NOSTALGIA

BY

GRAZIA DELEDDA

AUTHOR OF 'CENERE,' ETC.

TRANSLATED BY

HELEN HESTER COLVILL

(KATHARINE WYLDE)

AUTHOR OF 'THE STEPPING-STONE,' ETC.

LONDON

CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd.

1905

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

INTRODUCTION

Since the days of Latin, to how few authors has it been given to obtain an European reputation!

We English seem exceptionally slow in making ourselves acquainted with the works of foreigners. Dante and Cervantes, Goethe and Dumas, are perhaps no worse known among us than they are in their homes; but we seldom find out a modern writer till he has been the round of all the other countries. We are opinionated in England. We think other folk barbarians, even if we don't call them so; we visit them for the making of comparisons, generally in our own favour; of trying their manners and customs, arts and morals, not by their standard but by ours. We never forget that on the map of Europe there is the big continent, and away in a corner, by themselves, extraneous, cut off, and "very superior," physically and morally isolated and self-contained, are our two not over enormous islands. We don't regret that sea-voyage, literal and metaphorical, which is necessary to transport us to the lands of the barbarians; and though we travel a great deal, I declare I think we all (and especially newspaper correspondents) go about enclosed in a little bubble of our own foggy atmosphere, seeing only the things we intend to see, hearing the things we mean to hear, and already believe. We are poor linguists moreover, and when we talk with the barbarians we only catch half they say and omit all attention to what they hint; we frighten them by our abruptness, our unintentional hortatoriness and unconscious conceit, so that they don't say to us what they mean, nor tell what they suppose to be true. We come home swollen with false report and evil surmise, and at once commit ourselves to criticism and laudation equally beside the mark. I wonder now do we really understand the errors of Abdul Hamed and Nicholas II as thoroughly as we think we do? and in our long glibness about the Dreyfus case has it never occurred to us we may have been partly deluded?—as the barbarians were deluded when they chattered of us in the time of the Boer War!

Well, we can't help our position in the far-away corner of the map; but perhaps we should become less odd and more sympathetic if we read the barbarian's books a little oftener; books in which he is talking to his brother barbarians, and has not been questioned by an island catechist; books, superior or inferior to our own it matters little, which at least are written from another standpoint, and which by their mere perusal must extend our knowledge, and remind us that "it takes all sorts to make a world."

The best way, of course, is to read foreign books in their original language. Don Quixote was right when he said translation was a bad job at its best. But life is short and the gift of tongues is miraculous; some of us are too busy with our Dante and our Schopenhauer to waste time on a railway novel, and more are lazy and can't be bothered to look out words in a dictionary. The humble translator has his function. If he can succeed in giving any of his author's spirit, he may interest his reader enough to send him to the original itself next time;—in which case the translator will have done a worthy deed, and the author will perhaps forgive a certain mangling of his ideas, spoiling of his best passages and general rubbing of the bloom from his peach, inevitable in a process scarce easier than changing the skin of an Ethiopian or repainting the spots of a leopard.

Grazia Deledda, the new writer, for not so many years have passed since the publication of her first book, has already conquered not only her fellow-countrymen but many more distant peoples. Several of her novels have been put into French for the Revue des Deux Mondes and have appeared in Germany in various magazines and journals. One at least has been published in America, and this particular book, Nostalgie, is in process of translation into German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, and French. In England alone—poor, isolated, ignorant England—is the author's name almost unknown.

She is a Sardinian, and most of her books have been about her native island, the simple folk, and quiet histories of a forgotten corner where the tourist has hardly penetrated. But Signora Deledda now lives in Rome, and true to her method she observes and describes the things and places about her, the people among whom her lot is cast. The scene of Nostalgie is therefore laid in the capital, but with constant allusion to a district in the north of Italy evidently familiar—her husband's country—which she tells us is dear to her as a second home, and from which she has dated her preface. As a writer she prides herself on her Realism—strange, ill-comprehended, often misapplied word! The realism of the highly imaginative may easily seem romance to the prosaic; and Signora Deledda will pardon us if we say that if only in her pictures of scenery, in her intimate knowledge of the influence of Nature on the heart and the mind of her votaries, there is something very superior to realism—at least in the common acceptation of the term. Grazia Deledda sees her figures set in a landscape, belonging to it, born of it. Half the tragedy of this book arises from the fact that the heroine having lived alone with Nature is suddenly transplanted to a city where she imagines herself bereaved of the mighty mother. Years have to go over before she realises that the mighty mother never really deserts her children, and that the "still sad music of Humanity" is as much a part of Nature as the sough of the wind, the rustling of the leaves in the poplar-trees, and the unending roll of the river waters.

The form of Signora Deledda's novels is almost autobiographical. There is one principal character, hero or heroine as the case may be, and the story develops from his or her point of view. In the book before us, we know all about Regina, we are, as it were, inside her; but the other personages are known to us only in so far as she knows them. We are never admitted to a scene from which she is absent, nor is anything explained to us but in so far as she understood or guessed it herself. The minor characters are little more than sketched; figures in a crowd of which Regina saw the outside and occasionally touched the soul. One feels the gracious influence of her mother as she felt it, but we are told little about her and practically never see her in action. The plot is slight, but it hangs together perfectly with unity and focus, never giving a feeling of strain. It is all very un-English; neither the life nor the actors are like ours, nor at all like what is described in our novels. The history and romance of Rome are sternly omitted. History and romance are already the property of the foreigners "who come down on Rome like a swarm of locusts," who wear "dress fasteners" and "impossible hats," who "resemble a nation of inquisitive children amusing themselves in the desecration of a stupendous sepulchre."

Yet even for the foreigner the supreme interest of Rome must be that it is no mere museum, but a living city still. Busy with churches and temples, statues and paintings, inscriptions and sites, we are apt to overlook the contemporary Romans whom we have not come forth to see. To themselves they must necessarily be the most important part of the Eternal City; and the greater number of them are not princes and dukes with historic names, nor even renowned churchmen, or patriots and kingdom builders, but good, simple, workaday, middle-class persons such as are the backbone of all countries and of all societies.

It is among such unnoticed folk that Grazia Deledda has taken us in Nostalgie; and it is not too much to say that her pages have a distinction and a force which recalls, at least in a measure, the style qui rugit of the author of Madame Bovary.

Helen Hester Colvill.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

To my Husband—

Do you remember a young and attractive lady who called on us one day in the course of our first year's residence in Rome? Her visit was surprising; for I did not know the coronet-surmounted name on her card, and at that time few outside our small circle of intimates had discovered our nest in Via Modena, or had courage to climb a century of steps in pursuit of two useless persons unpractised in giving letters of introduction or inditing dedicatory epistles. The lady, whom I will call Regina, explained, however, that she came from your native province and was the bearer of messages from your friends. We talked a long time of that vicinity, dear to me as a second home; then she asked if I did not yearn after my native Sardinia, whose children are reputed always great sufferers from homesickness.

"Not so much," I replied. "I love Rome with all my heart; besides, I am so busy with my work that I have no time for the indulgence of idle phantasies."

"You work so hard? Happy you!" sighed the young lady; and added, "But, no! no! Homesickness is not mere phantasy; nor is it a disease, as so many call it! It is a passion; and, like other passions, can drive one mad if ungratified. During my first months in Rome I suffered from acute and morbid nostalgia; but now I have been home for a while and have come back almost cured."

"I don't know——," I said; "such nostalgia as I have felt has been quite harmless."

"Then there must be several kinds, some harmless, some dangerous," conceded the young lady with a smile; and she continued rather shyly: "but our whole existence is one long chain of nostalgia—don't you think so? The nostalgia of yesterday, the nostalgia of to-morrow; the longing for what is lost, the yearning for what can never be attained——"

After this first visit we saw Regina several times. I liked her, she was so clever and original; but to you she proved unsympathetic. "I can't see clearly into her life," you complained to me more than once.

This much we learned about her. Her husband was far from rich and she had brought him but a slender dowry, yet they rented a handsome Apartment and lived almost luxuriously. We, on the other hand, who worked hard and between us made an income the double of theirs, were content with the modest life of poor artists; gladdened indeed—like the careless existence of the birds building in the laurel below our windows—by the songs of love and the mere joy of living and struggling on in good hope of victory.

Remembering, as I minutely do, the whole simple romance of our early married life—on this day when we have attained to almost all our hopes (a little by my good-will, chiefly by your intelligence and activity, never by stooping to any transaction disapproved by our conscience)—to you, dear comrade of my work and of my life, I dedicate this tale. In it the reader will not find one of those stale themes for which my romances have been unjustly blamed. It is a simple narrative, a transcript from life, from this our modern life, so multiform, so interesting, sometimes so joyous, oftener so sad; beautiful always as an autumn tree laden with fruit—some of it rotten,—and with leaves—many of them already dead.

A simple narrative, I say; so simple that criticism deeming it a test of my literary powers, hitherto devoted only to the passions and sorrows of a primitive society, may deem that I have failed. But such judgment will not disturb me. This novel has not been written as a test; and criticism resembles the Exchequer which almost always taxes us on capital greater than what we really possess.

Alas! that we cannot contest its terrible authority! nor make it understand that our patrimony, though small, is at least our own! If we forced ourselves to give all it has the audacity to demand, we should not only ruin ourselves, but to the last remain unsuccessful in appeasing our creditor.

Grazia.

Roncadello (Casalmaggiore). October, 1904.

CONTENTS.

PART I

NOSTALGIA

CHAPTER I

Rome was near.

The November moon illuminated the Campagna—an immense mother-o'-pearl moon, clear and sad. The violence of the express train was met by the violence of a raging wind.

Regina dozed and was dreaming herself still at home; the rumble of the train seemed the clatter of the mill upon the Po. Suddenly Antonio's hand pressed hers and she awoke with a start.

"We are near arriving," said the young husband.

Regina sat up, leaned towards the closed window and looked out. The glass reflected the interior of the compartment—the lamp, her own figure wrapped in a long, light-coloured cloak, her face wan with weariness. She half-closed her large, short-sighted eyes, and in the misty moonlight, against the grey background caused by the reflection of her cloak, she made out the landscape—bluish undulations fleeting by, a mysterious pathway, a tree with silver leaves lashed by the wind, and in the distance a long line of aqueducts, the arches of which disappeared into the moonlight and seemed like a row of immense inhospitable doors. This of the aqueducts was no doubt optical illusion; but Regina, who had little confidence in her eyes yet was obstinate in refusing spectacles, felt none the less excited by the sublime visions she believed herself seeing in the dimness of the wind-swept window-pane. Rome! she was filled with childish joy at the mere thought that Rome was near. Rome! the long-dreamed-of wonder city, the world's metropolis, the home of all splendours, all delight—Rome, which was now to become her own! She forgot everything else; fatigue, mourning for the dear things lost, trepidation as to her future, fear of the strangers awaiting her, the embarrassments of the first days of marriage, all sadness, disappointment, delusion—all disappeared in the realisation of her long dream so ardently indulged.

Antonio got up and joined her at the window, which reflected his fine person—tall, fair, easy in attitude, dominant in manner. Regina saw—still in the glass—his long grey eyes looking at her caressingly, his well-shaped mouth smiling and suggesting a kiss, and she felt happy, happy, happy!

"Think!" said Antonio, bending over her as if to confide a secret; "think, my queen! We are at Rome!"

She did not reply. "Are you thinking of it?" he insisted.

"Of course I am!"

"Does your heart beat?"

Regina smiled, a trifle contemptuously, not choosing to let him see all her excitement and delight.

Antonio looked at his watch.

"A quarter of an hour more. If there wasn't such a wind, I'd make you look out."

"I will. Put down the glass."

"I tell you there's too much wind."

"I'll look out all the same," she said, with the obstinacy of a spoilt child.

Antonio tried to open the window, but the wind was really too strong, and Regina changed her mind.

"Shut it up! Shut it up!" she cried.

He obeyed.

"But think! think!" he repeated, "you are at Rome! They will be just starting for the station," he observed gravely, and advised her to put on her hat and get herself ready. "Settle your hair," he said; "and where have you put the powder?"

"Am I very hideous?" asked Regina, passing her hand over her face.

She sat down, opened her dressing-bag, smoothed her hair, powdered her face; then again put on the grey cloak which Antonio held for her, and buttoned it up. Her little face emerged from its sable collar as from a cup. It was pale and tired, all lips and eyes, reminding one of the pretty little face of a kitten.

"That's all right!" said Antonio, surveying her adoringly.

Again she rose and leaned against the door. A long wall was fleeting past the train; then came houses, hedges, gardens, canes bending under the wind, now and then lamps flaring yellow in the great whiteness of the autumn moon.

"San Paolo! The Tiber!" said Antonio, still at Regina's side.

San Paolo! The Tiber! Regina just perceived the sheen of the river and her heart beat strongly. Yet, as often happened to her, after the first moment's wild delight, a shadow of melancholy diffidence stole over her soul.

"Yes!" she thought, "Rome! the capital, the wonder city; where there is no fog, which is full of sunshine and flowers! But what is there in store for me there? Young, happy, loved, I have come to throw myself into the arms of Rome as I have thrown myself into the arms of Antonio. What will Rome be able to give me? We are not rich, and the great city is like—like people, who give little to and care little for those who are not rich. But we aren't poor either!" she concluded, comforting herself.

The engine whistled, and Regina started involuntarily. Behind a wind-blown hedge, straight before her in the moonlight and the glare of the lamps which now had multiplied in number, a small house started into sight for a moment, and vanished as if by magic.

"It might be my home!" she told herself sadly, remembering the dear maternal nest, planted pleasantly on the high bank of the Po.

The train shrieked again, beginning to slacken speed.

"Here we are!" said Antonio; and Regina's recollections dissolved as the apparition of the house had dissolved a moment before.

After this, notwithstanding her resolution not to be upset, not to be surprised, but to make calm study of her own impressions, she became hopelessly bewildered and saw everything as through a veil.

Antonio was pulling the light luggage down from the rack; he overturned the bonnet-box containing the bride's beautiful white hat; she stooped to pick it up, flushed with dismay, then returned to the window and rearranged her cloak and fur collar. Lines of monstrous houses, orange against the velvety blue of the sky, fleeted by rapidly; the wind abated, the lamps became innumerable, golden, white, violet—their crude rays vanquishing the melancholy moonlight. The glare grew and grew, became magnificent, pervaded an enclosure into which the train rushed with deafening roar.

Rome!

Hundreds of intent egotistic faces, illuminated by the violet brilliance of the electric light, passed before Regina's agitated gaze. Here and there she distinguished a few figures, a lady with red hair, a man in a check suit, a pale girl with a picture hat, a bald gentleman, a raised stick, a fluttering handkerchief—but she saw nothing distinctly; she had a strange fancy that this unnamed alien crowd was a deputation sent to welcome her—not over-kindly—by the great city to which she was giving herself.

The carriage doors were thrown violently open, a babel of human voices resounded above the whistles and the throbbing of the engines; on the platform people were running about and jostling each other.

"Roma—a—a!"

"Porter—r—r!"

Antonio was collecting the hand luggage, but Regina stood gazing at the scene. Many smiling, curious, anxious persons were still standing in groups before the carriage doors; others had already escaped and were disappearing out of the station exit.

"There's no one for us, Antonio," said Regina, a little surprised; but she had no sooner spoken than she perceived a knot of persons returning along the platform, and understood that these were they. She jumped out and looked harder. Yes, it was they—three men, one in a light-coloured overcoat; two women, one short and stout, the other very tall, very thin, her face hidden in the shadow of her great black hat. The thin lady held a bouquet of flowers, and her strange figure, tightly compressed in a long coat of which the mother-o'-pearl buttons could be seen a mile off, struck Regina at once. This must be Arduina, her sister-in-law, editress of a Woman's Rights paper, who had written her two or three extraordinary letters.

"Mother!" cried Antonio, flinging himself from the carriage.

Regina found herself on the fat lady's panting bosom; then she felt the pressure of the buttons she had seen from afar; in one hand she was holding the bouquet, the other was clasped by a plump, soft, masculine hand.

The slightly amused voice of Antonio was introducing—

"My brother Mario, clerk in the Board of Control; my brother Gaspare, clerk at the War Office; my brother Massimo, junior clerk at the War Office——"

"That's enough," said the last, bowing graciously. All smiled, but Antonio went on—

"And this is Arduina, the crazy one——"

"Joking as usual!" cried the latter.

"Well, here is Regina, my wife! Here she is! How are you, Gaspare?"

"Pretty fit. And you? Hungry?"

"Are you very tired, my dear?" asked the trembling voice of the old lady, her face close to Regina's.

Notwithstanding the scent of the flowers, Regina could have wished her mother-in-law's lips further off, and she shuddered involuntarily. In that strange place, at that late hour, under that metallic, unpleasantly glaring, electric splendour, all these people, pressed upon the bride, speaking in an unfamiliar accent and staring at her with ill-concealed curiosity. She conceived a dislike to them all. Even Antonio, who at that moment was more taken up with them than with his wife, seemed unlike himself, a stranger, a man of a different race from hers. She felt completely alone, lost, confused; had presently the sensation of being carried away, borne along in a wave of the crowd. Outside she saw a mountain of enormous vehicles drawn up in line on the shining wood pavement; it seemed to her made of blue tiles, and on the damp air she fancied the scent of a forest. The electric light blinded her short-sighted eyes; she thought she saw the forest in the distance, a line of trees black against the steely sky; and the violet globes of the lamps suggested in the heart of those black trees some sort of miraculous burning fruit. There was magic in the late hour, in the vastness of the enclosure bounded by the imaginary wood; the people silently lost themselves and disappeared as into a wet and shining morass.

"Let's walk—it's quite close," said Antonio, taking her arm. "Well! it's pretty big, isn't it, this station yard?"

"It is big!" she responded, genuinely astonished; "but it's been raining here, hasn't it? How lovely it all is!"

Regina felt happy again, at Antonio's side, squeezed up against him by the large and panting person of her mother-in-law. Yes, certainly! Rome was the dream-city, full of gardens, fountains, sublime buildings; a city great and splendid by day and by night! She felt joyous as if she had drunk wine; she chattered with feverish animation. Never afterwards did she succeed in remembering what she said in that first hour of arrival; she did remember that her pleasure was marred by the panting and sighing of her mother-in-law, by Arduina's silly laughter, by the talk of the brothers who stepped just behind her, arguing about trifles.

