It was ridiculous this curiosity, but I knew how to explain it—it grew out of my life’s great emptiness since I had listened to Ruthita’s confession. She had made me realize as never before how I had muddled my chances of happiness. I had heard nothing from Vi in all these years and now I had learnt that, without knowing it, I might have had Ruthita. My interests had lost their charm; I wanted an excuse to leave my work. This matter of Fiesole had cropped up, so here I was on my way to Paris, more for the sake of something to do than anything else.
I had not the remotest intention of renewing her acquaintance. Unseen by her, I would watch her from some corner of the theatre, and then slip back to London. There would be piquancy in the thought that I had gone to see her for old time’s sake, and that she would never know about it. As for speaking to her, that would be an insult after what had happened at Venice. Probably she hated me. She ought to, if she did not.
Though I smiled at myself, truth to tell, I was rather pleased to find I could still be so impulsive; romance in me was not dead after all these years of uneventful waiting. This journey was the folly of a sentimental boy—not the cynical act of a man of the world.
La Fiesole! La Fiesole! Since she had stared out at me from the printed page I was continually coming across her. Everyone was discussing her; she had sprung out of nowhere into notoriety. Greater than Bernhardt, men said of her: a spontaneous emotional actress of the first rank—the sensation of the moment.
France took her seriously; England quoted French eulogies in italics. Fantastic legends were woven about her name, made plausible by an occasional touch of accuracy.
Antoine Georges had written the play—it was based on the amours of Lucrezia Borgia. It was said that he was La Fiesole’s lover, that she had given him the plot—that she had even helped him write it; some went so far as to say that it was founded on an incident in her own past life, transposed into a fifteenth century setting. Antoine Georges denied that he was her lover; but the world smiled skeptically—it liked to believe he was. One story asserted that she had been a fille de joie when he came across her; another, with that French instinct for the theatric, that he had reclaimed her from a low café in Cherbourg in which she danced. Nothing was too incredible in the face of her incredible success. One fact alone was undisputed—that she was the daughter of the famous Italian actor, many years dead, Signore Cortona.
This confirmed what I already knew about her. I remembered how she had told me in Oxford of her early stage career, which she had abandoned to go traveling. I recalled how she had said, “I’m an amateur at living—always chopping and changing. I’ll find what I want some day.”—— So she had found it!
In the English press she was made a peg on which to hang a whole wardrobe of side-issue and prejudice. The decency of the French stage was discussed. The question was introduced as to whether such a play would be allowed to be performed in London. The superiority of English morals was the topic of some articles; of others, the brutal prudery by which British art was stifled. A fine opportunity was afforded and welcomed for slinging mud at the censor. The discussion was given academic sanction when Andrew Lang patted it on the head in an ingeniously discursive monologue on the anachronisms of playwrights, in which he made clear that Monsieur Georges’s tragedy was riddled with historic falsity.
It was nearing five when we steamed into the Gare du Nord. My first journey to Paris had been prompted by Fiesole. Then I was escaping from her; now I was going to her. For old time’s sake I made my headquarters at the hotel at which I had then stayed in the Rue St. Honoré. After diner I set out through thronged streets to book a seat at the theatre. Upon making my request at the office, the man shrugged his shoulders and turned away with the inimitable insolence of French manners. It was as though he had said, “You must be mad, or extremely bourgeois.” I had affronted him personally, the theatre-management, La Fiesole and last, but not least, the infallible intelligence of Paris. Did Monsieur not know that La Fiesole was the rage, the fashion? Every seat was taken—taken weeks ahead.
My second request was apologetic and explanatory: I honored La Fiesole so much that I had journeyed from London on purpose to see her. What was the earliest date at which he could make it possible? He directed me to an agency which had bought up all the best seats in the house; here I secured a box at an extortionate price for five nights later.
In the intervening days I was frequently tempted to abandon my project and return. It seemed the height of foolishness to squander five days in order that I might court disappointment. She must have altered—might have deteriorated. It was just possible there was a grain of truth in the wild stories that circulated about her. And yet—— There were memories that came to me full of nobility and gentleness: windswept days at Oxford; a night at Ferrara; days and nights on the lapping lagoons of Venice. I wanted to see her again—and I did not. I blew hot and cold. And while I hesitated, spring raced through the streets of Paris with tossing arms and reckless laughter.
