Withered Leaves Volume I Part 16

"The glorious woman whom I encircled with my arms, was just as little wrath as the Madonna.

"And yet--is it not temerity of the man who only ventures to offer to the woman transient love? Has she not the right to a love that shall fill his whole life? May he without awe, without the fear of conscience, touch this holy thing?

"I was intoxicated by the moment; I did not think of the future. I accepted nothing, I declined nothing, but the _gens d'arme_ who dwells in our bosom, to whom I had not listened for so long, a.s.serted himself.

I felt, in spite of all, in the presence of those fiery kisses, something of a subject's duty. I mentioned my name, position and place of habitation.

"But she laid her hand, as if imploringly, upon my lips--

"'Not these confessions, which I shall not, cannot return; shall we, then, frighten away the present beautiful dream? The witchery of happiness lies in mystery. You must never learn my name! Give me your word never to try to discover it.'

"I promised; but demanded urgently that her whole heart should be mine.

She looked wondrously beautiful in the darkened chapel, when a ray of lightning, illumining her fine features, seemed to trace her figure in dazzling outlines in the twilight.

"'I only remain here three more days; then I disappear for ever--'from you also.'

"'Three days--well, but three days of perfect happiness may atone for everlasting separation. Three days--but they must be three days that can never be forgotten. Let us not think of the cold duty that constrains us to part, let us but remember that three days are still before us--yet I do not even know your name!'

"'Call me Giulia; it is one of the names that I bear.'

"In crash upon crash the storm discharged itself above us; more tempestuous became my vows. She bent towards me, whispering--

"'Men think but lightly of a heart that is quickly won, and are ever ready to repay fond love with forgetfulness and contempt.'

"I protested that that would never be the case with me.

"'And I a.s.severate that my heart never yet was weak enough to cherish a love which could have no hope of being a part of my life. I have struggled against love in sleepless nights, but it seemed to me as if the genius of my life rose up erectly and distinctly before me, and said--'If into your poor ruined life a sunny ray of happiness should fall, oh, then, open all your windows to it! And if it be only a short gleam of light that soon pa.s.ses away, yet it will remain in your soul, full of consolation for the gloom into which the coming night plunges you. If misfortune be solemnly decreed to you by heaven and earth, if it hold you in an indissoluble spell, oh, then have courage to grasp happiness yourself; grasp that which heaven and earth would deny you.

But intense love is bliss, bliss unutterable; its intensity is not measured by its lastingness--the moment is its watchword. In your arms, from your kisses I have felt what, until now, life could never give me; what only as the dream of the supreme was quickened in my soul. To every human being is granted one supreme moment--once birth and death--once the bliss of perfect love!"

"'My Giulia!' cried I, deeply stirred by her fervour.

"'Never, never can I be yours!' cried she, 'but we will meet again to say farewell! I live in the Princess Dolgia's villa! This evening come to the pavilion; here is the garden key. No one will see you; at that hour all is deserted, the Princess herself is from home; only few servants are left at the villa.'

"I kissed her lips and hands in wild devotion.

"The tempest, meanwhile, had receded farther down the lake; the moon stood amid the broken clouds, which raced in wild career around the summits of the Alps. Our bark glided softly over the now bright, now dark waves. This time Giulia showed me her villa. It was a splendid building, buried amongst flowers; it shone brightly in the moonlight.

"'There, on the left, is the pavilion,' said Giulia, as she designated a Turkish kiosque. Laurels and myrtles surrounded it; a red fir, also, from the far north, lent its shade.

"As we stepped on land, a man came out of the bushes on the sh.o.r.e, close to Giulia. I could not recognise his features; they were half enveloped in a kerchief.

"Annoyed at this obtrusion, I was about to send him away, but she restrained my interference with a slight movement of the hand. He spoke vehemently to her in Italian, but, in an to me, incomprehensible dialect. His gestures were somewhat menacing, so that I held myself in readiness to come to the a.s.sistance of my beloved one; but he withdrew quietly, apparently satisfied with Giulia's replies.

"She looked pale as she held out her hand, bidding me farewell for a short time.

"All my spirits were in a state of ebullition. I ascended the heights behind Stresa. I was impelled along a pathless course through vineyards and chestnut groves; the sky was again overcast. Gloomily lay the surface of the lake, but it was as though, beneath the covering of clouds, a hotter breath brooded over the earth.

"I inhaled deep draughts of the burning air of that voluptuous nature--my pulses were at fever height.

"At the same time I was possessed with a sick dread of losing the key, and every moment I felt if it were still in my pocket.

"The evening hour struck from the church tower of the little town on the sh.o.r.e. For half-an-hour already I had been wandering round the villa, in which no lights were s.h.i.+ning.

"The marble bal.u.s.trades and pillars gazed gloomily into the cloudy night, but the air was perfumed with a hundred invisible flowers.

"Then something like a will-o'-the-wisp quivered in the pavilion! a little lamp illuminated the branches of the red fir-tree which kept guard before it. I opened the garden door and entered the leafy walks.

