TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

In the plain text version words in Italics are denoted by _underscores_.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

The Table of Contents was added by the transcriber.

FANTASY

Heinemann’s International Library.

Edited by EDMUND GOSSE.

Crown 8vo, in paper covers, 2s. 6d., or cloth limp, 3s. 6d.

IN GOD’S WAY.

By BJÖRNSTJERNE BJÖRNSON.

Translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Carmichael.

PIERRE AND JEAN.

By GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

Translated from the French by Clara Bell.

THE CHIEF JUSTICE.

By KARL EMIL FRANZOS.

Translated from the German by Miles Corbet.

WORK WHILE YE HAVE THE LIGHT.

By COUNT LYON TOLSTOI.

Translated from the Russian by E. J. Dillon, Ph.D.

FANTASY.

By MATILDE SERAO.

Translated from the Italian by Henry Harland and Paul Sylvester.

FROTH.

By ARMANDO PALACIO VALDÉS.

Translated from the Spanish by Clara Bell.

Other Volumes will be announced later.

Each Volume will contain a Specially Written Introduction by the Editor.

London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford St., W.C.

FANTASY

A NOVEL
BY

MATILDE SERAO

TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN
BY

HENRY HARLAND & PAUL SYLVESTER

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1891
[All rights reserved]

INTRODUCTION.

The most prominent imaginative writer of the latest generation in Italy is a woman. What little is known of the private life of Matilde Serao adds, as forcibly as what may be divined from the tenour and material of her books, to the impression that every student of literary history must have formed of the difficulties which hem in the intellectual development of an ambitious girl. Without unusual neglect, unusual misfortune, it seems impossible for a woman to arrive at that experience which is essential to the production of work which shall be able to compete with the work of the best men. It is known that the elements of hardship and enforced adventure have not been absent from the career of the distinguished Italian novelist. Madame Serao has learned in the fierce school of privation what she teaches to us with so much beauty and passion in her stories.

Matilde Serao was born on the 17th of March 1856, in the little town of Patras, on the western coast of Greece. Her father was a Neapolitan political exile, her mother a Greek princess, the last survivor of an ancient noble family. I know not under what circumstances she came to the Italian home of her father, but it was probably in 1861 or soon afterwards that the unification of Italy permitted his return. At an early age, however, she seems to have been left without resources. She received a rough education at the Scuola Normale in Naples, and she obtained a small clerkship in the telegraph office at Rome. Literature, however, was the profession she designed to excel in, and she showed herself a realist at once. Her earliest story, if I do not mistake, was that minute picture of the vicissitudes of a post-office which is named Telegrapi dello Stato (“State Telegraphs”). She worked with extreme energy, she taught herself shorthand, and she presently quitted the post-office to become a reporter and a journalist. To give herself full scope in this new employment, she, as I have been assured, cut short her curly crop of hair, and adopted on occasion male costume. She soon gained a great proficiency in reporting, and advanced to the writing of short sketches and stories for the newspapers. The power and originality of these attempts were acknowledged, and the name of Matilde Serao gradually became one of those which irresistibly attracted public attention. The writer of these lines may be permitted to record the impression which more than ten years ago was made upon him by reading a Neapolitan sketch, signed by that then wholly obscure name, in a chance number of the Roman Fanfulla.

The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879. In 1880 Matilde Serao became suddenly famous by the publication of the charming story Fantasia (“Fantasy”), which is now first presented to an English public. It was followed by a much weaker study of Neapolitan life, Cuore Infermo (“A Heart Diseased”). In 1881 she published “The Life and Adventures of Riccardo Joanna,” to which she added a continuation in 1885. It is not possible to enumerate all Madame Serao’s successive publications, but the powerful romance La Conquista di Roma (“The Conquest of Rome”), 1882, must not be omitted. This is a very careful and highly finished study of bureaucratic ambition, admirably characterised. Since then she has written in rapid succession several volumes of collected short stories, dealing with the oddities of Neapolitan life, and a curious novel, “The Virtue of Cecchina,” 1884. Her latest romances, most of them short, have been Terno Secco (“A Dry Third”), a very charming episode of Italian life, illustrating the frenzied interest taken in the public lotteries, 1887; Addio Amore (“Good-bye Love”), 1887; La Granda Fiamma, 1889; and Sogno di una notte d’estate (“A Summer Night’s Dream”), 1890.

The naturalism of Matilde Serao deserves to be distinguished from that of the French contemporaries with whom she is commonly classed. She has a finer passion, more of the true ardour of the South, than Zola or Maupassant, but her temperament is distinctly related to that of Daudet. She is an idealist working in the school of realism; she climbs, on scaffolding of minute prosaic observation, to heights which are emotional and often lyrical. But her most obvious merit is the acuteness with which she has learned to collect and arrange in artistic form the elements of the town life of Southern Italy. She still retains in her nature something of the newspaper reporter’s quicksilver, but it is sublimated by the genius of a poet.

EDMUND GOSSE.

CONTENTS

FANTASY.

PART I.

I.

“The discipline for to-morrow is this....” said the preacher, reading from a small card. “You will sacrifice to the Virgin Mary all the sentiments of rancour that you cherish in your hearts, and you will kiss the schoolfellow, the teacher, or the servant whom you think you hate.”

In the twilight of the chapel there was a slight stir among the grown-up girls and teachers; the little ones remained quiet; some of them were asleep, others yawned behind tiny hands, and their small round faces twitched with weariness. The sermon had lasted an hour; and the poor children had not understood a word of it. They were longing for supper and bed. The preacher had now descended from the pulpit, and Cherubina Friscia, the teacher who acted as sacristan, was lighting the candles with a taper. By degrees the chapel became flooded with light. The cheeks of the dazed, sleepy little girls flushed pink under it; their elders stood immovable, with blinking startled eyes, and weary indifferent faces. Some prayed, with bowed heads, while the candle-light played with the thick plaits of their hair, coiled close to the neck, and with certain blonde curls that no comb could restrain. Then, when the whole chapel was lighted for the recital of the Rosary, the group of girl scholars in white muslin frocks, with black aprons and the various coloured ribbons by which the classes were distinguished, assumed a gay aspect, despite the general weariness. A deep sigh escaped Lucia Altimare.

“What ails thee?” queried Caterina Spaccapietra, under her breath.

“I suffer, I suffer,” murmured the other dreamily. “This preacher saddens me. He does not understand, he does not feel, Our Lady.” And the black pupils of her eyes, set in bluish white, dilated as in a vision. Caterina did not reply. The Directress intoned the Rosary in a solemn voice, with a strong Tuscan accent. She read the Mystery alone. Then all the voices in chorus, shrill and low, accompanied her in the Gloria Patri, and in the Pater.

She repeated the Ave Maria as far as the Frutto del tuo ventre; the teachers and pupils taking up the words in unison. The chapel filled with music, the elder pupils singing with a fulness of voice that sounded like the outpouring of their souls: but the little ones made a game of it. While the Directress, standing alone, repeated the verses, they counted the time, so that they might all break in at the end with a burst, and nudging each other, tittered under their breath. Some of them would lean over the backs of the chairs, assuming a devout collectedness, but in reality pulling out the hair of the playfellows in front of them. Some played with their rosaries under their pinafores, with an audible click of the beads. The vigilant eye of the Directress watched over the apparently exemplary elder girls; she saw that Carolina Pentasuglia wore a carnation at the button-hole of her bodice, though no carnations grew in the College gardens; that a little square of paper was perceptible in the bosom of Ginevra Avigliana, beneath the muslin of her gown; that Artemisia Minichini, with the short hair and firm chin, had as usual crossed one leg over the other, in contempt of religion; she saw and noted it all. Lucia Altimare sat leaning forward, with wide open eyes fixed upon a candle, her mouth drawn slightly on one side; from time to time a nervous shock thrilled her. Close to her, Caterina Spaccapietra said her prayers in all tranquillity, her eyes void of sight, as was her face of motion and expression. The Directress said the words of the Ave Maria without thinking of their meaning, absent, preoccupied, getting through her prayers as rapidly as possible.

The restlessness of the little ones increased. They twisted about, and lightly raised themselves on their chairs, whispering to each other, and fidgeting with their rosaries. Virginia Friozzi had a live cricket in her pocket, with a fine silken thread tied round its claw; at first she had covered it with her hand to prevent its moving, then she had allowed it to peep out of the opening of her pocket, then she had taken it out and hidden it under her apron; at last she could not resist showing it to the neighbours on her right and on her left. The news spread, the children became agitated, restraining their laughter with difficulty, and no longer giving the responses in time. Suddenly the cricket dragged at the thread, and hopped off, limping, into the midst of the passage which divided the two rows of chairs. There was a burst of laughter.

“Friozzi will not appear in the parlour to-morrow,” said the Directress severely.

The child turned pale at the harshness of a punishment which would prevent her from seeing her mother.

Cherubina Friscia, the sacristan-teacher, of cadaverous complexion, and worn anæmic face, descended the altar steps, and confiscated the cricket. There was a moment of silence, and then they heard the gasping voice of Lucia Altimare murmuring, “Mary ... Mary ... divine Mary!”

“Pray silently, Altimare,” gently suggested the Directress.

The Rosary began again, this time without interruption. All knelt down, with a great noise of moving chairs, and the Latin words were recited, almost chanted, in chorus. Caterina Spaccapietra rested her head against the back of the chair in front of her. Lucia Altimare had thrown herself down, shuddering, with her head on the straw seat, and arms hanging slack at her side.

“The blood will go to your head, Lucia,” whispered her friend.

“Leave me alone,” said Lucia.

The pupils rose from their knees. One of them, accompanied by a teacher, had mounted the steps leading to the little organ. The teacher played a simple devotional prelude for the Litany to the Virgin. A pure fresh voice, of brilliant quality, rang out, and permeated the chapel, waking its sleeping echoes; a young yearning voice, crying with the ardour of an invocation, “Sancta Maria...!” And from below, all the pupils responded in the minor key, “Ora pro nobis!” The singer stood in the light on the platform of the organ, her face turned towards the altar. She was Giovanna Casacalenda, a tall girl whose white raiment did not conceal her fine proportions; a girl with a massive head, upon which her dark hair was piled heavily, and with eyes so black that they appeared as if painted. She stood there alone, isolated, infusing all the passion of her youth into her full mellow voice, delighting in the pleasure of singing as if she had freed herself, and lived in her song. The pupils turned to look at her, with the joy in music which is inherent in childhood. When the voice of Giovanna came down to them, the chorus rising from below answered, “Ora pro nobis!” She felt her triumph. With head erect, her wondrous black eyes swimming in a humid light, her right hand resting lightly on the wooden balustrade, her white throat throbbing as if for love, she intoned the medium notes, ran up to the highest ones, and came down gently to the lower, giving full expression to her song: “Regina angelorum...!” One moment of silence, in which to enjoy the last notes; then from below, in enthusiastic answer, came childish and youthful voices: “Ora pro nobis!” The singer looked fixedly at the altar, but she seemed to see or hear something beyond it—a vision, or music inaudible to the others. Every now and then a breath passed through her song, lending it warmth, making it passionate; every now and then the voice thinned itself to a golden thread, that sounded like the sweet trill of a bird, while occasionally it sank to a murmur, with a delicious hesitation.

“Giovanna sees heaven,” said Ginevra Avigliana to Artemisia Minichini.

“Or the stage,” rejoined the other, sceptically.

Still, when Giovanna came to the poetic images by which the Virgin is designated—Gate of Heaven, Vase of Election, Tower of David—the girls’ faces flushed in the ecstasy of that wondrous music: only Caterina Spaccapietra, who was absorbed, did not join in, and Lucia Altimare, who wept silently. The tears coursed down her thin cheeks. They rained upon her bosom and her hands; they melted away on her apron; and she did not dry them. Caterina quietly passed her handkerchief to her. But she took no notice of it. The preacher, Father Capece, went up the altar steps for the benediction. The Litany ended with the Agnus Dei. The voice of the singer seemed overpowered by sheer fatigue. Once more all the pupils knelt, and the priest prayed. Giovanna, kneeling at the organ, breathed heavily. After five minutes of silent prayer, the organ pealed out again slowly over the bowed heads, and a thrilling resonant voice seemed to rise from mid-air towards heaven, lending its splendour to the Sacrament in the Tantum Ergo. Giovanna was no longer tired; indeed her song grew in power, triumphant and full of life, with an ebb and flow that were almost voluptuous. The throb of its passion passed over the youthful heads below, and a mystic sensation caused their hearts to flutter. In the intensity of their prayer, in the approach of the benediction, they realised the solemnity of the moment. It dominated and terrified them, until it was followed by a painful and exquisite prostration. Then all was silent. A bell rang three peals; for an instant Artemisia Minichini dared to raise her eyes; she alone; looking at the inert forms upon the chairs, looking boldly at the altar; after which, overcome by childish fear, she dropped them again.

The holy Sacrament, in its sphere of burnished gold, raised high in the priest’s hands, shed its blessing on those assembled in the church.

“I am dying,” gasped Lucia Altimare.

At the door of the chapel, in the long gas-lighted corridor, the teachers were waiting to muster the classes, and lead them to the refectory. The faces were still agitated, but the little ones hopped and skipped about, and prattled together, and pinched each other, in all the joyous exuberance of childhood released from durance vile. As their limbs unstiffened, they jostled each other, laughing the while. The teachers, running after some of them, scolding others, half threatening, half coaxing, tried to range them in a file of two and two. They began with the little ones, then came the elder children, and after them the grown-up girls. The corridor rang with voices, calling:

“The Blues, where are the Blues?” “Here they are, all of them.” “Friozzi is missing.” “Where is Friozzi of the Blues?” “Here!” “In line, and to the left, if you please.” “The Greens, in line the Greens, or no fruit for dinner to-morrow.” “Quick, the refectory bell has rung twice already.” “Federici of the Reds, walk straight!” “Young ladies of the White-and-Greens, the bell is ringing for the third time.” “Are the Tricolors all here?” “All.” “Casacalenda is missing.” “She is coming; she is still at the organ.” “Altimare is missing.” “Where is Altimare?”

“She was here just now, she must have disappeared in the bustle; shall I look for her?”

“Look; and come to the refectory with her.”

Then the corridor emptied, and the refectory filled with light and merriment. With measured, almost rhythmic step, Caterina went to and fro in the deserted passages, seeking her friend Altimare. She descended to the ground-floor, called her twice from the garden; no answer. Then she mounted the stairs again, and entered the dormitory. The white beds formed a line under the crude gaslight; Lucia was not there. A shade of anxiety began to dawn on Caterina’s rosy face. She passed by the chapel twice, without going in. But the third time, finding the door ajar, she made up her mind to enter. It was dark inside. A lamp burning before the Madonna, scarcely relieved the gloom. She passed on, half intimidated, despite her well-balanced nerves, for she was alone in the darkness, in church.

Along one of the altar steps, stretched out on the crimson velvet carpet, a white form was lying, with open arms and pallid face, a spectral figure. It was Lucia Altimare, who had fainted.

II.

The fan of Artemisia Minichini, made of a large sheet of manuscript, waved noisily to and fro.

“Minichini, you disturb the Professor,” said Friscia, the assistant teacher, without raising her eyes from her crochet work.

“Friscia, you don’t feel the heat?” returned Minichini, insolently.

“No.”

“You are lucky to be so insensible.”

In the class room, where the Tricolor young ladies were taking their lesson in Italian history, it was very hot. There were two windows opening upon the garden, a door leading to the corridor, three rows of benches, and twenty-four pupils. On a high raised step stood the table and armchair of the Professor. The fans waved hither and thither, some vivaciously, some languidly. Here and there a head bent over its book as if weighted with drowsiness. Ginevra Avigliana stared at the Professor, nodding as if in approval, though her face expressed entire absence of mind. Minichini had put down her fan, opened her pince-nez, and fixed it impudently upon the Professor’s face. With her nose tip-tilted, and a truant lock of hair curling on her forehead, she laughed her silent laugh that so irritated the teachers. The Professor explained the lesson in a low voice. He was small, spare, and pitiable. He might have been about two-and-thirty, but his emaciated face, whose dark colouring had yellowed with the pallor of some long illness, proclaimed him a convalescent. A big scholarly head surmounting the body of a dwarf, a wild thick mane in which some white hairs were already visible, proud yet shy eyes, a small dirty black beard, thinly planted towards the thin cheeks, completed his sad and pensive ugliness.

He spoke without gesture, his eyes downcast; occasionally his right hand moving so slightly. Its shadow on the wall seemed to belong to a skeleton, it was so thin and crooked. He proceeded slowly, picking his words. These girls intimidated him, some because of their intelligence, others because of their impertinence, others simply because of their sex. His scholastic austerity was perturbed by their shining eyes, by their graceful and youthful forms; their white garments formed a kind of mirage before his eyes. A pungent scent diffused itself throughout the class, although perfumes were prohibited; whence came it? And, at the end of the third bench, Giovanna Casacalenda, who paid not the slightest attention, sat, with half-closed eyes, furiously nibbling a rose. Here in front, Lucia Altimare, with hair falling loose about her neck, one arm hanging carelessly over the bench, resting her brow against her hand and hiding her eyes, looked at the Professor through her fingers; every now and then she pressed her handkerchief to her too crimson lips, as if to mitigate their feverishness. The Professor felt upon him the gaze that filtered through her fingers; while, without looking at her, he could see Giovanna Casacalenda tearing the rose to pieces with her little teeth. He remained apparently imperturbable, still discoursing of Carmagnola and the conspiracy of Fiesco, addressing himself to the tranquil face of Caterina Spaccapietra, who pencilled rapid notes in her copy-book.

“What are you writing, Pentasuglia?” asked the teacher Friscia, who had been observing the latter for some time.

“Nothing,” replied Pentasuglia, reddening.

“Give me that scrap of paper.”

“What for? There is nothing on it.”

“Give me that scrap of paper.”

“It is not a scrap of paper,” said Minichini, audaciously, taking hold of it as if to hand it to her. “It is one, two, three, four, five, twelve useless fragments....”

To save her schoolfellow, she had torn it to shreds. There was silence in the class: they trembled for Minichini. The teacher bent her head, tightened her thin lips, and picked up her crochet again as if nothing had happened. The Professor appeared to take no notice of the incident, as he looked through his papers, but his mind must have been inwardly disturbed. A flush of youthful curiosity made him wonder what those girls were thinking of—what they scribbled in their little notes—for whom their smiles were meant, as they looked at the plaster bust of the King—what they thought when they drew the tricolor scarves round their waists. But the ghastly face and false grey eyes of Cherubina Friscia, the governess, frightened him.

“Avigliana, say the lesson.”

The girl rose and began rapidly to speak of the Viscontis, like a well-trained parrot. When asked to give a few historical comments, she made no reply; she had not understood her own words.

“Minichini, say the lesson.”

“Professor, I don’t know it.”

“And why?”

“Yesterday was Sunday, and we went out, so I could not study.”

