complimented her on the way in which she played a duchess, she answered in a voice full of conviction: “When one has models like Your Ladyship before one’s eyes, one cannot go wrong in knowing what befits a noble role.” But when the great lady had gone Lucrezia and all the other actors burst out laughing. Poor duchess! And she had thought she was bestowing so much honour and pleasure with her praise!
All these digressions are meant to tell you that it would have required nothing less than a miracle to make this proud plebeian develop an infatuation or affection for a prince. We have seen how this miracle happened by degrees and how it was accomplished as if by surprise. And now Madame Floriani, no longer concerned in defending herself but in admiring, discovered in the object of her love charms which she had always refused to appreciate in other members of his caste. Faithful to her prejudices, she was reluctant to ascribe so many graces and such delicate courtesy to the education he had received and the habits he had acquired. From that point of view, she would have preferred to criticise them. But on the assumption that he owed them entirely to the perfection of his innate character, the sweetness of his soul and the tenderness of his feelings for her, she was intoxicated by them. It seemed to her that all her past loves had been orgies in comparison with the feast of ambrosia and honey which was served to her by the chaste lips, sweet words and divine ecstasies of her young lover.
“I do not deserve such adoration,” she would say to him, “but I love you because you are capable of feeling and expressing it thus. I used not to love myself and I have never loved myself hitherto. But it seems to me that I am beginning to love myself in you and that I must respect the being whom you venerate in this way.”
At other times she would cry out in the sincerity of her heart: “No, no, I have never been loved and you are my first love! Parched with thirst, I used to search for what I have at last found now. I tell you, my soul which I thought was exhausted, was as virgin as yours. I am sure of it now and I can swear it before God.”
Love is full of such blasphemies uttered in good faith. The most recent always seems the first to deeply emotional natures, and it is certain that if affection can be measured by exultation. Lucrezia had never loved to such an extent The ecstasy which she had felt for other men had been of brief duration. They had been unable to maintain or renew it. Affection had survived disillusion for a certain time, then had come generosity, solicitude, compassion, devotion, – in short, maternal feeling. It was indeed a miracle that passions born in such frenzy could have endured so long, although the world, judging merely by appearances, would have been astonished and scandalised to see her end them so swiftly and with such finality. In all these passions she had been happy and blinded for barely a week, and when one or two years of absolute devotion survive a love which almost at once is recognised as absurd and misplaced, is it not a great expense of heroism, more costly than would be the sacrifice of an entire life for a being whom one always felt worthy of it?
In that case, is it very difficult and meritorious to submit and immolate oneself? Coriolanus was greater in pardoning his ungrateful fatherland than Regulus in suffering martyrdom for his grateful country.
And so this time Lucrezia was dazed by her happiness. This time, too, she had begun with devotion, since she had tended, nursed and saved this sick child, at the cost of great mental anxiety and physical fatigue. But what was that in comparison with the suffering she had endured in saving depraved souls and distracted minds?
Indeed, nothing less than nothing. Hadn’t she lavished care and attention on paupers and strangers? “And for the little that he owes me,” she said to herself, “see how he loves me – as if I had opened the heavens to him! From now on I shall never say to myself that I am loved because I am needed or because a little glamour surrounds me. He loves me for myself, for myself alone. He is rich, he is a prince, he is virtuous, he has no debts, he does not feel weak in spirit or carried away by evil passions. He is neither a libertine, nor a gambler, nor a spendthrift, nor an egotist He has only one ambition: to be loved. And he expects no service and no support from me, but only the happiness which love can give. He never saw me in my days of glory. It was not the artificial beauty created by costumes, the display of my talents, my triumphs, the infatuation of the crowd and the rivalry among my admirers which drew him to me. He has only seen me in retirement, stripped of all glamour. It is me, yes, it is my own self that he loves.”
She did not tell herself what was indeed even more difficult to conceive and to explain, and that is that this young man, consumed by the need of an exclusive affection and recently deprived of that of his mother, had reached a point in his life where he must attach himself to someone or die; that chance or fatality having sent him to find care, tenderness and kindness at the hands of a woman still beautiful and very gentle, his inner life, too long repressed, had exploded; in short, that he loved passionately because he could not love otherwise.
Salvator’s absence which was only supposed to last a fortnight lasted more than a month. Who was keeping him so long from his friends? Possibly it was someone not worth mentioning; so I shall not mention him. Evidently Salvator was of the same opinion, for he never spoke about it to Karol or Lucrezia. He returned to them when he had reached the conclusion that he would have done better never to have left them at all.
For our two lovers, during this month in which they were together, paradise had remained radiant and serene, drenched in sunshine and profuse in riches. The absolute and continual possession of the being he loved was the only existence that Karol could endure. The more he was loved, the more he wished to be loved; the more his happiness possessed him, the more determined he was to possess his happiness.
