Lucrezia Floriani, page 7
And yet, as Salvator well knew, no woman had suffered so much.
Towards the end of supper, the little girls prepared to go to their mother’s bedroom and join their younger brother who was already asleep. The handsome Celio who, by reason of his twelve years enjoyed the privilege of remaining downstairs until ten o’clock, took his dog for a run on the terrace which overlooked the lake.
It was a beautiful sight to watch Madame Floriani at dessert receiving the last caresses of her children, while at the same time these charming youngsters were themselves saying good night and kissing each other in a sprightly ritual of embraces half loving, half teasing. With her profile like that of an antique cameo, her hair artlessly and unaffectedly coiled around her shapely head, her gown loose and unadorned, behind which one had difficulty in surmising the statuesque figure of a Roman empress, her calm pallor flushed by the violent kisses of her children, her eyes tired but serene, her beautiful arms whose round firm muscles were gracefully outlined when she encircled the whole of her brood, she suddenly became more beautiful and alive than Salvator had ever yet seen her. Hardly had the children gone when, forgetting the ghost of Karol which was moving fitfully against the background of the far wall, he poured out his heart to her.
“Lucrezia,” he cried, covering with kisses those arms tired after so many games and maternal embraces, “I do not understand where my mind, heart and eyes were when I imagined that you had aged and lost your looks. Never have you been younger, fresher, sweeter, more capable of driving a man frantic. If you wish to drive me into that state you only have to say one word, and maybe you would have to say more than one to prevent it. I have always loved you with friendship, esteem, admiration, and now…”
“And now, my friend, you are mocking me or raving,” said Madame Floriani, with the calm modesty which results from the habit of holding sway over others. “Let us not speak lightly of serious matters, please.”
“But nothing is more serious than what I am saying … Come,” he said, lowering his voice a little out of instinct rather than real caution, for the prince was not missing a single word, “Tell me, are you free at the present moment?”
“Not in the slightest – indeed, even less than ever. Henceforth I belong entirely to my family and my children. Those are chains that are more sacred than all others, and I shall not break them.”
“Of course! Who would wish to break them? But what about love? Tell me, is it true that for the past year you have renounced it?”
“It is very true.”
“What? No lover? And what of the father of Celio and Stella?”
“He is dead. He was Memmo Ranieri.”
“Yes, that’s true … But the little girl’s father?”
“Beatrice’s? He left me before she was born.”
“So he was not the father of your youngest boy?”
“Salvator’s? No.”
“Is your last child called Salvator?”
“In memory of you, and in gratitude, because you never made love to me.”
“Divine and cruel woman! But tell me, where is the father of my namesake?”
“I left him last year.”
“Left him? You left him?”
“Yes, indeed! I was weary of love. I had found nothing but torment and injustice in it I had either to die of sorrow under the yoke or live for my children by sacrificing to them a man who could not love them all equally. I chose the latter; I suffered, but I do not repent of my decision.”
“But I was told that you had had a liaison with a friend of mine, a Frenchman, a man of some talent, a painter.”
“Saint-Gély? We loved one another for a week.”
“Your adventure caused a stir.”
“Perhaps. He was impertinent to me. I asked him never to come back to my house.”
“Is he the father of Salvator?”
“No. Salvator’s father is Vandoni, a penniless actor, possibly the best and most honest of all men. But he was consumed by childish, wretched jealousy. Would you believe it, his jealousy was retrospective. Unable to suspect me in the present, he overwhelmed me with my past. It was not difficult; my life is vulnerable to the attacks of moralists, and he was incapable of generosity. I could not endure his quarrels, reproaches and tantrums, which soon threatened to explode in my children’s presence. I fled. I remained hidden here for some time and when I learned that he had accepted the inevitable I bought this house and settled here. However, I am still slightly apprehensive, for he loved me greatly, and if his present mistress hasn’t the skill to hold him, I may find myself burdened with him once more.”
“In that case,” said Salvator, laughing and holding out his arms to her, “keep me here as your knight I shall cleave him in twain if he appears.”
“No, thank you. I shall protect myself quite well without you.”
“So you don’t want me to stay?” said Salvator, whose natural gaiety had been somewhat heightened by a few glasses of maraschino, and who had completely forgotten his friend and his own solemn promises.
“Oh yes, stay as long as you wish,” replied Madame Floriani, giving him a little pat on the cheek, “but on the old footing.”
“Let it be on a war footing, so that I can rebel.”
“Take care,” said she, freeing herself from his arms, “if you are no longer my friend as you were in the old days, I shall send you away. Let us go and find your travelling companion who must be bored there, all alone, in the drawing room.”
Karol who had been leaning against a column had heard all this dialogue. It seemed to him now that he was coming out of a dream and he moved away so as not to be accused of eavesdropping, whereas in reality he had been standing there lost to his surroundings. He passed his hand over his brow as if to efface the memory of a nightmare. The involuntary effort he had made to enter into the mind of a being so stormy and anarchic, a mixture of things so magnificent and so deplorable, had shattered his soul. He could not understand how Salvator’s passion could grow stronger as this woman disclosed her successive errors more and more boldly, and how the very things that would have repelled him, attracted this irresponsible young man like a moth attracted by light.