Antonio had requested his family not to announce his arrival to the more distant relations; however, no sooner had they got to Via Torino and the great palace in which the Venutellis lived on the fourth and fifth floors, than the panting old lady confessed—

"Clara and her girl are here. They came in to spend the evening, and we couldn't get rid of them. They guessed, you see."

"The deuce!" said Antonio; "never mind, I'll soon pack them off for you!"

The gas was lighted, and Regina was impressed by the grand entrance hall and the marble staircase, which seemed continuation of the splendours she had found in piazza and street.

"Courage, my queen!" said Antonio; "this is a veritable Jacob's ladder! Go on in front, you fellows!"

The three men and Arduina pressed forward with the nimbleness of habit; Regina herself tried to run, but she soon got tired and out of breath.

"These stairs are the death of me!" sighed the mother-in-law; "ah! my dear child, I did not always live on a fourth floor!"

Regina was not listening. Cries, laughter, exclamations, a merry uproar, rang from the top of the stair;—then came a whirlwind, a rustle, a whiff of scent, a vision of flounces, chains, lace, yellow hair, which overwhelmed and nearly overturned the bride, the bridegroom, and the old lady.

"Mind you don't break your neck, Claretta, my dear!" cried Antonio.

The lovely being clasped Regina tight in her fragrant arms, covering her with impassioned kisses.

"Dearest! Welcome! Welcome, dearest! A thousand good wishes and congratulations! Mamma is up there waiting for you!"

"Pray reserve some kisses for me!" said Antonio, dryly.

Claretta, without ado, kissed him rapidly on the cheek; then again seized Regina's hand, and drew her up and up, shouting and laughing, tall, rustling, fragrant, elegant. Regina followed, a little envious, even jealous, but childishly bewitched by so much easy loveliness. Claretta, filling the whole stair with her cries and peals of laughter, almost carried the bride, brought her into the drawing-room, threw her on the soft bosom of fat Aunt Clara, and then herself dragged her through the whole Apartment on a tour of inspection. The rooms were lighted by gas, and all the furniture was polished and smelly with paraffin: space everywhere was narrow and choked up with furniture, coarse draperies, jute carpets, crochet work, great cushions embroidered in wool, Japanese fans and umbrellas. In some of the rooms it was impossible to move. Regina's throat was caught by a feeling of suffocation. The remembrance of her beautiful country home, of its large rooms, so sunny and so simple, assailed her with an anguish of tenderness. To comfort herself she had to say to Claretta—

"We shall only stay here till we've found a nice Apartment for ourselves. That'll be easy, won't it?"

"Not so very easy. The foreigners come down on Rome like a swarm of locusts."

This was the discouraging reply of the cousin, who stopped before every mirror to admire herself, bending this way and that, and talking loud that the young men in the dining-room might hear her.

"Here! this is your own room, your nid d'amour, you birds of passage!" she said, taking Regina into a corner room, where they found Antonio, his mother, Arduina, the maid-servant, and the portmanteaux.

The room was large, but had an oppressively low ceiling, painted grey with vulgar blue arabesques; three windows, one close to the foot of the bed, were smothered in heavy draperies, and the massive bed itself was burdened with huge pillows and counterpanes. The bridal trunks and portmanteaux completed the barricade, and Regina's sense of asphyxia perceptibly increased. Silent and sad she surveyed the ugly room; she seemed lost in some painful dream, in some strange prison where everything fettered and mortally oppressed her. Oh dear! all these people! These women, who surrounded, crushed, smothered her! Tired and sleepy, her physical irritability made itself almost morbidly felt at the touch of all these unknown, inquisitive, cruel people. She was yearning for solitude and repose; at any rate she wanted to wash, dress, rearrange her hair. They did not leave her a moment alone. Claretta had no notion of forsaking the looking-glass; Arduina, on the look out for copy, catechised her about her impressions; the mother-in-law never stopped staring with lachrymose eyes.

Regina took off her hat and cloak; her little face, all eyes and lips, seemed pale and frightened under the waves of her hair, black, abundant and curly. Antonio was paying no heed to his bride; he arranged the luggage, and asked his mother news of this one and that. The old lady puffed and sighed, and answered his questions, but never took her eyes off the new daughter-in-law.

"Where shall I wash my hands?" asked Regina. Her warm brown eyes, generally velvety and sweet, were now drooping with fatigue, and in expression almost wild.

"Here!" cried Arduina, precipitating herself on the washstand, "you'll find everything here, dear! soap, powder, comb—What sort of soap do you like?"

Regina did not answer. Mechanically she washed herself, accepting the towel which her sister-in-law presented, and smoothed her hair, stooping to look in the low looking-glass.

"Sit down," said Arduina, setting a chair, "you can't see like that."

"No, I can't see sitting; I'm short-sighted," said Regina, with increasing irritation.

This piece of news plunged the ladies into consternation. Claretta actually turned her back on the glass; Signora Anna, who was examining the lining of Regina's cloak, looked up almost in tears; Arduina studied her sister-in-law's beautiful orbs with astonishment.

"Short-sighted? With such lovely eyes! and so young!" exclaimed the old lady.

"Have you eye-glasses?" asked Claretta.

"Yes, but they're no good. I hate them."

"They're very chic though," said Arduina. "My dear, do loosen your hair at your temples—it's too dragged. What splendid hair you have! I'll do it for you to-morrow. Wait a moment—" and she raised her hand; but the bride's little head, which seemed so small and insignificant, shook itself fiercely.

"No, no. It will do well enough," she said.

Her tone admitted of no reply; and the authoress understood that Regina was a commanding creature of a superior race. For this reason she looked at her with pitying tenderness and compassionate admiration. Struck by this look, Regina for the first time noticed her sister-in-law, whom Antonio had described as a fool. Arduina was tall, with a narrow chest and a countenance of yellowish wood. She had small, colourless, frightened eyes, thin lips with discoloured teeth, and three curls of pale hair. She was singularly plain, and now Regina perceived further that she was melancholy and enslaved. But this produced no pity in the bride, rather a sense of malicious consolation. In this odious world into which she had stepped through the door of the Apartment, there were victims like Arduina, in comparison with whom she was an empress! All this passed through her mind during the few minutes in which she was settling her hair in the presence of the three staring women.

Antonio at last noticed his bride's annoyance, and sent the ladies away, pushing his cousins out familiarly.

"Be so kind as to take yourselves off. I don't require your assistance at my toilette. Go away. Make haste. We want rest."

"You can sleep all to-morrow. It's going to rain," said his mother.

"Let us hope not."

"I expect it will."

"Bother the weather prophets!" said Regina.

At last the women were gone; and in an instant Antonio was by Regina's side, kissing her, leaning his face against her troubled one, and saying in his caressing voice—

"Cheer up; don't be so depressed! You shall just eat a mouthful and then get at once to bed. To-morrow we'll escape—we'll go out by ourselves. We won't let them bore us. Cheer up!"

He put his arm round her and drew her to the dining-room, humming a merry tune—

"Mousey doesn't care for cream,
Mousey wants to marry the Queen;
If the King won't let her go,
Mousey'll break his bones, you know."

But Regina had no smiles left.

Scarcely was she seated on one of the comfortless Vienna chairs which surrounded the overburdened table than she felt her back broken and her eyelids weighed down by the whole fatigue of the journey. Again she seemed in a bad dream, looking through a veil at a picture of vulgar figures. Yes, vulgar the face of her mother-in-law—fat, red, puffy, outlined by the hard line of hair, over-shiny and over-black for nature; vulgar that of Mario, which was much like his mother's, with the same small blue eyes, the same mouth hanging half-open as he breathed slowly and noisily; vulgar, again, the face of Gaspare—rosy all over, hairless below the shining line of his bald forehead; and that of Massimo, who was dandified but decadent, something like Antonio, but with long, reddish, oily hair and bold grey eyes. Claretta herself was vulgar; the very type of a bourgeois beauty. Without understanding why, Regina remembered the crowds half-seen at the passing stations and on the Roman platform; the faces now surrounding her stood out from the confusion of those unnoticed ones, but themselves belonged to the crowd, and were no better than the crowd. A whole world separated her from them.

Notwithstanding the hour and Antonio's promise of dispatch, the supper lasted an immense time. It was served by a strapping, fair-haired girl in a pink blouse, who never took her astonished eyes from the bride's face, and every moment tripped and stumbled, as if determined to break something.

This figure which came and went seemed the principal one of the picture. Every one watched the girl and talked to her. Signora Anna started every time she opened the door.

Even Antonio addressed her.

"Well, Marina, and how are all the sweethearts?" he asked; and added, indicating Regina, "are you satisfied? Which is the prettier, she or Signora Arduina?"

Marina blushed, giggled, ran away, and did not return.

Presently Gaspare rose gravely, threw his napkin over his shoulder, and went in search of her. An altercation was heard in the kitchen. Then Gaspare returned, wrathful and very red.

"Mother, the mutton is burnt!" he announced tragically; "you must go and see after it."

The old lady groaned, got up, went out, came back—and did not stay quiet for another moment!

"Mother!" implored Antonio, "do sit down!"

"Mother!" urged Gaspare, still wrathful, "go and look after her!"

"Oh, these servants!" said the mother-in-law, turning to Regina, "one shouldn't mention them, I know, but they're the ruin of families. I'll tell you afterwards——"

"It's one of the gravest of social problems," said Massimo, sarcastically, looking straight before him.

"But one can't live without servants," cried Gaspare.

"Yet the servants are the death of you?"

"Oh, I'll be the death of them if they don't do their business," said Gaspare, and they all laughed.

Notwithstanding the old lady's irruptions into the kitchen the courses were a long time coming. Talk grew animated. Massimo chattered with the cousin; Signora Anna expatiated to Signora Clara on the delinquencies of the maid.

"How are you getting on with your Gigione?" Antonio asked Gaspare; and his brother replied, abusing his chief as he had abused Marina.

"Did you get my last letter?" Arduina demanded of Regina, under cover of the general noise.

"Which?"

"The one in which I asked information about the state of private benevolence in Mantua."

"Oh, pray leave her in peace," interrupted Antonio testily.

Regina thought of her old home, of the beautiful picture seen through the window of the great dining-parlour, the woods, the silver river sparkling in the summer sunshine—all lost! The actual picture of the woods, and the painted picture above the chimneypiece, a river scene by Baratta, showing the green banks of the Parma, and white boats against a violet sky—all vanished—vanished for ever! Seated on this back-breaking chair, among all these people who chattered of vulgar things, dismay again invaded her soul, the dismay felt by the condemned at the thought of association with his fellow-prisoners. Antonio paid her little attention; he was sucked into the current of his brothers' talk and had become a stranger to her. Again he made some jest at Arduina's expense; the maid looked at the ladies and laughed. Indeed, they all laughed. Why did they laugh? Was happiness making Antonio cruel? His brother Mario—a man no longer young, who seldom spoke, but always reddened when he heard his thought expressed by somebody else—detested, as they all knew, his wife's scribbling mania. So Antonio persisted in questioning his sister-in-law about her newspaper, The Future of Woman.

"It has reached a circulation of three copies," said Massimo, "and it's clearly anxious to provoke quarrels, for it has printed a sonnet from a Calabrian paper without leave."

"My goodness! how witty you are!" cried Arduina, laughing, but her whole face expressed a vague terror.

Sor Mario, his eyes on his plate, grunted and munched like an angry bullock. There followed a perfect explosion of childish cruelty towards the poor creature, who, even to Regina, suggested a caricature.

"I've never succeeded in discovering the office of her paper," said Claretta; "one ought to be able to go there if only to find the editor."

"There are plenty of editors in the street," answered Arduina; "a girl like you could find one anywhere."

"I don't see the sense of that!" cried Gaspare.

"We never expect you to see the sense of anything."

"Come, show sense yourself!" interposed her husband, threatening her with his fork.

"Are you in the Woman Movement, Regina?" some one asked.

"I? No!" answered the bride, as if starting from a dream. Then, wishing to defend her sister-in-law, less out of pity for her than out of dislike to the brothers, she added, "Perhaps Arduina will convert me."

"Antonio! get out your stick!" cried Gaspare, and again they all laughed.

The topic changed. They discussed a certain Madame Makuline, a Russian princess long resident in Rome, to whom Antonio had been introduced by Arduina, and who occasionally employed him in the administration of her affairs.

"She should give a wedding present to Regina," said the authoress; "I expect her to dinner to-morrow; will you two come?"

This intelligence somewhat restored Arduina's prestige, and Regina breathed more freely. The conversation ran on countesses and duchesses; Claretta cried, turning to Massimo—

"Oh, now I remember! You were seen yesterday——"

"Wasn't I seen to-day?"

"——running after Donna Maria del Carro's carriage. It was raining, and you had no umbrella."

"That's why I ran," he said, flattered and pleased.

"No, my dear boy; you ran after the carriage."

"Why?" asked the innocent Regina.

"How sweet you are!" said the cousin. "He ran to be seen, of course! The Marchesa del Carro likes handsome young men, even when she doesn't know them."

"Thank you very much," said Massimo, making a bow.

Then they all got excited and talked of innumerable titled persons of their acquaintance, telling their "lives and miracles." Signora Clara, not to be left out, was insistent in describing the reception costume of a countess.

Regina listened. She did not confess it to herself, but she was certainly pleased that her new relations had friends among the aristocracy.

At last they arrived at the coffee, and Signora Anna turned to Regina intending to say something pleasant.

"I expect you miss your Mamma," she began; "you can't get accustomed to the idea of a second mother."

But she was interrupted by Gaspare, who came from a second inspection of the kitchen.

"My dear mother, just come and look. Come!" he insisted, flicking the corner of his napkin, "there's a flood in the kitchen. She has left the tap running."

The old lady had to get up; panting and puffing she followed her son to the kitchen. Presently Marina was heard sobbing.

"The man's unbearable!" said Arduina; "is that poor girl a slave? From the point of view of——"

"From the social point of view—" suggested Massimo.

"Pardon me," observed Aunt Clara, "she left the tap running."

"If ever I marry a man who meddles in the kitchen," said Claretta, tightening her sash at the looking-glass, "I'll give him—from the social point of view—such a hiding——"

"I too!" agreed the authoress.

Sor Mario, who was picking his teeth ferociously, uttered a grunt.

Signora Anna came back followed by Marina, her eyes red, her lips quivering.

"Pooh! don't cry!" said Massimo, "it makes a fright of you. If the pastrycook saw you now——"

"What, is it a pastrycook this time?" joked Antonio.

"Yes; his name's Stanislao."

"But when I went away it was a penny-a-liner!"

"I got rid of him. For more than three months I had no one," declared Marina, all smiles again.

"Brava!" said Claretta, "that's the best plan. Have you had a great many?"

"Four. No—five, counting the first. He was Peppino. He was an official."

"Good gracious! Where?"

"At Campo Verano."

"Oh! Did he perhaps dig there?"

"Yes," said the girl, simply.

They all burst out laughing, and again Regina felt choked.

Were they always like this in this house? Even Antonio, her Antonio, who was always gay, but with her never had shown himself vulgar—even he appeared in a new light.

Suddenly, however, while Signora Clara was repeating her description of the countess's dress, Regina saw her husband looking at her with distressed eyes, and she knew that her brows must have been contracted in a frown. He got up, came over, and stroked her hair.

"It's time for bed now. You're tired, aren't you?" he whispered, his voice almost supplicating.

Regina rose. Arduina and Claretta thought it necessary to run after her, embracing and kissing her. When they had conducted her to the bedroom, they kissed her again.

Now she was alone with Antonio, and great was her relief. But alas! the door opened immediately, and in came the mother-in-law.

"What is it?" asked Regina, dismayed; and she threw herself on one of the immense, encumbering arm-chairs, and closed her eyes.

Signora Anna, sighing as usual, advanced to the bed.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, in accents of tragedy, "these maids, now-a-days, know nothing of their business! They have no heads. Forgive me, my dearest child——"

"What on earth has happened?" asked Antonio, half undressed.

"She hasn't turned down the bed!" cried the poor lady, attacking the pillows with her fat and trembling arms.

She fussed about, altered all the blankets, tidied the dressing-table, examined the jugs. Regina was waiting to undress; but as the old lady would not go away, she leaned back in the arm-chair, her eyes still closed, her hands folded in her lap. She listened to her mother-in-law's uncertain step and panting breath; and she thought with anguish of to-morrow.

"And the morrow of that, and the next day, and for ever and ever, I shall have to put up with these people! It's awful!"

"Where are your things?" asked Antonio, in his pyjamas.

Regina opened her eyes, got up hastily, and searched her portmanteau. Lo! behind her the heavy panting of the old lady!

"Let me, dear child! You go and undress. I'll find everything for you."

"No, no!" said Regina, vexed, "I'll do it myself."

"Leave it all to me. Go and undress."

"No!"

"There's nothing for me but to dance!" said Antonio, cutting capers; he was well made, and agile as a clown.

"My dear daughter! what are you thinking of? That's a petticoat, not a night-dress! This? Surely that's one of Antonio's flannel shirts? Ah! a flannel night-dress! Dear me! doesn't it tickle you? But I believe it's very cold in your part of the country. It's cold here, too, when the tramontana blows. The tramontana blows for three days at a time. Dear! what lovely embroidery! Did you do it yourself? Listen——"

But Regina could listen no longer. Rage possessed her, while the old lady rummaged in the portmanteau, examining everything with the greatest curiosity. Antonio was waltzing round the arm-chair; he suddenly seized Regina, and whirled her away with him.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a cry of suffering protest, "it's time now to leave me in peace!"

The hint was lost upon the old lady. She put everything straight in the portmanteau, then came to Regina and embraced her lengthily.

