Lucrezia Floriani, page 8
“These are weighty matters, Lucrezia,” said Salvator. “From the fact that you have given this subject so much thought I see quite clearly that you are no longer under the sway of passion.”
“That would hardly follow,” she retorted. “One can experience great emotions, yet consider them critically. Perhaps that is a misfortune, but I possess that faculty and I have always possessed it In the midst of the greatest storms of my youth, my thoughts used to consume themselves in the attempt to make sense of the storm which was causing this confusion. I fail to understand how, when it is a matter of love, the mind can have any other application than this. I am fully aware that it achieves nothing, that the more one tries to see clearly into oneself, the more one’s vision becomes blurred, but that is because, as I have already said, the law of love is not known, and the catechism of our affections is still to be made.”
“So,” said Salvator, “you have striven, yet have not solved the riddle?”
“No, but I have a presentiment that it lies in the Gospel.”
“My poor friend, the love we are speaking of is not in the Gospel. Jesus forbade it; He knew nothing of it The love He teaches us extends to humanity as a whole and does not concentrate on one individual being.”
“I know nothing about that But it seems to me that not everything that Jesus said and thought is sufficiently understood. And I could swear that He was not as ignorant about love as we are led to believe. That He lived chaste I accept, which was all the more reason why He understood the metaphysical side of love. That He is God, that, too, I accept; therefore I see in the Incarnation a marriage with matter, an alliance with woman, and that leaves me no doubts about the divine thought. So do not mock me when I tell you that Jesus understood love better than anyone else. Note His behaviour with the woman taken in adultery, with the Samaritan woman, with Mary and Martha, with Mary Magdalene, the parable of the labourers at the twelfth hour, so sublime and so profound! All that Jesus does and says and thinks is intended to show us that love is greater in its cause than in its object and that it overlooks human imperfections. The more culpable, feeble and unworthy men are of this generous love, the more it strives to envelop them in its ardent embrace.”
“You are describing Christian charity.”
“Well, isn’t love, great, real love, Christian charity applied and as it were concentrated in a single being?”
“That’s Utopia. Love is the most selfish of feelings and the most incompatible with Christian charity.”
“That is your love, such as you have made it, miserable men!” cried Lucrezia passionately. “But the love which God gave us, the kind which, fresh and pure, should have passed from Him to us, the kind which I understand, which I have dreamed of and sought, the love which I thought I had grasped and possessed once or twice in my life, – alas, it lasted the space of a dream and a startled awakening – the kind which I shall believe in as a religion, although I may be its only adept, and I have died in the pain of its pursuit … that is the kind which is patterned on the love which Jesus Christ felt and manifested to mankind. It is a gleam of the divine charity, it obeys the same laws; it is calm, mild, and just, with those who are just It is restless, ardent, impetuous, in a word, passionate, only for sinners. When you see a man and wife loving one another tenderly and faithfully, you can say that that is friendship. But when you, a decent man, will feel yourself madly enamoured of a wretched courtesan, you may be sure that that, too, is love, and do not blush for it! That is how Christ loved those who were unworthy of Him.
“And that is how I loved Tealdo Soavi. I knew quite well that he was selfish, vain, ambitious and ungrateful, but I was madly in love with him. When I learned that he was vile I cursed him, but I still loved him. I wept over him with a bitterness so great that since that time I have lost the faculty of loving any other man. It seemed as if I found consolation very quickly, and now I certainly am consoled; but the blow was so violent, the wound so deep that I shall never love again.”
Madame Floriani wiped away a tear which fell slowly down her pale cheek. Her face expressed no pain, but there was something terrifying about her stillness.
9.
“So it was because of a scoundrel that you were unable to love a decent man?” said Salvator, deeply moved “You are a strange woman, Lucrezia.”
“Well, why did this man need my love?” she retorted “Wasn’t he sufficiently happy in himself, knowing that he was sensible, well balanced, at peace with his conscience and the world? He asked for my friendship and offered me in return a loyal and long devotion. He had my friendship and was not satisfied with it He demanded passion; he was asking for turmoil and torment It was not in my power to make myself unhappy on his account And he could not forgive me for wishing to make him happy.”
“Those are paradoxes indeed ! They terrify me. What you say is very beautiful, but difficult to summarise. You say that love is generous, sublime and divine. Christ Himself taught it to us indirectly by teaching us charity. It is compassion driven to transcendence, devotion driven to ecstasy. Consequently it only happens to noble hearts. And thus such hearts are condemned to hell for the whole of this life, since they only burn with this sacred fire for the wicked and the ungrateful.”
“Yes, that is just how it is,” sighed Madame Floriani. “The riddle of life has no other solution. It is sacrifice, suffering and weariness; sacrifice in youth, suffering in the prime of life, weariness in old age.”
“Consequently good persons will not know the happiness of being loved?”
“No, as long as this world will not change, and with it the human heart. If Jesus returns one day, as He promised, I hope He will give gentler laws to a new race of men, which will be better than ours.”
