Page 3 of Hauntings

  Part II

  Dec. 17th.--I fear that my craze about Medea da Carpi has become wellknown, thanks to my silly talk and idiotic songs. That Vice-Prefect'sson--or the assistant at the Archives, or perhaps some of the companyat the Contessa's, is trying to play me a trick! But take care, my goodladies and gentlemen, I shall pay you out in your own coin! Imagine myfeelings when, this morning, I found on my desk a folded letteraddressed to me in a curious handwriting which seemed strangelyfamiliar to me, and which, after a moment, I recognized as that of theletters of Medea da Carpi at the Archives. It gave me a horrible shock.My next idea was that it must be a present from some one who knew myinterest in Medea--a genuine letter of hers on which some idiot hadwritten my address instead of putting it into an envelope. But it wasaddressed to me, written to me, no old letter; merely four lines, whichran as follows:--

  "To Spiridion.--

  "A person who knows the interest you bear her will be at the Church ofSan Giovanni Decollato this evening at nine. Look out, in the leftaisle, for a lady wearing a black mantle, and holding a rose."

  By this time I understood that I was the object of a conspiracy, thevictim of a hoax. I turned the letter round and round. It was writtenon paper such as was made in the sixteenth century, and in anextraordinarily precise imitation of Medea da Carpi's characters. Whohad written it? I thought over all the possible people. On the whole,it must be the Vice-Prefect's son, perhaps in combination with hislady-love, the Countess. They must have torn a blank page off some oldletter; but that either of them should have had the ingenuity ofinventing such a hoax, or the power of committing such a forgery,astounds me beyond measure. There is more in these people than I shouldhave guessed. How pay them off? By taking no notice of the letter?Dignified, but dull. No, I will go; perhaps some one will be there, andI will mystify them in their turn. Or, if no one is there, how I shallcrow over them for their imperfectly carried out plot! Perhaps this issome folly of the Cavalier Muzio's to bring me into the presence ofsome lady whom he destines to be the flame of my future _amori_.That is likely enough. And it would be too idiotic and professorial torefuse such an invitation; the lady must be worth knowing who can forgesixteenth-century letters like this, for I am sure that languid swellMuzio never could. I will go! By Heaven! I'll pay them back in theirown coin! It is now five--how long these days are!

  _Dec. 18th._--

  Am I mad? Or are there really ghosts? That adventure of last night hasshaken me to the very depth of my soul.

  I went at nine, as the mysterious letter had bid me. It was bitterlycold, and the air full of fog and sleet; not a shop open, not a windowunshuttered, not a creature visible; the narrow black streets,precipitous between their, high walls and under their lofty archways,were only the blacker for the dull light of an oil-lamp here and there,with its flickering yellow reflection on the wet flags. San GiovanniDecollato is a little church, or rather oratory, which I have alwayshitherto seen shut up (as so many churches here are shut up except ongreat festivals); and situate behind the ducal palace, on a sharpascent, and forming the bifurcation of two steep paved lanes. I havepassed by the place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the littlechurch, except for the marble high relief over the door, showing thegrizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the iron cage closeby, in which were formerly exposed the heads of criminals; thedecapitated, or, as they call him here, decollated, John the Baptist,being apparently the patron of axe and block.

  A few strides took me from my lodgings to San Giovanni Decollato. Iconfess I was excited; one is not twenty-four and a Pole for nothing.On getting to the kind of little platform at the bifurcation of the twoprecipitous streets, I found, to my surprise, that the windows of thechurch or oratory were not lighted, and that the door was locked! Sothis was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send me ona bitter cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and hadperhaps been shut up for years! I don't know what I couldn't have donein that moment of rage; I felt inclined to break open the church door,or to go and pull the Vice-Prefect's son out of bed (for I felt surethat the joke was his). I determined upon the latter course; and waswalking towards his door, along the black alley to the left of thechurch, when I was suddenly stopped by the sound as of an organ closeby, an organ, yes, quite plainly, and the voice of choristers and thedrone of a litany. So the church was not shut, after all! I retraced mysteps to the top of the lane. All was dark and in complete silence.Suddenly there came again a faint gust of organ and voices. I listened;it clearly came from the other lane, the one on the right-hand side.Was there, perhaps, another door there? I passed beneath the archway,and descended a little way in the direction whence the sounds seemed tocome. But no door, no light, only the black walls, the black wet flags,with their faint yellow reflections of flickering oil-lamps; moreover,complete silence. I stopped a minute, and then the chant rose again;this time it seemed to me most certainly from the lane I had just left.I went back--nothing. Thus backwards and forwards, the sounds alwaysbeckoning, as it were, one way, only to beckon me back, vainly, to theother.

  At last I lost patience; and I felt a sort of creeping terror, whichonly a violent action could dispel. If the mysterious sounds cameneither from the street to the right, nor from the street to the left,they could come only from the church. Half-maddened, I rushed up thetwo or three steps, and prepared to wrench the door open with atremendous effort. To my amazement, it opened with the greatest ease. Ientered, and the sounds of the litany met me louder than before, as Ipaused a moment between the outer door and the heavy leathern curtain.I raised the latter and crept in. The altar was brilliantly illuminatedwith tapers and garlands of chandeliers; this was evidently someevening service connected with Christmas. The nave and aisles werecomparatively dark, and about half-full. I elbowed my way along theright aisle towards the altar. When my eyes had got accustomed to theunexpected light, I began to look round me, and with a beating heart.The idea that all this was a hoax, that I should meet merely someacquaintance of my friend the Cavaliere's, had somehow departed: Ilooked about. The people were all wrapped up, the men in big cloaks,the women in woolen veils and mantles. The body of the church wascomparatively dark, and I could not make out anything very clearly, butit seemed to me, somehow, as if, under the cloaks and veils, thesepeople were dressed in a rather extraordinary fashion. The man in frontof me, I remarked, showed yellow stockings beneath his cloak; a woman,hard by, a red bodice, laced behind with gold tags. Could these bepeasants from some remote part come for the Christmas festivities, ordid the inhabitants of Urbania don some old-fashioned garb in honor ofChristmas?

  As I was wondering, my eye suddenly caught that of a woman standing inthe opposite aisle, close to the altar, and in the full blaze of itslights. She was wrapped in black, but held, in a very conspicuous way,a red rose, an unknown luxury at this time of the year in a place likeUrbania. She evidently saw me, and turning even more fully into thelight, she loosened her heavy black cloak, displaying a dress of deepred, with gleams of silver and gold embroideries; she turned her facetowards me; the full blaze of the chandeliers and tapers fell upon it.It was the face of Medea da Carpi! I dashed across the nave, pushingpeople roughly aside, or rather, it seemed to me, passing throughimpalpable bodies. But the lady turned and walked rapidly down theaisle towards the door. I followed close upon her, but somehow I couldnot get up with her. Once, at the curtain, she turned round again. Shewas within a few paces of me. Yes, it was Medea. Medea herself, nomistake, no delusion, no sham; the oval face, the lips tightened overthe mouth, the eyelids tight over the corner of the eyes, the exquisitealabaster complexion! She raised the curtain and glided out. Ifollowed; the curtain alone separated me from her. I saw the woodendoor swing to behind her. One step ahead of me! I tore open the door;she must be on the steps, within reach of my arm!

  I stood outside the church. All was empty, merely the wet pavement andthe yellow reflections in the pools: a sudden cold seized me; I couldnot go on. I tried to re-enter the church; it wa
s shut. I rushed home,my hair standing on end, and trembling in all my limbs, and remainedfor an hour like a maniac. Is it a delusion? Am I too going mad? O God,God! am I going mad?

  _Dec. 19th.--_

  A brilliant, sunny day; all the black snow-slush has disappeared out ofthe town, off the bushes and trees. The snow-clad mountains sparkleagainst the bright blue sky. A Sunday, and Sunday weather; all thebells are ringing for the approach of Christmas. They are preparing fora kind of fair in the square with the colonnade, putting up boothsfilled with colored cotton and woolen ware, bright shawls andkerchiefs, mirrors, ribbons, brilliant pewter lamps; the whole turn-outof the peddler in "Winter's Tale." The pork-shops are all garlandedwith green and with paper flowers, the hams and cheeses stuck full oflittle flags and green twigs. I strolled out to see the cattle-fairoutside the gate; a forest of interlacing horns, an ocean of lowing andstamping: hundreds of immense white bullocks, with horns a yard longand red tassels, packed close together on the little piazza d'armiunder the city walls. Bah! Why do I write this trash? What's the use ofit all? While I am forcing myself to write about bells, and Christmasfestivities, and cattle-fairs, one idea goes on like a bell within me:Medea, Medea! Have I really seen her, or am I mad?

  Two hours later.--That Church of San Giovanni Decollato--so my landlordinforms me--has not been made use of within the memory of man. Could ithave been all a hallucination or a dream--perhaps a dream dreamed thatnight? I have been out again to look at that church. There it is, atthe bifurcation of the two steep lanes, with its bas-relief of theBaptist's head over the door. The door does look as if it had not beenopened for years. I can see the cobwebs in the windowpanes; it doeslook as if, as Sor Asdrubale says, only rats and spiders congregatedwithin it. And yet--and yet; I have so clear a remembrance, so distincta consciousness of it all. There was a picture of the daughter ofHerodias dancing, upon the altar; I remember her white turban with ascarlet tuft of feathers, and Herod's blue caftan; I remember the shapeof the central chandelier; it swung round slowly, and one of the waxlights had got bent almost in two by the heat and draught.