When I entered the theatre it was already packed. The audience seemed conscious that it had assembled for a great occasion; it had dressed for its share in the undertaking. Gowns of marvelous cut and audacity were in evidence. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of exotic femininity and flowers.
My box was on the right-hand side, just above and next to the stage. Below me was a nodding sea of plumed head-dresses, naked shoulders, and gleaming bosoms; rising tier on tier to the gold-domed roof, was a wall of eyes and fluttering white faces. Everything was provocative of expectancy. Gods and goddesses, carved on the columns and painted on the curtain, alone were immobile.
A quick succession of taps sounded, followed by three long raps. The theatre was plunged in shadow. As though a crowd drew away into the distance, the last murmur spent itself. The curtain quivered, then rose reluctantly on the illusion which had brought the unrelated lives of so vast an audience together.
We saw an Italian garden, basking in sunlight and languorous with summer. Beneath the black shade of cypress-trees stretched marble terraces, mounting up a hillside, up and up, till they hung gleaming like white birds halfhidden in the velvet foliage. In the foreground a fountain splashed. A little way distant the Pope Alexander lolled, toying with his mistress, Giulia. Up and down pathways lined with statues, groups of courtiers wandered: youths in parti-colored hose and slashed doublets; girls, vividly attired, exquisitely young, engaged in the game of love. Guitars tinkled and masses of bloom flared stridently in the sun. Sitting by the fountain was the Madonna Lu-crezia and the young Lord of Pesaro. Her face was turned from us; we could only see her vase-like figure and the way she shook her head in answer to all he offered.
The envoy from Naples enters and with him the Duke of Biseglia; he urges the Pope for a last time to make an alliance with his country by betrothing the Madonna Lucrezia to the Duke. But the Pope does not want the alliance; he is joining with Ludovico of Milan against Naples and war will result.’ While the Pope is refusing, for the first time Lucrezia looks up and her face is turned towards us—the face I had known in my boyhood, innocently girlish, fresh as a flower, so ardent and beautiful with longing that the theatre caught its breath at sight of it and a muffled “Ah!” swept through the audience.
As though attracted by a power which is outside herself, she rises, hesitating between shyness and daring, and steals to where the young Duke is sullenly standing. She takes his hand and presses it against her breast. He snatches it from her. She commences to speak, at first haltingly, but with gathering passion. Her voice is hoarse and sultry, like that of a Jewess; it is a voice shaken with emotion, which now caresses and now tears at the heart. The drone of merriment in the garden and the tinkling of the guitars is hushed. Listless lovers come out from the shadows and gather about her, amused by her earnestness. She pleads with the Pope, her father, to give her the Duke—not to send him away from her. Biseglia interrupts haughtily, asserting that he only desired her for State reasons and that since the Pope refuses Naples’ friendship, he would not marry the Madonna Lucrezia though her father were to allow it.
Alexander laughs boisterously at this quarrel of children and like a huge Silenus wanders off into the garden, leaning on his mistress, Giulia, followed by his train of minstrels and dilettantes. Their singing grows more faint as they mount the terraces towards the palace.
Lucrezia watches them depart with a face frozen with despair. As Biseglia turns to go, she darts after him and drags him back, fawning on him, abasing herself, offering herself to him, telling him that whatever comes of it she cannot live without him. He regards her in silence; then falls to smiling and flings her from him, reminding her that she is the Pope’s bastard. At that the boy Lord of Pesaro, who has watched everything from the fountain, runs with drawn sword to her defense. But she springs between them, saying that when the time comes to kill Biseglia, she will take revenge in her own way like a Borgia. The great Pope, looking back, has seen her awakened savagery and laughs uproariously. The scene ends with the garden empty and Lucrezia stretched out on the ground, kissing the spot which Biseglia’s feet have touched and weeping in a frenzy of abandon, while the Lord of Pesaro looks on impotent and broken-hearted.
Between the first act and the second the French have invaded Italy, so the Pope and............