The Professor made a note in the register; the young lady shrugged her shoulders.

“Casacalenda?”

This one made no answer. She was gazing with intense earnestness at her white hands, hands that looked as if they were modelled in wax.

“Casacalenda, will you say the lesson?”

Opening her great eyes as if she were dazed, she began, stumbling at every word, puzzled, making one mistake upon another: the Professor prompted, and she repeated, with the winning air of a strong, beautiful, young animal: she neither knew nor understood, nor was ashamed, maintaining her sculpturesque placidity, moistening her savage Diana-like lips, contemplating her pink nails. The Professor bent his head in displeasure, not daring to scold that splendid stupid creature, whose voice had such enchanting modulations.

He made two or three other attempts, but the class, owing to the preceding holiday, had not studied. This was the explanation of the flowers, the perfumes, and the little notes: the twelve hours’ liberty had upset the girls. Their eyes were full of visions, they had seen the world, yesterday. He drew himself together, perplexed; a sense of mingled shame and respect kept every mouth closed. How he loved that science of history! His critical acumen measured its widest horizons; his was a vast ideal, and he suffered in having to offer crumbs of it to those pretty, aristocratic, indolent girls, who would have none of it. Still young, he had grown old and grey in arduous study; and now, behold—gay and careless youth, choosing rather to live than to know, rose in defiance against him. Bitterness welled up to his lips and went out towards those creatures, thrilling with life, and contemptuous of his ideal: bitterness, in that he could not, like them, be beautiful and vigorous, and revel in heedlessness, and be beloved. Anguish rushed through his veins, from his heart, and poisoned his brain, that he should have to humiliate his knowledge before those frivolous, scarcely human girls. But the gathering storm was held back; and nothing of it was perceptible save a slight flush on his meagre cheekbones.

“Since none of you have studied,” he said slowly, in a low voice, “none of you can have done the composition.”

“Altimare and I have done it,” answered Caterina Spaccapietra. “We did not go home,” she added apologetically, to avoid offending her friends.

“Then you read, Spaccapietra; the subject is, I think, Beatrice di Tenda.”

“Yes; Beatrice di Tenda.”

Spaccapietra stood up and read, in her pure, slow voice:—

“Ambition had ever been the ruling passion of the Viscontis of Milan, who shrank from naught that could minister to the maintenance of their sovereign power. Filippo Maria, son of Gian Galeazzo, who had succeeded his brother, Gian Galeazzo, differed in no way from his predecessors. For the love of gain, this Prince espoused Beatrice di Tenda, the widow of a Condottiere, a soldier of fortune, a virtuous and accomplished woman of mature age. She brought her husband in dowry the dominions of Tortona, Novara, Vercelli and Alessandria; but he tired of her as soon as he had satisfied his thirst for wealth. He caused her to be accused of unfaithfulness to her wifely duty, with a certain Michele Orombello, a simple squire. Whether the accusation was false, or made in good faith, whether the witnesses were to be relied upon or not, Beatrice di Tenda was declared guilty, and, with Michele Orombello, mounted the scaffold in the year 1418, which was the forty-eighth of her life, she having been born in 1370.”

Caterina had folded up her paper, and the Professor was still waiting; two minutes elapsed.

“Is there no more?”

“No.”

“Really, is that all?”

“All.”

“It is a very meagre composition, Spaccapietra. It is but the bare narrative of the historical fact, as it stands in the text-book. Does not the hapless fate of Beatrice inspire you with any sympathy?”

“I don’t know....” murmured the young scholar, pale with emotion.

“Yet you are a woman.... It so happens that I had chosen a theme which suggests the manifestation of a noble impulse; say of pity, or contempt for the false accusation. But like this, the story turns to mere chronology. The composition is too meagre. You have no imagination, Spaccapietra.”

“Yes, Professor,” replied the young girl, submissively, as she took her seat again, while tears welled to her eyes.

“Let us hear Altimare.”

Lucia appeared to start out of a lethargy. She sought for some time among her papers, with an ever increasing expression of weariness. Then, in a weak inaudible voice, she began to read, slowly, dragging the syllables, as if overpowered by an invincible lassitude....

“Louder, Altimare.”

“I cannot, Professor.”

And she looked at him with such melancholy eyes that he repented of having made the remark. Again, she touched her parched lips with her handkerchief and continued:—

“... through the evil lust of power. He was Filippo Maria Visconti, of a noble presence, with the eye of a hawk, of powerful build, and ever foremost in the saddle. The maidens who watched him pass, clad in armour under the velvet coat, on the breastpiece of which was broidered the wily, fascinating serpent, the crest of the Lords of Visconti, sighed as they exclaimed: 'How handsome he is!’ But under this attractive exterior, as is ever the case in this melancholy world, where appearance is but part of mise-en-scène of life, he hid a depraved soul. Oh! gentle, loving women, trust not him who flutters round you with courteous manner, and words that charm, and protestations of exquisite sentiment; he deceives you. All is vanity, all is corruption, all is ashes! None learnt this lesson better than the hapless Beatrice di Tenda, whose tale I am about to tell you. This youthful widow was of unblemished character and matchless beauty; fair was her hair of spun gold, soft were her eyes of a blue worthy to reflect the firmament; her skin was as dazzling white as the petals of a lily. Her first marriage with Facino Cane could not have been a happy one. He, a soldier of fortune, fierce, blood-thirsty, trained to the arms, the wine, and the rough speech of martial camps, could scarcely have been a man after Beatrice’s heart. Woe to those marriages, in which one consort neither understands nor appreciates the mind of the other. Woe to those marriages in which the man ignores the mystic poetry, the mysterious sentiments of the feminine heart! These be the unblessed unions, with which alas! our corrupt and suffering modern society teems. Facino Cane died. His widow shed bitter tears over him, but her virgin heart beat quicker when she first met the valorous yet malefic Filippo Maria Visconti. Her face turned as pale as Luna’s when she drags her weary way along the starred empyrean. And she loved him with all the ardour of her stored-up youth, with the chastity of a pious soul loving the Creator in the created, blending divine with human love. Beatrice, pure and beautiful, wedded Filippo Maria for love: Filippo Maria, black soul that he was, wedded Beatrice for greed of money. For a short time the august pair were happy on their ducal throne. But the hymeneal roses were worm-eaten: in the dewy grass lay hidden the perfidious serpent, perfidious emblem of the most perfidious Visconti. No sooner had he obtained possession of the riches of Beatrice, than Filippo Maria wearied of her, as might be expected of a man of so hard a heart and of such depraved manners. He had, besides, formed an infamous connection with a certain Agnese del Maino, one of the most vicious of women; and more than ever he was possessed of the desire to rid himself of his wife. There lived at the Court of the Visconti, a simple squire named Michele Orombello, a young troubadour, a poet, who had dared to raise his eyes to his august mistress. But the noble woman did not reciprocate his passion, although the faithlessness and treachery of Filippo Maria caused her the greatest unhappiness, and almost justified reprisals; she was simply courteous to her unfortunate adorer. When Filippo Maria saw how matters stood, he at once threw Michele Orombello and his chaste consort into prison, accusing them of treason. Torture was applied to Beatrice, who bore it bravely and maintained her innocence. Michele Orombello, being younger and perchance weaker to combat pain, or because he was treacherously advised that he might thereby save Beatrice, made a false confession. The judges, vile slaves of Filippo Maria, and tremblingly submissive to his will, condemned that most ill-starred of women and her miserable lover to die on the scaffold. The saintly woman ascended it with resignation; embracing the crucifix whereon the Redeemer agonised and died for our sins. Then, perceiving the young squire, who, weeping desperately, went with her to death, she cried: 'I forgive thee, Michele Orombello;’ and he made answer: 'I proclaim thee the purest of wives!’ But it availed not; the Prince’s will must needs be carried out; the axe struck off the squire’s dark head. Beatrice cried: 'Gesù Maria;’ and the axe felled the blonde head too. A pitiable spectacle and full of horror for those assembled! Yet none dared to proclaim the infamy of the mighty Filippo Maria Visconti. Thus it ever is in life, virtue is oppressed, and vice triumphs. Only before the Eternal Judge is justice, only before that God of mercy who has said: 'I am the resurrection and the life.’”

A profound silence ensued. The pupils were embarrassed, and looked furtively at each other. Caterina gazed at Lucia with frightened astonished eyes. Lucia remained standing, pale, panting, contemptuous, with twitching lips. The Professor, deep in thought, held his peace.

“The composition is very long, Altimare,” he said at last. “You have too much imagination.”

Then silence once more—and the dry malicious hissing voice of Cherubina Friscia, “Give me that composition, Altimare.”

All trembled, seized by an unknown terror.

III.

They, the Tricolors, the tallest, the handsomest, the proudest girls, had the privilege of sitting together in groups, during the hours set aside for needlework, in a corner of the long work-room. The other pupils sat on benches, behind frames, in rows, separated from each other, in enforced silence. The Tricolors, whose deft fingers produced the prettiest and most costly work, for the annual exhibition, enjoyed a certain freedom. So, in a narrow circle, with their backs turned to the others, they chatted in whispers. Whenever the work-mistress approached them, they turned the conversation, and asking for her advice, would hold up their work for her approval. It was their best hour, almost free of surveillance, delivered from the tyranny of Cherubina Friscia’s boiled fish eyes, with liberty to talk of whatever they chose. The work dragged on; but word and thought flew.

Giovanna Casacalenda—who was embroidering an altar-cover on finest cambric, a cloudy, diaphanous piece of work, a very marvel—had a way of rounding her arms, with certain graceful and studied movements of the fingers, as they drew the thread. Ginevra Avigliana was absorbed in a piece of lace made with bobbins, like Venetian point, to be presented to the Directress at the end of the term; every palma (a measure of six inches) cost five francs in silk. Carolina Pentasuglia was working a red velvet cushion in gold. Giulia Pezzali was making a portfolio-cover in chenille. But little thought they of their work, while the needles clicked and the bobbins flew; especially little on that morning, when they could talk of nothing but the Altimare scandal.

“So they have ordered her to appear before the Directress’s Committee?” inquired Vitali, who was working with beads on perforated cardboard.

“No, not yet. Do you think they will?” asked Spaccapietra, timidly. She did not dare to raise her eyes from the shirt she was sewing.

“Diamine!” exclaimed Avigliana. “Didn’t you hear what ambiguous things there were in the composition! A girl has no right to know anything about them.”

“Altimare is innocent as a new-born babe,” replied Spaccapietra, gravely. No one answered, but all looked towards Altimare. Separated from the rest, far away from them, she sat with bowed head, making lint. It was her latest fancy; to make lint for the hospitals. She had voluntarily withdrawn herself, but appeared to be calm.

“Nonsense, girls, nonsense,” observed Minichini, passing her hand through her hair with a masculine gesture. “Every one knows these things, but no one can speak of them.”

“But to write about a wife’s deceiving her husband, Minichini, what do you think of that?”

“Oh, dear, that’s how it is in society; Signora Ferrari deceives her husband with my cousin,” added Minichini, “I saw them ... behind a door....”

“How, what, what did you see?” asked two or three in concert, while the others opened their eyes.

“The maestra is coming,” said Spaccapietra.

“As usual, Minichini, you are not working,” observed the teacher.

“You know it hurts my eyes.”

“Are these your glasses? You are not so very short-sighted; I think you might work.”

“And why, what for?”

“For your own house, when you return to it....”

“You are perhaps unaware that my mother has three maids,” said the other, turning on her like a viper.

The teacher bent over the work of Avigliana, muttering something about “pride ... insolence,” and then presently withdrew. Minichini shrugged her shoulders. After a moment:

“I say, Minichini, what were the Signora Ferrari and your cousin doing behind the door?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“Well ... they were kissing.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the chorus, alternately blushing and turning pale.

“On the lips, of course?” asked Casacalenda, biting her own to make them redder.

“Yes.”

The girls were silent, absorbed in thought. Minichini always unsettled the work-class with her tales: she would tell the simplest thing with a certain malicious reticence and brusque frankness, that wrought upon their imagination. “I shall work myself a wrapper like this altar-cloth, when I leave this house,” said Casacalenda, “it is so becoming to the skin.”

And she tried it over her hand, a pink and exquisite transparency.

“Dio, when shall I get out of this house!” exclaimed Avigliana.

“Three more months, eight days, and seven hours,” said Pentasuglia.

“Doesn’t Altimare wish she were out of it?” murmured Vitali.

“Goodness knows how they will punish her,” said Spaccapietra.

“If I were she, I should give the Directress a piece of my mind.”

Then all at once they heard: “Hush-sh.” The Vice-Directress had entered the room; quite an event. Altimare raised her eyes, but only for an instant, and her lids quivered. She went on making lint. To avoid a sensation, the Vice-Directress bent over two or three frames, and made a few remarks. At last:

“Altimare, the Directress wishes to see you.”

Altimare stood up, erect and rigid, and passed straight down through two rows of pupils without looking either to right or left. The girls kept silence and worked industriously.

“Holy Mother, do thou help her,” said Caterina Spaccapietra under her breath.

“My married sister told me that Zola’s books are not fit to be read,” said Giovanna Casacalenda.

“That means that they may be read, but that it wouldn’t do to say before gentlemen that one had read them.”

“Oh! what a number of books I have read that no one knows anything about,” exclaimed Avigliana.

“I know of a marriage that never came off,” said Minichini, “because the fiancée let out that she read the Dame aux Camélias.”

“La Dame aux Camélias! how interesting it must be! Who has read it, girls?”

“Not I, nor I, nor I,” in chorus, accompanied by gentle sighs.

“I have read it,” confessed Minichini.

“The maestra is coming,” whispered Vitali, the sentinel.

“What is the matter, that you don’t sew, Spaccapietra?” asked the teacher.

“Nothing,” replied Caterina, casting down her eyes, while her hands trembled.

“Do you feel ill? Would you like to go out into the air?”

“No, thank you, I am well; I prefer to stay here.”

“Are you in trouble about Altimare?” asked Avigliana.

“No, no,” murmured the other, shyly.

“After all, what can they do to her?” said Casacalenda.

“Diamine, they won’t eat her,” said Minichini. “If they do anything to her, we will avenge her.”

“The Directress is cruel,” said Avigliana.

“And the Vice-Directress is a wretch,” added Vitali.

“And as far as malignity goes, Cherubina Friscia is no joke,” observed Pentasuglia.

“Dio mio, may I soon leave this house!” exclaimed Casacalenda.

All heads bent in acquiescence to this prayer. There was a spell of silence. Caterina Spaccapietra, overcome by a great lassitude, dragged slowly at her needle.

“Minichini, darling, tell us about the Dame aux Camélias,” entreated Giovanna Casacalenda, her sweet voice thrilling with the passion of the unknown.

“I cannot, my heart.”

“Why not? is it so dreadful? Tell it, Minichini. Artemisia, sweetest, tell us about that book.” The others did not speak, but curiosity burned in their eyes; desire dried the words on their parched lips. Giovanna pleaded for them, her great eyes brimming over with entreaty, while a languid smile played about her full lips.

“Well, I’ll tell it you. But you will never tell any one, Giovanna?”

“No, dear love.”

“It is too late to finish the tale to-day....”

“Never mind, never mind, go on.”

“Well then, work hard, without looking at me; as if you were not listening to me. I shall turn towards Giovanna, as if I were chatting with her: she must nod approval from time to time, and say a word or two. But, for goodness’ sake, don’t show that you are listening to me:

“Once upon a time, there lived in Paris, a poor little dressmaker, whose name was Marguerite Duplessis....”

“Violetta Valery,” interrupted Pezzali; “I have seen the Traviata.”

“Don’t interrupt; in making the opera, they changed the name.... She was a radiant beauty at fourteen, delicate, svelte, with long blonde chestnut hair, large blue eyes, and an ethereal form. She was very poor; she wore a faded cotton frock, a little black shawl, transparent from age, and shabby shoes, down at heel. Every day she went to the man who sold fried potatoes, and bought herself two sous worth of them. She was known as the Blonde of the fried potatoes. But she was born for beautiful things, for luxury and elegance: she could not bear poverty and misery; she held out for a time, but not for long. One fine day, the pretty dove had a perfumed nest....”

“What had she done?” asked Avigliana, bewildered.

“She had become ... one of those....”

“Here is Altimare,” said Spaccapietra, half rising from he chair.

Every one turned round. Lucia advanced slowly, with uncertain gait, stumbling here and there against the chairs as if she did not see them. Her hands hung down against her dress as if they did not belong to her. Her face was not pale, it was livid, with wild eyes. She sat down, but did not take up her work. Her companions looked at her aghast. The emaciated figure of the ardent ascetic had always intimidated them: now it terrified them. Something very serious must have passed between herself and the Directress. Without saying a word, Caterina Spaccapietra laid down her work, left the charmed circle of the Tricolors, and went and seated herself by Lucia. Altimare took no notice of her, but sat as still as one petrified, with an expression of pain on her face.

“What is the matter, Lucia?”

“Nothing.”

“Tell me, Lucia, have they made you suffer much; do you still suffer?”

Not even a sign that she breathed; not a line moved in her face.

“Lucia, sai, I don’t know what to say to comfort you, I don’t know how to say it, I don’t....” Then she was silent. She took one of Lucia’s hands in hers; it was icy cold. The hand lay there, inert and lifeless. Caterina caressed it as if to put warmth into it; indeed, she was trying to think of something to say, but she found nothing. She sat by her side, leaning slightly towards her, endeavouring to make Lucia look at her. The Tricolors watched from a distance. The whole College was watching.

“Why do you not cry, Lucia?” suggested Caterina, timidly.

Nothing, no impression. Caterina felt her own embarrassment and confusion increase. “Tell me, Lucia, tell me what ails you? Be comforted; see, I cannot console you; but speak, cry, give it vent, it will choke you.”

Nothing. All at once Lucia’s hand contracted nervously; she stood up, still petrified, then thrust her hand into her hair and tore it, gave one long, heartrending, horrible cry, and rushed like a whirlwind down the room. The confusion was indescribable. Caterina Spaccapietra was stunned for a moment.

“To the terrace!” cried Minichini, “that’s where the danger is. To the terrace!”

Lucia Altimare fled along the hall with bowed head, the dark plaits of her hair hanging loose over her shoulders, her white gown clinging to her limbs. She fled along the room, and down the corridor, feeling the hot breath of her pursuers close upon her. In the long corridor, she doubled her speed; at the steps leading to the refectory, she cast aside her tricolor scarf.

“Altimare, Altimare, Altimare!” said her panting school-fellows. She did not turn; she bounded up the steps, stumbled, instantly rose to her feet again, drew a long breath and gained the corridor on the upper story that ran parallel with the dormitory. She rushed to the door; but uttered a cry of rage and anguish when she found it closed.

