they left the factory, and walked along a road that was enclosed between the walls of silent gardens. the bronze-like laurels were touched with gold at the tops by the setting sun. the air was filled with sparkling gold-dust.
"how sweet and terrible was the fate of gaspara stampa," said stelio. "do you know her sonnets? yes, i saw them one day on your table. she was a strange mingling of ice and fire. sometimes her mortal passion, above the petrarchism of aretino, lifted a glorious cry. i remember a magnificent verse of hers:
vivere ardendo e non sentire il male!"
"do you remember, stelio," said la foscarina, with that peculiar slight smile of hers which gave her face the look of one walking in her sleep, "do you remember the sonnet that begins:
signore, io so che in me non son più viva,
e veggo omai ch'ancor in voi son morta?"
"i don't remember, fosca."
"do you remember your beautiful fancy about the dead summer? summer was lying on a funeral barge, dressed in gold like a dogaressa, and the procession was bearing her toward the island of murano, where a master of the flame was to enclose her in a shroud of opalescent glass, so that when she should be submerged in the depths of the lagoon, she could at least watch the waving seaweed. do you remember?"
"it was an evening in september."
"the last night of september, the night of the allegory. there was a great light on the water. you were in an exalted mood, and talked and talked. what things you said! you had come from solitude, and your overcharged soul broke forth. you poured a sparkling wave of poetry over your companion. a bark passed, laden with pomegranates. i called myself perdita. do you remember?"
as she walked she felt the extreme lightness of her step and felt that something in her was vanishing, as if her body were on the point of being changed to an empty chrysalis.
"my name was still perdita. stelio, do you recall another sonnet of gaspara's beginning:
io vorrei pur che amor dicesse come
debbo seguirlo....
and the madrigal beginning:
se tu credi piacere al mio signore?"
"i did not know you were so familiar with the unhappy anasilla, my dear."
"ah, i will tell you. i was hardly fourteen years old when i played in an old romantic tragedy called gaspara stampa. i played the leading part. it was at dolo, where we passed the other day on our way to strà. we played in a small rustic theater—a kind of tent. it was the year before my mother died. i remember it very well. i can remember the sound of my own voice, which was weak then, when i forced it in the tirades because some one in the wings kept whispering to me to speak louder, louder!... well, gaspara was despairing; she wept and raved for her cruel count. there were many things about it all that my small, profaned soul did not know or understand, and i know not what instinct and comprehension of sorrow led me to find the accent and the cries that could stir the miserable crowd from which we expected to gain our daily bread. ten hungry persons used me as a breadwinner; brutal necessity cut and tore away from me all the dream-flowers born of my trembling precocity. oh, it was a time of weeping and suffocation, of terror, of unthinking weariness, of mute horror. those that martyrized me knew not what they were doing, poor creatures, made stupid by poverty and work. god pardon them and give them peace! only my mother—she, too, who 'for having loved too well and been too little loved, unhappy lived and died'—only my mother had pity on my pain, and knew how to take me in her arms, how to calm my horrible trembling, to weep when i wept, to console me. my blessed mother!"
her voice changed. her mother's eyes once again looked upon her, kind and firm and infinite as a peaceful horizon.—tell me, tell me what i must do! guide me, teach me, you who know!—her heart felt again the clasp of those arms, and from the distance of years the old pain came back, but not harshly; it was almost sweet. the memory of her struggles and her sufferings seemed to bathe her soul in a warm wave, to sustain and comfort it. the test had been hard and the victory difficult, obtained at the price of persistent labor, against brutal and hostile forces. she had witnessed the deepest misery and ruin, she had known heroic efforts, pity, horror, and the face of death.
"i know what hunger is, stelio, and what the approach of night seems like when a place of rest is uncertain," she said softly.
she stopped between the high walls, and lifted her little veil, looking deep into her friend's eyes. he grew pale under that look, so sudden was his emotion and surprise at her words. he felt confused, as if in the incoherence of a dream, incapable of applying the true significance of those words to the woman who was smiling at him, holding the delicate glass in her ungloved hand. yet he had heard what she said, and she stood there before him in her rich fur cape, looking at him with beautiful soft eyes, misty with unshed tears.
