But that day they were to pass through other shadows, to know other fears. Henceforth the tragic meaning of life filled both their minds, and they tried in vain to banish the physical sadness which from moment to moment made their spirits more clear yet more disturbed. They clasped each other's hand, as if they were groping in dark, dangerous places. They spoke little, but often they gazed into each other's eyes, and the look of the one poured into that of the other a wave of confused emotion, the mingling of their love and horror. But it did not calm their hearts.
"Shall we go farther?"
"Yes, let us go on."
Still they clasped each other's hand closely, as if they were about to go through some strange test, and were resolved to experiment as to what depths could be reached by the combined force of their melancholy. At the Dolo, the wheels made the chestnut-leaves rustle and crackle beneath them, and the tall changing trees flamed over their heads like crimson draperies on fire. At a distance was the Villa Barbariga, silent, deserted, of a reddish hue in its denuded garden, showing vestiges of old paintings in the cracks of its fa?ade, like streaks of rouge on the wrinkled cheeks of an old woman. And, at every glance, the distances of the landscape seemed fainter and bluer, like things slowly submerged.
"Here is Strà."
They alighted before the Villa Pisani, and, accompanied by its guardian, they visited the deserted apartments. They heard the sound of their own footsteps on the marble that reflected them, the echoes in the historic arches, the creaking of the doors, the tiresome voice of the keeper awakening the memories of the place. The rooms were vast, hung with faded draperies and furnished in the style of the Empire, with Napoleonic emblems. The walls of one room were covered with portraits of the Pisani, procurators of San Marco; of another, with marble medallions of all the Doges; of a third, with a series of flowers painted in water-colors and mounted in delicate frames, pale as the dry flowers that are laid under glass, in memory of love or death.
As La Foscarina entered one room, she said:
"In time! Here, too!"
There, on a bracket, stood a transformation into marble of La Vecchia by Francesco Torbido, made even more repulsive by the relief, by the subtle skill of the sculptor, to bring out with his chisel each tendon, wrinkle, and hollow place in the old woman's face. And at the doors of this room seemed to appear the ghosts of the crowned women that had hidden their unhappiness and their decay in that vast dwelling, at once like a palace and a monastery.
"Maria Luisa di Parma, in eighteen hundred and seventeen," continued the monotonous voice.
"Ah, the Queen of Spain, wife of Charles the Fourth, and mistress of Manuel Godo?," said Stelio. "She attracts me more than all the others. She came here when they were in exile. Do you know whether she stayed here with the King and the favorite!"
But the guardian knew only that name and the date.
"Why does she attract you?" La Foscarina asked. "I know nothing of her history."
"Her end, the last years of her life of exile, after so much struggle and passion, are extraordinarily full of poetry."
And he described that violent and tenacious character, the weak, credulous King, the handsome adventurer who had enjoyed the smiles of the Queen, and had been dragged through the streets by the infuriated mob; the agitations of the three lives bound together by Fate, and swept before Napoleon's will like leaves in a whirlwind; the tumult at Aranjuez, the abdication, the exile.
"And Godo?—the Prince of Peace, as the King called him—faithfully followed the sovereigns into exile; he remained faithful to his royal mistress, and she to him. They all lived together under the same roof thenceforth, and Charles never doubted the virtue of Maria Luisa. Even to the day of his death, he lavished all manner of kindness on the two lovers. Imagine their life in this place; imagine here such a love coming safely through a storm so terrible. All was broken down, overthrown, reduced to powder by the destroyer. Bonaparte had passed that way, but had not smothered that love, already old, beneath the ruins. The faithfulness of those two violent natures moves my heart not less than the credulity of the kindly King. Thus they grew old. Imagine it! The Queen died first, then the King; and the favorite, who was younger than they, lived a wandering life a few years more."
"This is the Emperor's room," said the guardian solemnly, flinging open a door.
The great shade seemed omnipresent in the villa of the Doge Alvise. The imperial eagle, symbol of his power, dominated all the faded relics. But in the yellow room, the shade seemed to occupy the vast bed, to rest under the canopy, surrounded by the four bedposts ornamented at the top with golden flames. The formidable sigla inscribed within the laurel crown shone upon the polished side of the bed. And this species of funereal couch seemed to be prolonged in the dim mirror hanging between the two figures of Victory that supported the candelabra.
"Did the Emperor sleep in this bed?" inquired the young man of the custodian, who pointed out to him on the wall the portrait of the great condottiere mantled in ermine, wearing a crown of laurel and holding a scepter, as he appeared at the coronation blessed by Pius VII. "Is it certain?"