But he could only possess it on one condition: that nothing should come to stand between him and the object of his passion, and this miracle was produced for him for more than a month, thanks to a combination of utterly exceptional circumstances. Lucrezia’s children were in perfect health, and not a single one suffered the slightest indisposition for five weeks. If Celio had had a touch of sunstroke or little Salvator had cut a big tooth, Lucrezia would have been absorbed by the attentions they would have required and for a few days her interest would have to be diverted from her dear prince. But as the two boys and the two girls were enjoying wonderful health there were no fits of temper, tears or quarrels among them – at least, if there were any, Karol was not aware of them, for he was not yet conscious of the small details or rare interruptions in his happiness; and Lucrezia only needed to devote very brief moments to discipline or maternal intervention. She exercised her assiduous shrewd supervision of them with her customary calm, but they made her task so easy, that the prince only saw the admirable side of these motherly duties.
Old Menapace caught many fish and sold them at a good profit both to his daughter and to the innkeeper at Iseo. This put him in a good mood and prevented him from coming to administer tiresome rebukes to Lucrezia. She went to see him several times a day, as usual. Karol never dreamed of acompanying her, so that he forgot the aversion and disgust the mean old man had inspired in him when first he saw him. In short, no one came to the Villa Floriani and nothing disturbed their divine intimacy.
15.
It must also be said that the prince assisted fate by the happy disposition of his mind and that he did nothing to appreciate the strangeness of his situation. Skilled in self-torture, accustomed to dark and taciturn reveries, he allowed Lucrezia’s tranquil nature and sweet serenity to drive away his sad thoughts and maintain his spiritual well-being.
They almost never conversed together – an admirable and indeed the only method of always agreeing in everything! As their love was at its highest point it expressed itself in nothing but ecstatic and incoherent utterances, mutual caresses, silent contemplation of each other, impassioned exclamations, burning looks and gentle reveries.
Yet if one had been able to see into these two souls plunged in their dreams of the ideal, one would have noted a great absence of similarity and unity between them. Whereas Madame Floriani, in love with nature, associated with her intoxication the earth and the sky, the moon and the lake, the flowers and the breeze, above all her children and often, too, the memory of her past griefs, Karol, insensitive to the external beauty of the world and the realities of his own life, drowned his more exquisite and untrammelled imagination in an exalted monologue with God Himself. He was no longer on earth, but in an empyrean of golden, fragrant clouds, at the feet of the Lord, between his cherished mother and his adored mistress. If a ray of sunshine set the landscape aglow, or the scent of a plant was wafted through the air and Lucrezia commented on it, he saw the splendour and the delight through his dreams; but in reality he had seen nothing and smelled nothing. Sometimes, when she said to him: “See how beautiful the earth is!” he would reply: “I do not see the earth, I only see the sky.” And she would admire the passionate depth of this reply without exactly understanding it As she looked at the crimson clouds at sunset she never thought that the soul of Karol could see beyond those clouds an imagined Eden where he thought he was talking with her, but where he was really alone. In a word, one can say that Lucrezia saw reality with the poetic feeling of the author of Waverley, whereas her lover, idealising poetry itself peopled the infinite with his own creations, after the manner of Mannfred.
In spite of these differences, their love had soared to the highest heaven, and things of this earth found no place in their effusions. This was utterly contrary to the active, succouring and so to speak militant instincts of Lucrezia. She moved about in these regions like one blind from birth who has suddenly recovered his sight and tries in vain to understand all these strange new things. The prince could only convey to her a vague impression of his own vision. He would have thought he was wronging her by thinking that her insight was not greater than his and that she was unable to explain the miracle to herself a thousand times better than he could have done. As for Lucrezia, lost in this immensity, yet enraptured by this adventurous journey through a new world, she scarcely thought to question him on what he was experiencing. For the first time she felt the inadequacy of human speech, she who had studied it so much and used it to such purpose! But with the humility of one who idolises a person other than oneself, she thought that anything she could have said or understood was as nothing in comparison with what her lover thought or felt.
She had not yet experienced the lassitude inseparable from the tensions of a soul which dwells in a region above its natural abode, when Salvator came to put an end to their têtê-á-tête; yet she greeted his arrival with instinctive satisfaction and received him with open arms. His coming was utterly unexpected. He had not written for a week and they were rather anxious about him, Lucrezia more so than Karol however, for although she did not love him as much as the prince was supposed to love him, she felt a concern for Salvator which was natural to her but which found little room in the superhuman ecstasy of the young prince.
Karol came forward, ready to be pleased at the return of his faithful friend; but when he heard the sound of the bells of the post-horses stop at the entrance to the villa, even before he knew who it was, his heart sank. The old presentiment, obliterated and forgotten, suddenly awoke. “Oh God,” he cried, pressing Lucrezia’s arm convulsively, “we are no longer alone. I am lost! Ah, if I could only die now.”
“Oh no,” she replied, “if it is a stranger I shall not receive him. But it can only be Salvator, my heart tells me so, and that makes our happiness complete.”
But Karol’s heart told him nothing and in spite of himself he wished the visitor was a stranger so that he could be sent away. However, he received his friend with deep emotion, but an involuntary sadness had already taken possession of him. This new presence was a change in an existence which could ensure his happiness only as long as it was perfect; any modification would ruin it.