"She was waiting for me at the entrance of the dainty little round building. Mats covered the floor; ottomans with soft cus.h.i.+ons were spread round the walls, which higher up were wreathed with garlands of flowers.

"The air wafted an exquisite perfume inside and through the open window.

"She appeared more beautiful to me than ever; she was a night-flower, created for night and moonlight. Her complexion was of that _morbidezza_ of the Venetian women, which lends them such a melancholy charm; and by day, too, she wore her hair in the artistic manner of the Venetians, plaited at the side, behind a daintily-coiled head-dress.

But now it flowed in dark abundance over the yellow s.h.i.+mmering moir dress. She received me sadly: was not the coming parting hovering over our bliss of the present moment as restless foreboding hovers over every happiness?

"I have often read in books written by those who are learned in art, that all beauty is a self-sufficing copy of the eternal idea, whose enjoyment alone can grant harmonious contentment, that its reign ceases when the will's emotion desecrates its impalpable glory.

"It is heresy to think otherwise about it, and yet I do think otherwise. Even that people of G.o.d-like beauty, the h.e.l.lenes, thought otherwise, else they would never have invented the legend of Pygmalion: that is the solution of the enigma--beauty which does not only satisfy the ideal senses, which overpowers the whole man, so that without volition he is seized by its magic power.

"Amongst the Lemures of the East Prussian exorcists, woman, in her magical power, had first crossed my path; and that spirit of adoration which so long had held me in its bondage, was vanquished for evermore.

"Here, beneath Italy's laurels and myrtles, I was Pygmalion; but it was no cold marble that I folded in my arms. Was I ever a poet, I was one then; hymns of rapture flowed through my soul.

"For three evenings I was permitted to visit her; on the third the full moon stood above the red fir tree. The cracking of its branches in the night wind reminded me of my distant home.

"We wandered silently in the garden, forgetful of time--of everything--but that the oppression of the parting hour weighed upon us. She must go; she repeated it; I did not ask her why--I asked nothing. I still stood beneath the whole magic of her presence. Morning dawned at last, and released the dark ma.s.ses of the groups of trees from the darkness with which they had been blended.

"It was a morning full of mournful sadness; tears hung on Giulia's long eye-lashes.

"'Let your thoughts return to these days, these happy days, as to a fairy-tale--for me they were more, far more! They have quite effaced all the rest of my life; and yet I must return to joyless gloom. I must--and, therefore--farewell!'

"One more burning kiss, one last embrace; I felt her tears upon my cheeks; her locks flowed over me like a tide of endless pain--we parted!

"After the little garden door was shut, something rustled near me amongst the shrubs, beneath the chestnuts; as I went farther on, I perceived a figure creeping behind me, which reminded me of that singular stranger who had already once played the spy upon us on the sh.o.r.e; however, I did not trouble myself about him, but went to my hotel, without again looking behind me.

"I kept my promise faithfully not to enquire about this queen of the night who had bloomed for me in such enrapturing splendour on the banks of that magic lake; held to it so faithfully that for a long time I avoided asking myself who that mysterious beauty could be?

"There is a heart's shrine for relics which one may not touch without destroying the charm that clings to those sacred recollections--the lotos-flower, which is the cradle of a G.o.d no hand may touch.

"Never to be forgotten are the days and nights on the sh.o.r.es of that beautiful lake. I have seen lakes in the highlands of Mongolia, amongst the mountain-giants of Thibet; but all these pictures were effaced beside the burning outlines in which the Lago Maggiore printed itself upon my soul.

"All the same in later times I often surprised myself in reprehensible curiosity; who was this Lady of the Lake? Her highly-bred manner told that she was a lady of distinction--an equal of her friend, that princess, in whose society I had first seen her. But the fetter that bound her? Was it the bond of matrimony, for which, however, in Italy, in the most aristocratic circles, the _cicisbeat_ offers a compensation, rendered sacred by custom!

"I thought of the Countess Guiccioli, Byron's beautiful beloved--she did not conceal her happiness from her husband--and tie used to drive his favoured rival out in Ravenna, in his carriage and six--yes, the former rented quarters in the Count's castle.

"The secret that my Giulia preserved so fearfully must be of another kind. Perhaps she was being persecuted--politically persecuted; there are highly-born women enough in Italy, who stand upon the list of the proscribed; and if she never spoke of politics it was, perhaps, in order to avert all such thoughts from me. In this way, too, it would be easiest to explain the appearance of that obnoxious stranger, who surely was a subordinate agent of her political party.

"Certainly, I always asked myself again and again, whether love which withholds every confession excepting that of its own existence, which veils everything excepting its own intensity, is not an error? Love requires the whole man to be pledged, and may not appear with a mask, such as the Parisian ladies of simplicity carry before their faces.

Otherwise it is but an adventure, and as an entrancing adventure I preserve that meeting in my memory; but I am weary of adventures, they have seduced me long enough, rendered my life disturbed and unsteady; precipitated my soul from one intoxication into another, but at last, after all, only left internal desolation behind.

"And now this mysterious Giulia appears suddenly here, in my castle.