“So, no requited love, no pure intoxication for the generations of the present?”
“No, no, and again, no.”
“You frighten me, you soul in despair!”
“The fact is that you wish to see happiness in love. It is not there. Happiness means tranquillity and friendship; love is storm and conflict”
“Well, let me define another kind of love: friendship, that is tranquillity combined with sensual pleasure – that is to say, enjoyment and happiness.”
“Yes, that is the ideal of marriage. I have not known it, although I have dreamed of it and pursued it”
“And because you do not know it, do you deny its existence?’’
“Salvator, have you ever known two lovers or two married people who loved one another absolutely in the same manner? – with the same strength or the same calmness?”
“I don’t know … I don’t think so.”
“I am sure not. As soon as passion seizes one of the two (and that is inevitable) the other grows cool, suffering comes and happiness is disturbed, if not completely lost In youth one tries to find love; in maturity love is accompanied by torture; in old age one tries to love, but love has gone.”
“Well, when you have reached a mature age, you will get married, I can see that You will make a gentle and understanding marriage based on reason and you will be happy in conjugal love. That is your dream, isn’t it?”
“No, Salvator. I have reached mature years. My heart is fifty years old, my brain is twice that age, and I do not think that the future will give me back my youth. I ought to have loved only one man, traversed all life’s vicissitudes with him, suffered with him and for him and reserved for him the angelic devotion that Christ has taught us. This virtue would then have been able to count on its own reward Old age would have come to heal everything and I would have gone peacefully to my rest alongside the companion of my life, sure that I had done my duty to the end and given him a worthwhile devotion.”
“Why did you not do so? You forgave your first lover so much! When. I knew you, you seemed resolved to go on forgiving the second one, too, endlessly.”
“I lacked patience and faith forsook me, but I yielded to the weakness of human nature, to dejection, and later to the wild hope of finding happiness with another. I was wrong. Men find it impossible to be grateful to us for worshipping those who preceded them. On the contrary, they look upon it as a crime and a reproach and the more devoted we were before we knew them the more they judge us to be incapable of devotion to them.”
“Isn’t that true?”
“It does become true after a number of errors and involvements. The soul is exhausted, the imagination freezes, courage departs, strength forsakes us. That is the stage at which I am. If I told a man now that I am capable of love, I would be lying shamelessly.”
“Ah, you have never been a coquette, my dear friend, and I see that you could never become a cold sensualist”
“Do you pity me then on that account?”
“I pity myself, for in spite of and possibly because of all you say I feel I am desperately in love with you.”
“In that case, my dear Salvator, good night – and you will be leaving to-morrow.”
“Do you wish it? Ah, if you could really wish it”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that then I would stay in spite of you and that I would hope.”
“Do you imagine that I am afraid of you? You used not to be conceited, but now you have become so.”
“No, I haven’t grown conceited, but I do not know why you wish to make me believe that you have become invulnerable. Have you never had any sudden impulses?”
“Never.”
“Ah, I can’t believe it”
“Listen, I have had violent, blind, culpable relationships, I won’t deny it. But they were never an impulse. That is another word for a pleasurable affair which lasts a week … But there can be genuine passions which only last a week.”
“There are even passions which last only an hour,” cried Salvator, with emotion.
“Yes,” she replied, “Illusions so sudden and so powerful that they are followed by aversion and terror as they vanish. The shortest lived passions can be the deepest felt; one mourns them and blushes for them all one’s life.”
“Why blush for them if they are sincere? One can be quite sure that these at least were requited”
“One can’t be more sure of these than of the rest”
“What is spontaneous and irresistible is legitimate and divinely right”
“The right of the stronger is not divinely right,” said Madame Floriani, freeing herself from Salvator’s arms. “My friend, why have you come to insult me, and under my own roof? I can feel no love for you”
“Lucrezia! Lucrezia! You would not kill yourself to-morrow morning, would you?”
“The Lucrezia you speak of was wrong to kill herself Sextus had not possessed her. A man who takes a woman by surprise is not her lover.”
“Ah! You are right, my dear friend,” said Salvator, kneeling at her feet “Will you forgive me?”
“Yes, of course,” she answered, with a smile. “We are alone and it is midnight I have no protector and perhaps I have been too kind to you. What is happening to you is not your fault, but mine. So I will have to abandon the idea of seeing my friends for another ten years. It is sad”
“Oh, my dearest, you are weeping. I have offended you”
“No, not offended My life has not been chaste enough for me to have a right to be offended by a desire expressed plainly.”
“Do not speak in that way. I respect and adore you.”
“That is impossible. You are a man and you are young. That is all.”
“Trample me underfoot, but do not say that I only feel sensuality towards you. My heart is deeply moved, my mind uplifted, and your refusal, far from vexing me, increases my respect and affection even more … Forget that I have distressed you. Heavens, how pale and sad you look! Wretched fool that I am, I have awakened the memory of all your sorrows. Ah, you are weeping, weeping bitterly. You make me wish to kill myself, I despise myself so much.”