“Altimare, for pity’s sake, Altimare!” called the voices of her pursuers, in a tumult. She ran to another door, pushed it open and entered the dormitory. She made a wild gesture of salutation to the Christ over her bed. At the further end of the long room was a large bay window, which overlooked the terrace. Wherever she went, the whole College pressed within a dozen yards of her footsteps; but she did not hear them. With one supreme bound she reached the window, opened it, and rushed out upon the black asphalt, burning under the July sun. Blinded by the brilliant outdoor light, mad with despair, she dashed forward, wishing, almost believing, that the stone parapet would give way at her desire. But when she got there, and hurriedly made the sign of the cross, two iron arms caught her round the waist.

“Let me go, Caterina, let me throw myself down.”

“No.”

“Loose me, I will die!”

“No.”

And for an instant there was a struggle on the broad, deserted terrace, close to the outer wall, beyond which was the precipice. Caterina held her close, panting, yet never loosening her hold. Lucia struggled with serpentine flexibility; striking, scratching, and biting. Then she gave a scream, and fell down insensible on the asphalt. When the others arrived, when the whole College assembled on that wide terrace, Caterina was fanning Lucia’s face with her handkerchief, and sucking away the blood from the scratches on her own hands.

“But for thee, she would have died,” said Minichini, kissing her. “How did you manage?”

“I came up by the chapel stair,” said Caterina, simply. “Directress, I beg your pardon, but would you mind sending for some vinegar?”

IV.

The little ones were doing their gymnastics in the garden, laughing and screaming. Attenuated by the distance, their voices floated up to the terrace, where the big girls were taking their recreation. In the serene violet sunset, the young ladies walked slowly to and fro, in groups of twos, and threes, and fours; white figures, on which the black aprons stood out clearly defined, as they lingered near the terrace wall. Three or four teachers moved about with crochet or tatting in their hands. Their eyes bent on their work, and their faces expressionless, none the less they heard and took heed of everything. That hour of recess was the most longed for and yet the most melancholy of the whole day. The fresh, calm air—the vast horizon opening out before and around the line of houses that appeared to flow like a stream into the sea, from Capo-di-monte, where the College stood—the atmosphere of liberty—all lent a saddening influence to temperaments that were either oppressed by exuberance or impoverished by anæmia. The mystic melancholy, the yearning tenderness, the effusion of anguish, the vague aspirations, all those impulses of tears and sighs, which the dawn of womanhood brings in its train, breathed in that hour.

The fair collegians mounted the terrace steps, longing for the open air, and uttering little cries of joy at their deliverance. Merry words ran from one to the other, and rippling laughter. They chased each other as if they were but ten years old, those great girls of fifteen and eighteen; they all but played at hide-and-seek. Here they could forget the unedifying subjects upon which their precocious minds were prone to dwell. They did not even think of murmuring against the Directress or the teachers, an eternal theme on which to embroider the most malicious variations. Up here they once more became frank, light-hearted children. One day, Artemisia Minichini had in a fit of gaiety forced Cherubina Friscia to waltz round the terrace with her; and it had seemed to every one, natural and amusing.

But after the first quarter of an hour, the excitement abated, until it gradually died out. The laughter was silenced; the voices lowered, as if in fear; the race abandoned for a slow solemn walk; separate groups of twos and threes formed where there had been a compact crowd. And the words came languidly and far between to their lips. All the suppressed sadness of the full young life with which their pulses throbbed, made their heads hang listlessly in that summer sunset. Lucia Altimare, drawn to her full height, stood gazing across at Naples, as if she did not see it. Her slight figure stood out clearly against the paling sky, and in that light the fine lines of her profile acquired the purity and refinement of an antique statue. Indeed, that dark hair coiled up high, looked not unlike a classic helmet. Next to her stood Caterina Spaccapietra, her clear grey eyes bent upon Naples. She seemed absent and dreamy; but the moment Lucia looked down the precipice, she started forward as if to hold her back.

“Don’t be afraid, I won’t throw myself over,” said Lucia Altimare, in her low, weak voice, her face breaking into the shadow of a smile. “Last week, I was mad, but you have made me sane. That is to say, not you, but God. Through your lips, by your hands, has the Lord saved me from eternal perdition.”

She drew her blue rosary from her pocket, and kissed the silver crucifix and the medal of the Madonna. “Yes, Caterina, it was madness. But here”—she bent down to whisper—“no one understands me, no one but you! You are good, and you understand me; oh! if I could but tell you all! They cannot understand me here. That day, the Directress was so cold and cruel to me. She said that I had written things that were unworthy of a gentleman’s daughter, that I appeared to know of things which it is unmaidenly even to think of; that the Professor, the teacher, and my companions were scandalised; that she should be obliged to send the composition to my father, with a severe letter. I held my tongue, Caterina; what could I say? I held my tongue, I did not weep; neither did I entreat her. I returned to the hall in an agony of grief and shame. You spoke to me, but I did not hear you. Death passed like lightning through my soul, and my soul fell in love with it. God ... disappeared.”

She left off speaking, tired in voice and body. Caterina, who had listened spell-bound by her sentimental talk, replied: “Cheer up, Lucia; September will soon be here. We shall leave then.”

“What does that matter?” said the other, shrugging her shoulders. “I shall but exchange one sorrow for another. Do you see a little tower yonder, under the Vomero hill? I was christened in that church. In that little church there is a Madonna, all robed in black; her gown is embroidered with gold. She holds a little white handkerchief in her hand; she can turn her eyes in anguish, and in her divine heart of woman and mother, are seven swords of pain. Caterina, they christened me in the church of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows. The Madonna Addolorata is my patron saint; I shall suffer for ever.”

Caterina listened to her with a pained expression on her face.

“You exaggerate; what do you know of life?”

“I know it,” said the other, shaking her head. “I feel as if I had lived enough, suffered enough—I feel as I had grown so old. I feel as if I had found dust and ashes everywhere. I am sick at heart. We are only born to sorrow.”

“That’s Leopardi again, Lucia; you promised me not to read Leopardi again.”

“I will not read him again. But listen; we are blind, miserable beings, destined to pain and death. Do you see beautiful Naples, smiling, voluptuous, nestling between her fruitful hills and her divine sea, in the magic of her radiant colouring? Do you really love Naples?”

“Yes, for I was born there,” said the other in a low voice.

“I hate her, with her odour of flowers, of humanity, of sparkling wines; her starred and seductive nights. I hate her; for she is the embodiment of sin and sorrow. There, where the tall lightning conductors shoot into the air, is the aristocratic quarter; the home of corruption and sorrow. Here below us, where the houses are closer together and look darker, are the people’s dwellings; but here, too, are corruption and sorrow. She is a sinner, like the city of Sodom, like the city of Gomorrah; she is a sinful woman, like the Magdalen. But she writhes in her sin, she inundates her bed with her tears, she weeps in the fatal night of Gethsemane. Oh! triumphant city, accursed and agonising!”

Her gesture cut the air like an anathema; but immediately her excitement calmed down, and the flush died out of her cheeks.

“It is bad for you to stand here, Lucia; shall we walk?”

“No, let me speak; I think too much, and thought ploughs too deep a furrow, when I cannot put it into words. Have I saddened you, Caterina?”

“A little; I fear for your health.”

“I beg your pardon. I ought not to talk to you of these things. You don’t like to hear them.”

“I assure you....”

“You are right, dear. But really, without exaggeration, life is not beautiful. Have you ever thought of the future; of the vague, dread future, that is so close upon us?”

“Sometimes.”

“And you have not feared?”

“I don’t know.”

“The future is all fear, Caterina.... Do you know what you will do with your life?”

“I know.”

“Who has told it you, thoughtless child? Who has read the riddle of the future?”

“My aunt intends me to marry Andrea Lieti.”

“Shall you obey?”

“Yes.”

“Without regret?”

“Without regret.”

“Oh! poor child, poor child! Does this Andrea love you?”

“I think so.”

“Do you love him?”

“I think I do.”

“Love is sorrow; marriage is an abomination, Caterina.”

“I hope not,” replied the other, with clasped hands and bowed head.

“I shall never marry, no, never,” added Lucia, drawing herself up and raising her eyes to heaven, in the pride of her mysticism.

The violet twilight deepened. The collegians stood still in the grounds, near the parapet, looking at some of the windows that reflected the sun’s last rays, at the distant sea that was turning to iron grey, at the swallows that shot like arrows across the roofs with the shrill cry that is their evensong.

Giovanna Casacalenda confessed to Maria Vitali that the hour of twilight made her long to die a sudden death, so that they might embalm her, dress her in a white satin gown, and loosen her long hair under a wreath of roses ... and after a hundred years a poet might fall in love with her. Artemisia Minichini assumed her most lugubrious air, her fists were doubled up in her apron pockets, there was a deep furrow across her forehead, and her lips were pursed up. Carolina Pentasuglia, the blonde, romantic, little sentimentalist, told Ginevra Avigliana that she wished herself far away in Denmark, on the shore of the Northern Sea, on a deserted strand, where the north wind howls through the fir-trees. Even Cherubina Friscia forgot her part of eavesdropper, and with vague eyes and listless hands meditated upon a whole life to be passed within College walls, without friends or relations, a poor old maid, hated by the girls.

“I think,” said Lucia to Caterina, “that my father intends marrying again. He has not dared to before, but human patience is so fragile a thing! My father is worldly, he does not understand me. My presence saddens him. He would like to have a merry, thoughtless girl in the house, who would enliven it. I am not the one for that.”

“But what will you do? Something will have to be done, Lucia.”

“Yes, something I will do, not for myself, but for others. Great undertakings call for great sacrifices. If I were a man, I would go to Africa and explore unknown regions. If I were a man, I would be a monk, a missionary to China or Japan, far, far away. But I am a woman, a weak, useless woman.”

“You could stay with your father, meanwhile.”

“No, his is a tardy youth, and mine a precocious old age. My presence in his house would be a continual reproach. Well, listen, I shall try to come upon a good, noble, holy idea, to which I can consecrate my mind and my energy. I will seek for a plague to lessen, an injustice to remove, a wrong to right, everywhere I will search for the ideal of humanity, to which I may sacrifice my life. I know not what I shall do, as yet I know not. But either as a Sister of the Red Cross on the battlefield, or as a Sister of Charity in the hospitals, or as a visitor in prisons, or as founder and teacher in some orphan asylum, I shall dedicate the strength and the courage of a wasted existence to the alleviation of human suffering.”

Caterina did not answer. Lucia contemplated her friend with the faintest shade of disdain on her lips.

“Will it not be a beautiful life, Caterina?”

“Very beautiful. Will your people give their consent?”

“I should like to know how they could prevent it. It would be cruel tyranny.”

“And your health?”

“I shall struggle against it ... or if I die, death will be the more welcome to me, worn with toil, with the consciousness of accomplished duty.”

“I am not capable of such great things,” murmured Caterina, after a short silence. “Mine is not a great soul.”

“Never mind, dear,” said the other, stroking her hair as if she were a child, “the ideal of humanity is not for every one.”

Evening had closed in, recreation was over, the collegians re-entered the dormitory, passed thence to the corridor, and descending the stair, approached the chapel, for evening prayer. On they went, without looking at each other, in silence, prey to a melancholy so intense that it isolated them. They walked two and two, but not arm in arm. Two of them took each other by the hand, but with so languid a pressure that they scarcely held together. Behind them, the lights of Naples glimmered like evening stars; they entered into the garnered peace of the College, and did not turn to look back. The oppression of that long hour of twilight weighed upon their spirits, and there was something funereal in the long, unsmiling march to the chapel. The window, hastily closed by the last comer, Cherubina Friscia, grated on its rusty hinge with a noise like a laugh of irony.

V.

It was the last lesson. August was dying; the lessons were all coming to an end. After the September and October holidays, the children were to return to school for the Feast of San Carlo. But the Tricolors, maidens of seventeen or eighteen, having finished their education, left in September, to return no more. On that day, at two o’clock, they attended the history lesson the last of all. After that lesson, their course of study was absolutely finished.

That was why there was something so abnormal in the girls themselves, and in the very atmosphere about them. That was why the curly, blonde hair of Carolina Pentasuglia was dressed more like a poodle’s than it had ever been before; a roguish cherub’s head, one mass of curls. Giovanna Casacalenda, divested of her apron, was in pure white, a resplendent whiteness, broken only at the waist by her tricolor scarf. Artemisia Minichini wore a big gold locket on the velvet ribbon round her throat. Ginevra Avigliana had three roses in her waistband, right under her heart. But all of them sat demure and composed in the class-room, that already seemed so deserted: there was not a book on the desks, nor a scrap of paper, nor a pen. The inkstands were closed. A few drawers stood open. In a corner, on the ground, behind the blackboard, was a heap of tattered paper, torn into shreds or rolled up in balls. On a black panel destined to the exhibition of calligraphic achievements, there was chalked a tabulated list which set forth in finest imitation of printed letters, combined with copy-book and old English characters, embellished by countless flourishes, the fact that: “In the scholastic year —— the Signorine ... had completed the studies of the fifth gymnasial course....” And first on the list was Lucia Altimare. It was the clôture, the end of the volume, the word finis.... The young ladies never turned towards that tablet. The eyes of some of them were rather red. Oh! on that day the lesson was a serious and arduous one. They had all studied that period of 1815, with which the historical programme ended. From time to time the Professor made a critical remark, to which the pupils listened attentively. Caterina Spaccapietra, that diligent scribe, took notes on a scrap of paper. On that day the Professor was paler and uglier than ever: he seemed thinner, a pitiable figure in the clothes that set so awkwardly upon him. The most ludicrous item of his attire was a large cameo pin, stuck in a dark red cravat of the worst possible taste. On that day he was more careful than ever to avoid the glances of his pupils. He listened to them with profound attention, his eyes half closed, nodding his approval, murmuring an occasional bene under his breath. Now and again he would make an absent comment, as if he were talking to himself. Then the half-hour struck. As the minutes passed, the voice of the girl who repeated the lesson grew more and more tremulous: then at last the Professor added certain historical anecdotes concerning Napoleon. He spoke slowly, carefully picking his words. When he had ended the third quarter struck. The Professor and his pupils, impressed by a sudden and painful embarrassment, looked at each other. The history lesson was over.

“The class asks permission to read its farewell letter,” said Cherubina Friscia, whose placid face was undisturbed by emotion.

He hesitated, a painful look of indecision passed over his face.

“I should prefer to read it at home. I could give more attention to it ...” he stammered, for want of something better.

“No, no; listen to it here, Professor,” cried two or three eager voices.

“It is customary, Professor,” said Friscia, dryly.

There was a moment’s silence. All the girls’ faces turned pale from emotion. His head was bent in thought; at last: “Read,” he said, and appeared ready to listen in earnest from behind the hand with which he hid his eyes.

Altimare rose, took the letter from an envelope and read it, halting at every word, dividing every syllable, her voice suffused with tenderness:

“Honoured and beloved Professor, fate has indeed been both blind and cruel in choosing me to offer you, most respected Professor, the last farewell of a departing class. I am assuredly too much affected by our common sorrow; so conscious of the solitude in which this separation will leave us, that a nameless pang at the heart will prevent the anguish of our minds from passing into words, in parting from him who has been our master and our guide. Oh, judge not the depth of our feeling for you from what I write.... Words are so pale, so weak and inadequate, and our emotion is so heartfelt. Professor, we are leaving....”

Ginevra Avigliana wept aloud, her face buried in her hands.

“... this college where we have lived the sweetest years of our life, where our childhood and youth have been passed in the companionship of beloved friends and in the salutary occupation of our studies. We are leaving the house where we have laughed and learned, the roof that has overlooked our sports, our strivings for knowledge, our dreams. God is our witness that we feel that the past is slipping from us....”

Silently and with a pressure at her heart, Carolina Pentasuglia wept until she felt faint.

“... that a whirlwind is snatching it from us, that our joyous youth has vanished, and that the weight of the future, heavy with responsibility, is hanging over us. We cannot face the future undaunted, we would fain prolong this last day at school, we would fain cry aloud to our Directress and our teachers—'Why turn us away? we were so happy! oh! keep us, keep us with you...!’”

The reader broke down, her voice was hoarse, sobs checked her utterance, tears blinded her. She dried her eyes and cheeks, and continued:

“... but this is a hard law which governs human beings. They must meet, love and part—part for ever from those with whom one would gladly pass one’s life. Well, on this day, we gather our memories together, we recall the life we have lived and all the benefits we owe to your knowledge, your teaching, and your patient, indulgent affection. For all you have done for us, take our blessing and our thanks. Yours is the tenderest memory that will abide with us, in the battle of life, a guiding star in the darkness that perchance awaits us. If we have failed in aught, forgive us. We entreat you, by this hour of sorrow upon which we enter, prepared for it, and yet shrinking from it, we entreat you, think of us without bitterness....”

The reader fell back on her bench exhausted, sobbing violently. The letter had fallen from her hand. Cherubina Friscia rose, crossed the class, picked up the letter, put it into its envelope and placed it on the Professor’s desk. Nearly all of them wept in the despair of childish sorrow, at the many farewells, at the details of their departure, and in doubt and dread of the world they were about to enter. Artemisia Minichini, in the vain attempt to keep up her reputation of a strong-minded woman, bit her lips and blinked with her eyelids, but the flush on her cheek betrayed the effort it cost her. Little Giulia Pezzali, with her head hanging over her arms, which she had crossed on the back of the bench in front of her, like the child she was, moaned as if some one were hurting her. Even the plump white beauty of Giovanna Casacalenda was dimmed, her surprised black eyes were swollen with tears. Caterina’s were dry and burning, but from time to time a sigh escaped her lips. The Professor did not weep, but he appeared to be more than usually unhappy in the heavy atmosphere that bowed those youthful heads and forced from them such noisy tears.

“Listen,” he said, “do not weep....” Some faces looked up through their tears. “Do not weep. There should be no tears at your age. The time will come for them later—very late, I trust.... To-day you feel unbearable sorrow in departing from this educational institution, where you must needs leave behind you so much of yourselves. To-morrow will bring a joy that will blot out all this sorrow. Life is made up of these alternations. They are not hard to bear, if you have within you faith and courage. I have taught you all I know, hoping that in the history of man’s deeds you might find guidance for your own actions. Why do you thank me? I have done so little. But if you will perforce thank me, I pray you let it be in this wise only: be good, be so in a humane, womanly spirit. Remember one who says these words to you, remember....”

By this time his voice was very faint, and his hands were trembling. The girls had abandoned themselves to a fresh fit of weeping. Motionless he stood for a second on the little platform, looking down at the bowed heads, at the faces buried in pocket-handkerchiefs, at the convulsed forms on the benches; then he noiselessly descended, scribbled a single word in chalk on the blackboard and slipped away, bowing to Friscia as he passed.

On the dingy slate, in big uncertain characters, stood the word “Addio.”

VI.