  Things, all these, which I may have seen elsewhere, stored unawares inmy brain, and which may have come out, somehow, in a dream; I haveheard physiologists allude to such things. I will go again: if thechurch be shut, why then it must have been a dream, a vision, theresult of over-excitement. I must leave at once for Rome and seedoctors, for I am afraid of going mad. If, on the other hand--pshaw!there _is no other hand_ in such a case. Yet if there were--whythen, I should really have seen Medea; I might see her again; speak toher. The mere thought sets my blood in a whirl, not with horror, butwith... I know not what to call it. The feeling terrifies me, but it isdelicious. Idiot! There is some little coil of my brain, the twentiethof a hair's-breadth out of order--that's all!

  _Dec. 20th.--_

  I have been again; I have heard the music; I have been inside thechurch; I have seen Her! I can no longer doubt my senses. Why should I?Those pedants say that the dead are dead, the past is past. For them,yes; but why for me?--why for a man who loves, who is consumed with thelove of a woman?--a woman who, indeed--yes, let me finish the sentence.Why should there not be ghosts to such as can see them? Why should shenot return to the earth, if she knows that it contains a man who thinksof, desires, only her?

  A hallucination? Why, I saw her, as I see this paper that I write upon;standing there, in the full blaze of the altar. Why, I heard the rustleof her skirts, I smelt the scent of her hair, I raised the curtainwhich was shaking from her touch. Again I missed her. But this time, asI rushed out into the empty moonlit street, I found upon the churchsteps a rose--the rose which I had seen in her hand the momentbefore--I felt it, smelt it; a rose, a real, living rose, dark red andonly just plucked. I put it into water when I returned, after havingkissed it, who knows how many times? I placed it on the top of thecupboard; I determined not to look at it for twenty-four hours lest itshould be a delusion. But I must see it again; I must.... Good Heavens!this is horrible, horrible; if I had found a skeleton it could not havebeen worse! The rose, which last night seemed freshly plucked, full ofcolor and perfume, is brown, dry--a thing kept for centuries betweenthe leaves of a book--it has crumbled into dust between my fingers.Horrible, horrible! But why so, pray? Did I not know that I was in lovewith a woman dead three hundred years? If I wanted fresh roses whichbloomed yesterday, the Countess Fiammetta or any little sempstress inUrbania might have given them me. What if the rose has fallen to dust?If only I could hold Medea in my arms as I held it in my fingers, kissher lips as I kissed its petals, should I not be satisfied if she toowere to fall to dust the next moment, if I were to fall to dust myself?

  _Dec. 22nd, Eleven at night.--_

  I have seen her once more!--almost spoken to her. I have been promisedher love! Ah, Spiridion! you were right when you felt that you were notmade for any earthly _amori_. At the usual hour I betook myselfthis evening to San Giovanni Decollato. A bright winter night; the highhouses and belfries standing out against a deep blue heaven luminous,shimmering like steel with myriads of stars; the moon has not yetrisen. There was no light in the windows; but, after a little effort,the door opened and I entered the church, the altar, as usual,brilliantly illuminated. It struck me suddenly that all this crowd ofmen and women standing all round, these priests chanting and movingabout the altar, were dead--that they did not exist for any man saveme. I touched, as if by accident, the hand of my neighbor; it was cold,like wet clay. He turned round, but did not seem to see me: his facewas ashy, and his eyes staring, fixed, like those of a blind man or acorpse. I felt as if I must rush out. But at that moment my eye fellupon Her, standing as usual by the altar steps, wrapped in a blackmantle, in the full blaze of the lights. She turned round; the lightfell straight upon her face, the face with the delicate features, theeyelids and lips a little tight, the alabaster skin faintly tinged withpale pink. Our eyes met.

  I pushed my way across the nave towards where she stood by the altarsteps; she turned quickly down the aisle, and I after her. Once ortwice she lingered, and I thought I should overtake her; but again,when, not a second after the door had closed upon her, I stepped outinto the street, she had vanished. On the church step lay somethingwhite. It was not a flower this time, but a letter. I rushed back tothe church to read it; but the church was fast shut, as if it had notbeen opened for years. I could not see by the flickeringshrine-lamps--I rushed home, lit my lamp, pulled the letter from mybreast. I have it before me. The handwriting is hers; the same as inthe Archives, the same as in that first letter:--

  "To Spiridion.--

  "Let thy courage be equal to thy love, and thy love shall be rewarded.On the night preceding Christmas, take a hatchet and saw; cut boldlyinto the body of the bronze rider who stands in the Corte, on the leftside, near the waist. Saw open the body, and within it thou wilt findthe silver effigy of a winged genius. Take it out, hack it into ahundred pieces, and fling them in all directions, so that the winds maysweep them away. That night she whom thou lovest will come to rewardthy fidelity."

  On the brownish wax is the device--"AMOUR DURE--DURE AMOUR."

  _Dec. 23rd.--_

  So it is true! I was reserved for something wonderful in this world. Ihave at last found that after which my soul has been straining.Ambition, love of art, love of Italy, these things which have occupiedmy spirit, and have yet left me continually unsatisfied, these werenone of them my real destiny. I have sought for life, thirsting for itas a man in the desert thirsts for a well; but the life of the sensesof other youths, the life of the intellect of other men, have neverslaked that thirst. Shall life for me mean the love of a dead woman? Wesmile at what we choose to call the superstition of the past,forgetting that all our vaunted science of today may seem just suchanother superstition to the men of the future; but why should thepresent be right and the past wrong? The men who painted the picturesand built the palaces of three hundred years ago were certainly of asdelicate fiber, of as keen reason, as ourselves, who merely
printcalico and build locomotives. What makes me think this, is that I havebeen calculating my nativity by help of an old book belonging to SorAsdrubale--and see, my horoscope tallies almost exactly with that ofMedea da Carpi, as given by a chronicler. May this explain? No, no; allis explained by the fact that the first time I read of this woman'scareer, the first time I saw her portrait, I loved her, though I hid mylove to myself in the garb of historical interest. Historical interestindeed!

  I have got the hatchet and the saw. I bought the saw of a poor joiner,in a village some miles off; he did not understand at first what Imeant, and I think he thought me mad; perhaps I am. But if madnessmeans the happiness of one's life, what of it? The hatchet I saw lyingin a timber-yard, where they prepare the great trunks of the fir-treeswhich grow high on the Apennines of Sant' Elmo. There was no one in theyard, and I could not resist the temptation; I handled the thing, triedits edge, and stole it. This is the first time in my life that I havebeen a thief; why did I not go into a shop and buy a hatchet? I don'tknow; I seemed unable to resist the sight of the shining blade. What Iam going to do is, I suppose, an act of vandalism; and certainly I haveno right to spoil the property of this city of Urbania. But I wish noharm either to the statue or the city, if I could plaster up thebronze, I would do so willingly. But I must obey Her; I must avengeHer; I must get at that silver image which Robert of Montemurlo hadmade and consecrated in order that his cowardly soul might sleep inpeace, and not encounter that of the being whom he dreaded most in theworld. Aha! Duke Robert, you forced her to die unshriven, and you stuckthe image of your soul into the image of your body, thinking therebythat, while she suffered the tortures of Hell, you would rest in peace,until your well-scoured little soul might fly straight up toParadise;--you were afraid of Her when both of you should be dead, andthought yourself very clever to have prepared for all emergencies! Notso, Serene Highness. You too shall taste what it is to wander afterdeath, and to meet the dead whom one has injured.

  What an interminable day! But I shall see her again tonight.

  Eleven o'clock.--No; the church was fast closed; the spell had ceased.Until tomorrow I shall not see her. But tomorrow! Ah, Medea! did any ofthy lovers love thee as I do?

  Twenty-four hours more till the moment of happiness--the moment forwhich I seem to have been waiting all my life. And after that, whatnext? Yes, I see it plainer every minute; after that, nothing more. Allthose who loved Medea da Carpi, who loved and who served her, died:Giovanfrancesco Pico, her first husband, whom she left stabbed in thecastle from which she fled; Stimigliano, who died of poison; the groomwho gave him the poison, cut down by her orders; Oliverotto da Narni,Marcantonio Frangipani, and that poor boy of the Ordelaffi, who hadnever even looked upon her face, and whose only reward was thathandkerchief with which the hangman wiped the sweat off his face, whenhe was one mass of broken limbs and torn flesh: all had to die, and Ishall die also.

  The love of such a woman is enough, and is fatal--"Amour Dure," as herdevice says. I shall die also. But why not? Would it be possible tolive in order to love another woman? Nay, would it be possible to dragon a life like this one after the happiness of tomorrow? Impossible;the others died, and I must die. I always felt that I should not livelong; a gipsy in Poland told me once that I had in my hand the cut-linewhich signifies a violent death. I might have ended in a duel with somebrother-student, or in a railway accident. No, no; my death will not beof that sort! Death--and is not she also dead? What strange vistas doessuch a thought not open! Then the others--Pico, the Groom, Stimigliano,Oliverotto, Frangipani, Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi--will they all be_there?_ But she shall love me best--me by whom she has been lovedafter she has been three hundred years in the grave!