He was surprised at himself at not feeling the emotion experienced by ambitious spirits at the sight of the traces of heroes—that strong throb he knew so well.
He lifted the edge of the yellow counterpane, and let it fall as suddenly as if the pillow under it had been full of vermin.
"Let us go away from this place; let us go!" said La Foscarina, who had been looking through the windows at the park, where the golden bars of the setting sun alternated with bluish-green zones of shade. "We cannot breathe here," she added.
The air, in truth, was like that of a vault.
"Now we pass into the room of Maximilian of Austria," said the droning voice, "he took the dressing-room of Amélie de Beauharnais for his bedroom."
They crossed this apartment in a flood of crimson light. The sunlight struck on a crimson couch, flashed rainbows from a frail chandelier with crystal drops that hung from the ceiling and kindled perpendicular red lines on the wall. Stelio stopped on the threshold, evoking in his fancy as he did so, the pensive figure of the young Archduke, with blue eyes, that fair flower of Hapsburg fallen in a barbaric land one summer morning!
"Let us go!" begged La Foscarina again, seeing him still delay.
She hastened through the immense salon, painted in fresco by Tiepolo; the Corinthian bronze gate closing behind her gave forth a clang as resonant as the stroke of a bell, sending prolonged vibrations through space. She flew along, terrified, as if the whole palace were about to crumble and fall, and the light to fail, and she dreaded lest she should find herself alone among the shadows with these phantoms of unhappiness and death. As Stelio followed, through the space wherein the air was moved by her flight, between those walls enclosing relics, behind the famous actress who had simulated the fury of deadly passions, the desperate efforts of will and of desire, and the violent conflict of splendid destines on the stage of all lands, the warm blood in his veins grew chill, as if he were passing through a freezing atmosphere; he felt his heart grow cold, his courage flag; his reason for being lost its hold on his mind, and the magnificent illusions with which he had fed his soul, that it might surpass itself and his destiny, wavered and were dispersed.
"Are we still living?" he asked, when they found themselves in the air without, in the park, far from the unwholesome odor.
He took La Foscarina's hand, shook her gently, gazed into her eyes and tried to smile; then he drew her into the sunlight in the middle of the green meadow.
"What heat! Do you feel it? How sweet the grass is!"
He half-closed his eyes, that he might feel the sun's rays on his eyelids, and was once more filled with the joy of living. The woman imitated him, calmed by the pleasure her beloved showed; and she looked from under her half-closed eyelids at his fresh, sensuous mouth. They sat thus for some time, hand-in-hand, their feet resting on the warm grass. Her thoughts turned back to the Eugenean hills, which he had described, to the villages pink as the buried shells, to the first drops of rain on the tender leaves, Petrarch's fountain, to all things fair and pleasant.
"Life might still be sweet!" she sighed, in a voice wherein was the miracle of hope born anew.
The heart of her beloved became like a fruit suddenly ripened by a miraculous ray. Joy, delight, and tenderness spread through his whole being. Once more he reveled in the joy of the moment, as if it were the last of life. Love was exalted above Destiny.
"Do you love me? Tell me?"
She made no answer, but she opened wide her eyes, and the vastness of the universe was within the circle of those pupils. Never was boundless love more powerfully signified by mortal woman.
"Ah, life with thee is sweet, sweet—yesterday as well as to-morrow!"
He seemed intoxicated with her, with the sunlight, the grass, the divine sky, as with something never before seen or possessed. The prisoner leaving his stifling cell, the convalescent who beholds the sea after looking death in the face, are not more intoxicated.
"Would you like to go now? Shall we leave our melancholy behind us? Would you like to go to a country where there is no autumn?"
—The autumn is in myself, and I carry it everywhere—she thought; but she smiled the slight smile with which she veiled her sadness.—It is I—it is I that must go away alone; I will disappear; I will go far-away and die, my love, O my love!—
During this moment of respite, she had not succeeded either in conquering her sadness or reviving her hope; but her anguish was softened, and she had lost all bitterness and rancor.
"Do you wish to go away?"
—To go away, always to be going away, to wander throughout the world, to go long distances!—thought the nomad woman.—Never to stop, never to rest! The anxiety of the journey is not over yet, but already the truce has expired. You wish to comfort me, my friend, and, to console me, you propose that I should go far-away once more, although I returned to my home, as it were, but yesterday.—
Suddenly her eyes looked like two sparkling springs.
"Leave me in my home a little while longer. And remain here, too, if that is possible. Later, you will be free, you will be happy. You have so long a time before you! You are young. You will win what you deserve. They will not lose you, even if they must wait for you."
