"Well, my friend, we took each other without knowing. One never knows.

You are young; younger than I, since we are of the same age. You have,
doubtless, projects for the future."

He looked at her proudly. She continued:

"Your family, your mother, your aunts, your uncle the General, have
projects for you. That is natural. I might have become an obstacle. It is
better that I should disappear from your life. We shall keep a fond
remembrance of each other."

She extended her gloved hand. He folded his arms:

"Then, you do not want me? You have made me happy, as no other man ever
was, and you think now to brush me aside? Truly, you seem to think you
have finished with me. What have you come to say to me? That it was a
liaison, which is easily broken? That people take each other, quit each
other--well, no! You are not a person whom one can easily quit."

"Yes," said Therese, "you had perhaps given me more of your heart than
one does ordinarily in such 180 cases. I was more than an amusement for
you. But, if I am not the woman you thought I was, if I have deceived
you, if I am frivolous--you know people have said so--well, if I have not
been to you what I should have been--"

She hesitated, and continued in a brave tone, contrasting with what she
said:

"If, while I was yours, I have been led astray; if I have been curious;
if I say to you that I was not made for serious sentiment--"

He interrupted her:

"You are not telling the truth."

"No, I am not telling the truth. And I do not know how to lie. I wished
to spoil our past. I was wrong. It was--you know what it was. But--"

"But?"

"I have always told you I was not sure of myself. There are women, it is
said, who are sure of themselves. I warned you that I was not like them."

He shook his head violently, like an irritated animal.

"What do you mean? I do not understand. I understand nothing. Speak
clearly. There is something between us. I do not know what. I demand to
know what it is. What is it?"

"There is the fact that I am not a woman sure of herself, and that you
should not rely on me. No, you should not rely on me. I had promised
nothing--and then, if I had promised, what are words?"

"You do not love me. Oh, you love me no more! I can see it. But it is so
much the worse for you! I love you. You should not have given yourself to
me. Do not think that you can take yourself back. I love you and I shall
keep you. So you thought you could get out of it very quietly? Listen a
moment. You have done everything to make me love you, to attach me to
you, to make it impossible for me to live without you.

"Six weeks ago you asked for nothing better. You were everything for me,
I was everything for you. And now you desire suddenly that I should know
you no longer; that you should be to me a stranger, a lady whom one meets
in society. Ah, you have a fine audacity! Have I dreamed? All the past is
a dream? I invented it all? Oh, there can be no doubt of it. You loved
me. I feel it still. Well, I have not changed. I am what I was; you have
nothing to complain of. I have not betrayed you for other women. It isn't
credit that I claim. I could not have done it. When one has known you,
one finds the prettiest women insipid. I never have had the idea of
deceiving you. I have always acted well toward you. Why should you not
love me? Answer! Speak! Say you love me still. Say it, since it is true.
Come, Therese, you will feel at once that you love as you loved me
formerly in the little nest where we were so happy. Come!"

He approached her ardently. She, her eyes full of fright, pushed him away
with a kind of horror.

He understood, stopped, and said:

"You have a lover."

She bent her head, then lifted it, grave and dumb.

Then he made a gesture as if to strike her, and at once recoiled in
shame. He lowered his eyes and was silent. His fingers to his lips, and
biting his nails, he saw that his hand had been pricked by a pin on her
waist, and bled. He threw himself in an armchair, drew his handkerchief
to wipe off the blood, and remained indifferent and without thought.

She, with her back to the door, her face calm and pale, her look vague,
arranged her hat with instinctive care. At the noise, formerly delicious,
that the rustle of her skirts made, he started, looked at her, and asked
furiously:

"Who is he? I will know."

She did not move. She replied with soft firmness:

"I have told you all I can. Do not ask more; it would be useless."

He looked at her with a cruel expression which she had never seen before.

"Oh, do not tell me his name. It will not be difficult for me to find
it."

She said not a word, saddened for him, anxious for another, full of
anguish and fear, and yet without regret, without bitterness, because her
real soul was elsewhere.

He had a vague sensation of what passed in her mind. In his anger to see
her so sweet and so serene, to find her beautiful, and beautiful for
another, he felt a desire to kill her, and he shouted at her:

"Go!"