At last she did take herself off, and at last Regina was really alone with her husband, but it was too late for her to feel great comfort in the fact. She undressed and got into bed; into the huge, solid bed, hard, and wide and cold as the bed of a river! She felt shipwrecked; around her floated gaping trunks, boxes, curtains, unpleasing furniture; above beetled the grey ceiling, overwhelming as a rainy sky. Confused noises, vibrations in the silence of night, penetrated from the distance, from some unknown and mysterious place. Arduina's foolish laughter, Claretta's hysterical shrieks, echoed on in the next room. And above these, above all voices far and near, sounded a melancholy whistle, the sibilant lament of some nocturnal train, which seemed to Regina a voice out of other times from a distant place, a cry which called, invited, implored her to—what? She did not know, did not remember; but she was sure she knew that cry, that it had once told her something wonderful, that it was sounding now only for her, having sought her out in the night of the vast, unknown city;—that it was repeating to her things wild, sweet, lacerating——

"At last!" said Antonio, embracing her. "This bed is a limitless desert! Where are you? Oh, what little cold hands! You're trembling! Are you cold?"

"No."

"Then why do you tremble?" he asked, in another tone; "are you not happy, Regina?"

She made no answer.

"Are you not happy?"

"I'm tired," she said, her eyes shut; "I still feel the shake of the train. Do you hear that whistle?"

"Ah!" she went on, as if speaking in a dream, "I know it now! It's the whistle of the little steamer on the Po! Ah! let us start!"

"We have hardly arrived, and already you want to go?" he said, his voice half jesting, half bitter.

She made no response. He thought she slept, and kept motionless for fear of waking her. But presently he heard her laugh and felt quite cheered.

"What's the matter?" he asked, fondling her hand, which was beginning to grow warm.

"That official—was a gravedigger!" she murmured, still dreaming; "if my sister Toscana had been here how she would have laughed!"

"She's still in that old home of hers!" thought Antonio jealously.

Long afterwards he confided to Regina that that night he had been unable to sleep. He wanted to ask how she liked his mother and the rest, but dared not put the question, guessing intuitively that she would not answer him sincerely.

He, too, heard the whistle which had reached the half-slumbering Regina, and had lulled her in memories and hope.

"Go? Is she already dreaming of going?" he thought, bitterly; and remembered, not without resentment, her cold, sad, now and then contemptuous manner during those first hours of communion with her new relatives. Yet he could not but feel the measureless distance which divided those relatives from the thoughtful, delicate creature of a superior race whom he had dared to marry.

"But she knew all about it!" he reflected; "I had told her everything. I said to her: We're a family of working people, descended from working people. My mother is just the housewife, my sister-in-law is a harmless lunatic. She said she did not care—she loved me, and that was enough. Then what more does she want?"

He had a foolish desire to push her away, to distance her from himself in that great, limitless bed; but she was so fragile, so slight, so cold, lying like a dead thing on his warm, pulsing breast!

"I've been wrong in bringing her here! I ought to have prepared our own nest, and taken her there at once. She's like an uprooted flower which must be planted at once in an adapted soil."

He looked at her with profound tenderness, and remained motionless, lest he should disturb the slumber which had descended on her homesickness and fatigue.

CHAPTER II

On waking next morning Regina found herself alone in the big hard bed.

It was raining; the room was oppressed by a grey, melancholy twilight which seemed thrown from the ceiling. Vehicles were already rolling in the street; screaming trams passed by; there was continued howling of tempestuous wind, the whole making on Regina an impression of unutterable dreariness. The luminous city of her dreams seemed pervaded by this howling wind through which resounded a thousand other voices; a ceaseless booming of toilsome life, dismal under eternal rain.

Presently she looked at the room, screwing up her eyes to distinguish the various objects. The grey ceiling, the three grey windows, especially that one at the foot of the bed, were positively funereal; the rough linen of the sheets and pillow-case, the coarse embroidery of their adornment filled her with horror.

And Antonio, where was he? In her ill-humour Regina resented his having risen silently so as not to wake her, his having left her alone in the immensity of that strange bed; but almost immediately the door was gently pushed open and Antonio looked in.

"There they are, her big eyes!" he said gaily, and came over hurriedly to kiss her lips; "so you've come to, little one, have you? Are you awake?"

"I think so," she murmured rather hoarsely, and threw her arm round his neck. "Is it raining?"

"Yes; it's raining needlessly hard!" he said, heaving an exaggerated sigh, "but it will soon leave off."

"Let us hope so! Open the shutters!"

He moved to obey. "This is Sunday; don't you know that in Rome it always rains on Sunday?—result of the Papal curse! Never mind. It will leave off. I assure you it will! Stay in bed a little longer. I'll ring for your coffee."

"No, no!" she cried, terrified lest the summons should bring her mother-in-law; "I'll get up at once! I'm anxious to write home."

"We'll go out the moment the rain stops," said Antonio. "If you don't mind we'll take Gaspare with us. He knows all about archæology. We'll go to the Forum."

"To the Forum!" she echoed, her eyes sparkling with revival of joy.

"Yes, my dear—to the Forum. Think of that! To the Forum! Have you realised where you are?"

She smiled at him without answering. He had changed his costume, was wearing a shining collar, a beautiful green tie, had curled his moustache. He was fresh, fragrant, very handsome. Light had come in with him, love, joy. Regina pulled him down to her, kissed his hair, which she said smelt of "burnt flowers," pretended to whisper something in his ear, and made instead a childish shout. He jumped in feigned terror, threatened her and shook her. They laughed, they played, they forgot everything but their own felicity.

"Where have you awaked, levrottin?" (leveret), he asked, using one of the pretty pet names he had learned in her country, where he had been for three months on a Royal Commission; "where are you? This time yesterday we were at Parma; to-day we are here. Think, what a distance! And three months ago we didn't so much as know each other! Do you remember the first day we made friends on the river-bank? And that great crimson sun behind the woods? The Master kept looking at us and smiling; he knew we'd have to get married!"

"'Here is the Signor Antonio Venutelli, junior clerk at the Treasury, and here is the noble Signorina Regina Tagliamari,'" continued Antonio, imitating the nasal voice of the school-master who had arranged their introduction; "'she is a real queen of goodness and of genius, fit to reign in the Eternal City, in unequalled Rome.'"

"Poor old man!" said Regina, more gravely. "Yes, we certainly owe our meeting to him."

"And what do you suppose they'd say in your home, now? They'd say, 'Regina is in Rome, and she's still in bed, the little sluggard, and she hasn't even been to Mass, the little heathen! Fancy being in Rome and not going to Mass!'"

"But look here!" she began, clapping her hands and imitating her husband's mock-heroic tone. However she was no longer merry. A sweet vision had melted her heart. She saw her mother—her dear, delicate mother, her pretty sister, her youngest brother, her darling, all starting for the nine o'clock Mass. The house on the river-bank was deserted. It stood among poplar-trees veiled in mist, like a fancy house in the background of a stage picture. Inside a fire burned on the great hearth, the black cat sat contemplating the flames, the Baratta painting was illuminated with grey and rosy tints which gave it a suggestive relief. The sound of a bell, singularly pure in tone, was dying on the still air in metallic vibrations; the northern landscape, with the great river winding along like an immense blue vein in the whiteness of that snowy plain, was spread out under the vaporous heaven. Silence—mysterious immensity—the mist of dream!

But this nostalgic vision, which gave her a melancholy pleasure seen thus under the caresses of him for whom she had abandoned all, was snatched from her by the entrance of Signora Anna. The old lady, round and enormous in her red flannel dressing-gown, her hair already dressed, and blacker and oilier than yesterday, advanced with circumspection, puffing and panting as was her wont. Regina blushed, removed her arms from Antonio's neck, and covered herself hastily.

"Why so?" said the young man, taking the coverlet away, "show your lovely little arms at once! Look, mother! see how white my Regina is!"

"No, no! let me alone!" said the girl, hiding under the sheet. But the old lady came nearer, helped Antonio to unbutton the wrist of Regina's jacket, and passed an approving finger over the bride's white and child-like arm.

"Upon my word!" she exclaimed, "you are really lovely!"

"Oh, dear me! Do please let me alone!" said Regina, flattered all the same.

"Isn't she lovely? Isn't she?" insisted Antonio, kissing the fair arms.

"Lovely! Very well made indeed! Brava!" said the mother-in-law, almost as if Regina had made herself. "And indeed I was white and shapely enough myself once," she went on; "now I'm an old woman, but in my day I was very much admired, I assure you!"

"Well really!" thought Regina, looking at her mother-in-law's thick hands, brown, chapped, smelling of garlic, and very unlike the blue-veined whiteness of her own delicate members.

"Won't you have some coffee? Do you take it with milk? I'll go and get the coffee and the milk—a little scalded cream—whipped eggs?"

"For pity's sake!" cried Regina. "No, thank you, I don't want anything."

"Get up! Get up!" said Antonio, "the rain's stopping. Let's go out!"

"You're not going to take her out in this weather!" protested the mother-in-law. "You're insane! She shall stay in bed. When I was a girl" (she turned to Regina), "I always stayed in bed the whole morning. But those days were different. The servants then were faithful, sensible, active, and the mistress could do the lady even if she wasn't one—thank heaven, I could."

"So you can now. What's to hinder you?" said Regina politely.

"Goodness me! What! with such maids as we get now? Dishonest, untruthful, ungrateful hussies! They're the torment of one's existence. There was a time when I loved my servants just as if they were members of the family; now I don't love them at all. They don't deserve it. This girl I have now makes me sick with the worries she causes me."

"Get up! Get up!" repeated Antonio.

But Regina would not stir till she was left alone. Then she jumped out of bed, and, clad in her long white nightgown, stood disconsolately looking at the chaos of objects in the room and at the grey light which penetrated by the three doleful windows. She made also the sad discovery that at Rome it was colder than in her own north country! She washed, dressed, and did her hair awkwardly. Everything was inconvenient from the washstand to the looking-glass, the latter a panel in the wardrobe draped with a heavy curtain. Having tucked this up she saw herself in the glass; pale, worn out, ugly. Her depression reasserted itself.

She was long in appearing, and at last Antonio came to look for her. She had peevishly pulled up all the blinds, tucked away all the curtains, and was engaged settling the things in her trunk.

"What on earth are you about?" he asked a little impatiently; and, taking her hand, led her to the dining-room, where Signora Anna was waiting at a table laid for two, but groaning under food sufficient for ten.

"I only want a drop of black coffee," said Regina.

"Only black coffee? My dear, you are crazy—so to speak—I don't mean any offence. But, you know, one must eat at Rome! Here is the black coffee. A little brandy in it?"

"No, thanks. It doesn't agree with me."

"Just try. You'll like it, I'm sure."

"No, no!"

"Yes, yes! If you don't mean to vex me——"

She had to take the brandy in the coffee, and then café au lait; and cream, and bread and butter, and biscuits, and the whipped eggs. At last tears rose in her eyes, so overwhelmed was she by her mother-in-law's insistence. By way of comfort Signora Anna at once offered a basin of broth and the wing of a roast chicken.

"But you're trying to kill me!" cried the girl, jesting, though desperate. Antonio laughed, and ate heartily.

Fortunately an alarming noise was heard in the kitchen, and the Signora ran, much agitated and tripping over her red dressing-gown. Regina seized the opportunity and fled to her room.

She put on a beautiful white scarf and a black hat with a pink ribbon, which she thought very smart; powdered herself carefully, and imagined every one was going to admire her as they did at home.

"Behold how lovely my Regina is!" said Antonio, half serious, half amused; "and just you look at her hat!"

Gaspare, buttoned up in his new great-coat, fat, heavy, rosy and pompous, was waiting at the dining-room door. He looked at Regina out of the corner of his eye, then saluted her and said gravely—

"Your hat is like a swallow's nest."

"I'd like to hear what you know about hats, when you know nothing about women," said Antonio.

"I shall never marry," declared Gaspare; "but if I should be overtaken by such unhappiness, at least my wife shall not make herself ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" retorted Regina. "Who? the unhappy one?"

Gaspare deigned no reply. They started.

Regina never forgave her husband for taking Gaspare with them on this their first walk through Rome.

"We'll go down Via Cavour to the Forum, and come back by Piazza Venezia and Via Nazionale," proposed Antonio, consulting his watch; "it's late already."

The weather had cleared. Great drops of shining water fell from the trees in the Via Torino gardens. Santa Maria Maggiore, rose-coloured and grey against the blue sky, towered like a mountain above her broad flight of rain-washed steps. Gaspare pointed to the church with his umbrella and named it. Regina looked indifferently; the edifice seemed to her ugly.

They went down Via Cavour. The wood pavement was drying rapidly, and Regina naïvely remarked that it wasn't polished as she had supposed last night.

"I should hope not!" said Gaspare, who dropped behind now and then to hawk and spit. "What extraordinary things women do suppose! The very opposite of the facts!"

"Men too," retorted Regina.

"Men oftener than women," added Antonio, gallantly.

"Eh! Possibly. Sometimes," said Gaspare, with a disagreeable smile.

Gaspare's rude manners offended Regina, though she had been warned he was "quite a character." Presently, however, she forgot him, and became absorbed in contemplation of the new things she was seeing.

People passed rapidly along the pavements, umbrellas under their arms; vivid light poured from the blue sky still furrowed by metallic clouds; through the bright moist air strayed the smell of roasted chestnuts. Yes! this wide, brilliant street was really fine! In a shop window were exhibited five astonishing hats, which Regina admired more than Santa Maria Maggiore. But presently the brothers made her deviate into a lane, dismal with old houses and old gardens hanging under high bastion-like walls, which went up and down, where there were no pavements, no shops, only a dirty crowd of hawkers, herb-sellers, street arabs. They walked on and on, but this melancholy street seemed endless. Regina grew tired; she leaned on Antonio's arm, and began again to feel a dull weight of sadness. Was this Rome?

The brothers made the blunder of supposing that Regina could walk as far as they. They dragged her on to the Forum, where, her eyes blinded by fatigue, she saw no more than a field of drenched ruins, a sorrow-stricken place, a cemetery over which the metallic clouds brooded, hiding the blue heaven and wrapping arches and columns in veils of doleful shade. Gaspare discoursed learnedly, but she did not listen. The tragic solitude of the vast graveyard was profaned by a great number of persons with eye-glasses and English gowns girded up with pins and dress-fasteners. The columns and the glorious fragments, still soaked with rain, seemed to Regina gigantic marble bones, exhumed by a nation of inquisitive children who amused themselves desecrating this stupendous sepulchre of a dead civilisation.

From the Forum they moved homewards towards Piazza Venezia. It was almost noon; the crowds took the trams by assault; a broad river of smartly-dressed women came down Via Nazionale, spread over the Piazza, and went up the Corso. A confused noise of trams, motors, carriages, human voices, sounded on the air which was still damp, but illuminated by changing light from between the clouds. Regina felt a kind of vertigo. She, who could see little that was distant, began to see even the near things confusedly. The incessant rumble of a thousand noises, among which the motors emitted roars like rampant wild beasts, gave her a vague sensation of terror. She fixed her wide eyes on the crowd, fascinated by the coming and going as by the flowing of a stream. She looked up and saw a network of telephone wires hiding the sky, which renewed her feeling of oppression; and yet, though tired and overwhelmed, she would not admit herself wondering or surprised. The elegance of the women certainly struck her. She felt envious, but also displeased. It was impossible there could be so many shapely and handsome women! They must be painted and padded! Oh, she knew very well! She knew how much corruption, falsity, hidden misery, that crowd carried within itself, the first contact with which on that uncertain autumn morning under the network of metallic threads awoke in her a mysterious sentiment of aversion and pity. Antonio fixed enamoured eyes on his bride's face; but those enamoured eyes failed to perceive the apathy of fatigue which was showing more and more plainly on the beloved features.

"Let's take a carriage," he suggested.

"Why not the tram?" asked Gaspare.

Antonio said the carriage would be quicker, but really he wanted at least for the first day to treat his Regina royally. Gaspare argued for the tram.

"Let's walk," said Regina.

"Walk? When we can't get you along?" exclaimed the brother-in-law.

"Then we'll have the carriage," said Regina to spite him.

"Oh, I see! We've become aristocrats!" said the misogynist.

They found a carriage and drove up Via Nazionale, now beginning to empty and a little somnolent. It appeared immense under the white light of a heaven which had become all silver. In the distant and vaporous background of Piazza Termini, the fountains looked like huge crystal flowers. The great street was a thing of exquisite beauty at that hour, under that tender and melancholy sky, with that grand yet delicate background. Antonio looked at his wife, hoping at last to find a ray of admiration in her bewildered eyes. But the great eyes, shadowed and full of weariness, were only following the floating flags, and did not notice the grandeur and beauty of the splendid street. At Via Napoli he said—

"Let's throw a glance into those cross-streets. We'll perhaps find our street, Regianotta!"

"It would take me three months to recognise it. I don't know what to look out for."

"But you aren't observing!"

"Very likely not. What's the good of observing?"

"What's the good of having eyes?" put in Gaspare.

"Yes, what's the good? One generally blunders with them."

Gaspare did not appear to understand. He merely spat, and reflected that women are all either fools or flirts.

From that day out, he classed Regina with what he called the "avalanche" of fool-women. She was like Arduina, like Marina the maid, like other women of his acquaintance. Supreme and reciprocal contempt reigned for their whole life between this brother and sister-in-law.

They came in, and Signora Anna declared the lunch "Ready, ready!" yet kept them waiting for half-an-hour. Regina had to give minute descriptions of everything she had seen. The three brothers argued about politics, their ideas being widely apart. Gaspare was a "forcaiuolo"[1] of the first water, uncompromising and cruel; Massimo was a Tolstoyan Socialist, as much against war as his brother was against liberty; Antonio was Liberal and a little opportunist. Signora Anna made excursions into her sons' conversation in a manner peculiar to herself. No matter what public character was named, she knew the history of his marriage and could give the name of his mistress. On all such matters she appeared singularly well informed.

After lunch Regina retired to her room, lay down, and slept. When she awoke her ears told her it was again raining, and very heavily. Finding herself once more in the big, hard bed under that detestable ceiling, in the gloom of the chilly room, her depression became almost desperation. She jumped up, and resolved to write her letter home. Antonio established her at the bureau in Signora Anna's room, and she began—

"It's pouring. I am in the lowest spirits."

But come! this was idiotic. Why distress her Mamma with useless lamentations?