"and i have known other things."
it relieved her heart to speak like this; his humility gave her strength, as if she had accomplished some proud and daring deed. she never had felt conscious of her power and worldly glory in the presence of her beloved, but now the memory of her obscure martyrdom, her poverty and hunger, created in her heart a feeling of real superiority over him she believed invincible.
"but i have no fear of suffering," she said, remembering the words he had spoken once: "tell me you do not fear to suffer.... i believe your soul capable of bearing all the sorrow of the world." and her hand stole up to his cheek and caressed it, and he understood that she had answered those words spoken long ago.
he was silent, as intoxicated as if she had presented to his lips the very essence of her heart pressed out into that crystal cup like the blood of the grape. he waited for her to go on.
they reached a crossroads where stood a miserable hut, falling into ruin. la foscarina stopped to look at it. the rude, unhinged windows were held open by a stick laid across them. the low sun struck the smoked walls within, and revealed the furniture—a table, a bench, a cradle.
"do you remember, stelio," said la foscarina, "that inn at dolo where we waited for the train. vampa's inn, i mean. a great fire burned on the hearth, the dishes glittered on the shelves, and slices of polenta were toasting on the gridiron. twenty years ago everything was exactly the same—the same fire, the same dishes, the same polenta. my mother and i used to go in there after the performance, and sit on the bench before a table. i had wept, cried, raved, and had died of poison or by the sword, on the stage. i still heard in my ears the resonance of the verses i had uttered, in a voice that was not my own, and a strange will still possessed my soul, and i could not shake it off—it was as if another person, struggling with my inertness, persisted in performing over again those movements and actions. the simulation of an outside life remained in the muscles of my face, and some evenings i could not calm them. already, even then, the mask, the sensation of the living mask, was beginning to grow. my eyes would remain fixed, and a chill crept at the roots of my hair. i had difficulty in recovering full consciousness of myself and my surroundings.
"the odors from the kitchen sickened me; the food on our plates seemed too coarse, heavy as a stone, impossible to swallow. my disgust at everything sprang from something indescribably delicate and precious, of which i was conscious under all my weariness—a vague feeling of nobility beneath my humiliation. i hardly know how to express it. perhaps it was the obscure presence of that power which later developed in me, of that election, of that difference wherewith nature has marked me. sometimes the consciousness of that difference from others became so strong that it almost raised a barrier between my mother and myself—god forgive me!—almost separated me from her. a great loneliness possessed me; nothing around me had power to touch me any more. i was alone with my destiny. my mother, even though she was with me, gradually receded into an infinite distance. ah, she was to die soon, and was already preparing to leave me, and perhaps this withdrawal was the forerunner. she used to urge me to eat, with the words only she knew how to say. i answered: 'wait! wait!' i could only drink; i had a great craving for cold water. at times, when i was more tired and trembling than usual, i smiled a long-continued smile. and even that dear woman herself, with her deep heart, could not understand whence came my smile!
"incomparable hours, wherein it seemed that the bodily prison was being broken through by the soul that wandered to the extremest limits of life! what must your youth have been, stelio! who can imagine it? we have all felt the weight of sleep that descends upon us after fatigue or intoxication, heavy and sudden as a stroke from a hammer, and it seems to annihilate us. but the power of dreams sometimes seizes upon us in waking hours with the same force; it holds us and we cannot resist it, though the whole thread of our existence seems on the point of being destroyed. ah, some of the beautiful things you said that night in venice come back to my mind, when you spoke of her marvelous hands weaving her own lights and shadows in a continuous work of beauty. you alone know how to describe the indescribable.
