Part 26

"Old and grave melody," said Tristan. "Your lamenting sounds reached me even on the evening wind, as when, in distant times, the death of the father was announced to the son. In the sinister dawn thou didst seek me, more and more uneasy, when the son learned of the departure of the mother. When my father engendered me and died, when my mother brought me to light and died, the old melody came to their ears also, languishing and sad. She interrogated me one day, and now she is speaking to me again. To what destiny was I born? To what destiny? The old melody is repeating it to me: To desire and to die! to die of desire! Oh! no, no. Such is not your true sense. To desire, to desire, to desire, even unto death; but not to die of desire!" Stronger and stronger, more and more tenacious, the philter corroded him to the marrow. All his being writhed in the unbearable spasm. At moments, the orchestra had the crepitations of a funereal pyre. The violence of the pain traversed him at times with tempestuous impetuosity, reviving the flames. Sudden starts shook him; atrocious cries escaped from it; choking sobs were extinguished in it. "The philter! the philter! the terrible philter! with what fury I feel it mount from my heart to my brain! Henceforth no remedy, no sweet death, can deliver me from the torture of desire. In no place, in no spot, alas! shall I find repose. The night repulses me toward the day, and the eye of the sun feeds on my perpetual suffering. Ah! how the ardent sun burns me and consumes me! And not even to have, never to have, the refreshment of a shade for that devouring ardor! What balm would procure a relief to my horrible torture?" He bore in his veins and marrow the desire of all men, of every species, amassed generation after generation, aggravated by the faults of all the fathers and of all the sons, the intoxications of all, the anguishes of all. In his blood blossomed the germs of the secular concupiscence, remingled the most diverse impurities, refermented the venoms, the most subtle and violent, that, since immemorial ages, the purplish sinuous mouths of women had poured out on eager and subjugated males. He was the heir of the eternal evil. "That terrible philter which condemns me to torture, it is I, I myself, who have compounded it. With the agitations of my father, with the convulsions of my mother, with all the tears of love shed in other times, with laughter and with tears, with pleasures and with wounds, I myself have compounded the poison of that philter. And I have drunk it by deep, enjoyable draughts. A curse on thee, terrible philter! A curse on he who compounded thee!" And he fell back on his couch, exhausted, inanimate, to recover his equanimity, to feel once more the ardor of his wound, to see once more with his hallucinated eyes the sovereign image crossing the fields of the sea. "She is coming, she is coming towards land, softly rocked on the great waves of intoxicating flowers. Her smile throws on me a divine consolation; she brings me the supreme refreshment." Thus he invoked, thus _he saw_, with his eyes closed henceforth to the common light, the sorceress, the mistress of balms, the healer of all wounds. "She comes, she comes! Dost thou not see her, Kurvenal; dost thou not see her?" And the agitated waves of the Mystic Gulf gathered confusedly from the depths all the melodies already heard, mingling them, raising them up, submerging them in an abyss, repulsing them again to the surface, crushing them: those that could have expressed the anguish of the decisive conflict on the bridge of the ship, those in which one heard the boiling of the draught poured into the golden cup and the buzzing in the arteries invaded by the liquid fire, those in which had been heard the mysterious breath of the summer night inviting voluptuousness without end, all the melodies, with all the images and all the recollections. And on this immense shipwreck the fatal melody passed, proud, sovereign, implacable, repeating at intervals the atrocious condemnation: "To desire, to desire, to desire even unto death: but not to die of desire!"

"The vessel drops its anchor! Ysolde! behold Ysolde! She springs to the shore!" cried Kurvenal from the top of the tower. And, in the delirium of joy, Tristan tore off the bandages of his wound, excited his own blood to flow, to inundate the earth, to empurple the world. At the approach of Ysolde and Death, he believed he _heard_ the light. "Do I not hear the light? Do not my ears hear the light?" A great inner sun dazzled him; every atom of his substance darted rays of sunlight that, in luminous waves, expanded through the universe. The light was music; the music was light.