There was only one flickering jet of gas burning at the entrance to the dormitory that contained the little white beds in which the Tricolors passed the last night of their school-days. There had been short dialogues, interrupted by sighs, melancholy reflections and regrets, until a late hour. They would have liked to sit up all night, to indulge in their grief. But fatigue had melted their project away. When they could hold out no longer, sleep mastered those restless beings, weary with weeping. A languid “Good-night” was audible here and there, gradually the irregular breathing had subsided, and the sobs had died out. Complete repose reigned in the dormitory of the Tricolors.

When the great clock struck two after midnight, Lucia Altimare opened her eyes. She had not slept; devoured by impatience, she had watched. Without rising she gently and noiselessly took her clothes from the chair near her bed, and put them on, thrust her bare feet into her slippers, and then crept out of bed. She moved liked a shadow, with infinite precaution, casting, in passing, an oblique glance at the beds where her companions slept. Now and again she looked towards the end of the hall where Cherubina Friscia lay. There was no danger. Lucia passed like a tall white phantom, with burning eyes, through the heavy gloom, to Caterina’s bedside.

Her friend slept quietly, composedly, breathing like a child. She bent down and whispered close to her ear:

“Caterina, Caterina!”

She opened her eyes in alarm; a sign from Lucia froze the cry that rose to her lips. The surprise on her face spoke for her, and questioned her friend.

“If you love me, Caterina, dress and follow me.”

“Where are we going?” the other ventured to ask, hesitating.

“If you love me....”

Caterina no longer questioned her. She dressed herself in silence, looking now and then at Lucia, who stood there like a statue, waiting. When Caterina was ready she took her by the hand to lead her.

“Fear nothing,” breathed Lucia, who could feel the coldness of her hand. They glided down the passage that divided the beds from the rest of the room. Artemisia Minichini was the only one who turned in her bed, and appeared for a moment to have opened her eyes. They closed again, but perhaps she saw through her lids. No other sign of waking. They shrank closer together when they passed the last bed, Friscia’s, and stooped to make themselves smaller. That moment seemed to them like a century. When they got into the corridor, Caterina squeezed Lucia’s hand as if they had passed through a great danger.

“Come, come, come!” murmured the siren voice of Lucia, and suddenly they stopped before a door. Lucia dropped Caterina’s hand and inserted a key into the keyhole; the door creaked as it flew open. A gust of chill air struck the two young girls; a faint diffuse light broke in upon them. A lamp was burning before the image of the Virgin. They were in the chapel. Calmly Lucia knelt before the altar and lighted two candelabra. Then she turned to Caterina, who, dazed by the light, was catching her breath, and once more said, “Come.”

They advanced towards the altar. In the little whitewashed church, with two high windows open on the country, a pleasant dampness tempered the heat of the August night. The faintest perfume of incense still clung to the air. The church was so placid and restful, the candelabra in their places, the tapers extinguished, the Sacrament shut away in its pix, the altar-cloth turned up to cover it. But a quaintly fashioned silver arabesque, behind which Lucia had lighted a taper, projected on the wall the profile of a strange monstrous beast. Caterina stood there in a dream, with her hand still clasped in Lucia’s, whose fever it had caught.... Even at that unusual hour, in the dead of night, she no longer asked herself what strange rite was to be solemnised in that chapel illuminated only for them. She was conscious of a vague tremor, of a weight in the head, and a longing for sleep; she would fain have been back in the dormitory, with her cheek on her pillow.... But like one who dreams of having the well-defined will to do a thing, and yet while the dream lasts has neither the speech to express nor the energy to accomplish it, she was conscious, between sleeping and waking, of the torpor of her own mind. She looked around her as one in a stupor, neither understanding nor caring to understand. From time to time her mouth twitched with an imperceptible yawn. Lucia’s hands were crossed over her bosom, and her eyes fixed on the Madonna. No sound escaped her half-open lips. Caterina leant forward to observe her; in the vague turn of thought that went round and round in her sleepy brain, she asked herself if she were dreaming, and Lucia a phantom.... She passed one hand across her brow either to awake herself or to dispel the hallucination.

“Listen, Caterina, and try and comprehend me better than I know how to express myself. Do you give your whole attention?”

“Yes,” said the other with an effort.

“You alone know how we have loved each other here. After God, the Madonna Addolorata, and my father, I have loved you, Caterina. You have saved my life, I can never forget it. But for you, I should have gone to burn in hell, where suicides must eternally suffer. I thank you, dear heart. You believe in my gratitude?”

“Yes,” said Caterina, opening wide her eyes the better to understand her.

“Now we who so love each other must part. You go to the left, I to the right. You are to be married. I know not what will happen to me. Shall we meet again? I know not. Shall we again come together in the future? Who knows? Do you know?”

“No,” replied Caterina, starting.

“Well, then, I propose to you to conquer time and space, men and circumstances, should they stand in the way of our affection. From afar, howsoever we may be separated, let us love each other as we do to-day, as we did yesterday. Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“The Madonna hears us, Caterina. Do you promise with a vow, with an oath?”

“With a vow, with an oath,” repeated Caterina, monotonously, like an echo.

“And I too promise, that no one shall ever by word or deed lessen this our steadfast friendship. Do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“And I too promise, that neither shall ever seek to do ill to the other, or willingly cause her sorrow, or ever, ever betray her. Promise—the Madonna hears us.”

“I promise.”

“I swear it—that always, whatever befalls, one shall try to help the other. Say, do you promise?”

“I promise.”

“And I too. Besides, that either will be ever ready to sacrifice her own happiness to that of the other. Swear it, swear!”

Caterina thought for an instant. Was she dreaming a strange dream, or was she binding herself for life? “I swear,” she said, firmly.

“I swear,” reiterated Lucia. “The Madonna has heard. Woe to her who breaks her vow! God will punish her.”

Caterina bowed her assent. Lucia took her rosary from her pocket. It was a string of lapis lazuli bound together by little silver links. From it depended a small silver crucifix, and a little gold medal on which was engraved the image of the Madonna della Saletta. She kissed it.

“We will break this rosary in two equal parts, Caterina. Half of it you shall take with you, the other half I will keep. It will be our keepsake, to remind us of our vow. When I pray at night, I shall remember. You too will remember me in your prayers. The missing half will remind you of your absent friend.”

And taking up the rosary between them, they pulled hard at it from either side.... Lucia kept the half with the crucifix, Caterina the half with the medal. The two girls embraced. Then they heard the clock strike three. When silence reigned once more in the College and in the empty chapel, both knelt down on the steps of the altar, crossed their hands on their bosoms, and with closed eyes repeated in unison—

“Our Father....”

PART II.

I.

The green hue of the country disappeared under the heavy November rain. Caserta, down below, shrouded by the falling water as by a veil of mist, seemed but a large grey blot on a background of paler grey. The Tifata hills, that are tinged with so deep a violet during the long autumn twilights, had vanished behind the thick, opaque downpour. The small and aristocratic village of Centurano, entirely composed of lordly villas, separated from each other by narrow lanes and flowering hedges, held its peace.

At the corner of the high road that leads to Caserta, the fountain which Ferdinand of Bourbon had bestowed on Michelangiolo Viglia, his favourite barber, overflowed with rain-water. The long, melancholy, watery day was slowly dying, in a rainy twilight that seemed already evening. No sound was heard. The last lingerers among the villeganti kept within their houses, yawning, dozing, or gazing through closed windows at the drenched, denuded gardens, where the monthly roses hung their dishevelled heads, and the water trickled in little muddy rivulets among wasted flower-beds; while here and there the stalks of stocks and wallflowers showed like the bare bones of so many skeletons. Behind one window were visible the cadaverous old face and red velvet smoking-cap of Cavalier Scardamaglia, judge at the Court of Santa Maria; behind another, the aquiline nose and the long thin cheeks of Signora Magaloni, wife of the architect who was directing the repairs of the royal palace. The children of lawyer Farini were running after and shouting at each other on the covered terrace of their villa. Francesca, their nurse, sat in the arch of the window, knitting, without dreaming of scolding them. The water poured along the gutters and filled the pipes to bursting; the butts for the family washing overflowed; the walls were stained as with rust.

From behind her balcony windows, Caterina looked out upon the fountain that overflowed the road. She tried to see farther away, down the highway to Caserta, but in this the rain thwarted her. She looked back again at the fountain, and re-read the two first lines of its fatuous inscription:

DIEMMI DELL’ACQUA GIULIA
UN RIVOLETTO IL RE.

But she soon wearied of this contemplation, and again applied herself to her sewing. She was seated on the broad window-sill: before her stood her work-table, covered with reels of cotton, a needle-case, a pincushion, scissors of all sizes, and bundles of tapes; near to her was a large basket of new ready-basted household linen, at which she was sewing. Just now she was hemming a fine Flanders tablecloth; four that she had finished were lying folded on the little table. She sewed deliberately, with a harmonious precision of movement. Whenever she cut her thread with her scissors, she turned to the road for a moment to see if any one was coming. Then she resumed her hem again, patiently and mechanically, passing her pink nail across it to make it even. Once a noise in the street caused her to start: she stopped to listen. It was the little covered cart in which the Avvocata Farini was returning from Nola, whither he had gone on some legal errand. The lawyer, as he alighted, made her a low bow.

Despite her disappointment, she responded with a pretty, gracious smile, and followed him with her eyes, to where his children welcomed him with shouts and outstretched arms. Once more the regular profile bent over the Flanders cloth, and the needle flew under her agile fingers. Caterina appeared to have grown bigger, although she still retained a certain girlish delicacy and a pretty minuteness of feature. The look in her grey eyes was more decided, the contour of her cheek was firmer, the chin had assumed a more energetic character. On the low brow, the bright chestnut hair was slightly waved; its thick plaits were gathered up at the nape by a light tortoiseshell comb. She wore a short indoor dress of ivory-white cashmere—a soft thick material that clung closely to her, especially at the waist—a relic of the coquetry of her school-days. Round her throat was a broad creamy lace tie, with a large bow, wherein the chin seemed to bury itself. It gave value to the delicate pink colouring of her face. There were full lace ruffles around her wrists; no jewels, except a plain gold ring on one finger. Her whole person breathed a serene simplicity, a delightful happy calm.

“Shall I bring the lights?” asked Cecchina, the maid, entering the room.

“What time is it?”

“Nearly six o’clock.”

“Wait a little longer.”

“And master not yet back!”

“He will come in good time.”

“The Lord knows how soaked he’ll be.”

“I hope not. Is his room quite ready?”

“Everything, Signora.”

“Then you needn’t wait.”

Cecchina left the room. Caterina did not return to her sewing, for it was nearly dark, and she wanted to believe that it was still early. Meanwhile, the lamplighter of Centurano was proceeding under cover of his waterproof and his umbrella to light the few petroleum lamps of the tiny village. Caterina folded and refolded her linen in the twilight. Cecchina, who was getting impatient, brought in two lamps.

“The cook says, 'What is he to do?’”

“He’s to wait.”

“Till what hour?”

“Till seven—like yesterday.”

But all at once a faint bark was audible down the lane.

“That is Fox,” said Caterina quietly. “Your master is coming.”

Immediately there was the noise of a great opening and shutting of doors; a rush of sound and movement. After that a lusty voice resounded in the courtyard.

“Here, Fox! Here, poor beast! Here, Diana! She’s as wet as a newly hatched chicken! Caterina, Caterina! Matteo, take care of the gun, it’s full of water! Caterina!”

“Here I am,” she said, leaning over the balustrade.

A big curly head and a green felt hat, then a herculean body, clothed in a velveteen jacket, leather breeches, and top-boots, appeared on the lower steps. With a great sound of clanking spur, and cracking whip, soaked from head to foot, but laughing heartily, Andrea seized his wife by the waist, and raised her like a child in his strong arms, while he kissed her eyes, lips, and throat, roughly and eagerly.

“Nini, Nini!” he cried, between each sounding kiss.

“You’re come ... you’re come!” she murmured, smiling; her hair loosened from its comb, and on her fair skin sundry red imprints left by his caresses.

“Oh! Nini, Nini!” he repeated, burying his big nose in the soft folds of her tie. Then he placed his wife on her feet again, drew a deep breath like a bellows, and stretched himself.

“How wet you are, Andrea!”

“From head to foot. Beastly weather! Yesterday capital sport, but to-day, perdio! this rascally rain! I’m soaked to the bone.”

Leaning out of the landing window, he called in to the courtyard: “Take care of the dogs, Matteo. Rub them down with warm straw.”

“And yourself, Andrea?”

“I will go and change my clothes. But I am not cold. I have walked so fast that I am quite warm. Is everything ready for me?”

“Everything.”

“And dinner? I’m dying of hunger.”

“Dinner is ready, Andrea.”

“Macaroni, eh?”

“Macaroni patties.”

“Hurrah!” he shouted, tossing his cap up to the ceiling. “Thou art a golden Nini.”

And he took her once more in his arms, like a small bundle.

“You are drenching me,” she murmured, without looking at all vexed.

“I’m a brute; right you are. Thy pretty white frock! what a lout I am!”

And he delicately shook out its folds. He took his handkerchief, and went down on his knees to dry her gown, while she said: “No, it was nothing, she would not let him tire himself.”

“Let me; do, do let me, I am a brute ... I am a brute!” he persisted. When he had finished, he turned her round and round like a child.

“Now you’re dry, Nini. What a sweet smell you have about you. Is it your lace tie or your skin? I’ll go and dress. Go and see if the macaroni patties will be done in time.”

She went away, but returned immediately to listen at his door, in case he should call her. She could hear him moving to and fro in his dressing-room, puffing and blowing and in the highest spirits. He was throwing his wet boots against the wall, tramping about like a horse, or halting to look at his clothes; singing the while to an air of his own composition:

“Where are the socks ... the socks ... the socks.... Here you are. Now I want a scarf to bind up my inexpressibles. Here’s the scarf.... Now where’s my necktie?”

Then there was silence.

“Have you found the necktie, Andrea? May I come in?” she asked shyly.

“Oh! you are there! And here is the necktie.... I’m ready. Call Cecchina to take away these wet things while we are at dinner.”

He opened the door and came out with a face red from much rubbing. He looked taller and broader in indoor dress. His curly leonine head, with its low forehead, blue eyes, and bushy auburn moustache, was firmly set on a full, massive, and very white throat. Round it he wore a white silk tie and no collar. His broad shoulders expanded under the dark blue cloth of his jacket, his mighty chest swelled under the fine linen of his shirt. The whole figure, ponderous in its strength, was redeemed from awkwardness by a certain high-bred ease and by the minute care of his person, visible in the cut of his hair and the polish of his well-tended nails.

“H’m, Caterina, are we going to dine to-day?”

“Dinner is on the table.”

The dining-room was bright with lighted candles, spotless linen, and shining silver. The centre-piece of fruit—grapes, apples, and pears—shone golden with autumn tints. Through the closed shutters the faintest patter of rain was perceptible. The light fell upon two huge oaken cupboards, whose glass doors revealed within various services of porcelain and crystal, and on the panels of which were carved birds, fish, and fruit. Two high-backed armchairs faced each other. The whole room was pervaded by a sense of peace and order. The macaroni pasty, copper-coloured within its paler crust, was smoking on the table. Andrea ate heartily and in silence; he had helped himself three times. Caterina, who had taken her share with the appetite of a healthy young woman, watched while he ate, with her chin in the air and a little smile on her face.

“Perdio! how good this pie is! Tell the cook, Caterina, to repeat it as often as he likes.”

“I will make a note of it in the household book. Will you have some more?”

“No, basta. Ring, please. Has it rained all day here?”

“Since last night.”

“At Santa Maria, too. Would you believe it? I went as far as Mazzoni, to the Torone, our farm over there.”

“Did you sleep there last night?”

“Yes; a good bed. Coarse but sweet-smelling sheets. But I was furious with the weather. Have some beef, Nini. There is no sport to be had now. Who has been here?”

“Pepe Guardini, one of the Nola tenants. He wants a reduction.”

“I’ve given him three reductions. He is a drunkard and too ready with his knife. He must pay.”

“He says he can’t.”

“He can’t, he can’t!” he roared; “then I’ll turn him out.”

She looked at him fixedly, but smiling. Andrea lowered his voice.

“I don’t know why I lose my temper,” he muttered. “I beg your pardon, Nini, but it annoys me when they come and bother you. What did you say to him?”

“That I would speak to you about it; that we should see.... Have your own way. Give me some wine. By-the-by, Giovanni has been here; the vats are opened; he says the wine promises well.”

“I will look in to-morrow. When that’s over, in a week we’ll leave for Naples. Are you impatient? No fowl! I assure you, it is excellent.”

“Tell the truth, ’tis you who want more.”

“I blush, but I say yes. So you pine for Naples?”

“And you?”

“I, too. Here there’s no sport, and dull neighbours. We are expected there. By-the-by, send for Cecchina and tell her that in the pocket of my shooting-jacket there is a letter for you. I found it at the post-office at Caserta.”

“Whose handwriting?” she queried, with a start.

“The writing of one who sends thee long letters in a scratchy hand, on transparent paper. Of one on whose seal is graven a death’s-head, with the motto, 'Nihil’. Of one whose paper is so heavily scented with musk, that my pocket reeks intolerably of it. Here’s a pear peeled for you, Nini. ’Tis thy lover who writes to thee.”

“It’s Lucia Altimare, is it not?”

“Yes” ... stretching himself with a sigh of satisfaction, as one who has dined well; “the Signorina Lucia Altimare, a skinny, ethereal creature, with pointed elbows, poseuse par excellence.”

“Andrea!”

“Do you mean to say that she is not a poseuse? Indulgent Nini! What is this under the table? Your foot, Nini! I hope I haven’t crushed it. But your friend is repugnant to me, at least she was so the only time I ever saw her.”

“I am so sorry, Andrea. I hope that when you see her again, you will alter your mind.”

“If you’re sorry, I hope I shall alter my mind. But why does she scent her letters so heavily? I recommend you this coffee, Caterina; it ought to be good.”

“Lucia is sickly and unhappy. One is so sorry for her. Do you think five teaspoonfuls of coffee will be sufficient?”

“Put six.... I see; ... to please you I will pity her. But don’t read her letter yet; for, to judge by the weight of it, it must be a very long one. Make the coffee first. If you don’t, I shall say that you care for Lucia more than for me,” murmured Andrea, with the vague tenderness induced by digestion.

“I will read it later.”

He leant back in his chair, breathing slowly and contentedly, with his necktie unfastened and his hands resting on the tablecloth, while he watched her making the coffee—to which she gave all her attention, intent on listening for the hiss of the machine. A calm lithe figure that neither fidgeted nor moved too often, absorbed by her occupation, she bent her whole mind to it.

“It’s ready,” she said, after a time.

“Let’s discuss it in the drawing-room,” he replied. “As a reward I will let you read my rival’s letter.”

A bright wood fire burned on the drawing-room hearth. With another sigh of satisfaction, Andrea sank into a broad, low, leathern armchair that was drawn up before it.

“If it were not for the shooting, I should get too fat. Now don’t begin to sew again, Caterina; sit down here and talk to me. Did you use to dance when you were at school?”