"Is it not my own doing?" she thought, tearing the note-paper. "Who forced me to change my state, to leave my family, and my home? For the future I am alone. Alone! Even if I were to explain, no one would ever understand!"

Leaning against the desk, she philosophised bitterly.

"Have I the smallest right to complain? No. And there's no sense in complaining when the cause of discomfort is in oneself. My soul is sick; it's a plant torn from the place where it sprang; every little shock withers it. Why should I lament? It's useless. Nothing can cure me, not even Antonio's love. The rain will stop, the fine days will come, I shall have my own house, and needn't be bothered with any one's company; but shall I even then be happy? Who can tell? Yet, after all, what does it matter? One must just accept life as it is, and resign oneself, and try to live to oneself. I don't understand the mania for company. Isn't it possible to live alone? Isn't it better? What company so good as one's own? And," she concluded, "it won't last for ever. We've all got to die."

She took this for resignation, and decided to write a letter full of pious lies. But, searching the pigeon-holes for an envelope, she came upon Antonio's letters to his mother during the three months he had served on the Commission at C——e.

Curiosity prompted her to look into them.

In the beginning of the correspondence Antonio described the place with rapid touches, and praised the inhabitants, whom he found energetic, lively, quick-witted.

"I have established myself," he wrote, "in an excellent family, thoroughly honest and sensible. The father is school-master in a neighbouring village, but lives here that his own children may attend secondary schools. The boy Gabriele is smart, active, and ambitious. Gabriella, the girl, is very clever, and intends to be an authoress. The school-master (nick-named the guendol [spindle], because he's never quiet for a single moment) is an excellent fellow. He discourses of Raphael and Michaelangelo, making highly original criticisms. For instance, speaking of Raphael (whose surname he never omits), he says 'the painter of La Madonna delle Seggiole (plural), etc.'"

In a postscript to this letter Antonio added—

"The Master has suggested a marriage to me—a young lady of noble family, once very wealthy, now come down in the world—twenty-three—neither pretty nor ugly—clever—fortune, 30,000 lire."

In another letter Antonio boasted of tender regards from several young ladies in the neighbourhood, but said the Master still held to his idea.

"The Tagliamari are one of the best families in this part. They still have 200,000 lire to be divided into four parts. At present the elder daughter has 30,000. The Signora T—— is most distinguished widow of a noble who in his day ran through half-a-million. The Master paints the young lady as a model of wisdom and goodness. 'È fine, sa,' he says to me, 'fine, fine, fine!'[2] She has been educated at Parma in a school for ladies of rank. 'You ought to take her away from this,' he says, 'to Rome—that's her place.'"

"Poor old man," commented Antonio. "He imagines that I am a prince—I with my small berth at the Treasury!—fit to marry and carry off a young lady who is fine, fine, fine!"

"To be sure," he wrote in his letter of September 2nd, "30,000 lire are not to be despised; but I must first see the lady."

The next letter described the meeting with Regina on the banks of the Po, near her home.

"She is not beautiful. She has a muzzle like a cat; but she is very attractive, cultured, particularly intelligent. The Master must have talked to her of me, for she got red and looked at me in a shy sort of way. She asked if I was really private secretary to a princess. Evidently she would think that much more interesting than to be merely a junior clerk in the Treasury office!

"Yesterday I went to the Tagliamaris' villa. The mother is the most charming of women, a genuine great lady. She told me the whole story of her life, perhaps with intention, but in the most delicate way. She belongs herself to a distinguished family. Her husband was wealthy, but what she calls unlucky speculations, the floods of —80, and other misfortunes, completely ruined him——"

"What are you about, Regina?" asked Antonio, appearing at the door.

"Oh!" she cried, looking up, "I've discovered some most curious human documents!"

And she held up the letters. He flushed, and sprang to put them back in their pigeon-holes, then changed his mind and began to read them himself.

"Aren't you ashamed?" she said; "a 'signorina fine, fine, fine!' '30,000 lire not to be despised,' 'Private secretary to a princess more interesting in her eyes, etc., etc., etc.' You were horrid!"

"Read here! Read here!" said Antonio. "See what I say afterwards!"

But she got up and looked at herself in the glass.

"I declare it's true! I am like a cat!"

"Read here!" repeated Antonio, pursuing her, a letter in his hand.

"We'll read it later. Now I'm going to write home," she said, reseating herself at the bureau.

Antonio took all the letters and set himself to read them over, buried in a corner of the ottoman. Every now and then, while Regina wrote rapidly, he burst into exclamations and little laughs, then suddenly became serious, as if in the lively recollection of the last days passed at C——e he were living his happiness over again.

Later the pair presented themselves at Arduina's Apartment, where they were to dine. The authoress lived on the top floor of the palace in a small suite of rooms furnished in rather strange taste and pervaded by what seemed to Regina affected disorder.

Arduina came to meet her guests screaming with delight. She was dressed in a long white overall, her sleeves tucked up and displaying lean, yellow arms.

"Come in!" she said, hiding her hands behind her back; "give me a kiss, Regina!"

Regina kissed her without enthusiasm, and Antonio said—

"I've explained that to get time for writing you prepare dinner at 5 a.m. God only knows what sort of meal you'll give us!"

"Here's what will reassure you!" said Arduina, revealing floury hands. "I write easily, you know," she went on, "at any hour and in any place; so it's true, sometimes, when the inspiration comes I do sit down with a pen at a corner of the kitchen table. And I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing that the meat's apt to get burned. But what does it matter?" she added, laughing with her rather silly but apparently conceited laugh; "roast meat is no more than roast meat, and art is art. But come in; sit down; amuse yourself with these papers, dear. I'll be with you in a moment, and then you'll give me that information about female benevolence in Mantua."

"Leave her in peace," said Antonio, as before.

"Don't you interfere with me! There's no one cares for your wife so much as I do. Why, I adore her! Do you hear," she repeated, turning to Regina, "I adore you. It seems as if I'd known you for years. If for no other reason I love you because of your queenly name. By the way, have you seen the queen yet?"

"Of course! in my dreams last night."

"True; you only arrived last night. Still, you've had time. Where did you go this morning? To the Colosseum? Ah! I adore the Colosseum! I'd like to live in it! Have you read Quo Vadis? What! you have not?—and it's the finest of all modern books! I'll make you read it. I'll make you read all sorts of books. I'll introduce you to ever so many authors. I'll take you to intellectual circles, artistic gatherings, to lectures, to wherever one may live not by bread alone——"

"Are we to have bread alone here?" asked Antonio, in feigned alarm; "well, whatever you do, you're not to make Regina write for your paper."

"Why not?"

"I'd kill you—have you taken up!"

Regina laughed, and Arduina disappeared again into the kitchen.

When they were alone Antonio pulled Regina to the looking-glass. "We mayn't be beautiful," he said, kissing her, "but we make a good group. Look, my queen, and laugh; laugh as you used! You don't know what dumps I fall into when I see you displeased."

"I'm not displeased," she said, putting her hands on his breast.

"But neither are you pleased. You aren't my Regina of the river-side. Your face is long, your eyes are far away. You don't seem to care that you're in Rome—Rome of your dreams."

"It's the weather—the weather," she said in a dull voice.

"The weather will clear up," said Antonio, taking her to the window. "You'll see how beautiful Rome is in fine weather! It's almost always fine, and never cold. Just see all the gardens! Even here in Via Torino there's so much green. Shall we look out a bit? It's not raining now."

He opened the French window. Regina stepped out among the flower-pots—filled with consumptive little plants, on whose sparse leaves the melancholy of the grey sky was reflected. She looked down on the wet and deserted street.

Taking shelter under a doorway was a little old woman, dressed in black, and with a meagre basket of lemons by her side. She was hurriedly wringing out her stockings, and she was pale, huddled up, shaking with cold.

Regina had noticed her in the morning, and now, instead of admiring the palaces and gardens—squeezing up her eyes to see distinctly from this altitude of fifth storey—she looked again at the little old woman with the withered lemons.

Antonio pointed out the Costanzi Theatre, and tried to cheer her by saying that Bellincioni was expected at Carnival time.

"Just think, little one! You shall hear Bellincioni!"

But Regina was looking at the muddy pavement, presided over by that little black figure, whose whole fortune consisted in those seven miserable lemons. It seemed as if she had no right to rejoice in the pleasures offered by a great city, when in that same city, at a street corner, while it rained, that little old woman was to be seen tired and shaking with cold. Her soul must have turned sour and sad like the lemons which made up her ridiculous fortune, all her subsistence, the total of her long life of labour and sorrow.

"To be poor and old!" murmured Regina, trying to express her idea to her husband.

"What is it you've got in your head?" he returned; "do you imagine the old crone is suffering? Not she! She's used to that sort of life. If you altered her habits, even if you offered her a more comfortable existence, she'd be perfectly wretched."

Regina remembered her own case, and questioned whether Antonio were not right. Her thoughts flew to her old home, where the firelight would be just beginning to gild the semi-obscurity of the great parlour. The recollection was enough to make her feel sadder still, here in this cold and untidy little city drawing-room.

She was roused from her homesickness by Arduina, who brought tidings.

"The Princess is coming after all! She had promised, but I feared she'd never turn out a day like this. She is so kind! and so clever. I adore her. I must go and dress. Mario!" she cried, running to her husband, who was entering, "Mario, make haste! Put on at least your——"

Sor Mario entered, very grave, very fat, much out of breath. He pressed Regina's hand, gasped, and in compliance with his wife's insistence went away to dress. Regina could not make out if he were pleased or not that the Princess was honouring his board. As for herself she was curious, even anxious, to meet a lady of authentic rank, or, at any rate, of wealth, however little flattering her portrait as drawn by Antonio. It did not occur to her that the Princess in question could not be a very exalted personage if she deigned to sup with Arduina!

"She's old and deaf," Antonio had said; "she sets up to be a critic, and patronises, or at least receives visits from, the worst scribblers in Rome. But oh! these authors! They penetrate everywhere like flies. It's a fine thing, genius!—worth even more than money."

"Certainly," Regina had answered, "genius can buy even money; or, at any rate, can despise it!"

"I think we'd better dress, too," said Antonio thoughtfully, and added hastily, "not, of course, for her sake—for our own."

They descended the stair again, and Regina put on her prettiest silk, her lace scarf, her jewelled brooch, her rings. She powdered herself, and, following Antonio's suggestion, puffed her hair a little at the temples.

"That's it," he said approvingly, "you look another girl."

He changed his own attire, and curled his moustache.

"A perfect fop!" laughed Regina; "you intend to captivate the lady with that moustache!"

"Surely you don't imagine any one could fall in love with me?—not even that 'vecchia corna' (scarecrow)!"

"I fell in love with you!"

He caught her and kissed her.

"But is it true you were in love? I don't believe it!"

"It was you who didn't fall in love! A 'signorina fine, fine, fine.' '30,000 lire not to be despised,' 'a muzzle like——'"

"Yes; a muzzle, a muzzle, a muzzle!" he said, like a child persisting in some innocent insult.

As they were going forth the second time Signora Anna ran to see Regina's finery. She examined the stuff of her dress, and looked if it were lined with silk, while deep and painful sighs swelled her capacious bosom. In the kitchen Gaspare was heard scolding Marina.

Regina felt acute pleasure in the thought that Gaspare and the mother-in-law were not coming to Arduina's dinner. However, she was no sooner back in the squeezy drawing-room, where they sat awaiting "Madame," than her low spirits returned.

Evening fell rapidly; the shadows deepened like black impalpable clouds. Arduina was busy with final preparations. Sor Mario grunted benevolently, sunk in an arm-chair, his trousers drawn very tight over the knee. Antonio was thoughtful and silent. No one remembered to light the lamps.

Regina felt a weight of sadness upon her soul. What was it? The gloom, the oppression of twilight in this remote and unknown place to which destiny had carried her, or was it the mere reflection of Antonio's unwonted seriousness? She walked to the window, and again looked for the little old woman with the black raiment; lamps white and yellow pierced the cloudy twilight; the pavement glistened; an infinite sadness, a mystery of fearful shadow fell blacker and blacker from the heavens.

The bell rang. In rushed the servant and lighted the gas, barely in time for the great lady's entrance.

With eyes dazzled by this suddenly kindled light, Regina first saw the Princess, and was at once disillusioned. The tall, stout, flat-chested form, the felt hat, fastened by an elastic under the black chignon stuck at the nape of the neck—suggested something masculine. Thick, colourless lips, a small nose slightly awry, small metallic eyes of yellowish-green, marked the pale heavy face. The whole made up a figure which, once seen, was not likely to be forgotten.

"Bon soir," she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, oddly in contrast with her stout and malformed person. She talked on in French while Arduina hurried to relieve her of her hat and handbag. "I am pleased to see you back, Monsieur Venutelli. I received your letter. This is your bride? She is charming!"

Antonio bowed, and Regina looked at her with wondering eyes, saying shyly—

"You are very kind, Signora."

"Beg pardon?" said Madame, turning her left ear to Regina, who nearly laughed, remembering Antonio's mimicry of the deaf Princess.

But Signora Makuline had taken her hand, and was slipping a sapphire ring on one of its fingers, saying—

"You will allow me? With a thousand good wishes!"

"Oh, thank you! You are really too good!" cried Regina, delighted, and Antonio also looked at the ring and expressed thanks. Then they all sat down; the Princess removed her dirty white gloves, and, to Regina's surprise, displayed hands small as a child's, and covered with flashing rings.

"What shocking weather," said Madame, her small feline eyes not looking at any one. "I've been many years in Rome, but never remember an autumn like this. It's not manners to talk of the weather; but when it becomes a matter of health, the weather has certainly more influence over us than even the most important events of our lives!"

"Monsieur Antonio, this abominable storm will spoil your honeymoon," said Arduina, trying to joke; but Regina, rather offended, muttered some words of protest.

"Beg pardon?" said the Princess.

"Arduina is right," said Antonio; "my wife is, in point of fact, in the very worst of humours."

"N'est ce pas? In the worst possible humour!"

"It's not true!" protested Regina, "quite the contrary; I am extremely cheerful."

However, Madame was tiresome enough to observe that during dinner Regina spoke very little.

"I like to be silent! I like listening," explained the bride, rather shortly.

"Well," said the Princess, "there's a certain cachet about a young woman who doesn't talk. A woman's silence suggests something mysterious, something occult; even something charming. Georges Sand spoke little. One of my uncles was her intimate friend, and he told me Georges was designedly silent."

"Perhaps you yourself knew Georges Sand?" said Massimo ungallantly.

"No," replied Madame, unmoved.

"Her mother, perhaps?" murmured Antonio.

"Beg pardon?"

"I've been reading an article on Georges Sand's mother," said Antonio louder. "Most interesting! She was a woman of fiery genius, and of fiery heart, too, whose adventures no doubt influenced her daughter's imagination."

"Where did you see that article?" cried Arduina; "we'll reproduce it!"

Sor Mario, bending low over his plate, shook his head, and emitted a perhaps unintentional grunt.

Tedious talk followed of the adventures and romances of Georges Sand. Arduina declared that the novels were uninteresting. She liked modern books, and Quo Vadis? above all others.

"Dio Mio!" said Antonio, "do stop about Quo Vadis? And really, you know, it's not precisely modern!"

Regina listened and held her peace. The talk was entirely of books, theatres, authors. The Princess told some story of Tolstoy, whom she knew personally. Towards the close of the repast, violent discussion arose between Massimo and Arduina about a great contemporary Italian poet and novelist—not only about his works, but about his private life. Arduina spoke against the master, hatred darting from her eyes, venom from her lips. She reproached him even for having grown old, bald, and ugly before his time. Massimo, red with fury, withered his sister-in-law with looks of supreme contempt.

"Worms!" he cried, forgetting he sat at her table. "See what you writers are! Merely to blacken the greatest and purest glory of Italy you stoop to absolute nonsense, and don't even know what it is you are saying!"

"Peace! peace!" laughed Antonio.

But now a most extraordinary thing happened. Sor Mario spoke. He had not read one line of the poet's, nor had any scandal to tell of him, but he related:—

"I saw him once at Anzio; he was riding along the shore got up entirely in white; white coat, white hat, white gloves, on a white horse——"

"White gloves on a horse?" queried Massimo, laughing foolishly.

Regina asked the Princess her opinion of the author in question, and the lady replied—

"To tell the truth, I'm not one of his blind admirers; but his prose is certainly lovely—bewitching, like music——"

"True," said Antonio; "but one very quickly forgets what he says."

"That's just my impression," said Regina; "it's music without any echo."

Massimo shook his head; his long hair stood on end like that of an infuriated baby.

"People were coming down to bathe," continued Sor Mario, "and they stared at him and laughed. Some were in hopes the poet would tumble off his white horse——"

About nine, while Arduina was pouring out coffee, the Princess's lady companion arrived; a queer-looking little creature with dark, malignant countenance, a long, pointed chin, and minute, glittering eyes. Small, shrivelled, dressed in grey, this curious person seemed half-animal to Regina, a kind of human rodent. And, really, no sooner had she entered than the room was pervaded and animated by what seemed the scratching and running about of a rat; little cries and exclamations; hand-claspings and kisses which suggested bites, questions, remarks, and, above all, looks which seemed to Regina inquisitive, anxious, mocking, and impudent.

"Take a cup of coffee if you care for it, Marianna," said Arduina, while the companion felt the Princess's forehead with both her hands.

"Why, your head's burning!" she said; "have you been eating a great deal? What have you eaten? Whatever have you made her eat?" she went on, turning to Arduina. "Oh, yes, I'll have some coffee, though I know very well it won't be good! What wretched cups! They're as small as I am!"

Antonio had hinted to his wife that Marianna was commonly supposed to be the Princess's daughter; and Regina, watching her, thought—

"It's clearly the case of the mountain and the mouse."

Apparently, Marianna read her thought, for she turned her little head with the alertness of a mouse, surprised by some slight sound; then came and sat beside the bride, balancing her cup on the palm of her hand, and saying maliciously—

"That husband of yours is a villain; keep your eye on him if you don't want him in every sort of mischief."

"I think you're the villain this time," said Antonio; "what are you insinuating suspicions into my wife for?"

"Because I pity her."

"And pray why?" asked Regina.