And then the Mystic Gulf truly became irradiated like a sky. The sonorities of the orchestra seemed to imitate those distant planetary harmonies that, long ago, the souls of vigilant contemplators believed they surprised in the nocturnal silence. Gradually, the long tremblings of restlessness, the long bursts of anguish, the pantings of vain pursuits, and the efforts of the ever-deceived desire, and all the agitations of terrestrial misery, were appeased, became dissipated. Tristan had finally crossed the limit of the "marvellous empire"; he had finally entered into eternal night. And Ysolde, bent over the inert shell, felt at last the heavy weight that still crushed her slowly dissolve. The fatal melody, become clearer and more solemn, consecrated the great funereal hymn. Then the notes, like ethereal chords, began to weave about the lover veils of diaphanous purity. Thus commenced a sort of joyous assumption, by degrees of splendor, on the wing of a hymn. "What a sweet smile he is smiling! Dost thou not see? Dost thou not hear? Am I alone to hear that new melody, infinitely sweet and consoling, that streams from the depths of his being, and ravishes me, and penetrates me, and envelops me?" The Irish sorceress, the formidable mistress of philters, the hereditary arbitrator of obscure terrestrial powers, she who, from the tops of the ship, had invoked the whirlwinds and tempests, she whose love had chosen the strongest and most noble of heroes to intoxicate and destroy him, she who had closed the path of glory and victory to a "conqueror of the world," the poisoner, the homicide, became transfigured by the power of death into a being of light and of joy, exempt from all impure covetousness, free from all base attachment, throbbing and respiring in the breast of the diffused soul of the universe. "Are not these clearer sounds that murmur in my ear the soft waves of the air? Must I respire, drink, plunge myself, slowly drift in the vapors and perfumes?" All in her dissolved, melted, dilated, returned to the original fluidity, to the immense elementary ocean in which the forms were born, in which the forms disappeared to become renewed and to be reborn. In the Mystic Gulf the transformations and transfigurations were being accomplished, note by note, harmony by harmony, without interruption. It seemed as if all things there were decomposed, exhaling their hidden essences, changing into immaterial symbols. Colors never before seen on petals of the most delicate terrestrial flowers, perfumes of an almost imperceptible subtlety, floated there. Visions of secret paradises were revealed in a flash of light; the germs of worlds to be born blossomed there. And the panicky intoxication ascended, ascended; the chorus of the Great All covered the unique human voice. Transfigured, Ysolde entered into the marvellous empire triumphantly. "To lose oneself, to throw oneself into the abyss, to swoon without consciousness in the infinite throbbing of the universal soul: supreme voluptuousness."

*CHAPTER II.*

For two entire days the two hermits lived thus amid great fiction, respired that burning atmosphere, saturated themselves with that mortal forgetfulness. They believed they had transfigured themselves, that they had attained superior heights of existence. In the vertiginous heights of their love-dream they believed they equalled the personages in the drama. Did it not seem to them that they, too, had drunk a philter? Were not they also tormented by a limitless desire? Were they not also linked together by an indissoluble bond, and did they not often feel in voluptuousness the horrors of the death-agony; did they not hear the rumbling of death? George, like Tristan when he heard the ancient melody modulated by the shepherd, found in that music the direct revelation of an anguish in which he believed he had at last surprised the true essence of his soul and the tragic secret of his destiny. No man could better penetrate the symbolic and mythical sense of the philter, and no man better than himself could better measure the depth of the inner drama, solely inner, in which the pensive hero had consumed his strength. Nor could any one better understand the despairing cry of the victim: "That terrible philter which has condemned me to torture, _it is I, I myself, who compounded it_."

He then undertook the funereal seduction of his mistress. He wished to slowly persuade her to die; he wished to entice her to go with him toward a mysterious and comfortable end, during that beautiful Adriatic summer, full of transparencies and perfumes. The great phrase of love--that spread out in such a wide circle of light around the transfiguration of Ysolde--had also enclosed Hippolyte in its charm. She repeated it ceaselessly in a low tone, sometimes even in a loud voice, with signs of exuberant joy.