Then, weakened by this effort of hatred, which was not natural to him, he
buried his head in his hands and sobbed.

His pain touched her, gave her the hope of quieting him. She thought she
might perhaps console him for her loss. Amicably and comfortably she
seated herself beside him.

"My friend, blame me. I am to blame, but more to be pitied. Disdain me,
if you wish, if one can disdain an unfortunate creature who is the
plaything of life. In fine, judge me as you wish. But keep for me a
little friendship in your anger, a little bitter-sweet reminiscence,
something like those days of autumn when there is sunlight and strong
wind. That is what I deserve. Do not be harsh to the agreeable but
frivolous visitor who passed through your life. Bid good-by to me as to a
traveller who goes one knows not where, and who is sad. There is so much
sadness in separation! You were irritated against me a moment ago. Oh, I
do not reproach you for it. I only suffer for it. Reserve a little
sympathy for me. Who knows? The future is always unknown. It is very gray
and obscure before me. Let me say to myself that I have been kind,
simple, frank with you, and that you have not forgotten it. In time you
will understand, you will forgive; to-day have a little pity."

He was not listening to her words. He was appeased simply by the caress
of her voice, of which the tone was limpid and clear. He exclaimed:

"You do not love him. I am the one whom you love. Then--"

She hesitated:

"Ah, to say whom one loves or loves not is not an easy thing for a woman,
or at least for me. I do not know how other women do. But life is not
good to me. I am tossed to and fro by force of circumstances."

He looked at her calmly. An idea came to him. He had taken a resolution;
he forgave, he forgot, provided she returned to him at once.

"Therese, you do not love him. It was an error, a moment of
forgetfulness, a horrible and stupid thing that you did through weakness,
through surprise, perhaps in spite. Swear to me that you never will see
him again."

He took her arm:

"Swear to me!"

She said not a word, her teeth were set, her face was sombre. He wrenched
her wrist. She exclaimed:

"You hurt me!"

However, he followed his idea; he led her to the table, on which, near
the brushes, were an ink-stand, and several leaves of letter-paper
ornamented with a large blue vignette, representing the facade of the
hotel, with innumerable windows.

"Write what I am about to dictate to you. I will call somebody to take
the letter."

And as she resisted, he made her fall on her knees. Proud and determined,
she said:

"I can not, I will not."

"Why?"

"Because--do you wish to know?--because I love him."

Brusquely he released her. If he had had his revolver at hand, perhaps he
would have killed her. But almost at once his anger was dampened by
sadness; and now, desperate, he was the one who wished to die.

"Is what you say true? Is it possible?"

"How do I know? Can I say? Do I understand? Have I an idea, a sentiment,
about anything?"

With an effort she added:

"Am I at this moment aware of anything except my sadness and your
despair?"

"You love him, you love him! What is he, who is he, that you should love
him?"

His surprise made him stupid; he was in an abyss of astonishment. But
what she had said separated them. He dared not complain. He only
repeated:

"You love him, you love him! But what has he done to you, what has he
said, to make you love him? I know you. I have not told you every time
your ideas shocked me. I would wager he is not even a man in society. And
you believe he loves you? You believe it? Well, you are deceiving
yourself. He does not love you. You flatter him, simply. He will quit you
at the first opportunity. When he shall have compromised you, he will
abandon you. Next year people will say of you: 'She is not at all
exclusive.' I am sorry for your father; he is one of my friends, and will
know of your behavior. You can not expect to deceive him."

She listened, humiliated but consoled, thinking how she would have
suffered had she found him generous.

In his simplicity he sincerely disdained her. This disdain relieved him.

"How did the thing happen? You can tell me."

She shrugged her shoulders with so much pity that he dared not continue.
He became contemptuous again.

"Do you imagine that I shall aid you in saving appearances, that I shall
return to your house, that I shall continue to call on your husband?"

"I think you will continue to do what a gentleman should. I ask nothing
of you. I should have liked to preserve of you the reminiscence of an
excellent friend. I thought you might be indulgent and kind to, me, but
it is not possible. I see that lovers never separate kindly. Later, you
will judge me better. Farewell!"