"Why? Just because you're married! Here comes another villain," continued Marianna, pointing to Massimo, who had drawn nearer; "for that matter they're all villains, the men! And the good ones are worse than the bad. The good ones are stupid. I don't care if men are bad, terrible even, so long as they have some genius and will-power."

"If I had at least these attributes—" began Massimo, looking at her with his insolent eyes.

"You can't have them," she interrupted; "geniuses never oil their hair as you do." "It's oiled, signora, isn't it?"

"I—don't know," said Regina, "I think not."

"Ah, poor dear! you haven't found it out! You'll never find anything out."

"How silly she is!" thought Regina.

And again she fancied that the young lady read her thoughts.

"Oh, you're thinking me a fool!" she said; "but listen here. I've forgotten to tell you something I always tell people when I meet them first."

"We know what it is," interjected Massimo and Antonio; but Marianna went on—

"Once, seven years ago, at Odessa, the house I was living in went on fire. I was in a top room, all hemmed in by flames—impossible to get me out. The smoke was already blinding and stifling me, and I heard the roar of the flames quite close. I believed in God no more then than now; however, I did feel the need of recourse to some supernatural being, some occult or omnipotent power. So I made a vow. I promised if I were saved, I would henceforth always speak the truth. At that moment the floor fell in. I lost my senses; and when I came to, I found myself safe and sound in the arms of a most hideous fireman. 'How have you managed it?' I asked. 'Like this,' he answered, and told how he had rescued me at great peril of his life. 'Oh, very well,' I said, 'I suspect you're exaggerating; but I'm grateful, all the same, and I'll always remember you; the more vividly that your ugliness is quite unforgettable.'"

Regina laughed. "I seem to be reading a Russian story," she said.

"But is that little tale true?" asked Massimo; and Antonio added—

"You gave me a slightly different version."

"Now you're trying to be witty," said Marianna, "but it's no use. You can't be witty, except for women you wish to please, and you don't in the least wish to please me."

"Oh, yes, I wish to please you," said Massimo; "it's the sole object of my life."

"Well, I don't appreciate your jokes. There are plenty of women very inferior to me, and you won't succeed in pleasing even them."

"I shall succeed with the superior ones, perhaps."

"I don't think there are many women superior to me; if there are, you'll never get within a stone's throw of them."

"Then I suppose I'm one of the inferiors?" said Regina, for the sake of saying something.

"Yes, because you're married. A superior woman never marries. Or if in some spell of unconsciousness she does take a husband, she repents at once. If I wished to pay you a compliment, I should say I believe you are repenting."

"By Jove!" said Antonio, "that's not a matter of joke."

"Do you always tell the Princess the truth?" asked Regina.

"Of course she keeps me only for that purpose," said Marianna, looking, not without affection, at the Princess. Madame was telling Arduina a story of her aunt.

"—the handsomest and smartest woman in Paris," she said. "I've told you of her marriage, haven't I? They married her at fifteen to the lover of a lady who remained her friend for ten years, her friend, her confidante, her guide. For ten years she never guessed——"

Sor Mario, buried in his arm-chair, was listening, fighting with sleepiness and the desire to pick his teeth.

Marianna began to abuse Nietzsche and his opinion of women, but Regina's attention wandered to the Princess's stories, scraps of which reached her across the screaming and the audacities of the younger lady.

"If women understood him, they'd agree," said Massimo; "they don't approve because they don't understand."

"They do better than approve, they refute him," said Marianna.

"If Gaspare were here," said Antonio, "he'd soon settle the question."

Regina's soul shivered at the mere recollection of Gaspare, and his mother, and the servant.

"Her second husband was a Spaniard," narrated the Princess, "the handsomest man you could see, and acquainted with all the literary personages of his time. But his conduct——"

"The education of women has not even begun," said Marianna, turning to Regina; "women will never have any sense till men begin to tell them the truth."

"But what is the truth?" asked Massimo; "truth between man and woman only comes out when they quarrel."

"That's true up to a certain point. I'm always wondering why truth is so disagreeable to everybody. They tell me I'm cracked because I never tell lies. Nobody cares, because my words don't really interest the person I'm talking to. But let's suppose this lady were to tell her husband all she was thinking, her real impressions, her real idea of him, his family, his friends. I'm certain Signor Antonio would fall quite sick——"

"Regina!" cried Antonio, in feigned alarm, "can this be true?"

Regina laughed, but a shudder as of great cold interrupted her false merriment. The Princess was continuing her story.

"'Jeanne!' said my aunt, hammering at the door of the room where he was with the lady's maid, 'hand me the Figaro, if you please.' My aunt was discreet. That was all she said."

"And what did they reply?" asked Sor Mario, sitting up straight, his toothpick in his fingers.

"My dear!" said Arduina, "what a stupid question!"

Before leaving, the Princess invited Regina to her Friday receptions. Regina promised to go; but that night, when she was comfortably in bed, lulled in the quiet and warmth of the first half-slumber, she said—

"Antonio, do you know what? I've taken a great dislike to that Princess!"

"Why? She's all right."

"Yes, but—you see——"

"What?"

She paused—then went on, her voice rather sleepy: "Do you remember that female lion-tamer we saw at Parma? She looked at women in such a strange way. I couldn't think whom the Princess reminded me of, and I thought, and thought——Her eyes are just like that lion-tamer's! Didn't you see how she stared at me?"

"Well? She liked you. Who knows but she'll leave you something in her will!"

"Is she really rich?"

"The deuce she is! A millionaire."

"Her gloves were so dirty."

"Did you see her rings?"

"What do I care for rings if the gloves are dirty?"

Regina relapsed into silence; then she laughed softly, and presently fell into a light sleep. She dreamt she was in a wood on the banks of the Po towards Viadana. The shining waters were churned by a mill, but the mill was a castle with vast rooms hung with red, and the castle belonged to Madame Makuline. The Princess was dead, but her soul had climbed up a poplar-tree, through the silver leaves of which shone the river, a crystalline blue. The mill wheel roared like thunder, and Regina, seated on the entrance stair of the castle, was washing her feet in a runnel of greenish water which overflowed the steps. A white duck came to peck at the little toe of her right foot, and laughed. Regina laughed herself. She was vaguely aware she was dreaming, for she was analysing her sentiments, and knew that a mill is a mill, that ducks can't laugh, and souls can't climb poplar-trees. None the less, she was oppressed by mysterious fear, by a sense of intolerable repugnance and distress.

Antonio heard her laugh, that vague, strange laugh from the profundity of dream which is like a voice from the depths of a well.

"She's having pleasant visions—she is happy, my little queen!" he thought, much moved.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One who favours despotism.

[2] Fine. Out of the common—delicately exquisite.

CHAPTER III

That winter was cold in Rome, and the rain seemed endless. Even days which began fine grew suddenly dark; the wind rose, and down came a deluge. Luckily, the showers did not last. Soon the pavements dried, the clouds blew away, the sky became blue, as if smiling at an accomplished jest. The people, however, came home with their clothes drenched, their boots soaking, their chests racked with coughs and their bosoms with evil temper.

"Your famous Roman sky seems to me a lunatic asylum without any warders," said Regina to her husband; "a bedlam where the raging clouds do whatever they like."

And that rainy winter proved one of the saddest in the young wife's whole life. True, she loved Antonio; the first day he left her to resume his work she felt a profound emptiness, and knew herself henceforth attached to him as firmly as the bark to the tree. But existence in the Casa Venutelli, association with her mother-in-law, the presence of Sor Gaspare, the gloomy bedroom with those immense arm-chairs, heavy as vulgar destiny, proved altogether unbearable.

And Rome was horrible under the continuous rain, which had something malicious and mocking about it. People hurried through the streets, their faces livid; the women showed petticoat-edges pasted with mud; the heaven itself was soiled; and Regina's soul made shipwreck amid this ocean of mud and water. She would come in drenched and exasperated; within-doors it was cold; there was no fire, and there was continual annoyance. She was uncomfortable at the table in those high round chairs, opposite the sarcastic countenance of Massimo, Sor Gaspare's red visage, the enormous panting bosom of Signora Anna. At night she was worse off still on that lumpy mattress, in the cold air which was pervaded by the rumble of the trams, and the melancholy rolling of purposeless carriages.

Was this the life of Rome? Nay, was this Rome? What! This the famous Corso—this narrow, smelly, mud-splashed street, with its carriage loads of old and hideous women, its foot-passengers squashing and treading upon each other like flocks of stupid sheep? And was this St. Peter's? Regina had expected it larger. That the Pincio? It was not beautiful. The Colosseum? She had supposed it more sublime. Where were the grandeur and magnificence? She could discover neither; everything appeared melancholy and hollow. She felt no astonishment at anything except her own impressions, and found a dreary pleasure in the thought that among all the provincials who came to Rome to be overwhelmed, she alone saw things in their true light. Sometimes she made exaggerated display of her own superiority; but self-examination convinced her it was tainted by personal rancour, and she felt sadder than ever. What was it she wanted? What did she expect? She felt sick of some deep wound. In vain she told herself the winter would pass, she would soon leave this distasteful house where everything seemed to freeze and suffocate her. Alas! her own sweet home was never, never, to be found again!

After hurried visits to monuments and museums, and a promise of more leisurely re-inspection—promise made by all who fix their dwelling in Rome, and seldom fulfilled under months and years—Regina and Antonio began the (more interesting) round of appartamenti to be let.

Between the salary of the one and the dowry of the other, they counted on a fixed income of 3,000 lire. Antonio received a small addition from the Princess, who had, however, other advisers, and only consulted him in certain affairs which brought her into collision with the Treasury. The means of the young couple would not therefore allow them more than a small Apartment at fifty or sixty lire a month. They began their search in Via Massimo d'Azeglio, where a possibly suitable suite of rooms was to fall vacant in January. Regina, oppressed with doubts, entered a lordly entrance hall, from which led a principal staircase of fine marble. The second stair was perfectly dark at the bottom, but got brighter and brighter as it went up. Regina began to count its steps.

"Eleven, twenty-two, thirty-three, forty-four, fifty-five, sixty-three—you don't tell me there are more?"

She stopped, her heart beating violently. Antonio smiled indulgently; he took his little queen by the arm and helped her up; the higher they went the steeper the steps became.

"Eighty-eight; ninety-nine. Goodness! more?"

"Courage!"

"A hundred and ten!"

By the grace of God they had arrived; but before the door was opened, the trembling and panting wife had said bitterly to herself, "Is this where Regina is to live? Never! never!"

The Apartment was suitable and pretty; a real nest in the heart of the city's great forest of stone. Two windows looked out on a garden; the rest on a court none too clean.

Regina declared at once that there was no air and no light, and, in fact, that the rooms would not do at all.

"No air?" repeated Antonio; "no light? I should have said just the opposite! Look! there's a garden down there! And it's so close to my work and in the very centre of the town!"

"No. I want windows on the street."

"Well, then, we'll look for windows on the street; but, mind you, we shan't find a more comfortable little place for our rent."

"You think not?" she said, unbelievingly.

Soon she was obliged to believe. They spent a fortnight in weary pilgrimage, revolving at first about the Esquiline, the Quirinal, and the Villa Ludovisi; and Regina, half vexed, half amused, sang smilingly, Senza tetto e senza cuna (With neither roof-tree nor home). Then she became taciturn and very tired, dragging herself along with an air of desperation. They consulted a house-agent, who proved a delusion and a snare. He gave them a score of addresses, and they gradually went up the Corso exploring all the adjacent streets, as a traveller ascends a river seeking an unknown land and an undiscoverable source. Antonio would have put up with a long walk to his office if he could thus have contented Regina; but Regina would not be contented. All the suites were either too large and costly, or so cramped and cold that a single glance froze and tightened the heart. Regina saw one mezzanino (entresol) of four immense, perfectly dark rooms, inhabited by what seemed an infinite number of smartly attired young ladies. It suggested a tomb for the living, and she fled horrified. It was shocking! And this was Rome! These were the habitations which Rome offered to those who had long dreamed of her! Tombs for the living, obscure caverns, dens for slaves! A thousand times preferable the poorest cabins of the villages on the Po, full of liberty and light!

And still it rained; and Regina, unused to walking, got more and more tired as she wandered about, seeking a nest in which to fold her wounded wings. She had lost her looks, and was thin and pale; as the days passed on she became irritable. Sometimes she looked at Antonio with mocking commiseration. Was there anything more ridiculous than a fine young man dragged round by an ugly little wife, on the search for lodgings at fifty lire a month? What a wretched business was civilisation! She gazed enviously at the passers by, thinking feverishly—

"They know where to go! They have houses even if they are dens, and needn't traipse about the streets, like us, looking for a refuge. We are stray dogs, unable to find a hole to die in!"

And she looked yearningly at inaccessible country houses, thinking bitterly—

"I, too, had a home—a home full of poetry and light. I shut myself out with my own hands, and never, never will it be mine again!"

At this thought tears welled into her eyes. Weary and silent she stepped along at her husband's side, and Antonio looked at her with pity, guessing the cause of her discontent. There were times, however, when he also felt irritated. Why had she refused the Apartment in the Via d'Azeglio? What more, what better did she want?

They came in, worn out, both of them, and cross. Regina shrank away into remote regions of the big, cold bed, and Antonio sometimes heard smothered sobs which, instead of moving, vexed him all the more. What was the matter with her? Well, really now, what was it? What was the matter? Surely a sensible girl like her couldn't be crying because rooms to her fancy were not discoverable at the first go off?

"No," he told her later, "I thought you didn't love me any longer; I thought you repented having married me. I felt humiliated and wretched like a whipped child."

Regina, far away from him in the great cold bed, had a hopeless feeling of abandonment. She seemed to have lost herself in a boundless, frozen plain; the screaming breath of the tram reproduced the drive of the rain, the roar of the wet wind. All around was cloud, and only far, far, far away shone the crimson of a lighted hearth, glimmered the silver of a river——

"Why did I leave my home?" she asked herself, dully; "I've let myself be rooted up like a poplar; and now, like the poplar-wood, I've been carted here to make part of this odious construction which is called a great city. I also shall warp and rot—get worm-eaten, fall——"

Then she asked herself did she really love Antonio? There were moments when she answered "No;" other moments when she melted at the thought of him.

"I shall make him miserable! He told me what to expect in Rome; a modest life, a middle-class family. Did I not accept it? Well—well! we shall all die! We must be resigned to our destiny. Every hour will come, and the hour of death is the most certain of all. To die! To have no more suffering from homesickness—never again to see my mother-in-law, Arduina, Sor Gaspare, that maid Marina; to wander no further in the rain seeking an Apartment! No—I don't want to torment Antonio any more. Is it his fault that all the miseries of civilisation interfere between him and me? He didn't know it, and neither did I know it. But we shall all die at last! We must be resigned, and go and live in Via d'Azeglio. The days will pass there as they pass everywhere."

She slept, pleased with her philosophy; and, of course, she dreamed of the distant home, the woods, the blazing logs, the windows radiant in the sunset, the kitten on the window-sill contemplating the stem of the poplar-tree. Next morning daylight met her in the detestable Venutelli room; she lay under the incubus of the grey ceiling; she must get up, endure the cold, the rain, the company of Signora Anna! Resignation? It was very well in theory; in practice her nerves revolted fiercely against the reality.

At last, after a month of vain search, more in the end from weariness than from good-will, Regina consented to the suite in the Via d'Azeglio for one year. Yet on the very day of signing the agreement she repented, abandoning all self-control.

"Was it worth while leaving my home and coming to Rome to live in a box? I shall be suffocated! I shall die!" she cried.

Nor could Antonio longer contain himself.

"Can't you say what it is you want?" he exclaimed in a fury. "Did you imagine you were marrying a prince? You knew all I had to offer! You told me a hundred times you hadn't corrupted your soul with vain ambitions; you said you were robust and unselfish; you said you didn't ask impossible things of life! Why don't you look back instead of always looking ahead? Didn't you say you were a bit of a Socialist? Well, then, why don't you compare your condition with that of millions and millions of other women?"

She wept, leaning her forehead against the window-pane. Of course it was raining, and it seemed to her that the heavens wept with her. She knew Antonio was right, although he looked at the matter merely on its material side, and did not understand the real causes of her discontent.

However, she laughed through her tears, laughed proudly and ironically.

"If you speak like that, we are done for," she said.

He moderated his voice. "I speak crossly," he said, "but I mean well. I am tired of seeing you so dissatisfied, Regina. What do you want me to do? What can I give you beyond what I have—that is, all my work, all my love, a good position, a morrow without cares?"

"He doesn't understand," she thought; "I shall suffer, but no one shall perceive it, he least of all. I shall be always solitary. Well! I don't need any one, do I? I'm strong, am I not? Are you proposing to let your heart be seen, Regina, by all these odious little people?" And she shook her wings like a little bird which has tumbled into dirty water.

Antonio came nearer, and they made it up.

"You know," he said, stroking her hair, "the agreement is only for a year. Who knows what mayn't happen in a year? I shall apply for a rise, get a step; then we shall have our house rent free. I'll try to get extra work; perhaps Madame will put her whole affairs into my hands. Our position will improve. We'll take a larger flat—with a shorter stair. You'll get used to the stair. Some day you'll laugh at having cried for such trifles. Now wash your face. How ugly you are with those red eyes!"

"Ugly or pretty, I'm always myself!" she said, plunging her face into cold water; then she scrubbed it with the rough towel, powdered herself, put on the lace scarf, and consented to go up and visit Arduina.

They found that lady's door open, and from the vestibule her voice was heard in the drawing-room.

"Who's there?" asked Regina.

There was no one.

"What are you doing? Talking to yourself?" asked Antonio.

The authoress coloured, laughed, screamed, and confessed she was rehearsing a speech for his Excellency the Minister of Public Instruction, whom she was going to ask for a subscription for her paper.

"Does Mario know? I'll ask him what he thinks of it," said Antonio.

"For pity's sake, don't!" she cried.

"Doesn't it make you shy asking for money?" asked Regina, astonished.

"Why should I be shy? Every one does it. It's not for myself I ask—it's for the journal, which is doing terribly badly. I've asked for a subscription and an audience of the Queen. And to-morrow I must go to my uncle the Senator and learn——"

"I'd sooner die than beg from anybody!" said Regina.