“The dancing-master came twice a week.”

“Did you like dancing?”

“Pretty well; do you?”

“Now, when we are at Naples we can dance as much as we like. We’ve got three invitations already.”

“Giovanna Casacalenda ... that’s one.”

“And my relations the Valgheras ... two.”

“And Passalancias ... three.”

“We’ll dance, Nini. If I didn’t dance I should get too fat. It will be capital exercise for me. Does your melancholy skeleton of a friend dance?”

“Lucia?”

“Yes.”

“She didn’t dance much. She liked the lancers and the mazurka, I remember. The waltz tried her strength too much.”

“A woman who is always ill! who faints away in your arms at any moment! What a bore!”

“Oh, Andrea!”

“At least you are always well, Nini.”

“Always.”

“So much the better, come here and give me a kiss! Has the Pungolo arrived?”

“Here it is.”

“Caterina, I am going to bury myself in the newspaper. Read your letter. I won’t tease you any more.”

But while he lost himself in the political diatribes that filled the Pungolo, Caterina, notwithstanding the permission granted to her, did not begin to read. She kept the letter in her hand, looking at it and inhaling its scent. It was charged with the violent, luscious perfume of ambergris. Then she glanced shyly at her husband; he was falling gradually asleep, his head sinking towards his shoulder. In five minutes the paper fell from his hands. Caterina picked it up, and gently replaced it on the table. She turned down the lamp, to make a twilight in the room. Then she crept back to her chair, and knelt to read her letter by the light of the fire. For a long time, the only sound within the quiet room was the calm, regular breathing of Andrea, accompanied by the faint rustle of foreign letter-paper as Caterina turned the pages. She read carefully and attentively, as if weighing every word. From time to time an expression of trouble passed across her firelit face. When she had finished reading she looked at her husband; he slept on, like a great child, beautiful and gentle in his strength, an almost infantile sweetness and tenderness on his countenance. He lay there calm and still in the assurance of their mutual love, his tired muscles relaxed and at ease in the peace of his honest soul. She bent her head again towards the flame, and once more read the letter from beginning to end, with the same minute attention. When she had read it through for the second time, Caterina slipped it into her pocket, and leaving her hand half hidden in its depths, rested her head on the back of her low chair. Time passed, the quarter struck, then the half-hour, and another quarter, at the clock in the tower of Centurano: by degrees the fire burned out on the hearth. Andrea awoke with a start.

“Caterina, wake up.”

“I am not asleep, Andrea,” she replied placidly, with wide-open eyes.

“It’s late, Nini, very late; time for by-bye,” said the Colossus, as in loving jest he gathered her up in his arms like a child.

II.

The circular drawing-room had been transformed into a garden of camellias, on whose close, dense, dark-green background of foliage the flowers displayed their insolent waxen beauty, white or red, perfumeless, icily voluptuous, their full buds swelling as if to burst their green chalices. A luxuriant vegetation covered the walls and the very roof, lending them a silent enchantment. In the midst of the shrubbery a Musa paradisiaca reared its lofty head, spreading out its vivid green leaves like an umbrella. Round the Musa ran a rustic divan roughly wrought in wood. Here and there were low rustic stools. Massive branches of camellia nearly hid the two doors leading to this room. A faint diffuse light shone through its opaque rose-coloured shades.

Three or four times during the evening, in the intervals of the dances, this room had filled with guests. Ladies, young and old, uttered little cries of delight in the rustic effect, in the coolness and the repose of it, as compared with the hard white glare of the ball-room, its oppressive atmosphere and noisy orchestra. They assumed attitudes of graceful languor. The men looked round with an air of suppressed satisfaction, as if they too were far from insensible to the beauties of Nature. A few timidly culled buds were offered as gifts.... A young lady in pale yellow, with a shower of lilies of the valley in her dark hair, recited some verses in a low murmur. Quiet women fanned themselves gently with noiseless, winged fans of soft grey feathers; but hardly had the triumphant appeal of the first notes of a waltz or the plaintive melting strains of the mazurka reached their retreat, when one and all flung themselves into the whirl of the ball and every couple vanished. Once more the shrubbery was silent and deserted, the red camellias again opened their lips. What were they waiting for?

Giovanna Casacalenda, the daughter of the house, entered the shrubbery on the arm of a young man. Taller than her partner, she seemed to look down upon him from the height of her regal beauty. She was draped in the clinging folds of a long dress of ivory crape, that ended in a soft floating train. Wondrous to behold was the low bodice of crimson satin, fitting without a crease; her arms were bare to the shoulder. One row of pearls round the firm white throat. A wreath of damask roses, worn low on the forehead, crowned her dark hair, drawn up close from the nape of her neck. This audaciously simple costume was worn with the repose of conscious beauty, proof against any weakness on its own account. A smile just parted her curved lips while she listened to her companion, a meagre undersized youth, with a bilious complexion; there were lines about his eyes and the hair was scanty on the temples. He was correct, refined, and finnikin.

“But, Giovanna, I have your promise,” he protested, “thy promise.”

“You need not 'thou’ and 'thee’ me,” she observed.

“Forgive.... I beg your pardon, I am always betraying my feelings,” he murmured; “it’s very clear that you are casting me off, Giovanna....”

“If it is so clear, why trouble to talk about it?”

“Why do I...? That you may contradict me. What have I done to thee?”

“Nothing; treat me to you, if you please. Now go on, I am in a hurry.”

“Then it has been a dream?”

“Dream, caprice, folly; call it what you will. You must make up your mind to the fact that we cannot marry. You have an income of eight thousand lire; I shall have six thousand. What can one do with fourteen thousand lire a year?”

Smiling, she said these things, without changing her easy attitude; the arm that plied the fan was carefully rounded, and she looked at him with a little air of superiority.

“But if my uncle dies ...” whined her victim.

“Your uncle is not going to die just yet, I have observed him carefully; he’s solid.”

“You are positively malevolent, Giovanna ... remember....”

“What would you have me remember? Do try to be sensible. Let us go back.”

They went away, and those superb camellias that Giovanna so closely resembled told no tales, neither did they murmur among themselves.

“Very fine indeed!” said Andrea Lieti, admiring the general effect, while the divan creaked under his weight. “But give me Centurano.”

“Real country must always surpass in beauty its counterfeit presentment,” mumbled timid Galimberti, Professor of History. “But these Casacalendas have a fine, luxurious taste.”

“Bah! respected Professor, they want to marry their daughter, and they are sure to succeed.”

“Do you really think...?”

“I don’t blame them. So magnificent a creature is not meant to be kept at home. Was she so beautiful when she was at school?”

“Beautiful ... dangerously beautiful, even at school.... I remember ...” passing his hand across his forehead, as if he were talking to himself.

Andrea Lieti opened his big blue eyes in amazement. The Professor remained standing in an awkward attitude, stooping slightly, and ill at ease in his easy attire. His trousers were too long, and bagged at the knees. The collar of his old-fashioned dress-coat was too high. Instead of the regulation shirt, shining like a wall of marble, he wore an embroidered one, with large Roman mosaic studs, a view of the Colosseum, the Column of Trajan, the Piazza di San Pietro. There he stood, with hanging arms, with his hideous, pensive head. The brow appeared to have grown higher and yellower. His eyes had the old oblique look, at once absent and embarrassed.

“These balls must bore you fearfully, Professor,” cried Andrea, as he rose and walked to and fro, conspicuous for his fine proportions and well-bred ease.

“Well ... rather ... I feel somewhat isolated in a crowd like this,” said Galimberti, confusedly.

“And yet you don’t dislike it?”

“A.... Two or three of my pupils are so good as to invite me.... I go out for recreation.... I read too hard.”

Again that weary gesture, as if to ease his brow of its weight of thought, and the wandering glance seeming to seek something that was lost.

“You must come to us, too, Professor,” said Andrea, full of compassion for the wretched little dwarf. “Caterina often speaks of you.”

“She was a good creature ... such a good creature. So good and gentle and sensible. Yours was an excellent choice.”

“I believe you,” said Andrea, laughing heartily. “Is it true that you always reproached her with a lack of imagination?”

“Did she tell you that too? Yes—sometimes ... a certain dryness....”

“Well, Caterina isn’t troubled with sentimental vagaries. But I like her best as she is. Have you seen her to-night? She’s lovely. If she were not my wife, I should be dancing with her.”

“She is ... or was with her friend....”

“With Lucia Altimare, to be sure.”

“With the Signorina Altimare,” repeated the Professor, gulping down something with difficulty.

“There’s another of your pupils! She must have plagued you, no end, with her compositions, to judge from the tiresome fantastic letters she writes to my wife.”

“The Signorina Altimare wrote divinely,” said the Professor, dryly.

“Eh! maybe,” muttered Andrea, choosing a cigarette. “Have one? No? I assure you they are not bad. I was saying”—he resumed his seat on the couch, and blew the smoke upwards—“that she must have bored you to tears.”

“The Signorina Altimare is a suffering, interesting being. She is so very unhappy,” persisted the Professor, with his cravat all awry, in the heat of his defence.

Andrea gazed at him with curiosity; then a faint smile parted his lips.

“She goes to balls, however,” he replied, quietly enjoying the study of the Professor.

“She does. She is obliged to, and it changes the current of her thoughts. You see she never dances.”

“Bah! because nobody insists on her doing so. What do you bet that, if I go and ask her, she won’t dance the waltz with me?”

“Nothing would induce her to dance, she is subject to palpitations. It might make her faint.”

“Che! If I give her a turn, you’ll see how she’ll trot! No woman has ever fainted in my arms....” He stopped short from sheer pity. Galimberti, who had turned from yellow to red, and stood nervously clutching at his hat, looked at Andrea with so marked an expression of pain and anger, that he felt ashamed of tormenting him.

“But she is too thin, too angular; we’ll leave her alone. Or you try it, Professor; you dance with her.” With a friendly gesture he took him by the arm, to lead him away.

“I don’t dance,” mumbled Galimberti, and his big head sank on his breast. “I don’t know how to dance.”

Enter once more Giovanna Casacalenda, leaning this time with a certain abandon on the arm of a cavalry officer. Her arm nestled against his coat, her face was raised to his. He, strutting like a peacock in his new uniform, was smiling through his blonde moustache; an ornamental soldier, who had left his sword in the anteroom.

“Well, Giovanna, has the old boy made up his mind?”

“There is something brewing, but nothing settled,” she replied, wearily. “Indeed, it’s a sorry business.”

“All’s well that ends well. Courage, Giovanna; you are enchanting to-night.”

“Am I?” she murmured, looking in his face.

“More than ever ... when I think that old....”

“Don’t think about it, Roberto.... It must be,” she added seriously.

“I know that it must be; as if I hadn’t advised it! Of course your father would not give you to me: it’s no good thinking of it. Besides, he is a very presentable old fellow.”

“Oh! presentable....”

“Well, with the collar of his order under his coat, his bald head, and his white whiskers, he looks dignified enough for a husband, and....”

“It’s all so far off, Roberto,” she said, looking at him languidly but fixedly, with parted lips and sad eyes.

“Well, get it over; it rests with you....”

“You will never forget me, Roberto, my own Roberto?”

“Forget you, Giovanna, transcendent, fascinating as you are? Do you realise the extent of my sacrifice? I leave you to Gabrielli. Do you realise what I lose?”

“You do not lose all,” murmured Giovanna, with a catch in her breath. He bent down and imprinted a long kiss on her wrist. Her eyelids drooped, but she did not withdraw it; she was ready to fall into his arms, notwithstanding the nearness of the ball-room. The young officer, whose prudence was more than equal to his love, raised his head.

“It would be rash to loiter here,” he said; “the old boy might get jealous.”

“Dio mio, what a bore! Basta, for your sake.”

“Why do you not sing to-night?”

“Mamma won’t let me....” And they passed on.

The two friends were approaching the rustic seat: after carefully arranging their trains, they sat down together. Lucia Altimare sank as if from sheer fatigue. Her dress was of strange pale sea-green, almost neutral in tint; the skirt hung in plain ample folds, like a peplum. The bodice closely defined her small waist; her arms and shoulders were swathed in a pale veil, like a cloud in colour and texture. Some of her dark tresses were loosened on her shoulders, and, half buried in their waves, was a wreath of natural white flowers, fresh, but just beginning to fade. A bunch of the same flowers was dying in the folds of tulle that covered her bosom. The general effect was that of the fragile body of an Undine, surmounted by the head of a Sappho.

Next to her sat Caterina Lieti, radiantly serene and fresh, in her pretty pink ball-dress, wearing round her throat a dazzling rivière of diamonds, and in her hair a diamond aigrette that trembled as she leant over her friend, talking to her the while with animation. Lucia appeared to be lost in thought, or in the absence of it. She said, in her dragging tones, as if her very words weighed too heavily for her, “I knew I should meet you here. Besides, my father is so very youngish—it amuses him, he likes dancing. Why did you not answer my last letter?”

“I was on the eve of returning to Naples ... and so you see....”

“I hope,” said the other, with a somewhat contemptuous pout, “that you do not permit your husband to read my letters.”

Caterina, blushing, denied the impeachment.

“He is a good young man,” admitted Lucia, in an indulgent tone. “I think your husband suits you. You are pretty to-night: too many diamonds, though.”

“They were a present from Andrea,” proudly.

“I hate jewels; I shall never wear them.”

“If you were to marry, Lucia....”

“I marry? You know what I wrote you.”

“But listen; there is that Galimberti, who follows you everywhere; who admires you from a distance; who loves you without daring to tell his love. I am sorry for him.”

“Alas! ’tis no fault of mine, Caterina, sai.”

“You know; perhaps he is poor; perhaps his feelings are hurt in all these rich houses, where he follows you. You are good. Spare him. He looks so unhappy.”

“What can I do? He is, like myself, a victim of fate, of fatality.”

“Of what fatality?”

“He is ill-starred, he deserves to be wealthy and handsome, and that is just what he is not. I ought to have come into the world either as an ignorant peasant or as queen of a people to whose happiness I could have ministered. We console ourselves by a correspondence which gives vent to our souls.”

“But he will fall over head and ears in love.”

“I cannot love any one: it is not given to me to love;” and Lucia fell into a rigid, all but statuesque attitude, like a Greek heroine caught in the act of posing. Caterina neither asked her why nor wherefore. In Lucia’s presence she was under the spell that fantastic divagations sometimes exercise over calm reasonable beings.

“Caterina, I have begun to visit the poor in their homes. It is an interesting humanitarian occupation. It is the source of the sweetest emotion. Will you come with me?”

“I will ask Andrea.”

“Must you needs ask his permission for everything? Have you bartered your liberty so far as that?”

“Sai, a wife!”

“Tell me, Caterina, what is the happiness, the charm of married life?”

“I can’t explain it.”

“Tell me why is marriage the death of love.”

“I don’t know, Lucia.”

“Then marriage is to be the eternal mystery of life?”

“Who tells you these things, Lucia?”

“My own heart, Caterina,” replied the other, rising.

Then, assuming a solemn tone and raising her hand to swing it swordwise through the air—“One thing only exists for certain.”

“What?”

“Passion, it’s the only reality.”

“The favoured mortal is always a young man,” remarked the Commendatore Gabrielli, his mouth twitching with a nervous tic to which he was subject.

“But that is not my ideal,” replied the enchanting voice of Giovanna.... “I have always felt a tacit contempt for those idlers, deficient alike in character and talent, who waste their youth and their fortune on gambling and horses and other less worthy pursuits....” She pretended to blush behind her fan.

“Well, Signora Giovanna, you are perhaps right. But a reformed rake makes a good husband.”

“I do not think so, Commendatore; with all due deference, I am not of your opinion. Think of Angela Toraldo’s husband; what a pearl! I hear that if she weeps or complains he boxes her ears. A horror! These young husbands are brutes. Look at Andrea Lieti! how roughly he must treat that poor little Caterina...! While with a man of mature age....”

“Has this often occurred to you, Signora Giovanna?”

“Always.... A grave man who takes life seriously; who lives up to a political idea....”

“You would know how to grace a political salon,” he murmured, gazing at her.

She shut her fan and shrugged her beautiful shoulders, as if they were about to take leave of their crimson cuirasse. The Commendatore’s catlike eyes blazed behind his gold spectacles. Giovanna again plied her fan; it fluttered caressingly, humbly.

“Oh! I am not worthy such honour.... He would shine; and I should modestly reflect his light. We women love to be the secret inspirers of great men. Could you read our hearts....”

And she leant on his arm, against his shoulder, smiling perpetually, smiling to the verge of weariness, while the bald head of the Commendatore shone with a crimson glow.

“What madness,” whispered Lucia Altimare, sinking on the divan. “Perfect madness, for which you are responsible. I ought not to have waltzed....”

“Pray forgive me,” said Andrea, apparently embarrassed, but really bored. He was standing before her in a deferential attitude.

“It is your fault,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes. “You are strong and robust, and an odd fancy came into your head. I ought to have refused.... At first it was all right, a delicious waltz.... You bore me along like a feather, then my head began to whirl.... The room swam round, the lights danced in my brain.... I lost my breath....”

“May I get you something to drink?”

“No,” she answered curtly at his interruption of her eloquence.

“A glass of punch? Punch is a capital remedy,” he continued hurriedly; “it warms, and it’s the best possible restorative. I am going to have some. Pray drink something, unless you mean to overwhelm me with remorse. All our ills come from the stomach. Shall I call Caterina to insist on your taking it?”

“Caterina did not see us come in here?”

“I think not, she was dancing with my brother-in-law, Federigo Passalancia. Caterina is looking her loveliest to-night, isn’t she?”

But Lucia Altimare made no answer; she turned extremely pale, breathed heavily, and then slipped off the divan on to the floor, in a dead faint.

Andrea swore inwardly, with more energy than politeness, against all women who waltz, and at the folly of men who waltz with them.

III.

Every morning, Lucia Altimare, draped in the folds of a red, yellow, and blue striped dressing-gown, fastened round her waist and kilted up on one side with gold cord, her sleeves tucked up over bare wrists, an immense white pocket-handkerchief in her hand as a duster, proceeded, after dismissing her maid, to dust her little apartment, a bedroom and a small sitting-room, within whose walls her father allowed her complete liberty. The dainty office, accomplished methodically and always at the same hour, after she had dressed and prayed, was a source of infinite delight to her. It appeared to her that the act of bending her great pride and her little strength to manual labour, was both pious and meritorious. When the moment for dusting the furniture came round, she would tell her maid, with a sense of condescension:

“You may go, Giulietta, I will do it myself.”

“But, Signorina....”

“No, no, let me do it myself.”

And she felt that she was kind and humane to Giulietta, sparing her the trouble of dusting, and at the same time proving that she did not disdain to share her humble labour.

“In God’s sight we are all equal. If my strength permitted, I would make my own bed, but I am so delicate! If I stoop too much, I get palpitations,” she thought, as she tied on her black apron and tucked up the train of her Turkish dressing-gown.

