Part 2

When he turned round, his eyes met those of Hippolyte. Her eyes were widely dilated and fixed upon him, and he believed he could read in their depths things which increased his pain. He passed his arm beneath that of his mistress with an affectionate gesture customary with him. And she pressed his arm firmly against her heart. Both felt a sudden desire to embrace, to dissolve one into the other, distractedly.

"All out! All out!"

The cry of the keepers resounded among the groves, disturbing the silence.

"All out!"

After the cry, the silence seemed heavier and more dismal than ever, and these few words, vociferated by men they could not see, gave the two lovers an insupportable shock. To show that they had heard and were preparing to leave, they hastened their step. But here and there, in the deserted paths, the voices obstinately repeated:

"All out!"

"Curse their cries!" exclaimed Hippolyte, with a gesture of impatience and exasperation, and increasing the rapidity of her pace.

The clock of the Trinita-de-Monti sounded the Angelus. Rome appeared, similar to an immense, grayish, formless cloud touching the earth. Already, in the neighboring houses, several windows were lit up, their lights enlarged by the fog. A few drops of rain were falling.

"You'll come to me to-night, won't you?" asked George.

"Yes, yes, I will come."

"Early?"

"About eleven."

"I should die if you did not come."

"I will come."

They gazed in each other's eyes, exchanging an intoxicating promise.

Overcome by his emotion, George murmured: "Am I forgiven?"

They looked at each other again, and their gaze was charged with caresses.

"Adored one!" he murmured.

"Addio!" she rejoined softly. "Think of me until eleven."

"Addio!"

They separated at the foot of the Via Gregoriana. She went down the Via Capo-le-Case. As long as he could see her going along the wet pavement, lit up by the reflection of the shop windows, his gaze followed her.

"Thus it is," he thought. "She leaves me; she enters a house of which I know nothing; she reenters upon her commonplace life, despoiled of all the ideality in which I have clothed her; she becomes another woman entirely. I no longer know her. The gross necessities of life occupy her, absorb her, and degrade her...."

A perfume of violets was carried to him from a florist's close by, and his heart swelled with confused aspirations.

"Ah! why is it not permitted us to conform our existence according to our dreams, and to live forever in ourselves alone?"

*CHAPTER II.*

At ten o'clock in the morning George was still buried in the profound and refreshing slumber which, in the young, follows a night of voluptuousness, when his servant entered to awaken him.

Turning in his bed, he cried ill-humoredly:

"I am at home to no one. Let me be."

But from the adjoining room he heard the importunate visitor's voice addressing him in beseeching accents:

"Excuse me, George; I must speak to you."

George recognized the voice of Alphonso Exili, and his annoyance was only the greater.

This Exili was a college chum, a man of mediocre intelligence, who, ruined by gambling and debauch, had become a parasite and adventurer.

He still appeared a handsome young man, in spite of his face devastated by vice; yet in his person and manners there was that indefinable cunning and ignobleness noticeable in persons reduced to living by their wits.

He entered, waited until the servant had retired, and assumed a distressed air. Then, swallowing half his words, he said: "Forgive me, George, if I have recourse once more to your kindness. I must pay a card debt. I want you to help me. It's a small sum. Only three hundred lira. Forgive me."

"What? You pay your card debts now?" said George. "I'm surprised."

He threw this insult at him with the most perfect _sans-gene_. Not knowing how to break off all connection with the parasite, he treated him with contempt, just as one would use a stick to ward off a dirty animal.

Exili smiled.

"Come, don't be unkind," he pleaded, in supplicating tones, like a woman's. "You'll give me the three hundred lira, won't you? I will pay you back to-morrow, on my word of honor!"

George burst into laughter. He pulled the bell to summon the servant. The servant entered. "Get my bunch of keys out of those clothes there, on the sofa." The servant found the keys. "Open the second drawer. Give me the large card-case." The servant passed him the card-case. "Very well, you may go."

"Couldn't you let me have four hundred lira?" asked Exili, with a half-timid, half-convulsive smile when the servant had left the room.

"No, there's three hundred. It's the last time. Now go."