"But why?" asked the other, astounded. "What harm does it do? If you were a literary woman, and ran a paper and had an idea to sustain and to make triumphant——"

"Spare us—my dear goose!" interrupted Antonio.

"And hold my tongue, I suppose? So you never ask for money? Nor take advantage of anything useful which comes in your way? Why do you stare, Regina? It's all a question of getting used to it."

"Getting used to it? That's another matter." Regina felt a flood of contemptuous words rise to her lips, but she kept silence, thinking she would not deign even to reply. She walked to the window and saw the little black-dressed woman with the seven lemons, in the corner by the shut door; but she no longer felt the melancholy this sight had waked in her on her first coming to Rome. She had got used to it.

"The Princess often asks for you," said Arduina, "won't you come to her next reception? Now you've found a house and are getting settled, you can begin to return visits and make acquaintances."

"What good are acquaintances to me?"

"What good are they to others? Don't be posing as an oddity," said Antonio, a little sharply.

"Shall I have enough drawing-room to receive them in?" returned Regina in that cold voice of hers which froze her husband's heart.

He was dismayed and silent. Arduina, however, did not understand.

"Your drawing-room will be small," she said, "that means you can't have a large circle. But you'd better come to the Princess's. It's in your husband's interest."

"No. I don't know what to make of your princesses," said Regina; but immediately she repented, remembering her vows of a few minutes before. She laughed, joked, turned everything upside down in the little drawing-room, and promised to go with Arduina to see the Senator uncle.

"I'll tell him I'm a poetess, and ask him to get me an audience of the Queen," she said gaily.

"My dear child, capital!" cried Arduina in ecstasy. "Yes! yes! we'll go together!"

But Regina made a roguish gesture, moving her hand like a fan with her thumb on the point of her nose; and the other laughed, more than ever sure that her sister-in-law was half imbecile.

Next day they went together to the distinguished uncle, who turned out only a second cousin of Arduina's mother. The authoress had dressed herself up. She wore a black dress much wrinkled on the shoulders, a yellow straw hat trimmed with poppies; a feather boa so thin and worn that people turned their heads to look at it. Regina, also in black, with her inevitable lace scarf, seemed beside her almost a beauty.

The Senator lived in Via Sistina on a fourth floor. That comforted Regina greatly. If a senator could exist on a fourth floor she might get accustomed to a fifth. Still more was she comforted when she saw the Senator's Apartment. It was very dark, and furnished with a meagreness nearer to discomfort than to simplicity. A few aspidistras, whose large leaves glistened feebly in the chiaroscuro, adorned the ante-room and the two dreary reception-rooms through which the ladies were conducted by an elderly chambermaid. There was a portrait in oils of an old man, lean and red, with protruding blue eyes and beautiful white hair (suggestive, however, of a wig), who smiled sarcastically out of his yellow background. The portrait was reflected in a cracked mirror; and the vast, dreary, dark room seemed animated by the two figures—immobile against the yellow background of the picture and the mirror—looking at each other, smiling sarcastically, sharing some half mocking, half melancholy thought.

Regina glanced at herself in the glass, and fancied that the two figures, the one in front and the one behind, had fixed their mocking eyes upon herself; then she turned suddenly, for she saw advancing silently against the yellow background of the room a third figure exactly like the other two. It was the Senator.

"Oh, brava!" he said briskly, turning to Arduina and looking at Regina.

"Let me introduce my sister-in-law," said Arduina; "she has been married one month."

"How stupid she is!" thought Regina, but had herself nothing to say when the old man congratulated her on having been married a month.

"Oh, brava! brava!" he repeated; and Arduina quickly explained the occasion of her visit.

The old Senator again said "Brava! brava!" but Regina understood perfectly that he was out of sympathy with the entire affair.

"Oh, brava! brava! It's your paper, to be sure; and devoted to the woman question?"

"No, no! Still—yes! to women's questions, properly understood."

"I see!—women's questions properly understood. Well, teach the women to work. Habituate them to the idea of work, of earning their living, of independence. When I go abroad, especially when I go to England, I am immensely struck by the 'moral physiognomy' of the women—so different from our women at home—from you——"

"But I do work!" protested Arduina.

"Your work is not sufficiently profitable if you require subscriptions!" cried Regina.

"Oh, brava! brava! And you, I suppose, write too?"

"Oh, no! I don't do anything!"

The Senator looked at her with his mocking and melancholy blue eyes; and she blushed, remembering she had never worked in her life.

"I want subscriptions," said Arduina, "because in Italy work is not yet remunerative. But in the future—the generations we shall educate——," etc., etc., etc.

She made a long speech about the future generations, and returned to her starting point: the urgent need for a subscription.

"Bless the girl! She shall have the subscription!" said the Senator, who was still looking at Regina.

"And the audience also?"

He promised the audience. At that moment he was smiling just as he smiled in the portrait and in the mirror; and Regina perceived that he pitied the poor Italian journalist and was thinking of the moral physiognomy of the working Englishwomen.

"But why the audience?" asked Regina, emboldened and imitating the Senator's smile; "subscriptions are all very well—up to a certain point—but the audience——"

"It's a moral support. With reference to my principles——"

"Yes, yes; a moral support," interrupted the Senator, still smiling.

Regina felt rebellious. This man who found the moral physiognomy of the women abroad so different from the moral physiognomy of the incapable, enslaved Italians—why did he not make Arduina understand the errors of her method?

"But," she cried, almost angrily, "if you can't do without assistance, moral or material, it's better—to do nothing at all! We are always despoilers; and it's all one if we despoil fathers, husbands, lovers, or royalty and the Government!

"My dear, you don't understand!" said Arduina, who, had not taken in Regina's meaning; "you talk like that because you've never felt the need——"

"You are from Lombardy?" asked the Senator, who, with his hands folded on his breast, amused himself twiddling his thumbs.

"I'm an incapable and useless Italian," she replied, very contemptuous of herself.

"But you are young. Why don't you write?"

"What's the use of writing," she asked, meeting his eye mockingly, "if it's only to ask for subscriptions and audiences?"

The old man, still twiddling his thumbs, rose and took a step towards the young lady.

"What's your impression of Rome?"

"Bad! It bores me! Town life is so wretched and gloomy. Besides, it does nothing but rain," said Regina, and laughed.

"What makes him stare so?" she thought; "can I possibly have the moral physiognomy of the English ladies?"

The old man stood in front of her, his back to Arduina, whose presence he seemed to have forgotten.

"Town life is wretched," he said, "because it's empty. Our women are full of useless aspirations, and, as you say, despoil their men, who deteriorate working too hard for their families. In those societies where the woman works also, the man has a free margin for the development of his abilities. In England——"

"But what can we do," repeated Regina, "if we haven't been brought up to work?"

The Senator did not appear to hear her. He drew a picture of English society where the whole middle class, the professional and the working sections alike kept themselves up in literature, art, politics, and promoted free discussion on all subjects; where the women were not bored, because they worked.

"They have hundreds of authoresses, translators, newspaper correspondents, who make more than 10,000 lire every year, some a great deal more. Mrs. H. W.—do you know how much she gets for each of her books?"

Regina did not know.

"More than seven or eight thousand pounds."

Arduina hastily made the calculation.

"More than 200,000 lire?" she said, awe-struck. "Dear me! I shouldn't like to make all that!"

"Why not?"

"Because I should go off my head!"

"But in Italy——" began Regina.

"In Italy, too, a woman may earn a great deal. Work! work! there's the secret."

Regina left the old Senator's dark and melancholy house with a new ray of light in her mind. Work! work! Yes, she also wanted work! She would begin to write. If she was no good for anything else, at least she might make some money. She wanted work; she wanted money; above all she wanted to live.

"I'll escape from this narrow circle which is strangling me. I'll look life in the face. I'll lose myself in the great streets of Rome, feel the soul of the crowd, write descriptions of the lives of the poor, of those who are bored, of those who seem happy and are not—life as it is——"

When she got home she looked round with pitying eyes. Yes! Signora Anna and the maid, Arduina and the brothers-in-law, the whole environment and the souls set in it, all moved her to pity. And this pity gave her a feeling of soft sweet warmth, of profound well-being.

Antonio had not come in, and Regina stayed in her room. She took a book and sat by the closed window. Evening came on. Little by little the warmth which had been the result of the expedition died out. The light failed. Great impalpable veils fell down round her, slowly, one after the other. The book she held in her hand was so futile that she had not been able to read two pages. She shut it up and looked at the sky. But the line of sky above the ugly opposite façade was so ashen and heavy that it gave her the impression of a sheet of metal. Only one little red cloud, a wandering flame, illuminated the ashes of this dead heaven.

Suddenly Regina felt a great emptiness, a great cold within herself. That little cloud had reminded her of the distant hearth fire in her home; of all the little, simple, voiceless things which yet were greater and brighter than all glory, all riches. She thought—

"Work! Money-making! Even if it were possible it couldn't give me back my home, my past, my atmosphere! One little reality is worth more than the greatest of ideals."

"What is the Ideal?" she thought further, still watching the slow passing of the cloud; and she copied the old Senator's smile, remembering how he also imagined he had such lofty ideals!

CHAPTER IV

On Christmas Eve Regina went early to bed, complaining of an indisposition which made Signora Anna thoughtful, but was not suggestive to Antonio. He knew, or thought he knew, the subtle malady which was consuming his wife. He knew its name: Nostalgia; and he left to time the responsibility of its cure.

Regina was no sooner in bed than she began to remember and to meditate. Christmas in Rome! She saw over again the carts of live fowls being drawn through the streets; the ladies passing quickly along with parcels in their hands; the fat pork-butchers looking out from their nauseating shops with the importance of Roman emperors; his Excellency an Under-Secretary of State standing in front of Dagnino's window with a visage of terrible perplexity.

She reflected upon the quarrel which had broken out among Signora Anna, Gaspare and the maid about wax candles. Marina had gone up and down the stair at least twenty times, each time coming back with parcels, but each time forgetting something. During the whole of lunch and the whole of dinner the brothers, their mother and the girl had discussed the supplies of food.

Well! it had all produced in Regina a sort of spiritual indigestion. Alone in the great bed, shivering, crumpled up, she was conscious of an unspeakable depression. She felt like a little snail which hears the rain pattering on its shell. And she thought continually of the distant hearth, the grey night illumined by the snow. Behind the voices and the laughter which vibrated from the dining-room, behind the painful screech of the trams, behind the buzz of the merry-making city, she heard the whistling of trains in the station. Some of the whistles laughed, some wept; one, faint and tender, seemed the voice of a questioning child; one was like a zigzag on a black sky; one mocked at Regina. "Are you ready to go? Not you! not you! It's your own fault. Here you've come, and here you stay! Good-bye! Good-bye!"

She worked herself into a passion. She was angry even with his Excellency, who had looked in at Dagnino's window, fixing his gold eye-glasses. She asked, exasperated, who were all those strange people laughing and joking in the dining-room?

Antonio soon joined her. She pretended to sleep. He was solicitous and touched her gently. Feeling her very cold, he drew nearer to warm her. She was moved, but did not open her eyes.

The hours passed. The city became silent. It slept, like a greedy child to whom dainties are promised. Regina could not sleep, but she was not insensible to the kindness and the warmth. The little snail had looked out from the window of its shell and seen the sun shining on the grass. Melodious sound of bells trembled and oscillated on the quiet night. One seemed to come from beyond a river, grave, sonorous, nostalgic. To her surprise Regina found herself repeating certain lines of Prati's, which she was not conscious of having known before. Whence did they arise? Perhaps from the depths of her subconsciousness, evoked by the nostalgic song of the bells on that first Christmas of exile.

"Dreaming of home and of the country ways,
The village feastings and the green spring days."

She repeated the lines many times to herself with sing-song monotony, which ended by putting her asleep. She dreamed she was at home. Her young sister played "Stefánia" on her mandoline. Regina saw the mandoline distinctly and its inlaid picture of a troubadour with a mandola. The little black cat was listening, rather bored, and yawning ostentatiously. Outside fell the evening, violet-grey, velvety, silent. Suddenly a perplexed visage with gold-rimmed eye-glasses started up behind the window-panes. Regina laughed so loud that she woke her husband.

"Whatever is it?" he asked in alarm.

"His Excellency," she murmured, still dreaming.

Next morning, on awakening, Antonio found Regina in tears.

"You were laughing last night—now you cry," he said, with slight impatience. "Can't you explain what on earth's the matter with you?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing! You're crying! What are you crying about? I can't bear it any longer! Why do you torment me like this?"

She took his hand and passed it over her eyes. He repented.

"What is it? What is it? Tell me—only tell me, Regina, Regina!" he urged, tenderly and anxiously.

"It has nothing to do with you," she said, hiding her face on his breast, "it's all my own fault. I don't know why, but I can't conquer the past—the homesickness—and I'm afraid of the future."

He also felt a mysterious fear.

"Why are you afraid of the future?"

"Because—I suppose because we are poor. Rome is so horrid for the poor."

"But, Regina, we aren't poor!" he exclaimed with increasing alarm, "and, anyhow, don't we love each other?"

"To love—to vegetate—it's not enough—not enough," she murmured.

"But you knew all about it, Regina!"

"I knew and I know. I'm furious with myself that I can't overcome my aversion to this bourgeois life."

"But after all—down there at your home—what sort of life were you leading?"

"Oh, Antonio! I had dreams!"

Antonio understood the anguish in that cry, and tried to lull her sorrow for the time being, administering as to a sick person an innocuous soothing mixture.

"Listen," he said, "it's just that you're a bit homesick. You'll find that in a little time you'll get used to it all. I admit our life is rather cramped, but do you suppose the rich people are happy?"

"It's not riches I want!"

"What is it then? I'm not vulgar, am I? or stupid? After all, it's with me you've got to live. Be reasonable. You shall make your own surroundings just as you like them. Meantime, to cure you of your homesickness you can go home to your own country whenever you like."

The soothing mixture produced the desired effect. Regina raised a radiant face.

"In the spring?" she cried impetuously, "in the spring?"

"Whenever you wish. And you'll see that in course of time——"

But the course of time only augmented Regina's trouble.

The night of San Stefano Antonio took her to the Costanzi Theatre, to the Sedie.[3] She put on her smartest frock, her best trinkets, and went to the theatre, resolved to be astonished at nothing, for had she not already been to the theatre at Parma? The Costanzi was magnificent; an enormous casket where the most beautiful pearls in the capital shone on feminine shoulders resplendent with "Crema Venus." Even the pit was splendid, a field of great flowers sprinkled with the dew of gems and gold. And in spite of her experience at the Parma theatre, Regina felt sufficiently bewildered. Her short-sighted eyes, dazzled by the brilliant light, were half shut; and it was much the same with the eyes of her soul. She raised her opera glass and looked at one of the boxes. The lady there was plain in feature, but extremely fashionable; Regina thought her painted, decked with false hair, her eyes artificially darkened. None the less, she envied her.

She looked round. Little by little her envy swelled, overflowed, became hateful. She would have liked the theatre burned down. Then she perceived that a lady near her was looking at the boxes just as she was, perhaps with the same criminal envy in her heart. She felt ashamed of herself, put down the glass, and after this did not look at the seats above her again. But on her own level, in the furthest row of the Poltrone,[4] she saw a long row of smartly dressed men and women who always and only stared at the boxes. No one looked at the Sedie. The people there were an inferior race, or actually non-existent for the ladies and gentlemen in the Poltrone.

"We are nothing! We are the microbes which fill the void," thought Regina.

Then she perceived another strange fact, that she herself felt for the Sedie and the gallery the very same contempt which was felt by the people of the boxes and the stalls.

Antonio thought she was enjoying the music and the spectacle as he was himself; now and then he touched her hand and made some pleasant remark.

"You look a real queen with that necklace!" he said, for instance.

"An exiled queen!" returned Regina under her breath.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] The cheapest reserved seats.

[4] Seats next above the Sedie.

CHAPTER V

Later, when she thought over that first year of marriage, Regina divided it into many little chapters. Amongst them she attached importance to the chapter of her first visit to the Princess Makuline.

It took place on a warm, cloudy evening at the beginning of January. Antonio was missing, having been detained at the Department till nine, doing extra work; but Arduina and Regina waited in the Piazza dell' Indipendenza for Massimo, who was to escort them. The Piazza, almost deserted, was illumined by the pale gold rays of the veiled moon. The bare trees were scarce visible in the vaporous air, the small, motionless flames of the street lamps seemed far away. Regina, standing in the middle of the great square, was pleasantly conscious of silence, solitude, immensity. For the first time since she had been in Rome she caught herself admiring something.

"Come along!" said Massimo, arriving hurriedly, and brandishing a pair of new gloves; "three-fifty they cost me! Woe to Madame if she doesn't pay me with some hope!"

"I believe you'd be capable of marrying her," said Regina, with a gesture of disgust.

"She'd like it," said Arduina.

"Shut up! The point is—should I like it?" said the young man. "I'm not for sale."

Passing the Princess's little garden gate, Massimo said, "This is the entrance for Madame's lovers!"

But they walked on and rang at the hall door of the villa, or rather of the villas, for there were two; small but handsome houses, joined by an aërial terrace or hanging garden.

"Like two little brothers holding each other's hands," said Regina, with a sigh.

A servant in plain clothes opened the polished door, and disclosed two great wolves, apparently alive, lying in ambush on the red rugs of the entrance hall.

The rooms were much overheated. Thick carpets, skins of bears spread before large low divans, themselves covered with furs, exhaled what seemed the hot breath of wild beasts sleeping in the sun—an atmosphere wild, voluptuous, noxious. Huge waving branches of red-berried wild plants rose from tall metal vases. The Princess, richly but clumsily dressed in black velvet and white lace, was discoursing in French to two elderly ladies, telling them the adventures of her aunt, wife of the man who had known Georges Sand.

"At that time," she was saying, "my aunt was the best dressed woman in Paris. Georges Sand described one of her costumes in the Marquis de Villemer...."

Beyond the two elderly ladies, an old gentleman, shaven and bald, his head shining like a bowl of pink china, lolled in an arm-chair and listened sleepily.