But the greatest pleasure, the pleasure that thrilled her every nerve, to which she owed her most exquisite sensations, was derived from dawdling over each separate object that had become part of her existence. A charm, wherewith to recall the past, to measure the future, to pass from one dream to another, whereon to weave a fantastic web.

The cold frigid aspect of Lucia’s bedroom reminded her of her old dream of becoming a nun, of falling sick of mysticism, of dying in the ecstasy of the Cross. The room was uncarpeted, and the bare floor, with its red tiles, had an icy polish. The bed, whose wrought-iron supports Lucia rubbed so indefatigably, had no curtains. Under its plain cover, with its single, meagre little pillow, it was the typical bed of ascetic maidenhood. Next to the bed, in a frame draped in black crape, hung a Byzantine Madonna and Child, painted on a background of gilded wood. She wore an indigo dress, a red mantle, and her eyes were strangely dilated, while one hand clutched the Infant Jesus: a picture expressive of the first stammerings of the alphabet of art. Lucia always kissed it before she dusted it; the lugubrious drapery made her dream of the mother she had hardly known, and from whom the Madonna came to her. Her lips would seek the traces of maternal kisses on the narrow, diaphanous, waxen-hued hand of the Virgin.

By the side of the bed, under the Madonna, stood a wooden prie-Dieu of mediæval workmanship, which Lucia had bought of a second-hand dealer. The family arms were effaced from its wooden escutcheon. Lucia, instead of replacing them by the alte onde in tempesta, the polar star and the azure field of Casa Altimare, had had it graven with a death’s-head and the motto “Nihil,” which she had adopted for her own seal. She had to kneel down on its red velvet cushion to polish it, and then mechanically she would say another prayer. She could hardly tear herself away from it. When she did so, it was to pass the handkerchief over the tiny chest of drawers that she had taken with her to school. That brought back some of her past life to her, the books hidden in the folds of the linen, the little images from Lourdes mixed up with the ribbons, the sweets that she did not eat. On the top of this chest of drawers were a red silk pincushion, covered with finest lace—which had been given to her by Ginevra Avigliana, the most patient needlewoman of them all—and Thomas à Kempis’s “Imitation,” its margin finely annotated in ink red as blood. When she passed the handkerchief over the book, she read a few words in it.

Her mind would run in another channel when she found herself in front of the large mirror in her wardrobe, where she could see herself from head to foot. She looked at herself, perceiving that her gown wrinkled about the bodice, and reflecting that she must have become much thinner lately. She joined her fingers round her narrow waist, remarking inwardly that had she chosen she might have made it as slender as a reed.... Then she posed in profile, with her train pushed on one side, and her head a little inclined towards the right shoulder. She had once seen the fantastic portrait of a thin unknown woman in white, in this attitude.... Lucia liked to imagine that the unknown lady had suffered much, then died; and that afterwards the unknown atom had joined the Great Unknown. The same fancies followed her to the oval mirror on her dressing-table. A thin white covering hung over it from the night before, put there because it is unlucky to look into an uncovered mirror the last thing at night. She threw the large white handkerchief, now no longer white, into a corner and supplied herself with another, with which she slowly rubbed the glass. She was tired, and sat gazing at her image—her forehead, her eyes, and her lips—intently, as if seeking to discover something in them. Every now and then she took up a bottle of musk from the table and sniffed it, looking at herself to mark the intense pallor and the tears induced by the pungent odour. In the drawer there was a little box of rouge and a hare’s foot to lay it on with; but she did not use it. One morning she had slightly tinted one cheek, it had disgusted her. She preferred her pallor, the warm pallor of ivory, that “white heat of passion,” as a rapturous poet, of unrecognised merit, had described it. A butterfly was pinned to the frame of the looking-glass. His wings were expanded, for he was a cotillon butterfly of blue and silver gauze, a memento of the first ball her father had taken her to last year. Every morning a puff of her breath caused his wings to flutter, while his little body stuck fast to the mirror. That motionless, artificial butterfly reminded her of certain artificial lives, full of noble aspirations, but lacking the energy, the power to rise. Then she wondered if she were very interesting or very ugly, when she looked sad; and she postured before the mirror in her most melancholy manner, calculating the effect of the white brow, half hidden beneath the wealth of wavy hair, the depth of sadness in her eyes, the dark colouring of the underlid which accentuated their expression, the straight line of the profile, the angle drawn by the bitter smile that sharpened the curves of her lips. A sigh of satisfaction escaped her. In her sad mood, she might inspire interest, if not love. Love she did not want. What would be the good of it? The capacity for loving was denied her.

Then came the turn of the bottles on the toilet-table. They contained, for the most part, those fantastic remedies which a quasi-romantic science has voted sovereign against the most modern of maladies, mock nevrose. In one bottle, chloral for insomnia, chloral to produce a sleep full of exquisite and painful hallucinations, the very disease of fantasy. In another, digitalis, wherewith to calm palpitations of the heart. In another, a beautiful one, enamelled, with a golden stopper, “English” salts wherewith to recall the fainting spirit. And at last, in one, a white limpid fluid—morphine. “For sleep ... sleep,” murmured Lucia, while she reviewed her little pharmacy.

After the toilet-table, she passed her handkerchief over the second wardrobe, the one containing her linen, and dusted the three chairs. Then having finished, she cast a look round, to assure herself that her cell, as she called it, had assumed the cold, spotless appearance she desired to give it. Her fantasy was assuaged; she addressed herself aloud to her room: “Peace, peace, sleep on, inert and inanimate, until to-night, when my tortured spirit will return to fill thy space with anguish.”

She passed into the sitting-room, her favourite resort, the room where her life was passed. The dark rosewood cabinet, containing five wide deep drawers, was her first stage. Her fancy transformed it into a bier. She delicately dusted the oxidised silver inkstand, representing a tiny boat, sinking in a lake of ink. Then the handkerchief was passed over the portrait frames with their hermetically sealed doors, so that no one might ever steal a glimpse of the portraits hidden within. In reality, they were empty, but the white cardboard backs, the void only known to herself, suggested an unknown lover, a mystic knight, that fair-haired Knight of the Holy Grail whom Elsa had not known how to love; whom she would have known how to keep by her side. Gently she brushed the dust off a small Egyptian idol with a tiny necklace of blue fragments: it was an upright copy of a mummy of the Cheops dynasty. It served as a talisman, for these Egyptian idols avert the evil of one’s destiny. Lucia touched the Bible, bound in black morocco, on whose fly-page she had inscribed certain memorable dates in her existence, with mysterious signs to denote the events to which they referred. With reverence she took up the diamond edition of Leopardi, on whose crimson binding was inscribed “Lucia,” in letters of silver. She read in both books, every day, kissing the Bible and Leopardi with equal fervour. The ivory penholder, with its gold pen; the sandal-wood paper-knife, on which was inscribed the Spanish word Nada; the agate seal, that bore the same motto as the prie-dieu; the letter-weight, upon which stood a porcelain child in its shift; the half-mourning pen-wiper of black cloth, embroidered in white; all the fantastic playthings she had accumulated on her writing-table, were objects of equal interest to her. She always spent half an hour at the writing-table, with fingers that dallied over their pastime, shoulders bent in contemplation, and an imagination that sped on wings to unknown heights.

Then, after the writing-table, came a photograph in a red frame, suspended against the wall, a portrait of Caterina. Underneath it hung a bénitier containing fresh flowers, which were changed every morning. Caterina contemplated her friend with kind serene eyes; the portrait had her own air of composure. Every morning, in passing the linen over the glass, Lucia greeted Caterina: “Blessed art thou, that dreamest not, blessed ... that will never dream.” Next came a small group in terra-cotta of Mephistopheles and Margaret. The guilty, enamoured girl was kneeling in a convulsed attitude, with rigid limbs. Her hands clasped the prayer-book that she could not open, her bosom heaved, her throat had sunk into her crouching shoulders, her face was contorted, her lips convulsed with the cry of horror that appeared to escape them. Mephistopheles, tall, meagre, diabolic, with a subtle, jeering smile, his hand in the act of making magnetic passes over her head, stood behind her; a great, splendid, crushing Mephistopheles. Whenever she looked at Margaret she felt herself blush with desire; whenever she looked at Mephistopheles, Lucia paled with fear: with vague indefinite desire of sin; with vague fear of punishment; a mysterious struggle that took place in the very depths of her being. It was Lucia’s hand that had carved in crooked, shaky characters, on the wooden pedestal, Et ne nos inducas in tentationem. When she came to the low table on which the albums stood, she sat down, for her fatigue grew upon her. She turned their leaves; there were a few portraits—girl friends, relations, three or four young men. Among the latter, by way of eccentricity, was a faded photograph of Petröfi Sandor, the Hungarian poet who fell in love with a dead maiden. Lucia never saw that portrait but through a haze of tears, when she pondered over a love so sad, so strange, and so funereal. Then she opened her book of “Confessions.” Its pages were scribbled over by Lucia herself, by the lady who taught her German, by the Professor of History, by Caterina, Giovanna Casacalenda, and others. There were in response to the wildest questions, the most irrelevant, silly, or eccentric answers. Giovanna’s was stupid, Lucia’s mad and fantastic, Caterina’s honest and collected, the Professor’s insane, the German teacher’s sentimental, Alberto Sanna’s fluctuating and uncertain. Lucia lingered here and there to read one of them. Then she put that album aside and opened another, her favourite, the dearest, the handsomest, the best beloved; a faded rose was gummed on the first page, underneath it was a line from Byron. On the next, a little wreath of violets; in their centre, a date and a line of notes of interrogation; farther on, the shadowy profile of a woman, barely sketched in, signed “Clara.” And pell-mell, dried flowers, verses, thoughts, landscapes, sketches, an American postage-stamp, a scarabæus crushed into the paper, two words written with gold ink.

She smiled, revelling in melancholy, as she turned these pages. Then she left the albums, and stroked the head of a bronze lizard that lay beside them on the table. She had a great fondness for lizards, snakes, and toads, thinking them beautiful and unfortunate.

The grand piano, littered with music, was a long business. When she passed the duster over the shining wood, she half closed her eyelids, as if she felt the caressing contact of satin; then she passed it over the keys, drawing from them a sort of formless, discordant music, in whose endless variations she revelled. Lucia neither played well, nor much; but when she met with a philharmonic friend, she would instal her at the piano, and herself in a Viennese rocking-chair, where she would close her eyes, beat time with her head and listen. Voiceless and spell-bound, she was one of the best and most ecstatic of listeners. Most of the music lying on the table was German; she specially affected the sacred harmonies of Bach and Haydn. But Aïda was always open on the reading-desk. Then there was the embroidery-frame, a stole for the church of the Madonna, her Madonna of the Bleeding Heart. Next to it stood a microscopic work-table, on which lay the beginning of a useless, spidery fabric. The chairs, the pouffs, the little armchairs, were all in different styles and colours, for she loathed uniformity. Her first prize for literature, a gold medal set in white satin, hung on the wall; underneath it was her first childish essay in writing. A bookshelf contained a few worn school-books, some novels, and the Lives of the Saints. And last of all came a large tea-rose with red marks, like blood-stains, on its petals, gummed into a velvet frame, the Rosa mystica. When she had finished, Lucia cast aside her duster, washed her hands, swallowed a few drops of syrup diluted with water to clear her throat of dust, returned to the sitting-room, threw herself down on her sofa, and let her fancies have free play.

IV.

Caterina Lieti entered, looking tiny in her furs; with her pink face peeping from under her fur cap.

“Make haste, dear; it’s late.”

“No, dear; it’s no good going to my poor people before four; it’s hardly two o’clock.”

“We are going elsewhere.”

“Where?”

“Somewhere where we shall amuse ourselves.”

“I’m not going, I don’t want to amuse myself; I am more inclined to cry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.... I feel miserable.”

“Oh! poor, poor thing. Now listen to me, you’d better come with me and try to amuse yourself. You will injure your health by always staying in this dark room, in this perfumed atmosphere.”

“My health is gone, Caterina,” said the other in a comfortless tone; “every day I get thinner.”

“Because you do not eat, dear; you ought to eat; Andrea says so too.”

“What does Andrea say,” said Lucia, in a tone of indifference, which annoyed Caterina.

“That you should eat nutritious food, drink plenty of wine and eat underdone meat.”

“I am not a cannibal. That kind of diet does very well for muscular organisms, but not for fragile nerve-tissues like mine.”

“But Andrea says that nerves are cured by beefsteaks.”

“It’s no good trying; I couldn’t digest them; I can’t digest anything now.”

“Well, do dress, and come with me. The cold is quite reviving.”

“Where to?”

“I won’t tell you. Trust me!”

“I will trust you.... I am tempted by the unknown. I will drag this weary existence about wheresoever you please. Will you wait for me?”

She returned in half an hour, dressed in a short black dress, softened by lace accessories. A black hat, with a broad velvet brim, shaded her brow and eyes.

“Shall we walk?” asked Caterina.

“We will walk; if I get tired we can call a cab.”

They walked, entering the Toledo from Montesanto. The tramontana was blowing hard, but the sun flooded the streets with light. Men, with red noses and hands in their pockets, were walking quickly. Behind their short black veils the ladies’ eyes were full of tears and their lips were chapped by the wind. Caterina drew her furs closer to her.

“Are you cold, Lucia?”

“Strange to say, I am not cold.”

People turned to gaze at the two attractive-looking women, one small and rosy, with clear eyes and an expression of perfect composure, attired like a dainty Russian; the other, tall and slight, with marvellous eyes set in a waxen pallor.

A gentleman who passed them in a hired carriage, bowed profoundly to both.

“Galimberti ...” murmured Lucia, in a weary voice.

“Where can he be going at this hour?”

“I don’t know ... to his lesson ... I suppose.”

“Do you know what Cherubina Friscia told me, a few days ago?”

“Have you seen her again?”

“Yes, I went there, because I heard that the Directress was ill. Friscia told me that they were very dissatisfied with Galimberti. He is always late for his lesson now; he either leaves before the hour is up, or misses it altogether.”

“Does he...?” indifferently.

“Besides, he is not so good a teacher as he used to be. He takes no interest in his class, is careless in correcting the compositions, and has become prolix and hazy as an exponent.... In short, a mere ruin.”

“Poor Galimberti...! I told you that he was an unlucky creature. He’ll end badly.”

“Forgive me if I ask you ... not from curiosity, but for friendship’s sake ... does he still write to you?”

“Yes, every day; he writes me all his troubles.”

“And you to him?”

“I write him a long letter, every day.”

“And is it true that he comes to your house every day, to give you a lesson in history?”

“Yes, every day.”

“And does he stay long?”

“Yes, naturally. We don’t talk only of history, but of sentiment ... of the human affections ... of religion....”

“Of love?”

“Of love too.”

“Forgive me for importuning you. Galimberti is very much in love. Perhaps it is for the sake of going to you that he gets there so late; perhaps when he misses his lessons there altogether, it is because he stays so long with you. You who are so good, think what it means for him.”

“It’s nothing to do with me; if it is his destiny, it is fatal.”

“But does your father approve of these long interviews?”

“My father! He doesn’t care a pin for me, he is a heartless man.”

“Don’t say that, Lucia.”

“A heartless man! If my health is bad, he doesn’t care. He laughs at my piety.... Do you know how he describes me, when he speaks of me at all? 'That interesting poseuse, my daughter.’ You can’t get over that; it sums up my father.” Caterina made no reply. “That Galimberti will end by becoming a nuisance. Were he not so unhappy, I would send him about his business.”

“Sai, Lucia, a girl ought not to receive young men alone ... it is not nice ... it is playing with fire.”

“Nè fiamma d’esto incendio non m’assale,” she quoted.

They had arrived at the Café de l’Europe, where the wind was blowing furiously. Caterina, turning to protect herself against it, saw the cab in which Galimberti sat with the hood drawn up to hide him, following them step by step.

“Dio mio! now he is following us ... Galimberti.... What will people think...? Lucia, what shall we do?”

“Nothing, dear. I can’t prevent it; it is magnetism, you see.”

“Now he is missing his lesson for the sake of following us.”

“It is no good struggling against fate, Caterina.”

Caterina was silent, for she knew not what to say.

It was three o’clock when they entered the Samazzaro Theatre, all lit up by gas, as if for an evening entertainment. Nearly all the boxes were occupied, and a hum of suppressed chitchat arose towards the gilded ceiling. From time to time there was a peal of irrepressible laughter. People who, in groups of threes and fours, invaded the parterre were dazed by the artificial light. The gas was gruesome after the brilliant light of the streets. The ladies were all in dark morning costumes; most of them wore large hats, some were wrapped in furs. There was the click of cups in one box where the Duchess of Castrogiovanni and the Countess Filomarina were drinking tea, to warm themselves. Little Countess Vanderhoot hid her snub nose in her muff, trying to warm it by blowing as hard as she could. Smart Neapolitans, with their fur coats thrown back to show the gardenia in their button-hole, with dark gloves and light cravats, moved about the parterre and the stalls and began to pay a few visits in the boxes.

“What is going on here?” asked Lucia, as she took her seat in Box 1, first tier.

“You’ll see, you’ll see.”

“But what is that boarding for, which enlarges the stage, and entirely covers the place for the orchestra?”

“There’s a fencing tournament to-day.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Lucia, without much show of interest.

“Andrea is to have three assaults.”

“Ah!” repeated the other, in the same tone.

The maître d’armes seated himself at the end of the stage, next to a table, laden with foils and jackets. Every one in the parterre immediately resumed his seat, in profound silence. The theatre was crowded.

The maître d’armes was a Count Alberti, tall, powerfully built, bald, with bushy grey whiskers and serious mien. He was dressed in black, and wore his overcoat buttoned to the chin. His hand was resting on a foil.

“Look! what a fine type,” said Lucia; “a fine imposing figure.”

The first couple advanced to the front of the stage. They were the fencing-master, Giovanelli, and a Baron Mattei. The latter was tall and finely proportioned. His beard was trimmed to a short point, his cropped hair formed another point in the middle of his forehead; he wore a tight-fitting costume of maroon cloth, with a black scarf. He at once captured the ladies’ favour; there was a slight stir in the boxes.

“A Huguenot cavalier, that’s what he looks like,” murmured Lucia, who was becoming excited.

The fencers, after saluting the ladies and the general company, bowed to each other. Then the match began promptly and brilliantly. The fencing-master was short and stout, but uncommonly agile; the Baron, slight, cool, and admirable for ease and precision. They did not open their lips. After each thrust, Mattei fell into a sculpturesque attitude, which thrilled the company with admiration. He was touched twice. He touched his adversary four times. Then they shook hands, and laid down their foils. A burst of applause rang throughout the house.

“Do you like it?” whispered Caterina to Lucia.

“Oh, so much!” she answered, quite absorbed by the pleasure of it.

“There is Giovanna Casacalenda.”

“Where?”

“On the second tier, No. 3.”