He looked at her. Now his face expressed more pain than anger. She never
had seen his eyes so dry and so black. It seemed as if he had grown old
in an hour.

"I prefer to tell you in advance. It will be impossible for me to see you
again. You are not a woman whom one may meet after one has been loved by
her. You are not like others. You have a poison of your own, which you
have given to me, and which I feel in me, in my veins. Why have I known
you?"

She looked at him kindly.

"Farewell! Say to yourself that I am not worthy of being regretted so
much."

Then, when he saw that she placed her hand on the latch of the door, when
he felt at that gesture that he was to lose her, that he should never
have her again, he shouted. He forgot everything. There remained in him
only the dazed feeling of a great misfortune accomplished, of an
irreparable calamity. And from the depth of his stupor a desire ascended.
He desired to possess again the woman who was leaving him and who would
never return. He drew her to him. He desired her, with all the strength
of his animal nature. She resisted with all the force of her will, which
was free and on the alert. She disengaged herself, crumpled, torn,
without even having been afraid.

He understood that everything was useless; he realized she was no longer
for him, because she belonged to another. As his suffering returned, he
pushed her out of the door.

She remained a moment in the corridor, proudly waiting for a word.

But he shouted again, "Go!" and shut the door violently.

On the Via Alfieri, she saw again the pavilion in the rear of the
courtyard where pale grasses grew. She found it silent and tranquil,
faithful, with its goats and nymphs, to the lovers of the time of the
Grand Duchess Eliza. She felt at once freed from the painful, brutal
world, and transported to ages wherein she had not known the sadness of
life. At the foot of the stairs, the steps of which were covered with
roses, Dechartre was waiting. She threw herself in his arms. He carried
her inert, like a precious trophy before which he had become pallid and
trembling. She enjoyed, her eyelids half closed, the superb humiliation
of being a beautiful prey. Her fatigue, her sadness, her disgust with the
day, the reminiscence of violence, her regained liberty, the need of
forgetting, remains of fright, everything vivified, awakened her
tenderness. She threw her arms around the neck of her lover.

They were as gay as children. They laughed, said tender nothings, played,
ate lemons, oranges, and other fruits piled up near-them on painted
plates. Her lips, half-open, showed her brilliant teeth. She asked, with
coquettish anxiety, if he were not disillusioned after the beautiful
dream he had made of her.

In the caressing light of the day, for the enjoyment of which he had
arranged, he contemplated her with youthful joy. He lavished praise and
kisses upon her. They forgot themselves in caresses, in friendly
quarrels, in happy glances.

He asked her how a little red mark on her temple had come there. She
replied that she had forgotten; that it was nothing. She hardly lied; she
had really forgotten.

They recalled to each other their short but beautiful history, all their
life, which began upon the day when they had met.

"You know, on the terrace, the day after your arrival, you said vague
things to me. I guessed that you loved me."

"I was afraid to seem stupid to you."

"You were, a little. It was my triumph. It made me impatient to see you
so little troubled near me. I loved you before you loved me. Oh, I do not
blush for it!"

He gave her a glass of Asti. But there was a bottle of Trasimene. She
wished to taste it, in memory of the lake which she had seen silent and
beautiful at night in its opal cup. That was when she had first visited
Italy, six years before.

He chided her for having discovered the beauty of things without his aid.

She said:

"Without you, I did not know how to see anything. Why did you not come to
me before?"

He closed her lips with a kiss. Then she said:

"Yes, I love you! Yes, I never have loved any one but you!"




CHAPTER XXII

A MEETING AT THE STATION

Le Menil had written: "I leave tomorrow evening at seven o'clock. Meet me
at the station."

She had gone to meet him. She saw him in long coat and cape, precise and
calm, in front of the hotel stages. He said only:

"Ah, you have come."

"But, my friend, you called me."

He did not confess that he had written in the absurd hope that she would
love him again and that the rest would be forgotten, or that she would
say to him: "It was only a trial of your love."

If she had said so he would have believed her, however.

Astonished because she did not speak, he said, dryly:

"What have you to say to me? It is not for me to speak, but for you. I
have no explanations to give you. I have not to justify a betrayal."

