Lucrezia Floriani, page 24
This was more than enough for Karol’s imagination to leap into fatal action, swift as it was to be insulted, and always grasping the apparent fact without understanding and explaining it Outside the door of Lucrezia’s bedroom he muttered a strong offensive word and fled like a man who has just witnessed his dishonour. He required all that remained of the day to regain his calm and the clarity of his mind. And Lucrezia was required to descend to an explanation degrading to both her and him. This time she treated him like a sick person who must be persuaded and cured without his hallucinations being taken seriously. But what happens to all the rapture and the love when he who is the object of it behaves like a raving madman.
On another occasion a messenger came to tell Lucrezia that Mangiafoco, the fisherman who had once sought her in marriage and had caused her so much terror and aversion, was on the point of death and was asking to see her. This man had never dared to appear before her since she had returned home and it was not without repugnance that she consented to go to him. But it was a duty of piety and mercy, and without hesitation she left for the far side of the lake with her father and Biffi. She found a dying man who begged her forgiveness for the suffering and fear he had once caused her and implored her to pray for him, that his soul might find peace. She comforted him with kind words and her generous compassion brought solace to the last moments of this man, an old soldier, a brutal, lawless bandit, yet gifted with a certain intelligence and a few patriotic and romantic instincts.
Having witnessed his last agonised dying breath, Lucrezia returned home somewhat distressed Karol was present when, in simple words, she told Salvator what had happened and the words, alternately absurd and profound that this man had said to her as he was fighting for his life. Salvator was of the opinion that his dear Lucrezia had acted admirably in thus following the voice of duty, but Karol said nothing. He had been uneasy about this sudden departure and absence which had lasted from sunset until midnight. He could not conceive that one could have so much interest in a wretch who had so ill deserved it. And how had he had the audacity to summon to his deathbed a woman to whom he had made himself so hateful? He must have had faith in her kindness and her ability to forget insults …
He spoke these reflections in a rather strange tone. Lucrezia who had not yet learned to expect his jealousy at every turn and who had not dreamed that her good deed might appear criminal to the prince, looked at him in surprise and saw that he was angry. His eyes were red and he was cracking the joints of his fingers; it was a kind of nervous mannerism which betrayed his resentment and which she was beginning to recognise.
She could not refrain from shrugging her shoulders. Karol did not observe it and continued:
“How old was this Mangiafoco?”
“Sixty at least,” she replied coldly and severely.
“And without doubt,” Karol resumed after a moment, “he had a bold face, a bristly beard and picturesque rags? And he was a bandit out of a play or novel? A theatrical bandit whom one could not look at without shuddering, I suppose? The imagination of women takes pleasure in such exteriors and they are always flattered at heart if they have chained a wild animal. Doubtless as he died he looked like a wounded tiger who casts on the dove a last glance of covetousness and regret”
“Karol,” said Lucrezia sighing, “do you regard a dying man as a very pleasant thing to depict? You should go and see him now that he is dead. That would make your irony fall away immediately and would cut short your poetic metaphors. But you will not go, you who speak so well You will not have the courage; his cottage is dirty.”
“How easily offended she is to-night,” thought Karol. “Who knows what took place between her and that wretch?”
26.
On another occasion Karol was jealous of the priest who came on a charitable errand. Then he was jealous of a beggar whom he took for a gallant in disguise. Next, he was jealous of a servant who being very spoilt like all the rest of the servants in that house spoke with a boldness which struck him as unnatural. Then it was a pedlar, then the doctor, then a big simpleton of a cousin, half townsman, half yokel, who came to bring some game to Lucrezia and to whom she very naturally behaved like a kind of relative instead of sending him to the servants’ hall. Matters reached such a stage that she was no longer allowed to glance at the face of a passer-by, comment on the skill of a poacher or the neck and withers of a horse. Karol was even jealous of the children. Did I say even? I should have said especially.
Indeed they were the only rivals he had, the only beings to whom Lucrezia devoted her thoughts as much as she did to him. He was not aware of the feeling he experienced on seeing them devour their mother with caresses. But as, second to the imagination of a religious bigot, there is none more outrageous than that of a jealous person, he soon began to dislike, if not detest the children. He finally noticed that they were spoilt, noisy, headstrong and temperamental and he imagined that no other children were like them. He grew weary of seeing them almost always between their mother and him. He found that she yielded to them too much, that she made herself their slave. On the other hand he was horrified when she punished them. This system of maternal control, so simple and so clearly indicated by nature, which consists primarily of adoring one’s children, being continually occupied with them, giving them everything which can make them happy, yet censuring them and checking them when they go too far, scolding them roundly and even heatedly at times, only to reward them tenderly when they deserve it – all this was the opposite of his way of seeing things. According to him one should not be too familiar with them, for then one would have less difficulty in making oneself feared, if the necessity arose. They should not be caressed and addressed familiarly,* but should be held at a distance and young though they are be made into little men and little women who are very good, very polite, very dutiful and very calm in temperament Quite early in life they should be taught many things which they are unable to believe or understand at the time, in order to accustom them to respect established rule, usage and religion without questioning the utility and excellence of the principles of which these practices and rules are nothing but the consequence. Finally, one must forget that they are children, one must deprive them of the charm, pleasures and freedom of this early existence which is theirs by divine right, make their memories work in order to stretch their imaginations, develop the habit of form, and delay the explanation of the substance; in a word do the exact opposite of what Lucrezia did or planned to do.