Marianna, in a low pink dress, ran to the new-comers with her little rat-like steps, and surveyed Regina inquisitively.

"You look very well, Madame," she said; "is there no news?"

"What news do you expect?" asked Regina.

Marianna giggled, her little eyes shining unnaturally. Regina could not resist the suspicion that the rat was excited with wine, and she felt a resurgence of the curious physical disgust with which the Princess and this girl inspired her.

Madame at first paid scant attention to the Venutellis. Other guests were arriving, the greater number elderly foreign ladies in dresses of questionable freshness and fashion. Arduina soon got into conversation with an unattractive gentleman whose round eyes and flat nose surmounted an exaggerated jowl. Massimo followed in the wake of Marianna, who came and went, running about, frisking and shrieking. Regina was stranded between a stout lady who made a few observations without looking at her, and the bald old gentleman who said nothing at all. She soon grew bored, finding herself neglected and forgotten, lost among all these fat superannuated people, these old silk gowns which had outlived their rustle. How tedious! Was this the world of the rich, the enchanted realm for which she had pined?

"Regina shall not be seen here again," she told herself.

Presently she saw Arduina smiling and beckoning to her from the distance; but just then the Princess came over, and put her small refulgent hand in Regina's with an affectionate and familiar gesture.

"Won't you come and take a cup of tea?" she said.

Regina started to her feet overwhelmed by so much attention.

"How is your husband?" said the Princess, leading her to the supper-room.

"Very well, thank you," said Regina, in a low voice; "he hasn't been able to come to-night because——"

"Beg pardon?" said the Princess.

All the elderly ladies and gentlemen followed the hostess, and seated themselves round the room, in which a sumptuous table was laid. Marianna ran hither and thither, distributing the tea.

"Could you help?" she asked, passing Regina; "you seem like a girl. Come with me."

Regina followed her to the table, but did not know what to do; she upset a jug and blushed painfully.

"Here!" said Marianna, giving her a plate, "take that to the man like a dog."

"Which man? Speak low!"

"The man beside your sister-in-law. He's an author."

Regina crossed the room shyly, carrying the plate, and imagining every one was looking at her. There was consolation in the thought that she was about to offer a slice of tart to an author.

"Oh, Signorina!" he exclaimed, with a deprecating bow.

"Signora, if you please!" said Arduina, "she's my sister-in-law."

"My compliments and my condolences," said the man, insolently; he rolled his great eyes round the room and added, "In this company you seem a child."

"Why condolences?" asked Arduina.

"Because she's your sister-in-law," replied he.

Regina perceived that the author was very impudent, and she retreated to the table. Not finding Marianna she timidly possessed herself of another plate and took it to Massimo, who, also neglected and forgotten, was standing near the door.

"Oh, you're doing hostess, are you?" he said. "Look here! bring me a glass of that wine in the tall, gold-necked bottle at the corner of the table. Drink some yourself."

Regina went for it, but found the Princess herself pouring wine at that moment from the bottle with the golden neck.

"Massimo would like a glass of that," she murmured ingenuously.

"Beg pardon?" said the Princess, who fortunately had not heard.

Regina, however, found a wine-glass ready filled, and carried it to her brother-in-law; exquisite bouquet rose from the glass as perfume from a flower.

"It's port, you know," said Massimo, with genuine gratitude; "thanks, little sister-in-law! You're my salvation! 'Tis the wine of the modern gods."

"You are facetious to-night."

"Hush! I'm bored to death. Let's go. We'll leave Arduina. Who's that baboon-faced person she's got hold of?"

"That's an author."

"Connais pas," said the other, eating and drinking. "What a rabble! No one but rabble."

"Just so," said Regina, "and we belong to it."

"On the contrary, we'll snap our fingers at it. No! we are young and may some day be rich. Those folk are rich, but they'll never be young, my dear!"

"Take care! I think you are right though."

"Then bring me another glass of port!" said Massimo, imploringly.

"Certainly not!"

The old ladies and gentlemen, mildly excited by the wines and the tea, raised their voices, moved about, clustered in knots and circles. In the confusion Regina again found herself beside the hostess.

"But you've had positively nothing!" said Madame; "come with me. Have a glass of port? How's your husband?"

"The second time!" thought Regina; and she shouted, "Very well indeed, thank you."

"Have you moved yet? How do you like your house? Come, drink this! Have some sweets? The pastry's pretty good to-day. Oh, Monsieur Massimo! won't you have another cup of tea? No? A glass of port, then? Tell me, are you also at the Treasury?"

"No, Madame; in the War Office."

Marianna no sooner observed that the Princess was talking to the Venutellis than she thrust her restless face behind Regina's shoulder; and it struck the latter that this girl watched her patroness over much.

"I've a bothersome affair on hand," said Madame, slowly; "some money due in Milan which I want paid to me in Rome. I'm told I must have a warrant from the Treasury, Monsieur Antonio must come and speak to me to-morrow."

"I'll tell him the moment I get in," cried Regina.

Marianna said something in Russian, turning to Madame with an air almost of command. The Princess replied with her usual calm, but quickly afterwards she moved away.

"Now I must pay for the help you gave me," said Marianna to Regina, pouring out a glass of a white liqueur. "Drink this."

"No, thanks."

"It's vodka. The Russian ladies get tipsy with this. See how I drink it! I'm half tipsy already," she went on, raising the glass and looking through it; "I don't mind! It has the opposite effect on me to what it has on every one else. After drinking, I no longer speak the truth."

"I don't observe it," said Massimo, dryly. "So this is vodka, is it? It's nasty."

"Oh, I've had none to speak of to-day!" said Marianna. She laughed and sipped; then held the glass to Regina's lips and made her drink too.

"Now we'll go and interrupt the idyll of the dog and the cat," said Marianna, leading the way to the next room where Arduina and the author were still tête-à-tête under the branches of the red-berried plant.

Regina and Marianna sat down opposite to them on a divan of furs, and Massimo remained standing. In the next room one of the old ladies was playing "Se a te, O cara!"

Regina now felt an inexplicable content; the gentle yet impassioned music, the warmth of the divan whose soft furriness suggested a pussy cat to be stroked; the indefinable perfume with which the hot air was charged, the vodka, too, which still pulsed in her throat—all gave her the initial feelings of a pleasant intoxication. Arduina also seemed excited. She spoke loud, in the tones which Regina had noted in the flirtatious cousin, Claretta. She seemed no longer to recognise her relations.

"What's the matter with the silly thing?" Regina asked herself, and Marianna must have guessed her thought, for she said slyly, "They're love-making."

Regina laughed unthinkingly. Then suddenly she felt shocked.

"Is it possible!" she murmured.

"Anything is possible," said the rat. "You are such a child as yet; but in time you'll see—anything is possible."

CHAPTER VI

Next day Antonio went to the Princess about the collection of her rents. She invited him and his wife to dinner on Sunday, and this invitation was followed by others. Regina accepted them all, but unwillingly. The dinners were magnificent, served by pompous men servants, whose solemnity, said Antonio, spoiled his digestion. Regina found the entertainments dull, and came away out of temper. The guests were elderly foreigners or obscure Italian poets and artists; their conversation might have been interesting, for it touched on letters, art, the theatre, matters of palpitating contemporary life, but only stale commonplaces were uttered, and Regina heard nothing at all correspondent to the ideas sparkling in her own mind.

She was bored; yet no sooner was she back in the atmosphere of Casa Venutelli than she thought enviously of the Princess's saloons, where the servants passed and waited, silent and automatic as machines, where all was beauty, luxury, splendour, and the light itself seemed to shine by enchantment.

At last the day came when Antonio and his wife chose the furniture for their own Apartment in Via Massimo d'Azeglio.

"We'll go on Sunday and settle how to arrange it," said Antonio, and Regina thought dolefully of all the fatigue and worry awaiting her.

"Fancy coping with a servant!" she reflected, panic-struck.

On Sunday morning they went to their little habitation. It was late in January, a pure, soft morning with whiffs of spring in the air. Regina ran up the hundred-odd steps, and when, panting and perspiring, she arrived at her hall door she amused herself by ringing the bell.

"Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle! Who is there? Mr. Nobody! What fun going to visit Mr. Nobody!"

Antonio opened with a certain air of mystery and marched in first. Then he turned and made Regina a low bow. She looked round astonished, and exclaimed, with faint irony, "But I thought this kind of thing only happened in romances!"

The Apartment was all in complete order. Curtains veiled the half-open windows. The large white bed stood between strips of carpet, upon which were depicted yellow dogs running with partridges in their mouths. Even in the kitchen nothing was missing or awry.

Antonio stood at the window, leaving Regina time to get over her surprise. She hated herself because somehow she did not feel all the pleasurable emotion which her husband might justly expect of her. However, she understood quite well what she must do. She thought—

"I must kiss him and say, 'How good you are!'"

So she did kiss him, and said "How good you are!" quite cheerfully. His eyes filled with boyish delight, and at sight of this she felt touched in earnest.

"Antonio," she cried, "you really are good, and I am very wicked. But I'm going to improve, I really, really am!"

And for a week or a fortnight she was good; docile and even merry. She was very busy settling her treasures in the cabinets, her clothes in the wardrobes, altering this table and that picture; never in her whole life had she worked so hard! The first night she slept in the soft new bed, between the fine linen sheets of her trousseau, she felt as if delivered from an incubus, and about to begin a new life, with all the happiness, all the renewed energy of a convalescent. By this time fine weather had come. The Roman sky was cloudless; springtime fragrance filled the air; the city noises reached Regina's rooms like the sound of a distant waterfall, subdued and sweet. In the sun-dappled garden below, a thin curl of water was flung by a tiny fountain into a tiny vase, dotted with tiny goldfish; monthly roses bloomed; and a couple of white kittens chased each other along the paths. The little garden seemed made expressly for the two graceful little beasts.

Regina passed several happy days. But when all the things were safely installed in the wardrobes and cabinets she found she had nothing more to do. The servant, of whom she had thought with so much dread, looked after everything, was well behaved and prettily mannered. She was an expense, but worth it. Regina's only worry was making out the account for the maid's daily purchases. She got used even to this; and again began to be bored. She stood before her glass for long hours, brushing, washing and dressing her hair, polishing her nails and teeth. She looked at herself in profile, from this side and that, powdered her face, took to using "Crema Venus," laced herself very tight. But afterwards, or indeed at the moment, she asked with impatient and disgusted self-reproach, "Are you a fool, Regina? What's all this for? What on earth is the good of it?"

Of her few visitors, almost all were tiresome relations; among them Aunt Clara and Claretta. Aunt Clara, jealous of Arduina's aristocratic acquaintances, had much to relate of banquets and receptions at which she had assisted.

"And Claretta, as I need not say——"

Claretta admired herself in all the mirrors, ransacked Regina's toilet-table, passed through the little Apartment like the wind, upsetting everything. Regina hated the mother, hated the daughter, hated the whole connection, including Arduina, who nevertheless took her about, introducing her to countesses and duchesses at whose houses she met others of like rank.

"It's appalling the number of countesses in Rome," said Regina to her husband.

She was partly amused, partly wearied; she was not offended when the grand ladies failed to return her visits; and she no longer wondered at the shocking things said in almost all the drawing-rooms about the people most distinguished in the literary, the political, and even in the private world.

"Anything is possible," said Marianna, "and what is most possible of all is that the things they say are calumnies."

In the early spring Regina had a recrudescence of nostalgia and discontent. The little Apartment began to be hot. She stood for hours at the window with the nervous unquiet of a bird not yet used to its cage. From the "Pussies' Garden" rose a smell of damp grass which induced in her spasms of homesickness. Sometimes she looked down through her eye-glass, and saw a certain short and plump, pale and bald young man, strolling round and round the little vase into which the fountain wept tears of tedium. Life was tedious also for that young man. Regina remembered seeing him on the evening of San Stefano in a box at the Costanzi, his face bloated and yellow as an unripe apricot; and she had included him in her incendiary hatred. Now he, too, was bored. Was he bored because he had come down into the garden, or had he come down into the garden because he was bored? Sometimes he stood and teased the goldfish; then he yawned and battered the flowers with his stick, the wistaria on the walls, the monthly roses, the innocent daisies.

"He must beat something," thought Regina, and remembered that she herself was itching to torment any one or anything. On rainy days—frequent and tedious—she became depressed, even to hypochondria. Only one thought comforted her—that of the return to her home. She counted the days and the hours. Strange, childish recollections, distant fancies, passed through her mind like clouds across a sad sky. Details of her past life waked in her melting tenderness; she remembered vividly even the humblest persons of the place, the most secret nooks in the house or in the wood; with strange insistence she thought of certain little things which never before had greatly struck her. For instance, there was an old millstone, belonging to a ruined mill, which lay in the grass by the river-side. The remembrance of that old grey millstone, resting after its labour beside the very stream with which it had so long wrestled, moved Regina almost to tears. Often she tried to analyse her nostalgia, asking herself why she thought of the millstone, of the old blind chimney sweep, of the portiner (ferryman), who had enormous hairy hands and was getting on for a hundred; of the clean-limbed children by the green ditch, intent on making straw ropes; of the little snails crawling among the leaves of the plane-trees.

"I am an idiot!" she thought; yet with the thought came a sudden rush of joy at the idea of soon again seeing the millstone, the ferryman, the children, the green ditches, and the little snails.

And outside it rained and rained. Rome was drowned in mire and gloom. Regina raged like a furious child, wishing that upon Rome a rain of mud might fall for evermore, forcing all the inhabitants to emigrate and go away. Then, then she would return to her birth-place, to the wide horizons, the pure flowing river of her home; she would be born anew, she would be Regina once more, a bird alive and free!

Antonio went out and came in, and always found her wrapped in her homesick stupor, indifferent to everything about her.

"Let's take a walk, Regina!"

"Oh, no!"

"It would do you good."

"I am quite well."

"You can't be well. You are so dull. You don't care for me, that's what it is!"

"Oh, yes, I do! And if I don't, how can I help it?"

Sometimes, indeed, she included even Antonio in the collective hatred which she nourished against everything representative of the city. At those moments he seemed an inferior person, bloodless and half alive, one among all the other useless phantasms scarce visible in the rain, through which she alone in her egotism and her pride loomed gigantic.

But the warm and luminous spring came at last, and troops of men, women and flower-laden children spread themselves through the streets, in the depths of which Regina's short-sighted eyes fancied silvery lakes. In the fragrant evenings, bathed it would seem in golden dust, companies of women, fresh as flowers in their new spring frocks, came down by Via Nazionale, by the Corso, by Via del Tritone. Carriages passed heaped up with roses, red motor-cars flew by, bellowing like young monsters drunk with light, and even they were garlanded with flowers.

Regina walked and walked, on Antonio's arm, or sometimes alone; alone among the crowd, alone in the wave of all those joyous women, whose thoughtlessness she both envied and despised; alone among the smiling parties of sisters, companions, friends, by not one of whom, however, would she have been accompanied for anything in the world! One day, as she was going up Piazza Termini, she saw Arduina in the famous black silk dress with wrinkles on the shoulders. Regina would have avoided her sister-in-law, but did not set about it soon enough.

"I've been to your house," said Arduina; "why are you never at home? it's impossible to catch you. What are you always doing? Where have you been? Even our mother complains of you. Why don't you have a baby?"

"Why don't you? And where are you going?" said Regina, with sarcasm.

"I'm going to the Grand Hotel, to see a very rich English 'miss.' You can come too, if you like. She's worth it!"

Regina went, so anxious was she for something to do. The sunset tinged the Terme and the trees with orange-red. From the gardens came the cry of children and twitterings like the rustling of water from innumerable birds. Higher than all else, above the transparent vastness of the Piazza, above the fountain, which clear, luminous, pearly, seemed an immense Murano vase, towered the Grand Hotel, its gold-lettered name sparkling on its front like an epigraph on the façade of a temple.

There was a confusion of carriages before the columns of the entrance, of servants in livery, of gentlemen in tall hats, of fashionably attired ladies. A royal carriage with glossy, jet-black horses, was conspicuous among the others.

"It must be the Queen," said Arduina. "I'd like to wait!"

"Good-bye to you, then," returned her sister-in-law, "where there is one Regina there's no room for another!"

"Good heavens! what presumption!" laughed the other. "Well, then, come on."

Arduina led the way through the carriages and through the smart crowd which animated the hall; then humbly inquired of a waiter if Miss Harris were at home. The waiter bent his head and listened, but without looking at the two ladies.

"Miss Harris? I think she's at home. Take a seat," he replied absently, his eyes on the distance.

Regina remembered Madame Makuline's awe-inspiring servants; this man provoked not only awe, but a sort of terror. They went into the conservatory, and Arduina looked about with respectful admiration. The younger lady was silent, lost in the dream world she saw before her.

Apparently they had intruded into a fête. A strange light of ruddy gold streamed from the glass roof; among the palm-trees, treading on rich carpets, was a phantasmagoria of ladies dressed in silks and satins, with long rustling trains, their heads, ears, necks, brilliant with jewels. Bursts of laughter and the buzz of foreign voices mixed with the rattle of silver and the ring of china cups. It was a palace of crystal; a world of joy, of fairy creatures unacquainted with the realities of life, dwelling in the enchantment of groves of palms, rosy in the light of dream!

"The realities of life!" thought Regina, "but is not this the reality of life? It's the life of us mean little people which is the ugly dream!"

Just then a splendid creature, robed in yellow satin, who, as she passed, left behind her the effulgence of a comet, crossed the conservatory, and stopped to speak to two ladies in black.

"It's Miss Harris!" whispered Arduina; "she's coming!"

Regina had never imagined there could exist a being so beautiful and luminous. She watched her with dilated eyes, while from the far end of the conservatory breathed slow and voluptuous music overpowering the voices, the laughter, the rattle of the cups. Miss Harris drew nearer. Regina's eyes grew wild, she was overpowered by almost physical torture, by burning sadness. The rosy sunset light brooding over the palms as in an Oriental landscape, the warmth, the scent, the music, the dazzling aspect of the wealthy foreigner, all produced in her a kind of nostalgia, the atavic recollection of some wondrous world, where all life was pleasure and from which she had been exiled. Ah! at that moment she realised quite clearly what was the ill disease gnawing at her vitals! Ah! it was not the regret, the nostalgia for her early home, for her childish past; it was the death of the dreams which had filled that past, dreams which had perfumed the air she had breathed, the paths she had trod, the place where she had dwelt: dreams which were no fault of her own because born with her, transmitted in her blood, the blood of a once dominant race.

Miss Harris approached the corner where sat the two little bourgeois ladies, trailing her long shining train, her whole elegant slimness suggesting something feline. The two foreign ladies accompanied her talking in incomprehensible French. Arduina had to get up and smile very humbly before the Englishwoman recognised her, shook her hand, and spoke with condescending affability. Then Miss Harris sat down, her long tail wound round her legs like that of a reposing cat, and began to talk. She was tired and bored; she had been for a drive in a motor, had had a private audience of the Pope, and in half-an-hour was due at some great lady's reception. She did not look at Regina at all. After a minute she appeared to forget Arduina; a little later, the two foreign ladies also. She seemed talking for her own ears; in her beauty and splendour she was self-sufficient, like a star which scintillates for itself alone. From far and near everybody watched her.

Regina trembled with humiliation. In her modest short frock she felt herself disappearing; she was ashamed of her lace scarf; when Miss Harris offered her a cup of tea she repulsed it with an inimical gesture. She felt again that sense of puerile hatred which had assaulted her at the Costanzi on the evening of San Stefano.

As they left the hotel she said to her sister-in-law, "I can't think what you came for! Why are you so mean-spirited? Why did you listen so slavishly to that woman who hardly noticed your presence?"

"But weren't you listening quite humbly, too?"

"I? I'd like to have seized and throttled you all! Good God, what fools you women are!"

"My dear Regina," said the other, confounded, "I don't understand you!"

"I know you don't. What do you understand? Why do you go to such places? What have you to do with people like that? Don't you take in that they are the lords of the earth and we the slaves?"

"But we're the intelligent ones! We are the lords of the future! Don't you hear the clatter of our wooden shoes going up and of their satin slippers coming down?"

"We? What, you?" said Regina, contemptuously.

"Mind that carriage!" cried Arduina, pulling her back.

"You see? They drive over us! What's the good of intelligence? What is intelligence compared with a satin train?"

"Oh, I see! You're jealous of the satin train," said the other, laughing good-humouredly.

"Oh, you're a fool!" cried Regina, beside herself.

"Thanks!" said Arduina, unoffended.

Returned home, Regina threw herself on the ottoman in the ante-room, and remained there nearly an hour, beating the devil's tattoo with her foot in time to the ticking of the clock, which seemed the heart of the little room. Her own heart was overflown by a wave of humiliating distress. Ah! even the ridiculous Arduina had guessed what ailed her.

Daylight was dying in the adjacent room, and the dining-room, which looked out on the courtyard, was already overwhelmed in heavy shadow. The open door made a band of feeble light across the passage of the ante-room, while in its angles the penumbra continually darkened. Watching it, Regina reflected.

"The penumbra! What a horrid thing is the penumbra! Horrid? No, it's worse! It's noxious—soul-stifling! Better a thousand times the full shadow, complete darkness. In the shadow there is grief, desperation, rebellion—all that is life; but in this half-light it's all tedium, want, agony. It's better to be a beggar than a little bourgeois. The beggar can yell, can spit in the face of the prosperous. The little bourgeois is silent; he's a dead soul, he neither can nor ought to speak. What does he want? Hasn't he got the competence already, which some day every one is to have? His share is already given to him. If he asks for more he's called ambitious, egotistic, envious. Even the idiots call him so! Satin trains—green and shining halls like gardens spread out in the sun—motors like flying dragons! And the gardens, the beautiful gardens 'half seen through little gates,' country houses hidden among pines, like rosy women under green lace parasols! That should be the heritage of the future, of the to-morrow, promised us though not yet come. But no! all that is to disappear! The world is small and can't be divided into more than two parts, the day and the night, the light and the shade. But some day it's to be all penumbra! Every one's to be like us, every one's to live in a little dark Apartment with interminable stairs; all the streets are to be dusty, overrun by smelly trams, by troops of middle-class women who will go about on foot, dressed with sham elegance, wearing mock jewellery, carrying paper fans; joyous with a pitiable joy. The whole world will be tedium and destitution. The beggars won't have attained to the dreams which made them happy; the children of the rich will live on nostalgia, remembering the dream which was once reality to them. What will be the good of living then? Why am I living now?"

Then suddenly she remembered three figures, all exactly alike; three figures of an old man in a dreary room, who smiled and looked at each other with humorous sympathy, like three friends who understand without need of words. Work! Work! There's the secret of life!

The voice of the old Senator resounded still in Regina's soul. Since seeing him she had learned his story; his wife, a beautiful woman, brilliant and young, had killed herself, for what reason none could say. Work! Work! That was the secret! Perhaps the old Senator, panegyrising the working woman, had been thinking of his wife who had never worked.

Work! This was the secret of the world's future. All would eventually be happy because all would work.

"No! I don't represent the future as I have fondly fancied. I belong to the present—very much to the present! I am the parasite par excellence. I eat the labour of my husband, and I devour his moral life as well, because he loves me—loves me too much. I don't even make him happy. Why do I live? What's the good of me? What use am I? I'm good for nothing but to bear children; and, in point of fact, I don't want any children! I shouldn't know how to bring them up! Besides, what's the good of bringing children into the world? Wouldn't it be better I had never been born? What's the good of life?"

Surely her soul had become involved in the shadow darkening round her! Everything in her seemed dead. And then suddenly she thought of the luminous evenings on the shores of her great river at home; and saw again the wide horizons, the sky all violet and geranium colour, the infinite depths of the waters, the woods, the plain. She passed along the banks, the subdued splendour of all things reflected in her eyes, the water of rosy lilac, the heavens which flamed behind the wood, the warm grass which clothed the banks. Young willow-trees stretched out to drink the shining water, and they drank, they drank, consumed by an inextinguishable thirst. She passed on, and as the little willows drank, so she also drank in dreams from the burning river. What limitless horizons! What deeps of water! What tender distant voices carried by the waves, dying on the night! Was it a call out of a far world? Was it the crying of birds from the wood? Was it the woodpecker tapping on the poplar-tree?

Alas, no! it was her own foot beating the devil's tattoo; it was the clock ticking away indifferently in the penumbra of the little room; it was the caged canary moaning for nostalgia in the window opposite, above the lurid abyss of the courtyard.

Regina jumped to her feet; she was rebellious and desperate, suffocated by a sense of rage.

"I'll tell him the moment he comes in," she thought; "I'll cry, 'Why did you take me from there? Why have you brought me to this place? What can I do here? I must go away. I require air. I require light. You can't give me light, you can't give me air, and you never told me! How was I to know the world was like this? Away with all these gimcracks, all this lumber! I don't want it. I only want air! air! air! I am suffocating! I hate you all! I curse the city and the men who built it, and the fate which robs us even of the sight of heaven!'"

She went to her room, and automatically looked in the glass. By the last glimmer of day she saw her beautiful shining hair, her shining teeth, her shining nails, her fine skin which (softened by a light stratum of "Crema Venus") had almost the transparent delicacy of Miss Harris's. Her resentment grew. She went to her dressing-table, snatched up the bottle of "Crema" and dashed it against the wall. The bottle bounded off on the bed without breaking. She picked it up and replaced it on the table.

"No! no! no!" she sobbed, throwing herself on the pillow, "I will not bear it! I'll say to him, 'Do you see what I'm becoming? Do you see what you're making me? To-day a soiling of the face, to-morrow soiling of the soul! I will go away—I will go away—away! I will go back home. You are nothing to me!' Yes, I will tell him the moment he comes in!"

When he came in he found her seated quietly at the table, busy with the list of purchases for the following day. It was late, the lamps were lit, the table was laid, the servant was preparing supper. The whole of the little dwelling was pervaded by the contemptible yet merry hissing of the frying-pan and the smell of fried artichokes. From the window, open towards the garden, penetrated the contrasting fragrance of laurels and of grass.

Antonio came over to the table, bent down, and looked at the paper on which Regina was writing.

"I was here at six, and couldn't find you," he said.

"I was out."

"Listen. The Princess sent a note to the office asking me to go to her at half-past six; so I went."

"What did she want?"

"Well—she's beginning to be a nuisance, you know—she wants me to keep an eye on the man who speculates for her on the Stock Exchange."

Regina looked up and saw that Antonio's face was pale and damp.

"On the Stock Exchange? What does that mean?"

"What it means? I'll explain some time. But—well, really, that woman is becoming a plague!"

"But if she pays you?" said Regina; "and are you good at speculating?"

"I only wish I had the opportunity!" he exclaimed, tossing his hat to the sofa; "I wish I had a little of Madame's superfluous money! But this isn't a case of speculating. I'm to study the state of the money-market and audit the operations carried out by Cavaliere R—— on the Princess's account; take note of the details of daily transactions; get information from the brokers; in short, exercise rigorous control over all the fellow does."

"But," insisted Regina, "she'll pay you well, won't she?"

"Beg pardon?" he said, mimicking the Princess.

"How much will she pay you?" shouted Regina.

"A hundred lire or so. She's a skinflint, you know."

"Supper's on the table, Signora," announced the servant with her accustomed elegant decorum.

During the meal Antonio expounded the operations on 'Change, and other financial matters, talking with a certain enthusiasm. She appeared interested in what he told her; yet while she listened her eyes shone with the vague light of a thought very far away from what Antonio was saying. That thought was straying in a dark and empty distance; like a blind man feeling his way in a strange place, it sought and sought something to be a point of rest, a support, or at least a sign.

Suddenly, however, Regina's eyes sparkled and returned to the world about her.

"Why shouldn't you be Madame's confidential agent?" she said; "her secretary? I remember what I dreamed the first night I saw her at Arduina's—that she was dead and had left us her money!"

"It would be easy enough," said Antonio.

"To get the money?"

"No—the administration of her affairs. True, one would have to flatter and cringe, and take people in, especially as she employs two or three others in addition to the Cavaliere. One would have to intrigue against them all. I don't care for that sort of business."

"Nor I," said Regina, stiffening.

She rose and moved to the window which overlooked the garden. Antonio followed her. The night was warm and voluptuous. The scent of laurel rose ever sweeter and stronger; patches of yellow light were spread over the little garden paths like a carpet. Regina looked down, then raised her eyes towards the darkened blue of the heavens and sighed, stifling the sigh in a yawn.

"After all," said Antonio, pursuing his own line of thought, "are we not happy? What do we lack?"

"Nothing and everything!"

"What is lacking to us, I say?" repeated Antonio, questioning himself rather than his wife; "what do you mean by your 'everything'?"

"Do you see the Bear?" she asked, looking up, and pretending not to have heard this question. He looked also.

"No, I don't——"

"Then we do lack something! We can't see the stars."

"What do you want with the stars? Leave them where they are, for they're quite useless! If there were anything you really wanted you wouldn't be crying for the stars."

"Then you think I am lacking in——?" She touched her forehead.

"So it seems!"

"Perhaps the deficiency is in you," she said quickly.

"Now you're insulting me, and I'll take you and pitch you out of the window!" he jested, seizing her waist. "If my wits are deficient, it's because you're making me lose them with your folly!"

CHAPTER VII

She was not guilty of folly in action, but certainly her words became stranger and stranger. Antonio sometimes found them amusing; more often they distressed him. Though seemingly calm, Regina could not hide that she was under the dominion of a fixed idea. What was she thinking about? Even when he held her in his arms, wrapped in his tenderest embrace, Antonio felt her far, immeasurably far, away from him. In the brilliant yet drowsy spring mornings while the young pair still lay in the big white bed, Antonio would repeat his questions to himself: "What do we lack! Are we not happy?"

Through the half-shut windows soft light stole in and gilded the walls. Infinite beatitude seemed to reign in the room veiled by that mist of gold, fragrant with scent, lulled to a repose unshaken by the noises of the distant world. In the profound sweetness of the nuptial chamber Regina felt herself at moments conquered by that somnolent beatitude. Antonio's searching question had its echo in her soul also. What was it that they lacked? They were both of them young and strong; Antonio loved her ardently, blindly. He lived in her. And he was so handsome! His soft hands, his passionate eyes, had a magic which often succeeded in intoxicating her. And yet in those delicious mornings, at the moments when she seemed happiest, while Antonio caressed her hair, pulling it down and studying it like some precious thing, her face would suddenly cloud, and she would re-commence her extravagant speeches.

"What are we doing with our life?"

Antonio was not alarmed.

"What are we doing? We are living; we love, we work, eat, sleep, take our walks, and when we can we go to the play!"

"But that isn't living! Or, at least, it's a useless life, and I'm sick of it!"

"Then what do you want to be doing?"

"I don't know. I'd like to fly! I don't mean sentimentally, I mean really. To fly out of the window, in at the window! I'd like to invent the way!"

"I've thought of it myself sometimes."

"You know nothing about it!" she said, rather piqued. "No, no! I want to do something you couldn't understand one bit; which, for that matter, I don't understand myself!"

"That's very fine!"

"It's like thirsting for an unfindable drink with a thirst nothing else can assuage. If you had once felt it——"

"Oh, yes, I have felt it."

"No, you can't have felt it! You know nothing about it."

"You must explain more clearly."

"Oh, never mind! You don't understand, and that's enough. Let my hair alone, please."

"I say, what a lot of split hairs you have! You ought to have them cut, I was telling you——"

"What do I care about hair? It's a perfectly useless thing."

"Well," he said, after pretending to seek and to find a happy thought, "why don't you become a tram-conductor?" and he imitated the rumble of the tram and the gestures of the conductor.

"I won't demean myself by a reply," she said, and moved away from him; but presently repented and said—

"Do the little bird!"

"I don't know how to do the little bird!"

"Yes, you do. Go on, like a dear!"

"You're making a fool of me. I understand that much."

"You don't understand a bit! You do the little bird so well that I like to see you!"

He drew in his lips, puffed them out, opened and shut them like the beak of a callow bird. She laughed, and he laughed for the pleasure of seeing her laugh, then said—

"What babes we are! If they put that on the stage—good Lord, think of the hisses!"

"Oh, the stage! That's false if you like! And the novel. If you wrote a novel in which life was shown as it really is, every one would cry 'How unnatural!' I do wish I could write!—could describe life as I understand it, as it truly is, with its great littlenesses and its mean greatness! I'd write a book or a play which would astonish Europe!"

He looked at her, pretending to be so overwhelmed that he had no words, and again she felt irritated.

"You don't understand anything! You laugh at me! Yet if I could——"

In spite of himself Antonio became serious.

"Well, why can't you?"

"Because first I should have to——No, I won't tell you. You can't understand! Besides, I can't write; I don't know how to express myself. My thoughts are fine, but I haven't the words. That's the way with so many! What do you suppose great men, the so-called great thinkers, are? Fortunate folk who know how to express themselves! Nietzsche, for instance. Don't you think I and a hundred others have all Nietzsche's ideas, without ever having read them? Only he knew how to set them down, and we don't. I say Nietzsche, but I might just as well say the author of the Imitation."

"You should have married an author," said Antonio, secretly jealous of the man whom Regina had perhaps dreamed of but never met.

Again she felt vexed. "It's quite useless! You don't understand me. I can't get on with authors a bit. Let me alone now. I told you not to fiddle with my hair!"

"Stop! Don't go away! Let's talk more of your great thoughts. You think me an idiot. But listen, I want to say one thing; don't laugh. You want to do something wonderful. Well, an American author—Emerson, I think—said to his wife, that the greatest miracle a woman could perform is——"

"Oh, I know! To have a baby!" she replied, with a forced smile. "But you see, I think humanity useless, life not worth living. Still, I don't commit suicide, so I suppose I do accept life. I admit that a son would be a fine piece of work. I'd enter on it with enthusiasm, with pride, if I were sure my son wouldn't turn out just a little bourgeois like us!"

"He might make a fortune and be a useful member of society."

"Nonsense! Dreams of a little bourgeois!" she said bitterly; "he would be just as unhappy as we are!"

"But I am happy!" protested Antonio.

"If you are happy it shows you don't understand anything about it, and so you are doubly unhappy," she said vehemently, her eyes darkening disquietingly.

"My dear, you're growing as crazy as your great writers."

"There you are! the little bourgeois who doesn't know what he is talking about!"

And so they went on, till Antonio looked at the clock and jumped up with a start.

"It's past the time! My love, if you had to go down to the office every day I assure you these notions would never come into your head."

He hurried to wash; and still busy with the towel, damp and fresh with the cold water, he came back to kiss her.

"You're as pink as a strawberry ice!" she said admiringly, and so they made peace.

With the coming on of the hot days Regina's nostalgia, nervousness and melancholy increased. At night she tossed and turned, and sometimes groaned softly. At last she confessed to Antonio that her heart troubled her.

"Palpitations for hours at a time till I can hardly breathe! It feels as if my chest would burst and let my heart escape. It must be the stairs. I never used to have palpitations!"

Much alarmed, her husband wished to take her to a specialist, but this she opposed.

"It will go off the moment I get away," she said.

They decided she must go at the end of June. Antonio would take his holiday in August and join her, remaining at her mother's for a fortnight.

"After that, if we've any money left, we'll spend a few days at Viareggio."

Regina said neither yea nor nay. After the first seven months the young couple had only 200 lire in hand. This was barely enough for the journey; Antonio, however, hoped to put by a little while his wife was away.

The days passed on; Rome was becoming depopulated, though the first brief spell of heat had been followed by renewal of incessant and tiresome rain.

Antonio counted the days.

"Another ten—another eight—and you'll be gone. What's to become of me all alone for a month?"

Such expressions irritated her. She wished neither to speak nor to think of her departure.

"Alone? Why need you be alone? You've got your mother and your brothers!"

"A wife is more than brothers, more than a mother."

"But if I were to die? Suppose I fell ill and the doctors prescribed a long stay in my home?"

"That's impossible."

"You talk like a child. Why is it impossible? It's very possible indeed!" she said, still vexed; "whatever I say you think it nonsense—a thing which can't happen. Why can't it happen? It's enough to mention some things——"

"But, Regina," he exclaimed, astonished, "what makes you so cross?"