“Ah! of course. Behind her is the Commendatore Gabrielli. Poor Giovanna.”

“The marriage is officially announced. But she does not look unhappy.”

“She dissembles.”

The second couple—Lieti, amateur, and Galeota, professional—appeared and placed themselves in position. Andrea was dressed in black cloth, with a yellow scarf and shoes, and chamois-leather gloves. His athletic figure showed to its utmost advantage in perfect vigour and harmony of form and line. He smiled up at the box, a second. Caterina had shrunk back a little out of sight, with eyes all but overflowing.

“Your husband is handsome to-day,” said Lucia, gravely. “He looks like a gladiator.”

Caterina nodded her thanks. Galeota, dark, slight and meagre, attacked slowly.

Andrea defended himself phlegmatically; motionless they gazed into each other’s eyes; now and again a cunning thrust, cunningly parried. The audience was absorbed in profound attention.

“Su, su, on, on,” Lucia cried, under her breath, trembling in her eagerness, and crushing her cambric handkerchief with nervous fingers.

The assault went on as calmly and scientifically as a game of chess, ending in two or three master-thrusts, miraculously parried. The two fencers, as they shook hands, smiled at each other. They were worthy antagonists. The applause which followed was wrung from the audience by the perfection of their method.

“Applaud your husband! Are you not proud of him?”

“Yes,” replied Caterina, blushing.

A visitor entered the box, it was Alberto Sanna, a cousin of Lucia’s.

“Good-morning, Signora Lieti. What a triumph for your lord and master!”

Caterina bowed and smiled. Lucia held out two fingers to her cousin, who kept them in his. He was a rather stunted little creature, slightly bent in his tight overcoat; his temples were hollow, his cheekbones high, and his moustache thin and scanty; yet he had the air of a gentleman. His appearance was sickly and his smile uncertain. He spoke slowly, hissing out his syllables as if his breath were short. He informed the ladies that cold was bad for him; that he could not get warm, even in his fur coat; that he had only looked in, just by a mere accident, to avoid the cold outside. He was fortunate in having met them. He entreated them, for charity’s sweet sake, not to send him away. He added:

“I met your Professor of History, Lucia. He was walking up and down, smoking. Why don’t he come in?”

“I don’t know. Probably because he doesn’t care to see the fencing.”

“Or because he hasn’t the money to pay for a ticket,” persisted Sanna, with the triumphant malevolence of morbid natures.

Lucia struck him with the lightning of her glance, but made no answer. Caterina was too embarrassed to say anything. She looked at the stage; the fencers were two professionals; they had coarse voices, and arms that mowed the air like the poles of the semaphore telegraph. The audience paid small heed. Giovanna Casacalenda talked to her Commendatore, who was standing behind her, while she cast oblique glances at Roberto Gentile, the young officer in the brand-new uniform, who occupied a fauteuil underneath her box.

“Do you not fence, Signor Sanna?” asked Caterina by way of conversation.

“Fence!” said Lucia, vivaciously, giving her cousin tit-for-tat. “Fence, indeed, when he hasn’t breath to say more than four words at a time!”

The Signora Lieti reddened and trembled, out of sheer pity for Sanna’s pallor.

The silence in the box was more embarrassing than ever; then as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Lucia separated a gardenia from the bunch in her waistband, and gave it to Alberto. A little colour suffused his thin cheeks, he coughed weakly.

“Are you not well, Alberto...?” laying her hand upon his arm.

“Not quite, it’s the cold,” said he, with the whine of a sickly child.

“Have a glass of punch, to warm you?”

“It’s bad for my chest.”

Caterina, pretending not to hear, gave her whole attention to the spectacle. Count Alberti had passed two foils: to Galeota, junior, the young fencing-master, and to Lieti. The interest of the audience was once more awakened. The younger Galeota was a beautiful, graceful youth, with fair, curly hair, shining blue eyes, a short wavy beard, and the complexion of a fair woman; a well-proportioned figure, habited in ultramarine, with a white scarf. Opposite him, stood Andrea Lieti, like a calm Colossus.

“Dio mio!” cried Lucia, “Galeota is like a picture of Our Lord! How sweet and gentle he looks! If only Andrea does not hurt him.” But Andrea did not hurt him. It was a furious attack, in which the foils bent and squeaked; at last Galeota’s foil broke off at the hilt. Alberti stayed both hands. The fencers raised their masks to breathe.

“How like Galeota is to Corradino of Alcardi!” exclaimed Lucia. “But your husband is a glorious Charles of Anjou.”

The assault began again; hotter and fiercer than ever. From time to time the deep sonorous voice of Andrea cried, Toccato! and above the din, the clear resonant tones of Galeota rang out, Toccato! The ladies became enthusiastic; they seized their opera-glasses and leant over the parapet of their boxes, while a thrill of delight moved the whole assembly. In Lucia’s excitement she closed her teeth over her handkerchief, and dug her nails into the red velvet upholstery. Caterina had again withdrawn into her shady corner.

“Bravo! bravo!” cried the audience with one voice, when the assault was over. Lucia leant out of the box and applauded; for the matter of that, many other ladies applauded. After all, it was a tournament. Lucia’s eyes dilated, her lips trembled; a nervous shiver shook her from time to time.

“Are you amusing yourself, Lucia?” said Caterina again.

“Immensely...!” closing her eyes in the flush of her enjoyment.

“Senti, Alberto; if it is not too cold, go down and send us up something from the buffet.”

“I don’t want anything,” protested Caterina.

“Yes, yes, you do; you shall drink a glass of Marsala, with a biscuit.”

“I will have anything to please you,” assented Caterina, to avoid discussion.

“Send an ice for me, Alberto.”

“In this cold weather? I shiver to think of it.”

“I am burning; feel my hand.” And she put the poor creature’s finger in the opening of her glove. “Now, go and send me an ice at once. Take care of draughts.... That poor Alberto is not long for this life,” she added, addressing Caterina, when he was gone.

“Why not?”

“He is threatened with consumption. His mother and two sisters died of it. Don’t you see how thin he is?”

“Then don’t be cruel to him.”

“I? Why, I’m devotedly attached to him. I sympathise with suffering of every kind. All the people about me are sickly creatures.”

“Andrea would say that such an atmosphere cannot but be injurious to your health.”

“Oh! how strong your Andrea is! That is what I call strength. You saw to-day that he was the strongest of them all. But he never comes to see me.”

“Sai, he never has a moment to spare. And he is afraid of talking too loudly—of making your head ache.”

“He is not fond of musk, I fancy?” And she smiled a strange smile.

“Perfumes send the blood to his head. I will tell him to call on you.”

“Senti, Caterina, strength like his is almost overwhelming. Does it not almost frighten you? Are you never afraid of him?”

Caterina looked astonished, as she replied: “Afraid...! I do not understand you.... Why should I be afraid?”

“I don’t know,” said the other, shrugging her shoulders crossly. “I must eat this ice, for here comes Alberto again.”

During this conversation the performance continued—alternately interesting and tiresome. Connoisseurs opined that the tournament was a great success, and the Neapolitan school had been worthily represented. The Filomarina averred, with the audacity of a Titianesque beauty, that Galeota was an Antinous. The Marchesa Leale, a great friend of Baron Mattei’s, was enraptured. She was seated quietly by her husband’s side; she wore a badge—a brooch representing two crossed foils—that the Baron had presented to her. On the latter’s scarf was embroidered a red rose, the Marchesa’s emblem.

In the excitement incidental to the clashing of swords and the triumph of physical strength, Giovanna Casacalenda, with flushed cheeks and moist lips, began to neglect her Commendatore, and to cast enthusiastic and incendiary glances at Roberto Gentile. Many ladies regretted having exchanged their fans for muffs in the increasingly heated atmosphere. By degrees a vapour ascended towards the roof, and excited fancy conjured up visions of duels, gleaming foils, shining swords, secret thrusts, and applauding beauty. A warlike ardour reigned in boxes and parterre.

“Has the ice refreshed you, Lucia?” inquired her cousin.

“No, I burn more than ever; there was fire in it.”

“Perhaps you would feel better outside.”

“It will be over in a few minutes,” observed Caterina. “There is to be a set-to between my husband and Mattei.”

The set-to proved to be the most interesting part of the performance. Lieti and Mattei, the two most powerful champions, stood facing each other. The audience held its breath. During five minutes the two fencers stood facing each other; they toyed with their foils, indulging in a flourish of salutes, feintes, thrusts, parries, and plastic attitudes—a perfect symphony, whose theme was the chivalric salutation. Applause without end; then again silence, for the assault-at-arms was about to begin. Not a word or sound was uttered by either fencer. They were equally agile, ready, scientific, and full of fire—parrying with unflagging audacity, and liberating their foils as in the turn of a ring. They were well matched. Lieti touched Mattei five times; Mattei touched Lieti four times. They divided the honours. In applauding the two champions the public broke through the cordon. A handkerchief fell at Andrea’s feet. He hesitated a moment; then, without raising his eyes, stuck it in the scarf round his waist. The ladies’ gloves were torn to shreds in the storm of applause.

When he joined them in the box, Andrea found the ladies standing up, waiting for him.

“Good evening, Signorina Altimare; good evening, Caterina. Shall we go?” He spoke curtly and crossly while he helped his wife, who looked confused, to put on her furs. Then he burst out:

“Caterina, why did you behave so ridiculously? It is so unlike you to be eccentric—to make a laughing-stock of yourself?”

She kept her hands in her muff and her eyes cast down, and made no reply.

“You, a sensible little woman? Are we living in the Middle Ages? Perdio, to expose oneself to ridicule!”

Caterina turned pale and bit her lip; she would not cry, and had no voice left to answer with. Lucia leant against the door-post, listening.

“You are talking about the handkerchief, Signor Andrea?” she put in, slowly.

“Just so.... The handkerchief. A pretty conjugal amenity!”

“It was I who threw the handkerchief, Signor Andrea, in my enthusiasm. You were wonderful to-day—the first champion of the tournament.”

Andrea had not a word to say. He calmed down at once, with a vague smile. Caterina breathed freely once more.

Alberto Sanna returned and offered his arm to Caterina; Andrea assisted Lucia in putting on her cloak. She, with face uplifted towards his, her eyes, through their long lashes, fixed on his, and a slight quiver in her nostrils, leant on him imperceptibly, just sufficiently to graze his shoulder, as she drew on her coat-sleeves.

V.

“Is it you, Galimberti? Pray come in.”

“Am I not disturbing you?” and, as usual, he stumbled over the rug, and then sat down, hat in hand, one glove off and the other on, but unbuttoned.

“You never disturb me.” Her tone was the cold, monotonous one of ill-humour.

“You were thinking?” ventured the dwarf, after a short silence.

“Yes, I was thinking ... but I don’t remember about what.”

“Have you been out to-day? It is a lovely morning.”

“And I’m so cold. I am always cold when the weather is warm, and vice versâ.”

“Strange creature!”

“Eh?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“And about yourself, Galimberti. Have you been to the College to-day to give your lesson?”

“Yes, I went there, although I felt so sad, and so disinclined to teach.”

“Very sad—and why?” But the tone was indifferent.

He stroked his forehead with his ungloved hand. She sat with her back to the window, but the light shone straight on his face, which looked yellow and faded. Occasionally there appeared to be a squint in his eyes.

“Yesterday ...” he began, “yesterday, you did not deign to write to me.”

“Yesterday.... What did I do yesterday...? Oh! I remember. Alberto Sanna came to see me.”

“He ... comes ... often ... to see you ... does he not?”

“He is my cousin,” she replied, coldly.

Another halt in the conversation. He went on, mechanically fingering the gloves he had not put on. Lucia unwound a cord of the silken fringe of the low chair in which, with face upturned, she was lying.

“Shall I give you your history lesson to-day?”

“No. History is useless, like everything else.”

“Are you too sad?”

“I’m not even sad—I’m indifferent. I do not care to think.”

“So that—forgive me for mentioning it—I must not hope for a letter from you to-morrow?”

“I don’t know ... I don’t think I shall be able to write.”

“But those letters were my only consolation,” lamented the dwarf.

“A fleeting consolation.”

“I am unhappy, so unhappy.”

“We’re all unhappy”—sententiously, and without looking at him.

“I fear that they no longer like me at the College,” he went on, as if talking to himself. “I always find myself confronted by such icy faces. That Cherubina Friscia hates me. She is a canting hypocrite, who weighs every word I speak. She makes a note in her handbook when I’m only a little late. I don’t know how it is, but sometimes I forget the hour. My memory is getting so weak.”

“So much the better for you. I can never forget.”

“And besides, the Tricolors of this year are lazy and insolent. They contradict me, refuse to write on the subjects I give them, and interrupt me with the most impertinent questions. Every now and then I lose the thread of my discourse, and then they giggle so that I can never find it again.... I’m done for, Signorina Lucia, I’m done for. I no longer enjoy teaching. I think ... I think there is intrigue at work against me at the College, a frightful, terrible, mysterious conspiracy that will end in my destruction.” He rolled his fierce, scared eyes, injected with blood and bile, as if he were taking stock of the enemies against whom he had to defend himself.

“The remedy, my dear Galimberti, is a simple one,” said Lucia with childlike candour.

“Speak, oh speak, you’re my good angel.... I will obey you in everything.”

“Shake the dust from off your sandals, and leave. Give them due warning.”

Galimberti was so much surprised that he hesitated.

“Is not liberty dear to you?” she continued. “Are you not nauseated by the stifling atmosphere you live in? There is a means of reasserting your independence.”

“True,” he murmured. He did not dare to confess to her that leaving the aristocratic College would mean ruin and starvation to him. Thence he derived the chief part of his income—through them he obtained a few private lessons at the houses of his old pupils, by means of which he augmented the mite on which he lived, he in Naples, and his mother and sister in his native province. Without this, there would only remain to him an evening class for labouring people, by which he gained sixty francs a month: not enough to keep three people from dying of hunger. He was already too much ashamed of appearing to her, ugly, old, and unfortunate, without owning to being poverty-stricken besides.

“True,” he repeated despairingly.

“Why don’t you write to the Directress? If there be a conspiracy, she ought to be informed of it.”

“There is a conspiracy.... I feel it in the air about me.... I will write ... yes ... in a day or two.”

Then there was silence. Lucia stroked the folds of her Turkish wrapper. She took up her favourite album and in it wrote these lines of Boïto:

L’ebete vita
Vita che c’innamora
Lunga che pare un secolo
Breve che pare un ora.

She replaced the album on the table, and the gold pencil-case in her pocket.

“Will you believe in one thing, Signora Lucia?”

“Scarcely....”

“Oh! believe in this sacred truth; the only happy part of my life is the time I pass here.”

“Oh! indeed,” she said, without looking at him.

“I swear it. Before I arrive here, I am overwhelmed with anxiety, I seem to have so many important things to tell you. When I get to the door, I forget them all. I am afraid my brain is getting weak. Then time flies; you speak to me; I hear your voice; I am here with you, in the room in which you live. I am afraid I stay too long; why don’t you send me away? When I leave you, the first puff of wind on the threshold of the street-door takes all my ideas away with it, and empties my brain, without leaving me the power to hold on to my own thoughts.”

“Here is Signor Sanna, Signorina,” announced the maid Giulietta.

“I am going,” said the perturbed Professor, rising to take his leave.

“As you please.” She shrugged her shoulders.

But he did not go, not knowing how to do so, while Alberto Sanna entered. The latter, buttoned up to his chin in his overcoat, with a red silk handkerchief to protect his throat, held a bunch of violets in his hand. Lucia, rising from her seat, placed both her hands in his, and dragged him to the window, that she might see how he looked.

“How are you, Alberto; do you feel well to-day?”

“Always the same,” he said; “an unspeakable weakness in my limbs.”

“Did you sleep, last night?”

“Pretty well.”

“Without any fever?”

“I think so; at least I hadn’t those cold shivers or that horrid suffocation.”

“Let me feel your pulse. It is weak, but regular, sai.”

“I ate a light breakfast.”

“Then you ought to feel well.”

“Che! my stomach can’t digest anything.”

“Like mine, Alberto. What lovely violets!”

“I bought them for you. I think you are fond of them?”

“I hope you didn’t buy them of a flower-girl?”

“If I had, then I should not have offered them to you.”

This dialogue took place in the window, while Galimberti sat alone and forgotten in his armchair. He sat there without raising his eyes, holding an album of photographs in his awkwardly gloved hands. He took a long time turning pages which held the portraits of persons in whom he could not have felt any interest. At last Lucia returned to her rocking-chair, and Alberto dragged a stool close up to her.

“Alberto, you know the Professor?”

“I think I have the honour....”

“We have met before ...” the two then said in unison; the Professor in an undertone, the cousin curtly.

They sat staring at each other, bored by each other’s presence, conscious of being in love with the same woman; Galimberti not less conscious of the necessity of taking his leave. Only he did not know how to get up, or what the occasion demanded that he should say and do. Lucia appeared quite unconscious of what was passing in their minds. She sniffed at her violets, and sometimes vouchsafed a word or two, especially to her cousin. However, conversation did not flow easily. The Professor, when Lucia addressed him, replied in monosyllables, starting with the air of a person who answers by courtesy, without understanding what is said to him. Sanna never addressed Galimberti, so that by degrees the trio once more collapsed into a duet.

“I looked in at your father’s rooms before coming to you. He was going out. He wanted to persuade me to go with him.”

“He is always going out.... And why didn’t you go with him?”

“It rained this morning; and I feel a shrinking in my very bones from the damp. It’s so cosy here, I preferred staying with you.”

“Have you no fireplaces at home?”

“Sai; those Neapolitan fireplaces that are not meant for fire, a cardboard sort of affair. Besides, my servant never manages to make me comfortable. I shiver in my own room, although it is so thickly carpeted.”

“Do you light fires at home, Galimberti?”

“No, Signorina; indeed, I have no fireplace.”

“How can you study in the cold?”

“I don’t feel the cold when I study.”

“You, Alberto, when you have anything to do, bring it here. I will embroider, and you can work.”

“I never have any writing to do, Lucia. You know your father manages all my business. And writing is bad for my chest.”

“You could read.”

“Reading bores me; there’s nothing but rubbish in books.”

“Then we could chat.”

“That we could! You might tell me all your beautiful thoughts, which excite the unbounded admiration of every one who listens to you. Where do you get your strange thoughts from, Lucia?”

“From the land of dreams,” she said, with a smile.

“The land of dreams! A land of your own invention, surely! You ought to write these things, Lucia. You have the making of an authoress.”

“What would be the good of it; I have no vanity, have I, Professor? I never had any.”

“Never! An excessive modesty, united to rare talent....”

“Basta, I was not begging for compliments. I was thinking of how much I suffered from my usual sleeplessness, last night....”

“I hope you took no chloral?”

“I refrained from it to please you. I bore with insomnia for your sake.”

“Thank you, my angel.”

Galimberti sat listening to them, while they exchanged lover-like glances, gazing at the red frame which held Caterina’s portrait.