Her eyes had two crystal masks before them; they glittered in the sunshine, and seemed almost fixed in her fevered face.
"Ah, always the same shadow!" Stelio exclaimed, with an impatience he could not conceal. "But what are you thinking of? What do you fear? Why not tell me what it is that troubles you? Explain yourself. Who is it that must wait for me?"
She trembled with terror at that question, which seemed new and unexpected, although he only repeated her own last words. She trembled to find herself so near danger, as if, in walking across this fair meadow, a precipice had suddenly opened under her feet.
And suddenly, in that unfamiliar place, on that beautiful grass, at the end of the day, after all those specters, sanguinary or bloodless, rose a living image of will and desire, which filled her with far greater terror. Suddenly, above all the figures of the Past, arose the figure of the Future, and again the aspect of her life was changed; and the sweetness of the respite was already lost, and the fair meadow with its sweet grass was worth nothing.
"Yes, let us talk, if you wish."
But she was obliged to lift her face a little to keep her tears from falling.
"Do not be sad!" pleaded the young man, whose soul was suspended on those eyelids, whence the tears would not fall. "You hold my heart in your hand. I never will fail you. Then why torment yourself? I am wholly yours."
For him, too, the image of Donatella was there, with her rounded figure, her body as robust and agile as a wingless Victory, armed with the glory of maidenhood, attractive yet hostile, ready to struggle, and then to yield. But his soul was suspended from the eyelids of the other woman, like the tears that veiled the eyes in which he had seen the vastness of the universe, the infinity of love.
"Foscarina!"
At last the warm tears fell, but she did not let them course down her cheeks. With one of those movements that sometimes sprang from her sadness with the swift grace of a freed wing, she checked them, moistened her finger-tips with them, and touched her temples without drying them. And, while she still kept her tears upon herself, she tried to smile.
"Forgive me, Stelio. I am so weak!"
"Ah, dear fingers—beautiful as Sofia's! Let me kiss them as they are, still wet."
Within his caressing arm, he drew her across the field to a zone of golden green. Lightly, with his arm supporting hers, he kissed her finger-tips, one after another, more delicate than the buds of the tuberose. She startled, and he felt her tremble at each touch of his lips.
"They are salt!"
"Take care, Stelio! Some one may see us."
"No one is here."
"Perhaps down there, in the hothouses."
"There is not a sound. Hark!"
"What a strange silence! It is ecstasy."
"We might hear the falling of a leaf."
"And the keeper?"
"He has gone to meet some other visitor."
"Does anyone ever come here?"
"The other day Richard Wagner came here with Daniela von Bülow."
"Ah, yes, the niece of the Countess Agoult, of 'Daniel Stern.'"
"And, among all those phantoms, with which did that great stricken heart converse?"
"Who can tell?"
"Only with himself, perhaps."
"Perhaps."
"Look at the glass windows and walls of the conservatories—how they sparkle! They appear iridescent. Rain, sunshine and time have painted it in that way. Does it not seem to reflect a distant twilight? Perhaps you have sometimes stopped on the Pesaro quay, to look at the beautiful pentafore window of the Evangelists. If you raised your eyes, you could see the windows of the palace marvelously painted by the changes of weather."
"You know all the secrets of Venice!"
"Not all yet."
"How warm it is here! See how tall those cedars are. There is a swallow's nest hanging on that limb."
"The swallows went away very late this year."
"Will you really take me to the Euganean hills in the spring?"
"Yes, Foscarina, I should like to do so."
"Spring is so far-away!"
"Life can still be sweet."
"We are living in a dream."
"Look at Orpheus with his lyre, all dressed in lichens."
"Ah, what a land of dreams! No one comes here any more. Grass, grass everywhere! There is not a single human footstep."
"Deucalion with his stones, Ganymede with his eagle, Diana with her stag—all the gods of mythology."
"How many statues! But these, at least, are not in exile. The ancient hornbeams still protect them."
"Here strolled Maria Luisa di Parma, between the King and the favorite. From time to time she would pause to listen to the click of the blades that cut the hornbeams to form arches. She would let fall her handkerchief, perfumed with jessamine, and Don Manuel Godo? would pick it up with a graceful gesture, hiding the pain he suffered when he stooped—a souvenir of the outrages he had endured at the hands of the mob in the streets of Aranjuez. How warm the sun was, and how excellent the snuff in its enameled box, when the King said with a smile: 'Certainly, our dear Bonaparte is not so well off at Saint Helena as we are here.' But the demon of po............