He felt incapable of facing them. He was afraid of being unable to hide his displeasure from Salvator and his pity from Madame Floriani He left hastily through another door and, meeting Celio, asked him to show him the room which they had been good enough to place at his disposal. The boy took him to the upper floor, then to a handsome apartment where two beds, beautifully fresh and downy, had already been prepared for him and Salvator. The prince asked the boy to tell his mother that, feeling exhausted, he had retired, and begged her to accept his respects and his apologies.
Remaining alone, he tried to collect his thoughts and recover his composure, but he found it impossible to regain his habitual calmness of mind. It seemed as if a brutal influence had deeply disturbed his inner peace. He determined to lie down and go to sleep, but he sighed and tossed in vain in his luxurious bed. Sleep would not come and he heard midnight strike and he still had not slept a wink. Nor did Salvator appear.
8.
And yet Salvator Albani was a great sleeper. Like all fit, robust, active and easy-going men he ate voraciously, tired, himself out the livelong day, and did not need much persuasion to go to sleep as quickly as the prince who, because of his regular habits and indifferent health, was obliged not to keep late nights.
If however since first they began travelling together, the occasion arose when Salvator’s evening engagement was unusually long, he never failed to go two or three times and reassure himself that his child (as he called him) was sleeping quietly. He had a paternal instinct and though he was no more than four or five years older than Karol, he cared for him just as he would have done for his own son, so great was his need of serving and helping people who were weaker than himself. In this there was some resemblance between Madame Floriani and him, and that is why he could appreciate better than anyone else the deep love she bore her children.
In spite of everything, Salvator for once forgot his usual concern, and Madame Floriani, unaware of the attentions and considerations to which the prince was accustomed from his friend, did nothing to remind him to return to Karol.
“Your friend has already left us,” she said to him after receiving Celio’s message. “He appears to be unwell What did you say his name was? How long have you been travelling together? One has the impression that he is grieving over something…”
When Salvator had answered these questions she continued: “Poor boy! He interests me. It is beautiful to love a mother so much and mourn for her so long. His face and manners went straight to my heart. Ah, if my dear Celio lost me, how sad for him! Who would love him as I do?”
“One should adore one’s children and live for them, as you do,” said Salvator, “but one must not accustom them overmuch to living for themselves or for the tender mother who dedicates herself to them. There are grave dangers and drawbacks in not giving their minds all the development of which they are capable, and my friend is an example of this. He is an adorable being, but unhappy.”
“How is that? Why? Explain it to me. When it is a matter of children, character or education, I am always ready to listen and consider.”
“Oh, my friend has a strange character and I could not possibly define it, but, in a word, I can tell you that he takes everything to excess, affection as well as aversion, happiness as well as sorrow.”
“Well, that means an artistic nature.”
“That’s exactly it, but he has not been sufficiently developed in that direction. His emotions are intense and keen, but they are too generalised for art. He is exclusive in his tastes, but he is not dominated by a special passion which would occupy him and compel him to abstract himself from real life.”
“Well, that is a feminine nature.”
“Yes, but not like yours, my dear. Although he is capable of as much passion, devotion, delicacy and rapture as the tenderest woman…”
“In that case he is indeed to be pitied, for he will go through life searching in vain for a heart which will match his.”
“Ah, Lucrezia, did you yourself search far enough? If you only wished, your quest need go no further.”
“Tell me more about your friend.”
“No, I am not talking about him, but about myself”
“I understand and I shall answer you presently, but I don’t like to change the subject every minute. Tell me this first while asserting that there are similarities between us, why do you say that your friend is so different from me?”
“Because there are a thousand nuances in your mind, and he has none. Work, children, friendship, the countryside, flowers, music – everything that is good and beautiful – you feel it all so deeply that you can always find something to distract and console you.”
“That’s true. And what about him?”
“He loves all these things in relation to the being he loves, but none of them for themselves. If the object of his love is dead or absent, nothing exists for him any longer. Despair and boredom overwhelm him and his soul hasn’t sufficient strength to start life once more for the sake of a new love.”
“That is indeed beautiful,” said Madame Floriani, overcome with genuine admiration. “If I had come across such a soul when I fell in love for the first time, I should have had but one love in my life.”
“You frighten me, Lucrezia. Are you going to fall in love with my little prince?”
“I don’t like princes,” she answered simply. “I could only fall in love with paupers. In any case, your little prince could well be my son.”
“You are mad! You are thirty and he is twenty-four.”
“Ah! I would have thought he was only sixteen or eighteen. He looks like an adolescent And as for myself, I feel so old and staid that I think I am fifty.”
“It makes no difference. I am not easy in my mind. I must take the prince away to-morrow.”