"well, ... on that bench, in front of that rustic table, in vampa's inn at dolo, where destiny led me again with you, i had the most extraordinary visions that dreams ever have called up in my brain. i saw that which is unforgettable; i saw the real forms around me obliterated by the dream-figures born of my instinct and my thoughts. under my fixed eyes, dazzled and scorched by the smoky petroleum lamps of the improvised stage, the world of my expression began to throb with life. the first lines of my art were developed in that state of anguish, of weariness, fever, disgust, in which my sensibility became, so to speak, plastic, after the manner of the incandescent material we saw the workmen holding at the end of the tube. in it was a natural aspiration to be modeled, to receive breath, to fill a mold. on certain evenings, in that wall covered with copper utensils, i could see myself reflected as in a mirror, in attitudes of grief or rage; with an unrecognizable face; and, in order to escape from this hallucination, to break the fixity of my gaze, i opened and shut my eyes rapidly. my mother would say, over and over: 'eat, my daughter, at least eat this.' but what were bread, wine, meat, fruits, all those heavy things, in comparison with what i had within me? i said to her: 'wait!' and when we rose to go, i used to take only a large piece of bread with me. i liked to eat it in the country the next morning, under a tree, or sitting on the bank of the brenta.... oh, those statues! they did not recognize me the other day, stelio, but i recognized them!
"it was in the month of march, i remember. i went out into the country very early with my bread. i walked at random, though i meant to go to the statues. i went from one to another, and stopped before every one, as if i were paying a visit. some appeared very beautiful to me, and i tried to imitate their poses. but i remained longer with the mutilated ones, as if to console them. in the evening, on the stage, i remembered some of them while i was acting, and with so deep a feeling of their distance and their solitude that i felt as if i could not speak any more. the audience would grow impatient at these pauses too prolonged. at times, when i had to wait for my companion in the scene to finish his tirade, i used to stand in the attitude of one of those statues, and remain as motionless as if i had been made of stone. i was already beginning to carve my own destiny.
"i loved one of them tenderly; it had lost its arms, which once balanced a basket of fruit on its head. but the hands still remained attached to the basket, and the sight of them always aroused my pity. this statue stood on its pedestal in a flax-field; a little canal of stagnant water was near it, in which the reflected sky repeated the tender blue of the flowers. and always, since that time, in my most glowing moments on the stage, visions of some landscape rise in my memory, particularly when by the mere force of silence i succeed in producing a thrill in the listening throng."
her cheeks had flushed a little, and as the sun wrapped her in a radiant garment, drawing sparkles from her furs and from the crystal cup, her animation seemed like an increase of light.
"what a spring that was! in one of my wandering journeys i saw a great river for the first time. it appeared to me suddenly, swollen, and flowing rapidly between two wild banks. i felt then how much of divinity there is in a great stream running through the earth. it was the adige, flowing down from verona, from the city of juliet."
an ambiguous emotion filled her heart while she recalled the poverty and poetry of her youth. she was impelled to continue, though she did not know how she had arrived at these confidences, when she had intended to speak to her friend of another young life, not belonging to the past, but to the present. by what surprise of love had she been turned from an effort of her will, from her firm decision to face the painful truth, from the concentration of her slumbering energy to linger in the memory of the past, and to cover with the image of her own lost virgin self that other image which was so different?
"we reached verona one evening in may. i was devoured by anxiety. i clasped close to my heart the book in which i had copied the lines of juliet, and continually repeated to myself the words of my first entrance: 'how now? who calls? i am here. what is your will?' my imagination was excited by a strange coincidence: on that very day i was fourteen years old—the age of juliet. the nurse's gossip sounded in my ears; and, little by little, my own destiny seemed mingled with that of the veronese. at the corner of every street i thought i could see a throng approaching me, accompanying a coffin covered with white roses. when i saw the arche degli scaligeri behind its iron bars, i cried to my mother, 'here is juliet's tomb!' and i burst into sobs, and had a desperate desire to love and to die. 'o thou too early seen unknown, and known too late!'"
her voice, repeating the immortal words, penetrated the heart of her lover like a heart-rending melody. she paused a moment, then repeated:
"too late!"
they were the ominous words spoken by her lover, which she herself had repeated in the garden, when both were on the brink of being swept away on the flood of their passion: "it is late; too late!" the woman that was no longer young now faced the former image of herself, in her maidenhood, throbbing in the form of juliet before her first dream of love. having reached the limit of experience, had she not at the same time preserved the dream intact—but to what purpose? if to-day she looked at the image of her far-distant youth, it was only to trample upon it in leading her beloved to the other woman, to her who lived and waited.
with her smile of inimitable sadness, she said:
"i was juliet! one sunday in may, in the immense arena in the amphitheater under the open sky, before an audience that had breathed in the legend of love and death, i was juliet herself. no thrill from the most responsive audience, no applause, no triumph, ever has had from me the fulness and intoxication of that unique hour. actually, when i heard romeo say: 'o, she doth teach the torches to burn bright,' my whole being kindled. with great economy, i had managed to buy a large bunch of roses, and these were my only ornament. i mingled the roses with my words, my gestures, with every attitude. i dropped one at romeo's feet when we first met; i strewed the petals of another on his head, as i stood on the balcony; and i covered his body with them as he lay in the tomb. the words came with the strangest ease, almost involuntarily, as in delirium, and i could feel the throbbing in my veins accompanying them.
"i could see the great amphitheater, half in sunlight, half in shadow, and in the lighter part a sparkling from thousands of eyes. the day was as calm as this. not a breath of air disturbed the folds of my robes, or the hair that floated on my uncovered neck. i felt my strength and animation momentarily increasing. how i spoke of the lark and the nightingale! i had heard them both a thousand times in the country. i knew all their songs of the woods, the meadows, and the sky. every word, as it left my lips, seemed to have been steeped in the warmth of my blood. there was no fiber in me that did not give forth harmonious sound. ah, the grace, the state of grace! every time it is given to me to rise to the highest summit of my art i live again in that indescribable abandon. yes, i was juliet! i cried out in terror at the approach of dawn. the breeze stirred my hair. i could feel the extraordinary silence on which my lamentation fell. the multitude seemed to have sunk into the ground. i spoke of the terror of the coming day, but already i felt in reality 'the mask of night upon my face.' romeo had descended. we were already dead; already both had entered the vale of shadows. do you remember? my eyes sought the fading light of the sky. the people were noisy in the arena; they were impatient for the death scene; they would listen no more to the mother, the nurse, or the friar. the quiver of that impatience quickened my throbbing heart. the tragedy swept on. i recall the odor of the pitch from the funeral torches, and of the roses that covered me, and i remember the sound of far-off bells, and of the sky that was losing its light, little by little, as juliet was losing her life, and a star, the first star, that swam in my eyes with my tears. when i fell dead on romeo's body, the cry of the multitude in the shadows was so violent that i was frightened. some one lifted me and dragged me toward that cry. some one held the torch close to my tear-stained face, which must have been the color of death.... and thus, stelio, one night in may, juliet came to life again, and appeared before the people of verona."
again she paused, and closed her eyes as if she were dizzy, but her sorrowful lips still smiled at her friend.
"and then? then came the need to move, to go no matter where, to traverse space, to breathe in the wind. my mother followed me in silence. we crossed a bridge, walked beside the adige, and went on and on. my mother asked at times where we were going. i wished to find the franciscan convent where juliet's tomb was hidden, since, to my great regret, she was not buried in one of those beautiful tombs behind the great iron gates. but i did not wish to say so, and i could not speak. my voice seemed to have been lost with the last word of the dying juliet. 'where are we going?' again asked that indefatigable kindness. ah, then the last word of juliet came to me in reply. we were again near the adige, beside a bridge. i think i began to run, because soon afterward i felt myself seized by my mother's arms, and i stood leaning against the parapet, choking with sobs. 'there let me die!' i wished to say, but could not. the river carried with it the night and all its stars. i felt that the desire to die was not mine alone. ah, blessed mother!"
she became very pale; her whole heart felt once more the embrace of those arms, the kiss of those lips, those tender tears, the depth of that suffering.
with a mingled feeling of surprise and alarm, stelio watched the great waves of life that passed over her, the extraordinary expressions, the alternating lights and shadows; but he dared not speak, dared not break in upon the occult workings of that great, unhappy soul. he could only feel confusedly in her words the beauty and sadness of things unexpressed.
"speak to me still," he said. "draw nearer to me, sweet soul! no moment since i first loved you has been worth the steps that we have taken together to-day."
again her first sudden question returned to her mind: "do you think often of donatella?"
a short path led to the fondamenta degli angeli, whence the lagoon could be seen, smooth and luminous.