In all fairness it must be said that this mania for contradicting and this wearisome fault-finding, were not continual and absolute with him. When jealousy was not possessing him, that is in his lucid moments, he said and thought entirely the contrary. He adored the children and he admired them in all things – even when there was nothing to admire. He spoiled them more than did Lucrezia and made himself their slave without the slightest idea of his own inconsistency. It was because at that time he was happy and showed the angelic and ideal side of his nature. The outbursts of rapture which punctuated his love for Lucrezia were the thermometer which indicated the highest point of his sweetness, goodness and tenderness. What a seraph, what an archangel he would have been had he been able to remain so always! During such moments which could last at times for hours and even whole days he was the embodiment of kindliness, mercy and devotion to all beings who approached him. He stepped off the path so as not to tread on an insect; he would have thrown himself into the lake to save the house dog. He would have transformed himself into the dog if only to hear the shrieks of laughter of little Salvator; he would have changed into a hare or a partridge to give Celio the pleasure of shooting at him. His tenderness and effusiveness were so great as to be excessive and even absurd. At such times he became one of those sublime ecstatics who must be locked away as madmen or adored as gods.
But then what a fall, what an appalling cataclysm throughout his whole being when the outburst of joy and tenderness was followed by one of pain, suspicion and resentment! Now the whole of nature changed its face. The sunshine of Iseo was armed with poisoned arrows, the mist on the lake was pestilential, the divine Lucrezia was a Pasiphae, the children little monsters; Celio would end up on the scaffold, Laertes had rabies, Salvator Albani was the traitor Iago and old Menapace was Shylock the Jew. Dark clouds piled up on the horizon, full of Vandonis, Boccaferris, Mangiafocos, rivals disguised as beggars, travelling salesmen, priests, lackeys, pedlars and monks, these clouds then burst and showered on to the villa a host of former friends and former lovers (for him they both belonged to the same race of vipers) and Madame Floriani, sullied with hideous embraces, beckoned him with infernal laughter to witness this fantastic orgy!
Please do not believe that his imagination, deprived as it was of all restraint and continually excited by his natural disposition and mad passion, did not reach the extravagance of the above picture. It would be impossible for me to follow his imagination and make you follow it in all the frenzied storms it traversed. Never did Dante dream of tortures similar to those which this hapless being created for himself They were serious because they were so absurd, and no matter how grotesque the apparition, it still terrifies children, the sick and those who are jealous.
But as he was above all polite and reserved no one ever had the slightest suspicion of what was happening inside him. The more exasperated he was the colder he appeared and one could only judge of the degree of his fury by that of his icy courtesy. It was then that he was truly intolerable because he insisted on arguing and submitting the realities of life, of which he knew nothing, to principles which he could not define. And then he brought wit into play, false, brittle wit, in order to torture those whom he loved. He was bantering, artificial, precious, utterly disgusted with everything. He seemed to be biting very gently, for sheer pleasure, and the wound he was making went deeper and deeper into one’s soul. Alternatively, if he had not the courage to contradict and mock, he withdrew into a scornful silence, a fit of sulks which rent his victim’s heart Everything seemed alien and indifferent to him. He stood aside from all things, all people, all opinions and all ideas. The words he used were “I don’t understand that” and when he gave this reply to the kindly conversational attempts to distract him, one could be sure that he thoroughly despised everything one had said and one could possibly say.
Lucrezia was afraid that her family and Count Albani might happen to sense this jealousy which she herself had at last guessed at and by which she felt mortally humiliated. She therefore carefully concealed its wretched cause and strove to minimise its deplorable effects. At the beginning she had worried greatly about Karol’s health and life, but later she was able to verify that he never felt better in health than he did when he had given way to an inner agitation and an anger which would have killed anyone else. There are constitutions which draw on their sufferings alone for their strength and seem to be renewed by consuming themselves, like the phoenix. So her alarm was abated, but she began to suffer strangely from an intimacy which can only be compared with the inferno of the poets. In the hands of this terrible lover she had become the rock which Sisyphus rolls endlessly to the top of the mountain and lets fall into the depths of the abyss; a miserable rock which never shatters.