Instead of handing him the bills, George laid them on the edge of the bed. Exili smiled, took them, and placed them in his pocket; then, in an ambiguous tone, in which irony was mixed with adulation, he said: "You have a noble heart."

His gaze wandered around the chamber, and he added: "You have a delicious bedroom."

He seated himself on the sofa, poured out a small glass of liqueur, and refilled his cigar-case.

"Who is your present mistress?" he went on. "What's her name? I believe it's no longer the one you had last year."

"Go away, Exili. I want to sleep."

"What a splendid creature! She has the handsomest eyes in Rome. She's away, I suppose. I have not met her for several days. She must be out of town. She has a sister in Milan, I think."

He refilled his _petit verre_ and swallowed its contents at a single gulp. Possibly he gossiped only in order to gain time enough to empty the bottle.

"She's separated from her husband, isn't she?" he continued. "I imagine that her finances must be at a very low ebb, and yet she is always most elegantly dressed. About two months ago I met her in the Via del Babuino. You know your probable successor. But no, you can't know him. It's Monti, the _mercante di campagna_, a great big fellow, with dirty blond hair. That very day I saw her he was close at her heels in the Via del Babuino. You know one can see at a glance when a man is following a woman. Monti has money, too."

He uttered these last words in a curious tone; an odious tone of envy and cupidity. Then he drank for the third time, noiselessly.

"Are you asleep, George?"

Instead of answering, George pretended to sleep. He had heard everything, but he feared that Exili might see his heart-beats through the bedclothes.

"George!"

He feigned to start like a man suddenly awakened.

"What! You are still here? Aren't you going?"

"I am going now--but look! A tortoise-shell pin!"

He stooped to pick it up from the carpet, examined it with curiosity, and laid it on the coverlid.

"Lucky fellow!" he exclaimed in the same ambiguous tone. "And now, ta-ta--a thousand thanks."

He extended his hand, but George kept his beneath the clothes. The chatterbox turned towards the door.

"Your cognac is exquisite. I'll take another _petit verre_."

He drank, and then went away. George, in his bed, could relish the poison at his leisure.

*CHAPTER III.*

The second anniversary fell on the second of April.

"This time," said Hippolyte, "we will celebrate it away from Rome. We must pass a great week of love; all by ourselves, no matter where, but not here."

"Do you remember the first anniversary," asked George, "that of last year?"

"Yes, I remember."

"It was a Sunday, Easter Sunday. And I came to your rooms at ten o'clock in the morning. And you wore that little English jacket that pleased me so. You had brought your prayer-book."

"Oh! that morning, I had not been to mass."

"You were in such a hurry."

"My departure from the house was like a flight," answered Hippolyte. "You know, on holy days, I could not call a moment my own. Yet, for all that, I found a way to remain with you until noon. And we had guests for lunch that day."

"Then, the rest of the day we could not see each other. It was a sad anniversary."

"Yes, it was," murmured Hippolyte.

"And that sun!"

"And that forest of flowers in your room," she laughed. "I, too, on that morning, had gone out for a moment; I bought up almost the entire flower market."

"You threw hands full of rose-leaves at me. You put a number of the leaves down my neck, in my sleeves. Do you remember?"

"Yes, I remember."

"And then, at the house, I found them all when I disrobed."

She smiled.

"And on my return my husband found leaves on my hat, in the folds of my dress."

"Yes, you told me."

"I did not go out again that day. I did not care to go out again. I thought, and rethought. Yes, it was a sad anniversary."

After an interval of silent revery, she spoke again.

"Did you believe, in your heart, that we should reach our second anniversary?"

"I--no," he replied.

"Nor I."

"What love!" thought George, "that which carries within itself the presentiment of its end." He then thought of the husband, without hate and even with a sort of compassionate benevolence. "Now she is free. Why, then, am I more uneasy now than formerly? The husband was a sort of guarantee for me; I looked on him as a guardian who shielded my mistress from all danger. Maybe these are illusions; because at that time, also, I suffered much. But the suffering which is passed seems always less severe than the present pain." Following his own reflections, he no longer listened to Hippolyte's words.

"Well," she said, "where shall we go? We must decide. To-morrow is the first of April. I have already said to my mother: 'You know, mamma, one of these days I am going on a short journey.' I must prepare her for my departure. Do not worry. I will invent a plausible pretext. Leave it to me."

She spoke gayly; she smiled. And in the smile which illuminated her closing remarks he believed he discovered the instinctive contentment which a woman feels when concocting some deception. The facility with which Hippolyte succeeded in deceiving her mother displeased him. He thought once more, and not without regret, of the marital vigilance. "Why suffer so cruelly on account of this liberty," he reflected, "when it is in the service of my pleasure? I do not know what I would give could I get away from my fixed idea, from my suspicions which do her injustice. I love her, and I wrong her; I love her, and I believe her capable of an unworthy action!"

"We must not go too far," she said. "You ought to know of some peaceful spot, secluded, full of trees, interesting. Not Tivoli, nor Frascati."

"Take the _Baedeker_--it's there on the table--and look."

"Let us look together."

She took the red book, knelt close to the couch on which he was seated, and with pretty gestures and infantile grace she began to turn over the pages. Every few moments she read a few lines in a low tone.

He sat watching her, fascinated by the finesse of the nape of her neck, from which the little brown curls mounted towards the crown of her head, twisted into a sort of coil. He looked at the two little brown spots, beauty spots, the Twins placed one by the side of the other on the whiteness of the velvety neck to which they gave an ineffable charm. He remarked that she wore no earrings. In fact, for two or three days she had not worn her sapphire earrings. "Has she sacrificed them on account of some money embarrassment? Who knows? She may be suffering silently from the cares of hard, daily necessities." He had to forcibly compel himself to consider seriously the thought which haunted him. This thought was as follows: "When she becomes tired of me (and that will not be very long), she will fall into the hands of the first comer who will offer her an easy life, and who, in exchange for sensual pleasure, will keep her from want. This man may even be the _mercante_ of whom Exili spoke. Disgusted with petty miseries, she will triumph over the other disgust; she will adapt herself. It is even possible that she will not have to overcome any repugnance."

He remembered the mistress of one of her friends, the Countess Albertini. This woman, separated from her husband, left free without fortune, had descended progressively to lucrative _amours_, having enough cleverness to save appearances. He remembered a second example, which illustrated even more truly the possibility of what he feared. And confronted with this possibility, which emerged from the unfathomable future, he felt an inexpressible pain. Henceforth his apprehensions would give him no truce. Sooner or later, he was fated to witness the fall of the creature he had placed so high. Life was full of such forfeitures.

"I have found nothing," she said in a disappointed tone.

"Gubbio, Narni, Viterbo, Orvieto! Look at the map of Orvieto: the Monastery of Saint Peter, the Monastery of Saint Paul, the Monastery of Jesus, the Monastery of Saint Bernardin, the Monastery of Saint Louis, the Convent of Saint Dominique, the Convent of Saint Francis, the Convent of the Servants of Mary."

She read in a sing-song tone, as if she were reciting a litany. All at once she began to laugh, threw back her head, and offered her beautiful forehead to the lips of her lover. She was in one of those moments of expanding kindness which gave her the air of a young girl.

"What a number of monasteries! How many convents! It must be a strange place. Shall we go to Orvieto?"

George experienced a sensation as if his soul had been overwhelmed by a sudden wave of freshness. He abandoned himself with gratitude to this comforting sign. And, as he pressed his lips to Hippolyte's brow, he gathered there the souvenir of the city of the Guelphs, of the deserted city which is silent in mute adoration of its marvellous Duomo.

"Orvieto! were you never there? Imagine to yourself, at the top of a rock of tufa, overlooking a melancholy valley, a city so perfectly silent as to seem without inhabitants; shutters closed; gray lanes in which the grass grows; a capuchin monk crossing a public square; a bishop descending from a black carriage in front of some hospital, with a decrepit domestic at the carriage-door; a tower against a white and rainy sky; a clock slowly tolling the hours; and all at once, at the bottom of a street, a miracle--the Duomo."

"What peace!" murmured Hippolyte, rather dreamily, as if she had before her eyes the vision of this silent city.

"I have seen Orvieto in February," he went on, "when the weather was like to-day, uncertain--a few drops of rain; a few beams of sunshine. I stayed there one day, and I was sorry to leave. I brought away with me a feeling of nostalgia for that peace. Oh! what peace! I had no other companion than myself, and I indulged in this dream: 'To have a mistress, or, to express it better, a sister-lover, who would be full of devotion; and to come here, to live here for a month, a long April month, a rather rainy April, ashen but mild, with showers of sunshine; to pass hours and hours in, or before, or about the cathedral; to gather roses in the convents' gardens; to visit the houses of the sisters to get preserves; to drink delicious perfumed liqueurs from small Etruscan cups; to love a great deal, and sleep a great deal in a soft bed all veiled in virginal white.'"

This dream made Hippolyte smile with happiness. Putting on an innocent expression, she said: "I am pious, you know. Will you take me to Orvieto?"

And huddling at her lover's feet, she took both his hands in hers. An immense joy invaded her whole being; she had already a foretaste of the promised repose, idleness, melancholy.

"Tell me again."

He kissed her forehead, lingering over it with chaste emotion. Then for a long time he regarded her caressingly.

"Your forehead is so beautiful," he said, with a little thrill.

At that moment the real Hippolyte corresponded with the ideal Hippolyte which lived in his heart. He beheld her beautiful, tender, submissive, breathing a noble and sweet poesy. According to the motto he had invested her with, she was grave and suave--_gravis dum suavis_.

"Tell me again," she murmured.

A soft light entered from the balcony. From time to time the windows rattled gently under the breeze; and the raindrops pattered almost noiselessly on the panes.

*CHAPTER IV.*

"Since we have already enjoyed in imagination the essence of pleasure, since we have tasted all that our sensations and sentiments could experience of what is rarest and most delicate, I would advise that we renounce the experience of reality. Don't let us go to Orvieto." And he chose another place: Albano-Laziale.

George was not acquainted with Albano, nor Ariccia, nor the Lake of Nemi. Hippolyte, during her infancy, had been taken to Albano to the house of an aunt, now dead. For him this trip would have the charm of the unknown, and for her it would evoke the souvenir of days long distant. Does it not seem as if a new vision of beauty renews and purifies love? Do not the memories of the virginal age embalm the heart with a perfume always fresh and soothing?

They decided to leave on the second of April, at noon, by train. Both were punctual at the rendezvous at the station, and when they found themselves amidst the crowd they felt a restless joy penetrate their souls.

"Shan't we be seen? Tell me, shan't we be seen?" asked Hippolyte, half-laughing and half-trembling, and imagining that all eyes were fixed on her. "How much longer before we start? Dio Mio! How afraid I am!"

They hoped to have a compartment to themselves; but, to their great regret, they were forced to resign themselves to having three travelling companions. George saluted a gentleman and lady.

"Who is that?" asked Hippolyte, leaning towards her lover's ear.

"I will tell you."

She examined the couple with curiosity. The gentleman was an old man with a long, venerable beard, a broad, bald, yellowish head, marked in the centre by a deep depression, a sort of enormous and deformed navel, like the imprint which would be caused by a large finger pressed into a soft substance. The lady, wrapped in a Persian shawl, showed, under a bonnet fashioned like a lamp-shade, an emaciated and meditative face; and in her dress as in her physiognomy could be found something of the English caricatures of the blue-stocking. The watery eyes of the elderly man had, however, a singular vivacity; they seemed illumined by an internal fire, like those of an ecstatic. He had acknowledged George's bow by a very amiable smile.

Hippolyte racked her memory. Where could she have met these two persons? She could not succeed in refreshing her memory, but she had a confused feeling that these strange old people had been involved in one of her love-dreams.

"Who is it? Tell me," she repeated in a whisper.

"The Martlets--Mr. Martlet and his wife. They will bring us good luck. Do you know where we first met them?"

"No; but I am sure that I have seen them somewhere."

"It was in the chapel in the Via Belsiana, on April the 2d, when I first knew you."

"Ah! yes. I remember!"

Her eyes lighted up; the coincidence seemed marvellous to her. She examined anew the two old people, and felt a kind of emotion.

"What a good augury!"

A delicious melancholy came over her. She leaned her head against the back of the seat, and thought once more of bygone days. She saw again the little church in the Via Belsiana, mysterious, shrouded in a bluish penumbra; the gallery, which had a curve like a balcony; the posy of young girls chanting in the choir. Below, the group of musicians with their string instruments, standing in front of white-pine pulpits. Roundabout, in the stalls of oak, the seated auditors, few in number, almost all gray or bald. The chapel-master beat the time. A pious perfume of incense and violets mingled with the music of Sebastian Bach.

Overcome by the suavity of her recollections, she leaned over more towards her lover, and murmured: "Are you thinking of the old days too?"

She would have liked to be able to communicate her emotions, in order to prove to him that she had forgotten nothing, not even the slightest circumstance of that solemn event. He, with a furtive gesture, sought Hippolyte's hand beneath the large folds of their travelling rug, and kept it slightly pressed in his own. Both felt in their souls a thrill which recalled to them certain delicate sensations of the first days of their love. And they remained in this attitude, pensive, somewhat exalted, somewhat lethargic from the warmth, soothed by the even and continuous movement of the train, at times seeing a green-clad landscape in the haze through the carriage windows. The sky was clouded; it was raining. Mr. Martlet dozed in a corner; Mrs. Martlet was reading a review-the _Lyceum_. The third traveller slept soundly, his cap down over his eyes.

"If the choir missed the _tempo_, Mr. Martlet beat time with energy, like the chapel-master. At a certain moment, all the old men beat time, as if moved by the spirit of the music. There was in the air an evaporated perfume of incense and violets." George abandoned himself with delight to the capricious workings of his memory. "Could I have dreamed of a stranger or more poetic prelude to my love? It seems like a recollection of some romantic tale; yet, on the contrary, it is a souvenir of my actual life. I constantly retain the smallest details of it before the eyes of my soul. The poetry of this beginning shed, later on, the shadow of a dream over my entire love." In the drowsiness of a light torpor, he dwelt on certain confused images which exerted a species of musical fascination over his mind. "A few grains of incense--a little bouquet of violets!"

"Look how Mr. Martlet sleeps!" said Hippolyte in a whisper. "As peacefully as an infant."

Then she added, smiling: "You, too, are sleepy, are you not? It is still raining. What a strange languor! My eyelids feel so heavy."

Her eyes half-shut, she looked at him from between her long eyelashes.

George thought to himself: "Her eyelashes pleased me at once. She was in the centre of the chapel, seated on a high-backed bench. Her profile was delineated in the light streaming from the window. When the clouds outside cleared away, the light suddenly grew stronger. She made a slight movement, and in the light I saw the real length of her eyelashes--a prodigious length."

"Tell me," said Hippolyte, "will it be long before we arrive?"

The shrill whistle of the locomotive announced the proximity of a station.

"I'll wager," she added, "that we have gone beyond our station."

"Oh! no."

"Very well, inquire."

"Segni-Paliano," cried a hoarse voice on the platform.

George, somewhat startled, stretched out his head, and asked: "Is this Albano?"

"No, sir, this is Segni-Paliano," answered the man with a smile. "Are you going to Albano? Then you should have alighted at Cecchina."

Hippolyte burst into such a loud peal of laughter that Mr. and Mrs. Martlet looked at her with amazement. George immediately joined in the contagious hilarity.

"What shall we do?"

"First of all, we must get out of this train."

George handed their hand-bags to a porter, while Hippolyte continued to laugh--her fresh, hearty laugh--amused at this misadventure, which she considered capital fun. Mr. Martlet looked startled at this outburst of youth, which seemed to him like a wave of sunshine, but he smiled with benevolent condescension and bowed to Hippolyte, who at heart felt a vague regret at leaving the train.

"Poor Mr. Martlet!" she said, half in earnest, half in jest, as she watched the train moving away through the bleak and deserted country. "I am sorry to part with him. Who knows if I shall ever meet him again."

Then, turning towards George, she added, "What now?"

A railway employee gave them information.

"The train for Cecchina passes here at half-past four."