"how beautiful that light is!" she said. "it is like that night when my name was still perdita, stelio."
she now touched a note that she had touched in an interrupted prelude.
"the last night of september," she added. "do you remember?"
her heart was filled with exaltation to such a degree that she almost feared it would fail her. but she resolved that her voice should utter firmly the name that must break the silence between her friend and herself.
"do you remember the ship anchored before the gardens? a salute greeted the flag as it slid down the mast. our gondola touched the ship as we passed under its shadow."
a moment's pause. her pallor was animated by a wonderful vitality.
"then, in that shadow, you first spoke donatella's name."
she made a new effort, as a swimmer, submerged by a wave, rises again and shakes his head free of the foam.
"she began then to be yours!"
she felt as if she were growing rigid from head to foot. her eyes stared fixedly at the glittering water.
"she must be yours," she said at last, with the sternness of necessity in her voice, as if to repel with a second shock the terrible things that were ready to surge up from her fiery heart.
seized by sudden anguish, incapable of interrupting by a word the lightning-like apparitions of her tragic soul, stelio halted, and laid his hand on his companion's arm to make her stop also.
"is it not true?" she asked with a sweetness almost calm, as if her tension had suddenly relaxed, and her passion had quietly accepted the yoke laid upon it by her will. "speak! i do not fear to suffer. let us sit down here. i am a little tired."
they sat down on a low wall, facing the water.
"what can i say to you?" said the young man in a stifled voice, after a pause, unable to overcome the agitation arising from the certainty of his present love and the consciousness of his desires, inexorable as fate. "perhaps what you have imagined is true; perhaps it is only a fancy of your own mind. i am certain to-day of only one thing, and that is that i love you and recognize in you all that is noble. i know one other thing that is noble—that i have a work to do and a life to live according to the dictates of nature. you, too, must remember. on that september evening i spoke to you a long time of my life and of the genii that are leading it to its final destiny. you know that i can renounce nothing."
he trembled as if he held in his hand a sharp weapon, with which, as he was compelled to move it, he could not avoid wounding the defenseless woman.
"no, nothing; and especially your love, which ceaselessly exalts my strength and my hope. but did you not promise me more than love? can you not do for me things that love alone cannot do? do you not desire to be the constant inspiration of my life and my work?"
she listened motionless, with fixed eyes.
"it is true," he continued, after an anxious pause, recovering his courage, and feeling that on the sincerity of this moment depended the fate of that free alliance whereby he had hoped to be broadened, not confined. "it is true; that evening, when i saw you descend the stairs in the midst of the throng in company with her who had sung, i believed that a secret thought guided you from the moment that you did not come alone to meet me."
the woman felt a chill run through the roots of her hair. her fingers trembled round the crystal cup, wherein the colors of sky and water were blended.
"i believed that you yourself had chosen her. your look was that of one who knows and foresees. i was struck by it."
by her keen torture, the woman realized how sweet a falsehood would have been. she wished that he would either lie or be silent. she measured the distance that lay between her and the canal—the water that swallows and lulls to sleep.
"there was something about her that was hostile to me. she remained to me obscure, incomprehensible. do you remember the way she disappeared? her image faded, and only the desire of her song remained. you yourself, who led her to me, have more than once revived the remembrance of her. you have seen her shadow even where she was not."
she saw death itself. no other wound had gone deeper, had hurt her so cruelly.—i alone! i alone have brought it on myself!—and she remembered the cry that had brought this misery: "go! she awaits you!" suddenly the internal tempest seemed to become a mere hallucination. she thought herself non-existent, and wondered to see the glass shining in her hand; she lost all corporeal sense. all that had happened was only a trick of the imagination. her name was perdita. the dead summer was lying in the depths of the lagoon. words were words, that was all.
"could i love her? were i to see her again, should i desire to turn her destiny toward mine? perhaps. but of what use would that be? and of what use would all the vicissitudes and necessities of life be against the faith that links us? could you and i resemble commonplace lovers who pass their days in quarreling, weeping, and cursing?"
the woman gnashed her teeth. she had a wild instinct to defend herself, and to hurt him as in a hopeless struggle. a murderous desire flashed across her maddened brain.