“I ought to go ... I must go ...” he kept thinking. He felt as if he were nailed to his chair; as if he had no strength to rise from it. He was miserable, for he had just discovered that there was mud on one of his boots. It appeared to him that Lucia was always looking at that boot. It was his martyrdom, yet he dared not withdraw from it.

“And so the thought came to me amid so many others, that you, Alberto, need a woman about you.”

“What sort of a woman—a housekeeper? They are selfish and odious, I can’t abide them.”

“Why, no, I mean a wife.”

“Do you think so...? How strange! I should never have thought of it.”

“But the woman whom you need is not like any other. You need an exceptional woman.”

“True, how true! I want an exceptional wife,” said Alberto, willing to be persuaded.

“An exceptional woman. Don’t you agree with me, Professor?”

He started in the greatest perturbation. What could she be wanting of him, now?

Without awaiting his reply, she continued:

“You are, dear Alberto, in a somewhat precarious state of health; or rather, your age is itself a pitfall, surrounded as you are with all the temptations of youth. What with balls, theatres, supper-parties....”

“I never go anywhere,” he mumbled; “I am too afraid of making myself ill.”

“You do well to be prudent. After all, they are but empty pleasures. But at home, in your cold, lonely house, you do indeed need a sweet affectionate companion, who would never weary of tending you, who would never be bored, never grudge you the most tender care. Think of it! what a flood of light, and love, and sweet friendship, within your own walls! Think of the whole life of such a woman, consecrated to you!”

“And where is such an angel to be met with, Lucia?” he said, in an enthusiasm caught from her words, in despair that no such paragon was within reach.

“Alas! Alberto, we are all straining after an impossible ideal. You, too, are among the multitude of dreamers.”

“I wish I could but meet my ideal,” he persisted, with the obstinacy of his weak, capricious nature.

“Seek,” said Lucia, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

“Lucia, do me a favour.”

“Tell me what it is...? I beg your pardon, Galimberti, would you pass me that peacock fan?”

“Do you feel the heat, Signorina Lucia?”

“It oppresses me; I think I am feverish. Do you know that peacock feathers are unlucky?”

“I never heard it before.”

“Yes, they are iettatrici, just as branches of heather are lucky. Could you get me some?”

“To-morrow....”

“I was about to say, Lucia,” persisted Alberto, holding on to his idea, “that there is a favour you could do me. Why not write me the beautiful thing you have just said down on paper? I listen to you with delight; you talk admirably. If you would but write these things on a scrap of paper, I would put it in this fold of my pocket book, and every time I opened it I should remember that I have to find my ideal—that’s a wife.”

“You are a dear, silly fellow,” said Lucia, in her good-natured manner. “I will give you something better than this fleeting idea; all these things, and more besides, that are quite unknown to you, I will write you in a letter.”

“When, when?”

“To-day, to-night, or to-morrow morning.”

“No, this evening,”

“Well, this evening; but don’t answer me.”

“I shall answer you.”

“No, Alberto, your chest is too weak; it’s bad for you to stoop. Positively I won’t allow it.”

And so the Professor was quite excluded from the intimacy of the little duet; he was evidently in the way.

“What am I doing here, what am I doing here, what am I here for?” he kept repeating to himself. By this time he had succeeded in awkwardly concealing his muddy boot; but he was tormented by a cruel suspicion that his cravat was on one side. He dared not raise his finger to it; and his mind was torn by two conflicting griefs: the letter Lucia was going to write to her cousin, and the possible crookedness of his cravat. The others continued to gaze at each other in silence. On Alberto’s contemptuous face there appeared to be a note of interrogation. He was inquiring tacitly of his cousin: “Is this bore going to stay for ever?” And her eyes made answer: “Patience, he will go some time; he bores me too.”

The strangest part of it all was that Galimberti had a vague consciousness of what was passing in their minds, and wanted to go, but had not the strength to rise. His spine felt as if it were bound to the back of the chair, and there was an unbearable weight in his head.

“Signorina, here is Signor Andrea Lieti,” said Giulietta.

“This is a miracle.”

“If you reproach me,” said Andrea, laughing, “I won’t even sit down. Good-morning, Alberto; good-morning, Galimberti!”

The room seemed to be filled with the strong man’s presence, by his hearty laugh, and his magnificent strength. Beside him, Galimberti, crooked, undersized and yellow; Sanna, meagre, worn, pale, consumptive-looking; Lucia, fragile, thin, and languishing, made up a picture of pitiable humanity. Galimberti shrank in his chair, bowing his head. Alberto Sanna contemplated Andrea from his feet upwards, with profound admiration, making himself as small as possible, like a weak being who craves the protection of a strong one. Lucia, on the contrary, threw herself back in her rocking-chair, attitudinising like a serpent in the folds of rich Turkish stuff, just showing the point of a golden embroidered slipper. The glance that filtered through her lids seemed to emit a spark at the corner of her eyes. All three were visibly impressed by this fine physical type; so admirable in the perfection of its development. The room appeared to have narrowed, and even its furniture to have dwindled to humbler proportions, since he entered it; all the minute bric-à-brac and curios with which Lucia had surrounded herself had become invisible, as if they had been absorbed. Andrea sat down against the piano, and it seemed to disappear behind him. He shook his curly head, and a healthy current leavened the morbid atmosphere of the room; his laugh was almost too hearty for it, it disturbed the melancholy silence, which until his arrival had only been broken by undertones.

“I come here as an ambassador, Signora Lucia. Shall I present my credentials to the reigning powers?”

“Here are your credentials,” she said, pointing to the portrait of Caterina.

“Yes, there’s Nini. My government told me to go and prosper, and be received with the honours due to the representative of a reigning power.”

“Did Caterina say all that?”

“Not all. It’s in honour of your imagination, Signora Lucia, that I embellish my wife’s few words with flowers of rhetoric.”

“So you reproach me with my imagination,” said the girl, in an aggrieved tone, casting a circular glance at her friends, as if in appeal against such injustice.

“By no means; mayn’t one venture a joke? In short, Caterina said to me, 'At three you are to go....’”

“Is it already three?” broke in Galimberti, inopportunely.

“Past three, as your watch will tell you, my dear Professor.”

“Mine has stopped,” he replied mendaciously, not caring to exhibit a huge silver family relic. “I must take my departure.”

“To your lesson, Galimberti?” inquired Lucia, indifferently.

“Indeed, I find the time for it has slipped by. I had no idea that it was so late. After all it’s no great loss to my pupils. Will you have your lesson to-morrow, Signorina?”

“To-morrow! I don’t think I can; I feel too fatigued. Not to-morrow.”

“Wednesday, then?”

“I will let you know,” she replied, bored.

When, with a brick-coloured flush on his yellow cheeks, Galimberti had left them, all three were conscious of a sense of discomfort.

“Poor devil!” exclaimed Andrea, at last.

“Yes, but he is a bore,” added Alberto.

“What’s to be done? These ladies, in their exquisite good-nature, forget that he is only a teacher; and he gets bewildered and forgets it too. He must suffer a good deal when he comes to his senses.”

“Oh! he is an unhappy creature; but when I am sick or sad, the poor thing becomes an incubus: I don’t know how to shake him off.”

“Is he learned in history?” inquired Alberto, with the childish curiosity of ignorance.

“So, so; don’t let us talk about him any more. This morning he has spoilt my day for me. What were you saying when he left, Signor Lieti?”

“What was I saying? I don’t remember....”

“You were saying that your wife had sent you here at three,” suggested Alberto, as if he were repeating a lesson.

“Ecco! Ah, to be sure.... And after breakfast I went to a shooting-gallery, then I had a talk with the Member for Caserta about the local Exhibition in September, and then I came on here, with weighty communications, Signora Lucia.”

“I’m off,” said Alberto.

“What, because of me? As for what I have to say, you may hear every word of it.”

“The reason is that now that the sun has come out, I want to take a turn in the Villa before it sets,” said Alberto, pensively. “It will do me good, I want to get an appetite for dinner.”

“Go, dear Alberto, go and take your walk. I wish I could come too! The sun must be glorious outside; salute it for me.”

“Remember your promise.”

“I remember, and will keep it.”

When he was gone, they looked at each other in silence. Andrea Lieti had an awkward feeling that it would have been right and proper for him to leave with her cousin. Lucia, on the contrary, settled herself more comfortably in her rocking-chair; she had hidden her slippered foot under the Turkish gown, whose heavy folds completely enveloped her person.

“Will you give me that Bible, on the table, Signor Lieti?”

“Has the hour struck for prayer, Signorina?” he asked in a jesting tone.

“No,” replied Lucia; “for I am always praying. But when something unusual, something very unusual happens to me, then I open the Bible haphazard, and I read the first verse that meets my eye. There is always counsel, guidance, presentiment or a fatality in the words.”

She did as she said. She read a verse several times over, under her breath, as if to herself and in amazement.... Then she read aloud: “I love them that love me, and those that seek me early shall find me.”

He listened, surprised. This singular mysticism inspired him with a sort of anger. He held his tongue, with the good breeding of a man who would not willingly hurt a young lady’s feelings, but the episode struck him as a very ridiculous one.

“Did you hear, Signor Lieti?” she added, as if in defiance.

“I heard. It was very fine.... Love is always an interesting topic, whether in the Old or the New Testament, or elsewhere....”

“Signor Lieti!”

“I beg your pardon, I am talking nonsense. I am a rough fellow, Signorina Altimare. We who are in rude health are apt to regard these matters from a different standpoint. You must make allowances.”

“You are indeed the incarnation of health,” she said, sighing. “I shall never, never forget that waltz you made me dance. I shall never do it again.”

“Ma che! winter will come round again; there will be other balls, and we will dance like fun.”

“I have no strength for dancing.”

“If you are ill, it is your own fault. Why do you always keep your windows closed? The weather is mild and the heat of your room is suffocating; I’ll open them.”

“No,” she exclaimed, placing her hand upon his arm: at its light pressure he desisted: she smiled.

“Do you never dream, Signor Lieti?”

“Never. I sleep soundly, for eight hours, with closed fists, like a child.”

“But with open eyes?”

“Never.”

“Just like Caterina, then?”

“Oh! exactly like her.”

“You are two happy people.” Her accent was bitter.

He felt the pain in it. He looked at her, and was troubled. Perhaps, he had after all been hard upon the poor girl. What had she done to him? She was sickly and full of fancies. The more reason for pitying her. She was an ill-cared-for, unloved creature who was losing her way in life.

“Why don’t you marry?” he said, suddenly.

“Why?” ... in astonishment.

“Why? ... yes. Girls ought to marry, it cures them of their vagaries.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Lucia, and she hid her face in her hands.

“Now I suppose I have said something stupid again? I will give you Caterina’s message and be gone, before you turn me out.”

“No, Signor Lieti. Who knows but what your bourgeois common sense is right.”

He understood the hidden meaning of her phrase, and felt hurt by it. That skinny creature, with her ethereal airs and graces, knew how to sting, after all! She suddenly appeared to him under a new aspect. A slight fear of the woman, whose weakness was her only strength, overcame him. He began to feel ill at ease in the perfumed atmosphere; the room was so small that he could not stretch out his arms without coming to fisticuffs with the wall, the air so perfumed that it compressed his lungs; ill at ease with that long, lithe figure draped in a piece of Eastern stuff; a woman who had a mouth like a red rose, and eyes that shone as if they sometimes saw marvellous visions, and at others looked as if they were dying in an ecstasy of unknown longing. He felt a weight in his head like the beginning of a headache. He would like to have let in air by putting his fists through the window-panes, to have knocked down the walls by a push from his shoulders, to have taken up the piano and thrown it into the street; anything to shake off the torpor that was creeping over him. If he could only grasp that lithe figure in his arms, to hurt her, to hear her bones creak, to strangle her! The blood rushed to his head and it was getting heavier every minute. She was looking at him, examining him, while she waved the peacock-feather fan to and fro. Perhaps she divined it all, for without saying a word she rose and went to open the window, standing there a few minutes to watch the passers-by. When she returned, there was a faint flush on her face.

“Well,” she said, as if she were awaiting the end of a discourse.

“Well; your perfumes have given me a headache. It’s a wonder I did not faint; a thing that never yet happened to me, and that I should not like to happen. May I go? May I give you Caterina’s message?”

“I am listening to you. But are you better now?”

“I am quite well. I am not Alberto Sanna.”

“No, you are not Alberto Sanna,” she repeated, softly. “He is ill, I pity him. How do you feel now?”

“Why, very well indeed. It was a passing ailment, walking will set me up again. Caterina....”

“Do you love your wife as much as I love her?”

“Eh! what a question!”

“Don’t take any notice of it; it escaped me. I don’t believe in married love.”

“The worse for you!”

“You are irritated, Signor Lieti?” she said, smiling.

“No! I assure you I am not. Mine was a purely physical discomfort, I am not troubled by any moral qualms. I don’t believe in their existence. My wife....”

“Are you a materialist?”

“Signora Lucia, you will make me lose my temper,” he exclaimed, half in anger, half in jest. “You won’t let me speak.”

“I am listening to you.”

“Caterina wishes you to dine with us next Sunday. Her little cousin Giuditta is coming from school for the day. You two could drive her back in the evening.”

“I don’t know ...” she said, hesitatingly; “I don’t know whether I can....”

“I entreat you to, in Caterina’s name. She sent me here on purpose. Come, we have a capital cook. You won’t get a bad dinner.”

She shrugged her shoulders, and sat pondering as if she were gazing into futurity.

“You look like a sibyl, Signora Lucia. Via, make up your mind. A dinner is no very serious matter. I will order a crême méringue to please you, because it is light and snowy.”

“I will write to Caterina.”

“No, don’t write. Why write so much? She desired me to take no denial.”

“Well, I will come.”

And she placed her hand in his. He bent down chivalrously and imprinted a light kiss on it. She left her hand there and raised her eyes to his. By a singular optical illusion, she appeared to have grown taller than himself.

When he returned home, after a two hours’ walk about Naples, Andrea Lieti told his wife that Lucia Altimare was a false, rhetorical, antipathetic creature; that her house was suffocating enough to give one apoplexy; that she had a court of consumptives and rachitics—Galimberti, Sanna, and the Lord knows whom besides; that he would never put his foot into it again. He had done it to please her, but it had been a great sacrifice; he detested that poseuse, who received men’s visits as if she were a widow; he couldn’t imagine what men and women found to fall in love with, in that packet of bones in the shape of a cross. Of all this and more besides, he unburdened himself. He only stopped when he saw the pain on his wife’s face, who answered not a word and with difficulty restrained her tears. This strong antipathy between two persons she loved was her martyrdom.

“At least,” she stammered, “at least, she said she would dine with us on Sunday?”

“Just fancy, for your sake I had to entreat her as if I were praying to a saint. She wouldn’t, the stupid thing. At last, she accepted. But I give you due warning that on Sunday I shall not dine at home. I shall dine out and not return till midnight. Keep her to yourself, your poseuse.”

This time Caterina did burst into tears.

VI.

During the whole of the dinner in the Lietis’ apartment in Via Constantinopoli, a certain all-pervading embarrassment was perceptible, despite the care with which it was disguised. Caterina had not dared, for several days, to breathe Lucia’s name. But on Saturday, when she saw that Andrea had quite regained his good temper, she begged him not to go out on the morrow. He at first shrugged his shoulders, as if he did not care one way or the other, and then said, simply:

“I will stay at home: it would be too rude to go out.”

Yet Andrea’s manner was cold when he came in from his walk that day, and Lucia was very nervous, but beautiful, thought Caterina, in her clinging, cashmere gown, with a large bunch of violets under her chin. The talk was frigid. Caterina, who had been driving Giuditta all over the town, was troubled. She feared that Lucia would notice Andrea’s coldness, and was sorry she had invited her. She talked more than usual, addressing herself to Lucia, to Andrea, and to Giuditta, to keep the ball going, making strenuous efforts to put her beloved ones in good humour. For a moment she hoped that dinner would create a diversion, and breathed a sigh of relief when the servant announced, “The Signora is served.”

But even the bright warmth of the room was of no avail. Andrea, at whose side Lucia was seated, attended absently to her wants. He ate and drank a good deal, devouring his food in a silence unusual to him. Lucia hardly ate at all, but drank whole glasses of water just coloured with wine, a liquid of pale amethyst colour. When Andrea addressed her, she listened to him with intent eyes, which never lowered their gaze; his fell before it, and again he applied himself to his dinner. Caterina, who saw that their aversion was increasing, was terrified. She tried to draw Giuditta into the general conversation, but the child was possessed by the taciturn hunger of a school-girl, to whom good food is a delightful anomaly. Towards the end of dinner, there were slight signs of a thaw. Andrea began to chatter as fast as he could and with surprising volubility; talking to the two ladies, to the child, even to himself. Lucia deigned to smile assent two or three times. There was a passage of civilities when the crême méringue made its appearance. Lucia compared it to a flake of immaculate snow; Andrea pronounced the comparison to be as just as it was poetic. Caterina turned from pale to pink in the dawn of so good an understanding. She felt, however, that this was a bad evening for Lucia, one of those evenings that used to end so disastrously at school, in convulsions or a deluge of tears. She saw that her dark eyes were dilated, that her whole face quivered from time to time, and that the violets she wore rose and fell with the beating of her heart. Once or twice she asked her, as in their school-days, “What ails thee?”

“Nothing,” replied the other as curtly as she used to reply at school.

“Don’t you see that there is nothing the matter with her?” questioned Andrea. “Indeed, she looks better than usual. Signora Lucia, you are another person to-night, you have a colour.”

“I wish it were so.”

“Are you courageous?”

“Why do you ask?”

“To know.”

“Well, then, yes.”

“Then swallow a glass of cognac, at once.”

“No, Andrea, I won’t let her drink it. It would do her harm.”

“What fun! don’t you feel tempted, Signora Lucia?”

“I do ... rather....” after a little hesitation.

“Brava, brava! You too, Caterina, it doesn’t hurt you. And even Giuditta....”

“No; it would intoxicate the child.”

“Ma che! Just a drop in the bottom of the glass.”

Lucia drank off hers without the slightest sign of perturbation, then she turned pale. Giuditta, after swallowing hers, blushed crimson, coughing and sneezing until her eyes filled with tears. Every one laughed, while Caterina beat her gently on the back.

“I think you are drinking too much to-night, Andrea,” she whispered in his ear.

“Right you are; I won’t drink any more.”

When they rose from table, Andrea offered his arm to Lucia, a courtesy he had omitted when they entered the room. Caterina said nothing. When she had installed them in the yellow drawing-room, one on the sofa and the other in a comfortable chair, she left them and went into an adjoining room to prepare the child for her return.

“Have you left off using musk, Signora Lucia?”

“Yes, Signor Lieti.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Allow me to congratulate you.”

“Thank you.”

“Those flowers become you better. Who gave them to you?”

“You are curious, Signor Lieti.”