"My friend, do not be cruel, do not be ungrateful. This is what I had to
say to you. And I must repeat that I leave you with the sadness of a real
friend."

"Is that all? Go and say this to the other man. It will interest him more
than it interests me."

"You called me, and I came; do not make me regret it."

"I am sorry to have disturbed you. You could doubtless find a better
employment for your time. I will not detain you. Rejoin him, since you
are longing to do so."

At the thought that his unhappy words expressed a moment of eternal human
pain, and that tragedy had illustrated many similar griefs, she felt all
the sadness and irony of the situation, which a curl of her lips
betrayed. He thought she was laughing.

"Do not laugh; listen to me. The other day, at the hotel, I wanted to
kill you. I came so near doing it that now I know what I escaped. I will
not do it. You may rest secure. What would be the use? As I wish to keep
up appearances, I shall call on you in Paris. It will grieve me to learn
that you can not receive me. I shall see your husband, I shall see your
father also. It will be to say good-by to them, as I intend to go on a
long voyage. Farewell, Madame!"

At the moment when he turned his back to her, Therese saw Miss Bell and
Prince Albertinelli coming out of the freight-station toward her. The
Prince was very handsome. Vivian was walking by his side with the
lightness of chaste joy.

"Oh, darling, what a pleasant surprise to find you here! The Prince, and
I have seen, at the customhouse, the new bell, which has just come."

"Ah, the bell has come?"

"It is here, darling, the Ghiberti bell. I saw it in its wooden cage. It
did not ring, because it was a prisoner. But it will have a campanile in
my Fiesole house.

"When it feels the air of Florence, it will be happy to let its silvery
voice be heard. Visited by the doves, it will ring for all our joys and
all our sufferings. It will ring for you, for me, for the Prince, for
good Madame Marmet, for Monsieur Choulette, for all our friends."

"Dear, bells never ring for real joys and for real sufferings. Bells are
honest functionaries, who know only official sentiments."

"Oh, darling, you are much mistaken. Bells know the secrets of souls;
they know everything. But I am very glad to find you here. I know, my
love, why you came to the station. Your maid betrayed you. She told me
you were waiting for a pink gown which was delayed in coming and that you
were very impatient. But do not let that trouble you. You are always
beautiful, my love."

She made Madame Martin enter her wagon.

"Come, quick, darling; Monsieur Jacques Dechartre dines at the house
to-night, and I should not like to make him wait."

And while they were driving through the silence of the night, through the
pathways full of the fresh perfume of wildflowers, she said:

"Do you see over there, darling, the black distaffs of the Fates, the
cypresses of the cemetery? It is there I wish to sleep."

But Therese thought anxiously: "They saw him. Did they recognize him? I
think not. The place was dark, and had only little blinding lights. Did
she know him? I do not recall whether she saw him at my house last year."

What made her anxious was a sly smile on the Prince's face.

"Darling, do you wish a place near me in that rustic cemetery? Shall we
rest side by side under a little earth and a great deal of sky? But I do
wrong to extend to you an invitation which you can not accept. It will
not be permitted to you to sleep your eternal sleep at the foot of the
hill of Fiesole, my love. You must rest in Paris, in a handsome tomb, by
the side of Count Martin-Belleme."

"Why? Do you think, dear, that the wife must be united to her husband
even after death?"

"Certainly she must, darling. Marriage is for time and for eternity. Do
you not know the history of a young pair who loved each other in the
province of Auvergne? They died almost at the same time, and were placed
in two tombs separated by a road. But every night a sweetbrier bush threw
from one tomb to the other its flowery branches. The two coffins had to
be buried together."

When they had passed the Badia, they saw a procession coming up the side
of the hill. The wind blew on the candles borne in gilded wooden
candlesticks. The girls of the societies, dressed in white and blue,
carried painted banners. Then came a little St. John, blond,
curly-haired, nude, under a lamb's fleece which showed his arms and
shoulders; and a St. Mary Magdalene, seven years old, crowned only with
her waving golden hair. The people of Fiesole followed. Countess Martin
recognized Choulette among them. With a candle in one hand, a book in the
other, and blue spectacles on the end of his nose, he was singing. His
unkempt beard moved up and down with the rhythm of the song. In the
harshness of light and shade that worked in his face, he had an air that
suggested a solitary monk capable of accomplishing a century of penance.

"How amusing he is!" said Therese. "He is making a spectacle of himself
for himself. He is a great artist."

"Darling, why will you insist that Monsieur Choulette is not a pious man?
Why? There is much joy and much beauty in faith. Poets know this. If
Monsieur Choulette had not faith, he could not write the admirable verses
that he does."

"And you, dear, have you faith?"

"Oh, yes; I believe in God and in the word of Christ."

Now the banners and the white veils had disappeared down the road. But
one could see on the bald cranium of Choulette the flame of the candle
reflected in rays of gold.

Dechartre, however, was waiting alone in the garden. Therese found him
resting on the balcony of the terrace where he had felt the first
sufferings of love. While Miss Bell and the Prince were trying to fix
upon a suitable place for the campanile, Dechartre led his beloved under
the trees.

"You promised me that you would be in the garden when I came. I have been
waiting for you an hour, which seemed eternal. You were not to go out.
Your absence has surprised and grieved me."

She replied vaguely that she had been compelled to go to the station, and
that Miss Bell had brought her back in the wagon.

He begged her pardon for his anxiety, but everything alarmed him. His
happiness made him afraid.

They were already at table when Choulette appeared, with the face of an
antique satyr. A terrible joy shone in his phosphorous eyes. Since his
return from Assisi, he lived only among paupers, drank chianti all day
with girls and artisans to whom he taught the beauty of joy and
innocence, the advent of Jesus Christ, and the imminent abolition of
taxes and military service. At the beginning of the procession he had
gathered vagabonds in the ruins of the Roman theatre, and had delivered
to them in a macaronic language, half French and half Tuscan, a sermon,
which he took pleasure in repeating:

"Kings, senators, and judges have said: 'The life of nations is in us.'
Well, they lie; and they are the coffin saying: 'I am the cradle.'

"The life of nations is in the crops of the fields yellowing under the
eye of the Lord. It is in the vines, and in the smiles and tears with
which the sky bathes the fruits on the trees.

"The life of nations is not in the laws, which were made by the rich and
powerful for the preservation of riches and power.

"The chiefs of kingdoms and of republics have said in their books that
the right of peoples is the right of war, and they have glorified
violence. And they render honors unto conquerors, and they raise in the
public squares statues to the victorious man and horse. But one has not
the right to kill; that is the reason why the just man will not draw from
the urn a number that will send him to the war. The right is not to
pamper the folly and crimes of a prince raised over a kingdom or over a
republic; and that is the reason why the just man will not pay taxes and
will not give money to the publicans. He will enjoy in peace the fruit of
his work, and he will make bread with the wheat that he has sown, and he
will eat the fruits of the trees that he has cut."

"Ah, Monsieur Choulette," said Prince Albertinelli, gravely, "you are
right to take interest in the state of our unfortunate fields, which
taxes exhaust. What fruit can be drawn from a soil taxed to thirty-three
per cent. of its net income? The master and the servants are the prey of
the publicans."

Dechartre and Madame Martin were struck by the unexpected sincerity of
his accent.

He added:

"I like the King. I am sure of my loyalty, but the misfortunes of the
peasants move me."

The truth was, he pursued with obstinacy a single aim: to reestablish the
domain of Casentino that his father, Prince Carlo, an officer of Victor
Emmanuel, had left devoured by usurers. His affected gentleness concealed
his stubbornness. He had only useful vices. It was to become a great
Tuscan landowner that he had dealt in pictures, sold the famous ceilings
of his palace, made love to rich old women, and, finally, sought the hand
of Miss Bell, whom he knew to be skilful at earning money and practised
in the art of housekeeping. He really liked peasants. The ardent praises
of Choulette, which he understood vaguely, awakened this affection in
him. He forgot himself enough to express his mind:

"In a country where master and servants form one family, the fate of the
one depends on that of the others. Taxes despoil us. How good are our
farmers! They are the best men in the world to till the soil."

Madame Martin confessed that she should not have believed it. The country
of Lombardy alone seemed to her to be well cultivated. Tuscany appeared a
beautiful, wild orchard.

The Prince replied, smilingly, that perhaps she would not speak in that
way if she had done him the honor of visiting his farms of Casentino,
although these had suffered from long and ruinous lawsuits. She would
have seen there what an Italian landscape really is.

"I take a great deal of care of my domain. I was coming from it to-night
when I had the double pleasure of finding at the station Miss Bell, who
had gone there to find her Ghiberti bell, and you, Madame, who were
talking with a friend from Paris."

He had the idea that it would be disagreeable to her to hear him speak of
that meeting. He looked around the table, and saw the expression of
anxious surprise which Dechartre could not restrain. He insisted:

"Forgive, Madame, in a rustic, a certain pretension to knowing something
about the world. In the man who was talking to you I recognized a
Parisian, because he had an English air; and while he affected stiffness,
he showed perfect ease and particular vivacity."

"Oh," said Therese, negligently, "I have not seen him for a long time. I
was much surprised to meet him at Florence at the moment of his
departure."

She looked at Dechartre, who affected not to listen.

"I know that gentleman," said Miss Bell. "It is Monsieur Le Menil. I
dined with him twice at Madame Martin's, and he talked to me very well.
He said he liked football; that he introduced the game in France, and
that now football is quite the fashion. He also related to me his hunting
adventures. He likes animals. I have observed that hunters like animals.
I assure you, darling, that Monsieur Le Menil talks admirably about
hares. He knows their habits. He said to me it was a pleasure to look at
them dancing in the moonlight on the plains. He assured me that they were
very intelligent, and that he had seen an old hare, pursued by dogs,
force another hare to get out of the trail so as to deceive the hunters.
Darling, did Monsieur Le Menil ever talk to you about hares?"

Therese replied she did not know, and that she thought hunters were
tiresome.

Miss Bell exclaimed. She did not think M. Le Menil was ever tiresome when
talking of the hares that danced in the moonlight on the plains and among
the vines. She would like to raise a hare, like Phanion.

"Darling, you do not know Phanion. Oh, I am sure that Monsieur Dechartre
knows her. She was beautiful, and dear to poets. She lived in the Island
of Cos, beside a dell which, covered with lemon-trees, descended to the
blue sea. And they say that she looked at the blue waves. I related
Phanion's history to Monsieur Le Menil, and he was very glad to hear it.
She had received from some hunter a little hare with long ears. She held
it on her knees and fed it on spring flowers. It loved Phanion and forgot
its mother. It died before having eaten too many flowers. Phanion
lamented over its loss. She buried it in the lemon-grove, in a grave
which she could see from her bed. And the shade of the little hare was
consoled by the songs of the poets."

The good Madame Marmet said that M. Le Menil pleased by his elegant and
discreet manners, which young men no longer practise. She would have
liked to see him. She wanted him to do something for her.

"Or, rather, for my nephew," she said. "He is a captain in the artillery,
and his chiefs like him. His colonel was for a long time under orders of
Monsieur Le Menil's uncle, General La Briche. If Monsieur Le Menil would
ask his uncle to write to Colonel Faure in favor of my nephew I should be
grateful to him. My nephew is not a stranger to Monsieur Le Menil. They
met last year at the masked ball which Captain de Lassay gave at the
hotel at Caen."

Madame Marmet cast down her eyes and added:

"The invited guests, naturally, were not society women. But it is said
some of them were very pretty. They came from Paris. My nephew, who gave
these details to me, was dressed as a coachman. Monsieur Le Menil was
dressed as a Hussar of Death, and he had much success."

Miss Bell said that she was sorry not to have known that M. Le Menil was
in Florence. Certainly, she should have invited him to come to Fiesole.

Dechartre remained sombre and distant during the rest of the dinner: and
when, at the moment of leaving, Therese extended her hand to him, she
felt that he avoided pressing it in his.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

A woman is frank when she does not lie uselessly
Disappointed her to escape the danger she had feared
Does not wish one to treat it with either timidity or brutality
He knew now the divine malady of love