—no, you shall not have her!—and the brutality of her tyrant seemed monstrous to her. under the measured and repeated blows, she felt that she was like a man she had once seen on the dusty road of a mining town, prostrated by repeated blows on his head from a mallet in his enemy's hand. that hideous memory mingled with her mental torture. she sprang up, impelled by the savage force that filled her being. the glass broke in her convulsed hand, cut her, fell in a sparkling shower at her feet.
stelio startled. the woman's motionless silence had deceived him, but now he looked at her and saw her at last; and once more he saw, as on that night in her room when the logs had crackled on the hearth, the expression of madness on her agitated face. he stammered some words of regret, but impatience boiled under his concern.
"ah," said la foscarina, mastering her agony with a bitterness that convulsed her mouth, "how strong i am! another time have a care that your wounds are not made so slowly, since my resistance is so slight, my friend."
she saw that blood was dripping from her fingers; she wrapped them in her handkerchief. she looked at the sparkling fragments on the grass.
"the cup is broken! you had praised it too highly. shall we raise a mausoleum for it here?"
she was very bitter, almost mocking, her lips opening slightly to utter a mirthless laugh. stelio stood silent, chagrined, his heart full of rancor at beholding the destruction of so beautiful an effort as that perfect cup.
"let us imitate nero, since we have already imitated xerxes!"
she felt even more keenly than he the harshness of her sarcasm, the insincerity of her voice, the malignity of the laugh that was like a muscular spasm. but she was unable to conquer her soul at that moment. she felt a bitter, irresistible necessity to scorn, to devastate, to trample under foot, invaded by a sort of perfidious demon. every vestige of tenderness and benevolence had vanished, every hope, every illusion. the bitter hatred that lurks under the love of ardent natures was dominant. on the man's face she could discern the same shadow that darkened her own.
"do i irritate you? do you wish to return to venice alone? would you like to leave the dying season behind you? the tide is falling, but there is always enough water for one who has no intention of returning. would it suit you to have me try it? am i not as docile as you could wish?"
she said these insensate things in a hissing tone, and became almost livid, as if suddenly burned by some corroding poison. and stelio remembered having seen the same mask on her face on a distant day of love, madness and sadness. his heart contracted, then softened.
"ah, if i have hurt you, i ask for pardon," he said, trying to take her hand and soothe her by a gentle act. "but did we not begin together to approach this matter? was it not you that"—
she interrupted him, exasperated by his gentleness.
"hurt me? and what does that matter? have no pity, no pity! do not weep over the beautiful eyes of the wounded hare!"
the words broke between her teeth. her contracted lips opened in a convulsion of wild laughter that was like heart-rending sobs. her companion shuddered, spoke to her in a low tone, aware of the curious eyes of the women who sat at the thresholds of their cabins.
"calm yourself! calm yourself! oh, foscarina, i beg of you! do not act so, i entreat! we shall soon be at the quay, and then we shall go home. i will tell you—you will understand me then. come, now we are in the street. do you hear me?"
he feared she would fall in her hysterical convulsion, and stood ready to support her. but she only walked faster, unable to speak, smothering that wild laughter with her bandaged hand.
"what ails you? what do you see?" stelio inquired anxiously.
never could he forget the change in those eyes. they were dull, staring, sightless, yet they seemed to see something that was not there; they were filled with an unknown vision, occupied by some monstrous image which without doubt had generated that mad and anguished laughter.
"shall we stop here a little while? would you like some water?"
they found themselves now on the fondamenta dei vetrai. how long was it since they had walked beside the stagnant canal? how much of their life had vanished in the interval? what profound shadow were they leaving behind them?
having descended into the gondola, and wrapped herself in her cloak, la foscarina tried to control her hysteria, holding her face with both hands, but from time to time the terrible laugh would escape; then she pressed her hands closer to her mouth, as if she were trying to suffocate herself.
the lagoon and the deep twilight obliterated all forms and colors; only the rows of posts, like a file of monks on a path of ashes, showed against the dark background. when the bells began their clamor, her soul remembered, her tears gushed forth; the horror was vanquished.
she took her hands from her face, leaned toward her friend's shoulder, and found again her voice in saying:
"forgive me!"