“Forgive yourself as I forgive you,” said Madame Floriani gently, as she rose and offered him her hand. “I am wrong to be affected by a chance meeting which I should have foreseen. I would have laughed at it once … If I weep about it now it is because I thought I had already entered for ever on a life of calm and dignity. But it is not sufficiently long since I broke with weakness and folly for others to think me sober and strong. These conversations about love, these outpourings, these confidences between a man and a woman at night are dangerous, and if you have had bad thoughts, all the fault lies in my imprudence. But let us not take it too seriously,” said she, wiping her eyes and smiling at her friend with wonderful gentleness. “I must accept this mortification as an expiation of my past sins, although I myself do not regard them as such. Perhaps I would have done better to be wanton rather than passionate. It would have harmed no-one but myself, whereas my passion has broken other hearts than mine. But what can you expect, Salvator? I was not born to have philosophical morals, as they used to be called once … Nor you, my friend … You deserve better than that! Ah, out of respect for yourself do not ask women for pleasure without love. Otherwise you will cease to be young before you are old and that is the worst of all moral states.”
“Lucrezia, you are an angel,” said Salvator. “I have insulted you and you speak to me as a mother would to her son. Let me kiss your feet, I am no longer worthy of kissing your brow. I do not think I shall ever dare to do so again.”
“Come and kiss more innocent brows,” she said, slipping her arm through his. “Come into my bedroom.”
“Your bedroom?” said he, trembling.
“Yes, my bedroom,” said she, with a frank laugh which no longer held any hint of bitterness. Leading him through her boudoir she brought him into a room draped with white, in which four little pink beds stood around a kind of quilted hammock suspended by silk cords. Madame Floriani’s four children were sleeping in this sanctuary and formed a kind of rampart around her aerial couch.
“I used to be very greedy for my sleep once,” she said to him, “and I had difficulty in awakening during the night to attend to my children after the fatigues of the theatre and society. Since I have been enjoying the happiness of living for them and with them at all hours of the day and night, I have grown accustomed to more vigilant habits. I perch like a bird on a branch close to its nest and my children cannot make a single movement without my hearing and being on the alert for them. You see, because I left them for two hours to-night I have been punished and have been troubled. Had I gone to bed with them as usual, at ten o’clock, I would not have remembered the past … Ah, the past, that is my enemy.”
“Your past, your present and your future are admirable, Lucrezia, and I would have given my whole life to have been you for a single day. I would be proud of it, and that day would be the most memorable in my life.. Farewell! My friend and I will leave to-morrow at daybreak. Allow me to kiss all your children, and give me your blessing. It will sanctify me, and when we see one another again, I shall be worthy of you.”
When Salvator Albani entered his bedroom it was nearly one o’clock in the morning. He went in cautiously and approached the bed on tiptoe, for fear of waking his friend whose silence and stillness made him think he was asleep.
However, before extinguishing the light, the young count, as was his habit, went and gently drew apart the curtains of the prince’s bed to make sure that he was sleeping peacefully. He was surprised to see that his eyes were open and staring at him as if questioning all his movements.
“Aren’t you asleep, my good Karol?” he said. “I have wakened you…”
“I haven’t been sleeping,” answered the prince in a voice which held a tinge of sadness and reproach. “I was worried about you.”
“Worried?” said Salvator, pretending not to understand. “Are we in a robbers’ lair? You are forgetting, we have made a stop at a pleasant villa among friendly people.”
“A stop,” said Karol, with a strange sigh. “That is just what I feared.”
“Oh! Oh! So your presentiment has not gone? Well, you will soon be rid of it Our stop will not last much longer. I shall throw myself on my bed for a couple of hours and we shall be away even before sunrise.”
“To meet again, and part thus,” said the prince, tossing on his bed in distress. “How strange … How horrible…”
“What? What did you say? Do you want us to stay?”
“No, certainly not for my sake, but for yours. I am frightened at so easy a separation after so easy a reunion.”
“Come, my dear Karol, you are wandering,” said Salvator, forcing a laugh. “I understand your suspicions and accusations which are somewhat rash … and harsh! You imagine that I have just come from an intoxicating tête-à-tête and that content with a pleasant and easy adventure I am preparing to leave without formal leavetaking, without regrets, in short, without love … Thank you for such generous thoughts…”
“Salvator, I said nothing like that; you are making me speak so as to pick a quarrel with me.”
“No, no. Let us not quarrel This is not the time. Let’s sleep. Good night” And as he reached his bed and flung himself on it, slightly ill tempered, Salvator muttered: “You do jump to conclusions, don’t you? How charitable you virtuous people are! Ah! It is really very amusing.”
But his laughter was not exactly hearty. He felt that he was guilty and that if Madame Floriani had wished to be as foolish as he, Karol’s accusation would have hit the mark only too well.
10.