  _Dec. 24th.--_

  I have made all my arrangements. Tonight at eleven I slip out; SorAsdrubale and his sisters will be sound asleep. I have questioned them;their fear of rheumatism prevents their attending midnight mass.Luckily there are no churches between this and the Corte; whatevermovement Christmas night may entail will be a good way off. TheVice-Prefect's rooms are on the other side of the palace; the rest ofthe square is taken up with state-rooms, archives, and empty stablesand coach-houses of the palace. Besides, I shall be quick at my work.

  I have tried my saw on a stout bronze vase I bought of Sor Asdrubale;and the bronze of the statue, hollow and worn away by rust (I have evennoticed holes), cannot resist very much, especially after a blow withthe sharp hatchet. I have put my papers in order, for the benefit ofthe Government which has sent me hither. I am sorry to have defraudedthem of their "History of Urbania." To pass the endless day and calmthe fever of impatience, I have just taken a long walk. This is thecoldest day we have had. The bright sun does not warm in the least, butseems only to increase the impression of cold, to make the snow on themountains glitter, the blue air to sparkle like steel. The few peoplewho are out are muffled to the nose, and carry earthenware braziersbeneath their cloaks; long icicles hang from the fountain with thefigure of Mercury upon it; one can imagine the wolves trooping downthrough the dry scrub and beleaguering this town. Somehow this coldmakes me feel wonderfully calm--it seems to bring back to me myboyhood.

  As I walked up the rough, steep, paved alleys, slippery with frost, andwith their vista of snow mountains against the sky, and passed by thechurch steps strewn with box and laurel, with the faint smell ofincense coming out, there returned to me--I know not why--therecollection, almost the sensation, of those Christmas Eves long ago atPosen and Breslau, when I walked as a child along the wide streets,peeping into the windows where they were beginning to light the tapersof the Christmas-trees, and wondering whether I too, on returning home,should be let into a wonderful room all blazing with lights and gildednuts and glass beads. They are hanging the last strings of those blueand red metallic beads, fastening on the last gilded and silveredwalnuts on the trees out there at home in the North; they are lightingthe blue and red tapers; the wax is beginning to run on to thebeautiful spruce green branches; the children are waiting with beatinghearts behind the door, to be told that the Christ-Child has been. AndI, for what am I waiting? I don't know; all seems a dream; everythingvague and unsubstantial about me, as if time had ceased, nothing couldhappen, my own desires and hopes were all dead, myself absorbed into Iknow not what passive dreamland. Do I long for tonight? Do I dread it?Will tonight ever come? Do I feel anything, does anything exist allround me?

  I sit and seem to see that street at Posen, the wide street with thewindows illuminated by the Christmas lights, the green fir-branchesgrazing the window-panes.

  _Christmas Eve, Midnight.--_

  I have done it. I slipped out noiselessly. Sor Asdrubale and hissisters were fast asleep. I feared I had waked them, for my hatchetfell as I was passing through the principal room where my landlordkeeps his curiosities for sale; it struck against some old armor whichhe has been piecing. I heard him exclaim, half in his sleep; and blewout my light and hid in the stairs. He came out in his dressing-gown,but finding no one, went back to bed again. "Some cat, no doubt!" hesaid. I closed the house door softly behind me. The sky had becomestormy since the afternoon, luminous with the full moon, but strewnwith grey and buff-colored vapors; every now and then the moondisappeared entirely. Not a creature abroad; the tall gaunt housesstaring in the moonlight.

  I know not why, I took a roundabout way to the Corte, past one or twochurch doors, whence issued the faint flicker of midnight mass. For amoment I felt a temptation to enter one of them; but something seemedto restrain me. I caught snatches of the Christmas hymn. I felt myselfbeginning to be unnerved, and hastened towards the Corte. As I passedunder the portico at San Francesco I heard steps behind me; it seemedto me that I was followed. I stopped to let the other pass. As heapproached his pace flagged; he passed close by me and murmured, "Donot go: I am Giovanfrancesco Pico." I turned round; he was gone. Acoldness numbed me; but I hastened on.

  Behind the cathedral apse, in a narrow lane, I saw a man leaningagainst a wall. The moonlight was
full upon him; it seemed to me thathis face, with a thin pointed beard, was streaming with blood. Iquickened my pace; but as I grazed by him he whispered, "Do not obeyher; return home: I am Marcantonio Frangipani." My teeth chattered, butI hurried along the narrow lane, with the moonlight blue upon the whitewalls. At last I saw the Corte before me: the square was flooded withmoonlight, the windows of the palace seemed brightly illuminated, andthe statue of Duke Robert, shimmering green, seemed advancing towardsme on its horse. I came into the shadow. I had to pass beneath anarchway. There started a figure as if out of the wall, and barred mypassage with his outstretched cloaked arm. I tried to pass. He seizedme by the arm, and his grasp was like a weight of ice. "You shall notpass!" he cried, and, as the moon came out once more, I saw his face,ghastly white and bound with an embroidered kerchief; he seemed almosta child. "You shall not pass!" he cried; "you shall not have her! Sheis mine, and mine alone! I am Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi." I felt hisice-cold clutch, but with my other arm I laid about me wildly with thehatchet which I carried beneath my cloak. The hatchet struck the walland rang upon the stone. He had vanished.

  I hurried on. I did it. I cut open the bronze; I sawed it into a widergash. I tore out the silver image, and hacked it into innumerablepieces. As I scattered the last fragments about, the moon was suddenlyveiled; a great wind arose, howling down the square; it seemed to methat the earth shook. I threw down the hatchet and the saw, and fledhome. I felt pursued, as if by the tramp of hundreds of invisiblehorsemen.

  Now I am calm. It is midnight; another moment and she will be here!Patience, my heart! I hear it beating loud. I trust that no one willaccuse poor Sor Asdrubale. I will write a letter to the authorities todeclare his innocence should anything happen.... One! the clock in thepalace tower has just struck.... "I hereby certify that, shouldanything happen this night to me, Spiridion Trepka, no one but myselfis to be held..." A step on the staircase! It is she! it is she! Atlast, Medea, Medea! Ah! AMOUR DURE--DURE AMOUR!

  * * * * *

  _NOTE.--Here ends the diary of the late Spiridion Trepka The chiefnewspapers of the province of Umbria informed the public that, onChristmas morning of the year 1885, the bronze equestrian statue ofRobert II. had been found grievously mutilated; and that ProfessorSpiridion Trepka of Posen, in the German Empire, had been discovereddead of a stab in the region of the heart, given by an unknownhand._

  Dionea

  From the Letters of Doctor Alessandro De Rosis to the Lady EvelynSavelli, Princess of Sabina.

  _Montemiro Ligure, June 29, 1873._

  I take immediate advantage of the generous offer of your Excellency(allow an old Republican who has held you on his knees to address youby that title sometimes, 'tis so appropriate) to help our poor people.I never expected to come a-begging so soon. For the olive crop has beenunusually plenteous. We semi-Genoese don't pick the olives unripe, likeour Tuscan neighbors, but let them grow big and black, when the youngfellows go into the trees with long reeds and shake them down on thegrass for the women to collect--a pretty sight which your Excellencymust see some day: the grey trees with the brown, barefoot ladscraning, balanced in the branches, and the turquoise sea as backgroundjust beneath.... That sea of ours--it is all along of it that I wish toask for money. Looking up from my desk, I see the sea through thewindow, deep below and beyond the olive woods, bluish-green in thesunshine and veined with violet under the cloud-bars, like one of yourRavenna mosaics spread out as pavement for the world: a wicked sea,wicked in its loveliness, wickeder than your grey northern ones, andfrom which must have arisen in times gone by (when Phoenicians orGreeks built the temples at Lerici and Porto Venere) a baleful goddessof beauty, a Venus Verticordia, but in the bad sense of the word,overwhelming men's lives in sudden darkness like that squall of lastweek.

  To come to the point. I want you, dear Lady Evelyn, to promise me somemoney, a great deal of money, as much as would buy you a little mannishcloth frock--for the complete bringing-up, until years of discretion,of a young stranger whom the sea has laid upon our shore. Our people,kind as they are, are very poor, and overburdened with children;besides, they have got a certain repugnance for this poor little waif,cast up by that dreadful storm, and who is doubtless a heathen, for shehad no little crosses or scapulars on, like proper Christian children.So, being unable to get any of our women to adopt the child, and havingan old bachelor's terror of my housekeeper, I have bethought me ofcertain nuns, holy women, who teach little girls to say their prayersand make lace close by here; and of your dear Excellency to pay for thewhole business.

  Poor little brown mite! She was picked up after the storm (such aset-out of ship-models and votive candles as that storm must havebrought the Madonna at Porto Venere!) on a strip of sand between therocks of our castle: the thing was really miraculous, for this coast islike a shark's jaw, and the bits of sand are tiny and far between. Shewas lashed to a plank, swaddled up close in outlandish garments; andwhen they brought her to me they thought she must certainly be dead: alittle girl of four or five, decidedly pretty, and as brown as a berry,who, when she came to, shook her head to show she understood no kind ofItalian, and jabbered some half-intelligible Eastern jabber, a fewGreek words embedded in I know not what; the Superior of the College DePropaganda Fide would be puzzled to know. The child appears to be theonly survivor from a ship which must have gone down in the greatsquall, and whose timbers have been strewing the bay for some dayspast; no one at Spezia or in any of our ports knows anything about her,but she was seen, apparently making for Porto Venere, by some of oursardine-fishers: a big, lumbering craft, with eyes painted on each sideof the prow, which, as you know, is a peculiarity of Greek boats. Shewas sighted for the last time off the island of Palmaria, entering,with all sails spread, right into the thick of the storm-darkness. Nobodies, strangely enough, have been washed ashore.

  _July 10._

  I have received the money, dear Donna Evelina. There was tremendousexcitement down at San Massimo when the carrier came in with aregistered letter, and I was sent for, in presence of all the villageauthorities, to sign my name on the postal register.

  The child has already been settled some days with the nuns; such dearlittle nuns (nuns always go straight to the heart of an oldpriest-hater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed inbrown robes and close, white caps, with an immense round straw-hatflapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are called Sisters ofthe Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a littleway inland, with an untidy garden full of lavender and cherry-trees.Your _protegee_ has already half set the convent, the village, theEpiscopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, becausenobody could make out whether or not she had been christened. Thequestion was a grave one, for it appears (as your uncle-in-law, theCardinal, will tell you) that it is almost equally undesirable to bechristened twice over as not to be christened at all. The first dangerwas finally decided upon as the less terrible; but the child, they say,had evidently been baptized before, and knew that the operation oughtnot to be repeated, for she kicked and plunged and yelled like twentylittle devils, and positively would not let the holy water touch her.The Mother Superior, who always took for granted that the baptism hadtaken place before, says that the child was quite right, and thatHeaven was trying to prevent a sacrilege; but the priest and thebarber's wife, who had to hold her, think the occurrence fearful, andsuspect the little girl of being a Protestant. Then the question of thename. Pinned to her clothes--striped Eastern things, and that kind ofcrinkled silk stuff they weave in Crete and Cyprus--was a piece ofparchment, a scapular we thought at first, but which was found tocontain only the name _Dionea_--Dionea, as they pronounce it here.The question was, Could such a name be fitly borne by a young lady atthe Convent of the Stigmata? Half the population here have names asunchristian quite--Norma, Odoacer, Archimedes--my housemaid is calledThemis--but Dionea seemed to scandalize every one, perhaps becausethese good folk had a mysterious instinct that the name is derived fro
mDione, one of the loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a ladythan the goddess Venus. The child was very near being called Maria,although there are already twenty-three other Marias, Mariettas,Mariuccias, and so forth at the convent. But the sister-bookkeeper, whoapparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first inthe Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellum-boundbook, printed at Venice in 1625, called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives ofthe Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of suchSaints as have no assigned place in the Almanack, otherwise called theMovable or Extravagant Saints." The zeal of Sister Anna Maddalena hasbeen rewarded, for there, among the Extravagant Saints, sure enough,with a border of palm-branches and hour-glasses, stands the name ofSaint Dionea, Virgin and Martyr, a lady of Antioch, put to death by theEmperor Decius. I know your Excellency's taste for historicalinformation, so I forward this item. But I fear, dear Lady Evelyn, Ifear that the heavenly patroness of your little sea-waif was a muchmore extravagant saint than that.

  _December 21, 1879._

  Many thanks, dear Donna Evelina, for the money for Dionea's schooling.Indeed, it was not wanted yet: the accomplishments of young ladies aretaught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto: and as to clothes, whichyou mention, a pair of wooden clogs, with pretty red tips, costssixty-five centimes, and ought to last three years, if the owner iscareful to carry them on her head in a neat parcel when out walking,and to put them on again only on entering the village. The MotherSuperior is greatly overcome by your Excellency's munificence towardsthe convent, and much perturbed at being unable to send you a specimenof your _protegee's_ skill, exemplified in an embroideredpocket-handkerchief or a pair of mittens; but the fact is that poorDionea _has_ no skill. "We will pray to the Madonna and St.Francis to make her more worthy," remarked the Superior. Perhaps,however, your Excellency, who is, I fear but a Pagan woman (for all theSavelli Popes and St. Andrew Savelli's miracles), and insufficientlyappreciative of embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, will be quite assatisfied to hear that Dionea, instead of skill, has got the prettiestface of any little girl in Montemirto. She is tall, for her age (she iseleven) quite wonderfully well proportioned and extremely strong: ofall the convent-full, she is the only one for whom I have never beencalled in. The features are very regular, the hair black, and despiteall the good Sisters' efforts to keep it smooth like a Chinaman's,beautifully curly. I am glad she should be pretty, for she will moreeasily find a husband; and also because it seems fitting that your_protegee_ should be beautiful. Unfortunately her character is notso satisfactory: she hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, allequally. I am sorry to say she shows no natural piety. Her companionsdetest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactlynaughty, seem to feel her as a dreadful thorn in the flesh. She spendshours and hours on the terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire,she confided to me, is to get to the sea--to get _back to thesea_, as she expressed it), and lying in the garden, under the bigmyrtle-bushes, and, in spring and summer, under the rose-hedge. Thenuns say that rose-hedge and that myrtle-bush are growing a great dealtoo big, one would think from Dionea's lying under them; the fact, Isuppose, has drawn attention to them. "That child makes all the uselessweeds grow," remarked Sister Reparata. Another of Dionea's amusementsis playing with pigeons. The number of pigeons she collects about heris quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or theneighboring hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes,and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and unfurl their tails,and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads anda little throb and gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretchedout full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they come tokiss, and uttering strange, cooing sounds; or hopping about, flappingher arms slowly like wings, and raising her little head with much thesame odd gesture as they;--'tis a lovely sight, a thing fit for one ofyour painters, Burne Jones or Tadema, with the myrtle-bushes all round,the bright, white-washed convent walls behind, the white marble chapelsteps (all steps are marble in this Carrara country) and the enamelblue sea through the ilex-branches beyond. But the good Sistersabominate these pigeons, who, it appears, are messy little creatures,and they complain that, were it not that the Reverend Director likes apigeon in his pot on a holiday, they could not stand the bother ofperpetually sweeping the chapel steps and the kitchen threshold allalong of those dirty birds....

  _August 6, 1882._

  Do not tempt me, dearest Excellency, with your invitations to Rome. Ishould not be happy there, and do but little honor to your friendship.My many years of exile, of wanderings in northern countries, have mademe a little bit into a northern man: I cannot quite get on with my ownfellow-countrymen, except with the good peasants and fishermen allround. Besides--forgive the vanity of an old man, who has learned tomake triple acrostic sonnets to cheat the days and months atTheresienstadt and Spielberg--I have suffered too much for Italy toendure patiently the sight of little parliamentary cabals and municipalwranglings, although they also are necessary in this day asconspiracies and battles were in mine. I am not fit for your roomful ofministers and learned men and pretty women: the former would think mean ignoramus, and the latter--what would afflict me much more--apedant.... Rather, if your Excellency really wants to show yourself andyour children to your father's old _protege_ of Mazzinian times,find a few days to come here next spring. You shall have some very barerooms with brick floors and white curtains opening out on my terrace;and a dinner of all manner of fish and milk (the white garlic flowersshall be mown away from under the olives lest my cow should eat it) andeggs cooked in herbs plucked in the hedges. Your boys can go and seethe big ironclads at Spezia; and you shall come with me up our lanesfringed with delicate ferns and overhung by big olives, and into thefields where the cherry-trees shed their blossoms on to the buddingvines, the fig-trees stretching out their little green gloves, wherethe goats nibble perched on their hind legs, and the cows low in thehuts of reeds; and there rise from the ravines, with the gurgle of thebrooks, from the cliffs with the boom of the surf, the voices of unseenboys and girls, singing about love and flowers and death, just as inthe days of Theocritus, whom your learned Excellency does well to read.Has your Excellency ever read Longus, a Greek pastoral novelist? He isa trifle free, a trifle nude for us readers of Zola; but the old Frenchof Amyot has a wonderful charm, and he gives one an idea, as no oneelse does, how folk lived in such valleys, by such sea-boards, as thesein the days when daisy-chains and garlands of roses were still hung onthe olive-trees for the nymphs of the grove; when across the bay, atthe end of the narrow neck of blue sea, there clung to the marble rocksnot a church of Saint Laurence, with the sculptured martyr on hisgridiron, but the temple of Venus, protecting her harbor.... Yes, dearLady Evelyn, you have guessed aright. Your old friend has returned tohis sins, and is scribbling once more. But no longer at verses orpolitical pamphlets. I am enthralled by a tragic history, the historyof the fall of the Pagan Gods.... Have you ever read of theirwanderings and disguises, in my friend Heine's little book?

  And if you come to Montemirto, you shall see also your _protegee_,of whom you ask for news. It has just missed being disastrous. PoorDionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to herwits, poor little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it hasrequired all my influence, and all the awfulness of your Excellency'sname, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent herexpulsion by the Sisters of the Stigmata. It appears that this madcreature very nearly committed a sacrilege: she was discovered handlingin a suspicious manner the Madonna's gala frock and her best veil of_pizzo di Cantu_, a gift of the late Marchioness ViolanteVigalcila of Fornovo. One of the orphans, Zaira Barsanti, whom theycall the Rossaccia, even pretends to have surprised Dionea as she wasabout to adorn her wicked little person with these sacred garments;and, on another occasion, when Dionea had been sent to pass some oiland sawdust over the chapel floor (it was the eve of Easter of theRoses), to have discovered her seated on the edge of the altar,
in thevery place of the Most Holy Sacrament. I was sent for in hot haste, andhad to assist at an ecclesiastical council in the convent parlor, whereDionea appeared, rather out of place, an amazing little beauty, dark,lithe, with an odd, ferocious gleam in her eyes, and a still oddersmile, tortuous, serpentine, like that of Leonardo da Vinci's women,among the plaster images of St. Francis, and the glazed and framedsamplers before the little statue of the Virgin, which wears in summera kind of mosquito-curtain to guard it from the flies, who, as youknow, are creatures of Satan.

  Speaking of Satan, does your Excellency know that on the inside of ourlittle convent door, just above the little perforated plate of metal(like the rose of a watering-pot) through which the Sister-portresspeeps and talks, is pasted a printed form, an arrangement of holy namesand texts in triangles, and the stigmatized hands of St. Francis, and avariety of other devices, for the purpose, as is explained in a specialnotice, of baffling the Evil One, and preventing his entrance into thatbuilding? Had you seen Dionea, and the stolid, contemptuous way inwhich she took, without attempting to refute, the various shockingallegations against her, your Excellency would have reflected, as Idid, that the door in question must have been accidentally absent fromthe premises, perhaps at the joiner's for repair, the day that your_protegee_ first penetrated into the convent. The ecclesiasticaltribunal, consisting of the Mother Superior, three Sisters, theCapuchin Director, and your humble servant (who vainly attempted to beDevil's advocate), sentenced Dionea, among other things, to make thesign of the cross twenty-six times on the bare floor with her tongue.Poor little child! One might almost expect that, as happened when DameVenus scratched her hand on the thorn-bush, red roses should sprout upbetween the fissures of the dirty old bricks.

  _October 14, 1883_.

  You ask whether, now that the Sisters let Dionea go and do half a day'sservice now and then in the village, and that Dionea is a grown-upcreature, she does not set the place by the ears with her beauty. Thepeople here are quite aware of its existence. She is already dubbed_La bella Dionea_; but that does not bring her any nearer gettinga husband, although your Excellency's generous offer of awedding-portion is well known throughout the district of San Massimoand Montemirto. None of our boys, peasants or fishermen, seem to hangon her steps; and if they turn round to stare and whisper as she goesby straight and dainty in her wooden clogs, with the pitcher of wateror the basket of linen on her beautiful crisp dark head, it is, Iremark, with an expression rather of fear than of love. The women, ontheir side, make horns with their fingers as she passes, and as theysit by her side in the convent chapel; but that seems natural. Myhousekeeper tells me that down in the village she is regarded aspossessing the evil eye and bringing love misery. "You mean," I said,"that a glance from her is too much for our lads' peace of mind."Veneranda shook her head, and explained, with the deference andcontempt with which she always mentions any of her country-folk'ssuperstitions to me, that the matter is different: it's not with herthey are in love (they would be afraid of her eye), but where-ever shegoes the young people must needs fall in love with each other, andusually where it is far from desirable. "You know Sora Luisa, theblacksmith's widow? Well, Dionea did a _half-service_ for her lastmonth, to prepare for the wedding of Luisa's daughter. Well, now, thegirl must say, forsooth! that she won't have Pieriho of Lerici anylonger, but will have that raggamuffin Wooden Pipe from Solaro, or gointo a convent. And the girl changed her mind the very day that Dioneahad come into the house. Then there is the wife of Pippo, thecoffee-house keeper; they say she is carrying on with one of thecoastguards, and Dionea helped her to do her washing six weeks ago. Theson of Sor Temistocle has just cut off a finger to avoid theconscription, because he is mad about his cousin and afraid of beingtaken for a soldier; and it is a fact that some of the shirts whichwere made for him at the Stigmata had been sewn by Dionea;" ... andthus a perfect string of love misfortunes, enough to make a little"Decameron," I assure you, and all laid to Dionea's account. Certain itis that the people of San Massimo are terribly afraid of Dionea....

  _July 17, 1884._

  Dionea's strange influence seems to be extending in a terrible way. Iam almost beginning to think that our folk are correct in their fear ofthe young witch. I used to think, as physician to a convent, thatnothing was more erroneous than all the romancings of Diderot andSchubert (your Excellency sang me his "Young Nun" once: do yourecollect, just before your marriage?), and that no more humdrumcreature existed than one of our little nuns, with their pink babyfaces under their tight white caps. It appeared the romancing was morecorrect than the prose. Unknown things have sprung up in these goodSisters' hearts, as unknown flowers have sprung up among themyrtle-bushes and the rose-hedge which Dionea lies under. Did I evermention to you a certain little Sister Giuliana, who professed only twoyears ago?--a funny rose and white little creature presiding over theinfirmary, as prosaic a little saint as ever kissed a crucifix orscoured a saucepan. Well, Sister Giuliana has disappeared, and the sameday has disappeared also a sailor-boy from the port.

  _August 20, 1884_.

  The case of Sister Giuliana seems to have been but the beginning of anextraordinary love epidemic at the Convent of the Stigmata: the elderschoolgirls have to be kept under lock and key lest they should talkover the wall in the moonlight, or steal out to the little hunchbackwho writes love-letters at a penny a-piece, beautiful flourishes andall, under the portico by the Fishmarket. I wonder does that wickedlittle Dionea, whom no one pays court to, smile (her lips like aCupid's bow or a tiny snake's curves) as she calls the pigeons downaround her, or lies fondling the cats under the myrtle-bush, when shesees the pupils going about with swollen, red eyes; the poor littlenuns taking fresh penances on the cold chapel flags; and hears thelong-drawn guttural vowels, _amore_ and _morte_ and _mio bene_,which rise up of an evening, with the boom of the surf and thescent of the lemon-flowers, as the young men wander up and down,arm-in-arm, twanging their guitars along the moonlit lanes underthe olives?

  _October 20, 1885._

  A terrible, terrible thing has happened! I write to your Excellencywith hands all a-tremble; and yet I _must_ write, I must speak, orelse I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico ofCasoria, the confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man,tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome like the monkplaying the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brownserge still the most stalwart fellow of the country all round? One hasheard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father Domenicohad struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. Jerome,and he had conquered. I never knew anything comparable to the angelicserenity of gentleness of this victorious soul. I don't like monks, butI loved Father Domenico. I might have been his father, easily, yet Ialways felt a certain shyness and awe of him; and yet men haveaccounted me a clean-lived man in my generation; but I felt, whenever Iapproached him, a poor worldly creature, debased by the knowledge of somany mean and ugly things. Of late Father Domenico had seemed to meless calm than usual: his eyes had grown strangely bright, and redspots had formed on his salient cheekbones. One day last week, takinghis hand, I felt his pulse flutter, and all his strength as it were,liquefy under my touch. "You are ill," I said. "You have fever, FatherDomenico. You have been overdoing yourself--some new privation, somenew penance. Take care and do not tempt Heaven; remember the flesh isweak." Father Domenico withdrew his hand quickly. "Do not say that," hecried; "the flesh is strong!" and turned away his face. His eyes wereglistening and he shook all over. "Some quinine," I ordered. But I feltit was no case for quinine. Prayers might be more useful, and could Ihave given them he should not have wanted. Last night I was suddenlysent for to Father Domenico's monastery above Montemirto: they told mehe was ill. I ran up through the dim twilight of moonbeams and oliveswith a sinking heart. Something told me my monk was dead. He was lyingin a little low whitewashed room; they had carried him there from hisown cell in hopes he might still be alive. The windows were wide open;they framed some olive-branches, gl
istening in the moonlight, and farbelow, a strip of moonlit sea. When I told them that he was reallydead, they brought some tapers and lit them at his head and feet, andplaced a crucifix between his hands. "The Lord has been pleased to callour poor brother to Him," said the Superior. "A case of apoplexy, mydear Doctor--a case of apoplexy. You will make out the certificate forthe authorities." I made out the certificate. It was weak of me. But,after all, why make a scandal? He certainly had no wish to injure thepoor monks.

  Next day I found the little nuns all in tears. They were gatheringflowers to send as a last gift to their confessor. In the conventgarden I found Dionea, standing by the side of a big basket of roses,one of the white pigeons perched on her shoulder.

  "So," she said, "he has killed himself with charcoal, poor PadreDomenico!"

  Something in her tone, her eyes, shocked me.

  "God has called to Himself one of His most faithful servants," I saidgravely.

  Standing opposite this girl, magnificent, radiant in her beauty, beforethe rose-hedge, with the white pigeons furling and unfurling, struttingand pecking all round, I seemed to see suddenly the whitewashed room oflast night, the big crucifix, that poor thin face under the yellowwaxlight. I felt glad for Father Domenico; his battle was over.

  "Take this to Father Domenico from me," said Dionea, breaking off atwig of myrtle starred over with white blossom; and raising her headwith that smile like the twist of a young snake, she sang out in a highguttural voice a strange chant, consisting of the word _Amor--amor--amor_.I took the branch of myrtle and threw it in her face.

  _January 3, 1886_

  It will be difficult to find a place for Dionea, and in thisneighborhood well-nigh impossible. The people associate her somehowwith the death of Father Domenico, which has confirmed her reputationof having the evil eye. She left the convent (being now seventeen) sometwo months back, and is at present gaining her bread working with themasons at our notary's new house at Lerici: the work is hard, but ourwomen often do it, and it is magnificent to see Dionea, in her shortwhite skirt and tight white bodice, mixing the smoking lime with herbeautiful strong arms; or, an empty sack drawn over her head andshoulders, walking majestically up the cliff, up the scaffoldings withher load of bricks.... I am, however, very anxious to get Dionea out ofthe neighborhood, because I cannot help dreading the annoyances towhich her reputation for the evil eye exposes her, and even someexplosion of rage if ever she should lose the indifferent contempt withwhich she treats them. I hear that one of the rich men of our part ofthe world, a certain Sor Agostino of Sarzana, who owns a whole flank ofmarble mountain, is looking out for a maid for his daughter, who isabout to be married; kind people and patriarchal in their riches, theold man still sitting down to table with all his servants; and hisnephew, who is going to be his son-in-law, a splendid young fellow, whohas worked like Jacob, in the quarry and at the saw-mill, for love ofhis pretty cousin. That whole house is so good, simple, and peaceful,that I hope it may tame down even Dionea. If I do not succeed ingetting Dionea this place (and all your Excellency's illustriousnessand all my poor eloquence will be needed to counteract the sinisterreports attaching to our poor little waif), it will be best to acceptyour suggestion of taking the girl into your household at Rome, sinceyou are curious to see what you call our baleful beauty. I am amused,and a little indignant at what you say about your footmen beinghandsome: Don Juan himself, my dear Lady Evelyn, would be cowed byDionea....

  _May 29, 1886._

  Here is Dionea back upon our hands once more! but I cannot send her toyour Excellency. Is it from living among these peasants andfishing-folk, or is it because, as people pretend, a skeptic is alwayssuperstitious? I could not muster courage to send you Dionea, althoughyour boys are still in sailor-clothes and your uncle, the Cardinal, iseighty-four; and as to the Prince, why, he bears the most potent amuletagainst Dionea's terrible powers in your own dear capricious person.Seriously, there is something eerie in this coincidence. Poor Dionea!I feel sorry for her, exposed to the passion of a once patriarchallyrespectable old man. I feel even more abashed at the incredibleaudacity, I should almost say sacrilegious madness, of the vile oldcreature. But still the coincidence is strange and uncomfortable. Lastweek the lightning struck a huge olive in the orchard of Sor Agostino'shouse above Sarzana. Under the olive was Sor Agostino himself, who waskilled on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing waterfrom the well, unhurt and calm, was Dionea. It was the end of a sultryafternoon: I was on a terrace in one of those villages of ours, jammed,like some hardy bush, in the gash of a hill-side. I saw the storm rushdown the valley, a sudden blackness, and then, like a curse, a flash, atremendous crash, re-echoed by a dozen hills. "I told him," Dionea saidvery quietly, when she came to stay with me the next day (for SorAgostino's family would not have her for another half-minute), "that ifhe did not leave me alone Heaven would send him an accident."

  _July 15, 1886_.

  My book? Oh, dear Donna Evelina, do not make me blush by talking of mybook! Do not make an old man, respectable, a Government functionary(communal physician of the district of San Massimo and MontemirtoLigure), confess that he is but a lazy unprofitable dreamer, collectingmaterials as a child picks hips out of a hedge, only to throw themaway, liking them merely for the little occupation of scratching hishands and standing on tiptoe, for their pretty redness.... You rememberwhat Balzac says about projecting any piece of work?--"_C'est fumierdes cigarettes enchantees_...." Well, well! The data obtainableabout the ancient gods in their days of adversity are few and farbetween: a quotation here and there from the Fathers; two or threelegends; Venus reappearing; the persecutions of Apollo in Styria;Proserpina going, in Chaucer, to reign over the fairies; a few obscurereligious persecutions in the Middle Ages on the score of Paganism;some strange rites practiced till lately in the depths of a Bretonforest near Lannion.... As to Tannhaeuser, he was a real knight, and asorry one, and a real Minnesinger not of the best. Your Excellency willfind some of his poems in Von der Hagen's four immense volumes, but Irecommend you to take your notions of Ritter Tannhaeuser's poetry ratherfrom Wagner. Certain it is that the Pagan divinities lasted much longerthan we suspect, sometimes in their own nakedness, sometimes in thestolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows whether they do notexist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For theawfulness of the deep woods, with their filtered green light, the creakof the swaying, solitary reeds, exists, and is Pan; and the blue,starry May night exists, the sough of the waves, the warm wind carryingthe sweetness of the lemon-blossoms, the bitterness of the myrtle onour rocks, the distant chant of the boys cleaning out their nets, ofthe girls sickling the grass under the olives, _Amor--amor--amor,_and all this is the great goddess Venus. And opposite to me, as Iwrite, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea,streaked like a Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the whitehouses and walls, the steeple and towers, an enchanted Fata Morganacity, of dim Porto Venere; ... and I mumble to myself the verse ofCatullus, but addressing a greater and more terrible goddess than hedid:--

  "Procul a mea sit furor omnis, Hera, domo; alios; age incitatos, aliosage rabidos."

  _March 25, 1887._

  Yes; I will do everything in my power for your friends. Are youwell-bred folk as well bred as we, Republican _bourgeois,_ withthe coarse hands (though you once told me mine were psychic hands whenthe mania of palmistry had not yet been succeeded by that of theReconciliation between Church and State), I wonder, that you shouldapologize, you whose father fed me and housed me and clothed me in myexile, for giving me the horrid trouble of hunting for lodgings? It islike you, dear Donna Evelina, to have sent me photographs of my futurefriend Waldemar's statue.... I have no love for modern sculpture, forall the hours I have spent in Gibson's and Dupre's studio: 'tis a deadart we should do better to bury. But your Waldemar has something of theold spirit: he seems to feel the divineness of the mere body, thespirituality of a limpid stream of mere physical life. But why amongthese statues only men a
nd boys, athletes and fauns? Why only the bustof that thin, delicate-lipped little Madonna wife of his? Why nowide-shouldered Amazon or broad-flanked Aphrodite?

  _April 10, 1887._

  You ask me how poor Dionea is getting on. Not as your Excellency and Iought to have expected when we placed her with the good Sisters of theStigmata: although I wager that, fantastic and capricious as you are,you would be better pleased (hiding it carefully from that grave sideof you which bestows devout little books and carbolic acid upon theindigent) that your _protegee_ should be a witch than aserving-maid, a maker of philters rather than a knitter of stockingsand sewer of shirts.

  A maker of philters. Roughly speaking, that is Dionea's profession. Shelives upon the money which I dole out to her (with many uselessobjurgations) on behalf of your Excellency, and her ostensibleemployment is mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, andother miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of villagesorceress. You think our peasants are skeptical? Perhaps they do notbelieve in thought-reading, mesmerism, and ghosts, like you, dear LadyEvelyn. But they believe very firmly in the evil eye, in magic, and inlove-potions. Every one has his little story of this or that whichhappened to his brother or cousin or neighbor. My stable-boy and malefactotum's brother-in-law, living some years ago in Corsica, was seizedwith a longing for a dance with his beloved at one of those balls whichour peasants give in the winter, when the snow makes leisure in themountains. A wizard anointed him for money, and straightway he turnedinto a black cat, and in three bounds was over the seas, at the door ofhis uncle's cottage, and among the dancers. He caught his beloved bythe skirt to draw her attention; but she replied with a kick which senthim squealing back to Corsica. When he returned in summer he refused tomarry the lady, and carried his left arm in a sling. "You broke it whenI came to the Veglia!" he said, and all seemed explained. Another lad,returning from working in the vineyards near Marseilles, was walking upto his native village, high in our hills, one moonlight night. He heardsounds of fiddle and fife from a roadside barn, and saw yellow lightfrom its chinks; and then entering, he found many women dancing, oldand young, and among them his affianced. He tried to snatch her roundthe waist for a waltz (they play _Mme. Angot_ at our rusticballs), but the girl was unclutchable, and whispered, "Go; for theseare witches, who will kill thee; and I am a witch also. Alas! I shallgo to hell when I die."

  I could tell your Excellency dozens of such stories. But love-philtersare among the commonest things to sell and buy. Do you remember the sadlittle story of Cervantes' Licentiate, who, instead of a love-potion,drank a philter which made him think he was made of glass, fit emblemof a poor mad poet? ... It is love-philters that Dionea prepares. No;do not misunderstand; they do not give love of her, still less herlove.

  Your seller of love-charms is as cold as ice, as pure as snow. Thepriest has crusaded against her, and stones have flown at her as shewent by from dissatisfied lovers; and the very children, paddling inthe sea and making mud-pies in the sand, have put out forefinger andlittle finger and screamed, "Witch, witch! ugly witch!" as she passedwith basket or brick load; but Dionea has only smiled, that snake-like,amused smile, but more ominous than of yore. The other day I determinedto seek her and argue with her on the subject of her evil trade. Dioneahas a certain regard for me; not, I fancy, a result of gratitude, butrather the recognition of a certain admiration and awe which sheinspires in your Excellency's foolish old servant. She has taken up herabode in a deserted hut, built of dried reeds and thatch, such as theykeep cows in, among the olives on the cliffs. She was not there, butabout the hut pecked some white pigeons, and from it, startling mefoolishly with its unexpected sound, came the eerie bleat of her petgoat.... Among the olives it was twilight already, with streakings offaded rose in the sky, and faded rose, like long trails of petals, onthe distant sea. I clambered down among the myrtle-bushes and came to alittle semicircle of yellow sand, between two high and jagged rocks,the place where the sea had deposited Dionea after the wreck. She wasseated there on the sand, her bare foot dabbling in the waves; she hadtwisted a wreath of myrtle and wild roses on her black, crisp hair.Near her was one of our prettiest girls, the Lena of Sor Tullio theblacksmith, with ashy, terrified face under her flowered kerchief. Idetermined to speak to the child, but without startling her now, forshe is a nervous, hysteric little thing. So I sat on the rocks,screened by the myrtle-bushes, waiting till the girl had gone. Dionea,seated listless on the sands, leaned over the sea and took some of itswater in the hollow of her hand. "Here," she said to the Lena of SorTullio, "fill your bottle with this and give it to drink to Tommasinothe Rosebud." Then she set to singing:--

  "Love is salt, like sea-water--I drink and I die of thirst.... Water!water! Yet the more I drink, the more I burn. Love! thou art bitter asthe seaweed."

  _April 20, 1887._

  Your friends are settled here, dear Lady Evelyn. The house is built inwhat was once a Genoese fort, growing like a grey spiked aloes out ofthe marble rocks of our bay; rock and wall (the walls existed longbefore Genoa was ever heard of) grown almost into a homogeneous mass,delicate grey, stained with black and yellow lichen, and dotted hereand there with myrtle-shoots and crimson snapdragon. In what was oncethe highest enclosure of the fort, where your friend Gertrude watchesthe maids hanging out the fine white sheets and pillow-cases to dry (abit of the North, of Hermann and Dorothea transferred to the South), agreat twisted fig-tree juts out like an eccentric gargoyle over thesea, and drops its ripe fruit into the deep blue pools. There is butscant furniture in the house, but a great oleander overhangs it,presently to burst into pink splendor; and on all the window-sills,even that of the kitchen (such a background of shining brass saucepansWaldemar's wife has made of it!) are pipkins and tubs full of trailingcarnations, and tufts of sweet basil and thyme and mignonette. Shepleases me most, your Gertrude, although you foretold I should preferthe husband; with her thin white face, a Memling Madonna finished bysome Tuscan sculptor, and her long, delicate white hands ever busy,like those of a mediaeval lady, with some delicate piece of work; andthe strange blue, more limpid than the sky and deeper than the sea, ofher rarely lifted glance.

  It is in her company that I like Waldemar best; I prefer to the geniusthat infinitely tender and respectful, I would not say _lover_--yet I have no other word--of his pale wife. He seems to me,when with her, like some fierce, generous, wild thing from thewoods, like the lion of Una, tame and submissive to this saint.... Thistenderness is really very beautiful on the part of that big lionWaldemar, with his odd eyes, as of some wild animal--odd, and, yourExcellency remarks, not without a gleam of latent ferocity. I thinkthat hereby hangs the explanation of his never doing any but malefigures: the female figure, he says (and your Excellency must hold himresponsible, not me, for such profanity), is almost inevitably inferiorin strength and beauty; woman is not form, but expression, andtherefore suits painting, but not sculpture. The point of a woman isnot her body, but (and here his eyes rested very tenderly upon the thinwhite profile of his wife) her soul. "Still," I answered, "theancients, who understood such matters, did manufacture some tolerablefemale statues: the Fates of the Parthenon, the Phidian Pallas, theVenus of Milo."...

  "Ah! yes," exclaimed Waldemar, smiling, with that savage gleam of hiseyes; "but those are not women, and the people who made them have leftas the tales of Endymion, Adonis, Anchises: a goddess might sit forthem."...

  _May 5, 1887._

  Has it ever struck your Excellency in one of your La Rochefoucauld fits(in Lent say, after too many balls) that not merely maternal butconjugal unselfishness may be a very selfish thing? There! you tossyour little head at my words; yet I wager I have heard you say that_other_ women may think it right to humor their husbands, but asto you, the Prince must learn that a wife's duty is as much to chastenher husband's whims as to satisfy them. I really do feel indignant thatsuch a snow-white saint should wish another woman to part with allinstincts of modesty merely because that other woman would be a goodmodel for her husband; really it
is intolerable. "Leave the girlalone," Waldemar said, laughing. "What do I want with the unaestheticsex, as Schopenhauer calls it?" But Gertrude has set her heart on hisdoing a female figure; it seems that folk have twitted him with neverhaving produced one. She has long been on the look-out for a model forhim. It is odd to see this pale, demure, diaphanous creature, not themore earthly for approaching motherhood, scanning the girls of ourvillage with the eyes of a slave-dealer.

  "If you insist on speaking to Dionea," I said, "I shall insist onspeaking to her at the same time, to urge her to refuse your proposal."But Waldemar's pale wife was indifferent to all my speeches aboutmodesty being a poor girl's only dowry. "She will do for a Venus," shemerely answered.

  We went up to the cliffs together, after some sharp words, Waldemar'swife hanging on my arm as we slowly clambered up the stony path amongthe olives. We found Dionea at the door of her hut, making faggots ofmyrtle-branches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude's offer andexplanations; indifferently to my admonitions not to accept. Thethought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudderthrough our most brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her,immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not answer, but satunder the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that momentWaldemar came up to us; he had followed with the intention of puttingan end to these wranglings.

  "Gertrude," he said, "do leave her alone. I have found a model--afisher-boy, whom I much prefer to any woman."

  Dionea raised her head with that serpentine smile. "I will come," shesaid.

  Waldemar stood silent; his eyes were fixed on her, where she stoodunder the olives, her white shift loose about her splendid throat, hershining feet bare in the grass. Vaguely, as if not knowing what hesaid, he asked her name. She answered that her name was Dionea; for therest, she was an Innocentina, that is to say, a foundling; then shebegan to sing:--

  "Flower of the myrtle! My father is the starry sky, The mother that made me is the sea."

  _June 22, 1887_.

  I confess I was an old fool to have grudged Waldemar his model. As Iwatch him gradually building up his statue, watch the goddess graduallyemerging from the clay heap, I ask myself--and the case might trouble amore subtle moralist than me--whether a village girl, an obscure,useless life within the bounds of what we choose to call right andwrong, can be weighed against the possession by mankind of a great workof art, a Venus immortally beautiful? Still, I am glad that the twoalternatives need not be weighed against each other. Nothing can equalthe kindness of Gertrude, now that Dionea has consented to sit to herhusband; the girl is ostensibly merely a servant like any other; and,lest any report of her real functions should get abroad and discredither at San Massimo or Montemirto, she is to be taken to Rome, where noone will be the wiser, and where, by the way, your Excellency will havean opportunity of comparing Waldemar's goddess of love with our littleorphan of the Convent of the Stigmata. What reassures me still more isthe curious attitude of Waldemar towards the girl. I could never havebelieved that an artist could regard a woman so utterly as a mereinanimate thing, a form to copy, like a tree or flower. Truly hecarries out his theory that sculpture knows only the body, and the bodyscarcely considered as human. The way in which he speaks to Dioneaafter hours of the most rapt contemplation of her is almost brutal inits coldness. And yet to hear him exclaim, "How beautiful she is! GoodGod, how beautiful!" No love of mere woman was ever so violent as thislove of woman's mere shape.

  _June 27, 1887_.

  You asked me once, dearest Excellency, whether there survived among ourpeople (you had evidently added a volume on folk-lore to that heap ofhalf-cut, dog's-eared books that litter about among the Chineseries andmediaeval brocades of your rooms) any trace of Pagan myths. I explainedto you then that all our fairy mythology, classic gods, and demons andheroes, teemed with fairies, ogres, and princes. Last night I had acurious proof of this. Going to see the Waldemar, I found Dionea seatedunder the oleander at the top of the old Genoese fort, telling storiesto the two little blonde children who were making the falling pinkblossoms into necklaces at her feet; the pigeons, Dionea's whitepigeons, which never leave her, strutting and pecking among the basilpots, and the white gulls flying round the rocks overhead. This is whatI heard... "And the three fairies said to the youngest son of the King,to the one who had been brought up as a shepherd, 'Take this apple, andgive it to her among us who is most beautiful.' And the first fairysaid, 'If thou give it to me thou shalt be Emperor of Rome, and havepurple clothes, and have a gold crown and gold armor, and horses andcourtiers;' and the second said, 'If thou give it to me thou shalt bePope, and wear a miter, and have the keys of heaven and hell;' and thethird fairy said, 'Give the apple to me, for I will give thee the mostbeautiful lady to wife.' And the youngest son of the King sat in thegreen meadow and thought about it a little, and then said, 'What use isthere in being Emperor or Pope? Give me the beautiful lady to wife,since I am young myself.' And he gave the apple to the third of thethree fairies."...

  Dionea droned out the story in her half-Genoese dialect, her eyeslooking far away across the blue sea, dotted with sails like whitesea-gulls, that strange serpentine smile on her lips.

  "Who told thee that fable?" I asked.

  She took a handful of oleander-blossoms from the ground, and throwingthem in the air, answered listlessly, as she watched the little showerof rosy petals descend on her black hair and pale breast--

  "Who knows?"

  _July 6, 1887_.

  How strange is the power of art! Has Waldemar's statue shown me thereal Dionea, or has Dionea really grown more strangely beautiful thanbefore? Your Excellency will laugh; but when I meet her I cast down myeyes after the first glimpse of her loveliness; not with the shyness ofa ridiculous old pursuer of the Eternal Feminine, but with a sort ofreligious awe--the feeling with which, as a child kneeling by mymother's side, I looked down on the church flags when the Mass belltold the elevation of the Host.... Do you remember the story of Zeuxisand the ladies of Crotona, five of the fairest not being too much forhis Juno? Do you remember--you, who have read everything--all the boshof our writers about the Ideal in Art? Why, here is a girl whodisproves all this nonsense in a minute; she is far, far more beautifulthan Waldemar's statue of her. He said so angrily, only yesterday, whenhis wife took me into his studio (he has made a studio of thelong-desecrated chapel of the old Genoese fort, itself, they say,occupying the site of the temple of Venus).

  As he spoke that odd spark of ferocity dilated in his eyes, and seizingthe largest of his modeling tools, he obliterated at one swoop thewhole exquisite face. Poor Gertrude turned ashy white, and a convulsionpassed over her face....

  _July 15_.

  I wish I could make Gertrude understand, and yet I could never, neverbring myself to say a word. As a matter of fact, what is there to besaid? Surely she knows best that her husband will never love any womanbut herself. Yet ill, nervous as she is, I quite understand that shemust loathe this unceasing talk of Dionea, of the superiority of themodel over the statue. Cursed statue! I wish it were finished, or elsethat it had never been begun.

  _July 20_.

  This morning Waldemar came to me. He seemed strangely agitated: Iguessed he had something to tell me, and yet I could never ask. Was itcowardice on my part? He sat in my shuttered room, the sunshine makingpools on the red bricks and tremulous stars on the ceiling, talking ofmany things at random, and mechanically turning over the manuscript,the heap of notes of my poor, never-finished book on the Exiled Gods.Then he rose, and walking nervously round my study, talkingdisconnectedly about his work, his eye suddenly fell upon a littlealtar, one of my few antiquities, a little block of marble with acarved garland and rams' heads, and a half-effaced inscriptiondedicating it to Venus, the mother of Love.

  "It was found," I explained, "in the ruins of the temple, somewhere onthe site of your studio: so, at least, the man said from whom I boughtit."

  Waldemar looked at it long. "So," he said, "this little cavity was toburn the
incense in; or rather, I suppose, since it has two littlegutters running into it, for collecting the blood of the victim? Well,well! they were wiser in that day, to wring the neck of a pigeon orburn a pinch of incense than to eat their own hearts out, as we do, allalong of Dame Venus;" and he laughed, and left me with that oddferocious lighting-up of his face. Presently there came a knock at mydoor. It was Waldemar. "Doctor," he said very quietly, "will you dome a favor? Lend me your little Venus altar--only for a few days, onlytill the day after tomorrow. I want to copy the design of it for thepedestal of my statue: it is appropriate." I sent the altar to him: thelad who carried it told me that Waldemar had set it up in the studio,and calling for a flask of wine, poured out two glasses. One he hadgiven to my messenger for his pains; of the other he had drunk amouthful, and thrown the rest over the altar, saying some unknownwords. "It must be some German habit," said my servant. What oddfancies this man has!

  _July 25_.

  You ask me, dearest Excellency, to send you some sheets of my book: youwant to know what I have discovered. Alas! dear Donna Evelina, I havediscovered, I fear, that there is nothing to discover; that Apollo wasnever in Styria; that Chaucer, when he called the Queen of the FairiesProserpine, meant nothing more than an eighteenth century poet when hecalled Dolly or Betty Cynthia or Amaryllis; that the lady who damnedpoor Tannhaeuser was not Venus, but a mere little Suabian mountainsprite; in fact, that poetry is only the invention of poets, and thatthat rogue, Heinrich Heine, is entirely responsible for the existenceof _Dieux en Exil_.... My poor manuscript can only tell you whatSt. Augustine, Tertullian, and sundry morose old Bishops thought aboutthe loves of Father Zeus and the miracles of the Lady Isis, none ofwhich is much worth your attention.... Reality, my dear Lady Evelyn, isalways prosaic: at least when investigated into by bald old gentlemenlike me.

  And yet, it does not look so. The world, at times, seems to be playingat being poetic, mysterious, full of wonder and romance. I am writing,as usual, by my window, the moonlight brighter in its whiteness than mymean little yellow-shining lamp. From the mysterious greyness, theolive groves and lanes beneath my terrace, rises a confused quaver offrogs, and buzz and whirr of insects: something, in sound, like thevague trails of countless stars, the galaxies on galaxies blurred intomere blue shimmer by the moon, which rides slowly across the highestheaven. The olive twigs glisten in the rays: the flowers of thepomegranate and oleander are only veiled as with bluish mist in theirscarlet and rose. In the sea is another sea, of molten, rippled silver,or a magic causeway leading to the shining vague offing, the luminouspale sky-line, where the islands of Palmaria and Tino float likeunsubstantial, shadowy dolphins. The roofs of Montemirto glimmer amongthe black, pointing cypresses: farther below, at the end of thathalf-moon of land, is San Massimo: the Genoese fort inhabited by ourfriends is profiled black against the sky. All is dark: our fisher-folkgo to bed early; Gertrude and the little ones are asleep: they at leastare, for I can imagine Gertrude lying awake, the moonbeams on her thinMadonna face, smiling as she thinks of the little ones around her, ofthe other tiny thing that will soon lie on her breast.... There is alight in the old desecrated chapel, the thing that was once the templeof Venus, they say, and is now Waldemar's workshop, its broken roofmended with reeds and thatch. Waldemar has stolen in, no doubt to seehis statue again. But he will return, more peaceful for thepeacefulness of the night, to his sleeping wife and children. God blessand watch over them! Good-night, dearest Excellency.

  _July 26_.

  I have your Excellency's telegram in answer to mine. Many thanks forsending the Prince. I await his coming with feverish longing; it isstill something to look forward to. All does not seem over. And yetwhat can he do?

  The children are safe: we fetched them out of their bed and broughtthem up here. They are still a little shaken by the fire, the bustle,and by finding themselves in a strange house; also, they want to knowwhere their mother is; but they have found a tame cat, and I hear themchirping on the stairs.

  It was only the roof of the studio, the reeds and thatch, that burned,and a few old pieces of timber. Waldemar must have set fire to it withgreat care; he had brought armfuls of faggots of dry myrtle and heatherfrom the bakehouse close by, and thrown into the blaze quantities ofpine-cones, and of some resin, I know not what, that smelt likeincense. When we made our way, early this morning, through thesmoldering studio, we were stifled with a hot church-like perfume: mybrain swam, and I suddenly remembered going into St. Peter's on EasterDay as a child.

  It happened last night, while I was writing to you. Gertrude had goneto bed, leaving her husband in the studio. About eleven the maids heardhim come out and call to Dionea to get up and come and sit to him. Hehad had this craze once before, of seeing her and his statue by anartificial light: you remember he had theories about the way in whichthe ancients lit up the statues in their temples. Gertrude, theservants say, was heard creeping downstairs a little later.

  Do you see it? I have seen nothing else these hours, which have seemedweeks and months. He had placed Dionea on the big marble block behindthe altar, a great curtain of dull red brocade--you know that Venetianbrocade with the gold pomegranate pattern--behind her, like a Madonnaof Van Eyck's. He showed her to me once before like this, the whitenessof her neck and breast, the whiteness of the drapery round her flanks,toned to the color of old marble by the light of the resin burning inpans all round.... Before Dionea was the altar--the altar of Venuswhich he had borrowed from me. He must have collected all the rosesabout it, and thrown the incense upon the embers when Gertrude suddenlyentered. And then, and then...

  We found her lying across the altar, her pale hair among the ashes ofthe incense, her blood--she had but little to give, poor whiteghost!--trickling among the carved garlands and rams' heads, blackeningthe heaped-up roses. The body of Waldemar was found at the foot of thecastle cliff. Had he hoped, by setting the place on fire, to buryhimself among its ruins, or had he not rather wished to complete inthis way the sacrifice, to make the whole temple an immense votivepyre? It looked like one, as we hurried down the hills to San Massimo:the whole hillside, dry grass, myrtle, and heather, all burning, thepale short flames waving against the blue moonlit sky, and the oldfortress outlined black against the blaze.

  _August 30._

  Of Dionea I can tell you nothing certain. We speak of her as little aswe can. Some say they have seen her, on stormy nights, wandering amongthe cliffs: but a sailor-boy assures me, by all the holy things, thatthe day after the burning of the Castle Chapel--we never call itanything else--he met at dawn, off the island of Palmaria, beyond theStrait of Porto Venere, a Greek boat, with eyes painted on the prow,going full sail to sea, the men singing as she went. And against themast, a robe of purple and gold about her, and a myrtle-wreath on herhead, leaned Dionea, singing words in an unknown tongue, the whitepigeons circling around her.