Lucrezia Floriani, page 25
“Very well. You will take me to Venice and you will leave me there and return to receive the prize for your exploit This was arranged between you two. I have been waiting for this dénouement for a long time.”
“Karol,” cried Salvator, swept by the first real fury he had ever experienced in his life, “you are indeed fortunate to be weak, for if you were a man I would crush you with my fist. But I tell you that this thought is characteristic of an evil being and such words belong to a cowardly, ungrateful person. You fill me with horror and from this moment I abjure all the friendship I have had for you so long. Farewell, henceforth I shun you. I never wish to see you again, for I would become a coward and wretch like you.”
“Good,” retorted the prince who having reached the highest pitch of fury was correspondingly bitter, cold and contemptuous. “Go on, insult me, strike me, let us fight so that I may die or depart. That is the plan, I know it. How sweet the night of pleasure will be when you will be rewarded for your chivalrous conduct.”
For one moment Salvator was on the point of flinging himself at Karol. He seized a chair in both hands, uncertain as to what he would do. He felt he was going mad, he trembled like an hysterical woman, yet he knew that at that instant he would have had the strength to bring the house down on his own head.
For one moment there was a horrible silence during which one could hear rising in the calm evening air the sweet voice of a child saying: “Listen, Mother, I know my French lesson and I am going to tell it you before I go to sleep:
“Deux coqs vivaient en paix, une poule survint,
Et voilà la guerre allumée!
Amour, tu perdis Troie!”
The window was closed and Stella’s voice was lost Salvator gave a bitter laugh, broke the chair as he set it down again and rushed out of Karol’s room, slamming the door behind him.
He went and knocked at Lucrezia’s room and said to her, “Lucrezia, leave your children for a while. Call the maid. I wish to speak to you immediately.”
He took her far into the park. “Listen,” he began, “Karol is either vile or ill-starred, the most cowardly or the most insane of your lovers, but what is certain is that he is the most dangerous of them and the one who will kill you with pin pricks if you do not leave him at once. He is jealous of everything, he is jealous of his own shadow. It is a disease. But he is jealous of me and that is infamy. He will never make up his mind to leave you. He does not wish to depart, nor will he. It is for you to flee from your own house. There is not a moment to lose. Jump into a boat Catch the next stage coach, go to Rome, Milan, the end of the world – or hide, hide in some cottage. Perhaps I am raving. I am so furious I cannot think clearly, but we must find a way … I have it. It is painful but certain. Let us fly together. We would only go two leagues from here and we would only stay two hours. That will be enough. He will think that he guessed correctly, that I am your lover. He is proud, and will accept the inevitable without hesitation. And you will be free of him forever.”
“You are insane yourself; my poor friend,” replied Lucrezia, “or else you wish him to go insane. And as for me, it is enough for me to suffer because he is suspicious of me. I shall not bring myself to become the object of his scorn.”
“Unhappy woman, don’t you see that to be suspected is the same as being scorned! Do you still value the esteem of a man whom you can no longer take seriously? What madness! Come, go with me. What do you fear? That I should take advantage of your prostration and against your wishes justify the charming opinion Karol has of my character? I am no coward and if you require further reassurance allow me to tell you that I am no longer in love with you. No, no, Heaven preserve me from it! You are too weak, too gullible, too absurd. You are not the strong woman I once believed you to be; you are nothing but a child without brains or pride. I swear to you that your passion for Karol has cured me completely of the love I might have conceived for you. Come, time presses. If at this moment he came to implore you, you would open your arms to him and you would vow never to leave him. I know you. Let us fly then. Let us save him and let us transform his phantom into a reality. Let him believe that you are a liar and a wanton. Let him hate you and leave you with a curse, shaking the dust of this place off his feet What do you fear? The opinion of a madman? He will not indict you before the court of the world: he will maintain eternal silence about his disaster. Moreover if you wish, you will justify yourself later. But now we must cut the disease off at its root We must fly.”
“You forget only one thing, Salvator,” replied Lucrezia, “and that is whether he is guilty or unfortunate, I love him now and always. I would give my blood to relieve his suffering, yet you think that I could rend his heart in order to regain my peace. That would indeed be a strange method!”
“In that case you too are a coward,” cried the count, “and I abandon you. Remember what I tell you here. You are lost”
“I know that,” she replied. “But before you leave you will make your peace with him!”
“Don’t drive me to it! I am capable of killing him. I am leaving immediately. That is safest Farewell, Lucrezia!”
“Farewell, Salvator,” she said to him and flung herself into his arms. “We may never meet again!”
She burst into tears but she let him depart.
*i.e. use “tu” when speaking to them. [Translator’s note].
27.
The day following Salvator’s departure Lucrezia left the house before the prince had come from his room. She had thrown herself into a boat and recovering the vigour of her youth she made her own way to the other side of the lake. Opposite the villa, on the far bank, there was a little wood of olive trees which brought back to her memories of love and youth. It was there that fifteen years earlier she had often met her first lover, Memmo Ranieri. It was there that she told him for the first time that she loved him and it was there that she had later planned her flight with him. It was there too that she had hidden so often to avoid her. father’s watchful eye or the attentions of Mangiafoco.
Since her return she had never wished to go back to this grove which her first lover in his youthful enthusiasm had called her sacred wood. One could see it from the window of the villa. At times in the early days of her return Lucrezia’s eyes had rested on it inadvertently, but not wishing to awaken her own memories she had looked away as soon as she became aware of her thoughts. Since she had loved Karol she had often looked at the wood and admired the way the trees had grown and had never even thought of Memmo and the ecstasy of her first love. Yet, out of instinctive delicacy, she had never directed her new lover’s walks here.
When she had left the house a few hours after Albani’s departure and had ventured blindly on to the lake she had not conceived the plan of going to visit the sacred wood. She was in pain, she was feverish, and she felt the need to be steeped in the morning air and restore her faltering soul by physical movement. It was an instinct unreasoned but irresistible which drove her to send her skiff gliding into that sheltered little creek. She left it there among the undergrowth and jumping on to the bank she plunged into the mysterious depths of the wood.
The olive trees had grown tall, the brambles had spread, the paths were narrower and darker than in the past Several of them had become overgrown with vegetation. Lucrezia had difficulty in finding her bearings and striking the paths where once she could have walked blindfold. For long she sought a stout tree under which her lover often met her and which still bore her initials carved by him with a knife. The letters were very difficult to recognise and she guessed rather than read them. At last she sat down on the grass at the foot of this tree and sank into thought In her mind she repeated the story of her first passion in all its details and compared them with those of her latest love, not to establish a parallel between two men whom it would never have occurred to her to judge dispassionately, but to ask her heart what passion it could still feel and what suffering it could still endure. Very slowly, coherently and lucidly she unfolded for herself the whole story of her life, all her efforts at devotion, all her dreams of happiness, all her disappointments and all her bitterness. This recital of her own existence terrified her and she wondered if it was indeed she who could have deceived herself so many times and realised it without dying or going mad.
There are few moments in life when a woman of such a character is able to see so clearly into herself and estimate herself honestly.
People without egoism and pride do not have a very clear vision of themselves. Because they are capable of everything they do not know precisely of what they are capable. Always full of love for others and constantly concerned to serve their well-being, they end by not merely forgetting but not knowing themselves. Lucrezia had had occasion to examine and define herself less than three times in her life, but never had she done so as completely as now and with such absolute certainty. This too was the last time she did so, for all the remainder of her life was the foreseen and accepted consequence of what she was able to verify at this solemn moment.
“Let us see,” she said to herself “Is my latest love as passionate as the first? It was more so once, but it no longer is. Karol has destroyed the illusions of happiness almost as quickly as Memmo did.
“But is this latest love which is now hopeless, any less profound and less durable? For me it is still so tender, so devoted and so maternal that it is impossible for me to see it end and it is in this that it differs from the first love. For I told myself then that if Memmo deceived me I would stop loving him, whereas to-day I feel disillusioned and yet I cannot convince myself that I shall ever be able to recover from this love. It is true that I forgave Memmo much and for a long time, but each time I was aware of a perceptible diminution in my affection, whereas to-day the affection persists and is not diminished by reason of my suffering.
“How does that happen? Was it Memmo’s or my fault if, being younger and stronger then, I broke away from him more easily than I can do to-day from Karol? Perhaps it was partly Memmo’s fault, but I think it was more mine.
“It was above all the fault of youth. At that time our love was bound within us to a desire and need for happiness. I thought myself blindly devoted and in my every action I sacrificed myself, but if my love did not refuse to make such excessive and too often repeated sacrifices, it must be because, without my knowledge, I had a resourceful personality. Isn’t that one of the facts and rights of youth? Of course it aspires to happiness, it feels that it has the strength to go in search of it and believes it will have sufficient to retain it It would not be the age of energy, restlessness and great effort if it were not driven by the ambition to win great victories and the appetite for great happiness.
“What remains to me to-day from my successive illusions? The certainty that they could not and were not to be fulfilled. Such is reason, the sad triumph of experience! But as it is no easier to drive reason out when it comes to dwell in us than it is to summon it when we are not strong enough to receive it, it would perhaps be futile and wrong to curse its cold benefit and harsh council. Come, the day is at hand when I salute you and accept you, oh wisdom without pity, judgement without appeal!
“What do you want with me? Speak, clarify. Must I forgo love? Here you send me back to my instinct am I still capable of love? Yes, more than ever, since it is the essence of my life and I feel that I live intensely through pain; if I could no longer love, I could no longer suffer. I do suffer, therefore I love and exist.
“Well then, what must I renounce? The hope of happiness? Probably. It seems to me that I can no longer hope. And yet hope is desire, and not to desire happiness is contrary to the instincts and rights of humanity. Reason cannot prescribe anything which is outside the laws of nature.”
At this point Lucrezia was at a loss. For a long time she mused, straying into apparent digressions and memories which seemed to have nothing in common with her arduous investigation. But to upright and candid souls everything acts as a clue. She found herself back in the centre of the maze and thus resumed her argument Let the reader be patient; if he is still young the argument may be of use applied to himself.
“The fact is,” she thought, “that one would have to define happiness. There are several kinds, one for each age. Childhood thinks only of itself, youth thinks of completing itself by a being associated with its own joys; maturity must realise that whether well or badly lived its personal life will sooner or later end and it must think exclusively of the happiness of others. I had said this before I had reached that age, I had felt it, but not as completely as I can and must believe and feel it to-day. I will no longer derive my happiness from the satisfactions which will have myself as object Do I love my children because of the pleasure I have in seeing them and caressing them? Does my love for them diminish when they hurt me? It’s when I see them happy that I am happy myself … No indeed. At a certain age there is no other happiness save that which one gives. To seek any other kind is madness. It is attempting to violate the divine law which no longer allows us to triumph through beauty, charm and innocence.
“I shall therefore try more than ever to make those I love happy without worrying or even concerning myself with the suffering they will cause me. By this resolution I shall obey the need for loving which I still experience and the instincts of happiness which I can still satisfy. I shall no longer ask for the ideal on earth, for trust and passion from love, for justice and reason from human nature. I shall accept errors and faults, no longer in the hope of correcting them and rejoicing in my victory, but with the desire of reducing them and through my affection making up for the harm they do to others. This will be the logical conclusion of the whole of my life. At last I have disentangled this clear solution from the cloud of confusion in which I sought it”
Before leaving the olive grove Lucrezia mused again in order to rest a while after thinking. She saw before her mind’s eye the recent illusion of her happiness with Karol and the happiness she thought she could give him. She told herself that she was wrong to have cherished such a beautiful dream after so many disappointments and mistakes and she asked herself if she should humiliate herself before God for it or complain to Him for submitting her to so fiery an ordeal.
This short phase of her last intoxication had been so vivid, so sweet! It was the purest, the most perfect, and it was already ended for ever! She felt sure that it would be useless to try and find a similar one with another lover because there was not a second nature on earth which was as exclusive and passionate as Karol’s, a soul as rich in outbursts of emotion, or as strong in ecstasy and adoration.
“Well, isn’t he the same still?” she said to herself. “When the demon which torments him is asleep doesn’t he again become as he was once? Doesn’t it seem, on the contrary, that he is more ardent and more intoxicated than in the early days? Why should I not grow accustomed to suffering days and weeks and then forget everything in those hours of divine rapture?”
But then she was halted in her fancy by the fatal light which had been kindled in her. She felt that her mind, which was fairer and more logical than Karol’s, had not the faculty to forget its own anguish in the space of a single moment As she lay in his arms, remembering the insult which his jealousy had just inflicted on her, she could not understand the strange and terrible gift which some people have of despising what they adore and adoring what they despise. She could no longer believe in happiness, she no longer felt it. She had lost the power of feeling it.
“Oh God,” she cried in her heart, “forgive me for expressing one last regret for the perfect joy You allowed me to know so late and which You have withdrawn from me so quickly! I shall not blaspheme against Your kindness, I shall not say that You made game of me. You wished to shatter my reason, I did not defend myself As always I yielded naïvely to rapture and now, in my distress, I do not forget that this madness was happiness. Blessed be the name of God then, and with Him the hand which caresses and strikes down.”
Then Lucrezia was seized with immense grief as she bade an eternal farewell to her dear illusions. She fell to the ground and writhed there, her eyes brimming with tears. Stifled cries oppressed her heart and she sobbed aloud. She wished to give vent to a weakness which she felt must be her last and to tears which would never flow again.
When she was calmed by overwhelming fatigue she said farewell to the old olive tree, the witness of her first joys and her last struggles. She left the wood and never returned there, but it was her constant wish that she should utter her last breath beneath its guardian shade; and every time she felt herself weakening, she looked at the sacred wood from the windows of her villa, thinking of the cup of bitterness she had drained there and finding in the memory of this last crisis an instinctive strength which would defend her from both hope and despair.
28.
And now I have reached the goal which I had intended and the rest will be no more than a kindly act on my part for the benefit of those who insist on some denouement or other.
The sensible reader will, I am sure, be of my opinion and find denouements quite unnecessary. If I could follow my own convictions and fancy, no novel would come to a definite end, because then it would resemble real life more closely. For what love between a man and a woman ever stopped with absolute finality through a parting or a prosaic union, through infidelity or the sacrament? What events are there which fix our existence in never changing conditions? I agree that there is nothing prettier imaginable than the ancient concluding formula “And they lived happily ever after.” That was said in prehistoric literature, in fabled times – happy times, if one believed in such innocent lies.
But nowadays we no longer believe in anything and we laugh when we read this charming refrain.
A novel is never anything but an episode in life. I have just related to you events which offer unity of time and place in the loves of the Prince de Roswald and the actress Lucrezia Floriani. Now, do you wish to know the rest? Couldn’t you tell it me yourselves? Can’t you see even better than I can where the characters of my protagonists are leading? Are you anxious to know the facts?