“You may put your mind entirely at rest, Salvator. I shall never love again. See,” she said, taking his hand and putting it on her heart, “Henceforth a stone lies here. But I am wrong,” she went on and placed Salvator’s hand on her forehead. “Love of one’s children and charity still dwell in one’s heart; but the main abode of love is here, in the head, and my head is turned to stone. I know that love is said to be seated in the senses, but this is not true of intelligent women. With them it follows a progressive course: first it takes possession of the brain and knocks at the doors of the imagination. Without this golden key it could not enter. Having triumphed thus far, it descends into the emotions, it steals into all our faculties and we then love the man who dominates us like a God, a child, a brother, a husband – like everything that a woman can love. It stimulates and subjugates all our vital forces, and the senses duly play their own important part But the woman who can know pleasure without rapture is an animal, and I tell you now that rapture, – ecstasy – is dead inside me. I have had too many disappointments, I have too much experience, and above all, I am too tired. You know how I suddenly became sick of the theatre, through lassitude, although I was physically perfectly well My imagination was satiated, exhausted. I could no longer find a single role in the world’s repertoire which seemed genuine and when I tried to make one myself to my own liking I realised after one single performance that I had failed to convey my feelings in my words. I did not play this role well, because it wasn’t good, and I was not deluded when the public tried to deceive me by applauding. Well, I have reached the same point in the matter of love. The music of illusion has died for me too soon.
“Love is a prism,” she went on. “It is a sun which we wear on our brows and through which our interior being is illumined. When once it is extinguished, everything sinks back into night Now I see life and men just as they are. Now I can only love through charity, which is what I did for my last lover, Vandoni. I had no more ecstasy, I was grateful for his affection; touched by his suffering, I devoted myself to him. I was not happy, I did not even experience excitement It was a perpetual sacrifice, senseless and unnatural Suddenly the whole situation horrified me, I felt myself degraded. I could not endure to be reproached by my past, because among all the loves into which I had flung myself innocently and blindly none appeared so culpable as the one I was trying to maintain in spite of myself Oh, my friend, what things I could tell! But you are still too young and you would not understand”
“Speak! Speak!” cried Salvator who had grown deeply thoughtful. Still clasping her hand he said, “Let me learn to know you well, so that I can continue to love you as if you were my sister – or inspire me with the courage to love you otherwise. See, I am calm, because I am listening to you.”
“Love me like a sister and not otherwise,” she said to him, “for I can only look upon you as a brother. That is how I loved Vandoni, for years. I had known him at the theatre where he did not shine on account of his talent, but where he made himself useful with his activity, his devotion and his kindness. One night – in the country near Milan, it was a beautiful summer night like this one – he made me tell him the story of my break with the singer Tealdo Soavi, the father of my darling little Beatrice. I had loved that man passionately, but his was a cowardly and depraved soul. He kept telling me that he wished to marry me, and he was already married! I did not value marriage as such, but I was horrified when I realised that he could lie to me so long and so cunningly. I was bitter and furious in my reproaches. He left me at the moment when I was about to become a mother. I would not have had the courage to send him away, but I had sufficient not to ask him to return.
“Beatrice was only a year old when poor Vandoni who had become my servant, my squire, my instrument, and who had loved me for a long time without daring to tell me so, heard my sad story and when I had finished he threw himself at my feet and said ‘Love me and I shall console you for everything. I shall heal and obliterate all the wrong that has been done to you. I know full well that you have no passion for me; but yield to mine and maybe the love which is consuming me will spread to your heart Moreover having your friendship and your trust I shall be the happiest and most grateful of men.’
“I resisted for a long time. I liked him so much that it was impossible for me to love him. I wished to send him away, but he spoke seriously about suicide. I tried to live chastely with him. He became like one demented. I yielded; and I thought I was committing incest when instead of feeling the intoxication of passion, I lay in his arms, ashamed, sorrowful and weeping.
“However, his rapture moved me to pity, and for some time life with him was fairly pleasant But he had expected that his heightened emotion would be requited ultimately. When he saw that he was mistaken and that I still remained nothing but a gentle companion to him, he did not have the modesty to tell himself that I knew him too well to be ecstatic over him, and that the more I knew him the less likely it was for the ecstasy to come. He was young and handsome and a man of feeling he lacked neither intelligence nor education – but he could not imagine that he would never influence me by the charm of his personality. (And you would not, either, Salvator…) I shall tell you why he could not influence me.
“We must not measure the power of the love we experience by the merit of the beloved one. For some time love feeds on its own flame and is even kindled in us without consulting our experience and reason. What I have said is commonplace, and every day one sees noble natures meeting nothing but ingratitude and treachery, whilst depraved, wretched souls inspire violent and lasting passions.
“We see it, we note it and are constantly astonished by it, because we do not inquire into its cause, love being a sentiment of a mysterious nature which everybody experiences without understanding it This subject is so profound that it is terrifying to think of and yet, couldn’t one make a serious effort to examine something which hitherto has only been vaguely glimpsed? Couldn’t one study, analyse, understand and get to know something of this delightful, yet terrible emotion, the greatest which the human species feels, the one that no one can escape and which, however, assumes as many forms and varied aspects as there are individualities on this earth? Couldn’t one at least grasp its metaphysical essence, discover the law of its ideal, and then find out, by questioning oneself, if it is a noble and sincere love one is harbouring in oneself or a baleful, destructive emotion?”