"Wouldn't you like to die such a death as Ysolde's?" asked George, with a smile.

"I would," she answered. "But, on earth, people don't die like that."

"And if I died?" he went on, always smiling. "Suppose you saw me dead _in fact, not in fancy_?"

"I believe I should die, too, but of despair."

"And suppose I proposed to you to die with me, at the same time, in the same manner?"

For a few seconds she remained thoughtful, her eyes cast down. Then, raising toward the tempter a look full of all the sweetness of life:

"Why die," she said, "if I love you, if you love me, if nothing henceforth prevents us from living for ourselves alone?"

"Is life sweet to you?" he murmured with veiled bitterness.

"Yes," she answered, with a sort of vehemence. "Life is sweet to me because I love you."

"And if I should die?" he went on, without a smile, because once more he felt arise in him the instinctive hostility against this beautiful, sensual creature who breathed in the very air as if it were happiness.

"You won't die," she affirmed, with the same assurance. "You are young; why should you die?"

In her voice, in her attitude, in all her person there was an unusual diffusion of happiness. Her appearance was such as living creatures have only at the time their lives flow harmoniously in a temporary equilibrium of all the energies in accord with favorable external conditions. As at other times, she seemed to blossom in the strong sea air, in the coolness of the summer evening; and she recalled one of those magnificent twilight flowers that open the crown of their petals at sunset.

After a long pause, during which one heard the murmur of the sea on the shore like the rustling of dry leaves, George asked:

"Do you believe in Destiny?"

"Yes, I do."

Ill disposed to the sad gravity toward which George's words seemed to tend, she had answered in a light, jesting tone. Hurt, he retorted quickly and bitterly:

"Do you know what day this is?"

Perplexed, uneasy, she asked:

"What day is it?"

He hesitated. Up to then he had avoided recalling to the forgetful woman the anniversary of Demetrius's death; a repugnance that grew every minute prevented him from uttering that holy name, from evoking outside of the sanctuary that noble image. He felt that he would have profaned his religious sorrow in admitting Hippolyte as a participant. And what further intensified this feeling was that he was then passing through one of those frequent periods of cruel lucidity in which he saw in Hippolyte only the woman of pleasure, the "flower of concupiscence," the Enemy. He contained himself; and, with a sudden and false laugh:

"Look!" he cried. "There is a festival at Ortona."

He pointed in the pale-green distance to the maritime city that was being crowned with fire.

"How strange you are to-day!" she said.

Then, looking steadily at him with that singular expression which she was in the habit of assuming when she wished to appease and soften him, she added:

"Come here; come and sit by my side."

He was standing in the shadow, on the threshold of one of the doors that opened on the loggia. She was seated outside, on the parapet, clothed in a light, white robe, in a languorous pose, her bust outlined against the background of the sea, where still lingered the glints of twilight, and the profile of her brown head was outlined in a zone of limpid amber. He seemed as if reborn, as if he had stepped out from a close and suffocating place, from an atmosphere heavy with poisonous exhalations. In George's eyes she seemed as if she were evaporating like a vial of perfumes, were losing the ideal life accumulated in her by the power of Music, were gradually emptying herself of importunate dreams, were returning to primitive animalism.

George thought: "As always, she has done nothing but receive and obediently retain the attitudes I have given her. The inner life has always been and will always be factitious in her. Directly my suggestion is interrupted, she returns to her own nature, she becomes a woman again, an instrument of low lasciviousness. Nothing will ever change her substance, nothing will purify her. She has plebeian blood, and, in her blood, God knows what ignoble heredities! But I, too, shall never be able to free myself from the desire with which she fires me; I can never extirpate it from my flesh. Henceforth, I can neither live with her nor without her. I know I must die; but shall I leave her for a successor?" His hate against the unconscious creature had never been aroused with so much violence. He dissected her pitilessly, with acrimony that astonished even himself. It was as if he were avenging some infidelity, some disloyalty, that had surpassed all the limits of perfidy. He felt the envious rancor of the shipwrecked sailor who, at the moment of sinking, sees near him his comrade about to save himself, to cling to life again. For him that anniversary brought a new confirmation of the decree which he already knew was irrevocable. For him that day was the Epiphany of Death. He felt that he was no longer master of himself; he felt the absolute domination of the fixed idea that, from instant to instant, might suggest the supreme act to him, and, at the same time, communicate the effective impulsion to his will. And while criminal images confusedly passed through his brain, "Must I die alone?" he repeated to himself. "Must I die alone?"

He shuddered when Hippolyte touched his face and passed her arm around his neck.

"Did I frighten you?" she asked.

On seeing him disappear in the still deepening shadow of the door, a singular restlessness had seized her, and she had risen to embrace him.

"Of what are you thinking? What's the matter? Why are you like that to-day?"

She spoke in an insinuating tone, and, still with her arms about him, she caressed his head. In the obscurity he saw the mysterious pallor of that face, the light of those eyes. An irresistible trembling seized him.

"You are trembling! What ails you? What's the matter?"

She disengaged herself, found a candle on the table, and lit it. She went up to him, anxious; took both his hands.

"Are you ill?"

"Yes," he stammered. "I don't feel well. This is one of my bad days."

This was not the first time she heard him complain of vague physical suffering, of heavy and wandering pains, of painful twitchings and tinglings, of vertigos and nightmares. She believed these sufferings imaginary; she saw in them the effects of habitual melancholy, the excesses of thought, and she knew no better remedy for them than kisses, laughter, and joyousness.

"Where are you suffering?"

"I could not say."

"Oh, I know what it is. The music excites you too much. We must have no more for a week."

"No, we will have no more."

"No more."

She went to the piano, shut the cover over the keys, locked it, and hid the little key.

"To-morrow we will resume our long walks; we will spend all morning on the beach. Shall we? And now come into the loggia."

She drew him toward her with a tender gesture.

"See how beautiful the evening is! Smell how the rocks embalm the air!"

She breathed in the briny odor, trembling and clasping him close.

"We have everything to make us happy, and you--how you will regret these days when they are gone! Time flies. It will be soon three months that we are here."

"Do you already think of leaving me?" he asked, uneasy, suspicious.

She wanted to reassure him.

"No, no," she replied; "not yet. But the prolongation of my absence becomes difficult on account of my mother. I received only to-day a letter recalling me. You know she needs me. When I am not at home all goes wrong."

"Then you must soon return to Rome?"

"No. I shall have to find another pretext. You know that my mother believes I am here in company with an old girl friend of mine. My sister has helped me, and still helps me, in rendering this fiction probable; and, besides, my mother knows that I need sea-baths, and that, last year, I was ill from not having taken them. Do you remember? I spent the summer at Caronno, at my sister's. What a horrible summer!"

"Well, what to do?"

"I can certainly remain with you this whole month of August, perhaps also the first week of September."

"And after that?"

"After that you will permit me to return to Rome, and you will come and rejoin me there. There we will arrange concerning the future. I have already an idea in my head."

"What?"

"I will tell you. But just now let us dine. Aren't you hungry?"

The dinner was ready. As usual, in the loggia, the table was spread in the open air. They lit the large lamp.

"Look!" she cried, when the domestic had brought to the table the steaming soup tureen. "That is Candia's work."

She had asked Candia to make a rustic soup for him, after the manner of the country--a savory mixture, rich in ginger, colored, and odorous. She had already tasted it several times, attracted by its odor in the houses of the old people, and she had become greedy for it.

"It is delicious. You will enjoy it."

And she filled a bowl full with a gesture of childish greediness, and she swallowed the first spoonful hastily.

"I have never tasted anything more delicious!"

She called Candia to praise her work.

"Candia! Candia!"

The woman showed herself at the foot of the stairway, laughing:

"Does the soup please you, signora?"

"It is perfect."

"May it change into good blood for you!"

And the naive laughter of the enceinte woman arose in the still air.

George took part in this gayety, and showed it. The sudden change in his humor was evident. He poured out some wine, and drank it at a gulp. He made an effort to conquer his repugnance to eat, that repugnance which, latterly, had become so serious that at times he could not bear the sight of underdone meat.

"You feel better, don't you?" asked Hippolyte, leaning toward him, and moving her chair a little to get a little closer to him.

"Yes; I feel bettor now."

He drank again.

"Look!" she cried. "Look at Ortona in holiday attire!"

Both looked towards the distant city, crowned with fire, on the hill that stretched along by the shadowy sea. Groups of fire balloons, like constellations of flame, were rising slowly in the still air; they seemed to multiply ceaselessly; they peopled all that part of the sky.

"My sister is at Ortona now. She's staying with the Vallereggia, relatives of ours."

"Has she written to you?"

"Yes."

"How happy I should be to see her! She resembles you, doesn't she? Christine is your favorite."

For a few seconds she remained pensive. Then she went on:

"How happy I should be to see your mother! I have so often thought of her!"

And, after another pause, in a tender voice:

"How she must adore you!"

An unexpected emotion swelled George's heart, and before him reappeared the interior vision of the house he had abandoned, forgotten, and, for a moment, all the past sorrows came back to his mind, together with all the painful pictures: his mother's emaciated face, her eyelids swollen and reddened by tears; the sweet and heart-breaking remembrance of Christine; the sickly child whose large head was always bent on a breast barren of all but sighs; the cadaveric mask of the poor idiotic gormand. And the tired eyes of his mother asked him again, as when they separated: "_For whom_ are you abandoning me?"

Again his soul stretched out toward the distant house, suddenly inclining before it like a tree before a squall. And the secret resolution--made in the obscurity of the chamber, between Hippolyte's arms--vacillated beneath the shock of an obscure warning when he saw again, in memory, the closed door behind which was Demetrius's bed, when he saw again the mortuary chapel at the corner of the cemetery, in the bluish and solemn shadow of the protecting mountain.

But Hippolyte was speaking, becoming loquacious. As at other times, she imprudently abandoned herself to her domestic reminiscences. And he, as at other times, began to listen, observing with uneasiness certain vulgar lines that the mouth of this woman fell into, during the abundance and heat of the discourse, observing, as he had done so often before, the particular gesture that was habitual to her when she was excited, that ungraceful gesture that did not seem to belong to her. She was saying:

"You saw my mother one day in the street. Do you remember? What a difference between my mother and my father! My father was always good and affectionate to us, incapable of beating us or severely scolding us. My mother is violent, impetuous, almost cruel. Ah, if I told you of the martyrdom of my sister, poor Adriana! She always rebelled; and her rebellion exasperated my mother, who used to beat her until the blood came. I knew enough to disarm her by recognizing my fault and asking her pardon. For all that, with all her severity, she had an immense love for us. Our apartment had a window that led out on a cistern, and we, in play, often used to stand at this window and draw up the water with a little pail. One day my mother went out, and by chance we were left alone. A few minutes after, we were surprised to see her come in again, all in tears, agitated, upset. She took me in her arms and covered me with kisses, sobbing as if insane, in the street she had had a presentiment that I had fallen from that window."

George saw again, in memory, the face of that hysterical old woman in which was exaggerated all the defects of her daughter's face: the development of the lower jaw, the length of the chin, the width of the nostrils. He saw again that forehead, like that of a Fury, over which bristled the gray hair, thick and dry, and those dark eyes, deep-set beneath the superciliary ridge, that revealed the fanatic ardor of a bigot and the obstinate avarice of an insignificant bourgeoise.