She tried everything: gentleness, anger, prayers, silence, reproaches. Everything failed. If she pretended to be calm and gay so as to prevent others from penetrating her unhappiness, the prince, utterly ignorant of that kind of strength of will which he did not possess, was irritated to see her brave and magnanimous. At such moments he hated what he mentally called her fund of bohemian casualness, a certain toughness due to her common stock. Far from feeling any alarm for the hurt he was inflicting on her, he told himself that she felt nothing, that out of kindness she had certain moments of solicitude, but that in general nothing could touch a nature so resistant, so robust and so easy to distract and console. It seemed that at such times he was even jealous of her health which was apparently so excellent and he reproached God for the calmness with which He had endowed her. If she smelled a flower, picked up a pebble, caught a butterfly for Celio’s collection, taught Beatrice a fable, stroked the dog or plucked a fruit for little Salvator, he would say to himself “What an astonishing nature! Everything pleases her, everything amuses her, everything enraptures her. She finds beauty, perfume, grace, utility and pleasure in the smallest details of creation. She admires everything, she loves everything! Therefore she does not love me, for I admire, cherish and understand nothing but her in the whole world! An abyss separates us.”
This was fundamentally true: a nature which is rich through exuberance and one which is rich through exclusiveness cannot fuse. One of the two must consume the other and leave nothing but its ashes. And this is what happened.
If by chance Lucrezia, overcome with fatigue and sorrow, did not succeed in hiding her sufferings, Karol, seized by a sudden return of his old tenderness for her forgot his ill humour and became excessively anxious. He ministered to her on his knees, he adored her at such times even more than he had done at the height of their love. Why could she not have pretended all the time or allow her courage and strength to collapse completely? If she had always appeared before him downcast and listless or if she had been able to assume a perpetual air of gloom and dissatisfaction she might have cured him of his morbid temperament. For her sake, he would have forgotten himself for this fierce egoist was the most devoted and tender of men when he saw a friend suffer. But as in such a situation he himself also suffered deeply and sincerely, Lucrezia in her nobility blushed at having yielded to momentary weakness. She hastened to shake off her languor and appear calm and strong once more. As for pretending to resentment, she was utterly incapable of it. She rarely felt angry with him, but when she was angry she did not restrain herself but rebuked him violently. She had never disguised anything, never pretended, and as most often she only felt sorrow and compassion when she was the victim of the injustice of others, she also usually suffered without being angry and above all without sulking. She despised such feminine wiles and, in her own interests, she was wrong to do so. She was given plenty of proof of it! There is something in human nature which makes one continually abuse and offend when one is always sure to be forgiven, even when one has not the grace to apologise.
Salvator Albani had always known that his friend was inconsistent and temperamental, both excessively demanding and excessively unselfish, but in the old days the good moods used to be the most frequent and the most durable. Now on the contrary since his return to the Villa Floriani, Salvator saw the prince lose more and more of his hours of serenity each day and sink into a habit of strange sullenness; his character was becoming visibly more bitter. At the beginning it was one bad hour a week, then one bad hour a day. Gradually he had only one good hour a day and finally one good hour a week. However tolerant and good-humoured the count was, he ultimately found Karol’s behaviour intolerable. He said so first to his friend, then to Lucrezia, then to both of them together. Finally he felt that his own character would become bitter and deteriorate if he persisted in living in their company.
He resolved to leave them both. Lucrezia was aghast at the idea of remaining alone with this lover whom two months earlier, she would have liked to carry off to the ends of the earth and live with him in the desert By his sweet gaiety, his bright, philosophical way of looking at all domestic troubles, Salvator was of immense help to her. His presence still restrained the prince and compelled him to discipline himself, at least in front of the children. What was to become of her? Above all, what was to become of Karol when their good companion would no longer be there between them to preserve them from one another?
As she implored him not to go, her panic and her grief betrayed themselves; her secret escaped from her lips and she burst into tears. Dismayed, Albani saw that she was deeply unhappy and that if he did not succeed in taking Karol away with him, at least for some time, she and he were doomed.
This time he no longer hesitated. He felt neither pity nor weakness for his friend He spared none of Karol’s susceptibilities. He braved his wrath and his despair. He did not conceal from him his intention to do his very utmost to detach Lucrezia from him if he did not do so himself by leaving her. “Whether it is for six months or forever is immaterial,” he told him as he concluded his harsh exhortation. “I cannot foretell the future, I do not know whether you will forget Madame Floriani, which would be very fortunate for you, or whether she will be unfaithful to you, which would be very sensible of her. But I know that now she is broken, ill and desperate and she needs rest She has four children. It is her duty as a mother to preserve herself for them and to rid herself of intolerable suffering. You and I will leave together or fight, for I see quite clearly that the more I warn you, the more you shut your eyes, and the more I wish to drag you away, the more you cling to this poor woman. Whether through persuasion or force I shall take you with me, Karol. I have vowed it solemnly on the heads of Celio and his brother. It is I who brought you here, it is I who made you stay here. I ruined you when I thought I was saving you. But there is still a remedy and now that I see things clearly I shall save you despite yourself We are leaving to-night, do you hear? The horses are at the gate.”
Karol was deathly pale. He had great difficulty in unclenching his teeth. At last he uttered this laconic and decisive reply:
