The flame of life

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ALBERT W; SMITH
BROWSING LIBRARY

CORNELL
UNIVERSITY

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DATE DUE

OAVLORO

Cornell University Library
PQ 4803.Z3F9 1900

3 1924 027 482 334

B Cornell University
M Library

The original of tliis bool< is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
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http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924027482334

THE FLAME OF LIFE

THE WORKS OF

G A B R I E L E
D'ANNUNZIO

I

The Romances of the Rose

The Child of Pleasure. (IlPiacere.)

The Intruder. ( L' Innocente.)

The Triumph of Death. ( II Trionfo della Morte.)

II

The Romances of the Lily

The Maidens of the Rocks. (Le Vergini delle Rocce.)
The Book of Grace. (La Grazia.) — In Preparation.
The Annunciation. (L' Annunziazione.) — In Pre-
paration.

Ill

The Romances of the Pomegranate

The Flame of Life. (II Fuoco.)
The Dictator. (II Donatore.) — In Preparation.
The Triumph of Life. (II Trionfo della Vita.) —
In Preparation.

L. C. PAGE & CO. (incorporated). Publishers
212 SUMMER STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

The ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE

THE FLAME
OF LIFE

By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO

Author of "Th£ Twumph of Dsath," etc.

Translated by
KASSANDRA VIVARIA

Author of " Via Lucis," etc.
... & come natura &ce in poco. -— Dante

B O S T-O N
L. C. PAGE £sf COMPANY (Incorporated)

M D CCCC

CONTENTS

I. PAGE

The Epiphany of the Flame i

II.
The Empire of Silence I57

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME

The Flame of Life

%

I

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME

" Stelio, does not your heart fail you for the first
time? " La Foscarina asked with a slight smile, touch-
ing the hand of the silent friend sitting beside her.
" I see you are a little pale, and you seem preoccu-
pied. Yet this is a beautiful night for the triumph of
a great poet ! "

She gathered into one deeply conscious glance all
the beauty scattered so divinely through that last hour
of the September twilight. In the dark, living firma-
ment of her eyes the neighbouring garlands of light,
created by the oar as it dipped in the water, seemed
to encircle the fiery angels that shone from afar on the
towers of San Marco and of San Giorgio Maggiore.

" As ever," she added in her sweetest voice, — " as
ever, all things are favourable to you. On an even-
ing like this what soul could remain closed to the
dreams that it shall please your words to bring forth ?
Do not you feel already that the crowd is eager to
welcome your revelation? "

Thus, delicately, she soothed her friend, wrapping
him round with continual praise, exalting him with
continual hope.

2 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" No more unusual and no more magnificent festi-
val could have been imagined for the purpose of en-
ticing from his ivory tower a disdainful poet such as
you are. This joy, of entering for the first time into
communion with a multitude in a sovereign place
such as the Hall of the Greater Council, was reserved
for you alone. You will speak from the throne
whence once the Doges addressed the assembled pa-
tricians ; their background the Paradiso of Tintoretto,
and over their heads the Gloria of Paolo Veronese."

Stelio Effrena Iboked her deep in the eyes.

"Do you wish to intoxicate me?" he said, with
sudden gaiety. " This that you are offering me is the
cup you would place before one going to the scaffold.
Well, then, yes, my friend, I confess that my heart
does shrink a little."'

A sound of applause burst from the Passage of San
Gregorio, echoing along the Grand Canal, re-echoing
in the precious discs of porphyry and serpentine
adorning the house of the Darios, that stooped under
their weight like a decrepit courtesan under the pomp
of her jewels.

The royal barge was passing.

" Here is the one among your listeners whom the
ceremony bids you crown with some flower of your
speech in the preamble," said the woman, allud-
ing to the Queen. '<-In one of your first books, I be-
heve, you confess your taste and your respect for
ceremonials. One of your most extraordinary feats
of imagination is that which has for its motive the
description of a day of Charles II. of Spain."

The two occupants of the gondola saluted the barge
as it passed them. The Queen, blonde, rosy, illu-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 3

mined by the freshness of the inexhaustible smile that
was for ever rippling among the pale meshes of her
Buranese laces, looked back, moved by an impulse of
spontaneous curiosity, as she recognized the poet of
Persephone and the great tragic actress. By her side
was Andriana Duodo, the patroness of Burano, the
industrious little island where she cultivated a dainty
garden of thread for the marvellous renewing of
antique flowers.

"Don't you think, Stelio, that those two women
have twin smiles?" La Foscarina said, watching the
water gurgle in the furrow left by the receding gon-
dola, where the reflection of that double glamour
seemed to prolong itself.

"The Countess is a magnificent and ingenious
spirit, one of those rare Venetian souls that have re-
mained strongly coloured like their ancient can-
vases," said Stelio, with grateful remembrance. " I
have a deep devotion for her sensitive hands. They
are hands that tremble with joy when they touch beau-
tiful lace or velvet, and linger there with a grace that
seems half shy of being so languid. One day, as I
was taking her through the halls of the Academia,
she stopped before the Massacre of the Innocents,
by the first Bonifazio (you certainly remember the
green of the prostrate woman that the soldier of
Herod is about to strike: it is a note you cannot
forget). She remained standing there a long time,
the joy of full and perfect sensation difi"used all over
her. Then she said, ' Take me away, Efifrena, I must
leave my eyes behind on that dress, I want to see
nothing else.' Ah, dear friend, don't smile, she
was simple and sincere in saying this. She had in all

4 THE FLAME OF LIFE

truth left her eyes behind on that fragment of canvas
which art, with a httle colour, has made the centre
of an indefinitely joyous mystery. In all truth, it
was a blind woman that I was leading. And I
was all reverence for that privileged soul, in which
the spell of colour had had the power to abolish for
a time every vestige of its ordinary life and to stop
all other communications from the outside. What
would you call this? A filling up of the chalice
to the brim, it seems to me. This, for instance, is
what I would do to-night, if I were not discouraged."
A fresh clamour, louder and longer, rose from
between the two watchful columns of granite, as the
barge came to shore by the crowded Piazzetta. A -
confused roar, like the imaginary rushing that ani-
mates the spirals of some sea-shells, filled the open
spaces of the ducal balconies at the surging of the
dense, dark multitude. Then, suddenly, the shout
rose higher in the limpid air, breaking up against
the slim forest of the marbles, vaulting over the
brow of the taller statues, shooting beyond the
pinnacles and the crosses, dispersing in the far dis-
tances of twilight. The manifold harmonies of the
sacred and pagan architectures all over which the
Ionic modulations of the Biblioteca ran like an agile
melody, continued unbroken in the pause which again
followed, and the summit of the naked tower rose like
a mystic cry. And that silent music of motionless
lines was so powerful, in its contrast with the spec-
tacle of an anxious multitude, that it created almost
visibly the phantom of some richer and more beauti-
ful life. That multitude, too, seemed to feel the
divinity of the hour, and in the greeting it sent

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 5

up to the modern symbol of royalty stepping on
its ancient landing-place, the fair Queen beaming
with her inextinguishable smile, perhaps it exhaled
its obscure aspiration to transcend the narrowness of
its daily life and to reap the harvest of eternal poetry
growing over its stones and its waters. In those
men, oppressed by the tedium and labour of their
long mediocrity, the strong covetous souls of their
forefathers, who had applauded so many returning
conquerors of the sea, seemed to be waking up con-
fusedly, and as they woke they seemed to remember
the rush of the air, stirred by the hissing, implacable
banners of old that had shamed enemies without
number as they dropped to rest, refolding like the
great wings of victory.

" Do you know, Perdita," suddenly asked Stelio, —
" do you know of any other place in the world like
Venice, in its power of stimulating at certain mo-
ments all the powers of human life, and of exciting
every desire to the point of fever? Do you know of
any more terrible temptress ? "

The woman he called Perdita did not answer, her
head bent as if in greater concentration, but in all
her nerves she felt that indefinable quiver that the
voice of her friend always called up when it un-
expectedly revealed the vehement and passionate
soul to which she was drawn by limitless love and
terror.

" Peace ! oblivion ! Do you ever find them down
there, at the end of your deserted canal, when you
return home parched and exhausted from having
breathed the atmosphere of the theatre — of the
theatre that any gesture of yours lashes to frenzied

6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

enthusiasm? For my part, I can never find myself
on these dead waters without feeling that my life is
being multiplied at a bewildering speed, and at times
my thoughts seem to take fire as if delirium were
imminent."

"The flame and the strength are in yourself,
Stelio," said the woman, without raising her eyes,
almost humbly.

He was silent, intent. Images and impetuous
music were being generated within him, as if by
the magic of some instantaneous fertilisation. And
the unexpected flood of that abundance was filling his
spirit with joy.

It was still the hour that in one of his books he
had called "Titian's hour," because in it all things
seemed, like that painter's nude creations, to shine
with a rich glow of their own, and almost to illumine
the sky rather than receive light from it. The
strange, sumptuous octagonal temple drawn by Bal-
dassare Longhena from the dream of Polifilo was now
emerging from its blue green shadow with its cupola,
its scrolls, its statues, its columns, its balustrades,
like a temple dedicated to Neptune, constructed
after the pattern of tortuous marine shapes, and shad-
ing off into a haze of mother of pearl. In the hollows
of the stone the wet sea-salt had deposited something
fresh, and silvery and jewel-like, that vaguely sug-
gested pearl shells lying open in their native waters.

" Perdita," said the Poet, a kind of intellectual joy
running through him, as he saw the things which his
imagination called to life multiplying themselves
everywhere, " does it not strike you that we seem to
be following the princely retinue of dead Summer?

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 7

There she lies, sleeping in her funeral boat, all
dressed in gold like the wife of a Doge, like a Lore-
dana, or a Morosina, or a Soranza, of the enlightened
centuries. And the procession is taking her to the
Island of Murano, where some masterly Lord of Fire
will make her a crystal coffin. And the walls of the
coffin shall be of opal, so that when once submerged
in the Laguna, she may at least see the languid play
of the sea-weed through her transparent eyelids, and
while awaiting the hour of resurrection give herself
the illusion of having still about her person the con-
stant undulation of her voluptuous hair.''

A smile poured over La Foscarina's face, springing
from eyes that might have well seen the beautiful
figure. Indeed that sudden allegory in both its form
and rhythm truthfully expressed the feeling that was
permeating all things. As the milky blue of the opal
is filled with hidden fire, so the pale monotonous
water of the harbour held dissimulated splendours
that were brought to light by each shock of the oars.
Beyond the straight forest of ships motionless on
their anchors San Giorgio stood out like a vast
rosy galley, its prow turned to the Fortuna that
attracted it from the height of its golden sphere. A
placid estuary opened out in the centre of the Giu-
decca. The laden boats that came down the rivers
flowing into it brought with their weight of splintered
trunks what seemed the very spirit of the woods that
bend over the running waters of their far-away sources.

And from the Molo, from the twofold miracle of
the porticoes open to the popular applause, where the
red and white wall rose as if to enclose that dominant
will, the Riva unfolded its gentle arch towards the

8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

shady gardens and the fertile islands, as if to lead
away the thoughts excited by the arduous symbols
of art to the restfulness of nature. And almost as
if still further to complete the avocation of Autumn
there passed a string of boats laden with fruit, like
great floating baskets that spread over the waters
reflecting the perpetual foliage of the cusps and
Capitols, the fragrance of the island fruit gardens.

" Do you know, Perdita," began Stelio, gazing with
visible pleasure at the golden bunches and the purple
figs not inharmoniously heaped in those boats from
poop to prow ; " do you know a detail of ducal
chronicles which is quite charming? The wife of the
Doge, to defray the expenses of her state dress,
was given certain rights over the duty on fruit.
Does not this amuse you, Perdita? The fruit of the
islands clothing her in gold and girding her round
with pearls, Pomona giving Arachne her due; an
allegory that Veronese might well have painted for
the ceiling of the Vestiario. Whenever I picture to
myself the stately lady standing on her high slippers
with the gemmed heels, I like to think that something
fresh and rural clings to her between the folds of
heavy cloth, the tribute of the fruit. How many new
savours seem thus added to her magnificence. Well,
dear friend, let us now imagine that these figs and
grapes of the new Autumn are to yield the price of
the golden dress in which dead Summer is wrapped."

" What delightful fancies, Stelio ! " said La Fosca-
rina, youthfulness springing up in her for a moment,
so that she smiled in the surprised manner of a child
before a picture-book. "Who was it that one day
called you the Image-maker?"

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 9

" Ah ! those images ! " exclaimed the poet, pene-
trated. " In Venice, in the same way that one can-
not feel except in music, one cannot think if not in
images. They come to us from all quarters, in
countless numbers, in endless variety, and they are
more real, more living, than the people that elbow us
in the narrow streets. They let us bend down to
scrutinize the depths of their hngering eyes, and we
can divine the words they are going to say by the
curves of their eloquent lips. Some are tyrannical,
like imperious mistresses, and hold us long under the
yoke of their power. Others come to us wrapped
in veils, like virgins ; or tightly swaddled, like infants ;
and only he who can tear away those husks will raise
them to perfect life. When I awoke this morning,
my soul was already full of them ; it was like a great
tree with a load of chrysalides."

He stopped and laughed.

" If they all break open to-night," he added, " I
am saved. If they remain closed, I am lost."

" Lost?" said La Foscarina, looking at him in the
face with eyes so full of confidence that his gratitude
to her became immense. " You cannot lose yourself,
Stelio. You are always safe, you carry your fate in
your own hands. I think your mother can never
have feared for you, even in the worst of moments. Is
it not true? It is only the excess of your pride that
causes your heart to falter."

" Ah, dear friend, how I love you for this, and
how grateful I am to you ! " Stelio confessed can-
didly, taking her hand. " You are constantly feeding
my pride in myself and letting me half believe that
I have already acquired those virtues to which I con-

lo THE FLAME OF LIFE

tinually aspire. Sometimes you seem to have the
power of conferring I know not what divine quality
to the things that are born of my soul, and of placing
them at such a distance that they appear adorable in
my own eyes. You put in me the rehgious wonder of
the sculptor, who, having taken his idols to the temple
at fall of day, still warm from his touch, and I would
almost say still clinging to the moulding fingers that
shaped them, finds them next morning raised on
pedestals and wrapped in a cloud of incense, breath-
ing divinity from every pore of the deaf and dumb
matter in which his perishable hands had fashioned
them. You never enter my soul without accomplish-
ing a like deed of exaltation, and because of this,
every time that my good fortune allows me to be
near you, you become necessary to my life. And
nevertheless, during our too long separations, I can
live on, and so can you, both knowing to what splen-
dours the perfect union of our lives might give birth.
Thus while I fully know all you bring me, and further,
all you could bring, I consider you as lost to me, and
I call you by that name I have given you because
I want to express this boundless consciousness and
infinite regret — "

He interrupted himself, feeling the hand he still
held tremble in his own.

" When I call you Perdita,'' he added in a lower
voice, after a pause, " I feel that you ought to see my
desire advancing towards you with a deadly weapon
thrust in its heaving side. Even if it succeed in
touching you, the chill of death will have already
reached the points of its rapacious fingers."

A suffering that she knew too well flooded her as

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME ii

she listened to the beautiful, the perfect words flow-
ing from her friend's lips with a readiness that proved
their sincerity. It was once again a fear and anxiety
that she herself did not know how to define. She
seemed to lose the sense of her personal being and to
find herself thrown into a kind of fictitious life both
intense and hallucinating, that made even breathing
difficult. Once drawn into that atmosphere, as fiery
as the encircling neighbourhood of a forge, she felt her-
self capable of suffering all the transfigurations that it
should please the Life-Giver to work in her for the
satisfaction of his own constant desire of poetry and
of beauty. She felt that in his poetic spirit her own
image was not of far different nature to the image, so
evident as to be nearly tangible of the dead Sum-
mer wrapped in her opalescent shroud. And an
almost childish desire assailed her, of seeking in
his eyes, as in a mirror, the reflection of her true
likeness.

What made her suff"ering heavier was the fact that
she could trace a vague resemblance between this
agitated feeling and the anxiety that always possessed
her at the moment of entering into a stage fiction in
order to incarnate some sublime creation of Art.
Was he not drawing her on to live in a similar higher
zone of life, and,- that she might figure there oblivious
of her everyday personality, was he not covering her
with a splendid mask? But, while to her it was only
given to prolong such a state of intensity by a su-
preme effort, she knew that he moved in it, as easily
as if it were his natural mode of being, ceaselessly
enjoying the miraculous world of his own that he
renewed by an act of continual creation.

12 THE FLAME OF LIFE

He had brought about in himself the intimate
marriage of art with life, and he thus found in the
depths of his own substance a spring of perennial
harmonies. His spirit had found the means of unin-
terruptedly maintaining itself in that mysterious con-
dition which gives birth to the work of beauty and
of thus suddenly transforming into ideal species the
passing figures of his varied existence. It was pre-
cisely to this conquest of his that he alluded when he
put the following words in the mouth of one of his
personages : " I stood by and watched within myself
the continual genesis of a finer life wherein all ap-
pearances were transfigured as in a magic mirror."
He was gifted with an extraordinary facility of lan-
guage that enabled him to instantly translate into
words even his most complex modes of feeling with
a precision so detached and vivid that they seemed
at times to belong to him no longer, to have been
made objective by the isolating power of style. His
limpid and penetrating voice, that seemed to draw a
clear outline round the musical figure of each word,
still further enhanced this singular quality of his
speech; so much so that an ambiguous feeling
made of admiration and aversion crept over those
who heard him for the first time, because of his mani-
festing himself in a form so sharply defined that it
seemed to be a result of his constant determination
to establish between himself and those who were to
remain strangers to him a deep and impassable dif-
ference. His sensibility, however, equaUing his in-
tellect, it was easy for those who came near to him
and who loved him to catch the glow of his vehement
and passionate soul through the crystal of his words.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 13

These knew how wide were his powers of feeling and
of dreaming, and from what combustion he drew the
beautiful images into which he was wont to convert
the substance of his inner hfe.

She whom he called Perdita knew it well. As the
pious one awaits from her God the supernatural help
that is going to work her salvation, she seemed wait-
ing for his guidance to place her at last in the neces-
sary state of grace. Then perhaps she might elevate
and maintain herself in that fire to which she was
impelled by her mad desire of burning and melting
away. The loss of even the last vestige of her youth
made her desperate. She was terrified of finding
herself alone in a gray desert.

" Now it is you, Stelio," she said, with her slight
concealing smile, gently taking her hand away from
her friend, — " now it is you who wish to intoxicate
me. Look," she exclaimed, to break the spell,
pointing to a laden boat that was coming slowly
towards them, — " look at your pomegranates."

But her voice was unsteady.

Then in the evening dream they watched the boat
pass on the delicate water that was green and silvery
like the new leaves of the river-willow, the boat over-
flowing with the emblematic pomegranates. They
suggested the idea of things rich and hidden, they
seemed caskets of red leather bearing the crown of
the kingly giver, some tightly closed, some half-open
over their agglomeration of gems.

In a hushed voice the woman murmured the words
Hades addresses to Persephone when in the sacred
drama the daughter of Demeter tastes the fatal
pomegranate :

14 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" When thou shalt pluck the Colchian herb in flower
Upon the tender meadow-grass of Earth,
Beside thy blue-robed mother, and, one day,
See glimmer on the tender meadow-grass
The white feet of the Oceanides,
Then there shall come to thine immortal eyes •
Remembrance, and a sudden weariness,
The weariness of daylight ; and thy soul
Shall tremble in thy heart, Persephone,
Mindful of its deep sleep, and looking back,
Persephone, to its deep kingdom. Then
Thy blue-robed mother shalt thou see in silence
Weeping apart, and thou shalt say to her :
' O Mother, Hades calls me to his deep
Kingdom ; now Hades calls me far from day
To queen it among shadows ; Hades calls
Me lonely to his insatiable love.' "

" Ah, Perdita, how well you diffuse the shadows
over your voice," interrupted the poet, feeling the
harmony of the night that darkened the syllables of
his verse. " How well you become nocturnal at the
fall of day ! Do you remember the scene where
Persephone is on the point of sinking into Erebus,
while the chorus of the Oceanides is moaning? Her
face is like yours when you darken it Her crowned
head drops backwards as she stands rigid in her
crocus-dyed peplum ; it seems as if night itself were
flowing into her bloodless body, deepening under
her chin, in the hollow of her eyes, round her nos-
trils, transforming her into a sombre mask of trag-
edy. It is your mask, Perdita. The memory of you
helped me to bring forth her divine person while I
was composing my ' Mystery.' That little velvet
ribbon that you nearly always wear round your neck
taught me the colour most fit for the peplum of

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 15

Persephone. And one night, in your own house, as
I was taking leave of you on the threshold of a room
where the lamps had not yet been lit (an agitated
evening last autumn, if you remember), you suc-
ceeded with a mere gesture in bringing the creature
to light in my soul that was still lying there undevel-
oped, then, unconscious of having produced that
sudden nativity, you disappeared into the intimate
shadow of your own Erebus. Ah, I was quite cer-
tain I could hear you sob, yet a torrent of ungovern-
able joy was coursing through me. I have never
told you this before, have I ? I ought to have con-
secrated my work to you, as to an ideal Lucina."

She sat there suffering under the gaze of the Life-
giver; suffering because of the mask that he admired
on her face, and of the joy that she felt was for ever
springing up within him as from a source that could
never run dry. The whole of her own self gave her
pain; the mutability of her features; the strange
mimic power possessed by the muscles of her face,
the unconscious Art that regulated the meaning of
her gestures, the expressive shadow that she had so
often known how to wear on the stage like a veil
of sorrow in some moment of expectant silence.
And this was the shadow that now was filling up the
hollows carved by time in her no longer youthful
body. The hand she loved caused her cruel suffer-
ing, — the noble, delicate hand whose gift or caress
yet had such power to hurt her.

" Don't you believe, Perdita," Stelio said after
another pause, " in the occult beneficence of signs? "
As a river's meandering forms, encircles, and nour-
ishes the islands of the valley, that clear though tor-

i6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

tuous, course of thought to which he gave himself up
left in his spirit dark isolated spaces whence he knew
full well that some new treasure would be forthcom-
ing in his own good time. " I am not speaking of
astral science, of the signs of the horoscope. I mean
that as some believe themselves subject to the influ-
ence of a certain star, likewise we can create an ideal
correspondence between our soul and some earthly
thing, so that the latter, saturating itself little by little
with our own essence, and itself being magnified by
our illusion, at last appears almost representative to
us of some unknown fatality, and becomes something
like the figure of a mystery by appearing at certain
crises of our Hfe. This, Perdita, is the secret by which
we may restore something of a primeval freshness to
our souls that have become a little arid. I know by
experience what wholesome effects are derived from
intense communion with some natural thing. Our
soul must now and then become like the hamadryad
in order to feel the fresh energy of the tree, the life
of which gives it its own life. You have gathered
already that in saying this I allude to your own words
on the passing of the boat. Briefly and obscurely
you were expressing this same truth when you ex-
claimed ' Look at your pomegranates ! ' To you
and to those who love me they can never be any-
thing but mine. To you and to them the idea of
my person is indissolubly bound up with the fruit that
I have chosen for an emblem, and have overcharged
with mysterious significances more numerous than its
own grains. If I had lived in the ages when the men
who excavated the old Greek marbles used to find
the roots of the ancient fables still moist in the earth,

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 17

no painter could have represented me without placing
the Punic apple in my hand. To sever my person
from that symbol would have seemed to his ingenu-
ous soul like cutting off a living part of me, because,
to his paganly inclined imagination the fruit would
have seemed joined to my arm as to its natural
bough. His idea of me would have been no different
from that which he would have had of Hyacinthus, of
Narcissus, or of Ciparissus, who all three would neces-
sarily appear to him alternately under the aspect of
youth and symbolised by a plant. And even in our
own times there are a few agile and highly coloured
spirits ready to understand all the meaning and enjoy
all the savour of my invention. Yourself, Perdita,
have you not trained a beautiful pomegranate in your
garden that each summer you might see me blossom
and bring forth fruit? A letter you once wrote me
that was winged like a heavenly message describes
the graceful ceremony by which you decked out the
' Effrenic ' shrub with necklaces on the day you re-
ceived the first copy of Persephone. Thus, you see,
for you and for those who love me, I have truly
renewed an antique myth by thus projecting myself
into one of the forms of eternal Nature; so that
when I die (and Nature grant that before then I may
have manifested myself wholly in my work !) my
disciples will honour me under the symbol of the
Pomegranate. In the sharpness of the leaf, in the
flame-colour of the blossom, in the gem-like pulp
of the crowned fruit, they will recognise some of the
qualities of my art: by that leaf, by that flower,
and by that fruit, as if by a posthumous teaching of
their master, their intellects will be led to that same

1 8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

flame, sharpness, and enclosed opulence. You see
now, Perdita, what the true benefit is. By affinity I
myself am led on to develop myself in accordance
with the magnificent genius of the tree by which I
chose to signify my aspirations to rich and ardent
life. It seems as if this vegetating effigy of myself
were sufficient to reassure me that my powers are
conforming to nature in their development, so as to
obtain in a natural way the effect for which they were
destined. ' Thus hath nature disposed me,' is Leo-
nardo's epigraph that I wrote on the title-page of my
first book ; and the pomegranate as it blossoms and
brings forth fruit unceasingly repeats that simple
motto. We can only obey the laws written in our
own substance and by them we must remain com-
plete in a fulness and unity that fill us with joy
amongst so many dissolutions. There is no discord
between my art and my life."

He spoke with complete freedom, and in a flowing
stream, as if he felt the spirit of the listening woman
become concave like a chalice to receive that wave,
and wished to fill it to the brim. An ever clearer
intellectual joy was spreading over him, together
with a vague consciousness of the mysterious process
that was preparing his mind for the effort which
awaited it. Now and then as he bent over his lonely
friend and heard the oar measuring the silence that
rose from the great estuary, he would catch a glimpse,
like a flash, of the crowd with its innumerable faces
that was thickening in the great hall, and a quick
tremor would shake his heart.

" It is very singular, Perdita," he went on, gaz-
ing at the pale far waters where the low tide

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 19

blackened the shore, — " it is very singular to note
how easily chance assists our fancy in giving a mys-
terious character to the conjunction of certain appear-
ances with the aim we have imagined. I cannot
understand why the poets of our day wax indignant
at the vulgarity of their age and complain of having
come into the world too early or too late. I believe
that every man of intellect can, to-day as ever, create
his own beautiful fable of life. We should look into
life's confused whirl in the same spirit of fancy that
the disciples of Leonardo were taught to adopt in
gazing at the spots on a wall, at the ashes of fire, at
clouds, even mud and other similar objects, in order
to find there ' admirable inventions ' and ' infinite
things.' The same spirit prompted Leonardo to
add : ' In the sound of bells you will find every
word and every name that you choose to imagine.'
That master well knew — as the sponge of Apelles
had already pointed out — that chance always be-
friends the ingenious artist. To me, for example, the
ease and grace with which chance seconds the har-
monious unfolding of my invention is a constant
source of astonishment. Don't you think that black
Hades forced his bride to eat the seven grains on
purpose to furnish me with the subject-matter of
a masterpiece ? "

He interrupted himself with a burst of the youth-
ful laughter that always so clearly revealed the native
joy dwelling within him.

"See, Perdita," he added, laughing, "whether I
am right. In the very beginning of last October I
was invited to Burano by Donna Andriana Duodo.
We spent the morning in her gardens of thread;

20 THE FLAME OF LIFE

during the afternoon we went to visit Torcello. I
had already begun living in the myth of Persephone
in those daj's, and the work was being slowly formed
within me, so that I felt as if I were gliding on
Stygian waters and passing into the regions that lie
beyond them. Never had I known a purer and
sweeter foretaste of death, and that feeling had made
me so light that I could have walked on the meadow
of Asphodel without leaving a footprint. The air
was damp, soft, and grayish; the canals meandered
between barJks overgrown with discoloured herbs.
(Perhaps you only know Torcello in the sunshine.)
But meanwhile some one was talking and discussing
in Charon's boat. The sound of praise awoke me.
Alluding to me, Francesco de Lizo was lamenting
that a princely artist so magnificently sensual — they
are his own words — should be forced to live apart
far from an obtuse and hostile crowd, and to cele-
brate the feast ' of sounds, of colours, and of forms '
in the palace of his lonely dream. Giving way to
a lyric impulse he recalled the splendidly festive
lives of the Venetian artists, the public consent that
lifted them up like a whirlwind to the heights of
glory, the beauty, strength, and joy that they multi-
plied around them and reflected in the numberless
figures they painted on high walls and arched ceil-
ings. And Donna Andriana said : ' Well, then, I
solemnly promise you that Stelio Effrena shall have
his triumphant festival in Venice itself.' It was the
Dogaressa who spoke. At that moment I saw a
pomegranate laden with fruit break the infinite
squalor of the low, greenish bank like a hallucinat-
ing apparition. Donna Orsetta Contarini, who was

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 2i

seated next to me, gave a cry of delight, and held
out two hands as impatient as her desire. Nothing
pleases me so much as the sincere and powerful
expression of desire. ' I adore a pomegranate 1 '
she exclaimed, as if already enjoying its pleasant
sub-acid flavour. She was as childlike over it as
her archaic name. I was stirred, but Andrea Con-
tarini seemed deeply to disapprove of his wife's
eagerness. He is an Hades having but little faith,
it would seem, in the mnemonic virtue of the seven
grains as applied to lawful wedlock. The boatmen,
however, had been stirred too, and were making for
the shore. I jumped on the bank first and fell to
stripping the tree, my blood relation. It was truly
a case of repeating with pagan lips the words of the
Last Supper : ' Take, eat, this is my body, which is
given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'
How does all this strike you, Perdita ? You must
not think I am inventing. I am quite truthful."

She was being carried away along that free and ele-
gant play of words by which he seemed to exercise the
nimbleness of his spirit and the facility of his elo-
quence. There was something undulating, variable,
and powerful about him that conjured up the twofold
image of flame and of water.

" Now," he continued, " Donna Andriana has kept
her promise. Guided by that taste for antique splen-
dour that so largely survives in her, she has prepared
a festival truly worthy of the Doges in the Ducal
Palace, in imitation of those that were celebrated
towards the close of the sixteenth century. It is she
who thought of rescuing the Ariadne of Benedetto
Marcello from her obhvio;!, and of making her sigh

22 THE FLAME OF LIFE

out her lamentation in the very place where Tin-
toretto has painted the Minoide in the act of receiv-
ing the crown of stars from Aphrodite. Does not
the same woman who left her clear eyes behind on
the ineffable green gown shine in the beauty of this
thought? Add to it that there is an ancient counter-
part to this musical performance in the Hall of the
Greater Council. A mythological composition by
Cornelio Frangipani, the music by Claudio Merulo,
was recited in the same hall in the year 1573 in
honour of the most Christian emperor Henry III.
Confess, Perdita, that my learning bewilders you.
Oh, if you knew how much of it I have accumulated
on the subject. I will read you my discourse some
day when you deserve severe punishment."

" But will you not read it at the festival to-night?"
La Foscarina asked, surprised and fearful lest he
should have resolved to disappoint the expectation
of the public, with his well-known careless ignoring
of obligation.

He divined his friend's anxiety and confirmed it.

" This evening," he said, with quiet assurance, " I
am coming to take an ice in your garden and to
enjoy the sight of the begemmed pomegranate,
gleaming under the sky."

"Oh, Stelio! What are you doing?" she ex-
claimed, starting up.

There was in her words and action so sharp a
regret, and at the same time so strange an evocation
of the expectant crowd, that they troubled him. The
image of that crowd, the formidable monster with the
numberless human faces, stood before him amid the
purple and gold of the great hall, bringing him a

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 23

foretaste of its fixed stare and its stifling breath.
Suddenly, too, he measured the danger he had de-
cided to face in trusting only to the inspiration of the
moment, and he realised what the horror would be of
a sudden mental darkening, of some unlooked-for
bewilderment.

" Reassure yourself," he said. " I was jesting. I
will go ad bestias, and I will go unarmed. The sign
appeared again a moment ago; did you not see it?
Do you think it can have appeared in vain after the
miracle of Torcello? It has come to warn me once
more that I must only assure those attitudes for
which Nature has disposed me. Now you well know,
dear friend, that I can only speak of myself. There-
fore from the throne of the Doges I must only speak
to the audience of my own soul under the veil of
some seductive allegory and with the enchantment of
some beautiful musical cadence. This I shall do ex
tempore, if the flaming spirit of Tintoretto will only
pour down to me from his Paradiso something of his
own fervour and daring. The risk tempts me. But
what a singular self-deception I was about to fall into,
Perdita ! When the Dogaressa announced the festi-
val and invited me here to do it honour, I began
writing a pompous discourse, a truly ceremonious
piece of prose, ample and solemn, like one of the
purple state gowns in the glass cases in the Correr
Museum; not without a deep genuflection to the
Queen in the preamble, not without a leafy garland
for the head of the most serene Andriana Duodo.
And for some days, with curious complacency I
dwelt very near the spirit of a Venetian patrician of
the sixteenth century, Cardinal Bembo, for instance,

24 THE FLAME OF LIFE

adorned with all learning, academician of the Urania
or the Adorni, and assiduous frequenter of the gar-
dens of Murano and the hills of Asolo. I am sure
there was a certain correspondence between the turn
of my periods and the massive gold frames that en-
circle the paintings in the ceiling of the Council Hall.
But, alas ! as I reached Venice yesterday morning, and
in passing by the Grand Canal dipped my weariness
in the moist transparent shadows where the marble
still exhaled the spirituality that night gives it, I felt
that my sheets were worth much less than the dead
sea-weeds rocked by the tide, and seemed strangers
to me no less than the Trionfi of Celio Magno or the
Favoli Maritti of Anton Maria Consalvi that I had
quoted and commented on in them. What was I to
do, then?"

He cast an exploring glance round sky and water
as if to discover an invisible presence, or recognise
some newly arrived phantom. A yellowish glare was
stretching to the more solitary shores, that stood out
in it as if drawn there in finely pencilled lines, like the
opaque veining of agates ; behind him, towards the
Salute, the sky was scattered over with light-spreading
vapours, violet and rosy, that made it comparable to
a changing sea peopled by sea-anemones. From the
neighbouring gardens there descended an exhaled fra-
grance of plants saturated with light and warmth, like
floating aromatic oils heavy on the bronze-like water.

" Do you feel the autumn, Perdita? " he asked his
absorbed ix\Qr\A, awakening her with his voice.

The vision returned to her of dead Summer being
lowered among the sea-weeds of the laguna, shrouded
in its opalescent glass.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 25

" It is upon me," she answered, with a melancholy
smile.

" Did you not see it yesterday, when it descended
on the city? Where were you yesterday at sun-
down?"

" In a garden of the Giudecca."

" I was here, on the Riva. Does it not seem to you
that when human eyes have seen a similar vision of
joy and beauty, the lids ought to close over them for
ever to keep them sealed ? It is of these secret hid-
den things that I should like to speak to-night, Per-
dita. I should like to celebrate in myself the marriage
of Venice with Autumn, giving it an intonation as
little different as possible from that of Tintoretto when
he painted the Marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus for
the hall of the Anticollegio, — azure, purple and
gold. Yesterday an old germ of poetry suddenly
broke open in my soul. I remembered the fragment
of a forgotten poem in nona riina that I began writ-
ing here when I came to Venice for the first time, one
September in my earliest youth that I spent at sea.
It was called The Allegory of Autumn, and it sang the
praises of the god no longer crowned with vine-leaves,
but with jewels like one of Veronese's princes, fired
with passion, about to migrate to the sea-city with
the arms of marble and the thousand girdles of green.
At that time the idea had not reached the degree of
intensity necessary for it to enter into the life of Art,
and instinctively I abandoned the effort of manifesting
it as a whole. But, in the active spirit as in the fertile
soil, no seed is ever lost: it returns to me now at the
right moment urgently demanding expression. What
a just but mysterious fate governs the world of the

26 THE FLAME OF LIFE

mind! It was essential tiiat I should respect that
first germ in order to feel its multiplied virtue expand
in me to-day. That Vinci, who has darted a glance
into every profound thing, certainly meant to convey
this particular truth by his fable of the grain of millet
that says to the ant, ' If you will in so far please me
as to let me enjoy my desire of new birth, I will re-
store myself to you an hundredfold.' Admire this
touch of grace in those fingers that could bend iron.
Ah, he ever remains the incomparable master. How
shall I forget him awhile that I may give myself up
to the Venetians ? "

Of a sudden the gay irony with which he addressed
himself in his last words died out, and his whole
attention seemed to bend over his thoughts. With
bowed head, his body feeling a kind of convulsed
contraction that answered to the extreme tension of
his spirit, he began to trace some of the secret analo-
gies which should bind together many images ap-
pearing to him as if in the rapid intervals between
successive lightning flashes, and to determine some
of the broader lines upon which those images should
be developed. Such was his agitation that the
muscles of his face quivered visibly under the skin,
and the woman felt, as she watched him, a reflected
anguish not unsimilar to what she would have felt
had he made before her a spasmodic effort to draw
the string of a gigantic bow. And she knew that
he was far away, estranged, indifferent to everything
that was not his own thought.

" It is already late, the hour is drawing near, we
must go back,'' he said, suddenly pulling himself
together as if pressed by anxiety, as if the formi-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 27

dable monster with its innumerable human faces that
would occupy the great resounding hall had reap-
peared. " I must get back to the hotel in time to
dress."

And his youthful vanity blossomed again at the
thought of the unknown women whose eyes were to
fall upon him for the first time that night.

" To the H6tel Daniele," La Foscarina called to the
oarsman.

As the dentellated iron at the prow veered round
on the water with a slow swing like a crawling ani-
mal, both felt a different but equally acute suffer-
ing at leaving behind them the infinite silence of the
estuary, already mastered by shadow and death,
at turning back towards the magnificent City of
Temptation, in whose canals, as in the veins of a
voluptuous woman, the fever of night was kindling.

They were silent awhile, absorbed by the internal
tempest that belaboured them, penetrating to the
roots of their being and forcing them as if to tear
them up. The aromas descended from the gardens
swimming like oil on the water, that showed a glitter
as of burnt bronze here and there in its folds. There
was something like the phantom of past pageants in
the air, which they perceived in the same way that
they had felt a worn note of gold while contemplat-
ing the harmony of the durable marbles on the
palaces that age had dimmed. That magic evening
seemed to renew the breath and reflection of the
east clinging as of old to the round, hollow sails and
curved flanks of the galleys that brought them home
with their beautiful spoil. And all things around
seemed to exalt the forces of life in the man who

28 THE FLAME OF LIFE

would have drawn the very universe to himself in
order not to die, in the woman who would have
thrown her burdened soul to the stake if that could
have made her die pure. And both sat with their
anxiety growing upon them, listening to the flight
of time, as if the water on which they glided were
flowing through a fearful clepsydra.

Both started at the sudden burst of the salute that
hailed the lowering of the flag on board a man-
of-war anchored near the gardens. They saw the
striped bunting flutter above the black mass and
descend along its staff, and its folds drop like some
heroic dream suddenly vanishing. The silence seemed
deeper for a moment, and the gondola slipped into
denser shadow as it grazed the flank of the armed
giant.

" Perdita," Stelio Effrena said unexpectedly, " do
you know that Donatella Arvale who is going to
sing in Ariadne f"

In that deeper shadow his voice echoed with singu-
lar resonance against the ironclad.

" She is the daughter of Lorenzo Arvale, the great
sculptor," La Foscarina answered after a moment's
pause, " She is one of my dearest friends, and she is
also my guest. You will meet her, therefore, at my
house after the festival."

" Donna Andriana spoke to me about her last
night with great warmth as a marvellous being. She
told me that the idea of unearthing this Ariadne
came to her one day on hearing Donatella Arvale
sing the air, 'Ah come mai puoi — Vedermi piangere'
We are going to have some wonderful music at your
house, then, Perdita. Ah, how I thirst for it ! Down

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 29

there in my solitude I have had no music for many
months but that of the sea, which is too terrible, and
my own, which is too confused as yet."

The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the
Angelus, and their ponderous roll dilated in long
waves along the mirror of the harbour, vibrated
through the masts of the ships, spread afar towards
the infinite lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore,
from San Giorgio dei Greci, from San Giorgio degli
Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in Bragora, from San
Moise, from the churches of the Salute and the Re-
dentore and beyond, over the whole domain of the
Evangelist, from the far towers of the Madonna dell'
Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant' Andrea, bronze voices
answered, mingling in one great chorus, spreading
over the silent company of stones and water one great
dome of invisible metal, the vibrations of which
seemed to reach the twinkling of the earliest stars.
In the purity of evening the sacred voices gave the
City of Silence a sort of immensity of grandeur.
From the summit of their temples they brought
anxious mankind the message sent by the immortal
multitudes hidden in the darkness of deep aisles, or
mysteriously troubled by the light of votive lamps ;
they brought to spirits worn out by the day the mes-
sage of the superhuman creatures figured on the
walls of secluded chapels and in the niches of inner
altars, 'vho had announced miracles and promised
worlds. And all the apparitions of the consoling
Beauty invoked by unanimous Prayer, rose on that
storm of sound, spoke in that aerial chorus, irradiated
the face of the marvellous night.

" Can you still pray? " asked Stelio, in a low voice.

30 THE FLAME OF LIFE

on seeing that the woman's lids were lowered and
motionless, her hands clasped on her knees, her whole
person absorbed in some interior act.

She did not answer, only pressing her lips closer
together. And both listened on, feeling that their
distress was about to overtake them, in the fulness of
its tide, like a river no longer interrupted by a cata-
ract. Both had a grave, confused consciousness of
the strange interval, in which a new image had sprung
up unexpectedly between them and a new name had
been uttered. The ghost of the unforeseen sensation
they had felt on entering the shadow of the ironclad
seemed to have remained in them, like an isolated
encumbrance, like an indistinct, and nevertheless per-
sistent, point round which was a kind of unexplored
void. Distress in the fulness of its tide now sud-
denly seized them, throwing them towards each
other, uniting them with such vehemence that they
dared not look into each other's eyes for fear of
reading there some too brutal desire.

" Shall we not meet again to-night, after the festi-
val? " asked La Foscarina, with a tremble in her faint
voice. "Are you not free? "

She hastened to detain him, to imprison him, as if
he were about to slip from her, as if she hoped that
night to find some philtre that would lastingly attach
him to her. And, while she felt that the gift of her-
self had at length become a necessity, yet the fearful
lucidity that pierced the flame within her had shown
her the poverty of the gift so long denied. And a
sorrowful modesty, made of fear and of pride, con-
tracted her faded limbs.

" I am free ; I am yours," the young man answered

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 31

in a lower voice, without looking at her. " You know
that nothing is worth to me that which you can
give."

He too was trembling to the depths of his heart,
with the two aims before him that caused him to
strain his energy like a mighty bow, — the city and the
woman ; both deep and tempting and tired with hav-
ing lived too much, and languid with too many loves ;
both over-magnified by his dream, and fated to de-
lude his expectation.

For some seconds a violent wave of regret and
desires overcame him. The pride ; the intoxication of
his hard, dogged labour ; his boundless, uncurbed am-
bition that had been forced into a field too narrow for
it ; his bitter intolerance of mediocrity in life ; his claim
to princely privileges; the dissembled craving for
action by which he was propelled towards the multi-
tude as to the prey he should prefer ; the vision of
great and imperious art that should be at the same time
a signal of light in his hands and a weapon of sub-
jection ; his strangely imperial dreams ; his insatiable
need of predominance, of glory, of pleasure, — rebelled
tumultuously, dazzling and suffocating him in their
confusion. And his sadness inclined him to the last
love of the lonely, wandering woman who seemed to
carry in the folds of her dress the silenced frenzy of
those far-off multitudes from whose pent-up brutality
her cry of passion or burst of sorrow or enthralling
pause had wrenched the sublime pulsation that Art
quickens. A troubled desire drew him to the de-
spairing woman in whom the traces of every pleasure
were visible — towards that ageing body saturated
with endless caresses, yet still unknown to him.

32 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Is it a promise? " he asked, controlling his agita-
tion. "Ah, at last ! "

She did not answer, but gave him a look of almost
insane ardour, which escaped him.

And they remained silent, and the roll of the bells
passing over their heads was so strong that they felt
it at the roots of their hair, like a quiver of their own

flesh.

"Good-bye," she said, near the landing-place.
" On coming into the courtyard let us meet at the
second well on the side of the Molo."

" Good-bye," he said. " Place yourself so that I
may distinguish you among the crowd when I am
about to utter the first word."

An indistinct clamour came from San Marco,
above the sound of the bells, spreading over the
Piazzetta, dwindling away towards the Fortuna.

" May all Hght be on your forehead, Stelio," said
the woman, holding out her dry hands to him pas-
sionately.

Stelio Effrena entered the court by the south
door. On seeing the Giant's Staircase invaded by
the black and white multitude that swarmed up
under the reddish light of the torches fixed in the
iron candelabra, he felt a sudden movement of
repugnance, and stopped in the long covered gallery.
There was a contrast that jarred on him too acutely
between the meaner intruding crowd and the sight
of those architectural forms, magnified still more by
the unusual illumination in which the strength and
the beauty of their former life were expressed in
such varied harmonies.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 33

" Oh, how wretched ! " he exclaimed, turning to the
friends who accompanied him. " In the Hall of the
Greater Council, from the throne of the Doges, how
can one find a metaphor that will bring emotion to
a thousand starched shirt-fronts! Let us go back;
let us go and drink in the odour of the other crowd
outside, the real crowd. The Queen has not yet
left the palace ! We have plenty of time."

" Until I see you on the platform," Francesco de
Lizo said, laughing, " I shall not be sure that you are
really going to speak."

" I think Stelio would prefer the balcony between
the two blood-like columns to the platform in the
hall, would prefer haranguing a rebellious populace
that had threatened to set fire to the new Procuratie
and the old Libreria" said Piero Martello, wishing
to flatter the master's taste for sedition and the fac-
tious spirit that he himself imitated in his affectation.

" Yes, certainly," said Stelio, " if the harangue
were sufficient to stop or hasten an irreparable act.
I grant you that the words we write should be used
to create a pure form of beauty contained and shut
in by a book as by a tabernacle that is only ap-
proached by election, and by an act of that same
deliberate will necessary for the breaking of a seal ;
but it seems to me that the words we address directly
to a multitude should have no other aim but action,
even violent action, if need be. Only on this con-
dition can a spirit that is a trifle haughty commu-
nicate with the crowd by means of voice and gesture
without lowering itself. In any other case his game
can only be of a histrionic nature. For this reason
I bitterly repent having accepted my present office

3

34 THE FLAME OF LIFE

of ornate and pleasure-giving orator. Each of you
may grasp how much is humihating to me in this
honour of which I am made the mark, and how
much is useless in my coming effort. All these
outside, wrested for one night from their mediocre
occupations or their favourite pastimes, are coming
to hear me with the same futile and stupid curiosity
with which they would go and listen to any vir-
tuoso. To the women among my listeners the art
with which I have composed the knot of my cravat
will be far more appreciated than the art with which
I round my periods. And, after all, the effect of
my speech will probably be a burst of deadened
applause from gloved hands, or a low, discreet
murmur which I shall acknowledge with a bow.
Don't you think that I am indeed about to touch the
highest summit of my ambitions? "

" You are wrong," said Francesco de Lizo. " You
must congratulate yourself on having succeeded in
impressing the rhythm of art on the life of a forget-
ful city for a few hours, and in having given us a
glimpse of the splendours that might beautify our
existence through a renewed marriage of art with
life. If the man who built the Festival Theatre
at Bayreuth were present, he would applaud this
harmony which he himself has announced. But the
admirable part of it is that, though you were absent
from and ignorant of it, the festival seems to have
been disposed by the guidance of your own spirit,
by an inspiration, a design of your own. This is
the best proof of a possibility of restoring and
diffusing taste, even in the midst of present barbari-
ties. Your influence is deeper at the present day

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 35

than you think. The lady who has wished to do
you honour, she whom you call the Dogaressa, has
asked herself at every new idea rising in her mind,
' Would this please Stelio Effrena? ' You don't know
how many men of the younger generation are now
asking themselves the same question when they
consider the aspects of their inner life ! "

" For whom should you speak, if not for these? "
said Daniele Glauro, the fervent, sterile ascete of
Beauty, in that spiritual voice of his that seemed
to reflect the inextinguishable white-heat of a soul
cherished by the master as the most faithful. " If
you look round when you stand on the platform
■ you will easily recognise them by the expression
of their eyes. They are very numerous, some,
too, have come from afar, and they are waiting
with an anxiety that you perhaps cannot under-
stand. Their number is made up of those who
have drunk in your poetry, who have breathed the
fiery ether of your dream, who have felt the clutch
of your own chimera. It is made up of those
to whom you have promised a stronger and more
beautiful life, to whom you have announced the
world's transfiguration by the miracle of a new art.
They are the many, many whom your hope and joy
have carried away. They have heard that you are
going to speak in Venice, in the Ducal Palace, in
one of the most glorious places on earth. They
are going to see and hear you for the first time,
surrounded by the magnificence that seems to them
the only fitting frame to your nature. The old
Palace of the Doges, that has slept in, darkness for
so long, is suddenly reillumined and revivified.

36 THE FLAME OF LIFE

In their eyes it is you alone who have had the
power of relighting its torches. Do you not under-
stand their expectations? And does it not seem to
you that you ought to speak for them alone? You
can carry out the condition you just laid down for
him who speaks to a multitude, you can stir up
a vehement emotion in their souls that shall turn
them towards the Ideal and hold them there for ever.
For how many of them, Stelio, you might make this
Venetian night unforgettable ! "

Stelio laid his hand on the prematurely bent
shoulders of the mystic doctor and smilingly re-
peated the words of Petrarch: " Non ego loquar
omnibus sed tibi, sed mihi et his!' . . .

The eyes of his unknown disciples shone within
him; and with perfect clearness he now felt within
himself, like a tuneful modulation, the sound of his
own exordium.

" Nevertheless," he added merrily, turning to Piero
Martello, " to rouse a tempest in this sea would be a
much more stirring thing."

They were standing near the corner column of the
portico, in contact with the noisy, unanimous crowd
gathered in the Piazzetta that prolonged itself towards
the Zecca, was engulfed near the Procuratie, barri-
caded the black tower, occupied every space like
a formless wave, communicated its living warmth
to the marble of the columns and the walls against
which it pressed in its continual overflowing. Now
and then a greater outcry would come from the
distance, at the further end of the Piazza, growing
in volume until it burst quite close to them like
a clap of thunder; then it would dwindle until it

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 37

expired beside them like a murmur. The upper
outline of the arches, the loggias, the spires, and
the cupolas of the golden Basilica, the attics of
the Loggetta, the entablatures of the Biblioteca
were shining with numberless little lights, and the
high pyramid of the Campanile, twinkling together
with the silent constellations in the bosom of night,
conjured up for the multitude drunk with its own
noise the immensity of the silent heavens, the
boatman at the far end of the laguna, to whom this
light must seem a new kind of signal, the cadence
of a solitary oar disturbing the reflection of the stars
in the water, the holy peace closed in by the walls of
some island convent.

" To-night I should like to be for the first time with
a woman whom I desired on a floating bed some-
where beyond the Gardens, towards the Lido," said
Paris Eglano, the erotic poet, a fair, beardless youth
who had a handsome and voracious red mouth in
contrast to the almost angelic delicacy of his features.
" In an hour's time Venice will offer some Nero-like
lover hidden in some gondola-cabin the Dionysian
spectacle of a city that has been set on fire by its
own delirium."

Stelio smiled as he noticed to what extent those
who approached him were steeped in his own es-
sence, and how deeply the seal of his own style had
stamped itself on those intellects. The image of
La Foscarina flashed on his desire, La Foscarina as
she was: poisoned by art, laden with voluptuous
learning, with the savours of maturity and of cor-
ruption in her eloquent mouth, with the dryness of a
vain fever in those hands that had pressed out the

38 THE FLAME OF LIFE

substance of all deceitful fruits, with the traces of a
hundred masks on that face that had simulated the
fury of mortal passions. It was thus he pictured
her to his desire, and his pulse quickened at the
thought that before long he would see her emerging
from the crowd as from an element by which she was
enslaved, and would draw from her look the neces-
sary intoxication.

"Let us go," he said to his friends, ready now;
" it is time."

The cannon announced that the Queen had left
the residence. A long quiver ran along the living
human mass, like that which precedes a squall at
sea. From the shore of San Giorgio Maggiore a
rocket darted up with a vehement hiss, rose straight
in the air like a stem of fire, scattered a rose of fire
at its summit, then bent downwards, dwindled, dis-
persed in trembling sparks, died out on the water
with a dull crackling. And the joyous acclamation
that greeted the beautiful Queen, the united cry of
love echoed by the marbles and repeating her name,
— the name of the white starry flower of the rocket
that had the pure pearl for its meaning, — all this
summoned up in Stelio's mind the pomp of the
ancient Promissione, the triumphant procession of the
art that accompanied the new Dogaressa to the ducal
palace ; the immense wave of joy on which Morosina
Grimani, resplendent in her gold, soared to her throne,
while all the arts bowed down to her laden with gifts.

"If the Queen loves your books," said Francesco
de Lizo, " she will wear all her pearls to-night. You
will find yourself in a labyrinth of precious stones,
all the heirlooms of the patricians of Venice."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 39

"Look, Stelio, at the foot of the staircase," said
Daniele Glauro, " there is a group of your devotees
awaiting your passage."

Stelio paused at the well indicated by La Foscarina,
and bent over its bronze rim, feeling the carved out-
lines of its cariatides against his knees, and discern-
ing in its deep, dark mirror the vague reflection of
the far-off stars. For a few seconds his soul isolated
itself, grew deaf to surrounding voices, withdrew into
the circle of shadow whence came a slight chill re-
vealing the dumb presence of water. The fatigue
brought on by his state of tension made itself felt,
and with it a desire to be elsewhere, an indistinct
need of going beyond even the ecstasy that the
night hours were to bring him, and in the last ex-
treme depth of his being the consciousness of having
there a secret soul that, like the mirror of water, re-
mained strange to all things, motionless and intangible.

" What is it you see?" said Piero Martello, he too
bending over the edge, worn by the ropes of the
pitchers that had been lowered down over it for
centuries.

" The face of Truth," answered the master.

In the rooms surrounding the Hall of the Greater
Council, once inhabited by the Doges, now by the
pagan statues forming part of the booty of ancient
wars, Stelio Effrena was awaiting a sign from the
master of ceremonies to appear on the platform. He
smiled calmly on the friends who were talking to
him, but their words reached his ears between one
pause and another like the intermittent sounds that
wind brings from afar. Now and then he would

40 THE FLAME OF LIFE

approach one of the statues with an involuntary
movement as if seeking some frail spot where he
might break it, or bend intently over a medal as if to
read there some sign impossible to decipher. But
his eyes were sightless, being turned inwards to that
region where the accumulated powers of his will
called up the silent forms which his voice would pres-
ently raise to perfection of verbal music. His being
contracted under the effort of bringing the represen-
tation of the singular feeling that possessed him to
the highest degree of intensity. Since he was going
to speak only of himself and his own world, he would
at least gather into one ideal image the more resplen-
dent qualities of his art, thus showing those who fol-
lowed him what an invincible force it was that hurried
him through life. Once more he would prove to them
how, in order to obtain victory over man and circum-
stance, there is no other way but that of constantly
feeding one's own exaltation and magnifying one's
own dream of beauty or of power.

As he bent over a medal of Pisanello's he felt the
pulse of his thought beating with incredible rapidity
against his burning temples.

" Do you see, Stelio," said Daniele Glauro, drawing
him on one side with that pious reverence that veiled
his voice whenever he spoke of those things which
made up his religion, — " do you see how the myste-
rious affinities of art are working upon you, and how
your spirit, about to manifest itself, is being led by
an infallible instinct in the midst of so many forms
towards the one model or footprint of the highest and
most accurate expression of style. Through the ne-
cessity of coining your own idea, you are brought

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 41

to bend over a medal of Pisanello's; you come in
conjunction with the sign of one who is among the
greatest styHsts that have appeared in the world ; the
most frankly Hellenic soul of the whole Renaissance.
And your brow at once becomes marked by a ray of
light."

On the bronze was the effigy of a young man with
fair, waving hair, imperial profile, and Apollo-like neck.
His was so perfect a type of elegance and vigour
that the imagination could not picture him in life ex-
cept as entirely exempt from all decadence, change-
less for all eternity. Dux equitum prcestans Mala-
testa Novellus Cesence dominus. Opus Pisani pictoris.
And close to it lay another medal by the same hand,
bearing the effigy of a virgin with narrow bosom,
swan-like neck, and hair drawn back as if it were a
heavy bag, with a high receding forehead that seemed
already vowed to the halo of the blessed ; a vessel of
purity for ever sealed, hard, precise, and clear as the
diamond, an adamantine pyx enshrining a soul that,
like the Host, seemed consecrated to sacrifice. Cici-
lia Virgo, Filia Johannis Frencisci primi Marchionis
Matituce.

" See," said the subtle expert, pointing out the two
rare impressions, — " see how Pisanello has gathered
with an equally wonder-working hand the proudest
flower of life and the purest flower of death. Here
you have the image of profane desire and the image
of sacred aspiration in the same metal, both fixed by
the same idealism of style. Don't you recognise in
them the analogies that unite this form of art to your
own art? V^h&n yonr Persephone ■p\c\is the luscious
fruit of the infernal pomegranate, there is also some-

42 THE FLAME OF LIFE

thing mystic in her fine gesture of desire, because in
breaking it to eat the grains she unconsciously de-
termines her fate. The shadow of mystery, therefore,
accompanies her sensuous act. This reveals the char-
acter of your whole work. No sensuality is more
ardent than yours, yet your senses are so sharpened
that, while enjoying the appearance, they penetrate to
the greater depths until they come upon the great
mystery, and shudder. Your vision prolongs itself
beyond the veil on which life has painted the volup-
tuous images that give you pleasure. Thus, concili-
ating in yourself that which seems irreconcilable,
blending without effort the two terms of an antithesis,
you are setting the example of a complete and ultra-
powerful life. You should make this felt to them
that listen to you, because it is this, above all, that
should be recognised for the sake of your glory."

He had celebrated the imaginary marriage of the
proud Malatesta, leader of knights, and the blessed
Mantuan virgin, Cecilia Gonzaga, with the faith of a
pious priest at the altar. Stelio loved him for this
faith ; loved him, too, because in no other man had he
ever felt so deep and sincere a belief in the reality of
the poetic world, and because his own consciousness
often found some revealing expression in him and
his comments often threw unforeseen light on his own
work.

" Here comes La Foscarina with Donatella Arvale,"
announced Francesco de Lizo, who was watching the
crowd that came up the Censor's Staircase and grew
denser in the large hall.

Once more distress took hold of Stelio Effrena.
He could hear the murmur of the multitude ming-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 43

ling in his ears with the throb of his arteries as
in some indefinite distance, and Perdita's last words
came back to him above that roar.

The murmur rose again, then dwindled, and ceased
altogether as with a light, sure tread he ascended the
steps of the platform. Turning towards the crowd
he saw for the first time the formidable monster with
the numberless human faces staring in his dazzled
eyes from among the gold and sombre purples of the
great hall.

A sudden leap of pride helped him to master him-
self. He bowed to the Queen and to Donna Andri-
ana Duodo ; both threw him the same twin smiles as
from the gliding barge on the Grand Canal. His
glance sought La Foscarina in the glitter of the first
rows, travelled to the back of the assembly, where
only a dark zone dotted with pale spots appeared.
The silent, expectant multitude appeared to him in
the image of a gigantic many-eyed chimera, its bosom
covered with shining scales, stretching its blackness
under the enormous scrolls of the rich, heavy ceiling
that hung over it like a suspended treasure.

Splendid indeed was that chimeric bosom on which
necklaces^ glittered, that had certainly flashed before
under that same ceiling on the night of some coro-
nation festival. The diadem and ornaments of the
Queen and her many pearl necklaces, graduated
drops of light that suggested a miraculous falling in
grains of a smile just about to break out; the dark
emeralds of Andriana Duodo, originally torn from the
hilt of a scimitar; the rubies of Giustiniana Memo,
set after the manner of carnations by the inimitable

44 THE FLAME OF LIFE

workmanship of Vettor Camelio; the sapphires of
Lucrezia Priuli, taken from the heels of the high san-
dals on which the Most Serene Zilia had stepped to
her throne on the day of her triumph; the beryls of
Orsetta Contarini, so deHcately set in opaque gold by
the artist hand of Silvestro Grifo ; the turquoises of
Zenobia Corner, turned strangely pale by the myste-
rious disease that had changed them one night as
they lay on the moist bosom of the Lusignana among
the pleasures of Asolo, the proudest jewels that had
adorned the old-time festivals of the Sea-City, — flashed
with renewed fire on the chimera's bosom, and from
it a tepid exhalation of feminine skin and breath went
up to Stelio. The rest of that shapeless, strangely
spotted body stretched backwards into an appendage
something like a tail, between the two gigantic
spheres that recalled to the memory of the image
maker the two bronze spheres on which the blind-
folded monster presses its leonine claws in the Alle-
gory of Giambellino. And that accumulation of
blind animal life, void of all thought before him who
in that hour was alone to think, gifted with the same
inert fascination possessed by enigmatic idols, cov-
ered by its own silence as by a shield capable of
receiving and repulsing any vibration, waited for the
air to palpitate under his first dominating word.

Stelio Effrena measured the silence in which his
first word should fall. As his voice rose to his lips,
an effort of will leading it and strengthening it against
his instinctive emotion, he caught sight of La Foscarina
standing against the iron railing round the celestial
sphere. The head of the tragic actress rose from her
unadorned neck, and the purity of her bare shoulders

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 45

above the orbit of the signs of the zodiac. Stelio
admired the art of that apparition. Fixing his own
on those far-off adoring eyes, he began speaking very
slowly, as if the rhythm of the oars was still in his
ears.

" One afternoon not long ago, returning from the
Gardens along the warm bank of the Schiavoni, that
must often have seemed to some wandering poet like
I know not what golden magic bridge stretching out
over a sea of light and silence to some infinite dream
of beauty, I thought, or rather I stood by and watched
my own thoughts as I would an intimate spectacle, —
I thought of the nuptial alliance of Autumn and
Venice under those skies.

" A sense of life was diffused everywhere ; a sense of
life made up of passionate expectation and restrained
ardour, that surprised me by its vehemence, but yet
could not seem new to me, because I had already
found it gathered in some belt of shadow under the
almost deathly immobility of summer, and I had also
felt it here vibrating now and then like a mysterious
pulsation under the strange, feverish odour of the
waters. Thus, I thought, this pure City of Art truly
aspires to the supreme condition of that beauty that
is an annual return in her as is the giving forth of
flowers to the forest. She tends to reveal herself
in a full harmony as if she still carried in herself,
powerful and conscious, that desire of perfection
from which she was born and formed through the
ages like some divine creature. Under the motion-
less fires of a summer sky she seemed pulseless and
breathless, dead indeed in her green waters ; but my
feeling did not deceive me when I divined her

46 THE FLAME OF LIFE

secretly labouring under a spirit of life that would
prove sufficiently powerful to renew the highest of
older miracles.

" This I thought as I stood by and witnessed the
splendid spectacle that my eyes were made capable
of contemplating by a peculiar gift of love and poetry,
seeming to change their faculty of sight into a deep
and lasting vision. . . . But how shall I ever commu-
nicate to those who hear me my vision of joy and
beauty? There can be no dawn and no sunset
to equal such an hour of light on the waters and
among the stones. And no sudden appearing of a
beloved woman in a wood in spring could be in-
toxicating like the unexpected revelation in full day-
light of the heroic and voluptuous city, bringing to
my arms, to be crushed there, the richest dream ever
dreamed by a Latin soul."

The voice of the speaker, clear, penetrating, almost
icy at first, seemed to have been suddenly warmed
by the invisible sparks that doubtless were wrung
from his brain by the effort of improvisation governed
by the acute vigilance of his fastidious ear. As the
words flowed without impediment, and the rhythmic
line of his periods closed round them like a figure
drawn at one stroke by a bold hand, his listeners
could feel under that harmonious fluidity the excess
of the tension tormenting his spirit, and were held
captive by it as by one of those savage Circensian
games in whicl^ aH the energies of the athlete are
made manifest, the V^ibration of his sinews and the
swollen tissue of his arteries. They could feel how
much was actual, warmj and alive in the thoughts so
expressed, and their enjoyment was greater because

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 47

so unlocked for, all having expected from that un-
tiring seeker after perfection the studied reading of a
laboriously composed discourse. With deep emotion
his devotees witnessed the audacious test, as if the
mysterious process whence the forms had arisen that
had held out to them so many gifts of joy was being
laid bare before them. And that first emotion diffused
by contagion and indefinitely multiplied by numbers
became unanimous, and flowed back to him who had
produced it, threatening to overcome him.

It was the expected peril. He swayed as if under
the shock of a wave too strong for him. And for
some seconds a thick darkness filled his brain, the
light of his thought went out like a torch at the
breath of some irresistible wind, his eyes clouded as
in the early stage of faintness. He felt how great
the shame of defeat would be if he yielded to that
bewilderment. And in that darkness, with a kind of
sharp percussion, as of steel on flint, his will created
the new spark.

With a look and gesture he lifted the eye of the
crowd up to the masterpiece spreading over the ceil-
ing of the hall, a kind of sun-given radiance.

" Thus I am sure," he exclaimed, — " thus the city
appeared to Veronese while he was seeking within
himself the image of the triumphant Queen. Ah, I
am sure he must have trembled to his remotest fibres
and bent his knee like one stricken and bewildered
by a miracle, prostrating himself in adoration, arid
when he tried to manifest his wonder to mankind
and to paint her here, he, the prodigal artist who
seems to have collected in himself all the imagina-
tions of the most unbridled satraps, the magnificent

48 THE FLAME OF LIFE

poet whose soul was like that Lydian river called by
the harmonious Greeks Chrysorroes, from whose gold-
yielding springs a whole dynasty of kings came
forth laden with wealth, — he, Veronese, scattered
in profusion gold, jewels, amaranth, purple, ermine,
all that is sumptuous elsewhere, but he could only
picture the glorious face in a halo of shadow.

" We should unite in exalting Veronese if only
for that veil of shadow ! All the mystery and the
fascination of Venice are in that shadow, small yet
infinite, composed of things living but unknowable,
gifted with the portentous virtue of the fabulous cav-
erns where gems had eyes to see, and where men
have found coolness and ardour at the same time in
one inexpressibly ambiguous sensation. We must
praise Veronese for this. The giving a human as-
pect to his representation of the queenly city has
enabled him to grasp its essential spirit, which is
only symbolically an inextinguishable flame seen
through a veil of water. And I know of one whose
spirit, having been long saturated with these things,
withdrew it enriched by a new power, and hence-
forth treated his art and his life with a more ardent
touch."

Was he not himself that one? He seemed to re-
cover all his assurance and to feel himself out of
danger after this assertion, master of his thoughts
and words, capable of drawing into the circle of his
dream the giant chimera of the bosom covered with
glittering scales, the elusive and versatile monster
from whose sides emerged the tragic muse, her head
raised above the belt of constellations.

Obeying his gesture, the numberless faces turned

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 49

to the apotheosis. The unveiled eyes gazed won-
deringly at the marvel, as if they saw it for the first
time, or under a hitherto unknown aspect. The
wide, bare shoulders of the woman with the golden
helmet shone on the cloud with strongly accentuated
muscular life that made it as tempting as a palpable
body. And from that living nudity, conqueror of
time that had obscured beneath her the heroic
images of sieges and battles, a voluptuous charm
seemed to emanate, made sweeter by the breath of
the autumn night floating through the open windows
that stirred it as it stirred the wave of perfume hov-
ering round the fragrant rose-bushes, while the prin-
cesses from on high, bending over the balustrades
between the two spiral columns, inclined their burn-
ing faces and their opulent bosoms towards their
latest worldly sisters in the hall below.

Under this incantation, the poet began tossing his
periods to his audience, -harmonising them like lyric
stanzas.

" It was indeed some such flame which I felt
yesterday rising to extreme vehemence and confer-
ring on the beauty of Venice a power of expression
never before seen. The whole city kindled with
desire before my eyes, and throbbing with expecta-
tion within its thousand girdles of green like a woman
in love awaiting her hour of joy. She held her
marble arms out to the wild autumn whose per-
fumed breath reached her from the delicious death
of the distant landscape, and watched the light va-
pours that rose from the confines of the lagoon draw-
ing near her, silent, like furtive messages. Intently
she listened to the slightest sounds in the silence she

4

so THE FLAME OF LIFE

herself had made, and the breath of the wind flying
through her rare gardens had a musical continuation
that prolonged it outside the enclosures. A kind of
stupor gathered round the solitary imprisoned trees
that were changing colour, becoming resplendent like
some burning things. The dry leaf that had fallen
on the worn stone of the bank shone like some pre-
cious thing ; at the summit of the wall adorned with
fair lichens the pomegranate, swollen with maturity,
burst suddenly like a beautiful mouth that breaks
open by an impulse of cordial laughter. A boat
passed, slow and wide, filled with bunches like a
wine-press spreading through the air, and above the
waters with their tangle of sea-weed, the intoxication
of the vintage season, and a vision of solitary vineyards
full of young men and women singing. A deep
eloquence spoke from all surrounding objects, as if
invisible signs adhered to visible aspects and all were
living by some divine Hellenic privilege in the higher
truth of art.

" Surely, then," I thought, — " surely there must be
in the city of stone and water, as in the spirit of the
pure artist, a spontaneous and constant aspiration
to ideal harmonies. A kind of fictitious rhythmical
imagination seems to spaciously elaborate its repre-
sentations, conforming them to an idea, as it were,
and directing them to a premeditated end. Her
marvellous hands seem to weave her light and
shadows into a continual work of beauty; she
dreams over her work, and from her own dream,
transfiguring the heritage of centuries, she draws
that tissue of inimitable allegories by which she is
covered. And, because poetry alone is truth, he

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 5!

who knows how to contemplate it and draw it into
himself by the virtue of thought will be near know-
ing the secret of victory over life."

He had sought the eyes of Daniele Glauro while
uttering the last words, and had seen them shine
with joy under the vast, thoughtful brow that seemed
swollen by the presence of an unborn world. The
mystic doctor was there with his whole legion, with
some of thcJse unknown disciples whom he had de-
scribed to Stelio as eager and anxious, full of faith
and expectation, panting to break through the nar-
rowness of their daily servitude, and to know some
free ecstasy of joy or pain. Stelio saw them there,
serried together in a group, like a nucleus of com-
pressed forces, leaning against the great reddish
bookcases whose numberless volumes of forgotten
and inert science lay buried. He could tell them by
their intent, animated faces, their long, thick hair,
their mouths that were either opened in child-like
stupor or tightened with a sort of violence full of
sensitiveness, their light or dark eyes to which the
breath of his words seemed to bring alternate lights
and shadows like the passing of a breeze over a bed
of delicate flowers. He seemed to be holding their
united souls in his hands, able to agitate one or the
other, and crush it, or tear it and burn it as if it were
only some light banner. Whilst his spirit stretched
and relaxed in its continual discharge, there still re-
mained to him an extraordinary lucidity of exterior
analysis, a kind of separate faculty of material obser-
vation, that seemed to become ever more acute and
more sharply defined as his eloquence warmed and
quickened. Little by little he felt his effort becom-

52 THE FLAME OF LIFE

ing easier and the efficacy of his will being supple-
mented by an energy free and obscure as an instinct
that rose from the depths of his unconsciousness,
operating by an occult process impossible to gauge.
Association reminded him of the extraordinary mo-
ments in which — in the silence and intellectual heat
of his remote chamber — his hand had written an
immortal verse that had seemed to him not born
of his brain, but dictated by an impetuous deity to
which his unconscious organ had obeyed like a blind
instrument. A not unsimilar miracle was now taking
place within him, surprising his ear by the unforeseen
cadence of the words that fell from his lips. An
almost divine mystery was unfolding through the
communion into which his soul had entered with the
soul of the crowd. Something greater and stronger
was adding itself to the feeling he had about his own
person. And at every moment it seemed that his
voice was acquiring a higher virtue.

He saw the ideal picture complete and living within
himself, and his manifestation of it in the language of
poetry was after the manner of the master-colourists
who reign in that place. The luxuriance of Veronese,
the ardour of Tintoretto, was in his speech.

" And the hour was approaching; the hour of the
supreme feast was at hand. There was an unusual
light in the heavens coming from the far-away hori-
zon, as if the wild bridegroom were waving his purple
banner as he drew nearer in his fiery chariot. The
wind roused by his speed was heavy with all the per-
fumes of the earth, and reminded the expectant one
on the water where the vague sea-locks floated of the
white, compact rose-bushes that here and there grew

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 53

against the balustrades of the gardens overlooking
the Brenta, melting little by little like masses of
snow. The distant country seemed entirely reflected
in the crystal of the air as by the fallacious mirage
of the desert; and that impression of nature served
to magnify the rarity of the dream of art, for no
autumnal pageant of woods and meadows was com-
parable in the memory to the divine life and transfig-
urations of those ancient stones.

" Is not some god coming to the city who offers
herself? I asked of my own spirit, overcome by the
anxiety and desire of pleasure expressed around me
as if a fever of infinite passion invaded all things.
And I called up the most powerful artist to picture
that young, expected god with proud form and re-
fulgent colours.

" He was indeed coming ! The inverted goblet of
the sky poured down a stream of splendour that, at
first, seemed incredible to me, for it was of a quality
richer even than the richest light of inspired thought
or involuntary dream. The water was like some
starry matter of an unknown, changeable nature, sug-
gesting in myriads the indistinct images of a fluid
world. A perpetual quiver drew from it harmonies
for ever new by a series of stupendously easy destruc-
tions and creations. Between the wonders of sky and
water the stones that were multiform and many-souled,
like a forest or like a people, the silent company of
marbles from which the genius of art has extracted
the occult conceptions of nature, on which time has
accumulated its mysteries and glory engraved its
signs; along the hidden veins of which the human
spirit rises towards the ideal, as the sap ascends to

54 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the flower through the fibres of the plant, — the mul-
tiform and many-souled stone constantly took on
some expression of life so new and intense that law
seemed destroyed for it, and its original inertness
flooded by a miraculous sensibility.

" Each second after vibrated on these things
like an unbearable flash. From the crosses on the
tops of the cupolas swollen by prayer to the slight
saline crystals hanging under the arch of the bridges,
all glittered in a supreme jubilation of light. Like
the sentinel on the rampart throwing his sharp cry
to Expectation quivering like a storm below him,
so the golden angel from the summit of the greater
tower at last flashed out the announcement.

" And He appeared. He appeared sitting on a
cloud as on a chariot of fire, the long ends of his
purple raiment trailing behind him, imperious though
gentle, his half-open lips full of sylvan murmurs and
silences, his hair floating over his strong neck, his
titanic breast, hardened by the breath of the forest
quite bare. He turned his youthful countenance to
the City Beautiful. An indescribable inhuman fasci-
nation emanated from that countenance. I know not
what refined yet cruel brutality that contrasted with
his deep eyes full of knowledge shining under heavy
lids. His blood leapt and pulsated violently through-
out his body to the extreme joints of the firm hands
and to the toes of the nimble feet ; and occult things
were about his whole being, concealing joy as the
grape still in flower conceals the wine; and all the
tawny gold and purple that He brought with him
were like the raiment of his senses. . . .

"With what passion, palpitating under her thousand

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 55

girdles of green and the weight of her great jewels,
the City Beautiful gave herself up to the magnificent
God ! "

Lifted up in the vortex of those words, the soul of
the crowd seemed to reach the sense of Beauty at
one bound, at a height never before attained, and to
stand surprised there. The poet's eloquence was
seconded by the expression of all that surrounded
him; it seemed to resume and continue the rhythms
obeyed by all that effigied strength and grace; it
seemed to sum up the unlimited concordances be-
tween the forms created by human art and the
qualities of the natural atmosphere that perpetu-
ated themselves. This was why his voice had so
much power ; why his gesture so easily enlarged the
outlines of images; why in every syllable he pro-
nounced there was added to the significance of the
letter the suggestive power of sound. And it was
not the effect of the usual electric communication
established between speaker and audience only, but
of the spell that held the wonderful edifice to its
foundations and that gathered extraordinary vigour
from the unaccustomed contact of that palpitating
agglomerated humanity. The pulse of the crowd
and the voice of the poet seemed to restore their
own life to those ancient walls, and to renew its origi-
nal spirit in the cold museum with its nucleus of
powerful ideas, made concrete and organic in the
most durable of substances to bear witness to the
nobility of a race.

A splendour of youth almost divine fell on the
women, as it might have fallen in a sumptuous al-
cove; they too had felt the anxiety of expectance

56 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and the joy of surrender, like the City Beautiful.
They were smiling with vague languor as if exhausted
by a sensation that had been too stirring, their bare
shoulders emerging like flowers from their corollas
of gems. The emeralds of Andriana Duodo, the
rubies of Giustiniana Memo, the sapphires of Lu-
crezia Priuli, the beryls of Orsetta Contarini, the
turquoises of Zenobia Corner, all the heirlooms in
whose flame there was a little more than the mere
value of their substance, just as in the decorations
of the great hall there was a little more than even
the value of art, seemed to throw on the white faces
of the patrician women the reflection of a joyous,
shameless anterior life, as if awakening in them and
by some secret virtue raising from the abyss the
souls of the voluptuous women who had offered men
their bodies saturated with myrrh, with musk, and
with amber, and to the public their rouged uncovered
breasts.

As he watched the bust of the large many-eyed
chimera on which the feathers of the women's
fans flapped softly, hot intoxication swept over his
thoughts, disquieting him, suggesting words of al-
most carnal essence, some of those living sub-
stantial words with which he had often touched
women as if with caressing and inviting fingers.
The multiplied reverberation in himself of the vibra-
tion produced by him shook him so deeply that he
was about to lose his usual balance. He felt himself
swinging above the crowd like a concave and sono-
rous body in which the various resonances were
generated by the action of an indistinct though
infallible will. During the pauses he would anx-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 57

iously await the unforeseen manifestation of that will,
while the interior echoes still remained as of a voice
not his own having pronounced words expressive of
thoughts that were new to him. And that sky, and
that water, and those marbles, and the autumn as he
had described it, seemed to have no connection with
his own late sensations, but to belong to a world of
dreams of which he had caught sight while he was
speaking — in a rapid succession of flashes.

It surprised him, this unknown power that con-
verged in him, abolishing the limits of his own
person and conferring the fulness of a chorus on
his solitary voice. This, then, was the mysterious
truce that the revelation of beauty could bring to
the daily existence of the breathless multitude ; this
the mysterious will that could possess the Poet about
to answer the multiform soul questioning him as to
the value of life and yearning to raise itself, if once
only, towards the eternal idea. He was only the
means by which beauty held out the divine gift of
oblivion to the men gathered in a place consecrated
by centuries of human glory. He was only trans-
lating in the rhythm of words the visible language
with which the ancient artists had already set forth
in that very spot the prayer and aspiration of the
race. Those men would now contemplate the world,
for an hour at least, with different eyes ; surely they
would think and dream with a different soul.

It was the highest benefit of beauty made mani-
fest; it was the victory of art, the liberator, over
the misery and anxiety and tedium of ordinary
existence; it was one of those happy intervals in
which the stabs of necessity and pain seem to cease

58 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and the clenched hand of destiny slowly to relax its
hold. His thoughts overstepped the walls that
closed the palpitating crowd into a sort of heroic
cycle, a zone of red triremes and fortified towers and
triumphant processions. The place seemed too nar-
row now for the exaltation of his new feeling, and
once again the real crowd attracted him, the great,
unanimous crowd he had seen outside and had heard
sending up in the starry night a clamour by which it
was itself intoxicated as by wine or blood.

And his thoughts went out not only to this but
to infinite other multitudes. He conjured them up
crowded in a theatre, held by a dominating idea of
truth and beauty; silent and intent before the great
arch of the stage open on some marvellous trans-
figuration of human life, or frenzied by the sudden
splendour radiating from an immortal phrase. And
his dream of higher Art as it rose again showed him
mankind once more seized by reverence for the poets
as for those who alone can interrupt human anguish
for a while, assuage its thirst, and dispense oblivion.
And the test he was undergoing, now seemed much
too slight : he felt himself capable of creating gigan-
tic fictions. And the still formless work that he was
nourishing within him leapt with a great shudder of
life as he saw the tragic actress standing out from the
sphere of constellations, the Muse with the diffusing
voice who seemed to carry the very frenzy of those
distant multitudes silenced in the folds of her dress.

Almost as if the intensity of the life he had lived
during the pause had exhausted him, there was a
more subdued note in his voice when he began
speaking again.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 59

" Under this image," he resumed, — " under this
image so real and evident to me at the time I saw it
that it seemed nearly tangible, do you not see the
analogies that make it significant of singular things?

" The mutual passion of Venice and Autumn that
exalts the one and the other to the highest degree of
their sensuous beauty has its origin in a deep affinity ;
for the soul of Venice, the soul fashioned for the City
Beautiful by its great artists is autumnal.

" The correspondence between the external and
the interior spectacle once discovered, my enjoyment
found itself unspeakably multiplied. The crowd of
imperishable forms that peoples its churches and
palaces seemed from these latter to answer the har-
mony of daylight with a chord so deep and powerful
that it soon became dominant. And — because the
light of Heaven alternates with shadows, but the light
of Art lasts in the human soul and cannot be extin-
guished — when the miracle of the hour ceased to
cover all those things, my spirit felt itself alone and
ecstatic among the splendours of an ideal autumn.

" It is under this aspect that the artistic creation
hemmed in between the youth of Giorgione and the
old age of Tintoretto appears to me. It is purple,
golden, rich, and expressive, like a pageant of the
earth under the sun's last flame. Whenever I con-
sider the impetuous creators of so much powerful
beauty an image presents itself to my mind drawn
from a fragment of Pindar, — ' When the centaurs
became acquainted with the virtues of wine, which is
sweet as honey and conquers men, they at once ban-
ished the white milk from their tables and hastened
to partake of their wine in silver horns.' None in

6o THE FLAME OF LIFE

the world knew and tasted of the wine of life more
than they. They drew from it a sort of lucid in-
toxication that multiplied their power and communi-
cated a fertilising energy to their eloquence. And in
the most beautiful of their creations the violent throb
of their pulses seems to have persisted through the
ages, like the very rhythm of Venetian Art.

" How pure and poetic is the sleep of the Virgin
Ursula on her immaculate bed ! A gentle silence
hovers in the solitary room; the habit of prayer
seems sketched on the pious lips of the sleeper. The
shy light of dawn pierces through the doors and the
half-open windows, pointing to the word written on the
corner of her pillow. INFANTIA is the simple word
spreading round the maiden's head, something like
the freshness of morning : INFANTIA. The maiden,
already betrothed to the princely barbarian and des-
tined for martyrdom, sleeps on. As she lies there
fervent, ingenuous, and chaste, does she not seem the
image of art such as the precursors saw it in the
sincerity of their child-like eyes? INFANTIA. The
word calls up all the forgotten ones round that pil-
low, — Lorenzo Veneziano and Simone da Cusighe,
and Catarino and lacobello, and Maestro Paolo and
Giambono, and Semitecolo and Antonio, Andrea and
Quirizio da Murano, and the whole of the laborious
family by which colour, afterwards the rival of fire,
was prepared in the burning island of furnaces.

" But would not they themselves have uttered a
cry of surprise had they seen the wave of blood
that poured from the breast of the Virgin when
pierced by the handsome pagan archer? Blood so
crimson flowing from a maiden nurtured on ' white

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 6i

milk ' ! It is a very orgy of slaughter ; the archers
have brought their finest arms to it, their richest
apparel, their most elegant gestures, as to a festival.
The golden-haired barbarian aiming his dart at the
martyr with so proud an act of grace seems the
youth Eros chrysalised and wingless.

" This same agreeable slayer of innocence will
presently give himself up to the enchantment of
music, and laying aside his bow will dream a dream
of infinite pleasure.

" Well may Giorgione be considered as the one
to infuse the new soul into him, and to kindle
it with an implacable desire. The music that
enchants him is not the melody of angelic lutes
diffused between the arches that curve over radiant
thrones, or dwindling into serene distances in the
visions of the third Bellini. It is still at the touch of
religious hands that it rises from the harpsichord,
but the world it awakens is full of a joy and of a sad-
ness in which sin lies hidden.

" Whoever has looked at the Concerto with saga-
cious eyes has fathomed an extraordinary and irrevo-
cable moment of the Venetian soul. By means of
the harmony of colour, the power of significance of
which is unlimited as the mystery of sound, the
artist shows us the first workings of a yearning soul
to whom life suddenly appears under the aspect of
a rich inheritance.

"The monk sitting at the harpsichord and his
older companion are not monks like those that Vit-
tore Carpaccio painted flying from the wild beast
that Jerome had tamed, in San Giorgio degli Schia-
voni. They are of nobler and stronger essence, and

62 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the air they breathe is finer and richer: it is pro-
pitious to the birth of a great joy or a great sorrow,
or a haughty dream. What notes do the beautiful,
sensitive hands draw from the keys where they hn-
ger ? Magic notes they must be, certainly, to succeed
in working in the musician so violent a transfigura-
tion. He is half-way through his earthly existence,
he is already detached from his youth, already
on the verge of decay, and life is only now revealing
itself adorned with all its good things, like a forest
laden with purple fruit, of which his hands that were
intent on other work have never known the velvet
bloom. He does not fall under the dominion of some
solitary tempting image, because his sensuality slum-
bers, but he undergoes a confused kind of anguish in
which regret overcomes desire while on the web of
the harmonies that he seeks, the vision of his past —
such as it might have been and was not — weaves itself,
before his eyes like a design of Chimerae. His com-
panion, who is calm because already on the threshold
of old age, divines this inner tempest; kindly and
gravely he touches the shoulder of the passionate
musician with a pacifying movement. Emerging from
the warm shadow like the expression of desire itself,
we see the youth with the plumed hat and the un-
shorn locks, the fiery flower of adolescence, whom
Giorgione seems to have created under the influence
of a ray reflected from the stupendous Hellenic myth
whence the ideal form of Hermaphrodite arose. He
is there, present and yet a stranger, separated from
the others as one having no care but for his own
good. The music seems to exalt his inexpressible
dream and to multiply infinitely his power of enjoy-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 63

ment. He knows that he is master of the life that
escapes both the others;' the harmonies sought after
by the player seem only the prelude to his own
feast. He glances sideways intently as if turning to
I know not what that fascinates him, and that he
would fascinate; his closed mouth is a mouth heavy
with a yet ungiven kiss; his forehead is so spacious
that the leafiest of crowns would not encumber it, but
if I consider his hidden hands, I can only imagine
them in the act of crumpling the laurel leaves to per-
fume his fingers."

The hands of the Life-giver moved as if they were
imitating the gesture of the covetous youth and truly
extracting its essence from the aromatic leaf; the
manner of his voice gave to the image thus presented
an appearance so strongly detached that all those
among his listeners who were young thought their
unspeakable desire was at last finding expression,
and their inner dream of uninterrupted and unending
pleasure being made manifest. A profound emotion
seized them, an obscure agitation of controlled im-
pulses ; they seemed to divine new possibilities, the
prey that was unhoped for and distant seemed hence-
forth tangible. Stelio recognised them here and there
along the whole length of the hall, leaning against
the great reddish bookcases where the numberless
volumes of inert and forgotten wisdom lay buned.
They occupied the space left free all round, making
a border for the compact mass that was like a living
hem ; and as the extreme edges of a flag that waves
in the wind have a stronger flutter, thus they too
throbbed more than the rest of the audience at the
valiant breath of the poet's words.

64 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Stelio recognised them all. Some he could distin-
guish by the singularity of their attitude, by the ex-
cess of emotion betrayed in the curve of their lips, or
the throb of their temples, or the fire of their cheeks.
On the faces of some that were turned to the open
balcony he divined the enchanting effect of the
autumn night and their dehght in the breezes coming
from the weedy lagoon. The eyes of another, in a
ray of love, would point out to him some seated
woman, looking as if she had given herself up to her-
self, with an indefinable expression of impure languor,
with a soft snow-white face where the mouth seemed
the entrance to a hive moist with honey.

A strange lucidity possessed him, which gave un-
usual evidence to the things he saw, as if they ap-
peared to him in the hallucination of fever. All
things in his eyes were living a hyperbolic life ; the
portraits of the Doges that recurred round the room
among the white meandering of the maps breathed
as truly as the bald old men at the further end whose
monotonous gestures he could discern at intervals as
they wiped their pale, heated brows. Nothing escaped
him; not the persistent tearfulness of the hanging
torches in the bronze baskets that gathered up the
wax yellow as amber, nor the extreme fineness of a
gemmed hand that would press a handkerchief to
sorrowful lips as if to soothe a burn, nor the folds of
a light scarf thrown round bare shoulders to which
the night breeze breathing through the open bal-
conies had brought a shiver. And, nevertheless,
while he noted these thousand transient aspects, there
remained in his vision the entire image of the vast
thousand-eyed chimera, from whose side the tragic

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 65

Muse emerged, her head rising above the belt of
constellations.

His eyes constantly returned to the promised
woman who was appearing to him there as the living
fulcrum of a starry world. He was grateful to her
for having chosen such a way of appearing to him in
the moment of that first communion. He no longer
saw in her now the passing mistress of a night, a
body ripened by long ardour, laden with voluptuous
knowledge, but as the admirable instrument of a new
art, the apostle of the highest poetry. He saw in her
the woman who was to incarnate his future fictions
of beauty in her manifold person; whose unfor-
gettable voice was to carry the words of enlighten-
ment to distant peoples. It was not by a promise of
pleasure that he now bound himself to her, but by a
promise of glory, and the work that was still formless
within him leapt once more.

" You who are listening to me," he continued, " do
you not see some analogies between these three sym-
bols of Giorgione's and those three generations liv-
ing at the time and illumined by the dawn of a new
century? Venice, the triumphant city, reveals her-
self to their eyes like a great overpleasing banquet
where all the wealth gathered by all the centuries
of war and commerce is to be spread out without
measure. What richer fountain of pleasure could
there be to initiate life in insatiable desire? It
is a moment of emotion, almost of bewilderment,
that, because of its fulness, is worthy an hour of
heroic violence. Stirring voices and laughter seem
to come from the hills of Asolo, where in the midst
of her pleasures reigns the daughter of San Marco,

5

66 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Domina Aceli, who fsund the girdle of Aphrodite in
the myrtle gardens of Cyprus. The youth of the
white feathers comes at last towards the banquet, a
leader followed by an unbridled retinue ; and at last
we see all the strongest appetites burning like torches,
the flames of which are ceaselessly quickened by an
impetuous wind.

"Thus begins that divine autumn of Art to the
splendour of which man will turn with a deep throb
of emotion as long as the human soul is capable
of aspiring to transcend the narrowness of its daily
existence to live a more fervent life or die a nobler
death. .

" Giorgione is now imminent on that marvellous
sphere, but I cannot recognise his mortal person, and
I seek him in the mystery of the fiery cloud that
girds him round. He appears more like, a myth to
us than a man. The destiny of no poet on earth is
comparable to his. All, or nearly all, concerning him
is imknown. Some have gone so far as to deny his
existence. His name is written on no work of his,
and no work is attributed to him with certainty.
Yet the whole of Venetian art seems to have been
inflamed by his revelation. The great Cisan appears
to have received from him the secret of infusing a
stream of luminous blood into the veins of the beings
he creates. In all truth Giorgione represents in Art
the Epiphany of the Flame. He deserves to be called
the Bearer of Fire, like Prometheus.

" When I consider the rapidity with which the sa-
cred gift has passed from artist to artist, glowing ever
more gloriously from colour to colour, the image
rises spontaneous in my spirit of one of those festi-

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 6-j

vals by which the Greeks attempted to perpetuate the
image of the Titan son of Japetus. On the day of the
festival a group of young Athenian horsemen would
ride, galloping from Ceramicus to Colonos, their
leader waving a torch lit at the altar of the temple.
Whenever the rapidity of their course extinguished
it, the bearer would give it up to his companion, who,
still galloping, would relight it, and this one passed
it to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on
ever galloping until the last laid it, still burning, on
the altar of the Titan. This image, with all that is
vehement in it, is in some way significant to me of
the feast of the master-colourists of Venice. Each of
them, even the least glorious, has had the sacred gift
in his hand, at least for a moment. Some even, like
that first Bonifacio whom we should glorify, seem
to have gathered with their incombustible fingers the
inner flower of this flame."

His own fingers moved in the air as if to pick the
ideal flower from the invisible summit of the wave
that the seething soul of the chimera was propelling
towards the poet who had conquered it. And his
eyes travelled to the celestial sphere, silently offering
the fiery gift of that flower to her who watched over
the godlike beasts of the Zodiac. " To you, Perdita."

But the woman was smiling to some one far away,
pointing to some one with her smile. And so, by
following the thread of her smile, he was led to an
unknown person suddenly lit up on a background
of shadow.

Was not that the creature of music whose name
had resounded against the iron of the ship in the
silence and the shadow?

68 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She seemed to him almost an interior image sud-
denly sprung up in that part of his soul where
the ghost of the sensation that had fallen upon
him as he entered the shadow of the ironclad had
remained like an obscure and indistinct point. For
a second she was beautiful, with the beauty of his
own unexpressed thoughts.

" A City to which similar creatures have given so
powerful a soul," he added, agile on the rising wave,
" is only considered to-day, by the many, as a great
inert shrine full of relics, or as a refuge full of peace
and oblivion !

" Indeed I know of no other place in the world —
unless it be Rome — where an ambitious and robust
spirit can spur on the active virtue of his intellect
and all the energies of his being towards the supreme
degree, better than on these sluggish waters. And
I know of no marsh capable of provoking in human
pulses a fever more violent than that which at times
creeps towards us from the shadow of a silent canal.
And those men who spend their noontide buried in
the ripe crop during the dog-days feel no wilder
wave of blood rise to their temples than that which
dims our eyes when we bend too intently over these
waters, seeking lest by chance we should discover in
the depths below them some ancient sword or old lost
diadem.

" Nevertheless, do not all fragile souls come here
as to a place of refuge? those who hide some secret
wound, those who have accomplished some final
renunciation, those whom a morbid love has emascu-
lated, and those who only seek silence the better to
hear themselves perish ? Perhaps Venice is in their

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 69

eyes a clement city of death, embraced by a sleep-
giving pool. Their presence, however, weighs no
more than the wandering weeds floating about the
steps of the marble palaces. They only serve to
increase the singular odour of sickly things, the
strange feverish odour on which we have often found
it sweet, towards evening, after a laborious day, to
nurse the fulness of our own feelings, at times so
akin to languor.

" Yet the ambiguous city does not always indulge
the illusion of those who worship her as a peace-
giver. I know of one who started up from his rest
on her bosom as terrified as if he had been lying
with the pliant fingers of his beloved on his tired
eyelids and had heard snakes suddenly hissing in
her hair.

" Ah, if I could only show you the prodigious life
that I see throbbing under her vast necklaces and
her thousand girdles of green ! Day by day she
absorbs more of our soul : now giving it back to us
intact and fresh, and renewed with a primitive new-
ness on which the traces of the morrow's things will
impress themselves with ineffable clearness ; now
giving it back to us infinitely subtle and voracious,
like a flame melting all that approaches it, so that at
evening, among the dross and ashes of it, we some-
times come upon some extraordinary sublimate.
She entices each of us into the act that is the very
genesis of our species : the effort to surpass our-
selves unceasingly. She shows us the possibility of
transforming pain into the most efiicacious of stimu-
lating energies ; she teaches us that joy is the most
certain means of knowledge offered us by Nature,

;o THE FLAME OF LIFE

and that he who has suffered much is less wise than
he who has much enjoyed."

Here and there a vague murmur of dissent rip-
pled through the audience; the Queen denied the
assertion with a slight shake of her head; some
ladies communicated a sort of graceful horror to each
other in an exchange of glances. Then all was lost
in the zeal of the youthful applause that on every
side went out to him who taught with such truthful
daring the art of ascending to superior forms of life
by the power of joy.

Stelio smiled as he recognised his own, who were
many; smiled on recognising the efficacy of his
teaching that had already cleared the mists of inert
sadness from more than one spirit, and in more than
one had killed cowardice and vain tears, and in more
than one had instilled for ever a scorn of complain-
ing sorrows and weak compassions. He was glad of
having given utterance once more to that principle
of his doctrine which flowed naturally from the soul
of the art he was glorifying. And they who had
withdrawn into a hermit's cell to adore a sad phantom
that only lived in the blurred mirror of their own
eyes ; and they who had made themselves kings of
a windowless palace, from time immemorial awaiting
a visitation there ; and they who had hoped to dig
up the image of Beauty from under some ruin and
had only found a worn sphinx that had tormented
them with its endless enigmas; and they who sat
down evening after evening on their doorsteps, pale,
to await the arrival of a mysterious stranger bringing
endless gifts under his mantle, and pressed their
ears flat on the ground to hear the footsteps that

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 71

now seemed to draw near and now to fade away ; all
those who were sterilised by a resigned mourning or
devoured by a desperate pride ; those who were hard-
ened by a useless obstinacy or kept sleepless by some
continually disappointed expectation, — he would
have bid them all come and recognise their disease
under the splendour of that ancient yet ever-resurgent
soul.

" If its whole population were to emigrate," he said,
in a voice full of exaltation, " forsaking its homes,
attracted by other shores, as once its own heroic
youth were tempted by the arch of the Bosphorus
in the time of the Doge Pietro Ziani, and no prayer
were again to strike the sonorous gold of the curved
mosaics, no oar were again to perpetuate with its
rhythm the meditation of the silent stones, Venice
would yet and for ever remain a City of Life. The
ideal creatures guarded by its silence live in the
whole past and in the whole future. We constantly
find in them new concordances with the edifice of
the Universe that is about to be, unexpected meet-
ings with the idea that was born only yesterday,
clear announcements of that which is only a fore-
boding in us as yet, and open answers to that which
we have not yet dared to ask. They are simple, and
yet charged with numberless significances ; they are
ingenuous, and yet clothed in curious raiment. If we
contemplated them for an indefinite length of time,
they would never cease from pouring dissimilar
truths into our spirits. If we visited them every
day, they would appear to us every day under an
unforeseen aspect, like the sea, the rivers, the fields,
the woods, and the rocks. Sometimes the things

72 THE FLAME OF LIFE

which they say to us do not r&ach as far as our
intellect, but are revealed to us in a kind of confused
happiness causing our own substance to dilate and
quiver from. its very depths. Some clear morning
they will show us the way to the distant forest where
the beautiful one awaits us from time immemorial,
buried in her mystic hair.

"Whence comes their unlimited power?

" From the pure unconsciousness of the artists
who created them.

" Those profound men ignored the immensity of the
things which they expressed. Striking a million roots
into the soil of life, not like single trees, but like the
vastest forests, they have absorbed infinite elements,
which have been transfused and condensed by them
into ideal species whose essences have remained un-
known to them, as the taste of the apple remains un-
known to the branch that bears it. They have been
the mysterious means continually chosen by Nature
to satisfy her continual aspiration to those types which
she has not succeeded in producing in an integral
manner. Because of this, while continuing the work
of the Divine Mother, their mind has become trans-
formed, as Leonardo says, into a ' likeness of the
divine mind.' And because creative force inces-
santly rushed to their fingers like sap to the buds
of the trees, they have created with joy."

All the desire of the artist panting to obtain the
Olympic gift, all his envy of those colossal, untir-
ing, and undoubting forgers of beauty, all his thirst
for happiness and glory, stood revealed in the
accent with which he pronounced the last words.
Once more the soul of the multitude was in the

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 73

poet's power, strained and vibrating like one only-
chord made of a thousand chords, that incalculably
prolonged every resonance. That resonance awak-
ened in it the sense of a truth that it had contained
all along, but that the words of the poet were sud-
denly revealing in the form of a message never
heard before. It no longer felt a stranger in the
sacred place, where one of the most splendid of
human destinies had left so deep a trace of its
splendour; but it could feel the aged mass living
round it and beneath it, from its deepest foundations,
as if its memories, no longer motionless in the shadow
of the past, were circulating through it like the free
winds of a deeply-stirred forest. In the magic res-
pite given to it by the virtue of strength and poetry
the multitude seemed to perceive in itself the inde-
structible signs of its primitive generation, almost
a vague effigy of its remote .ascendency; it seemed
to recognise its right to an old heritage of which
it had been despoiled, — that heritage which the
messenger was telling them was still intact and
within their power to recover. It was experiencing
the agitation of one about to regain a lost fortune.
And over the night that could be seen glittering
through the open balconies, with the red glare of
the illumination that was to encircle the harbour be-
low beginning to appear, there seemed to be spread
the expectation of a foretold home-coming.

In that sonorous silence the solitary voice reached
its climax.

" To create with joy ! " It is the attribute of
Divinity ! It is not possible to imagine at the
summit of our spirit a more triumphal act. The

74 THE FLAME OF LIFE

very words that express it have about them the
qualities of the dawn's resplendence.

" And these artists created by a means that is in
itself a joyous mystery: by colour which is the
ornament of the world; colour, which seems the
effort of matter to become light.

" And such was their extreme musical sense of
colour that their creation transcends the narrow
limits of the pictured symbols, and takes on the
high revealing power of an infinite harmony.

" Never has the sentence pronounced by that
Vinci on whom Truth flashed one day with its thou-
sand sacred faces appeared so evident as before their
great symphonic canvases. Music cannot be called
other than the sister of painting. Their painting
is not only silent poetry, it is also silent music.
For this, the subtlest seekers of rare symbols and
those most anxious to impress the signs of an in-
ternal Universe on the purity of a thoughtful brow
seem to us almost barren in comparison to these
great unconscious musicians.

" When we see Bonifacio in his Parable of Dives
intoning with a note of fire the most powerful har-
mony of colour in which the essence of a haughty
and voluptuous soul has ever stood revealed, we do
not pause with our inquiry at the fair youth listening
to the music, seated between the two magnificent
courtesans, whose faces have the gleam of lamps lit
in pure ether. But piercing through the material
symbol we give ourselves up with anxious emotion
to the power of evocation held by those far-reaching
chords, in which our spirits of to-day seem to find
the foresight of I know not what evening, heavy with

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME ;5

autumnal gold as with beautiful destinies, on a har-
bour quiet as a basin of perfumed oils where a galley
throbbing with oriflames shall enter in the midst of a
strange silence, like a twilight butterfly fluttering into
the veined chalice of a great flower.

" Shall not our mortal eyes really see it landing
under the palace of the Doges some glorious evening?

" Does it not appear to us from a prophetic horizon
in that Allegory of Autumn which Tintoretto offers
us, like a superior created image of our dream of
yesterday?

" Seated on the shore like a deity Venice receives
the ring from the young vine-crowned god who has
descended into the water, while Beauty soars on her
wings with the diadem of stars to crown the wonder-
ful alliance.

" Look at the distant ship ! it seems to bring some
announcement. Look at the body of the symbolic
woman ! both seem capable of bearing the germs of
a world.''

The vast bursting applause was overpowered by
the youthful clamour that rose like a whirlwind
towards him who had made so great a hope flash
before their anxious eyes, towards him who had
revealed himself as possessing so lucid a faith in the
occult genius of their race, in the growing virtue of
the ideals handed down by their fathers, in their
sovereign dignity of spirit, in the indestructible power
of Beauty, in all the great values held as nothing by
modern barbarity. The hearts of his disciples went
out to the master with an impulse of love, with all
the effusion of gratitude, for his ardent words had
brought torch-lights to their souls, and had excited

^e THE FLAME OF LIFE

their sense of life to the point of fever. Giorgione's
creation lived again in each of them : the youth with
the beautiful white feathers, about to grasp the im-
mense accumulated spoil. And to each it seemed as
if his power of enjoyment had been infinitely multi-
plied. Their cry was so expressive of internal tumult,
that the Life-giver shivered inwardly, filled by a
sudden tide of sadness as he thought of the ashes of
that transient fire, of the morrow's cruel awakening.
Against what sharp and ignoble hindrances would
it not have to break, this, their terrible desire of liv-
ing, and the violent will to direct all the energies of
their being to a sublime end, to shape the wings of
victory for their own fate !

But the night was favourable to that youthful
delirium. The dreams of domination, of pleasure,
and of glory that Venice has first nursed, and then
suffocated in her marble arms, seemed to rise again
from the foundations of the palaces, entering by the
open balconies, throbbing like a people newly restored
to life under the enormous scrolls of the ceiling that
was rich and heavy like a suspended treasure. The
strength that- was swelling the muscles of the gods,
kings, and heroes effigied round the ample dome and
the high walls; the beauty that flowed like visible
music through the nudity of the goddesses, the
queens, and the courtesans ; the human strength and
beauty transfigured by centuries of art, — harmonised
in one single image, that those intoxicated men
seemed to see real and breathing before their eyes,
erected there by the new poet.

Their intoxication vented itself in the shout they
sent up to him who had offered their parched lips a

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME ;;

cup of his own wine. All henceforth would be able
to see the inextinguishable flame through the veil of
water. Some one among them already imagined him-
self crumpling laurel leaves to perfume his fingers, and
some already dreamt of discovering at the bottom of
a silent' canal the ancient sword and the old, lost
diadem.

Stelio Effrena was alone with the statues in one
of the rooms of the neighbouring museum, impatient
of any other contact, feeling the necessity of recollect-
ing himself and quieting the unusual vibration by
which his whole essence had been dissipated and dis-
persed over the manifold spirit of the crowd. There
was no trace in his memory of his recent words ; he
could find no sign of his recent images. All that
persisted in his mind was that " inner flower of the .
flame " that he had mentioned when glorifying the
first Bonifacio, and had gathered with his own incom-
bustible fingers for the promised woman. It again
struck him how at the moment of a spontaneous
offer, the woman had withdrawn herself, and how, in
the place of her absent eyes, he had found the indi-
cating smile. The cloud of ecstasy that had been on
the point of dissolving seemed to again condense
above his head; assuming the vague shape of the
creature of music, and holding the flaming flower in
an attitude of dominion, it seemed that she was
emerging above his inward agitation as on the inces-
sant tremble of a summer sea. The first notes of the
symphony of Benedetto Marcello reached him from
the neighbouring hall as if to celebrate that image,

78 THE FLAME OF LIFE

their fugue-like movement at once revealing its char-
acter of great style. A clear, sonorous idea, strong
as a living person, developed itself in the measure of
its power, and in that music he recognised the virtue
of the same principle round which as round a thyrsus
he had entwined the garland of his poetry.

Then the name that had already echoed against the
flank of the ironclad, in the silence and the shadow,
the name that had been scattered like a sibylline leaf
by the immense wave of the evening bells, seemed to
propose its syllables to the orchestra for him, like a
new theme picked up by the bows of the instruments.
The violins, the viols, and the violoncellos sang it in
turn; the sudden blasts of the heroic trumpets ex-
alted it; finally, with a uniform impetus the whole
quartette launched it into that heaven of joy where
the crown of stars offered to Ariadne by the golden
Aphrodite would presently shine.

In the pause which followed, Steho underwent a
singular bewilderment, almost a religious stupor, as if
he had assisted at an annunciation. He understood
what a precious thing it was to him to be alone among
those pure, silent images in that inestimable lyric
moment.

A shred of the same mystery that he had grazed
under the flank of the ironclad as one touches a float-
ing veil seemed to waver before his eyes in that de-
serted room that was yet so near to the human crowd.
It was silent, like the sea-shell lying on the shore by
the rushing waves. Again, as before at other extraor-
dinary hours of his journey, he felt that his fate was

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME

7?

present and about to give his being a new impulse,
perhaps to call to life in it a marvellous act of will.
And as he reflected on the mediocrity of the many
obscure destinies hanging over those heads in the
crowd, that were eager for the apparitions of ideal
life, he rejoiced at being where he was to adore the
auspicious demon-figure that had secretly come to
visit him and to bring him a shrouded gift in the
name of an unknown mistress.

He started at the burst of human voices saluting
the unconquered king with a triumphant acclamation.
" Viva il forte, viva il grande." . . .

The deep hall echoed like a vast timbrel, and the
reverberation diluted along the staircase of the cen-
sors and the Golden Staircase, to the loggias, the pas-
sages, the porches, the vestibules, to the wells, to the
foundations of the palace, like a thunder of gladness
rolling in the serene night.

" Viva il forte, viva il grande
Vinci tor dell' Indie dome." ^ . .

It seemed that the chorus was saluting the appari-
tion of the magnificent god invoked by the poet upon
the Sea-City. It seemed as if the hem of his purple
raiment fluttered in those vocal notes like flames in a
crystal tube. The living image hung suspended over
the crowd that it was nourishing with its own dream.
" Viva il forte, viva il grande." . . .

In the impetuous /«^M^ movement of the bassi, the
contralti and the soprani repeated their frenzied ac-
clamation of the Immortal of the thousand names and

1 " Hail to the strong, hail to the great conqueror o£ vanquished
India."

8o THE FLAME OF LIFE

the thousand crowns, "born on an ineffable bed,
like to a young man in his first youth."

The old Dionysian intoxication seemed to revive
and diffuse itself over the divine Chorus. The ful-
ness and freshness of life in the smile of Zeus, who
loosed the hearts of men from human sufferings, was
expressed there with a luminous burst of joy. The
inextinguishable fires of the Bassarides flamed and
crackled there. As in the Orphean hymn the light
of a conflagration illumined the young brow crowned
with azure hair. " When the splendour of fire in-
vaded all the earth, he alone chained up the shrill
whirlwinds of flame." As in the Homeric hymn the
barren bosom of the sea throbbed there, the meas-
ured stroke of the numerous oars that were pushing
the well-built vessel to unknown lands echoed there.
The Florid, the Fruit-bearer, the visible Remedy of
mortals, the sacred Flower, the Friend of pleasure,
Dionysius the liberator, suddenly reappeared before
the face of man on the wings of song, crowning that
nocturnal hour with bliss, incessantly holding out to
his senses as in a full chalice all the good things of life.

The strength of the song was increasing, the voices
blending in its rush. The hymn now celebrated the
tamer of tigers, of panthers, of lions, and of lynxes.
The Maenads seemed to scream out here with heads
thrown back, and locks scattered, and dresses loos-
ened, striking their cymbals, shaking their citherns.
" Evoe ! "

A broad pastoral rhythm rose unexpectedly from
these heroic sounds, bringing forth the images of the
Theban Bacchus of the pure brow circled with gentle
thoughts.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 8i

" Quel che all' olmo la vite in stretto nodo
Pronuba accoppia, e i pampini feconda." ^

Only two voices in a succession of sixths now sang
the leafy nuptials, the green marriage-feast, the flexi-
ble ties. The image of the boat on the lagoon, laden
with bunches like a wine-press about to be trodden,
already created by the poet's words, passed again
before the eyes of the multitude. And the song
seemed to repeat the miracle witnessed by the pru-
dent pilot Medeia. " And it came to pass that a
sweet and most fragrant wine ran along the swift,
black boat. . . . And a vine unfolded itself up to
the top of the sail, and from it hung numberless
bunches. And a dark ivy twisted itself about the
mast, and it was covered with flowers, and beautiful
fruits grew on it, and garlands were about the row-
locks."

The spirit of the fugue then passed into the orches-
tra, disburdened itself there in beautiful volutes while
the voices struck the web of the orchestra with a
simultaneous percussion. And like a light thyrsus
brandished above the Bacchic crowd, a single voice
repeated the impartial melody, smiling with the grace
of that pastoral marriage.

" Viva deir olmo
E della vite
V almo fecondo
Sostenitor!'"^

The single voices seemed to call forth a picture
of erect Tiades gently waving their thyrsi in the

1 " He who tightly clasps the vine to the elm-tree, weds them one
to the other, and fructifies its tendrils."

* " Hail to the great, fruitful supporter of the vine and the elm-tree."
6

82 THE FLAME OF LIFE

fumes of their intoxication, dressed in long crocus-
coloured garments, their faces alight, palpitating
like the women of Veronese who were bending
from aerial balustrades to drink in the song.

The heroic applause came up once more with
final vehemence. The face of the conquering God
flashed again among the madly waved torches.
Voices and orchestra thundered in unison in a
supreme impulse of joy at the huge chimera full of
eyes under the hanging treasure of the ceiling in the
circle of red triremes and armed towers and trium-
phant processions.

" Viva dell' Indie,
Viva de' mari.
Viva de' mostri
II domator ! " i

SteHo Efifrena had come as far as the threshold ;
through the throng that gave way as he passed he
penetrated into the hall, and remained standing
against one of the sides of the platform occupied by
the singers and the orchestra. His anxious eyes
sought la Foscarina by the heavenly sphere, but did
not find her.

The head of the tragic muse no longer rose above
the belt of constellations. Where was she? Where
had she withdrawn herself? Could she be seeing
him without his seeing her? An obscure feeling of
agitation perturbed him, and all they had seen that
evening on the waters returned to his spirit con-
fusedly accompanied by her parting words of promise.
As he looked through the open balconies he thought

1 " Hail to the conqueror o£ India, of the seas, and of the
monster?."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 83

she had gone out into the night air, and that perhaps
she was leaning against the parapet, feeling the waves
of music pass over her cold neck, deriving from them
a joy as of shivers communicated by long kisses.

The expectation of the revealing voice, however,
overpowered every other thought, abolished every
other anxiety. He noticed that a deep silence had
come over the hall, as in the moment when he had
opened his lips for his first syllable. As in that
moment the elusive and versatile monster with the
thousand human faces seemed to stretch out dumbly,
making a void in itself to receive a new soul.

He heard some one round him whisper the name
of Donatella Arvale ; he turned his eyes towards the
platform beyond the dark hedge of the violoncelli.
The singer was invisible, concealed by the delicate,
quivering forest, whence the sorrowful harmony
was about to arise that was to accompany Ariadne's
lament.

In the propitious silence the violins unfolded the
prelude. The viols and the violoncellos then added
a deeper sigh to that imploring moan. After the
Phrygian flute and the Berecinthian cithern, after the
instruments of revelry the sounds of which trouble
the reason and spur on delirium, was not this, grave
and sweet, the august Doric lyre, the harmonious
fulcrum of song? It was the birth of the Drama
from the noisy Dithyramb. The great metamor-
phosis of the Dionysian rite, the frenzy of the sacred
festival converted into the creative enthusiasm of the
tragedian, seemed figured by that musical vicis-
situde. The fiery breath of the Thracian god had
given life to a sublime form of art. The crown and the

84 THE FLAME OF LIFE

tripod decreed as the prize of the poet's victory had
taken the place of the lascivious goat and the Attic
basket of figs, ^schilus, keeper of a vineyard, had
been visited by the god, and had received the infusion
of his spirit of flame. On the slope of the Acropolis,
by the sanctuary of Dionysius, a marble theatre had
arisen worthy of containing the chosen people.

Thus, suddenly in the inner world of the Life-giver
the pathways of the centuries had opened up, and
were stretching away into the distance of primitive
mysteries. That form of art to which the effort of
his genius was tending, attracted by the obscure
aspirations of human multitudes, now appeared to
him in all the sanctity of its origins. The divine
sorrow of Ariadne, coming like a melodious cry out
of the furious Thiaros, imparted a throb to the already
living, though still formless, work that he was nourish-
ing within him. Again his glance sought the Muse
of the propagating voice against the belt of con-
stellations. As he did not see her, he turned to the
forest of instruments whence the moan arose.

Then, among the slight bows that rose and fell on
the strings with an alternating motion, he saw the
singer. She was standing straight as a stem, and
like a stem swaying a little to the hushed harmony.
The youthfulness of her agile yet robust body seemed
resplendent through the tissue of her garments like a
flame seen through the thinness of polished ivory.
The bows seemed to draw their note from the occult
music that was in her as they rose and fell round her
white form. When she curved her lips for her first
words Stelio felt the strength and purity of the voice
before he heard its modulation, as if she were before

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 85

him like a crystal vase in which he could trace the
ascension of a living spring.

" Come mai puoi
Vedermi piangere?" * . . .

The melody of antique love and sorrow flowed
from those lips with an expression so strong and
pure, that as it passed into the manifold soul of the
audience it immediately changed into mysterious joy.
Was it indeed the divine weeping of the daughter
of Minos as she held out her deluded arms to the
Flavian guest from the deserted shore of Naxos?
The fable vanished, abolishing the deception of time.
The eternal love and eternal sorrow of gods and
men breathed in the sovereign voice. The useless
regret of each lost joy, the last recalling of each
fugitive good, the supreme prayer to every sail van-
ishing in the sea, to every sun hiding in the moun-
tains, the implacable desire and the promise of death
passed into the great, solitary song, transformed
by the virtue of art into sublime essences that the
soul could receive without suffering. The words
themselves dissolved in it, lost all meaning, changed
into indefinitely revealing notes of love and sorrow.
Like a circle that is closed and yet dilates continually
with the same throb as universal life, the melody had
circumscribed the manifold soul that yet dilated with
it in an immense joy. Through the open balconies,
in the perfect calm of the autumn night, the fascina-
tion spread over the torpid waters, rose to the vigi-
lant stars, went beyond the motionless masts of the
ships, beyond the sacred towers inhabited by the

* " How can you bear to see me weep ? "

86 THE FLAME OF LIFE

now silent bells. In the interludes the singer would
bend her young head, apparently lifeless as an image,
all white in the forest of instruments, surrounded by
the alternate motion of the long bows, perhaps un-
conscious of the world that her song had in a
moment transfigured.

Stelio Effrena reached the courtyard by a secret
outlet, so as to be spared the curiosity of the im-
portunate, and took refuge in a fragment of shadow.
Thence he watched the throng at the head of the
Scala dei Giganti and waited for the two women,
the singer and the actress, who had promised to
meet him at the well.

At every instant his expectation became more
anxious. The immense cry rising round the outer
walls of the palace reached him and then lost itself
in the heavens that were illumined by a red glare as
of a conflagration. An almost terrible joy seemed
spreading over the Sea-City. It seemed that a vehe-
ment breath had suddenly come to dilate the narrow
hearts, and that a superabundance of sensual life was
swelling the arteries of man. The repetition of the
Bacchic chorus celebrating the crown of stars laid
by Aphrodite on the forgetful head of Ariadne, the
great hymn of glory followed by the supreme clam-
ours of the revels of Thiaros, had drawn a cry from
the throng gathered on the Molo under the open
balconies.

At the final elevation, in unison on the word
" Viva!" in the chorus of Maenads, Satyrs, and
Egipans, the chorus of the populace in the harbour

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 87

of San Marco had answered like a formidable echo.
And at that point it had seemed as if their delirium,
remembering the woods burned of old on the sacred
nights, had given the signal of the conflagration in
which the beauty of Venice was finally to stand
resplendent.

The dream of Paris Eglano flashed on Stelio's
desire, — the spectacle of the miraculous flames
offered to love on the floating bed. The image of
Donatella Arvale persisted in his eyes: a nimble,
youthful figure, powerful and shapely, standing out
of the forest of sound in the midst of the alternating
motion of the bows that seemed to draw their note
from the hidden music that was in her. And, with
a strange pain in which there passed something like
a shadow of horror, he saw the image of the other
woman, — poisoned by art, overcharged with volup-
tuous knowledge, her eloquent mouth full of the
savours of maturity and corruption, a dryness as of
fever in her hands that had pressed the juice from
all deceitful fruits, and the traces of a hundred masks
on her face that had shammed the fury of mortal
passions. To-night at last, after the long interme-
diate desire, he was to receive the gift of the age-
ing body, that was saturated with caresses and yet
still unknown to him. How he had trembled and
vibrated a little while ago, as he sat by the side
of the silent woman, gliding towards the City Beau-
tiful on waters that had seemed to both as if rushing
through a fearful clepsydra ! Ah, why was she now
coming towards him with the other temptress? Why
was she placing, by the side of her knowledge full of
despair, the pure splendour of that young life?

88 THE FLAME OF LIFE

With a deep throb he noticed the figure of la
Foscarina standing in the light of the smoking
torches at the top of the marble staircase, so tightly
pressed by the crowd upon that of Donatella Arvale
that they blended into each other in one same white-
ness. His eyes followed them down the staircase in
the same suspense, as if at every step they were put-
ting their feet on the margin of an abyss. In those
brief hours the stranger had already lived within
him a life so intense that his emotion on seeing her
draw near him was such as he would have felt had
he suddenly been met by the living incarnation of
one of the ideal creatures born of his art.

She was coming slowly down through the human
tide that her song had raised for a moment to the
height of joy. Behind her, the Palace of the Doges,
crossed by sudden flashes and confused sounds, gave
the impression of one of those fabulous awakenings
that suddenly transfigure the inaccessible palaces in
the midst of a wood where the long hair on some royal
head had grown in their solitude through the ages,
feeding on their silence like the eternal willows on
a lethal river. The two guardian Giants blazed red
in the red light of the torches; the cusp of the
Golden Gate glittered with little lamps ; beyond the
north wing, the five cupolas of the basilica reigned
in the heavens like vast mitres studded with chryso-
lites. And .still the great clamour rose, rose above
the crowd of marbles, bold as the lowing of the
sea in a storm against the walls of Malamocco.
Stelio saw the two temptresses come to his desire
in the midst of this festive tumult, in this con-
trast of unusual appearances, both emerging from

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 89

the crowd as from the clasp of a monster. And
his desire pictured to him extraordinary promiscui-
ties which he beheved could be realised with the
facility of dreams and the solemnity of liturgic
ceremonies. He thought Perdita must be leading
that magnificent prey to him for some recondite
aim of beauty, for some great work of love which
she herself would help him accomplish. Perdita's
words that night, he thought, would be wonderful
in their meaning. And the indefinable melancholy
he had felt on leaning over the bronze edge, on
gazing at the reflection of the stars in the dark
inner well, passed over his spirit ; he seemed to feel
himself in the expectation of some event about to
stir that secret soul in the last depths of his being
which had remained, like the mirror of water, un-
moved and strange and intangible. By the dizzy
quickening of his thoughts, he understood that he
had attained the state of grace, that he was near
the divine delirium which only the virtues of the
lagoon could give him. And he went forth from the
shadow to meet the two women with an intoxicating
presentiment.

" Oh, Effrena," la Foscarina said, coming up to
the well, " I did not hope to find you here. We
are very late, are we not? But we were hemmed in
by the crowd without escape. ..."

Turning to her companion, she added, smiling,
" Donatella, here is the Lord of the Flame."

Without speaking, yet smiling, Donatella Arvale
acknowledged Stelio's deep salute.

Drawing her towards her, la Foscarina resumed :

"We must go and look for our gondola. It is wait-

90 THE FLAME OF LIFE

ing for us at the Ponte della Paglia. Are you coming
with us, Effrena? We must seize our moment. The
crowd is rushing towards the Piazzetta. The Queen
comes out by the Porta della Carta."

A long, united cry greeted the appearance of the
fair pearled Queen at the head of the staircase, whence
at one time, in the presence of the people, the Doge
was wont to receive the ducal ensign. Once more
the name of the white starry flower and of the pure
pearl was repeated by the crowd and echoed by the
marble. Flashes of joy sparkled in the sky; a thou-
sand pigeons of fire flew away from the pinnacles of
San Marco like flaming messengers.

"The Epiphany of the Flame," exclaimed la
Foscarina, as on reaching the Molo she came upon
the hallucinating spectacle.

By her side Donatella Arvale and Stelio Effrena
stopped, struck with wonder, looking at each other
with dazed eyes. And their faces, lit up by the
reflection, shone as if they were bending over a
furnace or the mouth of a crater.

All the innumerable appearances of volatile and
many-coloured Fire spread over the firmament,
crawled on the water, twined round the masts of the
vessels, garlanded the cupolas and the towers, adorned
the entablatures, wrapped themselves round the
statues, budded on the capitals, enriched every line,
transfigured every aspect of the sacred and profane
architectures in the midst of which the deep harbour
was like an enchanted mirror that multiplied the
marble. The astonished eye could no longer distin-

/

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 91

guish the quality of the various elements : it was
deluded by a mobile and measureless vision, all the
forms of which lived a lucid, fluid life suspended in
vibrating ether, so that the slim prows curving on the
waters and the myriad pigeons of fire in the heavens
seemed to vie with each other in a similar flight and
to both reach the summit of the immaterial edifices.
That which in the twilight had seemed a silvery
palace dedicated to Neptune and built after the like-
ness of tortuous marine forms, had now become a
temple built by the willing genii of Fire. It seemed,
on a giant scale, one of those labyrinthian dweUings
rising on the andirons at the hundred doors of which
the two-faced presages with their ambiguous gestures
appear to the watching maiden ; it seemed, on a giant
scale, one of those frail, regal palaces, all vermilion,
at the thousand windows of which the salamander
princesses look out for an instant, laughing voluptu-
ously at the thoughtful poet. The sphere of the
Fortuna, borne on the shoulders of the Atlantides,
radiated on the triple loggia near by, rosy as a wan-
ing moon, a cycle of satellites springing from its
reflection. From the Riva, from San Giorgio, from
the Giudecca, fiery bunches of stars sparkled cease-
lessly, converged on high and burst there into roses,
lilies, palms, into flowers of Paradise forming an aerial
garden that continually melted and continually re-
newed itself with ever richer and stranger blossoms.
It was like a rapid succession of supernal springs and
autumns; an immense rain of sparks made of leaves
and petals fell from the dissolution of the heavens,
wrapping all things in its tremulous gold. Through
the gap that opened out in that thickness one could

92 THE FLAME OF LIFE

see still far off a beflagged flotilla advancing from
the lagoon: a flock of galleys similar perhaps to
that which might float through the dream of a child
of pleasure, sleeping his last sleep on a bed steeped
in deadly perfumes; like those dream-vessels, they
too perhaps had cables made of the twisted hair of
female slaves brought from conquered countries and
still dripping with sweet oils; like them, perhaps,
their hulls too were full of myrrh, spikenard, ben-
zoin, balsam of Syria, cinnamon, all the aromas;
arid of sandal, cedar, terebinth, all the odoriferous
woods in different layers. The indescribable colours
of the flags that adorned them suggested perfumes
and spices. Blue and green and greenish blue,
crocus-coloured, violet, and of indistinct blendings,
those flags seemed to escape from an internal con-
flagration and to have been coloured by unknown
processes. Thus, perhaps, in the fury of ancient
sieges fire was set to reservoirs that contained the
essences destined to the wives of the Syrian princes ;
and thus, on the water dotted over by the molten
matters gathered in its hulls, the magnificent lost
fleet advanced towards the harbour, slowly as if its
pilots were ecstatic dreams that would lead it to the
foot of the columned Lion, there to consume itself
like a gigantic votive pyre, perfuming and stupefying
the soul of Venice for all eternity.

" The Epiphany of the Flame ! What an unfore-
seen commentary to your poem, Effrena ! The City
of Life responds by a miracle to your act of adora-
tion. She is all burning, through her veil of water.
Are you not satisfied? Look! Millions of golden
pomegranates are hanging everywhere."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 93

The actress was smiling and the festival illumined
her face. She seemed under the empire of that
singular gaiety of hers that Stelio well knew, apd
that because of its dull creaking sound gave him the
idea of a deep, shut-up house where violent hands
suddenly opened all the doors and windows, causing
them to turn on their corroded hinges.

" We must praise Ariadne," he said, " for having
given this harmony its highest note."

He only said those words that the singer might
be induced to speak, only because of his desire to
hear what the tone of her voice would be when not
lifted up in song. But his praise was lost in the
reiterated clamour of the crowd that overflowed on
the Molo, making delay impossible. From the shore
where he stood he helped the two friends into their
gondola, then sat down on the stool at their knee,
and the long dentellated prow, throwing out sparks,
entered into the enchantment.

" To the Rio Marin, by the Canalazzo," la Foscarina
ordered the boatman. "Do you know, Effrena, we
are going to have some of your best friends to
supper, — Francesco de Lizo, Daniele Glauro, Prince
Hoditz, Antimo della Bella, Fabio Molza, Baldassare
Stampa — .? "

" It is going to be a banquet, then? "

" Alas ! not that of Cana ! "

" But will Lady Myrta not be there with her
Veronese-like greyhounds?"

" Certainly, Lady Myrta will not fail ; did you not
see her in the hall? She was sitting in one of the
first rows wrapped up in you."

Because they had looked each other in the eyes

94 THE FLAME OF LIFE

as they spoke, a sudden confusion invaded them.
And the remembrance of the full twilight hour they
had lived on that same water cleaved by that same
oar filled their souls like a tide of troubled blood ;
they were surprised by a swift return of that same
anguish which both had felt when on the point of
leaving behind them the silence of the estuary already
in the power of shadow and death. And their lips
rebelled against vain, deceitful words, and their souls
withdrew from the effort of incHning themselves for
the sake of prudence towards the passing ornaments
of the life of joy that now seemed worthless, absorbed
as they were in the consideration of the strange figures
that were rising from their own depth with an aspect
of monstrous wealth never before seen, like the heaped
up treasures that shafts of light were discovering in
the night waters.

And because they were silent as they had been
when they approached the vessel with the descending
flag, they felt the presence of the creature of music
weigh the more heavily on their silence, as in the
interval when they had first heard her name ; and,
little by little, that weight became intolerable.
Nevertheless, she appeared to be as distant from
Stelio, who was sitting at her knee, as she had been
a moment ago among the forest of instruments : apart
and unconscious, as a moment ago in the joy of her
song. She had not yet spoken.

Almost timidly and only to hear her speak, Stelio
asked her: —

"Are you staying some time longer in Venice?"

He had tried to choose the words he should address
to her : all those that had come as far as his lips had

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 95

troubled him, had seemed too full of ambiguous
meanings, too much alive, insidious, fit for incal-
culable transformations of life like the unknown
seed from which spring the thousand roots. And
it had seemed to him that none of these could be
heard by Perdita too without her love being left the
sadder for them.

Only after having uttered the simple, usual question
he noticed that even in its words an infinity of hope
and desire could lie hidden.

" I shall have to leave to-morrow," answered Dona-
tella Arvale ; " even now I ought not to be here."

Her voice, that was so clear and powerful in the
heights of song, sounded low and sober as if suffused
with a slight opaque quality, suggesting the image of
a precious metal wrapped in the most delicate velvet.
Her brief answer suggested a place of suffering to
which she was about to return, where she would
submit herself to some well-known torture; a sor-
rowful strength of will, like iron tempered in tears,
sparkled through the veil of her young beauty.

" To-morrow ! " exclaimed Stelio, with sincere regret.
" Have you heard, Signora?"

" I know," said la Foscarina, gently, taking Dona-
tella's hand. " And it is a great sorrow to me to see
her go. But she cannot remain too long away from
her father. Perhaps you still ignore . . ."

"What?" Stelio asked quickly. "Is he ill? It
is true, then, that Lorenzo Arvale is ill ! '•'

" No, he is tired," la Foscarina answered, touching
her forehead with an involuntary gesture that showed
Stelio the horrible threat hanging over the genius of
the artist who had seemed as fertile and untiring as

96 THE FLAME OF LIFE

one of the old masters : a Delia Robbia or a Verroc-
chio. " He is only tired. He needs rest and sooth-
ing balsams, and his daughter's song is an unequalled
balm to him. Do not you too, Effrena, believe in the
healing power of music? "

" Certainly," he said. " Ariadne has a divine gift
by which her power transcends all limits."

The name of Ariadne came spontaneously to his
lips to indicate the singer such as he saw her. It
seemed to him that he could not utter the girl's own
name preceded by the ordinary generic epithet im-
posed by social customs. As he saw her, she was
singular and entire, freed from the small ties of cus-
tom, living her own secluded life, like a great work
on which style should have set its inviolable seal. In
his eyes, she was isolated like those figures that stand
out because of sharp and deepened outline, a stranger
to ordinary life, fixed on some profoundly secret
thought; and already, before the intensity of that
concentration, he felt a kind of passionate impatience
not dissimilar to that of the curious man who should
find himself before some hermetically closed thing
that tempts him.

" Ariadne had for the healing of her sorrows
that gift of oblivion," she said, " which is denied
to me."

A perhaps involuntary bitterness coloured her
words. In it Stelio perceived the landmarks of an
aspiration towards some life that should be less
oppressed by useless suffering. His rapid intuition
divined her indignation at her state of slavery, her
horror of the sacrifice to which she was forcing her-
self, the vehement desire in her of rising towards joy,

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 97

and the aptitude in her of being drawn Hke a beauti-
ful bow by some strong hand that should know how
to use it as its weapon for a great conquest. He
divined that she had lost all hope of her father's
recovery; that it was painful to her to henceforth
feel herself no more than the custodian of an extin-
guished hearth, of ashes that had no sparks ; and the
image of the great stricken artist appeared to him
not such as he was, since he had never seen his per-
ishable mask, but such as he was pictured to him
by the ideas of beauty which he had expressed in
lasting bronze and marble. And he gazed fixedly at
that image in an agony of terror more icy than that
which the most awful aspects of death could have
inspired. And all his strength and all his pride
and all his desire seemed to resound within him
like a bundle of arms scattered by a threatening
hand, and there was no fibre in him which did not
quiver.

La Foscarina raised the funeral pall that in the
midst of the splendours of the festival had changed
the gondola into a coffin.

" See there, Effrena," she said, pointing to the
balcony of Desdemona's house. " See the fair
Nineta receiving the homage of the Serenade seated
between her monkey and her pet dog."

" Ah, the fair Nineta," exclaimed Stelio, shaking
off his sad thoughts, bending towards the smiling bal-
cony and, with cordial vivacity, sending a greeting to
the little woman who was listening to the musicians by
the light of two silver candelabra. Garlands of the
year's last roses hung entwined about the sconces.
" I have not seen her again yet. She is the gentlest

7

98 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and most graceful animal I know. What a piece of
good fortune it was for our dear Hoditz to have dis-
covered her behind the lid of a harpsichord while
rummaging in an old curiosity shop at San Samuele !
Two pieces of good fortune in one day: the fair
Nineta and a lid painted by Pordenone. From that
day the harmony of his life has been complete. How
I should like y@u to penetrate to his nest ! You
would find there a truly admirable example of what I
was saying to-day at sunset. Here is a man who by
obeying his native taste for subtlety has composed
his own little fable with minute art, and in it he lives
as happy as his Moravian ancestor in the arcadia of
Rosswald. Ah, how many exquisite things I know
of him ! "

A wide />eoia adorned with many-coloured lanterns
full of singers and musicians was floating under the
house of Desdemona. The old song of brief youth
and passing beauty rose sweetly to the little woman
who listened, smiling her childlike smile, between
her monkey and her little dog as in a print by Pietro
Longhi.

"Do beni vu ghave,
Beleza e zoventu ;
Co i va no i torna piu,
Nina, raia cara."*

" Don't you think that this is the true soul of
Venice and that the other one which you have pic-

' " Two good things are yours,
Beauty and youth ;
When they go they \\\',\ not return
Nina, my dear."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE. FLAME 99

tured to the crowd is only your own, Effrena?" said
la Foscarina, her head swaying a little to the languid
melody that floated all along the Grand Canal,
repeated far away by the other song-boats.

" No, this is not it," answered Stelio. " There is
within each of us, flitting like a butterfly on the sur-
face of our deep souls, a more trivial soul, an animiila
vagula, a slight playful spirit that often carries us away
and persuades us to yield to easy, mediocre pleasures,
to puerile pastimes and light melodies. This ani-
mula vagula is there, even in the gravest and most
violent natures, like the clown attached to the per-
son of Othello, and often it deceives our judgment.
You are listening now to the child-soul of Venice,
humming on its guitars; but her real soul is only
to be discovered in her silence, and most terribly,
be sure of that, in full summer, in the full noon-
tide, like the great Pan. Nevertheless, . there on
the harbour of San Marco I had indeed thought
that you were feeling its vibration in the immense
conflagration. You are forgetting Giorgione for
Rosalba."

Round the peota full of song other boats had as-
sembled, full of languid women, who turned towards
the music with gestures of lassitude, as if on the
point of sinking into invisible arms. And round all
that accumulated voluptuousness, the reflections of
the lanterns in the water trembled like a flowering
of luminous multicoloured water-lilies.

" Se lassarfe passar
La bela e fresca etk,
Un zorno i ve dirk
Vechia maura ;

lOO THE FLAME OF LIFE

E bramarfe, ma invan,
Quel che shavevi in man
Co avfe lassk scampar
La congiontura." *

It was truly the song of the year's last roses fading
away as they twined round the sconces. In Perdita's
soul it conjured up the pageant of dead summer,
the opalescent veil in which Stelio had wrapped the
gentle corpse dressed in gold. Through the glass
sealed by the Lord of the Flame, she could see her
own image lying at the bottom of the lagoon, on
its field of seaweeds. A sudden chill took hold of
her limbs ; again the horror and disgust of her own
ageing body gripped her. And, remembering the
recent promise, thinking how her beloved might that
very night exact the keeping of it, her whole body
contracted in the pulsation of her sorrowful modesty
made of fear and of pride. Her experienced, des-
pairing eyes ran over the woman beside her, sought
her out, penetrated her, felt her occult but certain
strength, her intact freshness, her pure healthiness,
and that indefinable virtue of love emanating like
an aroma from the chaste bodies of virgins once they
have attained the perfection of their blossoming.
She seemed to admit the secret affinity that already
ran between the girl and the Life-giver. She seemed
to divine the words with which he silently addressed
her. The anguish was so fearful that it bit her

1 " If you let your fine, fresh age pass away,
One day it will call you
A ripened old thing ;
And you will desire, but in vain,
All that you had
When you let the occasion slip."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME loi

bosom intolerably, and her convulsed fingers clutched
the black rope running along the side of the gon-
dola, and the little metal griffin that held it creaked
at her involuntary movement.

That movement did not escape Stelio, who was
watching her anxiously. He understood her ex-
treme anguish and himself suffered from it acutely
for a few moments ; but his feeling was mixed with
an almost angry impatience, because her anguish,
like a cry of destruction, crossed and interrupted a
fiction of transcendant life that he had been in-
wardly composing in order to conciliate the con-
trast, to conquer the new force presenting itself
before him, like a bow ready to be drawn, and at
the same time not to lose the savour of that maturity
which life had steeped in all its essences, the benefit
of that passionate attention and faith by which his
intellect was sharpened, as by a kindling drug, and
his pride nourished as by a continual act of praise.
" Ah, Perdita," he was thinking, " why has not a
pure spirit of human love sprung from the fermen-
tation of your numberless human loves? Ah, why
have I finally conquered you with my desire, al-
though I know that it is too late ; and why do you
let me read in your eyes the certainty of your com-
ing gift, in the midst of a flood of doubts that will
not be sufficient to revive the abolished prohibition ?
Both of us, well knowing that all the ability of our
long communion was in that prohibition, have not
known how to preserve it, and are going to yield
blindly, at the last hour, to the command of a tur-
bid, nocturnal voice. Even a little while ago, when
your head was standing out from the belt of con-

I02 THE FLAME OF LIFE

stellations, I no longer saw in you the carnal mis-
tress, but the muse and the apostle of my poetry.
And all the gratitude of my soul went out to you
for your promise of glory, not for your promise of
pleasure. Have you not understood, as you always
do? With marvellous fancy, as ever, have you not
led my desire along the ray of your smile towards
something resplendent with youth that you yourself
had chosen and reserved for me? In descending
the staircase and coming towards me together with
her, had you not the appearance of one bearing a
gift, of one bringing an unexpected announcement?
Nor wholly unwaited for, Perdita, not wholly un-
waited for, because I knew some extraordinary act
must come from your infinite wisdom."

" How happy the fair Nineta is with her monkey
and her little dog ! " sighed the despairing woman,
looking back towards the light song and the laughing
balcony.

" La zoventu xe un fior

Che apena nato el mor,

E un zomo gnanco mi

No saro quela." ^

Also Donatella Arvale turned and Stelio Effrena
with her. The light skiff carried the three faces of
that heavy destiny, without sinking, over the water
and the music.

" E vegna quel che vol,
Lassfe che vaga ! " *

' " Youth is a flower

No sooner born than dead ;

And I, too, one day,

Will be the same no longer."

* " And come what will,
And let it go I "

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 103

All along the Grand Canal, repeated in the dis-
tance by all the boats, flowed the melody of transient
pleasure. Fascinated by its rhythm, the slaves of
the oar united their voices to the joyful chorus.
That joy, which had seemed terrible to the Life-giver,
when he heard it in the first cry of the crowd massed
on the Molo, had now become attenuated, more las-
civious, had blossomed into grace and playfulness,
had become soft and indulgent. The more frivo-
lous soul of Venice repeated the refrain of forgetful
life, lightly touching its guitars and dancing among
the festoons of lanterns.

" E vegna quel che vol,
Lassfe che vaga ! "

Suddenly, in the curve of the canal, before the red
palace of the Foscari, a great galleon flamed like a
burning tower. More lightning crackled in the sky.
More fiery pigeons flew up from the fortress, sur-
passed the small light towers, slipped down along the
marbles, fluttered, hissed on the water, multiplied
themselves in numberless sparks, and floated there,
smoking. Along the parapets, from the decks, from
the poop, from the prow, a thousand fountains of fire
opened up, dilated, blended, illuminating the canal
from one part to the other, painting it a violent red
as far as San Vitale, as far as the Rialto. The gal-
leon disappeared from sight, transformed by the ceas-
ing of the fireworks into a purplish thunder-cloud.

" Turn down San Polo, turn down San Polo," la
Foscarina called to the oarsman, lowering her head
as under a storm, and pressing her hands to her ears
to defend them from the roar.

And with dazzled eyes Donatella Arvale and

104 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Stelio Effrena again glanced at each other. And
their faces were as resplendent, lit up by the reflected
glare, as if both had been bending over a furnace or
the mouth of a crater.

The gondola entered the canal of San Polo and
slipped into its shade. A sudden veil of ice fell on
its three silent occupantSi Under the arch of the
bridge, the cadence of the oar struck upon their souls
and the noise of the festival seemed infinitely far
away. All the houses were dark; the belfry rose
lonely and silent among the stars, the Campiello del
Reiner and the Campiello del Pistor were deserted,
and the grass breathed there in peace; the trees
hanging over the walls of the little gardens seemed
to feel their leaves dying on their branches lifted up
to the quiet sky.

" The rhythm of art and the pulse of life then have
again beaten in Venice with one same throb, at least
for a few hours," said Daniele Glauro, lifting from the
table a chalice from which only the sacred Host was
missing. " Let me express, also, in the name of so
many who are absent, the gratitude and fervour that
are blending in one single image of beauty the three
persons to whom we owe the miracle, — the lady oi
the banquet, the daughter of Lorenzo Arvale, and
the poet of Persephone."

"Why the lady of the banquet, Glauro?" la Fos-
carina asked, smiling, with astonished grace. " I, like
yourself, have not given but have received joy. It is
Donatella whom we should crown and Stelio Effrena.
The glory of it goes to both."

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 105

" But your silent presence in the Hall of the Greater
Council, near the celestial sphere, a little while ago,"
answered the mystic doctor, " was not less eloquent
than Stelio's words, nor less musical than Ariadne's
song. Once more you have divinely carved your
own statue in silence, and it shall live in our mem-
ory together with the words and the song."

Stelio Effrena, with a deep, inward shiver, again
saw the ephemeral, versatile monster from whose side
the tragic muse had emerged, with her head lifted to
the belt of constellations.

" True, true," exclaimed Francesco de Lizo. " I
think so too. Whoever saw you, while listening to
the song, the words, and the symphony, could not
but recognise in you the visible centre of that ideal
world that each one of us — us the faithful, us the
near ones — felt was growing out of his own aspi-
rations."

" Each one of us," said Fabio Molza, " felt that there
was great and unusual significance in your person as
it stood before the poet, dominating the crowd."

" It seemed that you alone were about to assist at
the mysterious birth of a new idea," said Antimo
della Bella; "everything seemed animating itself to
generate that idea which must soon be revealed to us,
if having waited for it with so much faith has made
us at all worthy."

The Life-giver,, with another shudder, felt the work
which he was nourishing leap within him, formless
still, but already a living thing, and his whole soul
stretched out with an impetuous movement, as if
carried away by a lyric breath, towards the power of
fertilisation and of revelation that emanated from the

io6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Dionysian woman to whom the praise of those fer-
vent spirits was rising.

She had suddenly become very beautiful, a noctur-
nal creature forged out of dreams and passions on an
anvil of gold, a breathing image of immortal fate and
eternal enigmas. Although she was motionless, al-
though she was silent, her well-known accents and
her memorable gestures seemed to live about her,
vibrating indefinitely, like melodies round the chords
that repeat them, like its rhymes round the closed
book where love and pain go in search of them,
to find comfort and intoxication. The heroic fidel-
ity of Antigone, the fury of Cassandra, the devour-
ing fever of Phaedra, the fierceness of Medea,
the sacrifice of Iphigenia; Mirra before his father,
Polissena and Alcestes before the face of death,
Cleopatra, changeable like the wind and flame of the
world; Lady Macbeth, that dreaming murderess of
the little hands and the large lilies pearled over with
dew and with fears; Imogen, Juliet, Miranda; and
Rosamund and Jessica and Perdita, the sweetest souls
and the most terrible and the most magnificent, —
were all in her, living in her body, flashing through her
pupils, breathing in her mouth that knew of honey
and of poison, of the gemmed goblet and the cup of
wormwood. Thus, with an unlimited vastness and
through endless time, the outlines of human age and
substance seemed to widen and perpetuate them-
selves ; and for no other reason than the motion of a
muscle, a sign, a gesture, a line of feature, a tremor
of the eyelids, a slight change of colour, an almost
imperceptible bend of the brows, a changing play of
light and shade, a lightning-like virtue of expression

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 107

radiating from that thin, frail body, infinite worlds
of undying beauty were continually generated. The
very genii of the places consecrated by poetry
breathed over her and girded her round with alterna-
ting visions : the dusty plain of Thebe, the parched
Argolide, the burnt up myrtles of Trezene, the sacred
olives of Colonus, the triumphant Cydnus, the pale
landscape of Dunsinane, Prospero's cave, the wood in
the Ardennes, regions furrowed with blood, laboured
by pain, transfigured by a dream or lighted by an
inextinguishable smile, appeared, receded, and melted
away behind her head. And other remote regions :
regions of mist, northern plains, the immense con-
tinents beyond the ocean where she had passed like
an unknown force, carrying her voice and her flame
with her, melted away behind her head; with the
multitudes, their hills and rivers, the gulfs, the impure
cities, the ancient forsaken races, the strong peoples
panting for the dominion of the world, the new
peoples that wrest from nature her most secret
energies to make them the slaves of omnipotent labour
in edifices of iron and glass, the colonies of bastard
races that ferment and grow corrupt on virgin soil,
all the barbarous crowds to which she had appeared
as a sovereign revelation of Latin genius, all the
unconscious masses to which she had spoken the
sublime language of Dante, all the innumerable
human herds whence the aspiration to beauty, had
risen towards her on a wave of confused hopes and
anxieties. As she stood there, a creature made of
perishable flesh and subject to the sad laws of time,
an immeasurable mass of real and ideal life seemed
to weigh upon her and widen round her, throbbing

io8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

with the rhythm of her breath. It was not on the
stage only that she had cried out and suffocated her
sobs, but she had loved, fought, and suffered vio-
lently in her daily life for herself, for her own soul,
for her flesh and blood. What loves ? What battles ?
What spasms? From what depths of melancholy
had she drawn the sublimate of her tragic power?
At what springs of bitterness had she watered her
free genius? Certainly she had witnessed the cruel-
est misery, the darkest ruin ; she had known heroic ef-
forts, pity, horror, and the threshold of death. All her
thirsts had kindled again in the delirium of Phaedra;
and in the submission of Imogen all her tenderness
had trembled anew. Thus Life and Art, the irrevo-
cable past and the eternally present, had made her
profound, many-souled and mysterious, had magnified
her ambiguous fate beyond human limits, making her
equal to the temples and the forests.

She stood on, breathing under the eyes of the poets,
who saw her one and yet different.

"Ah, I will possess you as in a vast orgy; I will
shake you like a bundle of thyrsi ; I will shake from
the knowledge of your body all the divine and
monstrous things that weigh upon you ; the things
you have accomplished, and those still in travail that
are growing in you as in a sacred season," spoke the
lyric demon of the Life-giver, recognising in the
woman's mystery the surviving power of the primitive
myth, the renewed initiation of the deity which had
fused all the energies of nature in one single ferment,
and with the varying of its rhythms and in the en-
thusiastic worship of himself had raised human senses
and the human spirit to the summit of joy and pain.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 109

" It will be good, it will be good, to have waited so
long. The passing of years, the tumult of dreams,
the agonies of the struggle and the swiftness of
triumph, the impurity of many loves, the enchant-
ment of poets, the applause of the crowd, the wonders
of earth, the patience and the fury, the footsteps in
the mud, the blind flights, all the evil, all the good,
what I know and what I ignore, what you know and
what you ignore, — all this had to be, to make the ful-
ness of my night that is coming."

He felt himself suffocate and turn pale. Desire
seized him by the throat with a wild impulse, to leave
him no more; and his heart swelled with that same
anxiety that both had felt in the evening when they
had glided over the water that had seemed flowing
in a frightful clepsydra.

As the exaggerated vision of places and events
vanished suddenly, the nocturnal creature reappeared
stilll more profoundly knitted to the city of the vast
necklaces and the thousand girdles of green. In the
city and in the woman he now saw a power of ex-
pression that he had never seen before. The one and
the other burned in the Autumn night, and the same
fever that ran through the canals was running through
her veins.

The stars glittered, the trees swayed behind Per-
dita's head, a garden stretched out beyond the
windows open on the balconies. Whiffs from the
sky stole into the supper-room, agitating the little
flames of the candelabra and the chahces of the
flowers; they passed through the doors, giving
the curtains a light throb, animating that old house
of the Capello where the last great daughter of San

no THE FLAME OP LIFE

Marco whom the people had covered with glory and
with gold had collected her relics of republican
magnificence. Galleon lamps, Turkish targets, quiv-
ers of leather, bronze helmets, velvet sheaths, adorned
the rooms of the last descendant of that marvellous
Cesare d'Arbes who had kept the Art of Comedy-
alive against the goldonian reform, and changed the
agony of the Serene Republic into a convulsion of
laughter.

" All I ask is to serve that idea humbly," la
Foscarina said to Antimo della Bella, with a slight
tremor in her voice because she had met Stelio's
gaze.

" You alone can make it triumph," said Francesco
de Lizo. " The soul of the crowd is subject to you
for ever."

" The drama," declared Daniele Glauro, " can only
be a rite or a message. The performance should be
once more solemn as a ceremony, including as it
does the two elements that make up all worship, — the
living person on the stage in whom, as before the
altar, the word of the revealer is made incarnate,
and the presence of the multitude silent as in its
temples. . . ."

" Bayreuth ! " interrupted Prince Hoditz.

" No, the Janiculum ! " cried Stelio EfFrena, sud-
denly emerging from his dizzy silence, " a Roman hill.
Not the bricks and the wood of Upper Francony.
We will have a marble theatre on our Roman hill."

The sudden opposition of his words seemed to
have been almost brought about by a kind of joyful
contempt.

" Do you not admire the work of Richard Wagner?"

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME iii

asked Donatella Aryale, with a slight frown that for an
instant made her Hermes-like face seem almost hard.

He looked her straight in the eyes, feeling all that
was obscurely hostile in the girl's manner and himself
sharing against her that indistinct enmity. He saw
her living her own encircled life apart, immovable
in some deeply secret thought, a stranger and
inviolable.

" The work of Richard Wagner," he answered, " is
founded on the German spirit, and its essence is
purely northern. His reform has some analogy with
that which Luther attempted ; his drama is nothing
if not the supreme flower of the genius of a race, the
extraordinarily efficacious summing up of the aspira-
tions that have burdened the soul of the symphonists
and of the national poets from Bach to Beethoven,
from Wieland to Goethe. If you could imagine his
work on the shores of the Mediterranean, among our
light olive-trees and our slender laurels, under the
glory of the Latin sky, you would see it grow pale
and dissolve. Since, according to his own words, it
is given to the artist to see a still unformed world
shining in its future perfection, and to enjoy it pro-
phetically in desire and in hope, I announce the
advent of a new or renewed art that by the powerful,
sincere simplicity of its lines, by its vigorous grace,
by the ardour of its spirit, by the pure force of its
harmonies, shall continue and crown the immense
ideal edifice of our elect race. I glory myself that I
am a Latin, and — forgive me, dreaming Lady Myrta,'
forgive me. Prince Hoditz, — I see a barbarian in
every man of different blood.

"But he, too, Richard Wagner, started from the

112 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Greeks in developing the thread of his theory," said
Baldassare Statnpa, who, having just returned from
Bayreuth, was still full of the ecstasy.

" A confused and unequal thread," answered the
master. " Nothing is further from the Orestiades
than the tetralogy of the Ring. The Florentines of
Casa Bardi have perceived the essence of Greek
tragedy far more deeply. All homage to the Cam-
erata del Conte di Vernio."

" I have always thought that the Camerata was an
idle gathering of savants and rhetoricians," said
Baldassare Stampa.

" Do you hear, Daniele?" exclaimed Stelio, turn-
ing to the mystic doctor. " When was there in the
world a more fervid fire of intelligence ? They sought
the spirit of life in Greek antiquity; they tried to
develop all human energies harmoniously, to manifest
man in his integrity by all the means of art. Giulio
Caccini taught that not only things in particular, but
all things together are needful to the excellence of
the musician ; the tawny hair of Jacopo Peri and of
Zazzerino flamed in their song like that of Apollo.
In the discourse that precedes his Rappresentazione
di Anima et di Corpo, Emilio del Cavaliere gives us
the same ideas on the foundation of the new theatre
that have since been carried out at Bayreuth, even to
the precept of perfect silence, of propitious darkness,
of an invisible orchestra. Marco da Gagliano in cele-
brating a festive performance eulogises all the arts
that contributed to it ' in such a manner that every
most noble feeling is flattered through the intellect at
one same time by the most pleasure-giving arts that
human talent has discovered.' Is not that enough?"

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 113

" Bernino," said Francesco de Lizo, " gave an
opera in Rome for which he himself had constructed
the theatre, painted the scenery, carved the orna-
mental statues, invented the machinery, written the
words, composed the music, regulated the dancing,
instructed the actors, in which he himself danced,
sang, and recited."

" Enough, enough ! " cried Prince Hoditz, laughing ;
" the barbarian is conquered."

" And it is still not enough," said Antimo della
Bella ; " we should glorify the greatest of these inno-
vators, he who is anointed a Venetian by his passion
and death, whose sepulchre in the Church of the
Frari is worthy of a pilgrimage, — the divine Claudio
Monteverde."

" His was an heroic soul of pure Italian essence,"
Daniele Glauro confirmed reverently.

" He accomplished his work in the storm, loving,
suffering, struggling, alone with his fate, his passion,
and his genius," la Foscarina said slowly, as if
absorbed in the vision of the brave life full of pain
that had fed the creatures of its art with its warmest
blood. " Tell us about him, Effrena."

Stelio quivered as if she had suddenly touched
him. Again the expressive power of her diffusing
voice called up an ideal figure, that rose from some
indefinite depths as from a tomb, assuming before
the eyes of the poets the colour and the breath of life.
The old viola-player, bereaved and ardent and sad
like the Orpheus of his own fable, appeared in the
supper-room.

It was a fiery apparition, prouder and more daz-
zling by far than that which had lit up the harbour of

114 THE FLAME OF LIFE

San Marco; an inflamed force of life, expelled
from the inner bosom of nature towards the expec-
tancy of the multitudes ; a vehement zone of light
breaking out from an interior sky to illumine the
more secret depths of human will and desire, an un-
known Word springing from primitive silences to say
that which is eternal and eternally inexpressible in
the heart of the world.

" Should we speak of him, if he himself could
speak to us ? " said the Life-giver, troubled, unable to
contain the growing fulness that surged within him
like an anguished sea. And he gazed at the singer;
and he saw her as when she had first appeared to
him in the pauses, among the forest of instruments
white and lifeless as a shadow.

But the spirit of beauty which they had invoked
was to manifest itself through her.

"Ariadne," Stelio added in a low voice, as if to
awaken her.

She rose without speaking, went to the door,
entered the neighbouring room. They heard the
rustle of her skirts, her light footfall, and the sound
of the instrument being opened. All were quiet and
intent. A musical silence seemed to occupy the
place that had remained empty in the supper-room.
Once only a breath of wind slanted the candle flames,
disturbing the flowers. Then all became anxious
again, and motionless in expectation.

" Lasciatemi morire ! " ^

Suddenly their souls were ravished by a power
that seemed the lightning-like eagle by which Dante
I " O let me die I "

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 115

in his dream was ravished up to the flame. They
were burning together in undying truth ; they heard
the world's melody pass through their luminous
ecstasy.

" Lasciatemi morire ! "

Was it Ariadne, still Ariadne, who was weeping in
some new pain ? rising, still rising, to new height in
her martyrdom?

" E che volete
Che mi conforte
In cosi dura sorte.
In cosi gran martire ?
Lasciatemi morire 1 " '

The voice ceased ; the singer did not reappear.
The aria of Claudio Monteverde composed itself in
the memory like a changeless feature.

" Is there any Greek marble that has reached a
simpler and securer perfection of style? " said Daniele
Glauro, in a low voice, as if he feared to disturb the
silence which was still ringing with the music.

" But what sorrow on earth has ever wept like
this?" stammered Lady Myrta, her eyes full of tears
that ran down the furrows of her poor bloodless face,
while her hands, deformed by gout, trembled as they
wiped them away.

The austere intellect of the aesthete and that of

the sweet sensitive soul in the old infirm body

gave witness to the same power. In the same way,

nearly three centuries before in Mantua, six thousand

spectators had been unable to control their tears, and

1 " And what can comfort me
In my hard fate,
In my great martyrdom ?
O let me die 1 "

ii6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

poets had believed in the living presence of Apollo
on the new stage of the famous theatre.

" Here, Baldassare is an artist of our own race,"
said Stelio Effrena, "who, by the simplest means,
has succeeded in touching the highest degree of that
beauty which the German rarely approached in his
confused aspirations towards the fatherland of
Sophocles."

" Do you know the lamentation of the ailing
King?" asked the young man with the long sunny
hair worn by him as an heirloom of the Venetian
Sappho, of the " high Gasparra," the unfortunate
friend of Collatino.

" All the anguish of Amfortas is in a mottetto I
know: ' Peccantem me quotidie;' but with what
lyric impulse, what powerful simplicity ! All the
forces of tragedy are there, I should almost say sub-
limated like the instincts of a multitude in the heart
of a hero. Palestrina's much older expression seems
to me also purer and more virile.

" But the struggle of Kundry and of Parsifal in the
second act, the Herzeleide motive, the impetuous
figure, the figure of pain drawn from the motto of
the sacred banquet, the motive of Kundry's aspira-
tion, the prophetic theme of the promise, the mad
kiss on the mouth of the youth, all that heartrending
and intoxicating contrast of desire and horror. . . .
'The wound, the wound ! Now it is burning, it is bleed-
ing in me ! ' And above the despairing restlessness
of the tempter, the melody of submission. . . . ' Let
me weep on your bosom, let me be united to thee
for an hour, and even if God repel me I shall be re-
deemed and saved by thee ! ' And Parsifal's answer

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 117

in which the motive of the madman now transfigured
into the promised hero returns with so grand a so-
lemnity : ' Hell is before us for all eternity, if only
for one hour I let thee fold me in thy arms.' And
the wild ecstasy of Kundry. . . . ' As my kiss has
made thee a prophet, the entire caress of my love
shall make thee divine. One hour, one hour only
with thee, and I shall be saved ! ' And the last ef-
forts of her demoniac will, the supreme gesture of
inducement, the prayer and the furious offer. . . .
' Only thy love can save me ! Let me love thee !
Mine for one only hour ! Thine for one only hour.' "

Madly Perdita and Stelio looked into each other's
eyes. For a second they rushed into each other, '
were united, knew joy, and gasped as on a bed of
pleasure and death.

The Marangona, the largest bell of San Marco,
rang out in the night, and as once before in the
evening hour, they seemed to feel the roll of the
bronze in the roots of their hair almost like a quiver
of their own flesh. They again felt, passing over
their heads, the vortex of sound in which the appari-
tions of the consoling beauty invoked by unanimous
Prayer had suddenly arisen. The phantoms on the
water, the infinite waverings of dissimulated desire,
the anxiety, the promise, the farewell, the festival,
the monster with the innumerable human faces, and
the great starry sphere, and the applause and the
symphony and the song, and the miracles of Fire, and
the passage along the sonorous canal, the song of
brief youth, the struggle and mute anguish in the
boat, the sudden shadow on their three destinies, the
banquet illumined by the beautiful idea, the an-

ii8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

nouncement, the hope, the pride, — all the pulsations
of strong life met and renewed themselves within
them, quickened, became a thousand, and became
one. And it seemed to them that they had lived
beyond human limits in that instant, that an un-
known immensity was spreading before them which
they could absorb as the ocean absorbs, because
having lived so much, they yet were empty, having
drunk so much, they yet were parched. A violent
illusion mastered their souls full of riches. The one
seemed to grow immeasurably in the other's wealth.
The maiden had disappeared. The eyes of the wan-
dering, despairing woman were repeating : " The full
'caress of my love shall make thee divine. One hour,
one only hour with thee, and I shall be saved ! Mine,
even if for one only hour! Thine, even if for one
only hour! "

And the eloquence of the enthusiast continued
building up the sacred tragedy. Kundry, the furious
tempter, the slave of desire, the rose of hell, the
original perdition, the cursed one, now reappeared
in the spring dawn, reappeared humble and pale in
the garb of the messenger, her head bent, her gaze
dim, her hoarse, broken voice knowing one word
only: " Let me serve ; let me serve ! "

The melodies of solitude, of submission, of purifi-
cation, prepared round her lowliness the enchantment
of Good Friday. And Parsifal reappeared in his
black armour, with closed helmet, with lowered spear,
absorbed in an infinite dream : " I have come by
perilous roads, but perhaps this day shall see me
saved because I hear the murmur of the holy forest."
Hope, pain, remorse, remembrance, promise, faith

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 119

panting for salvation, sacred, mysterious melodies
seemed to weave the ideal mantle that was to cover
the Simple, the Pure one, the Promised Hero sent
to heal the incurable wound. " Will you lead me
to Amfortas to-day?" He grew languid, fainting
in the arms of the old man. " Let me serve; let me
serve ! " The melody of submission spread through
the orchestra again, destroying the original impetu-
ous figure. " Let me serve ! " The faithful woman
was bringing water, was kneeling in her lowliness,
fervently washing the beloved feet. " Let me serve ! "
The faithful woman drew from her bosom a vase of
ointment to anoint the beloved feet, and then wiped
them with her loosened hair. The Pure One bent
over the sinner, pouring water on her wild head :
"Thus I accomplish my first office; receive this
baptism and believe in the Redeemer." The brow
of Kundry lay low in the dust as she burst out weep-
ing, freed from desire, freed from the curse. And
then, from the profound final harmonies of the prayer
to the Redeemer, the melody of the flowery meadow
spread and rose with superhuman sweetness. " How
beautiful the meadow is to-day ! marvellous flowers
once drew me to them, but the grass and the
flowers were never before so fragrant." Parsifal in
his ecstasy gazes at the meadow and the dewy
forest, smiling in the morning light.

" Ah, who shall forget the sublime moment," ex-
claimed the fascinated man, his thin face flashing
again with the lightning-stroke of joy. " All, in the
darkness of the theatre, were fixed in perfect stillness
like one single compact mass. In each of our veins
our blood had stopped, seeming to listen. The

120 THE FLAME OF LIFE

music rose like light from the Mystic Gulf; the
notes seemed to transform themselves into rays of
spring sunshine, coming to life with the same joy
as the blade of grass that breaks through the earth,
as the flower that opens, as the branch that buds, as
the insect bringing forth its wings. And all the
innocence of things just born entered into us, and
our souls lived again I know not what dream of far
away infancy. . . . Infantia, the device of Vettor
Carpaccio. Ah, Stelio, how well you repeated it to
our old age a little while ago, and how well you
have found the way of making us feel our sorrow
for what we have lost, and our hope of recovering
it by means of an art that shall be indissolubly re-
united to life ! "

Stelio Effrena was silent, oppressed by the weight
of the gigantic work of the barbaric creator whom
the enthusiasm of Baldassare Stampa had called up
and placed against the burning figure of the trage-
dian of Ariadne and Orpheus. A kind of instinctive
rancour, of obscure hostility which was not of the
intellect, raised him up against the tenacious German
who had succeeded in inflaming the world. To
obtain his victory over men and things, he too had
exalted his own image and magnified his own dream
of dominating beauty; he too had been drawn to
the crowd as to the preferable prey, he too had
made his discipline of the effort to surpass himself
without respite. And now he had his temple on the
Bavarian hills.

"Art alone can bring men back to unity," said
Daniele Glauro. " Let us honour the great master
who has always had this for his faith. His theatre,

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 121

although of bricks and wood, although small and im-
perfect, has a sublime significance. In it the work of
art is religion brought under the senses in a living
form ; the drama there becomes a rite."

" Let us honour Richard Wagner," said Antimo
della Bella ; " but if this hour is to be memorable as
the hour of an announcement, and a promise from
him who a little while ago was pointing the mysteri-
ous vessel out to the crowd, let us again invoke as
our patron the heroic soul which has spoken to us
through the voice of Donatella Arvale. In laying the
foundation stone of his theatre, the poet of Siegfried
consecrated it to the hopes and the victories of his
German people. The theatre of Apollo which is
rapidly rising on the Janiculum, where once the eagles
descended with their prophecies, must be no other
than the monumental revelation of the idea towards
which our race is led by its genius. Let us reinforce
the privilege by which nature has made our blood so
great."

Stelio Effrena was silent, overwhelmed by vor-
tex-like forces that laboured in him with a kind of
blind fury similar to the subterranean forces that
swell, break up, and transfigure a volcanic territory,
creating in it new mountains and new abysses. The
elements of his inner life, carried away by that shock,
seemed at the same time to dissolve and to multiply
themselves. Grand, terrible images passed over the
tumult in musical storm-clouds. Rapid concen-
trations and dispersions of thought succeeded each
other like electric discharges in a hurricane. At in-
tervals, he seemed to hear shouts and songs, as if
a door continually reclosed were being continually

r22 THE FLAME OF LIFE

thrown open ; as if blasts of wind were bringing him
the distant cries of a massacre, alternating with
an apotheosis. Suddenly, with the intensity of a
feverish vision, he saw the dry, fated land, in which
he was going to place the souls of his tragedy ; he
felt all its thirst in himself. He saw the mythic fount
that alone broke in upon its dryness, and on the
throb of its springs the whiteness of the virgin who
was to die there. He saw the heroine's mask on
Perdita's face, in all the beauty of an extraordinarily
calm sorrow. The ancient dryness of the plain
of Argos then seemed to convert itself into flames,
the fount of Perseia flowed like a river. The two
primordial elements, fire and water, passed over
all things, cancelled every sign, diflfused themselves,
wandered, struggled, triumphed, spoke, found words
and a language with which to reveal their inner es-
sence, to tell the innumerable myths born of their
eternity. The symphony expressed the drama of the
two elemental Souls on the stage of the Universe, the
pathetic struggle of the two great living and mobile
Beings, of the two forces of cosmic Will, such as the
shepherd Arya on his plateaus imagined it, when his
pure eyes first saw the spectacle. Then from the very
centre of the musical mystery, from the inner depth
of the symphonic ocean, the Ode arose, brought by
the human voice, and soared to its greatest height.
The miracle of Beethoven renewed itself. The winged
Ode, the Hymn, burst up from the depths of the
orchestra to tell, in an imperious and absolute man-
ner, the joy and the sorrow of Man. Not the chorus,
as in the Ninth Symphony, but the solitary, domi-
nating voice that was the interpreter, the messenger

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 123

to the multitude. " Her voice ! her voice ! She has
disappeared. Her voice seemed to touch the very
heart of the world, and she was beyond the veil,"
said the Life-giver, having once more before his eyes
the crystal statue in which he had seen the ascending
veins of melody. "I will seek you, I will find you
again, I will master your secret. You shall sing my
hymns, raised up on the summit of my music." Freed
from impure desire, he now considered the virgin's
form as the receptacle, as the custodian of a divine
gift. He heard the disembodied voice rise from the
depths of the orchestra to reveal the part of eternal
truth hidden in the passing fact, in the fleeting event.
The Ode was crowning the episode with light. Then,
as if to lead back to the play of images his spirit,
which had been rapt " beyond the veil," a dance
figure designed itself on the rhythm of the dying Ode.
The silent dancer appeared within a parallelogram
traced in the arch of the stage, as within the limits of
a strophe ; her body, redeemed for a while from the
sad laws of gravity, imitating fire and water and the
whirlpool and the evolution of stars. " La Tanagra,"
the flower of Syracuse, made of wings, as a flower is
made of petals ! Thus he conjured up the image of
the already famous Sicilian who had rediscovered the
ancient art as it was in the times when Frinico could
boast of having as many dance figures in himself as
a stormy winter's night raises up waves upon the sea.
The actress, the singer, and the dancer, the three
Dionysian women, appeared to him as three per-
fect, almost divine instruments of his creations. By
means of words, gesture, and symphony, and with
incredible rapidity, his work would complete itself

124 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and live its powerful life before the conquered
multitude.

He was silent, rapt in an ideal world, intent on
measuring the effort necessary to manifest it.

" Richard Wagner affirms that the only creator of a
work of art is the people," Baldassare Stampa was
saying, " and that all the artist can do is to gather
up and express the creation of the unconscious
throng. . . ."

The extraordinary feeling that had surprised him
while he had been speaking to the crowd from the throne
of the Doges returned and occupied him. During that
time of communion between his own soul and the soul
of the crowd an almost divine mystery had taken place ;
something greater and stronger had added itself to
the feeling he habitually entertained about his own
person, an unknown power had seemed to converge
within him, abolishing the limits of his particular per-
sonality and conferring the harmony of a chorus to
his solitary voice. There must, therefore, be in the
multitude some hidden beauty from which only the
hero and the poet can draw a flash. Whenever
that beauty revealed itself by a sudden clamour
arising in theatre or entrenchment or public place, a
torrent of joy must swell the heart of him who had
called it forth with his verse, his harangue, or the
action of his sword. The word of the poet, when
communicated to the crowd, must, therefore, be an
act like the deed of a hero, — an act creating instan-
taneous beauty in the numberless obscurities of the
soul, in the same way as a wonderful sculptor, from
a mass of clay and by the mere touch of his plastic
thumb brings forth a divine statue. The silence that

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 125

had been spread like a sacred veil on the completed
poem would then cease. The substance of life would
no longer be signified by immaterial symbols, but life
itself would be manifested in its entirety through the
medium of the poet, the Word made flesh, the rhythm
quickened in a breathing, living form ; the idea would
spring forth in the fulness of its strength and freedom.

" But Richard Wagner," said Fabio Molza, " be-
lieves that the crowd consists of all those who feel
some mutual infirmity. Do you hear, a mutual
infirmity? . . ."

" Towards Joy, towards eternal Joy ! " thought
Stelio EfFrena. " The people are all those who feel
an obscure necessity of raising themselves by means
of Fiction out of the daily prison in which they serve
and suffer." The small city theatres disappeared
before him, those theatres where in the midst of a
suffocating heat that is saturated with every impurity,
before a band of debauchees and harlots, the actors
take on themselves the office of prostitutes. On the
steps of the new theatre he saw the true crowd, the
immense, unanimous crowd that he had smelt and
heard a moment ago among the marbles under the
stars. His art, though imperfectly understood, would
bring to those rough unconscious souls, by the
mysterious power of rhythm, an emotion deep as that
felt by the prisoner on the point of being freed from
his chains. The joy of their liberation spread little
by little over the most abject, the furrowed brows
cleared and lips opened in wonder that were accus-'
tomed to violent outcry ; lastly the hands — the rough
hands enslaved by instruments of toil — stretched out
in one unanimous movement towards the heroine

126 THE FLAME OF LIFE

who was exhaling her immortal sorrow under the
stars.

" In the life of a people like ourselves," said Daniele
Glauro, "great manifestations of art weigh much
more than a treaty of alliance or a tributary law.
That which is undying is worth more than that which
passes away. The daring and the cunning of a
Malatesta are preserved for all Eternity in a medal of
Pisanello's. Of all Machiavelli's politics nothing
would survive if it were not for the sinews of his
prose. . . ."

" True, true," thought Steho Effrena ; " the fortunes
of Italy are inseparable from the fate of Beauty, of
whom she is the mother." And that sovereign truth
now seemed to him the approaching sun of the divine,
far-away ideal fatherland through which Dante
wandered. " Italy ! Italy ! " The name that has in-
toxicated the world sounded over his soul like a
rallying cry. Should not a new art, robust in both
roots and branches, rise from ruins steeped in so
much heroic blood, and should not this art sum up
within itself all the forces latent in the hereditary
substance of the nation? Should it not become a
constructive and determining power in the third
Rome, pointing out to the men who were taking part
in its government the primitive truths to be made
the basis of new forms? Faithful to the oldest in-
stincts of his race, Richard Wagner had foreseen and
forwarded by his effort the aspiration of the German
States toward the heroic greatness of empire. He
had presented them with the magnificent figure of
Henry the Fowler rising up and standing under the
ancient tree. ..." Let the warriors rise up from

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 127

every German land ! " At Sadowa and at Sedan the
warriors had won. With one same impulse, with the
same doggedness, the people and the artist had accom-
plished their aim of glory. One same victory had
crowned the work of the sword and the work of the
lyre. The poet as much as the hero had accomplished
an enfranchising act. His musical figures had con-
tributed as much as the will of the Chancellor, as
much as the blood of the soldiers, to the work of
exalting and perpetuating the soul of his race.

" He has been here a few days ; he is staying at the
Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi," said Prince Hoditz.

Suddenly the image of the barbaric creator
approached him, the lines of the face became visible,
the sky-blue eyes shone under the vast forehead, the
lips closed tightly above the powerful chin that was
armed with sensuality and pride and disdain. The
small body bent with old age and glory drew itself
up, growing gigantic like its work, the appearance
of a god coming over it. Its blood coursed like
the streams on a mountain-side ; its breath heaved like
the wind in a forest. All of a sudden the youth of
Siegfried filled it, was like the dawn shining through
a cloud. " To follow the impulse of my own heart,
to obey my own instinct, to listen to the voice of
nature speaking within me. Let this be my supreme
and only law." The heroic words rising from the
deep vibrated in it, giving expression to the young
healthy will that had overcome every obstacle and
every evil enchantment, that had always felt itself in
harmony with the law of the Universe. And at this,
the flames brought forth from the rock at the stroke
of Wotan's staff rose up in a circle.

128 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" A way has been opened through the sea of flames.
Great is the joy of being steeped in that fire. Oh
that in that fire I might find my bride ! " All the
phantoms of the myth seemed to flash and then
become dark again. The winged helmet of Brune-
hilde ghttered in the sun. " Glory to the sun, glory
to the light, glory to the radiant day ! My sleep was
long; who has awakened me ?" The phantoms
became tumultuous and dispersed. Suddenly Dona-
tella Arvale, the Song-maiden, reappeared on a
background of shadow, such as he had first seen her
in the crimson and gold of the Great Hall holding the
fruit of the flame in an attitude of dominion. " Do
you not see me, then? My consuming eyes and my
flaming blood, do they give you no fear? Do you too
feel this wild ardour?" Her power over his dream
seemed to return with her absence. Infinite music
welled up from the silence that filled her empty place
in the supper-room. Her Hermes-like face seemed
to withhold an inviolable secret. " Do not touch me,
do not disturb me, and I will reflect your luminous
image for ever. Love yourself and give me up."
Once more, as on the feverish water, a kind of
passionate impatience dogged the Life-giver, and
again he saw in the absent one the faculty of being
drawn like a beautiful bow by a strong hand that
should know how to use it as a weapon for some
great conquest. "Awake, virgin, awake! Laugh
and live ! Be mine ! "

Violently his spirit was being drawn into the circle
of the imaginary world created by the German god ;
its visions and harmonies overcame him, the fig-
ures of the northern myth built themselves up over

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 129

the figures of his own art and his own passion ob-
scuring them. His own desire and his own hope
were speaking the language of the barbarian. " It
is necessary that smiling I should love you, and
smiling I should blind myself. It is necessary that
still smiling we should unite ourselves and lose
ourselves in that union. O radiant Love ! O pro-
pitious Death ! " The exaltation of the warrior
maiden standing on the flame-encircled rock touched
its steepest height; her cry of freedom and pleasure
rose to the heart of the sun. Ah, what had that
formidable stirrer of human souls not expressed?
what apex and what abyss had he not reached? what
effort could ever equal his effort? what eagle could
ever hope to soar higher? His gigantic work stood
complete in the midst of men, the last chorus of the
Grail, the thanksgiving hymn echoed through the earth.
" Glory to the miracle, redemption to the Redeemer ! "

" He is tired," said Prince Hoditz, " very tired
and worn out. This is why we did not see him at
the Ducal Palace. His heart is ailing ..."

The giant became human again, turned into a
small body bent with age and glory, worn with pas-
sion, dying. And it seemed to Stelio Effrena that
he was once more hearing those words, uttered by
Perdita, which had made a coflRn of their gondola:
the words alluding to another great and stricken
artist, the father of Donatella Arvale. " The name
of the bow is Bios, and its work is Death." The
young man saw his way stretching before him,
traced out by victory, the long , art, the short life.
" Forward ! Forward ! Higher and still higher ! "
At every hour, at every second, he would have to

9

130 THE FLAME OF LIFE

feel, fight, and strengthen himself against destruc-
tion, diminution, violation, and contagion. At every
hour, at every second, he would have to keep his
eyes fixed on his aim, bringing. all his energies to
converge towards it without truce and without res-
pite. He felt that victory was as necessary to him
as air. A furious desire of battle was awaking
in his agile Latin blood at that contact with the
barbarian. " To you I now leave the task of willing,"
the latter had cried out from the stage of the new
theatre on the day of inauguration : " In the work of
art of the future the fountain head of all inven-
tions shall never run dry." Art was as infinite as
the beauty of the world. There are no limits to
strength and daring. He must seek further, still
further, and find. " Forward ! Forward ! "

One single, vast, formless wave summed up the
anguish and the aspirations of that delirium, con-
torting itself into a vortex, rising in a tidal wave,
seeming to condense itself, to take on the very
qualities of plastic matter, to obey the same inex-
haustible energy that shapes all things and all beings
under the sun. A form of extraordinary purity and
beauty was born of that travail, took life and shone
with almost unbearable happiness. The poet saw it,
gathered it up into his pure eyes, felt its roots strik-
ing into the very centres of his spirit. " Ah, only
to express it, to manifest it to mankind, to fix it in
its perfection for all eternity ! " It was one of those
sublime instants that have no return. Then every-
thing vanished. Ordinary life flowed on around him,
fleeting words sounded, expectation throbbed, all
desire fell consumed.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 131

And he looked at the woman. Stars twinkled,
trees waved behind Perdita's head, a garden deep-
ened out, and still the eyes of the woman said : " Let
me serve ! Let me serve ! "

In the garden, the guests had dispersed along
the walks and under the vine-trellises. The night
air was damp and lukewarm ; delicate eyelids could
feel it on their lashes like the approach of a warm,
mobile mouth. The hidden stars of the jessamine
shrubs yielded their acute perfume in the shadow;
the odour of the fruits too was as strong and even
heavier than in the island gardens. A vivid fertilis-
ing power emanated from that small space of culti-
vated earth that was enclosed like an exiled thing
by its girdle of water, becoming all the more intense
from its banishment, like the soul of the exile.

" Do you wish me to stay? Do you wish me to
return after the others have gone? Tell me. It is
late. "

" No, no, Stelio, I beg of you. It is late. It is too
late. You say so yourself."

Mortal dismay was in the woman's voice. Her
bare neck and her bare arms shuddered in the dark-
ness ; and she longed to deny herself and she longed
to be possessed, and she longed to die and longed to
be shaken by his man's hands. She trembled ; her
teeth trembled in her mouth. A stream that seemed
to flow from a glacier submerged her, rolled over her,
chilled her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her
fingers. The joints of each limb ached as if ready
to fall asunder, and the jaws stiffened by her terror

132 THE FLAME OF LIFE

seemed to change her voice. And she longed to die,
and longed to be suddenly taken and overthrown by
the violence of his manhood ; and over her dismay
and over her chill and over her body that was
no longer young the same terrible sentence hung
suspended that the loved one had pronounced and
that she herself had repeated : " It is late ; it is too
late."

" Your promise, your promise ! I will wait no
longer. I cannot, Perdita."

The harbour, voluptuous like a proffered bosom,
the estuary lost in darkness and death, the City
kindled by its twilight fire, the water running in
the invisible clepsydra, the vibrating bronze of the
bells close to the heavens, the suffocating desire, the
tightly drawn lips, the lowered Hds, and dry hands,
the whole fulness of the tide returned with the
memory of the silent promise. He desired, with a
savage desire, that flesh full of deep things.

" I will wait no longer." His turbid ardour came
to him from far, far away, from the remotest of
origins, from the primitive brutality of sudden unions,
from the antique mystery of sacred lusts. Like the
throng that the god possessed and that descended the
mountain-side, tearing up trees, pushing on with a
fury ever more and more bhnd, swelling its numbers
with other madmen, spreading insanity along its
passage until it became an immense animal and
human multitude, spurred on by a monstrous will,
the crude instinct in him rushed by, troubhng all the
figures of his soul and dragging them with it in its
rush with one manifold agitation. And what he most
desired in that despairing woman full of knowledge^

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 133

was the creature weighed down by the eternal servi-
tude of her nature, destined to succumb to the sudden
convulsions of her sex, the creature who habitually
slaked the lucid fever of the stage with obscure,
sleep-giving pleasures, the actress full of flame who
passed from the frenzy of the crowd to the embrace
of manhood, the Dionysian creature who was wont to
crown her mysterious rites by the act of life as in the
Orgies of old.

His desire lost all proportion and became mad, full
of the quiver of conquered multitudes and the intoxi-
cation of her unknown lovers and the vision of
orgiastic promiscuities; cruelty, rancour, jealousy,
poetry, and pride were in his desire. Regret stung
him for never having possessed the actress after
some theatrical triumph, still warm with the breath
of the crowd, covered with sweat, pale and panting,
still wearing the traces of the tragic soul that had
wept and cried out in her, with the tears of that intrud-
ing soul still damp on her convulsed face. For the
space of a lightning-flash he saw her outstretched,
full of the power that had drawn a howl from the
monster, throbbing like a Maenad after the dance,
parched and tired, yet needing to be taken, to be
shaken, to feel herself contracting in a last spasm,
to receive some violent germ, in order to quiet
down at last to a lethargy without dreams. How
many men had come forth from the crowd to
clasp her after having panted for her lost in the
unanimous mass? Their desire had been made of
the desire of thousands, their vigour multiplied.
Something of the drunkenness of the people, some-
thing of the fascinated monster, would penetrate into

134 THE FLAME OF LJFE

the bosom of the actress with the pleasure of those
nights.

" Don't be cruel ; don't be cruel ! " implored the
woman, feeling all that turbulence in his voice and
reading it in his eyes. " Oh, do not hurt me !"

Once more, under the voracious gaze of the young
man, her body seemed to contract at the resistance of
a painful modesty. His desire reached her like a
wound that tore her open. She knew how much was
pungent and impure in that sudden excitement, how
deeply rooted was his opinion of her that considered
her a poisoned and corrupt thing laden with many
loves, an expert in all that was pleasure, a wandering,
implacable temptress. She divined his ill-will, his
jealousy, the malignity of the fever that had suddenly
been kindled in the dear friend to whom she had
consecrated all that, shut up within herself, was pre-
cious and sincere, for whom she had preserved the
value of that offering by a constant refusal. Hence-
forward all was lost, all had been devastated at a
blow, like a beautiful domain that has become the
prey of vindictive rebel slaves. And almost as if she
had been on her death-bed and in her last agony, the
whole of her sharp, stormy life rose up before her,
her life of pain and struggle, of bewilderment, passion,
and triumph. She felt all the weight, all the encum-
brance of it. She remembered the ineffable feeling
of joy, of terror, and of liberation that had possessed
her when she gave herself up for the first time in her
far-away girlhood to the man who had deluded her.
And there passed through her soul with a frightful
stab the image of the virgin who had withdrawn her-
self that day, who had disappeared, who was perhaps

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 135

still dreaming in her solitary chamber, or was weep-
ing or promising herself, or prostrate was tasting
already the joy of her promise. " It is late ; it is too
late ! " The irrevocable word seemed to pass con-
tinually over her head like the roll of a bronze bell.
And his desire reached her like a wound that tore
her open.

" Oh, do not hurt me ! "

She stood imploring him, white and slight like the
swansdown that ran round her neck and on her rest-
less bosom. She seemed to have separated herself
from her power, to have become light and weak,
clothed with a secret, tender soul that was so easy to
be killed, to be destroyed and offered up as a blood-
less sacrifice.

" No, Perdita; I will not hurt you," he stammered,
suddenly unnerved by her voice and countenance,
seized at the entrails by a feeling of human pity
which had arisen from the same depths as his first
savage instinct. " Forgive me ; forgive me."

It would have pleased him now to take her in his
arms, to nurse her, comfort her, to feel her weeping
and to drink in her tears. It seemed to him that he
did not recognise her, that it was an unknown person
who stood there before him, one infinitely pained
and lowly and deprived of all strength. And his
pity and remorse were a little like what one would
feel if one had unwillingly offended or hurt a sick
person or a child, some little and inoffensive lonely
being.

" Forgive me ! "

It would have pleased him to kneel down before
her, to kiss her feet in the grass or say some little

136 THE FLAME OF LIFE

word to her. He stooped and touched one of her
hands. She shuddered from head to foot, turned her
widened eyes towards him, then cast them down
again and remained motionless. The shadows accu-
mulated under the arch of her eyebrows, marking
the undulation of the cheek-bone. Again the icy
stream submerged her.

They heard the voices of the guests who were scat-
tered about the garden ; then a great silence came.
They heard the gravel creak under some footstep ;
then again a great silence came. An indistinct clam-
our reached them from the distance of the canals.
All at once the perfume of the jessamine seemed
to have become stronger, like a heart that has quick-
ened its throbs. The night seemed to be heavy with
wonders. The eternal forces were harmoniously at
work between the earth and the stars.

" Forgive me ! If my desire gives you pain, I will
go on suffocating it. I am even capable of giving it
up, of obeying you. Perdita, Perdita, I will forget
what your eyes said to me up there among the use-
less words. . . . What clasp, what caress, could have
united us more deeply? All the passion of night
urged us and threw us towards each other. I re-
ceived you all into myself like a wave. And now it
seems that I can no longer divide you from my own
blood, it seems that you too cannot go away from
me, and that we should set out together towards
I know not what daybreak . . ."

He was speaking in a low voice, putting his whole
self into his words, as if he had become some vibrat-
ing substance in which at every moment all the
changes of that nocturnal creature seemed to impress

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 137

themselves. It was no longer the heavy human
prison, a bodily shape made of opaque and impene-
trable flesh that was there before him, but a soul that
was revealing itself in a variety of appearances as
expressive as melodies, a sensibility delicate and pow-
erful beyond all measure that was creating in her in
turns the frailty of flowers, the vigour of marble, the
vehemence of the flame, all that is shadow and all
that is light

" Stelio ! "

She only just said the name, and yet in the dying
breath that came from her pale lips there was as
great an immensity of wonder and exaltation as in
the loudest cry. She had caught the sound of love
in the words of the man beside her, — of love, love !
She, who had so often listened to beautiful perfect
words flowing towards her in that limpid voice and had
suffered from them as from a torture and a mockery,
now, because of this new accent in it, saw her own
life and the life of the world transfigured. Her soul
seemed to reverse itself, the heavy encumbrances fall-
ing to unknown depths, disappearing in endless dark-
ness, while there came to the surface something light
and luminous, something free and spotless, that dilated
and curved into a glorious dome like a morning sky ;
and as the wave of light creeps from horizon to
zenith in its silent harmony, the illusion of happi-
ness rose upon her lips. An infinite smile diffused
itself there, so infinite that the lines of her mouth
trembled in it like leaves in the wind, her teeth shone
in it like jessamine blossoms in the light of stars, —
the slenderest of shapes in a vast element.

" All is abolished ; all has vanished. I have not

138 THE FLAME OF LIFE

lived, I have not loved, I have not enjoyed, I have
not suffered, I am new again. This is the only love
I know. I am pure again. I would that I could die
in the joy you will reveal to me. Years and their
facts have passed over me without touching that part
of my soul that I have been keeping for you, that
secret heaven which has opened up suddenly and has
conquered shadows, and has remained alone to hold
the strength and sweetness of your name. Your love
is saving me ; the fulness of my clasp will make you
divine. . . ."

Words of ecstasy sprang from her enfranchised
heart, but her lips dared not speak them, and she
went on smiling, smiling that infinite smile of hers,
still in silence.

" Is it not true? Tell me! Answer me, Perdita. Do
not you too feel this necessity? This necessity that
has become stronger with all the strength of our
renunciation, with all the constancy we have shown
in waiting for the fulness of the hour? Ah, it does
indeed seem to me that all my hopes and all my
presentiments would be as nothing, Perdita, if this
hour were not to come. Tell me that you could not
get to that daybreak without me as I could not with-
out you. Answer me."

" Yes, yes ! "

In that faint syllable, she gave herself up irre-
claimably. The smile went out; the mouth became
heavy, appearing in almost hard relief against the
pallor of her face, as if thirst were swelling it, strong
to attract, to take, to hold, insatiable. And her whole
person, that had seemed to shrivel in her pain and
terror, drew itself up again as if a new framework had

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 139

suddenly grown within it, reconquered its carnal
power, was overswept by an impetuous wave, be-
came once more desirable and impure.

" Let us wait no longer; it is late."

He was trembling with impatience. The fury was
again taking hold of him ; frenzy had again seized
him by the throat with its feline claws.

" Yes," repeated the woman, but in a different
tone, her eyes plunged into his as if she were now
certain of possessing the philtre that was to bind him
to her lastingly.

He felt the many joys that must pervade that flesh
full of deep things enter his heart. He looked at her
and turned pale, as if his blood had suddenly been
dispersed over the earth and was sinking into it to
nourish the roots of growing things, as if he were
standing in a dream, outside all time, alone with her
who was alone.

She was standing under the fruit-laden shrub which
she had adorned with necklaces ; her whole person
was sharply drawn and curved like her lips, and
fever darted from all her limbs like the breath darts
from between the lips. The unexpected beauty
made up of a thousand ideal forces that had illu-
mined her in the supper-room renewed itself in her
still more intensely, made up now of a flame that
never fades, of a fervour that never languishes. The
magnificent fruits, bearing upon them the crown of
the kingly giver, hung above her head, the myth of
the pomegranate was revivified in the night as it had
been at the passage of the laden boat on the even-
ing water. Who was she? Persephone, Queen of
Shadows? Had she lived there where all human

146 THE FLAME OF LIFE

agitations seem but the wind's sport amid the dust
of an endless road? Had she seen the world where
its springs are, counted in a subterranean world
the roots of flowers immovable like the veins in
a petrified body? Was she tired or drunk with
human tears and laughter and lusts, and with having
touched all mortal things one by one to see them
blossom and to see them perish? Who was she,
then? Had she struck upon the cities like a curse?
Had her kiss for ever closed all lips that sang?
Had she stopped the throb of tyrannous souls,
and poisoned youths with the sweat of her body
that was salt like the foam of the sea? Who was
she; who was she? What was the past that made
her so pale, so ardent, and so perilous? Had she
already told all her secrets and given away all her
gifts, or could she still accomplish some new work
that would bring wonder to this new lover, to whom
life, desire, and victory, all three, meant one only
thing? All this and still more, still more was offered
to his dream by the thin veins on her temples, the
undulation of her cheeks, the power of her body,
the bluish-greenish shadow as of the sea that was the
element in which her face lived as the eye lives in
its own moisture.

"All evil and all good, that which I know and
that which I ignore, that which you know and that
which you ignore, all was reserved for the fulness
of our night." Life and dream had become one
only thing. Thoughts and senses were as wines
poured out in one same cup. Their garments and
their bare faces, their hopes and the sight of their
eyes were like the plants of that garden, like the air.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 141

the stars, and the silence. The hidden harmony of
Nature became apparent, by which she has mixed
together and dissimulated all her differences and
diversities.

It was one of those sublime moments that have no
return. Before even his soul was conscious of it,
his hands went out to her in their desire, touched
her body, drew it towards him, found pleasure in
feeling that it was cold and sweet.

When she felt his strong hands on her bare arm,
the woman threw her head back as if about to fall.
Under her dying eyelids, between her dying lips, the
white of her eyes and the white of her teeth glittered
like things that glitter for the last time. Then
quickly she raised her head and revived ; her mouth
sought the mouth that was seeking it They stamped
themselves on each other. No seal was ever deeper.
Love, like the shrub above them, covered both those
deluded ones.

They separated ; they gazed at each other without
seeing. They could see nothing. They were blind.
They could hear a terrible roll as if the quiver
of bronze bells had re-entered their very forehead.
Nevertheless they heard the dull thud of a pome-
granate that had fallen on the grass from a branch
they had shaken in their violent clasp. They shook
themselves as if to throw off a mantle that was
burdening them. They saw each other and became
lucid again. They heard the voices of their friends
who were scattered about the garden and a distant
indistinct clamour from the canals where perhaps the
antique pageants were repassing.

" Well, " asked the young man, eagerly, scorched

142 THE FLAME OF LIFE

to the marrow by that kiss that had been full of flesh
and soul.

The woman bent down to the grass to pick up the
pomegranate. It was quite ripe and broken by its
fall; its blood-like juice was flowing; it moistened
her parched hand and stained her light dress. With
the remembrance of the laden boat, the pale island,
and the meadow of asphodel, the words of the Life-
giver came back to her loving spirit. " This is my
body. . . . Take and eat."

" Well ? "

" Yes."

She pressed the fruit in her hand with an instinc-
tive movement, as if to crush it. The juice trickled
in a streak over her wrist. Then her whole body
contracted and vibrated as if round a knot of fire,
craving for subjection. Again the icy river sub-
merged her, passing over her, chilling her from the
roots of her hair to the points of her fingers without
extinguishing that knot of fire.

" How? Tell me ! " the young man urged, almost
roughly, as he felt his madness rising again and the
odour of the Orgy returning from' afar.

" Leave when the others leave, then come back. I
will wait for you at the gate of the Gradenigo Garden."

The wretched carnal trembling shook her. She
had become the prey of an invincible power. He
saw her again for the space of a flash as he had
pictured her before, outstretched, moist, and throb-
bing like a Maenad after the dance. Again they
gazed upon each other, but they could not bear the
suffering brought by the fierce eyes of their desire.
They parted.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 143

She went away towards the voices of the poets
who had exalted the idealism of her power.

Lost ! lost ! Henceforth she was lost ! She was
still living, yet overthrown, humiliated, wounded as
if she had been pitilessly trodden under foot; she
was still living, and the dawn was rising, and the
days were beginning again, and the fresh tide was
flowing again into the City Beautiful, and Donatella
was still pure on her pillows. It was already melting
into infinite distance, although it was still so near,
that hour in which she had waited for her lover at
the gate, had heard his steps in the almost funereal
silence of the deserted sidepath, had felt her knees
give way as under a blow, and the terrible roll as of
bronze bells fill her head. That hour was already
very far, yet in all her body, together with the tremu-
lousness that pleasure had left there, the sensations of
that time of waiting persisted with strange intensity ;
the chill of the railing against which she had laid
her brow, the acrid odour that rose from the grass
as from a retting-tank, the warm moist tongue of
Myrta's greyhounds that had noiselessly come and
licked her hands.

" Good-bye, good-bye ! "

She was lost. He had risen from her bed as from
the couch of a courtesan, almost a stranger to her,
almost impatient, attracted by the freshness of dawn,
by the freedom of morning.

" Good-bye ! "

From her window she caught sight of him on the
shore, drinking in a wide breath of vivid air; then

144 THE FLAME OF LIFE

in the great calm she heard his firm, clear voice
calling the gondolier : —

" Zorzi ! "

The man was sleeping in the bottom of his gondola
and his human sleep was like the sleep of the curved
boat that obeyed him. As Stelio touched him with
his foot, he awoke with a start, jumped to the stern,
seized his oar. The man and the boat woke up at
the same time, in perfect harmony with each other,
like a single body, ready to glide on the water.

" Your servant, master," said Zorzi, with a good-
natured smile, glancing at the sky that was growing
lighter. " Do you sit down, and I will row."

Opposite the palace some one threw open the great
door leading to some works. It was a stone-cutting
establishment, where steps were being cut out of
the stone of Val di Sole.

"To ascend," thought Stelio, and his superstitious
heart gladdened at the good omen. The name of
the quarry, too (the Valley of the Sun), seemed
radiant on the door-plate. The image of a staircase
signified his own ascension. He had already seen
it in the abandoned garden on the coat of arms of
the Gradenigo. " Higher, ever higher ! " Joy was
again bubbling up from the depths. The morning
seemed to stimulate all the works of man.

"And Perdita? And Ariadne?" He saw them
again at the top of the marble staircase in the light
of the smoking torches, thrown so close to each
other by the throng that they had blended in one
same whiteness, — the two temptresses, both emerg-
ing from the crowd as from the clasp of a monster.
"And la Tanagra?" The Syracusan with the long

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 145

goat-like eyes then appeared, in a restful pose, knitted
to her mother earth, as the figure of a bas-relief
is attached to the marble in which it is carved.
"The Dionysian Trinity!" He pictured them to
himself as freed from every passion, like the crea-
tures of Art. The surface of his soul was being
covered with splendid, rapid images, like a sea
scattered over with swelling sails. He had ceased
to suffer. The increasing daylight was spreading
a sharp sense of newness over his whole sub-
stance. The heat of the night's fever was entirely
dispersing in the breeze; its fumes were being dis-
sipated. What was happening all around, happened
in himself too. He was being born anew with the
morning.

" There is no need for me to light you any more
now ! " murmured the oarsman, putting out the gon-
dola lantern.

" By San Giovanni Decollate, to the Grand Canal,"
cried Stelio, sitting down.

And while the dentellated prow turned into the
Canal of San Giacomo dall' Orio, he turned to look at
the palace, which was leaden in the shadow. An illu-
minated window suddenly grew dark like an eye that
is blinded. " Good-bye, good-bye." His heart gave
a leap, pleasure waved back into his veins, images of
pain and death passed over all the others. The wo-
man no longer young had remained up there alone,
with the expression of a dying thing on her face;
the virgin was preparing to go back to the place of
her torment. He knew not how to pity, he could
only promise. From the abundance of his strength,
he drew the illusion of being able, for his greater joy,

146 THE FLAME OF LIFE

to change those two destinies. He ceased to sufifer.
All uneasiness yielded before the simple pleasure of
the eyes offered him by the sights of the morning.
The leaves peeping over the garden walls, behind
which the twitter of the sparrows was already awaken-
ing, hid from him the pallor of Perdita ; the sinuous
lips of the singer were lost in the water's undulation.
That which was happening around, happened to him
too. The arch and the echo of the bridges, the
swimming seaweeds, the moan of the pigeons, were
like his breathing, his confidence, his hunger.

" Stop in front of the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi,"
he ordered the boatman.

As he passed by a garden wall, he tore away a few
frail, flowering plants from the interstices of the bricks
that had the rich, dark colour of clotted blood. The
flowers were violet, of extreme delicacy, almost im-
palpable. He thought of the myrtles that grow along
the Gulf of .iEgina, hardy and erect, like bronze
bushes. He thought of the little dark cypresses that
crown the stony tops of the Tuscan Hills, of the high
laurels that protect the statues in the Roman villas.
His thoughts increased the value of the autumnal
flowers that were too slight an offering for Him who
had known how to give his life the great victory He
had promised it.

" Go to shore."

The Canal was deserted ; it was like an ancient
river, full of poetry and silence. The green sky was
mirrored in it with its last dying stars. At the first
glance the palace had an aerial appearance as of a
painted cloud laid on the water; the shade in which
it was still wrapped had about it something of the

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 147

quality of velvet, the beauty of something rich and
soft. And in the same manner that the pattern
slowly discloses itself in thick velvet, slowly the lines
of the architecture became visible in the three Corin-
thian orders that rose with their rhythm ot grace and
strength, to the summit where the emblems of noble
estate, the eagles, the horses, and the pitchers, were
entwined with the roses of the Loredan. NON
Nobis, Domine. Non Nobis.

It was there that the great ailing heart was beat-
ing. The image of- the barbaric creator reappeared,
with its blue eyes shining under the vast brow, its
lips closing above the robust chin that was armed
with sensuality, pride, and disdain. Was he asleep?
Could he sleep, or did he lie sleepless with his glory?
The young man recalled strange things that were
told of him. Was it true that he could not sleep,
except on his wife's heart, closely held by her, and
that even in his old age there persisted in him this
need of a loving contact? He recalled a story of
Lady Myrta's, who, when she was in Palermo, had
visited the Villa d'Angri, where the cupboards in the
room inhabited by the old man had remained im-
pregnated with so violent an essence of roses that it
still turned her faint. He saw the small, tired body
adorned with gems, wrapped in sumptuous sheets,
perfumed like a corpse prepared for the funeral pyre.
And was it not Venice that had given him, as of old
it had given Albert Diirer, a taste for things sumpt-
uous and voluptuous? It was in the silence of the
canals that he had heard the passing of the most
ardent breath of his music, — the deadly passion of
Tristan and Isolde.

148 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Now the great ailing heart was throbbing there,
and there its formidable impulse was dying out. The
patrician palace with the eagles and horses and
pitchers and roses was shut up and as dumb as a
great sepulchre. The sky above the marbles was
reddening at the breath of dawn.

" Hail to the victorious one ! " And Stelio threw
the flowers down. before the door.

"Goon! Goon!"

The oarsman bent over the oars, spurred by that
sudden impatience. The slight* boat skipped over
the water. The canal was all alight on one side.
A tawny sail passed noiselessly. The sea, the bright
waves, the laugh of the sea-birds, the wind out in the
open, rose up before his desire.

" Row, Zorzi ! To the Veneta Marina by the
Canal dell' Olio," cried the young man.

The canal seemed too small for his soul to breathe
in. Victory was as necessary to him now as air. He
wanted to test the well-tempered quality of his nature,
after the night's delirium, in the light of the morning,
and in the sharpness of the sea. He was not sleepy ;
there was a circle of freshness round his eyes as if he
had bathed them with dew. He felt no need of rest,
only a horror of his hotel bed as of a resting-place
too vile for him. " The deck of a vessel, the smell
of salt and pitch, the throb of a red sail . . ."

" Row, Zorzi ! "

The gondolier rowed with increased vigour; the
rowlock now and then creaked under his effort.
The Fondaco dei Turchi melted away like worn and
marvellously discoloured ivory, like the surviving
portico of a ruined mosque. The palace of the

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 149

Cornaro and the palace of the Pesaro passed them,
like two opaque giants blackened by time as by the
smoke of a conflagration. The Ca'd'Oro passed them
like a divine play of stone and air ; then the Rialto
showed its ample back already noisy with popular
life, laden with its encumbered shops, filled with the
odour of fish and vegetables, like an enormous cor-
nucopia pouring on the shore all round it an abun-
dance of the fruits of the earth and sea with which
to feed the dominant city.

" I am hungry, I am hungry, Zorzi," said Stelio,
laughing.

"A good sign when the night makes you hungry;
only the old are made sleepy by it," said Zorzi.

" Go to shore ! "

At a stall he bought some of the grapes of the
Vignole, and some of the figs of Malamocco, heaped
on a plate of vine-leaves.

" Row ! "

The gondola veered under the warehouse of the
Tedeschi, slipping along the dark, narrow canals
towards the Rio de Palazzo. The bells of San
Giovanni Crisostomo, of San Giovanni Elemosinario,
of San Cassiano, of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, of Santa
Maria Formosa, and of San Lio were joyously ringing
in the dawn. The noise of the market, with its odours
of fishery, of green stuff and of wine, was drowned in
the salutation of the bronzes. The strip of water under
the strip of sky, between the still sleeping walls of brick
and marble, became ever more resplendent before the
metal of the prow, as if the race were lighting it up,
and that increase of light gave Stelio the illusion
of a flaming swiftness. He thought of a boat that is

ISO THE FLAME OF LIFE

being launched, raising sparks as it slips into the sea :
the waves fume all round, the crowd shouts and
applauds.

" To the Ponte della Paglia ! "

A thought as spontaneous as an instinct was lead-
ing him to the glorious place where it seemed that
there must still remain some trace of his own lyrical
animations, and some echoes of the great Bacchic
Chorus. " Viva il forte!" The gondola grazed
the powerful flank of the ducal palace, standing com-
pact like a single mass worked by chisels that had
been as apt at finding melodies there as the bows of
musical instruments. He embraced that mass with
the whole of his newly arisen soul ; there, once more,
he heard the sound of his own voice and the crash of
applause, saw the great, many-eyed Chimera, its bust
covered with resplendent scales, its length blackening
under enormous gilded scrolls, and distinctly saw
himself oscillating above the multitude like a hollow,
sonorous body inhabited by some mysterious will.
He was saying the words : " To create with joy ! It
is the attribute of Divinity ! It is impossible to
imagine at the summit of our spirit a more triumph-
ant act. The very words which express it have some-
thing of the splendour of dawn. . . ." He went on
repeating to himself, to the air, to the water, to the
stones, to the ancient city, to the young dawn : " To
create with joy, to create with joy." When the prow
passed under the bridge, he absorbed in the wider
breath he drew, together with all his own hope and
courage, all the beauty and all the strength of his ante-
rior life.

" Find me a boat, Zorzi, a boat that will go out to

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 151

sea." He seemed to need still more breathing space,
to need the wind, the sea salt, the "foam, the swollen
sail, the bowsprit pointed towards an immense ho-
rizon.

" To the Veneta Marina ! Find me a fishing boat.
Some braghozzo from Chioggia."

He caught sight of a great red and black sail that
had only just been hoisted, and was flapping as it
caught the wind, haughty as an old republican ban-
ner, bearing the Lion and the Book.

" There it is ! there it is ! We must overtake it,
Zorzi."

Impatiently he waved his hand to the boat, signing
to her to stop.

" Shout out to the boat that they must wait for
me! "

The man at the oar, heated and dripping, threw a
cry of recall to the man at the sail. The gondola flew
like a canoe in a regatta to the panting of the gon-
dolier's mighty breast.

" Bravo, Zorzi ! "

But -Stelio was panting too, as if he were about to
overtake his fortune, or some happy aim, or the cer-
tainty of empire.

" We have run in and won the flag," said the oars-
man, rubbing his heated hands with a frank laugh
that seemed to refresh him. " What folly ! "

The gesture, the tone, the popular wit, the aston-
ished faces of the fisherman leaning over the parapet,
the reflection of the sail that made the water blood-
like, the cordial odour of bread that came from a
neighbouring bakehouse, the odour of boiling tar
from a neighbouring dockyard, the noise of the

152 THE FLAME OF LIFE

arsenal work-people going to their warlike labour, all
the strong emanation of that shore where one could
still smell the old rotten galleys of the Serene Re-
public and hear the resounding under the hammer of
the Italian iron-clads, — all those rough and healthy-
things called up an impulse of gladness that burst
forth in a laugh from the young man's heart. He and
the oarsman laughed together under the tarred,
patched flank of the fishing boat, that had the living
aspect of a good patient beast of burden, its skin
harsh with wrinkles, excrescences, and scars.

"What is it you want?" asked the elder of the
fishermen, bending towards the sonorous laughter
his bearded and weather-beaten face in which the
only light things were a few grey hairs, and the grey
eyes under the eyelids turned up by the salt winds.
" What can I do for you, master? "

The mainsail was flapping and hissing like a banner.

"The master would like to come on board,"
answered Zorzi.

The mast creaked like a living thing from head to
foot.

" Let him come up, then. Is that all you wish?"
said the old man, simply, and he turned to take the
stepladder.

He hooked it along the stern. It was made of a
few worn pegs, and a single double knotted rope that
was also worn. But that too, like every detail of the
rough boat, seemed to Stelio a singularly living
thing. On putting his foot upon it, his thin glossy
shoes embarrassed him. The large hard hand of the
sailor, marked with blue emblems, helped him up,
pulled him on board with a wrench.

THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 153

" The grapes and the figs, Zorzi ! "

The oarsman from the gondola handed him the
plate of vine-leaves.

" May it go into so much new blood for you ! "

"And the bread!"

" We have got hot bread," said a sailor, lifting up
his fine, fair, round form, " just fresh from the oven."

Hunger certainly would give it a delicious flavour,
would find all the goodness of the grain gathered
there.

" Your servant, master, and fair wind to you," cried
the oarsman, saluting.

" Pull ! "

The Latin sail with the Lion and the Book swelled
crimson. The boat made for the open, turning its
prow towards San Servolo. The shore seemed to
arch itself as if to push it off. The veins of water in
the ship's track made an opaline whirlpool as they
mingled, one rosy, one blue-green, then they changed ;
all the colours alternated as if the wave at the prow
were a fluid rainbow.

" Steer to the right ! "

The boat veered with all its might. A miracle
caught it; the first rays of the sun pierced the
throbbing sail and flashed on the angels above the
towers of San Marco and of San Giorgio Maggiore.
They kindled the sphere of the Fortuna ; their light-
ning crowned the five mitres of the Basilica. The
Sea-City was queen on the water, and all her veils were
rent.

" Glory to the miracle ! " A superhuman feeling
of power and freedom swelled the heart of the young
man as the wind swelled the sail that was being

1 54 THE FLAME OF LIFE

transfigured for him. He stood in the crimson
splendour of that sail as in the splendour of his own
blood. It seemed to him that the mystery of so
much beauty demanded of him the triumphal act.
The consciousness came to him that he was ready
for its accomplishment. " To create with joy ! "
And the world was his !

II

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE

II

THE EMPIRE OF .SILENCE

" In Time ! " La Foscarina had paused for a long
time in one of the rooms of the Academia before the
old woman of Francesco Torbido, — that wrinkled,
toothless, flabby, yellowish old woman, incapable of
either weeping or smiling any longer, that kind of
human ruin far worse than putrefaction, that kind
of earthly parca holding between her fingers in place
of spindle, thread, or scissors the placard with the
warning.

" In time ! " she repeated to the open air, interrupt-
ing the silence full of thoughts during which, little
by little, she had felt her heart grow heavy and
descend to its depths like a stone in dull water.
" Stelio, do you know the shut-up house in the Calle
Gambara?"

"No, which?"

" The house of the Countess of Glanegg."

" No, I don't know it. "

" Don't you know the story of the beautiful Aus-
trian?"

" No, Fosca, tell it me."

" Shall we go as far as the Calle Gambara? it is only
a few steps."

" Let us go."

IS8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Side by side, they went towards the shut-up house.
Stelio hung back a little to watch the actress, to see
her walking in the dead air. His warm glance em-
braced her whole person, — the line of the shoulders
falling with so noble a grace, the free flexible waist
on the powerful limbs, the knees that moved slightly
among the folds of her gown, and the pale, passionate
face, the mouth- full of thirst and eloquence, the fore-
head that was as beautiful as a beautiful manly brow,
the eyes that lengthened out from among the eye-
lashes, hazy as if a tear were continually coming up
to them and melting there unshed : the whole of the
passionate face full of light and shadow, of love and
sorrow : the feverish strength, the trembling life.

"I love you, I love you! You alone please me;
everything in you pleases me," he said suddenly,
quite low, close to her cheek, almost pressing against
her as he fell in with her pace, putting his arm under
her arm, unable to bear the thought of her being
seized by her torment, of her suffering from the fear-
ful admonishment.

She started, stopped, dropped her eyes, turned
white.

" Sweet friend," she said in so low a voice that
the words seem modulated less by her lips than by
her soul's smile.

All her trouble was flowing away, was being
changed into a wave of tenderness that poured its
abundance over her friend. Her infinite gratitude
gave her an anxious need of finding some great gift
for him.

"What can I do, what can I do for you? Tell
me!"

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 159

She thought of some wonderful test, some sudden
strange testimony of love. "Let me serve, let me
serve ! " She longed to possess the world that she
might offer it to him.

" What is it that you wish? Tell me, what can I
do for you ? "

" Love me ! Love me ! "

" My love is sad, my poor friend."

" It is perfect ; it fills up my life."

" But you are young."

" I love you ! "

" You should possess that which is strong like
yourself."

" Every day you exalt my hope and my strength.
The tide of my blood seems to swell when I am near
you and your silence. At such times, things are
conceived in me which you will marvel at in time.
You are necessary to me."

" Do not say so ! "

" Each day you bring me the assurance that every
promise ever made to me will be kept."

" Yes, you will go on to the end of your own beau-
tiful destiny. I have no fear for you. You are safe.
No danger can frighten you. No obstacle can ever
come in your way. Oh, to love without fearing !
Whoever loves, fears. I do not fear for you.
You seem to me invincible. For this too, I thank
you."

She was showing him her profound faith which, like
her passion, was lucid and unlimited. For a long
time, even in the ardour of her own struggles and the
vicissitudes of her wandering lot, she had kept her eyes
intently fixed on his young, victorious life as on an

i6o THE FLAME OF LIFE

ideal form born of the purification of her own desire.
More than once, in the midst of the sadness of her
vain loves and the nobility of her self-imposed pro-
hibition, she had thought : " Ah, if when the end has
come of all my courage that the storm has hardened,
if at the end of all the clear strong things that sorrow
and revolt have laid bare in the depths of my soul, if
with all that is best in me I could one day shape the
wings for your last, highest flight ! " More than once
her melancholy had known the intoxication of an
almost heroic presentiment. At such times, she had
subjected her soul to effort and constraint, had raised
it to the highest moral beauty she knew, had led it
towards actions that were pure and sorrowful, only
for the sake of deserving that which she hoped and
feared, only to think herself worthy of offering her
servitude to him who was so impatient of conquest.

And now a sudden violent shock of Fate had
thrown her against him with all the weight of her
trembling body like a woman full of desire. She
had united herself to him with the sharpest of her
blood, she had watched him on the same pillow,
sleeping the heavy sleep of love's exhaustion, she had
known at his side sudden awakenings agitated by cruel
forebodings, had known the impossibility of closing
her tired eyes again, lest he should gaze on her while
she slept, lest seeking in her face the lines of the
years that had passed he should be disgusted by them
and pant after some fresh, young, unconscious life.

" Nothing is worth what you give me," said Stelio,
pressing her arm, his fingers seeking the bare wrist
under her glove, urged by an uneasy necessity of
feeling the pulse of that devoted life and the beating

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE i6i

of that faithful heart in the deserted places through
which they walked, under the squalid smoke that sur-
rounded them and deadened the noise of their steps.
" Nothing is worth this certainty of never again being
alone until death."

" Ah, then you too feel it, you too know that this
is for ever ! " she cried with an impulse of joy as she
saw the triumph of her love. " For ever ! Whatever
may happen, wherever your fate may lead you,
wherever you may want me to serve you, Stelio, be
it near you or from afar. . . ."

A confused monotony of sound was spreading
through the air. She recognised it. It was the
chorus of sparrows gathered together on the great
dying tree in the garden of the Countess Glanegg.
The words stopped on her lips ; she made an instinc-
tive movement, as if to turn back, as if to draw her
friend away in some other direction.

"Where are we going?" he asked, shaken by his
companion's brusque movement and by the un-
expected interruption that was like the end of some
music or enchantnient.

She stopped. She smiled her slight concealing
smile. " In Time." " I tried to escape," she said,
" but I cannot, I see."

As she stood there, she was like some pale flame.

" I had forgotten that I was taking you to the
closed house, Stelio."

She stood there in the ashen daylight, nerveless
like one lost in a desert.

" I thought it was somewhere else we were going.
But here we are. In time ! "

She stood before him now as on that unforgettable

i62 THE FLAME OF LIFE

night, when she had implored him, "Do not hurt
me ! " She stood there clothed in her sweet tender
soul, that was so easy to slay, so easy to destroy and
offer up like a bloodless sacrifice.

" Let us go ; let us go ! ." he said, trying to draw
her away. "Let us go elsewhere."

" One cannot."

" Let us go home, let us go home and light a fire,
the first October fire. Let me spend the evening
with you, Foscarina. It is going to rain before long.
It would be so sweet to linger in your room, to talk
or be silent with our hands in each other's. . . .
Come, let us go."

It would have pleased him to take her in his arms,
to nurse her, comfort her, to feel her weeping and
to drink in her tears. The very sound of his own
caressing words increased his tenderness. Then,
passionately, of all her loving person he loved the
delicate lines that went from her eyes to her temples,
and the little dark veins that made violets of her eye-
lids, and the undulation of her cheek, and the weary
chin, and all that in her seemed touched by the
disease of Autumn and all that was shadow on her
passionate face.

" Foscarina, Foscarina ! "

Whenever he called her by her real name, his
heart would beat more rapidly, as if something more
profoundly human were entering into his love, as if
all of a sudden their whole past were being reknit
to the figure isolated by his dream, as if innumerable
threads were reconnecting all its fibres to implacable
life.

" Come, let us go ! "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 163

" But why, since the house is there. Let us pass
by the Calle Gambara. Don't you want to know
the story of the Countess Glanegg? Look, it is like
a convent ! "

The narrow street was lonely; like a hermitage
path it was greyish, damp, and strewn with putrid
leaves. The north-east wind had brought a slow
soft mist with it that deadened every noise. The
monotonous twitter of the sparrows sounded now and
again like the creaking of iron or wood.

" Behind those walls, a desolate soul is surviving
the beauty of its own body," said la Foscarina,
in a level voice. " Look, the windows are closed, the
shutters are nailed, the doors are sealed. Only one
is left open for the servants to pass in and out of,
and through it the dead woman's food is brought
to her as in an Egyptian tomb. It is an extinguished
body that those servants feed and wait upon."

The almost naked tops of the trees that overtopped
the cloistered enclosure seemed smoking, and the
sparrows, more numerous on the branches than the
diseased leaves, twittered and twittered endlessly.

" Guess what her name is. It is as rare and beau-
tiful a name as if you had discovered it yourself."

" I don't know."

" Radiana. Radiana is the name of the prisoner."

" But whose prisoner? "

" The prisoner of Time, Stelio. Time watches at
her doors, as in the old prints, with his hour-glass
and his scythe. . . "

" Is it an allegory? "

A child passed whistling. When he saw the two
gazing at the closed windows, he also stopped to

1 64 THE FLAME OF LIFE

look with wide, wondering, curious eyes. They
were silent. The constant twitter of the sparrows
could not overpower the silence of the walls and the
trees and the sky: its monotony sounded in their
ears like the roar in a sea-shell, and through it they
could hear the silence of surrounding things and
a few distant voices. The hoarse hoot of a siren
prolonged itself in the misty distance, becoming,
little by little, as soft as a flute note. It ceased.
The little boy grew tired of his gazing : nothing visi-
ble was happening ; the windows did not open ; all
remained motionless. He went off at a run.

They heard the flight of his little naked feet patter-
ing on the damp stones and the rotten leaves.

" Well?" asked Stelio, " and what about Radiana?
You have not told me yet why she has shut herself up.
Tell me ! I have been thinking of Soranza Soranzo."

"She is the Countess Glanegg, a lady of the high-
est Viennese nobility, and perhaps the most beauti-
ful creature that I have ever met. Franz Lenbach
has painted her in the armour of a Valkyrie, wearing
the four-winged helmet. Do you know Franz Len-
bach? Have you ever been to his studio in the
Palazzo Borghese?"

" No, never."

"You must go there one day, and you must ask
him to show you that portrait. You will never
again forget the face of Radiana. You will see it
unchanged as I now see it through those walls. She
has chosen to remain such as she was in the eyes
of those who once saw her in her splendour. Once
on some too bright a morning when she noticed that
the time of withering had come for her too, she

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 165

resolved to take leave of the world in such a way
that man should not stand by, watching the decay
and collapse of her famous beauty. Perhaps it was
her sympathy with things that fall to pieces and go
to ruin which kept her in Venice. On the occasion
of her leave-taking she gave a magnificent entertain-
ment at which she appeared, still sovereignly beauti-
ful. Then, with her servants, she retired for ever
in this house which you see, in this walled garden,
to await the end. She has become a legendary
figure. It is said that no mirror is allowed in her
house and that she has forgotten her own face. Her
most devoted friends and her nearest relatives are
not allowed to see her. How does she live? In the
company of what thoughts? What is the art that
helps her while away the time of waiting? Is her soul
in a state of grace ? "

Every pause in the veiled voice that questioned
the mystery was filled with a melancholy so dense as
to seem almost tangible ; it seemed to be cadenced
by the sobbing rhythm of water that is being poured
into an urn.

"Does she pray? Does she contemplate? Does
she weep? Perhaps she has become inert and no
longer suffers, as an apple does not suffer when it
shrivels up in the bottom of an old cupboard."

The woman stopped. Her lips curved down-
wards as if their words had withered them.

" What if she were suddenly to look out of that
window?" said Stelio, his ear catching something
like a real sensation, like the grinding of hinges.

Both examined the interstices of the nailed
shutters.

1 66 THE FLAME OF LIFE

"She might be sitting there looking at us," he
added in a hushed voice.

The shudder of the one communicated itself to the
other.

They were leaning against the opposite wall, un-
willing to move a step. The surrounding inertia was
creeping over them ; the damp, greyish mist grew
thicker as it swathed them ; the confused monotony
of the birds' twitter stunned them like certain drugs
that stun fever. The sirens screeched in the dis-
tance. The screeches, dwindling little by little till
they became as gentle as flute notes in the limp air,
seemed to linger like the discoloured leaves that were
leaving their branches one by one without a moan.
How long it took for the falling leaf to drop to the
earth ! All was mist ; all was slow heaviness, deser-
tion, waste, ashes.

" It is inevitable ! I must die, dear friend ; I must
die," the woman said in a heart-rending voice after a
long silence, raising her face from the cushion where
she had been pressing it in order to master the con-
vulsion of pain and pleasure that his sudden, furious
caresses had given her.

She saw her friend sitting apart from her on the
other divan near the balcony, in the attitude of one
about to go to sleep, his eyes half shut, and his head,
which was thrown back, tinged with gold by the light
of evening. She saw the red mark, like a small
wound, just under his lip, and the disordered hair on
his forehead. She felt that those were the things on
which her desire fed and rekindled itself. She felt

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 167

that her eyelids hurt her pupils the more she looked,
that her gaze burnt her eyelashes ; that the incurable
evil entered through her pupils, spreading over all
her withered body. Lost, lost, henceforth she was
lost without remedy.

" Die ? " her friend said weakly, without opening his
eyes, without moving, as if speaking from the depths
of his drowsiness and his melancholy.

She noticed that the little open wound moved
under his lip when he spoke.

" Before you hate me."

He opened his eyes, raised himself up, held out his
hand towards her as if to prevent her from saying
any more.

" Ah, why do you torment yourself? "

She was almost livid ; her loosened hair fell in
streaks over her face ; she seemed consumed by a
poison that corroded her, bent as if her soul had
broken through its flesh, terrible and miserable.

" What are you doing with me ; what are we doing
with each other ?" the woman said in her anguish.

They had struggled that day: the breath of the
one mingling with the other's breath, one heart
against the other heart; their union had been like a
scuffle ; they had felt the taste of blood in the mois-
ture of their mouths. All at once they had yielded
to a sudden rush of desire as to a blind necessity of
destroying each other. He had shaken her life as
if to tear it up by its most hidden roots. They
had felt a sharpness of teeth hiding in their cruel
kisses.

" I love you ! "

" Not as I would wish ; this is not what I want."

1 68 THE FLAME OF LIFE

"You excite me. Suddenly, the fury seizes
me. . . ."

" It is like hatred."

" No, no ; don't say that."

" You shake me and rend me as if you wanted to
make an end of me."

" You blind me. After that I know nothing."

" What is it that agitates you ? What do you see
in me?"

" I don't know. I don't know what it is."

" I know it."

"Don't torment yourself I love you! This is
the love. ..."

" That condemns me ! I must die of it. Give
me once more the name you used to give me.''

" You are mine ! I have you now and will not
lose you."

" But you must lose me."

"But why? I cannot understand you. What is
this madness of yours? Does my desire offend you?
But you, do you perhaps not desire me too? Are
you not seized by the same fury of possessing me
and of being possessed? Your teeth were chattering
before I even touched you. . . ."

His intolerance was burning into her more deeply,
was poisoning her wound. She covered her face with
her hands. Her heart had become rigid and was
beating in her breast like a hammer, and the hard
blows of the hammer were reverberated in her head.

" Look ! "

He touched his lip where it hurt him, pressed
the small wound, held out to the woman his finger
tinged with the drop of blood that had oozed from it.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 169

She rose to her feet quickly, writhing as if he had
prodded her with a red-hot iron. She opened her
eyes wide upon him as if to devour him with her
gaze, her nostrils quivered, a fearful force heaved
in her, her whole body, in vibrating, felt itself naked
under her dress as if the folds no longer adhered to
it. Her face, that had looked up from the hollow
of her hands as from a blind mask, burnt darkly
like a fire that has no rays. She was most beautiful,
most terrible, and most miserable.

" Ah, Perdita, Perdita 1 "

Never, never, never will that man forget that step
which Lust moved towards him, the way in which it
drew near him, the swift dumb wave that overthrew it-
self on his breast, that wrapped him round, that drank
him in, that gave him for a moment the fear and
the joy of suffering a divine violence, of dissolving
in a kind of warm, deadly moisture, as if the whole
of the woman's body had suddenly become one
single aspiring mouth that drew him in and by
which he was entirely absorbed.

He closed his eyes, forgetting the world and his
glory. A dark sacred depth opened in him like a
temple. His spirit became motionless and opaque,
but all his senses aspired after the transcending of
their human limits, aspired to the joy that is beyond
the human impediment, became sublime, capable of
penetrating the remotest mysteries, of discovering
the most recondite secrets, of drawing one pleasure
from another like one harmony from another har-
mony, became marvellous instruments, infinite vir-
tues, realities sure as death. All was vanishing like
a mist, the energies and the aspirations of the

\^o THE FLAME OF LIFE

universe seemed converging in that mere union of
sexes ; it was consecrated by heaven, made religious
by the shadow of the curtains, accompanied by the
roar of death.

He opened his eyes. He saw the room, that had
grown dark ; through the open balcony he saw the
distant sky, the trees, the cupolas, the towers, the
extremity of the lagoon with the face of the twi-
light bending over it, and the Euganean Hills, that
were quiet and blue like the folded wings of earth
resting in the evening. He saw the forms of silence
and the silent form of the woman adhering to him like
the bark to the trunk of the tree.

The woman was lying with all her weight upon him,
holding and covering him in her embrace, her fore-
head pressed against his shoulder, her face suffocat-
ingly hidden ; she was clasping him with a hold that
did not loosen, that was indissoluble, like the grip of
a corpse's stiffened arms round a living person. It
seemed as if she could never loosen that clasp, as if
she could never again be detached from him except by
the cutting off of her arms. He felt, in that encircling
clasp, the solidity and the tenacity of the bones,
while on his bosom and along his legs he felt the
soddenness of the body that trembled upon him now
and then with a quiver as of water running over
gravel. Indefinite things passed in that tremble of
water, numberless continual things that rose from the
depths and descended from afar ; ever thicker, more
impure, they passed and passed like a turbid stream
of life. He acknowledged once more that his sharp
desire was nourished by that very impurity, by that
unknown encumbrance, by those traces of lost loves,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE i;i

by all that bodily sadness and unspeakable despair.
He owned once more that it was the phantoms of
other gestures which spurred his gesture of longing
for the wandering woman. It was because of her
that he was suffering now and because of himself;
and he felt her suffer, and he felt that she was his the
same as fuel belongs to the fire that consumes it.
And again he heard the words that had come unex-
pectedly after their fury had passed : " It is inevi-
table: I must die."

He turned his eyes to the open again, saw the
gardens darkening, the houses being lit up, a star
springing from the sky's mourning, the glitter of a
long pale sword at the bottom of the lagoon, the
mountains melting into the fragments of night, the
distance stretching out towards regions rich with
unknown possessions. There were actions to be
accomplished in the world, conquests to be followed
up, dreams to exalt, destinies to enforce, enigmas
to attempt, laurels to be gathered. There were
paths down there, mysterious meetings that could
not be foreseen. Some veiled joy might be pass-
ing somewhere, with nobody to meet or recognise
it. Was there not perhaps an equal, a brother,
living somewhere in the world at that hour, or a
distant enemy on whose brow the lightning-like
inspiration from which the eternal work is born was
about to descend after a day of troubled expecta-
tion. Some one, perhaps, at that hour had finished
some great work, or had found at last some heroic
reason of living ; but he, — he lay there in the prison
of his body under the weight of the desperate
woman. Her magnificint fate, full of sorrow and of

172 THE FLAME OF LIFE

power, had come to break against him as against a
rock. What was Donatella Arvale doing? What
was she thinking of in the evening hour on her
Tuscan hill in her solitary house, near her demented
father? Was she tempering her will for some con-
templated struggle? Was she sounding her secret?
Was she pure?

He became inert under the woman's clasp, his
arms hindered by the rigid circle. Repulsion filled
his being. A melancholy as strong as pain thick-
ened round his heart; and the silence seemed
expecting a cry. The veins throbbed painfully in
his limbs, that had grown torpid under her weight.
Little by little the clasp gave way as if life were
failing it. The heart-rending words came back to
his soul. A funereal image appeared, assailing him
with a sudden frightened uneasiness. And neverthe-
less he did not move nor speak nor attempt to dis-
sipate the cloud of anguish that had gathered over
them both. He remained motionless. He lost the
knowledge of places and the measure of time. He
saw himself and the woman in the midst of an infi-
nite plain, where half-scorched, scattered grasses grew
under a white sky. They were waiting, waiting for
a voice to call them, for a voice that should raise
them up. ... A confused dream was born in his
torpor, fluctuated, changed, turned sad in the night-
mare. Breathlessly he seemed to be climbing a
steep hillside with his companion; and her more
than human breathlessness increased his own. . . .

He started, re-opening his eyes at the clang of a
bell. It was the bell of San Simeone Profeta, and
it was so near that it seemed to be ringing in the

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 173

very room. The metallic sound pierced like a
rapier.

"Had you, too, gone to sleep?" he asked the
woman, finding her unresisting like one already dead.

And he raised one hand, passed it lightly over her
hair, stroking her cheeks and chin.

She burst into sobs, as if that hand were breaking
her heart. And she lay sobbing on his breast with-
out dying there.

" I have a heart, Stelio," said the woman, looking
him in the eyes with a painful effort that made her
lips tremble as if she had overcome fierce shyness in
order to say those words. " I suffer from a heart
that is alive in me, — ah, Stelio, alive and eager and
full of anguish as you will never know. . . ."

She smiled her thin, concealing smile, hesitated,
held out her hand towards a bunch of violets, took
it up and raised it to her nostrils ; her eyelids
dropped; her forehead was bare between her hair
and the flowers, marvellously beautiful and sad.

"Sometimes you wound it," she said in a low
voice, her breath lost in the violets. " You are cruel
to it sometimes. . . ."

It seemed as if the humble, sweet-smelling flowers
were helping her to confess her grief, veiling still
further her timid reproach to her friend. She was
silent; he bowed his head. They could hear the
crackling of the wood on the fire-dogs ; they could
hear the even beat of the rain in the mourning
garden.

" A great thirst for kindness ; ah, you will never

i;4 THE FLAME OF LIFE

know what a thirst it is! . . . For that kindness,
dear sweet friend, that deep true kindness, knowing
not how to speak, but understanding, knowing how
to give all in a single look, in a little movement,
strong and sure, always rising up between us and life
that stains and seduces us . . . Do you know it? "

Her voice, alternately firm and vacillating, was so
warm with inner light, so filled with the revelation
of a soul, that the young man felt it passing through
his blood, less like a sound than a spiritual essence.

" In you, in you, I know it."

He took her hands that were in her lap holding
the violets, and, bending over them, submissively
kissed them both. Then he remained at her feet in
the same attitude of submission. The delicate per-
fume made his own tenderness more delicate. The
rain and the fire spoke in the pause.

"Do you think I am sure of you?" the woman
asked in a clear voice.

" Have you not watched me sleeping on your
heart?" he answered, his tone all at once changed
by a new emotion, because he had seen in that
question the bare soul rise up and stand before
him, had felt his secret need of believing and con-
fiding discovered.

"Yes, but what is that? The sleep of youth is
calm on any pillow. You are young. . . ."

" I love you and believe in you. I have given
myself up entirely. You are my companion and
your hand is strong." '

He had seen the well-known anguish disturb the
lines of the dear face, and his voice had trembled
with love.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 175

" Kindn»ss ! " said the woman, with a light move-
ment, caressing the hair on his temples. " You know
how to be kind ; the necessity is in you, dear friend, of
comforting. But a fault has been committed, and it
must be atoned for. Once I thought that I could
do the highest and the most humble things for you,
and now it seems to me there is only one thing I can
do, — to go away, disappear, leave you free with your
fate."

He interrupted her, lifting himself up and taking
the dear face in his hands.

" This thing I can do, which even love could not,"
she said in her low voice, turning pale and looking
at him as she had never done before.

He felt himself to be holding his soul in the hollow
of his hand, the image of a living spring infinitely
precious and beautiful.

" Foscarina, Foscarina, my soul, my life ! Yes,
yes, more than love, I know that you can give me
more than love; and nothing is worth to me that
which you can give, and no other offer could comfort
me for not having you at my side on the way.
Believe, believe ! I have repeated this to you so
many times, don't you remember? also when you
were not entirely mine, even when the prohibition
still kept us apart. . . ."

Holding her closely in that same position, he
bent over her and kissed her passionately on the
lips.

She shivered in all her bones ; the cold stream was
passing over her, freezing her.

" No, no more," she begged, turning white.

She moved her friend away from her, unable to

176 THE FLAME OF LIFE

restrain the panting in her breast. As in a dream,
she bent down to pick up the violets that had
fallen.

" The prohibition ! " she said, after an interval ot
silence.

A dull roar came from a log that was struggling
with the bite of the flame ; the rain was pouring on the
trees and stones. Now and then the sound imitated
the agitation of the sea, conjuring up hostile places,
inhospitable distances, beings that wandered under
inclement skies.

" Why have we violated it? "

Stelio's eyes were intent on the mobile splendour
of the hearth ; in his flat, open hands the marvellous
sensation was being continued, the vestige of the
miracle still dwelt there, the trace of that human
countenance across the miserable pallor of which a
wave of sublime beauty had passed.

"Why?" repeated the woman, sorrowfully. "Ah,
confess, confess that you, too, before the blind fury
took us and carried us both away that night, — you too
felt that all was about to be lost and devastated, you,
too, felt that we could not yield if we wanted to save
the good that was born of us, to save that strong,
inebriating thing that to me had seemed the only
valuable one of my life. Confess, Stelio ; tell me the
truth. I can almost remind you of the moment when
the better voice spoke to you. Was it not on the
water as we went towards my house, having Donatella
with us? "

She had hesitated a moment before pronouncing
that name, and afterwards she had felt an almost
physical bitterness descending from her lips, as if

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 177

its syllables had become poison to her. In her
suffering she waited for her friend's answer.

" I can no longer look back, Fosca," he answered.
" Nor would I. I have lost no good thing that was
mine. I like your soul to have a mouth that is heavy,
and it pleases me to feel that your blood flies from
your face when I touch you, and you know by that
touch that I desire you. . . ."

" Be silent, be silent ! " she implored. " Do not
unnerve me always. Let me speak of my trouble
to you. Why will you not help me?"

She drew back a little among her cushions, shrink-
ing as if his had been an act of brutal violence and,
in order not to look at her lover, looking fixedly
into the fire.

" More than once I have seen something in your
eyes which has filled me with horror," she at last
managed to say, with an effort that made her voice
hoarse.

He started, but dared not contradict her.

" With horror," she repeated, more clearly, im-
placable towards herself, Having conquered her fear
and taken hold of her courage.

Both of them, with naked throbbing hearts, now
stood before the truth.

" Without weakness," the woman spoke on.

" The first time, it was that night, out there in the
garden. ... I know what it all was that you were
seeing in me. All the mud over which I have walked,
all the infamy I have trodden under foot, all the im-
purity which has filled me with repugnance. . . . Ah,
you could not have confessed the visions that were
kindling your fever! Your eyes were cruel, and

iz

178 THE FLAME OF LIFE

your mouth was convulsed. When you felt that you
were wounding me you took pity. . . . But since, but
since . . ."

A blush had covered her, her voice had become
impetuous and her eyes shone.

" To have nourished for years, with all that was
best in me, a feeling of unlimited devotion and ad-
miration ; to have received when near you and from
afar, in joy and in sadness, every consolation offered
to mankind by your poetry with an act of the purest
gratitude: and to have anxiously awaited other,
ever greater and more consoling gifts; to have be-
lieved in the great strength of your genius from its
very dawn and never to have detached my eyes from
your ascension ; and to have accompanied it with a
wish that for years has been like my morning and
evening prayer; to have silently, fervently gone on
with the continual effort of imparting some beauty
and some harmony to my spirit, that it might be less
unworthy of approaching yours ; on the stage before
an ardent audience, to have so many times pro-
nounced some immortal words, thinking of those
which perhaps one day you would elect to give to
the crowd through my lips; to have worked un-
ceasingly; to have always sought after simpler and
more intense art; to have aspired to perfection
continually for fear of not pleasing you, of appear-
ing too unequal to your dream; to have loved my
fitful glory only because it might one day have
served your own ; to have hastened on the newest of
your revelations with unshakable faith, that I might
offer myself to you as an instrument of victory before
the hour of my own decay, and to have defended this

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 179

idealism in my hidden soul against all and every-
thing, against all and against myself: yes, more
harshly, more bravely against my own self; to have
made of you my melancholy, my unyielding hope,
my heroic test, the symbol of all things good, strong,
free, ah, Stelio, Stelio . . ."

She stopped a moment, suffocated by that memory
as by a new shame .

"... and to have reached that dawn, to have
seen you leaving my house in that way, in that hor-
rible dawn."

She turned even whiter, all the blood leaving her
face.

" Do you remember? "

" I was happy, happy, happy," he cried out
to her in a choked voice, convulsed to the very
depths.

"No, no; don't you remember? You rose from
my bed as from the bed of a courtesan, replete, after
a few hours' violent pleasure. . . ."

" You are wrong; you deceive yourself! " ,

" Confess, tell me the truth ; only through truth
can we yet hope to save ourselves."

" I was happy. My whole heart was open ; I was
dreaming and hoping. I felt myself rising to new
life. . . ."

"Yes, yes; happy because you were breathing
freely again, because you found yourself still young
in the wind and the daylight. Ah, you had mingled
too many acrid things with your caresses, and there
was too much poison in your pleasure. What did
you see in her who had known agony in her renunci-
ation so many times, — and you know it, — yes, agony,

i8o THE FLAME OF LIFE

rather than break through the prohibition necessary
to the life of the dream that she was dragging with
her in her endless wandering. Tell me, what was it
you saw in me if not a corrupt creature, a body full
of lust and remains of adventurous passions, a wan-
dering actress who, on her bed, as on the stage,
belongs to all and to none . . ."

" Foscarina ! Foscarina ! "

He threw himself upon her, overcome by her words,
and closed her lips with his trembling hand.

" No, no ; don't speak like that. Be silent ! You
are mad ; you are mad. . . ."

"The horror of it ! " she murmured, falling back on
her cushions as if about to lose consciousness, wearied
by the effort, wan under the flood of bitterness that
had gurgled up from her heart's depths.

But her eyes remained open and dilated, motion-
less like two crystals, hard as if they had no lashes,
fixed upon him. They prevented him from speak-
ing, from denying or diminishing the truth they had
discovered. After a few seconds he found them
becoming intolerable. He closed them with his
fingers, as one closes those of the dead. She saw
the gesture, which was one of infinite melancholy;
felt those fingers touching her lids as only love and
pity can touch. The bitterness disappeared; the
harsh knot melted away ; her lashes moistened. She
held out her arms, twined them round his neck, and
supporting herself by them, raised herself slightly.
She seemed to be drawing herself together within
herself, to have become light and weak once more
and full of silent prayer.

" So I must go away," she sighed, her voice mois-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE i8i

tened by her heart's weeping. " Is there no help for
it? Is there no forgiveness? "

" I love you," said her lover.

She freed one arm and held out her open hand to
the fire, as if for an exorcism. Then she locked the
young man again in a close embrace.

" Yes, yet for a little while, yet for a little while !
Let me stay with you a little more ! Then I will go
away, I will go away, and die somewhere far away
on a stone under some tree. Let me stay with you
a little longer."

" I love you," said her lover.

It seemed as if the blind undaunted forces of life
were whirling over their heads and, above their
embrace. Because they felt them and were terrified
by them, they held each other more closely ; and from
the clasp of their two bodies, a good and an evil that
were heart-rending, confused and intermingled and
no longer separable, were born for their souls. In the
silence, the voices of the elements spoke their obscure
language, which was like an uncomprehended answer
to their mute questioning. The fire and the rain,
near them and afar, conversed, answered, narrated.
Little by little these things attracted the Spirit of the
Life-giver, drew it away, mastered it, dragged it into
the world of innumerable myths that was born of
their eternity. With a sensation that was deep and
real he heard the resonance of the two melodies
expressing the intimate essence of the two elementary
wills : the two marvellous melodies that he had found
and was going to weave into the symphonic web of
his new tragedy. The stabs of pain and the vi-
brations of anxiety suddenly ceased as if for a happy

1 82 THE FLAME OF LIFE

truce, for an interval of enchantment in the mist.
The woman's arms, too, were loosened as if obey-
ing some mysterious liberating command.

" There is no help for it," she said to herself, as
if she were repeating the words of a condemnation
actually heard by her in the same way as Stelio had
heard the great melodies.

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand
and her elbow on her knee; and she remained in
that attitude staring fixedly into the fire with a frown
between her brows.

As he looked at her, he returned to his uneasiness.
The truce had passed too quickly, but in it his spirit
had been turned towards his work, and a tumult that
was like impatience had stayed behind with him. That
uneasiness now seemed useless to him, the woman's
anguish seemed importunate, since he loved her and
desired her, and his caresses were ardent, and both
were free, and the place of their dwelling was favour-
able to their dreams and their pleasures. He longed
to find a sudden means of snapping the iron band
that held her, of hfting her sad mists, of leading his
friend back to joy. He asked of his own spirit of
grace some delicate invention to mellow the afflicted
one and win her back to a smile. But he no longer
possessed the spontaneous melancholy, the trembhng
pity that had given his fingers so soft a touch when
he closed the despairing eyes. His instinct sug-
gested nothing more than a sensual act, the caress
that deadens the soul, the kiss that drowns thought.

He hesitated, looked at her. She was sitting in the
same bent attitude, her chin leaning on her hand, her
forehead puckered. The fire lit up her face and hair

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 183

in its glad leaping; the brow was as beautiful as a fine
manly brow ; there was something wild in the natural
fold and the tawny lights of the thick locks where they
waved back from the temples, — something fierce and
rough, that reminded one of the wing of a bird of prey.

" What are you looking at?" she said, feeling his
attention. "Are you discovering a white hair?"

He went down on his knees before her, flexible and
caressing.

" You are beautiful in my eyes. In you I always
find something that pleases me, Foscarina. I was
watching the strange wave of your hair just here; it
is not made by a comb, but by the storm."

He insinuated his sensual hands through her thick
locks. She closed her eyes, seized by the usual chill,
dominated by the terrible power; was his like a thing
that can be held in the hand, like a ring on a finger,
like a glove, like a garment, like a word that can be
spoken or not, like a wine that can be drunk or spilt
on the ground.

" You are beautiful as I see you. When you shut
your eyes thus, I feel that you are mine to your last,
last depths, lost in me, like the soul is confused with
the body. One only life, mine and yours. . . . Ah,
I cannot tell you. . . . The whole of your face turns
pale within me. ... I feel the love that is in your
veins and in your very hair rising, rising. I see it
overflow from under your eyelids. . . . When your
eyelids beat, it seems that they must throb like my
blood, and that the shadow of your eyelashes must
reach to the innermost part of my heart."

She listened in the darkness where the red vibra-
tion of the flame reached her through the living

1 84 THE FLAME OF LIFE

tissue. And now and then it seemed that his voice
came from far away and was not speaking to her, but
to another; that she was listening surreptitiously to
a lover's outpouring, that she was torn by jealousy,
stricken by the flashes of a desire to killj invaded by
a spirit of vengeance that thirsted for blood, and that
nevertheless her body remained motionless and that
her hands were hanging beside her, full of heavy
torpor, harmless and powerless.

" You are my joy, and you are my awakening.
There is an awakening power in you of which you
yourself are unconscious. The simplest of your acts
is enough to reveal some truth to me that I ignored,
and love is like the intellect, — shining in the measure
of the truths which it discovers. Why, why do you
regret? Nothing is destroyed ; nothing is lost. We
were meant to unite our two selves, just as we have
joined them, so that together we might rise towards
joy. It was necessary that I should be free and
happy in the truth of your entire love in order to
create the work of beauty that is expected by so
many. I have need of your faith; I have need of
passing through joy and of creating. . . . Your mere
presence is enough to fructify my spirit incalculably.
A moment ago, when you were holding me in your
embrace, I suddenly felt a torrent of music, a river
of melody passing through the silence. . . ."

To whom was he speaking? Of whom was he
asking joy? Was not his musical necessity stretch-
ing out towards her who sang and transfigured the
universe with her song? Of whom, if not of fresh
youth, intact virginity, could he ask joy and creation?
While she was holding him in her arms, the other

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 185

woman had been singing within him. And now,
now, to whom was he speaking, if not to her? Only
the other could give him that which was necessary
to his art and his life. The virgin was a new force,
a closed beauty, a weapon not yet used, sharp and
magnificent, bringing the intoxication of war. A
sorrow mixed with anger tormented the woman
in that vibrating broken darkness which she could
not leave. She was suffering as if lying in a night-
mare. It seemed to her that she was rolling to the
deep with her indestructible encumbrance, with
her past life and her years of misery and triumph,
with her faded face and her thousand masks, with
her despairing soul and the thousand souls that had
inhabited her mortal shape. The passion that was
to have saved her was pushing her irreparably to-
wards ruin and death. In order to reach her and to
reach his joy through her, the desire of the man she
loved was obliged -to force itself through the con-
fused encumbrance, made up, as he believed, of innu-
merable, unknown loves; it would contaminate and
corrupt itself there, become sharp and cruel; lastly,
from sharpness it would pass to disgust, perhaps to
hatred and contempt. The shadow of other men
must ever lurk above his own caress, and that shadow
must ever kindle the instinct of brutal ferocity that
was hidden in the depths of his powerful sensuality.
Ah, what had she done? She had armed a furious
devastator and had put him there between herself
and her friend. Henceforth there was no escape for
her. She herself on that night of conflagration had
brought him the fresh, beautiful prey on whom he
had cast one of those looks that are an election

1 86 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and a promise. To whom was he speaking now, if
not to her? Of whom was he asking joy?

" Don't be sad ; don't be sad ! "

She now heard the words confusedly, more faintly
from minute to minute, as if her soul were sinking
and the voice remaining on high, but she felt his im-
patient hands caressing her, tempting her. And in
the blood-like darkness that was like the darkness
whence folly and delirium spring, from her marrow,
from her veins, from all her troubled flesh, a savage
rebellion rose suddenly.

" Shall I take you to her; shall I call her to you?"
she cried, beside herself, opening her eyes wide on
his surprise, seizing him by the wrists and shak-
ing him with convulsed strength. " Go, go ; she is
waiting for you. Why do you stay here? Go, run;
she is waiting for you."

She got up, raised him as she did so, and tried to
push him towards the door. She was unrecognis-
able, transfigured by her violence into a threatening,
dangerous creature. The strength of her hands
was incredible, like the energy of harm that had
developed itself in all her limbs.

" Who, who is waiting for me ? What are you
saying? Come back to yourself, Foscarina."

He was stammering as he called her ; he trembled
with misgiving; he seemed to see the face of folly
outlined in those convulsed features. She was like
one demented and did not hear him.

" Foscarina ! "

He called her with all his soul, white with terror,
as if to stop with his cry the reason that was about to
leave her.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 187

She gave a great shudder, unclenched her hands,
and looked round in a dazed way, as if she were
awaking and did not remember. She was panting.

" Come, sit down."

He drew her back to the cushions, settled her there
gently. She let herself be soothed, tended by his
pained tenderness. She seemed to awake after
having lost consciousness and to remember nothing.
She moaned.

" Who has beaten me? "

She felt her sore arms, touched her cheeks near
the joint of the jaws that hurt her. She began to
shiver with cold.

" Stretch yourself out ; lay your head here. ..."

He made her lie down and rest her head, covered
her feet with a cushion, softly, very gently, bending
over her, as over a dear invalid, giving up to her all
his heart that was beating, beating, still terrified.

" Yes, yes," she repeated, at his every movement,
as if to prolong the sweetness of his care of her.

"Are you cold?"

" Yes."

" Shall I cover you up ? "

" Yes."

He looked for something to cover her, found a
piece of old velvet on a table. He covered her with
that. She smiled up at him slightly.

" Are you comfortable like this ? "

She only just signed to him with her eyelids that
were closing. He picked up the violets, that were
languid and warm. Then he placed the bunch on
the cushion where her head was resting.

"So?"

1 88 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Her lashes moved still more slightly. He kissed
her on the forehead, in the midst of the perfume ;
then he turned to stir up the fire, added more wood,
raised a great blaze.

" Does the heat reach you? Are you getting
warm? " he asked in a low voice.

He drew near and bent over the poor creature.
She had gone to sleep ; the contractions of her face
were smoothing out, and the lines of her mouth had
recomposed themselves in the regular rhythm of
sleep. A calm similar to that of death was diffused
over her pallor. " Sleep, sleep." He was so full of
love and pity that he would have liked to transfuse
an infinite virtue of consolation and forgetfulness into
that sleep. " Sleep on ; sleep on ! "

He remained there, standing on the carpet, to
watch her. For a few seconds he measured her
breathing. Those lips had said, " One thing I can
do which even Love cannot do ! " Those lips had
cried out, " Shall I take you to her? Shall I call
her to you? " He neither judged nor resolved, let-
ting his thoughts disperse. Once again, he felt the
blind, undaunted forces of life whirling above his
head, and once again above that sleep he felt his
terrible desire of life. " The bow is called Bios, and
its work is Death."

In the silence, the fire and the water spoke. The
voice of the elements, the woman sleeping in her sor-
row, the nearness of fate, the immensity of the future,
memory and presentiment, all those signs created a
state of musical mystery in his spirit in which his un-
expressed work rose up and received light. He
heard his melodies developing indefinitely ; he heard

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 189

a person in the fable saying: " It alone quenches
our thirst; and all the thirst that is in us reaches out
greedily towards its freshness. If it were not for it,
no one of us could live here ; we should all die of
thirst." He saw a landscape, furrowed by the white
dried-up bed of an ancient river, scattered over with
lighted bonfires in the extraordinarily calm pure
evening. He saw a funereal glimmer of gold, a tomb
full of corpses all covered with gold, the body of
Cassandra crowned among the sepulchral urns. A
voice was saying : " How soft her ashes are ! They
run through the fingers like sea-sand." A voice was
saying: "She speaks of a shadow that passes over
things and of a wet sponge that wipes out all traces."
At this, night came ; the stars twinkled, the myrtles
filled the air with odour, and a voice was saying:
" Ah, the statue of Niobe ! Before dying, Antigone
sees a stone statue from which issues a spring of
eternal tears." The error of time had disappeared,
the distance of centuries was abolished. The ancient
tragic soul was present in the new soul. The poet's
words and the poet's music were recomposing the
ideal unity of life.

One afternoon in November he returned on the
steamer from the. Lido, accompanied by Daniele
Glauro. They had left the stormy Adriatic behind
them, and with it the roar of the green and white
waves on the desert beach, the trees of San Niccolo
despoiled by the rapacious wind, clouds of dead
leaves, heroic phantoms of leave-takings and arrivals,
the memory of the archers competing for the scarlet,

190 THE FLAME OF tiFE

and of Lord Byron galloping, devoured by th
anxiety of surpassing his own destiny.

" I too, to-day, would have given a kingdom for
horse," said Stelio, deriding himself in his irritation :
the mediocrity of Hfe " There was neither a crosi
bow nor a horse at San Niccolo, not even the courag
of the oarsman ! Perge audacter. . . . Here we ar(
on this ignoble gray carcass that smokes and grun
bles Hke a kettle. Look at Venice dancing dow
there ! "

The anger of the sea was spreading over the lagoor
The waters were agitated by a strong tremor, and
seemed that the agitation communicated itself to th
foundations of the city, that the palaces and cupola
heaved like boats on the water. Seaweeds floatec
torn up from their depths, showing all their whitis
roots. Flocks of sea-gulls gyrated in the wind an
at times their strange laughter could be heard hang
ing above the innumerable crests of the storm.

" Wagner ! " said Daniele Glauro, in a low voic
and with sudden emotion, pointing out an old ma
who was leaning against the parapet at the prov
" There with Donna Cosima and Franz Liszt. D
you see him? "

The heart of SteHo Effrena beat louder ; for hii
too all surrounding figures disappeared ; the bitte
tedium ceased with the oppression of his inertia, an
there remained only the sense of superhuman powe
conjured up by that name ; the only reality abov
all those indistinct husks was the ideal world brougl
to light by that name round the little old man wh
was bending towards the tumult of the waters.

Victorious genius, fidelity of love, unchangeabl

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 191

friendship, all the supreme apparitions of an heroic
nature were once more gathered together under
the tempest, silently. One same dazzling whiteness
crowned the three persons standing near one another ;
their hair over their sad thoughts was extraordinarily
white. An uneasy sadness stood revealed in their
faces and attitudes as if one same obscure presenti-
ment lay heavy on their communicating souls. The
woman's white face had a beautiful robust mouth,
made up of firm clear lines that betrayed a tenacious
soul; and her light steely eyes were continually
fixed on him who had chosen her for the companion
of his great warfare, continually adoring and vigi-
lant on him who, having conquered all deadly things,
yet would not be able to conquer that other death
which so constantly menaced him. That feminine
gaze full of fear and of protection thus opposed itself
to the invisible eyes of the other Woman, and gath-
ered a vague funereal shadow round the protected
one.

" He seems to be suffering," said Daniele Glauro.
" Don't you see? He looks as if about to collapse.
Shall we draw nearer to him ? "

Stelio Effrena gazed with inexpressible emotion at
the white hairs tossed about by the harsh wind on
the aged neck under the wide brim of the soft felt
and at the almost livid ear with its swollen lobe;
that body, borne up during its warfare by so fierce
an instinct of predominance now had the appear-
ance of a rag that the gale could sweep away and
destroy.

"Ah, Daniele, what could we do for him?" he
asked his friend, seized by a religious need of mani-

192 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Testing by some outward sign his reverence and pity
for that great oppressed heart.

"What could we do?" repeated his friend, to
whom that fervent desire of offering something of
himself to the hero suffering from human fate had
instantly communicated itself.

They were one soul in that act of fervour and
gratitude, in the sudden elevation of their deep
nobility; but could they give nothing except that
which they gave. Nothing could stop the secret
workings of his malady; and both grew more sor-
rowful as they gazed at the white hair, the frail half-
living thing blown about on the old man's neck by
the vehement breath that came from the open and
brought to the shuddering lagoon the roar and the
foam of the sea.

" Ah, proud sea, you must carry me still ! The
salvation which I seek I shall never find on earth. I
will remain faithful to you, O waves of the great
sea. . . ." The impetuous harmonies of the Flying
Dutchman, with the despairing recall that pierces
through them at intervals, awoke in Stelio Effrena's
memory, and in the wind he seemed to hear the wild
song of the crew again on the ship with the blood-
like sails : " Iohoh6 ! lohohe ! Come to shore, O
swarthy captain : seven years have passed. . . ." And
his imagination recomposed the figure of Richard
Wagner as a young man, the recluse lost in the liv-
ing horror of Paris, poor and undaunted, devoured
by a marvellous fever, intent on his star, resolved on
forcing the world to recognise it too. In the myth
of the pale seaman, the exile had found an image
of his own panting race, his furious struggle, his

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 193

supreme hope. " But one day the pale man may be
delivered if only he find in his wandering a woman
who will be faithful to him unto death."

That woman was there, by the side of the hero,
like an ever vigilant custodian. She, too, hke Senta,
knew the sovereign law of fidelity, and death was
about to dissolve the sacred vow.

"Do you think that, immersed in the poetry of
myths, he has dreamed of some extraordinary manner
of passing away and is now praying each day to Nature
to conform his end to his dream?" asked Daniele
Glauro, dweUing on the mysterious will that enticed
the eagle into mistaking the brow of ^Eschylus for a
rock and brought Petrarch to expire alone over the
pages of a book. " What would be a worthy end ? "

" A new melody of unknown power that was only
indistinct when it appeared to him in his first youth,
and that he was then unable to fix, will cleave his
soul in two, like a terrible sword."

" True," said Daniele Glauro.

The clouds were battling through space in phalanxes,
overcoming each other, driven by the great wind;
the cupolas and the towers swaying in the back-
ground also seemed deformed ; the shadows of the
city and the shadows of the sky, equally vast and
mobile on the swollen waters, changed and merged
into each other, as if made of substances equally near
dissolution.

" Look at the Magyar, Daniele ; his is certainly a
generous spirit; he has served the hero with unlimited
faith and devotion. And this servitude, more than
his art, consecrates him to glory. But see, how from
his strong, sincere feeling, he draws an almost his-

13

194 THE FLAME OF LIFE

trionic performance, such as he would draw from the
continual need of imposing on his spectators, to de-
lude them, a magnificent image of himself."

The abb6 half raised his thin, bony body that
seemed clasped by a coat of mail. Holding himself
thus erect, he uncovered his head to pray, offering
his silent prayer to the God of Tempests. The wind
ruffled his long thick hair, the great leonine mane
whence so many flashes and quivers had started to
move women and crowds. His magnetic eyes were
raised to the sky, while the muttered words that
sketched themselves on his long thin lips spread
a mystic air over his face harsh with lines and
enormous warts.

"What matters?" said Daniele Glauro. "He
possesses the divine faculty of fervour and a taste for
overpowering strength and dominating passion. Has
not his art aspired towards Prometheus, Orpheus,
Dante, Tasso ? He was attracted by Richard Wagner
as by the great energies of nature ; perhaps he heard
in him that which he tried to express in his own
symphonic poem ' What is heard on the Mountain-
side.' "

" True," said Stelio Effrena.

Both started, however, on seeing the old bent man
turn suddenly with the gesture of one about to be
drowned in darkness, and clutch convulsively at his
companion, who gave a cry. They ran to him. All
those who were on the boat, struck by the cry of
anguish, rushed and crowded about him. A look
from the woman however was enough, none dared
approach the seemingly lifeless body. She herself
supported him, laid him on the bench, felt his pulse,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 195

bent over his heart listening. Her love and sorrow
drew an inviolable circle round the motionless man.
All drew back, silent, anxious, watching the livid face
for signs of returning consciousness.

The face was still, abandoned on the woman's
knees. Two deep furrows descended along the
cheeks to the half-closed mouth, deepening near the
imperious nostrils. Squalls of wind stirred the rare
and very fine hair on the full brow, and the white
collar of beard under the square chin where the ro-
bustness of the jawbone was apparent in spite of the
soft wrinkles. A clammy sweat was dropping from
his temples, and a slight tremor agitated one of the
hanging feet. Every little sign in that pale face was
impressed on the minds of the two young men
for ever.

How long did his suffering last? Alternating
shadows continued on the dark, seething water, in-
terrupted now and then by great zones of sun-rays
that seemed to cross the air and sink into the sea
with the weight of arrows. They could hear the
cadenced noise of the engine, the derisive laugh of
the sea-gulls, and already the dull howl coming from
the Grand Canal, the vast moan of the stricken city.

" Let us carry him," said Stelio, in his friend's ear,
intoxicated with the sadness of things and the so-
lemnity of his visions.

The motionless face was barely giving signs of
returning to life.

" Yes, let us offer ourselves," said Daniele Glauro,
turning pale.

They looked towards the woman with the face of
snow, and held out their arms.

196 THE FLAME OF LIFE

How long did that terrible removal last? The
space from the boat to the shore was brief indeed,
but they seemed to have gone a long way in those
few steps. The water clamoured against the posts of
the landing-pier, the howl broke from the Canal as
if it came from the windings of a cavern, the bells of
San Marco were ringing for vespers ; but the confused
noises had lost all immediate reality ; they seemed
indefinitely profound and remote, like a lament of
the Ocean.

They carried the weight of the Hero on their arms ;
they bore the stunned body of him who had spread
the power of his oceanic soul over the world, the
perishable form of the Revealer who had laid the es-
sences of the Universe, in infinite song, before men's
worship. With an ineff"able shiver of fear and joy,
like the man who should see a river dashing itself
over a rock, a volcano bursting open, a conflagration
burning a forest, a dazzling meteor obscuring the
starry heavens like man in the presence of a natural
force that should have suddenly and irresistibly mani-
fested itself, Stelio Effrena felt under the hand that
was passed below the shoulder and sustained the
bust, — he stopped a moment to grasp his strength,
which was escaping him, and gazed at the white head
against his breast, — he felt in his hand the renewed
beating of the sacred heart.

"You were strong, Daniele, — you who cannot break
a stick! That old barbarian body was heavy; it
seemed built over a bronze framework of bones ; solid,
well-built, meant to remain standing on a shaking

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 197

deck, — the structure of a man meant for the sea.
But where did your strength come from, Daniele?
I was afraid for you. You did not even stagger !
We have carried a hero in our arms. We must mark
this day and celebrate it. His eyes opened before
mine; his heart beat once more under my own hand.
We were worthy of carrying him, Daniele, because
of our fervour."

" You are worthy not only of carrying him, but
of picking up and preserving some of the most beau-
tiful promises offered by his art to those who still
hope."

" Ah ! if only I am not overmastered by my own
abundance, and if I succeed in conquering the anx-
iety that suffocates me, Daniele ! . . . "

On, on went the two friends, side by side, intoxi-
cated and full of confidences, as if their friendship
had suddenly become something higher, increased by
some ideal treasure; on, on they went in the wind,
in the noise, in the evening's emotion, followed by the
fury of the sea.

" It seems as if the Adriatic had overthrown the
Murazzi this evening-, and were about to scorn the
prohibition of the Senate," said Daniele Glauro, stop-
ping before the wave that was flowing over the
Piazza and was threatening the Procuratie. " We
must go back."

" No, let us take the ferry across. Here is a skiff.
Look at San Marco on the water ! "

The boatman was ferrying them to the Torre dell'
Orologio. The Piazza was inundated, like a lake in
a cloister of porticoes, reflecting the sky left uncov-
ered by the flight of the clouds that were coloured

198 THE FLAME OF LIFE

by the green and yellow of the twilight. The golden
Basilica, more living, as if revivified like a parched
forest, by contact with the water, was resplendent
with wings and halos in the waning light ; and the
crosses of its mitres could be seen at the bottom of
the dark mirror, like the spires of another submerged
Basilica.

" En verus fortis qui fregit vincula mortis,"
read Stelio Effrena, on the curve of an arch, under
the mosaic of the Resurrection. " Do you know
that Richard Wagner had his first conversation with
death in Venice twenty years ago now, at the time
of Tristan? Consumed by a desperate passion, he
came to Venice to die here in silence, and composed
instead that raving second act which is a hymn to
eternal night. His fate has again led him to the
lagoon. It seems decreed that he is to end here,
like Claudio Monteverde. Is it not indeed a musical
desire immense and indefinable, this desire of which
Venice is full? Here, every sound transforms itself
into expressive voices. Listen ! "

The city of stone and water had become sonorous
like a great organ. The hiss and the howl changed
into a kind of choral imploration growing and waning
with a rhythmic swell.

"Does not your ear seize the Hne of a melody in
this chorus of moans? Listen ! "

They had landed from the skiff and were walking
onwards in the narrow streets, crossing the little
bridges, lingering by the canal footpaths, penetrating
into the city at random ; but even in the excitement
of his speed, Stelio directed his way almost by in-
stinct towards a distant house that now and then as

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 199

In a lightning flash appeared to him animated by a
deep expectation.

" Listen ! I can distinguish a melodic theme that
rises and falls without the power to develop itself. . . ."

Stelio stopped, listening with so acute an intensity
of attention that his friend was surprised as if he were
assisting at his imminent transversion into the natural
phenomenon he was observing, as if he were annul-
ling himself little by little into a vaster and more
powerful will that was making him similar to itself

" Have you heard? "

" It is not given me to hear what you hear,"
answered the barren ascete to the genius. " I will
wait until you can repeat the words that Nature has
spoken to you."

Both trembled in the intimacy of their hearts, — one
most lucid, the other unconscious.

" I don't know," he said ; " I don't know any
more. ... It seemed to me. . . ."

The message he had received in a passing state of
unconsciousness was now slipping from his percep-
tion. The workings of his spirit began anew; his
will reawakened, agitated by anxious aspirations.

" Ah, to be able to restore to melody its natural
simplicity, its ingenuous perfection, its divine inno-
cence ; to draw it out all throbbing with life from its
eternal sources, from the very mystery of Nature,
from the very soul of universal things ! Have you
considered the myth referring to the early childhood
of Cassandra? One night she was left in the temple
of Apollo, and was found in the morning lying on the
marble, held in the coils of a snake that was Hcking
her ears. From that time she understood all the

200 THE FLAME OF LIFE

voices scattered in the air ; she knew all the melodies
of the world. The power of the seer was but a mus-
ical power. A part of that Apollian virtue entered
into the poets who co-operated in the creation of the
tragic chorus. One of those poets could boast of
knowing all the different voices of birds, and another
of being able to converse with the winds, and another
of fully understanding the language of the sea. More
than once I have dreamt that I was lying on that
marble in the coils of that serpent. . . . That myth
would have to renew itself, Daniele, before we could
create the new art."

At every step, his speech grew more fervid; at
every step he gave himself up further to the tide of
his thoughts, still feeling however that an obscure
part of himself was remaining in communion with
the sonorous air.

" Have you ever thought what the music might be
of that kind of pastoral ode sung by the Chorus in
CEdipos Tyrannos when Jocaste flies away horrified,
and the son of Laius is still under the illusion of a
last hope? Do you remember that.? ' O Citheron,
let Olympus bear witness before another full moon
comes round again.' For a moment the image of
the mountains interrupts the horror of the drama,
the rural serenity brings a pause in the human terror.
Do you remember it? Try to represent the strophes
to yourself as if they were a frame within the lines
of which a series of corporal movements are devel-
oped, an expressive dance-figure animated by the
perfect life of melody. You would have the spirit of
Earth conjured up before you in the essential plan of
things ; the comforting apparition of the great com-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 201

tnon Mother at the misfortune of her stricken, trem-
bling children, a celebration, in short, of all that is
divine and eternal above mankind which is dragged
to madness and death by cruel Destiny. Now try
by intuition to feel how much that song has helped
me in my tragedy to find the means of the highest
and simplest expression."

" You intend to re-establish the Chorus on the
stage? "

" Oh, no ! I shall not revive an antique form ; I
shall invent a new form, obeying my instinct and the
genius of my race only, as the Greeks did when they
created their drama, that marvellous inimitable edifice
of beauty. For a long time the three arts of music,
poetry, and dancing have separated from each other ;
the first two have followed their development toward
greater power of expression ; the third is in its decad-
ence ; therefore I think that it is no longer possible to
fuse them into a single rhythmical structure without
taking from one or other of them its own already
acquired dominant character. If made to concur
towards a common and total effect, they must re-
nounce their supreme and particular effect and re-
main, in a word, diminished. Among the substances
most capable of receiving rhythm, language is the
foundation of every work of Art tending to perfection.
Do you believe that language is given its full value in
the Wagnerian drama? And does it not seem to you
that the musical conception loses some of its prim-
itive purity by often being made to depend on
performances extraneous to the genius of music?
Richard Wagner certainly has a sense of this weak-
ness and confesses it when he goes up to some friend

202 THE FLAME OF LIFE

in Bayreuth and covers his eyes with his hand, that
he may give himself up entirely to the pure virtue of
the symphony and be therefore rapt by the greater
joy into a deeper vision."

" All this which you are exposing is new to me,"
said Daniele Glauro ; " yet it gives me a joy like that
which we feel when we learn things that have been
long foreseen and felt by presentiment. You will
therefore superpose the three rhythmic arts, but will
present them in single manifestations linked by a
sovereign idea and elevated to the supreme degree
by their own significant energy?"

" Ah, Daniele ! How can I give you an idea of
the work that is living in me?" exclaimed Stelio
Effrena. " The words with which you would attempt
to formulate my meaning are hard and mechanical. . . .
No, no. . . . How shall I communicate to you the life
and the infinitely fluid mystery that are within me?"

They were at the foot of the Rialto steps ; Stelio
ran up rapidly and stopped against the balustrade at
the top of the arch waiting for his friend. The wind
went over him like an army of flags, the ends of
which were striking his face ; the Canal beneath
him, lost in the shade of the palaces, bent like
a river running towards some cataract roaring afar;
one region of sky above him was clear in the midst
of the agglomerated clouds, vivid and crystalline
like the serenity that spreads itself above glaciers.

"It is impossible to stay here," said Daniele
Glauro, supporting himself against a shop door; "the
wind will carry us away."

" Go down ; I will overtake you. Only a moment,"
the master cried to him, leaning on the balustrade,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 2oj

covering his eyes with his hand concentrating all his
soul into the effort of listening.

Formidable indeed was the voice of the gale in
that gathering of centuries now turned to stone ; it
alone dominated the solitude as in the time when
the marbles still slept in the bosom of the mountains,
and wild grasses grew round the birds' nests in the
muddy lagoon islands, long before the Doge was in-
stalled in the Rialto, long before the patriarchs had
led the fugitives ' to their great destiny. Human
life had disappeared ; there was nothing under the
heavens except an immense sepulchre in the hollows
of which that one voice re-echoed, and that voice
alone. Its unaccompanied song, its lamentation that
had no hope, commemorated the multitudes that had
become ashes, the dispersed pageants, the fallen
greatness, the numberless days of birth and death,
the things of a time without name or form. All the
melancholy of the world passed with that wind over
the outstretched soul.

" Ah, I have grasped you," cried out the joy of the
triumphant artist.

The entire hne of the melody had been revealed
to him, was henceforth his, was immortal in his
spirit and in the world. No living thing seemed
more living to him than that one. His own life
yielded to the unlimited energy of that sonorous
idea, yielded to the generating force of that germ
capable of infinite developments. He imagined it
as steeped in the symphonic sea and unfolding it-
self through a thousand aspects until it reached its
perfection.

" Daniele, Daniele, I have found it."

204 THE FLAME OF LIFE

He raised his eyes, saw the first stars in the
adamantine sky and intuitively felt the great silence
in which they throbbed. Images of skies rounded
over far-off countries crossed his spirit; agitations
of sands, trees, water and dust on windy days ; the
Libyan Desert, the olive field on the Bay of Salona,
the Nile close to Memphis, the parched Argolides.
Other images overtook these. He feared lest he
should lose what he had found. With an effort he
closed his memory as he would have clenched his
hand to hold something. Close to a pillar he noticed
the shadow of a man and a glimmer at the €nd of a
long pole, and the slight explosion of a flame that
is being lit in a lantern. With anxious rapidity he
marked the notes of the theme in the lamplight on a
page of his notebook, fixing in the five lines the mes-
sage of the elements.

" What a day of marvels ! " said Daniele Glauro,
watching him come down the steps as light and
nimble as if he had robbed the air also of its elastic
properties. " May Nature always cherish you, my
brother ! "

" Come, come ! " said Stelio, taking him by the
arm and drawing him after him with the gladness of
a child. " I want to run."

He was drawing him through the narrow streets
towards San Giovanni Elemosinario. He was re-
peating to himself the names of the three churches
he would meet on his way before reaching the dis-
tant house that from time to time had appeared to
him as in a lightning-flash animated by a deep
expectation.

" It is quite true, Daniele, what you told me one

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 205

day ; the voice of things is essentially different from
their sound," he said, stopping at the beginning of
the Ruga Vecchia close to the belfry, because he
noticed that his haste was tiring his friend. "The
sound of a wind simulates in turns the moans of a
terrified multitude, the howling of wild beasts, the
crash of cataracts, the quiver of unfurled banners,
mockery, menace, despair. The voice of the wind
is the synthesis of all these sounds ; it is the voice
that sings and tells the terrible travail of time, the
cruelty of human destiny, the warfare eternally
waged for a deception that is eternally renewed."

" And have you never thought that the essence of
music is not in the sounds themselves?" asked the
mystic doctor. "That essence dwells in the silence
that precedes sound and in the silence that follows
it. Rhythm appears and lives in these intervals of
silence. Every sound wakens in the silence that goes
before and that follows it, a voice which can only
be heard by one spirit. Rhythm is the heart of
music, but its throbs are inaudible except during the
pauses of sound."

The law, metaphysical in its nature, thus announced
by the contemplator, confirmed Stelio in his belief in
the justness of his own intuition.

" Imagine," he said, " the interval between two
scenic symphonies in which all the motifs unite to
express the inner essence of the characters that are
struggling in the drama and to reveal the inner depths
of the action, as, for instance, in Beethoven's great
prelude in ' Leonora ' or in ' Coriolanus.' That musi-
cal silence throbbing with the heart-beats of rhythm
is like the mysterious living atmosphere where alone

2o6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

words of pure poetry can appear. The personages
thus seem to emerge from the symphonic ocean as if
from the truth itself of the hidden being that oper-
ates within them; and their spoken language will
have an extraordinary resonance in that rhythmic
silence, will touch the extreme limit of verbal power,
because it will be animated by a continual aspiration
to song that cannot be appeased except by the mel-
ody that shall again rise from the orchestra at the end
of the tragic episode. Do you understand ? "

" You mean that you place the episode between
two symphonies, that prepare and complete it, be-
cause music is the beginning and the end of human
speech."

" I thus draw the personages of the drama nearer
to the spectator. Do you remember the figure used
by Schiller in the ode he composed in honour of
Goethe's translation of* Mahomet,' to signify that only
an ideal world can have its life on the stage? The
Chariot of Thespis, like the boat of Acheron, is so
frail that it can only carry shades or human images.
On the ordinary stage those images are so distant that
any contact with them seems as impossible as contact
with mental phantoms. They are distant and strange,
but by making them appear in the rhythmic silence,
by making music accompany them to the threshold
of the visible world, I draw them marvellously near
to the spectator, because I illumine the most secret
depths of the will that produces them. You under:,
stand, their intimate essence is there uncovered and
placed in immediate communion with the soul of the
crowd. And that crowd, under the ideas signified by
voice and gesture, feels the depths of the musical

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 207

motives that correspond to them in the symphonies.
I show, in a word, the images painted on the veil and
that which happens beyond the veil. You under-
stand ! And by means of music, of dancing, and of
lyric poetry, I create round my heroes an ideal at-
mosphere in which the whole life of Nature vibrates,
so that in each of their actions not only the powers
of their preordained destinies seem to converge, but
also the obscurest influences of surrounding things, —
of the elementary souls living in the great tragic cir-
cle. As the creations of ^schylus bear in themselves
something of the natural myths from which they
sprang, I would that my creations could be felt
throbbing in the torrent of savage forces, suffering
from contact with the earth, drawn into communion
with air, fire, water, with the mountains and with the
clouds, in their pathetic struggle against a fate that
must be conquered. I would that Nature could be
round them as our oldest forefathers saw her: the
passionate actress in an immortal drama."

They were entering the Campo di San Cassiano,
that stretched out deserted on the banks of its livid
Stream ; steps and voices echoed there as in a rocky
amphitheatre, clear above the roar that came from
the Grand Canal as from a great river. A purplish
shadow rose from the fever-breathing water and
spread in the air like a poisonous exhalation. Death
seemed to have filled that place from all time. At a
high window a shutter beat in the wind against the
wall, grinding on its hinges like a sign of abandon-
ment and ruin. Yet all those appearances worked
extraordinary transformations in the spirit of the
Life-giver. Once more he saw a wild, lonely spot

208 THE FLAME OF LIFE

by the tombs at Mycenae in the hollow between the
lower peak of Mount Eubcea and the inaccessible
flank of the citadel. Myrtles grew vigorously be-
tween the harsh boulders and the Cyclopic ruins.
The waters of the Fount of Perseia, springing from
among the rocks, fell into a cavity like a shell, whence
it ran out and was lost in the valley of stone. At its
edge at the foot of a shrub lay the body of the Victim
stretched out rigid, spotless. In the deadly silence
he could hear the rush of the water and the inter-
mittent breath of the wind on the nodding myrtles.

" It was in an august place," he said, " that I first
had the vision of my new work : at Mycenae, at the
gate of the lions, while re-reading the ' Oresteia.' . . .
Land of Fire, land of thirst and delirium, birthplace
of Clytemnestra and the Hydra, soil made sterile for
ever by the horror of the most tragic destiny that
has ever overwhelmed a human race. . . . Have you
ever thought of that barbaric explorer who, after
having passed the greater part of his life among his
drugs behind a counter, began digging in the ruins
of Mycense among the graves of the Atridas, and one
day (the sixth anniversary took place not long ago)
saw the greatest and the strangest vision that has ever
presented itself to mortal eyes ? Have you ever con-
sidered the fat Schliemann in the act of discovering
the most dazzling treasure ever accumulated by death
in the obscurities of the earth for hundreds and thou-
sands of years ? Have you ever thought that the ter-
rible, superhuman spectacle might have appeared to
another, to some youthful, fervent spirit ; to a poet, a
Life-giver, to you, to me, perhaps ? The frenzy of it,
the fever, the madness. . . . Imagine ! "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 209

He was flaming, vibrating, all at once carried away
by his fiction as by a storm. His seeing eyes shone
with the gleam of the funereal treasures. His crea-
tive force was flowing to his spirit like blood to the
heart. He was the actor in his own drama. His
accents, his gesture, signified transcendent passion
and beauty, overstepped the power of the spoken
word, the limit of the letter. The fraternal spirit of
his companion hung upon his lips, trembling before
the sudden splendour that was realising his divinations.

" Imagine ! Imagine that the earth you are dig-
ging in is evil ; it must still give out the exhalations
of monstrous deeds. The curse that weighed on the
Atridse was so deadly that there must have remained
some vestige of it still to be dreaded in the dust that
was trodden by them. You are stricken by witchcraft,
the dead whom you seek and cannot succeed in find-
ing have come to life in you again and breathe
within you with the tremendous breath that ^Eschylus
infused into them, vast and bloodthirsty as they ap-
peared in the ' Oresteia,' thrust through ceaselessly
with the sword and brand of their destiny. Hence
all the ideal life with which you have nourished your-
self must have assumed in you the form and the im-
press of reality. And you go on obstinately in this
land of thirst, at the foot of this naked mountain,
drawn into the fascination of the dead city, digging,
digging in the earth, with those frightful phantoms
always before your eyes, in the thirsting dust. At
every stroke of the spade you must tremble through
all your bones, longing to see really the face of one
of the Atridae, still untouched, with the signs yet vis-
ible of the violence he endured, the cruel death. And

14

2IO THE FLAME OF LIFE

it appears, the gold, the gold, the bodies, great heaps
of gold, the bodies all covered with gold. . . ."

The Atridae princes were there extended on the
stone, a prodigy called up in the darkness of the
alley. Both the listener and he who had evoked
them shuddered with the same shudder in the same
flash.

" A succession of tombs ; fifteen intact bodies, one
beside the other, on a bed of gold, with faces covered
with masks of gold, with foreheads crowned with
gold, with breasts bound with gold; and over all,
on their bodies, at their sides, at their feet, over all
a profusion of golden things, innumerable as the
leaves fallen from a fabulous forest. . . . Do you
see? Do you see?"

The anxiety of rendering all that gold so that it
should be palpable, of changing his hallucinating
vision into a sensible reality, suffocated him.

"I see, I see!"

" For a moment, the soul of that man has leaped
back hundreds and thousands of years, breathed the
terrible legend, trembled in the horror of that ancient
massacre. For a moment his soul has traced that
ancient and violent life. They were there, the slain
ones : Agamemnon, Eurymedon, Cassandra, and the
royal escort lay under his eyes for a moment, motion-
less. And then exhaled like vapour — do you see
— like melting foam, like dust that is scattered,
like I know not what inexpressibly faint and fugitive
thing, all vanish into their silence, swallowed up by
the same fatal silence that was about their radiant
immobility. A handful of dust and a heap of
gold "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 211

The miracle of Life and Death was there on the
stones of the deserted alley as on the stones of the
sepulchres. Inexpressibly moved, trembling, Daniele
Glauro seized the hands of his friend. And in his
faithful eyes the Life-giver saw the dumb flame of
enthusiasm consecrated to the masterpiece.

They stopped by a doorway against the dark wall.
There was a mysterious sense of distance in them
both, as if their spirits were lost in the depths of
time; and behind that door, antique people lived
enslaved by a motionless Destiny. From the house
one could hear a cradle that was being rocked to the
rhythm of a low sing-song; a mother was conciliating
the sleep of her child with a melody handed down
from her ancestors ; her protecting voice covered the
menacing roar of the elements. The stars burned
above the narrow strip of sky. Further down against
the walls and the sand-banks the sea was lowing.
Elsewhere the heart of a hero was suffering as if
waiting for death, and near them the cradle rocked
on, and the voice of the mother calling down happi-
ness on the infant's wail.

" Life ! " said Stelio Effrena, resuming his walk and
dragging his friend after him. " Here, in one instant,
all that trembles, weeps, hopes, yearns, and raves in
the immensity of life, gathers itself up in one spirit,
condensed there with so rapid a sublimation that it
seems as if one should be able to manifest it all in a
single word. What word? What word? Do you
know it? Who shall ever say it? "

He was once more beginning to suffer from his
anxiety and discontent that wanted to embrace all
and express all.

212 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Have you ever seen the entire universe in a few
seconds, standing out before you like a human head?
I have, a thousand times. Ah, to be able to cut it
off, like him who cut off the head of Medusa, at one
blow, and hold it up from a scaffolding high above
the crowd that it might never forget it again. Have
you never thought that a great tragedy might resem-
ble the attitude of Perseus? I tell you that I should
like to take the bronze of Benvenuto away from the
Loggia of Orcagna and carry it away for the vestibule
of the new theatre as an admonishment. But who
shall give a poet the sword of Hermes and the mirror
of Athena?"

Daniele Glauro was silent. He who had received
from Nature the gift of enjoying beauty, though not
of creating it, well divined the torment of Stelio's
fraternal spirit. Silently he walked beside his brother,
bending his vast thoughtful brow, that seemed swol-
len by the presence of an unborn world.

" Perseus ! " added the Life-giver, after a pause
that had been full of the flashes of his inventions.
" In the hollow, under the citadel of Mycense, there is
a fountain called Perseia: the only living thing in
that place where all is burnt up and dead. Men are
attracted to it as to a spring of life in that land
where the sorrowful whiteness of the dried up rivers
can be seen late into the twilight. Every human
thirst stretches out voraciously to its freshness.
Through the whole of my work the murmur of
that stream will be heard : the water, the melody of
water. ... I have found it ! In it, in the pure ele-
ment, the pure Act which is the aim of the new
tragedy shall be accomplished. The Virgin destined

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 213

like Antigone to die " deprived of nuptials ' shall fall
asleep on its clear icy waters. Do you understand?
The pure Act marks the defeat of ancient Fate. The
new soul suddenly bursts the iron band that clasped
it with a determination born of madness, of a lucid
delirium that is like ecstasy, that is like a deeper
vision of nature. The last ode in the orchestra tells
the salvation and the freedom of man obtained by
means of pain and sacrifice. The monstrous Fate is
conquered there by the tombs into which the race of
Atreus descended, before the very bodies of the vic-
tims. Do you understand? He who has freed him-
self by means of the pure Act, the brother who kills
the sister to save her soul from the horror that
was about to seize her, has truly seen the face of
Agamemnon ! "

The fascination of the funereal gold was again tak-
ing hold of him ; the evidence of his internal vision
gave him an hallucinated appearance.

" One of the bodies exceeds all the others in stature
and in majesty: wearing a large crown of gold, with
cuirass, girdle, and shoulder-plates of gold surrounded
with swords, spears, daggers, cups, covered with in-
numerable discs of gold scattered over his body like
petals, more venerable than a demi-god. He bends
over him while he melts away in the light and raises
the heavy mask. . . . Ah, does he not indeed see the
face of Agamemnon? Is not this perhaps the King
of Kings? His mouth is open; his eyelids are open. . . .
Do you remember? Do you remember Homer? 'As
I lay dying I lifted my hands towards my sword ; but
the woman with the dog's eyes went her way and
would not close my eyelids and my mouth, as I de-

214 THE FLAME OF LIFE

scended to the abode of Hades.' Do you remem-
ber ? Well, the mouth of the corpse is open, the eyes
are open. ... He has a large forehead bound with
a round leaf of gold ; his nose is long and straight ; his
chin oval. . . ."

The dreamer stopped a moment, his eyes fixed and
dilated. It was he who was seeing ; the vision was
his. All about him disappeared, and his fiction
remained the only reality. Daniele Glauro shuddered,
for he too had seen through those eyes.

"Ah, even to the white spot on the shoulder; he
has raised the armour. . . . The spot, the spot!
The hereditary sign of the race of Pelops ' of the
ivory shoulders ! ' Is he not the King of Kings? "

The rapid, interrupted words of the visionary
seemed a succession of flashes by which he was him-
self dazzled. He himself was astonished by that
sudden apparition, by that sudden discovery, that
illumined in the darkness of his spirit, manifested
itself and became almost tangible. How could he
have discovered that spot on the shoulder of Aga-
memnon? From what abyss of his memory had that
detail arisen, so strange and yet precise and decisive
as the description necessary for the recognition of a
body dead since yesterday?

"You were there," said Daniele Glauro, in his
exaltation. " You yourself have raised the armour
and the mask. ... If you have really seen what
you say, you are no longer a man. . . ."

" I have seen ! I have seen ! "

Once more he was being transformed into the
actor of his own drama and with a violent palpi-
tation was hearing from the mouth of a living person

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 215

the words of his companion, those same words that
were to be pronounced in the episode. " If you
have really seen what you say, you are no longer a
man." From that moment the explorer of tombs
took on the aspect of a great hero fighting against
the ancient fate that had arisen from the ashes them-
selves of the Atridae to contaminate and overcome
him.

"It is not with impunity," he said, "that a man
uncovers tombs and gazes on the face of the dead ;
and of what dead ! He is living alone with his sister,
with the sweetest creature that has ever breathed the
air of this earth, alone with her in the house full
of light and silence, as in a prayer, a consecration.
. . . Now imagine one who should unconsciously
drink poison, a philtre, something impure, that
should corrupt his blood, that should contaminate
his thoughts: thus, suddenly, while his soul is in
peace. . . . Imagine this terrible evil, this vengeance
of the dead ! He is suddenly invaded by incestuous
passion; he becomes the trembling and miserable
prey of a monster, fighting a desperate hidden fight,
without truce, without escape, day and night, at every
hour, at every moment, the more atrocious the more
the unconscious pity of the poor creature stoops to
his evil. . . . How can he be liberated? From the
moment in which the tragedy has its beginning, from
the moment in which the innocent companion begins
to speak, she appears destined to die. And all that
is said and accomplished in the episodes, and all that
is expressed by song and by the dance and by the
interludes, all serves to lead her slowly and inexor-
ably towards death. She is the equal of Antigone.

2i6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

In the brief tragic hour she passes accompanied by
the light of hope and by the shadow of presentiment,
she passes accompanied by song and weeping, by the
great love that offers joy, by the furious love that
gives birth to mourning, and never stops except to
fall asleep on the clear icy water of the fountain that
called her uninterruptedly with its solitary moan.
As soon as he has killed her, her brother receives
from her through death, the gift of his redemption.
' Every stain is gone from my soul,' he cries ; ' I
have become pure, quite pure. All the sanctity of
my first love has returned to my mind like a torrent
of light. ... If she were to rise up now, she could
walk over my soul as over immaculate snow. ... If
she were to return to life again, all my thoughts for her
would be like lilies, like lilies. . . . Now she is perfect,
now she can be adored like a divine being. ... In
the deepest of my sepulchres I will lay her at rest,
and I will set about her all my treasures. . . .'
Thus the act of death, that he has been dragged into
by his lucid delirium, becomes a purifying act of
liberation and marks the defeat of an ancient fate. The
ode emerging from the symphonic ocean sings of the
victory of man, irradiates the darkness of the catas-
trophe with an unusual light, raises on the summit of
music the first word of the renewed drama."

" The gesture of Perseus," exclaimed Daniele
Glauro, in his exaltation. " At the end of the tragedy
you cut off the head of the Moira and show it to the
crowd, ever young and ever new, that brings the
spectacle to a close with great cries."

Both saw in their dream the marble theatre on the
Janiculum, the multitude dominated by its idea of

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 217

truth and of beauty, the great starry night stretching
over Rome; they saw the frenzied crowd carrying in
their rude hearts, as they descended the hill, the con-
fused revelation of poetry; they heard the clamour
of the immortal city prolonging itself in the shadow.

" And now good-bye, Daniele," said the master,
again seized by haste, as if some one were waiting for
him or calling him.

The eyes of the tragic muse gazed immovable in
the background of his dream, sightless, petrified in
the divine blindness of statues.

" Where are you going?"

" To the Palazzo Capello."

" Does la Foscarina know the thread of your work ? "

" Vaguely ! "

" And what shall be her figure? "

" She shall be blind, having already passed into
another world, already half alive in something beyond
life. She shall see that which others do not see. She
shall have one foot in the shadow, and her forehead
in eternal truth. The contrasts of the tragic hour shall
reverberate in her inner darkness, multiplying them-
selves in it like thunder in the deep circles of solitary
rocks. Like Tiresias, she shall understand all things
permitted and forbidden, earthly and terrestrial, and
she shall know ' how hard knowing is when knowing
is useless.' Ah, I will put marvellous words in her
mouth and silences that shall give birth to things of
infinite beauty. . . ."

" Her power on the stage, whether she is silent or
whether she speaks, is more than human. She wakens
in our hearts the most hidden evils and the most se-
cret hopes ; and through her enchantment our past

2i8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

becomes present, and through the virtue of her as-
pects we recognise ourselves in the sorrows under-
gone by other creatures in all time, as if the soul
revealed to us by her were our own soul."

They paused on the Ponte Savio. Stelio was silent
under a flood of love and melancholy that suddenly
invaded him. He was hearing the sad voice again :
" To have loved my passing glory only that one day
it might serve yours." He was hearing his own voice
again : " I love you and believe in you ; I give my-
self up entirely. You are my companion. Your
hand is safe." The power and security of that alliance
were swelling his pride, yet, for all that, deep in the
depths of his heart there still trembled an undefined
aspiration and a presentiment that grew denser at
times and became as heavy as anguish.

" I am sorry to leave you to-night, Stelio," con-
fessed the kind brother, he too falling under a veil of
melancholy. " Whenever I am near you I seem to
feel myself breathing more freely and living a quicker
life."

Stelio was silent. The wind seemed to have grown
fainter, the intermittent gusts tore away the acacia
leaves and wrapped them round. The brown church
and the square tower of naked brick prayed to the
stars in silence.

" Do you know the green column that is in San
Giacomo dall' Orio?" added Daniele, meaning to
keep his friend a few moments longer, because he
dreaded the farewell. " What a sublime substance it
is ! it seems the fossilised condensation of an immense,
growing forest; as it follows its innumerable veins,
the eye travels in a dream into silvern mysteries.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 219

When I gaze at it I seem to be visiting Sila and
Ercinna."

Stelio knew it. Perdita had one day remained lean-
ing against the great precious stem for a long time,
contemplating the magic golden frieze that curves
out — obscuring it — above the canvas of Bassano.

" To be ever dreaming, dreaming ! " he sighed,
feeling a return of the bitter impatience which had
suggested words of scorn to him on the boat that
brought him from the Lido. " To live on relics !
Think of Dandolo, who overthrew that column and
an empire at the same time, and who chose to remain
doge when he might have been emperor. He lived
more than you do, perhaps, who wander through
forests when you examine the marble he brought
home as booty. Good-bye, Daniele."

" Do not diminish your lot."

" I wish I could force it."

" Thought is your weapon."

" Often my ambition burns up my thought."

" You can create ; what more do you seek ? "

" In other times I too might have conquered an
archipelago."

" What does it matter to you? A melody is worth
a province. Would you not give up a principality
for a new image .' "

" I would that I could live the whole of life and not
be only a brain."

" A brain contains the world."

" Ah, you cannot understand ! You are the ascetic ;
you have overcome desire."

" And you will overcome it, too."

" I don't know whether I would."

220 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" I am certain of it."

" Good-bye, Daniele. You are the one who bears
witness to me. No other is as dear to me as you are."

Their hands met in a firm clasp.

" I shall stop for news at the Palazzo Vendramin,"
said the kind brother. His words brought to his
mind once more the great, ailing heart, the weight of
the hero on their arms, the terrible removal.

" He has conquered ; he can die," said Stelio
Effrena.

He entered la Foscarina's house like a spirit. His
intellectual excitement was changing the aspect of
things. The hall, illuminated by a galley lamp,
seemed immense. A felse upon the pavement near
the door disturbed him as if he had met a coffin.

" Ah, Stelio ! " cried the actress, jumping up with
a start when she saw him appear, and moving quickly
towards him, impetuous with all the spring of her
desire that expectation had restrained. " At last ! "

She stopped an instant before him without touch-
ing him. The impulse she had controlled vibrated
visibly in her body from top to toe; it seemed to
beat in her throat in a short gasp. She was as the
wind is when it falls.

" Who has taken you from me? " she thought, her
heart filled with doubt ; all at once she had felt some-
thing in the loved one that made him intangible to
her, she had caught something in his eyes that was
estranged and distant.

But she had been most beautiful in his eyes as she
came forth from the shade, animated with a violence

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 221

not dissimilar to that of the storm that was agitating
the lagoons. The cry, the gesture, the start, the sud-
den stop, the vibration of her muscles under her gar-
ments, the light in her face extinguished Hke a flame
that becomes ashes, the intensity of her look that was
like a gleani of battle, the breath which parted her
lips like the heat that breaks open the lips of earth, —
all these aspects of the real person showed a power
of pathetic life only comparable to the ferment of
natural energies, to the action of cosmic forces. The
artist recognised in her the Dionysian creature, the
living material capable of receiving the impress of
the rhythm of art, of being fashioned according to the
laws of poetry. And because she was in his eyes as
various as the waves of the sea, the blind mask he
would put on her face seemed inert, narrow the tragic
fable through which she was to pass sorrowing, too
limited the order of sentiment from which she was to
draw her expressions, almost subterranean the soul
she must reveal. " Ah ! all that trembles, weeps,
hopes, yearns, raves in the immensity of life ! " His
mental fancies were seized with a sort of panic, with
a sudden, dissolving terror. What could that single
work be in the immensity of Hfe? ./Eschylus had
composed more than a hundred tragedies, Sophocles
still more ; they had formed a world with colossal
fragments raised in their titanic arms. Their work
was as vast as a cosmogony. The ^Eschylian figures
seemed to be still warm with ethereal fire, shining
with sidereal light, damp from the fertilising cloud.
The statue of CEdipus seemed to be carved out of the
same mass as the solar myth ; that of Prometheus
made with the same primitive tool with which the

222 THE FLAME OF LIFE

shepherd Arya had produced fire upon the Asiatic
heights. The spirit of the Earth worked in the
creators.

" Hide me, hide me ! and do not ask me anything,
and let me be silent," he implored, not knowing how
to dissimulate his excitement, and failing to control
the tumult of his distracted thoughts.

The heart of the woman throbbed with fear in its
ignorance.

" Why? What have you done ? "

" I am suffering."

"From what?"

" From anxiety, anxiety, from that malady of mine
which you know."

She took him in her arms. He felt that she had
trembled with doubt.

" Mine, still mine ? " she asked in a suffocated voice,
with her lips upon his shoulder.

" Yes, yours always."

It was a horrible tremor which shook the woman
every time she saw him go away, every time she saw
him come back. When he left her, was he going to
the unknown wife ; when he returned, had he come to
take his last leave of her ?

She strained him in her arms, with the love of a
mistress, a sister, a mother, with all human love.

" What can I do for you, what can I do for you ?
Tell me ! "

She was continually tormented by the need of
offering, of serving, of obeying a command which
should drive her towards danger and the struggle to
obtain some good which she should bring him on
returning to him.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 223

" What can I give you ? "

He smiled slightly, overtaken by weariness.

" What is it you want? Ah, I know."

He smiled, letting himself be soothed by that
voice, by those adoring hands.

"Everything, is it not true? You want every-
thing?"

He smiled sadly, like a sick child told by a play-
mate of beautiful games.

" Ah, if I could. But nobody in the world will
ever be able to give you anything of any value, sweet
friend. Only your poetry and your music can demand
everything. Do you recollect your Ode beginning,
'I was Pan'?"

He bent over the faithful heart a brow that was
being illumined by beautiful things.

"I was Pan!"

The splendour of the lyrical moment went through
his spirit together with the delirium of the Ode.

" Have you seen your sea to-day? Did you see
the storm ? "

He shook his head without answering.

" Was it a great storm ? You told me one day
that you have many sailors among your ancestors.
Have you thought of your house on the sand-hills?
Are you homesick for the sands? Do you want to
go back down there? You have done a great deal
of work down there, and strong work. That house
is blessed. Your mother was there whilst you were
at work. You could hear her walk gently in the
neighbouring rooms. . . . Did she stop to listen
sometimes?"

He clasped her in silence. The voice was pene-

224 THE FLAME OF LIFE

trating him deeply and seemed to refresh his pent-up
soul.

" And was your sister with you, too? You told me
her name one day. I have not forgotten it. Her name
is Sophia. I know she is like you. I should like to
hear her speak once, or to see her pass down the
road. . . . One day you praised her hands to me.
They are beautiful, are they not? You told me one
day that when she is sorrowful they hurt her ' as if
they were the very roots of her soul.' That was what
you told me, ' the very roots of her soul.' "

He was listening to her almost in a state of beati-
tude. In what way had she discovered the secret of
that balsam? From what hidden spring was she
drawing the melodious fluidity of those memories?

" Sophia will never know the good she has done to
the poor pilgrim. I know little about her, but I know
that she is like you in the face, and I have pictured
her to myself. . . . Even now I can see her. . . .
In distant countries, far, far away in the midst of a
strange, hard population, she has appeared to me
more than once when I was feeling lost; she has
come to keep me company. She would appear sud-
denly without my calling or expecting her. . . .
Once at Miirren, which I had reached after a long
tiring journey I had undertaken in order to see a
poor sick friend who afterwards died. ... It was
at dawn ; the mounains had that cold dehcate colour
of beryl that is only seen among glaciers, the colour
of those things that will for ever remain distant and
intact and, oh, so enviable, so enviable 1 Why did
she come? We waited together. The sun touched
the peaks of the hills. Then a dazzling rainbow

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 225

ran along their edges, lasted a few seconds, and
disappeared. . . ."

He listened to her almost in a state of beatitude.
Was not all the beauty and all the truth that he
would have expressed contained in one of the stones
or flowers of those mountains? The most tragic
struggle of human passions was not worth the ap-
parition of that rainbow on the eternal snows.

" And another time? " he asked softly.

For the pause had prolonged itself and he feared
she would not continue.

She smiled, then grew sad.

"Another time, it was at Alexandria, in Egypt, one
confused day of horror as if after a shipwreck. . . ,
The city had all the appearance of putrefaction. . . .
I remember : a street full of muddy water, a whitish
skeleton-like horse that was splashing in it, its mane
and tail looking as if tinted with ochre ; the turrets of
an Arab cemetery; the distant glitter of the marsh of
Mareotis. . . . Disgust, ruin ! "

" Oh, dear soul, never again, never again shall you
be desperate and alone," he said in his heart, swollen
with paternal kindness towards the nomad woman who
was calling up the sadness of her continual wandering.

His spirit which had stretched out so violently
towards the future now seemed with a slight shudder
to draw back into the past the power of that voice
which was being made present. He felt himself in a
state of concentration sweet and full of images like
that which is generated by the telling of stories round
the hearth in winter. Like once before under the
windows of the cloistered Radiana, he felt himself
seized by the fascination of time.

IS

226 THE FLAME OF LIFE

"And another time?"

She smiled, then grew sad.

"Another time it was in Vienna, in a museum. . . .
A great deserted hall, the cracking of rain on the
glass of the windows, numberless precious shrines in
crystal cases, the signs of death everywhere, of exiled
things no longer prayed to, no longer worshipped.
. . . Together we bent over a case containing a
collection of holy arms with their metal hands fixed
in a changeless gesture. . . . Martyrs' hands studded
with agates, amethysts, topazes, garnets, and sickly
turquoises. . . . Through certain apertures, splinters
of bone could be seen in the interior. There was one
that held a golden lily, another a miniature city, a
third a column. One was finer than the others. It
had a ring on each finger, and it held a small vase
full of ointment: it contained the relics of Mary
Magdalen. . . . Exiled things, become profane and
no longer prayed to, no longer worshipped. ... Is
Sophia devout.' Has she preserved the habit of
prayer? "

He did not answer. It seemed to him that he
should not speak, that he should give no visible sign
of his own existence in the enchantment of that
distant life.

" Sometimes she would come into your room while
you were working and lay a blade of grass on the
page you had commenced."

The enchantress shuddered inwardly: an image
that was wrapped in veils revealed itself all of a sud-
den, suggesting other words which remained unut-
tered. "Do you know that I began loving the
creature who sings, her whom you cannot have for-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 227

gotten, do you know that I began to love her, think-
ing of your sister? In order to pour into a pure
soul the tenderness which my heart would have
given to your sister from whom I was separated by
so many cruel things ! Do you know it ? " The
words were living, but they remained unuttered ; yet
the voice trembled at their dumb presence.

" Then you would allow yourself a few moments'
rest; you would go to the window and with her beside
you would look out to the sea. A ploughman urged
his young oxen yoked to the plough over the sand to
teach them the straight furrow; you would watch
them with her every day at the same time. When
they were fully trained, they came and ploughed the
sand no longer, but were taken up to the hill. . . .
Who has told me all these things?"

He himself had told her one day, almost in the
same words, but now those memories were being
brought back to him like unexpected visions.

" Then the flocks passed along the seashore :
they came from the mountains and went to the
plains of the Puglia, from one pasture to another
pasture. As they walked, the woolly sheep imitated
the motion of the waves, but the sea was nearly always
quiet when the flocks passed with their shepherds.
All was quiet ; there was a golden silence stretched
over the beach. The dogs ran along beside the
flock : the shepherds leaned on their staffs, and the
tinkle of their collar bells was faint in the vastness.
Your eyes would follow their progress as far as the
promontory. Then, later, you would go with your
sister and follow the marks left by their passage on
the damp sand. It was here and there dotted with

228 THE FLAME OF LIFE

holes and golden like a honeycomb. . . . Who has
told me all these things?"

He listened to her almost in a state of beatitude.
His fever was quenched. There descended upon him
a slow peace that was like slumber.

" Then the sudden squalls would come ; the sea
would overrun the sand-hills and the low woods,
leaving its foam on the juniper and tamarisk trees,
on the myrtle and the rosemary. Quantities of sea-
weeds and fragments would be thrown on shore.
Some boat had shipwrecked somewhere. The sea
brought fire-wood for the poor and mourning who
knows where ! The beach would be crowded with
women and children and old men vying with one
another as to who should collect the largest bundle.
Then your sister would bring other help : bread,
wine, vegetables, linen. The blessing would rise
louder than the roar of the waves. You would look
on from the window; and it seemed to you that
none of your beautiful images was worth the odour
of the new bread. You would leave the half-written
page and hasten down to help Sophia. You would
speak to the women, the children, and the old
men. . . . Who has told me all these things?"

From the very first Stelio had preferred going
to the house of his friend through the gate of the
Gradenigo garden and passing among the trees and
shrubs that had grown wild again. La Foscarina had
obtained leave to unite her own garden with that of
the abandoned palace by means of a breach in the
partition wall. But soon afterwards. Lady Myrta had

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 229

come to inhabit the immense, silent rooms that had
welcomed as their last guest the son of the Empress
Josephine, the viceroy of Italy. The rooms were
adorned with old stringless instruments, and the gar-
den was peopled by beautiful greyhounds deprived of
their prey.

Nothing seemed to Stelio sadder and sweeter than
that walk towards the woman who awaited him,
counting the hours that were so slow and yet so swift
to fly. The canal path of San Simeone Piccolo
turned golden in the afternoon like a bank of fine ala-
baster. The reflected sun-rays played with the iron
of the prows moored in a row by the landing pier,
quivered on the steps of the church, on the columns
of the peristyle, animating the warm, disjointed
stones. A few rotten gondola cabins lay in the
shade of the pavement with their cloths spoiled and
discoloured by the rains, like biers worn by the wear
and tear of many funerals, grown old on the cemetery
road. The suffocating odour of hemp came from a
decayed palace now used as a rope factory, through
the barred windows choked with greyish down as
with accumulated cobwebs. And the garden gate
opened at the end of the Campiello della Comare,
which was grassy like the churchyard of a country
parish; it opened out between two pillars crowned
with mutilated statues, and on the limbs of these the
dried ivy branches stood out like veins. Nothing
could have seemed to the visitor sweeter or more
sad. The chimneys of the humble dwellings round
the grass plot smoked peacefully towards the green
cupola; now and then a flight of pigeons crossed
the canal, starting from the sculptures of the Scalzi ;

230 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the whistle of a train passing on the lagoon bridge
could be heard, and the sing-song of a rope-maker
and the roll of an organ and the chanting of the
priests. The late summer was deceiving the melan-
choly of love.

"Helion! Sirius! Altair! Donovan! Ali-Nour!
Nerissa ! Piuchebella ! "

Lady Myrta, seated on the bench against the wall
clasped by rose-bushes, was calling her dogs. La
Foscarina stood near her, dressed in a tawny garment
that seemed made of the wonderful roan stuff used in
ancient Venice; the sun wrapped the two women
and the roses in one same fair warmth.

" You are dressed like Donovan to-day," said Lady
Myrta to the actress, smiling. " Do you know that
Stelio loves Donovan above all the others?"

A faint blush tinted the face of La Foscarina ; her
eyes sought the tawny greyhound.

" The strongest and the most beautiful," she said.

" I think he wants him," added the old lady, with
her indulgent sweetness.

" What is it he does not want?"

The old woman felt the veiled melancholy ; she
remained silent for a few moments.

The dogs lay near them, heavy and sad, sleepy and
full of dreams, far from their plains, their steppes, and
their deserts, crouching on the field of clover where
the marrow plants meandered with their hollow,
yellow-green fruit. The trees were motionless, as if
they had been fused in the same bronze that covered
the three graduated cupolas of San Simeone. There
was one same aspect of wildness about the garden
and the great stone dwelling, darkened by the tena-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 231

cious smoke of time, streaked with the rust of its irons
produced by the rains of an infinite number of au-
tumns. And the head of a tall pine resounded with
the same twittering which was certainly reaching the
ears of Radiana at that moment from her walled
garden.

"Does he give you pain?" the old woman would
have liked to ask of the woman in love, because the
silence weighed upon her and the fire of that sorrow-
ful soul was warming her like the persistent summer.
But she dared not. She sighed instead of speaking.
Her heart, which was ever young, could still beat at
the sight of desperate passion and threatened beauty.
" Ah, you are still beautiful, and your mouth still
attracts, and the man who loves you can still know
the intoxication of your pallor and your eyes," she
said, looking at the absorbed actress, towards whom
the November roses were stretching out. " But I am
a shadow."

She lowered her eyes, saw her own deformed hands
resting on her knees, and marvelled at their being
hers, they were so dead and contorted, miserable
monsters that could no longer touch anything without
exciting repugnance, that henceforth had only the
sleepy dogs to caress. She felt the wrinkles on her
face, the artificial teeth against her gums, the false
hair on her head, the entire ruin of her poor body,
that at one time had obeyed the graceful dictates of
her delicate spirit; and she marvelled at her own
persistence in struggling against the decay of her
age, in deceiving herself, in recomposing each morn-
ing the laughable illusion of essences, ointments,
rouge, and dyes. But was not her youth still present

232 THE FLAME OF LIFE

in the continual spring of her dream ? Had she not
yesterday, only yesterday, caressed a lovable face with
perfect fingers, hunted the fox and the stag in the
northern counties, danced in a park with her promised
bridegroom to an air of John Dowland's.

" There are no mirrors in the house of the Countess
Glanegg ; there are too many in the house of Lady
Myrta," thought la Foscarina. " One has hidden her
decadence from herself and all others ; the other has
seen herself growing older each morning, has counted
her wrinkles one by one, has gathered up her dead
hairs in her comb, has felt the first shake of her teeth
in her pale gums, and has tried to repair the irrepa-
rable ruin by artifice. Poor, tender soul that would
still live, smiling and fascinating! One should dis-
appear, die, sink below the earth." She noticed the
little bunch of violets fastened by a pin to the hem
of Lady Myrta's dress. In every season a fresh flower
was pinned there, in some fold, hardly visible, as a
sign of her daily illusion of spring, of the ever-
renewed incantation that she worked on herself by
means of memory, music, and poetry, with all the
arts of dreams against old age, ill-health, and solitude.
" One should live a supreme, flaming hour, and then
disappear in the earth before all fascination be lost,
before the death of our last grace."

She felt the beauty of her own eyes, the hunger of
her lips, the rough strength of her hair folded back
by the tempest, all the power of the rhythms and the
impulses that slept in her muscles and in her bones.
She seemed to hear her friend's words which had
praised her, to see him in the fury of his desire, in the
sweetness of languor, in the moment of deepest ob-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 233

livion. "For a little while longer, still for a little
while, I shall please him, I shall seem beautiful to
him, I will burn his blood. Still for a little while."
With her feet in the grass, with her forehead lifted
to the sun, in the odour of the fading roses, in the
tawny dress that likened her to the magnificent
beast of prey, she burned with passionate expecta-
tion, with a sudden flood of life, as if that future
which she had given up by her resolution of death
were flowing back into the present. " Come, come ! "
She called her lover inwardly, half intoxicated, sure
of his coming, because she already felt him and had
never yet been deceived by her presentiment. " Still
for a little while ! " Every moment that passed
seemed an iniquitous theft. Motionless as she was,
she suffered and desired bewilderingly. The whole
garden, penetrated by heat to its very roots, throbbed
with her own pulsation. She felt as if she were
about to lose consciousness, to fall.

" Ah ! here is Stelio," exclaimed Lady Myrta,
seeing the young man appear among the laurels.

The woman turned quickly, blushing. The grey-
hounds rose, pricking their ears. The meeting of
those two brought forth sparks that were like a flash
of lightning. Once more, as ever, her lover had felt
in the presence of the marvellous creature the divine
sensation of being suddenly wrapped in inflamed
ether, in a vibrating atmosphere that seemed to
isolate him from the ordinary atmosphere and almost
ravished him. He had one day associated that mira-
cle of love with a physical image, remembering how
on one distant evening of his childhood, in crossing a
desolate plot of ground, he had suddenly found him-

234 THE FLAME OF LIFE

self surrounded by will-o'-the-wisps and had uttered
a cry.

"You were awaited here by all that lives in this
seclusion," said Lady Myrta, with a smile that covered
the emotion which had seized the poor youthful heart
in its prison of an old ailing body, at the spectacle of
love and desire. " In coming you have obeyed a call."
" True ! " said the young man, holding the collar
of Donovan, who had crept up to him, remembering
his caresses. " Indeed, I come from somewhere
very far. Where do you think I come from?
Guess ! "

"From the land of Giorgione."
" No, from the cloister of Santa Apollonia. Do
you know the cloister of Santa Apollonia? "
" Is it your invention of to-day .■' "
" Invention ? It is a cloister of stone, a real one,
with its well and its little columns."

"It may be; but all the things you have once
looked at become your inventions, Stelio."

" Ah, Lady Myrta, I should like to give you that
gem. I should like to remove it into your garden.
Imagine a small secret cloister, opening on an order
of worn columns, coupled like nuns when they
pace fasting in the sun, very delicate, neither white
nor grey nor black, but of that most mysterious
colour ever given to stone by that great master-
colourist called Time. And in the midst of these a
well, and on the margin furrowed by the rope a bot-
tomless pail. The nuns have disappeared, but I think
the shades of the Danaides frequent the place. . . ."
He interrupted himself suddenly on seeing him-
self surrounded by the hounds and began imi-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE ^35

tating the guttural sounds made by the kennel-man
to rally them. The dogs became restless; their
melancholy eyes brightened. Two who had been at
some distance from the others bounded towards him
with long leaps, jumping over the bushes, and stopped
before him, wiry, sinuous, with strained nerves.

" Ali-Nour ! Crissa ! Nerissa ! Clarissa ! Altair !
Helion ! Hardicanute ! Veronese ! Hierro ! "

He knew them all by name ; and when he called
them, they seemed to recognise him for their master.
There was the Scotch deer-hound, the native of the
highlands, with rough thick coat, rougher and thicker
round his jowls and nose and grey as new iron;
there was the reddish Irish wolf-hound, the robust
destroyer of wolves, whose brown eyes showed the
whites on moving; there was the spotted Tartary
hound, black and yellow, brought from the vast
Asiatic steppes where he guarded the tents at night
from leopards and hyenas; there was the Persian
dog, fair and small, his ears covered with long silky
hairs, with a bushy tail, his coat paler along the ribs
and down his legs, more graceful even than the ante-
lopes he had slain ; there was the Spanish galgo who
had migrated with the Moors, the magnificent beast
held in leash by a pompous dwarf in the picture of
Diego Velasquez, trained to course and overthrow
in the naked plains of the Mancha, or in the low
woods thick with brushwood of Murcia and Ali-
cante ; there was the Arabian sloughi, the illustrious
plunderer of the desert, with dark tongue and palate,
all his sinews visible, his framework of bones show-
ing through the fine skin, a noble animal all pride,
courage, and elegance, accustomed to sleeping on

236 THE FLAME OF LIFE

rich carpets and drinking pure milk in pure vessels.
And gathered together in a pack they quivered round
him who knew how to reawaken in their torpid blood
their primitive instincts of pursuit and carnage.

" Which of you was Gog's best friend ? " he said,
looking from one to the other of the beautiful
anxious eyes fixed on him.

" You Hierro ? You Altair ? "

His singular accent excited the sensitive animals,
who listened with suppressed, intermittent yelps.
Each movement of theirs imparted a shining wave
to their various coats ; and their long tails, curved at
the ends like hooks, wagged lightly from side to side
against their muscular haunches.

" Well, I must tell you what I have kept silent
until to-day: Gog, do you hear? who could break
the hare at one snap of his jowls, — Gog is crippled."

" Oh, really ! " exclaimed Lady Myrta, regretfully.
" How did it happen, Stelio, and how is Magog? "

" Magog is safe and sound."

They were a couple of greyhounds given by Lady
Myrta to her young friend to take with him to his
house on the sea.

" But how did it happen? "

" Ah, poor Gog ! He had already killed thirty-
seven hares. He possessed all the qualities of great
breeding: swiftness, resistance, an incredible quick-
ness at turning, and the constant desire of killing his
prey, and the classical manner of running straight,
and gripping from behind. Have you ever seen
greyhounds course, Foscarina?"

She was so intent that she started at the unexpected
sound of her name.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 237

" Never ! "

She was hanging on his lips, fascinated by their
instinctive expression of cruelty in describing the
work of blood.

" Never ! Then you do not know one of the rarest
manifestations of daring, vehemence and grace in the
world."

He drew Donovan towards him, knelt on the
ground and began feeling him with his expert hands.

" There is in nature no machine more precisely
and powerfully adapted to its purpose. The muzzle
is sharp in order to part the air in running, it is long,
in order that the jaws may disable the prey at the
first snap. The skull is large between the two ears
in order to contain greater courage and skill. The
jowls are dry and muscular, the lips short so that
they barely cover the teeth."

With easy assurance, he opened the mouth of the
dog, which attempted no resistance. The dazzling
teeth appeared, the palate marked with large black
waves, the thin rosy tongue.

" See what teeth ! See how long the eye-teeth
are, and a little curve at the points the better to
retain his hold. No other kind of dog has a mouth
constructed in so perfect a manner for the purpose of
biting."

His hands lingered in the examination, and his
admiration for the noble specimen seemed to have
no bounds. He had knelt down on the clover,
receiving in his face the breath of the animal, which
was letting itself be examined with unusual docility,
as if it had understood the praise of the expert and
were enjoying it.

238 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" The ears are small and placed very high, straight
in moments of excitement, but falling flat and adhering
to the skull when at rest. They do not prevent the
collar from being taken off and put on again without
undoing the buckle : so ! "

He took off the collar, which exactly fitted the
animal's neck, and put it on again.

" Then he has a swan's neck, long and flexible,
which allows him to grasp his peculiar game at the
moment of his greatest swiftness without losing his
balance. Ah, I once saw Gog clutch a hare that was
jumping across a ditch. . . . Now observe the more
important parts : the length and depth of chest made
for long runs, the oblique lines of the shoulders pro-
portioned to the length of the limbs, the formidable
muscular mass in the haunches, the short heels, the
backbone saddle-backed between bands of sohd
muscles. . . . Look ! Helion's backbone stands out
plainly : Donovan's is hidden in a furrow. The paws
are like those of a cat, with nails that are close, but
not too much so, elastic and sure. And what ele-
gance there is in the ribs, disposed with the symmetry
of a fine ship's keel, and in that line, curving inwards
towards the abdomen, which is entirely hidden. All
is directed to one aim. The tail thick at its root and
thin at the tip — look! almost like that of a rat —
serves the animal for the purpose of a rudder and is
necessary to him in order to be able to turn rapidly
when the hare doubles. Let me see, Donovan, if
you are perfect also in this."

He took the tip of the tail, passed it under the
leg, drew it back towards his haunch-bone, where it
exactly touched the projecting part

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 239

" Perfect ! I once saw an Arab of the tribe of
Arb^a measuring his sloughi in this way. AH-Nour !
Did you tremble when you discovered the flock of
gazelles? Think, Foscarina, the sloughi trembles
when he discovers his prey, trembles like a willow,
and turns two soft beseeching eyes to his master that
he may be set free. I do not know why this pleases
me, and moves me so much. His desire of killing is
terrible in him, his whole body is ready to fly like an
arrow, yet he trembles! Not with fear surely, not
with uncertainty, but with desire. Ah, Foscarina, if
you were to see a sloughi in those moments you
would certainly carry away from him his manner of
trembling, and you would know how to make it
human, and you would give men yet another quiver
with your tragic art. . . . Get up Ali-Nour ! desert
torrent of swiftness, do you remember? Now it is
only the cold that causes your trembling. . . ."

Gay and voluble, he let Donovan go, and taking in
his two hands the snakelike head of the slayer of
gazelles, looked into the depths of his eyes, where
lurked the homesickness of silent tropical countries,
of tents unfolded after a journey that meteors had
deceived, of bonfires lit for the evening meal under
the wide stars that seemed to draw their life from the
throb of the wind in the palm-tops. " Eyes full of
dreams and of melancholy, of courage and faithful-
ness. Have you ever thought. Lady Myrta, that the
hound of the lovely eyes is precisely the mortal
enemy of the lovely-eyed animals like the gazelle
and the hare ? "

The woman had entered into that bodily incan-
tation of love by which the limits of one's person

240 THE FLAME OF LIFE

seem to spread and be fused in the air, so that each
word or gesture of the loved one excites a quiver
sweeter than any caress. The young man had talcen
in his hands the head of Ali-Nour, but she felt the
touch of those hands on her own temples. The
young man was searching the eyes of Ali-Nour, but
she could feel that glance deep in her own soul, and
it seemed that his praise of those eyes flowed to her
own eyes.

She was standing on the grass like the haughty
animals he loved, dressed like the one he preferred of
all the others, filled like them with a confused memory
of a distant origin, and slightly stupefied by the glare
of the sun-rays reflected by the wall covered with
rose-trees, stupefied and fervent as if in a slight fever.
She heard him speaking of things that were alive, of
limbs apt for the chase and the capture, of vigour and
dexterity, of natural power and the vigour of blood,
and she saw him bending near the earth in the
odour of the grass, in the warmth of the sun, pliable
and strong, feeling skins and bones, measuring the
energy of exposed muscles, enjoying the contact of
those generous bodies, almost taking part in that
delicate, cruel brutality that it had more than once
pleased him to represent in the inventions of his art ;
and she herself, with her feet in the warm earth under
the breath of the sky, in her dress that was similar in
colour to the tawny plunderer, felt a strange primitive
sense of bestiality rising from the roots of her being,
something that was almost the illusion of a slow meta-
morphosis in which she was losing a part of her
human consciousness and becoming a child of nature,
a short-lived, ingenuous force, a savage life.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 241

Thus was he not touching the obscurest mystery
of her being? was he not making her feel the animal
profundity from which the unexpected revelations of
her tragic genius had sprung forth, shaking and
inebriating the multitude like the sights of the sea
and the sky, like the dawn or the tempest? When
he had told her of the quivering sloughi, had he not
divined the natural analogies from which she drew the
powers of expression that had set poets and peoples
wondering? It was because she had discovered anew
the Dionysian sense of nature the naturaliser, the
ancient fervour of instinctive and creative energies,
the enthusiasm of the manifold god emerging from
the ferment of every sap that she appeared so new
and so great on the stage. She had sometimes felt
in herself something like an imminent approach of
the miracle that used of old to swell with divine milk
the bosom of the Maenades when they saw the young
panthers draw near them craving for food.

She stood on the grass tawny and agile like the
favourite hound, full of the confused memory of a
distant origin, living and desirous of living without
measure in the brief hoiir allotted to her. The mist
of tears was vain, all the stifling aspirations to good-
ness and renunciation fell, and all the ashen melan-
cholies of the deserted garden. The presence of the
Life-giver seemed to widen space, to change time,
to quicken the throb of blood, to multiply the faculty
of enjoyment, to create once more the phantom of
a magnificent festival. She was there once more as
he had wished to shape her, forgetful of fears and
wretchedness, cured of her sad evil, a creature of
flesh vibrating in the light, in the warmth, in the per-

i6

242 THE FLAME OF LIFE

fumes, in the play of appearances, ready to cross the
suggested plains and sand-hills and deserts with him
in the fury of the chase, to feel the intoxication of
that ecstasy, to rejoice at the sight of courage, skill,
and bleeding spoils. From second to second as
he spoke and moved, he shaped her after his own
likeness.

" Ah, every time I saw the hare breaking in the
teeth of the hound, a flash of regret would pass over
my joy for those great moist eyes that were being
extinguished ! Larger than yours, Ali-Nour, and
larger than yours, Donovan, resplendent like pools
on a summer evening, with the same circle of wil-
lows dipping into them and the same heaven mir-
rored and changing in them. Have you ever seen a
hare in the early morning, emerge from a freshly
ploughed furrow, run for a while on the silver hoar-
frost, then stop in the silence, sit down on its hind-
legs, prick up its ears, and watch the horizon? Its
look seems to pacify the universe. The motionless
hare searching the smoking field in a moment of
respite from its perpetual anxiety ! One could not
imagine a more certain sign of perfect surrounding
peace. In those moments, it is a sacred animal that
we should adore. . . ."

Lady Myrta broke into the youthful laugh that
revealed the whple range of her gilded elephantine
teeth and shook the tortoise-like wrinkles under her
chin.

" Kind Stelio," she exclaimed, laughing, " first to
adore, then tear in pieces: is that your way?"

La Foscarina looked at her in some surprise, for
she had forgotten her ; and sitting there on the stone

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 243

seat, yellow with mosses, with her contorted hands,
with that glitter of gold and ivory between her thin
lips, with those small blue eyes under limp eyelids,
with that harsh voice and that queer laugh, she sug-
gested the image of one of those old web-footed
fairies that wander through the woods followed by an
obedient toad. The words did not penetrate the
oblivion in which she had lost herself, nevertheless
they disturbed her as a shriek.

" It is not my fault," said Stelio, " if greyhounds
are made to kill hares and not to slumber in a walled
garden on the waters of a dead canal."

Again he began imitating the guttural sounds
of the kennel-man.

" Crissa ! Nerissa ! Altair ! Sirius ! Piuchebella !
Helion ! "

The excited dogs grew agitated : their eyes lit up ;
the dry muscles started under the tawny, black,
white, leaden, spotted, and mingled coats; the long
haunches curved like bows ready to unbend and to
hurl into space the carcasses drier and more slender
than a bundle of arrows.

" There, there, Donovan, there 1 "

He was pointing to something half grey, half red-
dish, in the grass at the bottom of the garden, that
had the appearance of a hare crouching with its
ears laid flat. The imperious voice deceived the
hesitating hounds, and the thin powerful bodies were
beautiful to see in the sunlight, shining like living
silk, quivering and vibrating at the stimulus of the
human voice like the lightest flags in a pavice, an-
swering to the breeze.

" There, Donovan ! "

244 THE FLAME OF LIFE

And the great tawny dog looked him in the eyes,
gave a formidable leap, dashed towards the fancied
prey with all the vehemence of his reawakened in-
stinct. He had reached it in an instant, then stopped,
disappointed, bending on his hind-legs, his neck
thrust forward ; then he leaped again, began playing
with the pack that had followed him in great dis-
order, began fighting Altair, left off, and, his pointed
muzzle erect, followed, barking, a flock of sparrows
that had flown away from the pine top with a gay
rustle in the blue.

" A marrow, a marrow," cried the deceiver, between
his peals of laughter, " not even a rabbit. Poor
Donovan ! A bite in a pumpkin. Ah, poor Donovan,
what a humiliation ! Take care. Lady Myrta, lest he
drown himself in the canal to hide his shame. . . ."

Seized by the contagion of his gaiety, la Foscarina
laughed with him. Her roan dress and the coats of
the hounds shone in the slanting sun on the green
of the clover. The whiteness of her teeth and the
pealing laughter filled her mouth with renewed
youth. The tedium of the ancient garden seemed
torn asunder like the cobwebs that are brushed away
when a violent hand opens a window that has been
long closed.

" Would you like to have Donovan?" said Lady
Myrta, with a malicious grace in her soul that lost
itself among her wrinkles like a stream in a flooded
land. " I know, I know your arts. . . ."

Stelio ceased laughing, blushing like a child.

A wave of tenderness swelled the bosom of la
Foscarina as she noticed the childish blush. Her
whole being sparkled with love; and a mad desire

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 245

to fold her lover in her arms quivered in her pulses
and on her lips.

"Would you like to have him?" Lady Myrta
asked again, happy at being able to give, and grate-
ful to him who had received the gift with so much
fresh, vivid pleasure. " Donovan is yours ! "

Before thanking her, his eyes sought the grey-
hound almost anxiously, he saw him again as he was,
strong, splendid, most beautiful, with the stamp of
style on his limbs as if Pisanello had designed him
for the reverse of a medal.

"But Gog, what has become of Gog? You have
not said another word about him," said the giver.
" Ah, how easily an invalid goes out of our minds ! "

Stelio was watching la Foscarina, who had turned
towards the group of hounds, walking on the grass
with a quick undulation which was like the step
called precisely by the old Venetians the greyhound
step. The roan dress, gilded by the declining sun,
seemed burning on her flexible figure. And it was
easy to see that she was going towards the animal of
her own colour, to which she likened herself strangely
by her deep mimetic instinct, almost to the point of
being transfigured.

" It was after a run," said Stelio. " I was in the
habit of having a hare coursed along the sand-hills
by the seashore nearly every day. The peasants
often brought me live ones from my own grounds,
dark, robust ones ready to defend themselves, most
cunning, capable of scratching and biting. Ah, Lady
Myrta, there is no ground for a run finer than my
free seashore. You know the great plateaus of Lan-
cashire, the dry Yorkshire soil, the hard plains of

246 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Altcar, the low Scotch moors, the sands of southern
England; but a gallop along my sand-hills, more
golden and more luminous than the autumn clouds,
beyond the low juniper and tamarisk clusters, beyond
the small, limpid mouths of the streams, beyond the
little salt pools, along a sea which is greener than a
meadow, within sight of the blue and snowy moun-
tains, would obscure your fairest memories, Lady
Myrta."

" Italy ! Italy ! " smiled the indulgent old fairy.
" The flower of the world."

" It was along that shore that I would let the hare
loose. I trained a man to unleash the dogs at the
right moment, and I would follow the chase on
horseback. . . . Certainly Magog is an excellent
courser, but I had never seen a more ready or more
ardent slayer than Gog. . . ."

" He came from the Newmarket kennels," said the
giver,, proudly.

" One day I was returning home along the sea-
shore. The chase had been brief. . . . Gog had over-
taken the hare at the end of two or three miles. I
was coming home at a slow gallop, skirting the calm
water. Gog was galloping beside me, keeping up
with Cambyses, jumping up now and then towards
the game that hung from my saddle, and barking.
Suddenly, on seeing a dead carcass before him, my
horse started to one side, and his hoof wounded the
dog, who began howling, holding up his left foreleg,
which seemed broken at the fetlock. I reined in the
frightened horse with some difficulty, and went back.
But as Cambyses saw the carcass again, he shied and
bolted. Then it became a furious race along the

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 247

downs. With what emotion I cannot tell you, I heard
in a few minutes the hard breathing of Gog behind
the horse. He had followed me, you understand?
In spite of his broken leg, moved by the generosity
of his blood, forgetting his pain, he followed me, over-
took me, passed me ! My eyes met his sweet, beau-
tiful eyes, and while I strove to regain my mastery
over the frightened horse, my heart broke each time
I saw his poor wounded leg graze the ground. I
worshipped him at that moment, I worshipped him.
Do you think me capable of tears? "

" Yes," said Lady Myrta, " even of tears."

"Well, when my sister Sophia began dressing the
wound with her thin hands on which the tears were
dropping, I too, I think — "

La Foscarina stood beside Donovan, holding him
by the collar, pale again, more attenuated, as if the
chill of evening were already beginning to penetrate
her ; the shadow of the bronze cupola was lengthening
on the grass, on the hornbeams, on the laurels; a
violet moisture in which the last atoms of the sun's
gold were swimming spread itself among the stems
and branches that were quivering in the wind. And
once more their ears caught the twittering in the
pine tops full of empty cones.

" See, we are yours," seemed the words of the
woman, while the greyhound, seized by the first
shivers, pressed against her knees. " We are yours
for ever ; we are here to serve you."

" Nothing in the world disquiets and kindles me
so much as these sudden visions of the virtue of
blood," said the young man, roused by the memory
of that hour of emotion.

248 THE FLAME OF LIFE

They heard the prolonged whistle of a train that
was crossing the bridge over the lagoon. A breath
of wind stripped off all the petals of a large white
rose, so that only a bud reniained on the top of the
stalk. The chilly dogs drew near one another, gather-
ing together one against the other. Their slender
bones shivered under the thin skin, and the melan-
choly eyes shone in the long heads flat as the heads
of reptiles.

" Did I ever tell you, Stelio, of the way in which a
lady belonging to the best blood of France died at a
hunting party where I was present?" Lady Myrta
asked him. The tragic image and the pitiful remem-
brance had been reawakened in her by the expres-
sion she had caught on the pale face of la Foscarina.

" No, never; who was she? "

" Jeanne d'Elbeuf Through her own imprudence
or inexperience, or that of the man who rode beside
her, she was shot, nobody ever knew by whom, to-
gether with the hare, which passed between the legs
of the horse. She was seen to fall. We all hastened
to her, and found her on the grass, steeped in blood,
by the side of the convulsed hare. In the silence and
dismay, while we all stood there as if turned to stone,
while not one of us had yet dared to speak or move,
the poor creature raised one hand just a little, point-
ing to the wounded, suffering animal, and said (never
shall I forget her voice), " Tuez-le, tuez-le, mes amis.
. . . Ca fait si mal ! " ^ Then died at once.

Heart-rending indeed was the sweetness of the late
November that smiled like an invaUd who believes
himself to be convalescent and feels an unusual

1 " Kill it, kill it, my friends, it hurts so I "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 249

happiness and knows not that his agony is at
hand !

"What is the matter with you to-day, Fosca?
What has happened? Why are you so reserved
with me? Tell me! Speak to me!"

Stelio had strolled into San Marco by chance and
had seen her there, leaning against the door of the
chapel that leads to the Baptistery. She was alone,
motionless, her face devoured by fever and shadow,
her eyes full of terror fixed on the terrible figures
flaming in the yellow fire of the mosaics. A choir
was practising behind the door; the chant, inter-
rupted every now and then, began again with the
same cadence.

" Leave me alone, I beg of you, I beg of you ! I
must be alone. I implore you ! "

The sound of her words betrayed the dryness of
her convulsed mouth. She turned as if to fly. He
held her back.

" But tell me ! Say one word at least that I may
understand."

Again she moved as if to draw herself away, and
her movement expressed an unspeakable suffering.
She had the appearance of a creature lacerated by
torture, wrenched by an executioner. She seemed
more wretched than a body tied to the rack, tormented
by red-hot pincers.

" I implore you. If you are sorry for me, there
is only one thing you can do for me now; let
me go. . . ."

She spoke very low, and the torture of her shaken
soul was so evident that her not crying out, and her
throat's not giving way to breathless screams, seemed
inhuman.

250 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" But one word, at least one, that I may under-
stand."

A flash of fury passed over the perturbed face.

" No ! I want to be let alone."

The voice was as hard as the look. She turned,
taking a few steps like one overtaken by dizziness
hastening to some support.

" Foscarina ! "

But he dared not hold her back. He saw the
desperate woman walk into the zone of sunlight that
had invaded the basilica with the rush of a torrent
through the door that an unknown hand had opened.
The deep golden cave with its apostles, with its
martyrs, with its sacred beasts, sparkled behind her
as if the thousand torches of the day were pouring
into" it. The chant stopped, then began again.

" I am drowning in my sadness. . . . The impulse
to rebel against my fate, to go away aimlessly, to
search. . . . Who will save my hope ? From whom
will light come to me? . . . To sing, to sing! But
I would sing a hymn of life at last. . . . Could you
tell me where the Lord of the Flame is just now?"
The words of Donatella Arvale's letter were branded
on her eyes and branded on her soul with all the
pecuHarities of the handwriting, with all the diversity
of signs as living as the hand that had penned them,
as throbbing as the impatient pulse. She could see
them engraved in the stones, outlined in the clouds,
reflected in the waters, indelible and inevitable, like
decrees of Fate.

" Where can I go ? Where can I go ? " The sweet-
ness of things, the warmth of the golden marbles, the
fragrance of the quiet air, the languor of human

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 251

leisure, reached her through her agitation and de-
spair. She looked at a woman of the people wrapped
in her brown cloak and seated on the steps of the
basilica, a woman who was neither old nor young,
neither beautiful nor plain, who sat enjoying the sun-
shine, eating a large piece of bread, biting pieces out
of it with her teeth and then chewing them slowly,
her eyes half shut as she savoured her contentment
while her fair lashes shone upon her cheeks. " Ah,
if I could change myself into you, take on your des-
tiny, be content with bread and sunshine and think
no more and suffer no more." The poor woman's
repose seemed infinite bliss to her.

She turned with a start, fearing, hoping, that her
lover had followed her. She did not see him. She
would have fled if she had seen him ; but her heart
failed her as if he had sent her to her death without
calling her back. " All is over." She was losing all
sense of measure and certainty. The thoughts that
passed in her were broken and confusedly dragged
on by anguish, like plants and stones by the fury of
an overflowing river. In all the aspects of surround-
ing things, her bewildered eyes saw a confirmation
of her sentence or the obscure menace of new evils,
or a figuring of her state, or the signifying of occult
truths about to work cruelly on her existence. At
the corner of San Marco, near the Porta della Carta,
she felt the four porphyry kings clasping each other
as for a compact while their tough fists grasp the hilt
finishing in a hawk's beak, live as if they had been
made of dark blood. The numberless veins of the
various marbles with which the side of the temple is
encrusted, those indistinct threads of different colours,

2S2 THE FLAME OF LIFE

those intertwined labyrinths and meanders, seemed to
make her own interior diversity visible, and the very
confusion of her thoughts. In turn, she felt all things
estranged, remote, unexisting, and then familiar, ap-
proaching her and participating in her intimate life.
In turn she seemed to find herself in unknown places
and among forms belonging to her as if her own
substance had given them their material life. Like
those who are dying, she was at intervals illumined
by images of her distant childhood, by memories of
far-away events, by the distinct and rapid apparition
of a face, a gesture, a room, a whole neighbourhood.
And above all these phantoms, in a background of
shadow the eyes of her mother seemed gazing on
her, kind and firm, no larger than human eyes while
in life, yet infinite as an horizon towards which she
was being called. " Shall I come to you .'' Are
you really calling me for the last time?"

She had entered the Porta della Carta and had
crossed the lobby. The intoxication of pain was
leading her back to the place where on a night of
glory the three Destinies had met. She sought
the well which had been their meeting-place. The
whole life of those few instants rose up again round
its bronze rim with the evidence and the outline of
reality. There she had said as she turned, smiling, to
her companion, " Donatella, here is the Lord of the
Flame.'' The immense cry of the multitude had
covered her voice and a thousand fiery pigeons had
lit up the sky above their heads.

She drew nearer to the well. Every detail of it
impressed itself on her spirit as she stood consider-
ing it, clothing itself with a strange power of fateful

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 253

life ; the furrows left by the ropes in the metal, the
green oxide that streaked the stone at its base, the
breasts of the cariatides worn out by the knees of
the women who had at one time pressed upon them
in the effort of drawing water, and that deep inner
mirror no longer disturbed by the shock of descend-
ing pails, that narrow subterranean circle that reflected
the sky. She bent over the edge, saw her own face,
saw her terror and her ruin, saw the immovable
Medusa which she carried in the centre of her soul.
Unconsciously she was repeating the act of him
whom she loved. And she saw his face, too, and the
face of Donatella, such as she had seen them shining
for an instant on that night, one close to the other,
lit up by the flashes from the sky as if they had been
bending over a furnace or a crater. "Love, love
each other! I will go away. I will disappear.
Good-bye." Her eyelids dropped over the thought
of death. In that darkness the kind firm eyes re-
appeared, infinite as an horizon of peace. " You
who are in peace and who wait for me, you who
lived and died of passion." She straightened her-
self. An extraordinary silence filled the deserted
courtyard. The wealth of the high carved walls
rested half in the shadow, half in the light ; the five
mitres of the basilica surpassed the columned cloister
as light as the snowy clouds that made the sky
seem more blue, the same as the jessamine flower
causes the leaf to seem more green. Again through
her torment she was touched by the sweetness of
things. " Life might still be^ sweet."

She came out by the Molo, stepped into a gondola,
had herself rowed to the Giudecca. The harbour,

254 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the Salute, the Riva degli Schiavoni, all the stone and
all the water, were a miracle of gold and opal. She
looked anxiously towards the Piazzetta lest a figure
should be appearing there. The image of dead sum-
mer dressed in gold and shut in a coffin of opalescent
glass flashed on her memory. She imagined her
own self submerged in the lagoon and laid out on
a bed of seaweed, but the memory of the promise
made on that water and kept in the night's delirium,
pierced her heart like a knife, threw her once more
into a horrible convulsion. "Never more, then?
Never more?" All her senses remembered all his
caresses. The lips, the hands, the strength, the fire
of the young man, passed into her blood as if they
had melted in her. The poison burnt into her
to her furthest fibres. With him she had found at
the extreme limit of pleasure a spasm that was not
death and yet was beyond life. "And now never
more? never more?"

She was in the Rio della Croce. The foliage grew
above a red wall. The gondola stopped at a closed
door. She landed, took out a small key, opened the
door, and went into the garden.

It was her refuge, the secret place of her solitude,
preserved by her faithful melancholies as by silent cus-
todians. All came forward to meet her, the old ones
and the new ones, surrounded her, accompanied her.

With its long trellises, with its cypresses, with its
fruit-trees, with its edges of lavender, its oleanders,
its carnations, its rose-bushes crimson and crocus
coloured, marvellously soft and tired in the colours
of its dissolution, that garden seemed lost in the
extreme lagoon, on one of those islands forgotten by

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 255

man, Mazzorbo, Torcello, San Francesco Deserto.
The sun embraced it and penetrated it on every side
so that the shadows were so slight as to be hardly
visible ; so great was the stillness of the air that the
dry vine leaves stayed on their tendrils. None of
the leaves fell; though all were dead.

"Never more?" She walked under the trellises,
went towards the water, stopped on the grassy
mound, felt tired, sat down on a stone, held her
temples tightly between her hands, made an effort
to concentrate herself, to recover her dominion over
herself, to consider, to deliberate. " He is still here ;
he is near me. I can see him again. Perhaps I
shall find him before long at the threshold of my
door. He will take me in his arms, will kiss my
eyes and lips, will tell me again that he loves me,
that everything in me pleases him. He does not
know, does not understand. Nothing irreparable has
happened. What, then, is the fact that has convulsed
and broken me? I have received a letter from a
woman who is far away, a prisoner in a lonely villa
with her demented father, who complains of her lot
and longs to change it. This is the fact. There is
no more. This is the letter." She looked for it and
opened it to reread it. Her fingers trembled. She
felt the perfume of Donatella as if she had had her
by her side there on that stone.

"Is she beautiful? Truly? What is she like?"
The lines of the image were confused at first. She
tried to seize them, and they vanished. One detail
before any of the others fixed itself, becoming pre-
cise and evident, — the large heavy hand. " Did he
see it that night? He is extremely sensitive to the

2s6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

beauty of hands. He always looks at them when he
meets a woman. Does he not love Sophia's hands? "
She gave herself up for a few seconds to childish
considerations such as those, then smiled at them
bitterly. And suddenly the image completed itself,
grew living, shone with strength and youth, overcame
her, dazzled her. " She is beautiful ; and hers is the
beauty which he would have her possess."

She stayed on transfixed, surrounded by the silent
splendour of the waters, with the letter on her knees,
nailed there by the inflexible truth. And involuntary
thoughts of destruction flashed above that inert dis-
couragement : the face of Donatella was burnt in A
fire, her body deformed by a fall, her voice quenched
by an illness. Horror at herself filled her, and then
pity for herself and for the other woman. "Has
she not also the right of living .' Let her live, let
her love, let her have her joy." She imagined some
magnificent adventure for her, some happy love, the
love of a bridegroom, prosperity, luxury, pleasure.
" Is there only this one man on earth whom she can
love .' To-morrow could she not meet the man who
is to take her heart? Could not her fate suddenly
turn her elsewhere, draw her far away, lead her towards
an unknown path, separate her from us for ever? Is
it perhaps necessary that she should be loved by the
man whom I love ? They may perhaps never meet
again." Thus she tried to escape her own presenti-
ment, but a contrary spirit was telling her : " They
have met once ; they will seek each other ; they will
meet again. Hers is not the obscure soul that can
be lost in a crowd or along a side-path. She carries
a gift in herself resplendent as a star and that will

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 257

always make her easy to recognise from afar: her
song. The miracle of her voice will be her signal.
She will certainly avail herself of this power in the
world ; she too will pass among men leaving wonder
behind her. She will have glory as she has beauty, —
two signal lights to which he will easily go. They
have met once; they will meet again."

The woman cowered down under her pain as if
under a yoke ; the threads of grass at her feet seemed
to withhold the rays they received, and to breathe
in a green light which was coloured by their quiet
transparency. She felt the tears rise to her eyes, —
gazed through that veil at the lagoon which trembled
with the trembling of her tears. A fair pearly light
was on the waters. The islands of the Follia, San
Clemente and San Servilio were wrapped in pale
mist. And now and then there came from their dis-
tance faint cries, as of shipwrecked men lost in the
calm, answered now by the shriek of a siren, now by
the hoarse cry of the scattered sea-birds. The silence
would become terrible, then it would soften again.
She recovered her deep goodness, recovered her ten-
derness for the beautiful creature with whom she had
deluded her desire of loving Sophia, the kind sister.
She thought over the hours spent in the lonely villa
on the hill of Settignano, where Lorenzo Arvale cre-
ated his statues in the fulness of his strength and
fervour, unconscious of the thunderbolt that was
about to strike him. She lived in that time once
more, saw those places again, — she was sitting to the
famous artist who was portraying her in his clay.
Donatella would sing some antique song, and the
spirit of the song would animate both the model and

17

2S8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the effigy, and her thoughts and the pure voice
and the mystery of art almost composed an appear-
ance of divine Hfe in the great studio open to the
daylight on all sides, whence Florence and its river
could be seen in the spring valley.

What if not the reflection of Sophia had attracted
her towards the girl who had been deprived of a
mother's caresses from the time of her birth? She
called her up to her memory as she had seen her
standing grave and firm at her father's side, the com-
forter of his great work, the guardian of his sacred
flame and also of a secret determination of her own
that was being preserved like a sword in its sheath,
bright and sharp.

" She is sure of herself and mistress of her own
strength. When she shall feel herself free to do it,
she will reveal herself as one made for dominion.
She is made to subject men, to excite their curiosity
and their dreams. Her instinct, bold and prudent
as experience, is leading her already. . . . And she
remembered her attitude towards the young man on
that night, her almost disdainful silence, her short,
dry words, and the way in which she had risen from
the table, left the supper-room, and disappeared for
ever, leaving her image framed in the circle of an
unforgettable melody. "Ah, she knows the art of
disquieting the soul of one who dreams. He cannot
certainly have forgotten her. On the contrary, he
certainly awaits the hour in which it shall be given
him to meet her again as impatiently as she who has
asked me where he is."

She took up the letter and began glancing through
it, but her memory was swifter than her sight. The

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 259

enigmatic question, half veijed, was at the bottom of
the page like a postscript. On seeing the handwrit-
ing again, she went through the same tearing of her-
self asunder as on first reading it; and again all
became upheaval in her heart as if the danger were
imminent, as if her passion and her hope were already
irreparably lost. " What is she going to do ? What
is her thought? Did she expect that he would seek
her out without delay, and, disappointed in her ex-
pectation, does she now think of tempting him?
What is she going to do ? " She struggled against
that uncertainty, as against a spiked door beyond
which the light of her life should lie waiting to be
reconquered. " Shall I answer? And if I answered
in a way that would make her understand the truth,
could my love lay a prohibition on hers ? " A move-
ment of repugnance, modesty, and pride uplifted her
soul. " She shall never, never know of my wound
from me; never, even if she should question me."
And she grasped all the horror of an open rivalry
between the ageing mistress and the maiden strong
with the strength of her intact youth. She saw the
cruelty and humiliation of the unequal struggle.
" But if it were not this one," an opposing spirit
urged, "would it not be another? Do you think
you can keep a man of his nature to your melancholy
passion? There is only one condition on which you
should have loved him and offered him your love,
faithful until death, and that was the prohibition
which you have broken."

" True, true," she murmured, as if she were an-
swering a distinct voice, — a clear judgment pro-
nounced in the silence by invisible destiny.

26o THE FLAME OF LIFE

" There is only one condition on which he will now
be able to accept and recognise your love, — the con-
dition that you leave him free, that you renounce
possession, that you give up all, always, asking for
nothing, always; the condition of being yourself
heroic. Do you understand?"

" True, true," she repeated, raising her forehead,
all her moral beauty now flashing again on the heights
of her soul.

But the poison bit her. Once more all her senses
remembered all his caresses, — the lips and hands,
the strength and fire of the young man passed into
her blood as if they were melting there. And she
stayed on, motionless in her malady, dumb in her
fever, consumed in her soul and in her flesh, like
those red-spotted vine leaves that seemed to burn
round the rims like waste paper thrown on the
embers.

A distant, changeless song began vibrating on the
air, trembling in the immense stupor: a song of
women's voices, that seemed to come from broken
bosoms, somewhat similar to the sounds awakened
from the snapped wires of old spinets at a sudden
touch on the worn keys, faint yet shrill, with a bright,
vulgar rhythm that was sadder in that light and still-
ness than the saddest things of life.

" Who is singing? "

With obscure emotion she rose, drew near the
shore, strained her ear to listen.

" The mad women of San Clemente ! "

From the island of La Follia, from the light, deso-
late hospital, from the barred windows of the terrible
prison, came the bright yet lugubrious chorus. It

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 261

trembled, hesitated in the ecstatic immensity, became
almost childlike, grew fainter, seemed about to die
away; then rose up strengthened, shrieked, became
almost piercing; then stopped as if all the vocal
chords had snapped together; rose once more like
a tortured cry, like a call from lost, shipwrecked
beings who have seen a ship pass on the horizon,
like a clamour of dying creatures; then it dwindled,
stopped, did not rise again.

Heart-rending indeed was the sweetness of the
late November! It smiled like an invalid over an
interruption in his pain, who knows that it is the last,
and savours of life, which is revealing its delicacies
to him with an act full of new grace while on the
point of forsaking him, daily slumber resembles
that of a child going to sleep on the knees of
death.

" Look at the Euganean hills down there, Fosca-
rina ; if the wind rises they will go wandering through
the air like veils, they will pass over our heads. I
have never seen them so transparent. . . . One day
I should like to go with you to Arqucl ; the villages
down there are as rosy as the shells which one finds
in the earth in myriads. When we arrive, the first
drops of a fine sun shower will be robbing the peach
blossoms of a few petals. We will stop under one of
the arches of the Palladio to keep dry. Then we
will look for the Fountain of Petrarch without asking
our way. We will take his Rhymes with us in Mis-
sirini's small type, — the little book you keep by
your bedside and can no longer close now because

262 THE FLAME OF LIFE

it is swollen with leaves like a doll's herbarium. . . ,
Would you like to go to Arqu^ some spring day? "

She did not answer him, watching only the lips
that said these delicate things and hopelessly enjoy-
ing the sound and their motion and nothing else,
in a passing manner. She found the same distant
spell in those images of Spring as in a stanza of
Petrarch's, but she could place a marker near the
one and find it again, while the others were lost with
the hour. She wanted to answer, " I shall not drink
at that fountain," but remained silent that she might
not disturb the caress. " Oh, yes, give me illusions,
illusions ! You must play your own game ; you must
do with me what you will."

" Here we are at San Giorgio in Alga ; we shall be
at Fusina before long."

The little walled island passed them with its marble
Madonna perpetually reflecting herself in the water
like a nymph.

"Why are you so sweet? I have never felt you
like this before. One is out of one's depth with you
to-day. I cannot tell you what a feeling of infinite
melody is in your presence to-day. You are hereby
my side, I can take your hand ; and yet you are also
diffused in the horizon, you are that horizon itself,
with the waters, with the islands, with the hills that I
would climb. When I was speaking to you a little
while ago, it seemed that each syllable was creating
in you ever widening circles, like the ones round that
leaf there which has just fallen from that golden
tree. ... It is true ? Tell me it is true. Oh, look
at me!"

He felt himself surrounded by the woman's love

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 263

as by light and air ; he breathed in that soul as in an
element, receiving an ineffable fulness of life, as if a
single stream of mysterious things were flowing from
her and from the depths of the day, and pouring itself
into his overflowing heart. The desire of returning
the happiness which was given him raised him to an
almost religious degree of gratitude, suggesting words
of thanks and of praise which he would have uttered
had he been bending over her in the shadow. But the
splendour of sky and water had become so great all
around them that he could only be silent as she was
silent. It was a moment of marvellous communion
in the light for both ; it was a journey brief and yet
immense during which both compassed the dizzy
distances they had within them.

The boat touched the shore of Fusina. They
gazed at each other with dazzled eyes; and when
their feet touched the ground, when they saw that
squalid bank where the grass grew faded and rare, a
kind feeling of loss came upon them that was like a
disappointment, and both moved unwillingly, feeling
in those first steps that weight of their bodies which
had seemed to have become hghter during the drive.

"Does he love me, then? "

Suffering and hope revived in the woman's heart.
She did not believe the ecstasy of her beloved to
be other than sincere; she knew that his words
responded to an inward flame. She knew how en-
tirely he abandoned himself to every passing wave
that touched his sensibility, how incapable he was of
dissimulation or falsehood. She had more than once
heard him utter cruel truths with the same feline and
flexible grace as that possessed by those men who

264 THE FLAME OF LIFE

are given to fascinating. She well knew the direct
limpid gaze that sometimes became icy or cutting,
that was never otherwise than straight ; yet she also
knew the marvellous swiftness and diversity of thought
and feeling that made his an unseizable spirit. In
him there was ever something voluble, fluctuating
and powerful that suggested the double and diverse
image of flame and of water; and she had hoped to
fix him, hold him, possess him. In him there was
ever an unlimited ardour of life as if every second
seemed the supreme one to him, and he were about
to take his leave of the joy and pain of existence, like
from the caresses and the tears of a love-parting.
And she would have attracted that insatiable avidity
to herself as to its only nourishment !

What was she to him, if not an aspect of that
" life of the thousand and thousand faces " towards
which his desire, according to one of the images of
his own poetry, continually shook all its thyrsi?
She was a cause of visions and inventions to him,
like the hills and the woods and the rain. He drank
in mystery and beauty from her as he did from all
the forms of the universe. Even now he was already
apart from her, already intent on some new quest;
his mobile ingenuous eyes were already looking
round for the miracle to wonder at and adore.

She glanced at him and he did not turn his face
towards her, intent on observing the damp misty
country they were slowly driving through. She sat
there beside him, deprived of all strength, no longer
capable of living in herself and for herself, of breath-
ing with her own breath, of following a thought that
should be outside her love, hesitating even in her

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 265

enjoyment of natural things that were not pointed
out by him, needing to wait until he should com-
municate his sensations and his dreams to her before
inclining her aching heart towards that landscape.

Her life seemed to be dissolving and condensing
itself at intervals. When the intensity of a second
had passed, she would wait for the next one, and
between one and the other she would have no per-
ception except that time was flying and the lamp
was burning itself out.

" My friend, my friend," said Stelio, suddenly
turning and taking one of her hands with an emotion
that had risen to his throat little by little and was
suffocating him, " why have we come to these places?
They seem so sweet, and they are full of terror."

He was looking at her fixedly with the look that
from time to time would suddenly appear in his eyes
like a tear, — a look that would touch the very secret
of another's existence and descend to the uttermost
depths of unconsciousness, deep as that of an old
man, deep as that of a child, and she trembled under
it as if her soul had been one of the tears of his
eyes.

"You are suffering?" he asked with a pity full of
anguish that turned the woman pale. " You feel this
terror?"

She looked round with the anxiety of one pursued.
She seemed to see a thousand harmful phantoms
rising from the fields.

" Those statues," said Stelio, with an expression in
his voice that turned them in her eyes into witnesses
of her own decay.

And the landscape spread silently around them as

266 THE FLAME OF LIFE

if all its inhabitants had deserted it for centuries or
were all sleeping in new graves dug only yesterday.

"Shall we go back? The boat is still there."

She did not seem to hear.

" Answer me, Foscarina ! "

" Let us go on ; let us go on," she answered. " Fate
cannot change wherever we go."

Her body followed the motion, the slow rolling of
the wheels, and she feared to interrupt it, recoiling
from the slightest effort, the smallest fatigue, full of a
heavy inertness. Her face was like the delicate veil
of ashes that covers live coal, hiding its consumption.

" Dear, dear soul ! " said her beloved, bending
towards her and touching her pale cheek with his lips.
" Hold on to me. Give yourself up to me. Be sure
of me. I will not fail you, and you will not fail me.
We shall find, we must find, the secret truth on which
our love may rest for ever, unchanged. Do not shut
yourself up from me. Do not suffer alone. Do not
try to hide your torment from me ! When your
heart swells with pain, speak to me. Let me hope
that I could comfort you. Let nothing be kept
silent between us, and let nothing be hidden. I
venture to remind you of a condition that you your-
self have made. Speak to me, and I will always answer
you truthfully. Suffer me to help you, since so much
good conies to me /rom you. Tell me that you are
not afraid of suffering. I believe that your soul is ca-
pable of bearing all the pain of the world. Do not let
me lose my faith in this, the strength of your passion,
by which you have seemed divine to me more than
once. Tell me you are not afraid of suffering. . . .
I don't know, perhaps I am mistaken. . . . But I

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 267

have felt a shadow in you, a desperate determination
as it were to go away, to draw yourself back, to find
some end. . . . Why? Why? And a moment ago,
looking at all this terrible desolation which is smil-
ing at us, a great fear suddenly gripped my heart:
I thought that perhaps even your love could change
like all else, pass away into dissolution. ' You will
lose me.' Ah, those words are yours, Foscarina. It
is from your lips they fell."

She did not answer, and for the first time since she
loved him his words to her seemed vain, useless
sounds moving in the air quite powerless. For the
first time he himself seemed a weak anxious creature,
governed by unbreakable laws. She pitied him as
much as herself. He was laying on her the con-
dition of being heroic, a compact of pain and violence.
While attempting to comfort and uplift her, he was
predicting a difficult test, preparing her for torture.
But of what use was courage, of what use was effort,
what were all miserable human agitations worth ; and
why did they ever think of the future, of the uncertain
to-morrow? The past alone reigned around them,
and they were as nothing, and everything was as
nothing. " We are dying; you and I are two dying
creatures ; let us then dream and then die."

" Be silent ! " she said faintly, as if they were pass-
ing through a churchyard; and a thin slight smile
appeared on the edge of her lips like the smile that
was floating over the landscape, and it stopped there
motionless as on the lips of a portrait.

The wheels rolled on and on in the white road
along the banks of the Brenta. The river, magnified
and glorified in the sonnets of gallant abb6s at the

268 THE FLAME OF LIFE

time when barges full of music and pleasure slipped
down its current, now had the humble aspect of a
canal, where the blue-green ducks splashed about in
flocks. In the low well-watered plain, the fields were
smoking, the trees rose naked, the leaves rotted in
the moisture of the earthy mounds, the slow golden
vapour floated over an immense vegetable decom-
position that seemed to touch even the walls, the
stones, the houses, and destroy them like the leaves.
From the Foscara to the Barbariga, the patrician
villas, where a life of pale veins, delicately poisoned
by cosmetics and perfumes, had flickered out in
languid games round a beauty spot or a little dog,
were falling into ruins, silent and forsaken. Some
had the appearance of a human ruin, with their
empty apertures that seemed eyeless sockets and
toothless mouths ; others at first sight seemed on the
point of crumbling to bits and falling into powder
like the hair of dead women when tombs are un-
covered, like moth-eaten garments when cupboards
are opened that have been too long closed ; their
boundary walls were knocked down, their columns
broken, their gates contorted, their gardens overrun
with weeds, but here and there, near and far, all over
in the fruit orchards, in the vineyards, among the
silvery cabbages, among the vegetables, among the
pastures, on the heaps of manure and refuse from
the wine-press under the hay-ricks, on the threshold
of hovels and all along the river-side, rose the surviv-
ing statues. They were numberless like a dispersed
people. Some still white, some grey or yellow with
lichens or greenish with mosses, or spotted ; in all at-
titudes, with all gestures, Goddesses, Heroes, Nymphs,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 269

Seasons, Hours, with their bow, with their arrows,
their garlands, their cornucopias, their torches, with
all the emblems of their riches, power, and pleasure,
exiled from fountains, grottoes, labyrinths, harbours,
porticoes ; friends of the evergreen box and myrtle,
protectors of passing loves, witnesses of eternal vows,
figures of a dream far older than the hands that had
formed them and the eyes that had seen them in the
ravaged gardens. And in the soft late summer sun
their shadows, lengthening little by little over the
landscape, were like the shadows of the irrevocable
past, of all that which loves no longer, laughs and
weeps no longer, will never live, will never return
again. And the silent words on their lips of stone
were the same as the words spoken by the im-
movable smile on the lips of the worn-out woman, —
Nothing !

They became acquainted with other fears that day,
other shadows.

Henceforth the tragic sense of life filled them both,
and they strove in vain to overcome the physical
sadness which made their spirits become every mo-
ment clearer and more disquieted. They held each
other's hands as if they had been walking in the dark,
or through perilous places. Their words were rare ;
but now and then they would look into each other's
eyes, and the glance of the one would pour a con-
fused wave into the other, which was only the over-
flowing of their love and horror ; and it did not ease
their hearts.

"Shall we go on?"

270 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Yes, let us go on."

They were holding each other's hands tightly as if
making some strange experiment, as if they were
determined to find out what depths could be reached
by the forces of their mingled melancholy. At the
Dolo their footsteps crackled on the chestnut leaves
which strewed the way; and the great trees that
were changing colour flamed upon their heads like
crimson hangings on fire. Further off", the Villa
Barbariga appeared, lonely, desolate, reddish in its
bare garden, bearing traces of old paintings in the
fissures of its frontage that were like remains of
rouge in the wrinkles of an old woman. And at
every glance the distances of the landscape became
dimmer and more blue, like things that are being
slowly submerged.

" Here is Stri."

They went down to the villa of the Pisani ; they
entered ; they visited the deserted apartments accom-
panied by the caretaker. They heard the sound of
their steps on the marble that mirrored them, the
echo in the ornamented arches, the groan of the doors
as they were opened and shut, the tedious voice
awakening the memories of the place. The rooms
were vast, hung with faded stuffs, furnished in the
style of the first Empire, bearing the Napoleonic
emblems. In one of the rooms the walls were cov-
ered with the portraits of the Pisani, procurators of
San Marco ; in another, with marble medallions of all
the doges ; in another, with a series of flowers painted
in water-colour and mounted in delicate frames, pale
as the dried flowers that are put under glass in
memory of a love or a death.

THE EMPIRE OP SILENCE 271

In another la Foscarina said as she entered : —

" Wiik time! Here too."

There, on a bracket, was a translation into marble
of the figure of Francesco Torbido, made more horri-
ble by the subtle study of the sculptor to bring out
with his chisel, one by one, the wrinkles, the veins,
the hollows. And at the doors of the room there
seemed to appear the phantoms of the crowned
women who had concealed their decay and their
misery in that spacious dwelling that was like a
palace and like a monastery.

"Maria Luisa of Parma, in 1817," continued the
tedious voice.

And Stelio : —

" Ah, the Queen of Spain, the wife of Charles IV.,
the mistress of Manuel Godo'l ! This one attracts me
above all the others. She passed by this place at the
time of their exile. Do you know whether she stayed
here, with the King and the favourite?"

The custodian only knew the name and date.

" Why does she attract you ? " asked la Foscarina.
" I know nothing about her."

" Her end, the last years of her life as an exile after
so much passion and so many struggles are unusually
full of poetry."

And he described to her the violent, tenacious
figure, the weak, credulous King, the handsome
adventurer who had enjoyed the favours of the
Queen, and had been dragged through the streets
by a furious crowd, the agitation of the three lives
bound up by fate and driven like twigs in a whirl-
wind before the will of Napoleon, the tumult at
Aranjuez, the abdication, the exile.

2/2 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Godof then, the Prince of Peace, as the King
had called him, faithfully followed the sovereigns
into exile ; was faithful to his royal mistress and she
to him. And they lived together under the same
roof always, and Charles never suspected the virtue
of Maria Luisa, and lavished his kindness on both
lovers until death. Imagine their residence in this
place ; imagine here such a love having come safely
out of so terrible a hurricane. All was snapped,
■ overthrown ; all had crumbled to dust under the
might of the destroyer. Bonaparte had passed that
way and had not suffocated that love, already grey,
under the ruins he left behind 1 The fidelity of
these two violent ones touches me as much as the
credulity of the gentle King. They grew old in this
manner. Think! The Queen died first, then the
King ; and the favourite, who was younger than they,
lived some few years more, a wanderer. . . ."

" This is the Emperor's room," said the custodian,
solemnly, throwing open a door. The great shade
seemed to be omnipresent; the sign of his power
dominated from above all the pale relics collected
there. But in the yellow room it occupied the vast
bed and stretched itself out under the canopy, be-
tween the four posts surmounted by gilded flames.
The formidable sigla between the crown of laurels
shone upon the bolster; and that kind of funereal
couch was prolonged in the dim mirror that hung
between the two Victories supporting the candelabra.

" Did the Emperor sleep in this bed? " asked the
young man of the custodian who was showing him,
on the wall, the effigy of the condottiere mantled
with ermine, and wreathed with laurel as he ap-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 273

peared at the coronation blessed by Pius VII. " Is
it certain? "

He was astonished at not having felt the emotion
produced on ambitious hearts by the traces of heroes,
the deep throb which he well knew. Perhaps his
spirit was stunned by the odour of the shut-up
place, the stuffiness of old materials and mattresses,
the dulness of the silence where the great name
found no echo, whilst the buzzing of a moth per-
sisted so distinctly that he thought he had it in
his ear.

He raised the hem of the yellow coverlet and let
it fall as quickly as if the pillow beneath it had been
full of worms.

" Let us go ; let us go out," begged la Foscarina,
who had been looking through the windows at the
park, where the tawny bands of the slanting sun
alternated with half blue, half green zones of shadow,
" One cannot breathe here."

The air was like that of a crypt.
" Now we pass into the room of Maximilian of
Austria," continued the tedious voice, " who caused
his bed to be put in the dressing-room of Amalia
Beauharnais."

They crossed the room in a glare of crimson. The
sun was beating on a crimson sofa, making rainbows
in a frail chandelier with crystal drops that hung from
the ceiling, kindling the perpendicular red lines on
the wall. Stelio paused on the threshold, calling to
life, as he looked back into the blood-like resplen-
dence, the pensive figure of the young blue-eyed
archduke, the fair flower of Hapsburg, fallen on bar-
baric ground one summer morning.

18

274 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Let us go," again cried la Foscarina, as she saw
he was again delaying.

She was hurrying away across the immense hall
which Tiepolo had decorated ; behind her, the bronze
gate made in shutting a clear sound like the tinkling
of a bell that spread itself through the emptiness
in long vibrations. She was hurrying away in dis-
tress, as if all were about to crash down upon her,
and the light were about to fail, and she feared to
find herself alone in the dark with those phantoms of
misery and death. As he passed through the air set
in motion by her flight, between those walls full of
relics, behind the famous actress who had simulated
the fury of deadly passions, the desperate efforts of
will and desire, the violent shock of proud destinies
on every stage in the world, Stelio Effrena lost the
heat of his veins as if he were moving in a frozen
wind ; he felt his heart grow icy, his courage fainter ;
his reason for living lost all strength, his bonds with
beings and things loosened ; and the magnificent illu-
sions which he had given his soul that it might
surpass itself and his destiny trembled and disap-
peared.

" Are we alive still .' " he sai(J, when they found
themselves in the open, in the park, far from the
grim odour.

And he took the woman by the hands, shook her
slightly, looked into the depths of her eyes, tried to
smile ; then he led her towards the sunshine on the
grass of the meadow.

" How warm it is ! Do you feel ? How good the
grass is ! "

He half closed his eyes, so that he might feel the

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 275

rays upon his eyelids, once more suddenly seized by
the joy of life. She imitated him, soothed by her
friend's enjoyment, looking from under her eyelids
at his fresh, sensual mouth. They remained thus
for some time hand in hand, with their feet in the
grass under the sun's caresses, feeling the blood in
their veins throbbing in the silence as the streams
become more rapid when the frost breaks up in
spring. Her thoughts went back to the Euganean
hills, to the villages rosy as fossil shells, to the first
drops of rain falling upon young leaves, to the foun-
tain of Petrarch, to all pleasant things.

" Life could still be sweet," she sighed, and her
voice was the miracle of hope being born anew.

The heart of her beloved became like a fruit sud-
denly ripened and melted by a miraculous ray of
warmth. Joy and goodness spread through his spirit
and his flesh. Once again he enjoyed the moment
like one about to depart. Love was exalted above
destiny.

" Do you love me ? Tell me."

The woman did not reply; but her eyes opened
wide, and all the vastness of the universe was in the
circle of her pupils. Never was immense love more
powerfully signified by any earthly creature.

" Life is sweet, sweet with you, for you, yesterday
as to-morrow ! "

He seemed intoxicated with her, with the sun, the
grass, the divine sky, as with things never seen be-
fore, never possessed. The prisoner going out at
dawn from the suffocating prison, the convalescent
who sees the sea for the first time after having seen
death, are less intoxicated than he was.

276 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Do you wish to go ? Shall we leave melancholy
behind us? Shall we go away to countries where
there is no autumn?"

"The autumn is in myself, and I must carry it
with me wherever I go," she thought, but she smiled
her slight, concealing smile. " It is I, I who will go
away ; I will disappear ; I will go and die far away,
my love, my love ! "

She had not succeeded during that pause in over-
coming her sadness, nor in renewing her hope, yet
her sorrow had softened, had lost all acrimony, all
rancour.

" Shall we go away? "

" To go away, to be always going away, aimlessly
through the world, to go far away ! " thought the
wandering woman. " Never to rest, never to be at
peace ! The anxiety of the journey is not over, and,
see, the truce has expired. You wish to comfort me,
dear friend, and in order to comfort me you are pro-
posing that we should go far away again, when I re-
turned home only yesterday ! "

Suddenly her eyes became like springs of living
water.

" Leave me to my home a little longer. And you,
remain if you can. After, you will be free, you will
be happy. . . . You have so much time before you 1
You are young. You will have what is due to you.
They who expect you will not lose you."

Her eyes wore two crystal masks, which glittered
in the sun in her feverish face.

" Ah, always the same shadow ! " exclaimed Stelio,
complainingly, with an impatience which he could
not control. " But what are you thinking of ? What

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 277

do you fear? Why do you not tell me what is
troubling you? Let us talk, then. Who is it that
expects me ? "

She trembled with apprehension at that question,
which appeared new and unforeseen, although her
last words were repeated in it. She trembled at find-
ing herself so near danger; a precipice seemed to
have opened under her feet as they walked on the
beautiful grass.

" Who is it that expects me ? "

Suddenly, at the end of the day, in that strange
place, on that beautiful meadow, after so many ap-
paritions of spectres, sanguinary and bloodless, there
rose up a wilful form alive with desire which filled
her with even greater terror. Suddenly, at one stroke,
above all those figures of the past there rose a figure
which was the future ; and the semblance of life was
transformed anew, and the benefit of that brief pause
was lost already, and the good grass under her feet
was henceforth valueless.

" Yes, let us talk, if you wish it. . . . Not now. . . ."

Her throat contracted so that her voice could
hardly pass through it, and she held her face a little
raised that her eyelids might keep her tears from
falling.

" Don't be sad ! Don't be sad ! " begged the young
man, his soul suspended on her lids like those, tears
that would not fall. "You have my heart in your
hands. I will not fail you. Do not torment yourself.
I am yours."

Donatella was there for him too tall, with her
curved figure, with the agile, robust body of a wing-
less victory, fully armed with her virginity, attractive

278 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and hostile, ready to struggle and to give herself.
But his soul hung on the eyelids of this other woman,
like the tears that veiled those pupils in which he
had seen the immensity of love.

" Foscarina ! "

The hot drops fell at last, but she did not let them
flow down her cheeks. With one of those gestures
that often sprang from her sorrow with the unex-
pected grace of a wing that is being set free, she
stopped them, moistened her fingers with them, and
spread them over her temples without drying them.
And while she thus left her tears upon herself she
tried to smile.

" Forgive me, Stelio, if I am so weak."

Then, desperately, he loved the delicate marks that
went from the corners of her eyes to her moistened
temples and the small dark veins that made her eye-
lids like violets and the undulation of her cheeks
and the worn chin and all that seemed touched by
the malady of autumn, all the shadow of that im-
passioned face.

" Ah, dear fingers ! Beautiful as the fingers of
Sophia ! Let me kiss them as they are, still wet ! "

He was drawing her over the meadow in his caress
to a belt of golden green. Lightly, holding his arm
under hers, he kissed her finger-tips one by one.
They were more delicate than the unopened buds
of flowers. She was quivering. He could feel her
shudder at each touch of his lips.

" They are salt ! "

"Come, Stelio, some one will see us."

" There is nobody here."

" Down there in the greenhouses."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 279

" There is not a sound, listen ! "

" How strange the silence is ! It is ecstasy ! "

" One could hear the falling of a leaf."

" And that keeper? "

" He must have gone to meet some other visitor."

"Who would come here? "

" I know that the other day Richard Wagner came
with Daniela von Biilow."

" Ah, the niece of Countess Agoult and of Daniel
Stern."

" With which of these phantoms did the great ail-
ing heart converse? "

"Who knows?"

" Only perhaps with himself"

" Perhaps."

" Look at the glass of the conservatories, how it
shines. It is irradiated. Time, rain, and sunshine
have so painted it. Does it not seem to reflect a
distant twilight? Have you ever stopped on the
Fondamenta Pesaro and looked up at the beautiful
petafore window of the evangelists? If you raised
your eyes you could see the windows of the palace
marvellously painted by atmospheric vicissitudes."

" Do you then know all the secrets of Venice? "

" Not all yet."

" How warm it is here ! See how large those
cedars are."

" There is a swallow's nest there hanging on that
beam. The swallows have gone away late this
year."

" Will you really take me in spring to the Euganean
hills?"

" Yes, Fosca, I should hke to."

28o THE FLAME OF LIFE

" How far away spring is ! "

" Life can still be sweet."

" We are dreaming."

" Orpheus with his lyre, all dressed in lichens."

" Ah, what a pathway of dreams ! Nobody passes
us. Grass, grass everywhere. There is not a foot-
step."

" Deucalion with his stones, Ganymede with the
eagle, Diana with the stag, the whole of mythology."

" How many statues ! But these at least are not
in exile ; the old hornbeams still enclose them."

" Here Maria Luisa used to stroll between the
King and the Favourite. She would stop at inter-
vals, to listen to the click of the shears that were
cutting the hornbeams into arches. She would let
drop- her pocket handkerchief, perfumed with jessa-
mine, and Manuel Godoi would pick it up with a still
graceful movement, dissimulating the pain in his hip
when he bent down, that had stayed with him as a
memento of the tortures suffered in the streets of
Aranjuez at the hands of the mob. As the sun was
warm and the snuff excellent in its enamelled box, the
uncrowned king would say with a smile : ' Ah, dear
Bonaparte is certainly not so well off at St. Helena.'
But the demon of power, of struggle and of passion,
would reawaken in the heart of the Queen. . . . Look
at the red roses."

" They are flaming. They seem to have a live
coal at the heart. They are flaming really."

" The sun is becoming crimson. This is the hour
of the Chioggia sails on the lagoon."
" Pick me a rose 1 "
" Here it is 1 "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 281

" Oh, its leaves are falling ! "

" Here is another ! "

" Its leaves are falling too."

" They are all at death's door. Here, perhaps this
one is not."

" Do not pick it."

" Look ! they become more and more red. Boni-
fazfo's velvet. . . . Do you remember? It is the
same strength."

" The inner flower of the flame."

" What a memory ! "

" Hark ! the doors of the conservatory are being
shut."

" It is time to turn back."

" The air is already getting cooler."

"Are you cold?"

" No, not yet."

" Have you left your cloak in the carriage? "

" Yes."

" We will wait at the Dolo, for the passage of the
train. We will return to Venice by train."

"Yes."

" There is plenty of time still."

"What is this? Look!"

" I don't know."

" What a bitter smell ! A shrubbery of box and
hornbeams. . . ."

" Ah, it must be the labyrinth."

A rusty iron gate shut it in between two pillars
that bore two Cupids riding stone dolphins. Nothing
was visible on the other side of the gate, except
the beginning of the path and a kind of hard intri-
cate thicket, dense and mysterious. A tower rose

282 THE FLAME OF LIFE

from the centre of the maze, and the statue of a
warrior stood as if reconnoitring at the top of the
tower.

"Have you ever been in a labyrinth?" Stelio
inquired of his friend.

" No, never," she answered.

They paused a moment to watch the deceiving
game composed by some ingenious gardener for the
delight of the ladies and their gallants in the days of
hoops and patches, but neglect and age had turned it
wild and desolate, had taken from it all prettiness
and regularity, had changed it into an enclosed
wood brown and yellowish, full of inextricable mazes
where the slanting rays of the sunset shone so red
that some of the bushes here and there were like
burning, smokeless bonfires.

" It is open," said Stelio, feeling the gate yield
when he leaned against it. " Do you see?"

He pushed the rusty iron that creaked on the
loose hinges, then took one step forward, crossing
the threshold.

" What are you doing? " said his companion, with
instinctive fear, stretching out her hand to hold him
back.

" Shall we not go in? "

She stood perplexed. But the labyrinth at-
tracted them with its mystery, illumined by its deep
flame.

" What if we lose ourselves? "

" Don't you see ? It is quite small. We shall
easily find the way out."

" What if we don't find it?"

He laughed at her childish fear.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 283

" We shall stay in it, wandering round for ever."

" There is nobody in the neighbourhood. No, no,
let us go away."

She tried to draw him back. He defended him-
self, going backwards towards the path. Suddenly
he disappeared, laughing.

" Stelio, Stelio ! "

She no longer saw him, but she could hear his
laugh pealing in the wild maze.

" Come back, come back ! "

" Come and find me."

" Stelio, come back ! You will lose yourself."

" I shall find Ariadne."

She felt her heart leap at that name, then con-
tract, suffering confusedly. Had he not called Dona-
tella by that name on that first evening? Had he
not called her Ariadne, there on the water, while
sitting at her knee? She even remembered the
words : " Ariadne possesses a divine gift by which
her power transcends all limits." She remembered
his accent, his attitude, his look.

Tumultuous anguish convulsed her, dimmed her
reason, prevented her from considering the chance
spontaneity of the present occasion, from recognis-
ing her friend's unconsciousness. The terror that
lay hidden at the bottom of her desperate love
rebelled, mastered her, blinded her miserably. The
little vain accident took on an appearance of cruelty
and disdain. She could still hear that laugh pealing
in the wild maze.

" Stelio ! "

She cried out to him as if she had seen him in the
act of being embraced by the other woman, as if she

284 THE FLAME OF LIFE

had seen him in a frenzied hallucination, torn from
her arms for ever.

" Stelio ! "

" Look for me," he answered laughing, invisible.

She darted into the labyrinth to find him and went
straight towards his voice and laugh, carried away
by her impulse. But the path deviated. A blind box
wall rose up before her, impenetrable, and stopped
her. She followed the crooked, deceiving path, and
one turning succeeded the other and all were alike,
and the circle seemed to have no end.

" Look for me ! " the voice repeated from afar
across the living hedges.

"Where are you? Where are you? Do you see
me?"

She looked here and there for some thinner place
in the hedge through which she could see. All she
could perceive was the thick tissue of the branches
and the redness of evening that kindled them on
one side, while the shadows drowned them on the
other. The box bushes and the hornbeams mingled,
the evergreen leaves grew in confusion together with
the dying ones, the darker with the paler, in a
contrast of vigour and languor, with an ambiguity
that increased the bewilderment of the panting
woman.

" I am losing myself. Come and meet me ! "

Again his youthful laughter pealed in the thicket.

" Ariadne, Ariadne, the thread ! "

The sound now came from the opposite side,
wounding her in the spine like a blow.

" Ariadne ! "

She turned, ran, wandered, tried to penetrate the

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 285

hedge, to make an opening in the foliage, broke away
a branch.

She saw nothing, except the regular ever-renewed
maze. At last she heard a step, so near her that she
thought it was behind her and started. But she was
mistaken. Again she explored the leafy prison,
whence there was no return, that was closing round
her ; Hstened, waited ; she heard her own panting and
the throb of her own pulses. The silence had become
vast. She gazed at the sky, curving immense and
purfe over the two leafy walls that imprisoned her. It
seemed as if there were nothing in the world beyond
that narrowness and that immensity. And she could
not succeed in separating in her thoughts the reality
of the place from the image of her soul's torture, the
natural aspect of things from that kind of living
allegory created by her own anguish.

" Stelio ! Where are you? "

No answer came. She listened. She waited in
vain. The seconds seemed hours.

" Where are you? I am frightened."

No answer came. Where had he gone? Had he
perhaps found the way out; had he left her there
alone? Was he going to continue his cruel game?

A furious longing to shriek, to sob, to throw her-
self on the ground, to struggle there and hurt herself
and die, seized the maddened woman. She again
raised her eyes towards the silent sky. The summit
of the great hedges were reddening like burnt vine
branches that have ceased to flare up and are about
to become ashes.

" I can see you," suddenly said the laughing voice,
in the low shadows, quite close to her.

286 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She started violently, bent down in the shadow.

" Where are you ? "

He laughed among the leaves without showing him-
self, like a faun in ambush. The game excited him
and warmed his limbs that were stretching themselves
in his exercise of dexterity ; and the wild mystery, the
contact with the earth, the odour of autumn, the singu-
larity of the unforeseen adventure, the woman's be-
wilderment, the very presence of the stone deities,
poured into his physical pleasure an illusion of
antique poetry.

"Where are you? Oh, do not joke any more.
Do not laugh so. It is enough now."

He had crept into the bush on his hands and
knees, his head uncovered. Under his knees he felt
the decaying leaves, the soft moss. And as he
breathed and throbbed in the branches, letting that
pleasure absorb all his senses, the communion of
his own life with the life of the trees became closer,
and the spell of his imagination renewed in that
gathering of uncertain ways the industry of the first
maker of wings, the myth of the monster which was
born of Pasiphae and the Bull, the Attic fable of
Theseus in Crete. The whole of that world became
real to him, he was being transfigured on that purple
evening in autumn according to the instincts of his
blood and the memories of his intellect, into one of
those amphibious forms, half beast, half divinity,
into one of those silvern genii whose throat is swollen
with the same glands that hang suspended from the
neck of the goat. A laughing voluptuousness sug-
gested strange attitudes and gestures to him, surprising
and whimsical, figured to him the joy of a chase, of a

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 287

rapid union on the moss or against the uncultured
box. Then he desired a creature that should be like
him, a fresh bosom to which he might communicate
his laughter, two swift legs, two arms ready for a
struggle, a prey to conquer, a virginity to force, a
violence to accomplish. The curved form of Dona-
tella reappeared to him.

" Enough ! I can go on no longer, Stelio. I
shall let myself fall to the ground."

La Foscarina gave a scream on feeling the hem of
her dress pulled by a hand that had passed through
the bush. She bent down and perceived in the
shadow among the branches the face of a laughing
faun. That laugh flashed on her soul without moving
it, without breaking the horrible suffering that had
closed round her. On the contrary she suffered all
the more acutely from the contrast between his
merriment and her sadness, between that joy which
was ever new and her perpetual anxiety, between that
easy oblivion and the weight of her encumbrance.
She saw her error more clearly and she saw the
cruelty of life that was placing the image of the other
woman there where she herself was suffering. As
she bent down, as she saw his youthful face, she saw
with the same clearness the face of the singer who
was bending down with her imitating her gesture as
the shadow repeats a gesture on an illuminated wall.
All grew confused in her spirit and her thoughts were
unable to place an interval between that image and
reality. The other woman placed herself upon her,
oppressing her, suppressing her.

" Leave me ! Leave me ! It is not me you are
seeking. . . ."

288 THE FLAME OF LIFE

The voice was so changed that Stelio stopped his
laugh and his game, drew back his arm, rose up
straight. She saw him no more, the impenetrable
leafy wall was between them.

" Lead me away from this. I can hold up no
longer ; my strength is spent. ... I am suffering ! "

He could find no words with which to soothe her
and comfort her. The simultaneous coincidence of
his recent desire and her sudden divination had struck
home.

" Wait, wait a moment ! I will try to find the way
out. I will call some one. . . ."

" Are you going away? "

" Don't be afraid ! Don't be afraid ! There is no
danger."

And while he spoke thus to reassure her he was
feeUng the inanity of his words — the discord between
that laughable adventure and the obscure emotion
arising from a far different cause. And now he too
felt the strange ambiguity by which the small event
was appearing in two confused aspects : a suppressed
desire of laughter persisting under his solicitude so
that his suffering was new to him, like certain agitations
born of extravagant dreams.

" Don't go away," she begged, a prey to her hallu-
cination. " Perhaps we shall meet there at the next
turning. Let us try. Take me by the hands."

Through one of the open spaces he took her hands
and found them so cold that he started as he touched
them.

" Foscarina, what is the matter? Do you really
feel unwell? Wait! I will try to break through the
hedge."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 289

He tried to force through the thicket, snapped
some of its branches but its robustness resisted his
efforts. He wounded his hands in vain.

" It is not possible."

" Cry out. Call some one."

He called out in the silence. The summit of the
high hedges had lost its colour, but in the sky above
them a red light was spreading that was like the
reflection of woods on fire on the horizon. A flock
of wild ducks passed, arranged in a black triangle,
stretching out their long necks.

" Let me go ! I shall easily find the tower. And
from the tower I can call. Some one will hear my
cries."

"No, no!"

She heard him go away from her, followed the
sound of his steps, was once more engaged in the
maze, once more found herself alone and lost. She
stopped, waited, listened. She looked at the sky,
saw the triangular flock disappear in the distance.
She lost the sense of time, the seconds seemed hours.

" Stelio ! Stelio ! "

She was no longer capable of an eff'ort to dominate
the disorder of her exasperated nerves. She felt the
extreme access of her mania coming on as one would
feel a hurricane that is drawing near.

" Stelio ! "

He heard the voice full of anguish and hastened
his search along the winding paths that now drew
him near to the tower and now drew him away from
it. His laugh had frozen in his heart. His whole
soul trembled to the roots, every time his name
reached him, pronounced by that invisible agony.

19

290 THE FLAME OF LIFE

And the gradual lessening of the light brought up
to his imagination the thought of blood that is flow-
ing away, of life that is slowly fading.

" Here I am ! Here I am ! "

One of the paths brought him at last to the open
space where the tower was built. He ran furiously
up the winding staircase, felt a dizziness overtake him
when he reached the top, closed his eyes holding
on to the banisters, opened them again, saw a long
zone of fire on the horizon, the disc of the rayless
moon, the plain that was like a grey marsh, the laby-
rinth beneath him black with box bushes and spotted
with hornbeam, quite narrow in its interminable folds,
looking like a dismantled edifice invaded by wild
vines, like a ruin and a wood, lugubrious and -wild.

" Stop ! Stop ! Do not run like that. Some one
has heard me. A man is coming. I can see him
coming. Wait ! Stop ! "

He saw the woman running round like a mad thing
along the blind uncertain paths, like a creature con-
demned to some vain torment, to some useless but
eternal agitation, like a sister of the mythical
martyrs.

" Stop ! "

It seemed that she did not hear him, or that she
could not stop her fatal agitation, and that he was
tied down and could not rescue her, but was to re-
main a witness of that terrible chastisement.

" Here he is ! "

One of the keepers had heard their cries, had
drawn near, was coming through the gate. Stelio
met him at the foot of the tower. Together they
went out to seek the lost woman. The man knew

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 291

the secret of the labyrinth. Steho prevented his
chatter and his display of wit by surprising him with
his generosity.

"Has she lost consciousness? Has she fallen?"
The shadow and silence were very sinister and filled
him with dismay. When he called her she did not
answer. Her steps could not be heard. Night had
already descended over the place under a damp veil
of mist that was slowly dropping from the purple
sky. " Shall I find her stretched out, fainting, on the
ground ? "

He started on suddenly seeing a mysterious figure
appear at a turning with a pale face that attracted all
the twilight and shone hke a pearl with large fixed
eyes and tight stiff lips. They turned back towards
the Dolo, taking the same way along the Brenta.
She never spoke, never opened her mouth, never
Snswered, as if she could not unclose her teeth,
stretched out in the bottom of the carriage wrapped
in her mantle up to her chin, shaken now and then
by strong shudders, suffused with a livid pallor Hke
that of malarial fever. Her friend tried to take her
fingers and hold them in his own to warm them, but
in vain : they were inert and seemed hfeless. And
as they went the statues passed and passed on beside
them.

The river flowed darkly between its banks under
the violet and silver sky where the full moon was
rising. A black boat was coming down stream,
towed by two grey horses that trod the grass on the
tt)w-path with a dull thud of heavy hoofs, led by a
man who whistled peacefully, and the funnel smoked
on the deck hke a chimney-pot on the roof of a hovel.

292 THE FLAME OF LIFE

and the yellow light of a lantern flared in the hold
and the odour of an evening meal spread through
the air and here and there, as they went through the
irrigated landscape, the statues passed and passed
beside them.

It was like a Stygian plain, like a vision of
Hades: a land of shadows, mist, and water. All
things grew misty and vanished like spirits. The
moon enchanted and attracted the plain as it en-
chants and attracts the sea, drinking in the vapours
of earth from the horizon with insatiable, silent greed.
Solitary pools shone everywhere, small silvery canals
between rows of inclined willows could be seen glit-
tering at indefinite distances. Earth seemed to be
losing its solidity little by little, seemed to dissolve;
the sky seemed to watch its own melancholy reflected
on it in innumerable quiet mirrors. And here and
there along the discoloured shore, like the shadows
of a destroyed population, those statues passed and
passed beside them.

" Do you often think of Donatella Arvale, Stelio? "
la Foscarina asked suddenly, after a long interval in
which both had heard nothing but the cadence of
their own steps along the canal footpath of the
Vetrai illumined by the manifold light of the frail
things that filled the windows of the neighbouring
shops.

Her voice was like a glass that is cracking. Steho
stopped suddenly in the attitude of one who suddenly
finds himself before an unforeseen difficulty. His
spirit had been wandering freely over the red and

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 293

green island of Murano, begemmed with flowers
in her present disconsolate poverty, in which she
seemed to have lost even the memory of the joy-
ous times in which poets had sung her praises as
" a place fit for nymphs and demigods." He had
been thinking of the illustrious gardens where Andrea
Navagero, Bembo, Aretino, Aldo, in their learned
assembly rivalled each other in the elegance of their
platonic dialogues, lauri sub umbra. He had been
thinking of convents luxurious as gynaecus inhabited
by nuns dressed in white camelot and laces, their
brows adorned with curls, their breasts uncovered
after the manner of the more honoured courtesans,
given to secret loves, much sought after by licentious
patricians, the possessors of sweet names such as
Ancilla Soranzo, Cipriana Morosini, Zanetta Balbi,
Beatrice Falier, Eugenia Muschiera, pious teachers
of pleasures. His fluctuating dream had been accom-
panied by an aria which he had heard in the museum
slowly moaning in sonorous drops from a small me-
tallic instrument set in movement by the turn of a
key hidden under a garden of glass where two lovers
adorned with glass beads danced round a little foun-
tain of white agate. It was an indistinct melody, a
forgotten dance tune; most of its notes were silent
through dust and damage, yet so expressive that he
had been unable to drive it away from his ears. And
since, all around him had had the remote frailty and
melancholy of those little figures dancing to sounds
slower than falling drops. The faint soul of Murano
has chattered in that old pastime.

At the sudden question the aria had stopped, the
figures had dispersed, the spell of far-away life had

294 THE FLAME OF LIFE

vanished. His wandering spirit was called back and
contracted unwillingly. By his side Stelio felt the
beating of a living heart that he must inevitably wound.
He turned to look at his friend. She was walking, al-
most calm, with no trace of agitation, along the canal
between the green of the sickly water and the irides-
cence of the delicate vases. The only thing about
her that trembled slightly was her attenuated chin
just showing between the sable collar and the border
of her veil.

" Yes, sometimes," he answered, after a moment's
hesitation, incapable of falsehood, and feeling the
necessity of raising their love above ordinary ex-
actions and deceptions in order that it might remain
a cause of strength to him and not of weakness, a
free compact and not a burdensome tie.

The woman went on steadily, but she had entirely
lost the sensation of her various Hmbs in the terrible
beating of her heart that ran from neck to heels
as on a single cord. She saw nothing; all she felt
was the fascinating presence of the water by her
side.

" Her voice cannot be forgotten," he said after a
pause, gathering up his courage. " Its power is ex-
traordinary. From the very first evening, I thought
that she might be made a marvellous instrument of
my work._ I wish she would consent to sing the lyric
parts of my tragedy, the odes that arise from the
symphonies and resolve themselves into dance-figures
at the end between one episode and the other. La
Tanagra has consented to dance. I rely on your
kind intervention, my friend, in order to obtain the
consent of Donatella Arvale. The Dionysian Trinity

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 295

would thus be reconstructed in a perfect manner on
the new stage, for man's greater joy. . . ."

He noticed as he spoke that his words did not
ring true, that his unconcerned manner contrasted
too sharply with the deadly shadow on the veiled
face of his mistress. Against his will he had exag-
gerated his frankness in considering the singer merely
as an artistic instrument, as a purely ideal force to
be attracted into the circle of his magnificent enter-
prise. UnwilHngly disturbed by the suffering that
walked beside him, he had stooped ever so slightly
towards dissimulation. Certainly what he had said
was the truth, but his mistress had asked him for
another truth. He interrupted himself brusquely,
unable to tolerate the sound of his own words. He
felt that art in that hour had no resonance whatever
between him and the actress, no living value. They
were dominated by another more imperious, more
turbid force. The world which intellects create
seemed inert like the old stones they were treading.
The only truthful and formidable power was the
poison running in their human blood. The will of
the one was saying: "I love you, and I want you
all, body and soul, for my own." The will of the
other was saying : " You shall love me and you shall
serve me, but I can renounce nothing in life that
excites my desire." The struggle was unequal and
atrocious.

As the woman was silent, involuntarily quickening
her pace, he faced the other truth.

" I quite understand that this is not what you
wanted to know. . . ."

" Yes, it was not that ! Well ? "

296 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She turned to him with a kind of spasmodic vio-
lence that reminded him of her fury one distant
evening and of the mad cry: "Go! Run! She is
waiting for you ! " On that tranquil path between
the lazy water and the frail crystals, in the quiet
little island, the face of danger flashed before him.

But an importunate stranger crossed the path,
offering to lead them to the neighbouring furnace.

" Let us go in ! Let us go in ! " said the woman,
following the man and penetrating into the passage
as in a refuge to avoid the shame of the open street,
the profane daylight shining on her ruin.

The place was damp, spotted with sea-salt, smell-
ing of salt like a cave. They passed through a
courtyard full of firewood, passed through a de-
crepit door, reached the furnace, found themselves
wrapped round with its fiery breath, before a great
incandescent altar that imparted a painful tingling to
their eyes as if the lashes had suddenly caught fire.

" To disappear, to be swallowed up, to leave no
trace ! " roared the woman's heart, intoxicated with a
desire of destruction. " That fire could devour me
in an instant like a dried stick, like a bundle of straw."
And she drew near to the open mouths, whence she
could watch the fluent flames, more splendid than a
summer noon, surrounding the earthenware vases in
which the formless mineral was being melted ; the
workmen disposed all round were waiting to approach
with an iron tube to shape it with a breath of their
lips and the instruments of their art.

" Oh, Virtue of the Flame ! " thought the Life-
giver, beguiled from his anxiety by the miraculous
beauty of the element that had become famihar to

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 297

him as a brother from the day in which he had felt
the revealing melody. " Ah, that I might give to the
life of the creatures who love me the perfection of the
forms to which I aspire ! That I might fuse all their
weaknesses in some white heat, and make of it an
obedient matter in which to impress the command-
ments of my will, which is heroic, and the images of
my poetry, which is pure. Why, why, my friend, will
you not be the divine, mobile statue of my spirit, the
work of faith and of sorrow by which our lives might
surpass our art itself? Why are we on the point of
resembling those small lovers who curse and lament?
I had truly thought that you could have given me
more than love when I heard from your lips those
admirable words : ' One thing I can do, which even
love cannot do.' You must ever be able to accom-
plish those things which love can, and those things
which love cannot do in order to equal my insatiable
nature."

Meanwhile, the work of the furnace was proceeding
fervently. At the end of the blowing irons, the molten
glass swelled, twisted, became silvery as a little cloud,
shone like the moon, crackled, divided into a thou-
sand infinitely fine fragments, glittering, slighter than
the threads which we see in the forest at dawn
stretching from branch to branch. The workmen
were shaping harmonious vases, each as he operated
obeying a rhythm of his own, generated by the quality
of the matter and by the habit of movements most apt
to dominate it. The apprentices would place a small
pear-shaped mass of burning paste on the spot
pointed out by the master, and the mass would
lengthen out, twist, transform itself into a handle, a

298 THE FLAME OF LIFE

rim, a spout, a foot, or a stem. The red heat would
slowly die out under the instruments, and the half-
formed chalice would again be. exposed to the flame,
and be drawn from it docile, ductile, sensitive to the
slightest touches that adorned and refined it, con-
forming it to the model handed down by their fathers,
or to the free invention of the new creator. The
human gestures round those elegant creatures of fire,
breath and iron, were extraordinarily nimble and
light, like the gestures of a silent dance. The figure
of la Tanagra appeared to the Life-giver like a sala-
mander in the perpetual undulation of the flame.
And the powerful melody was sung to him by the
voice of Donatella.

" To-day, again, I myself have given her to you as
a companion," la Foscarina was thinking. " I my-
self have called her up between us, have recalled her
while your thoughts were perhaps elsewhere, have sud-
denly left her before you, as in that night's delirium."

It was true, it was true ! From the instant in
which the name of the singer had echoed against the
armour of the man-of-war, pronounced for the first
time by her friend in the shadow made by the flank
of the armed giant on the twilight waters — from that
instant she had unconsciously exalted the new image
in his spirit, had fed it with her very jealousy, with
her very fear, had strengthened and magnified it
daily, had at last illumined it with cei-tainty. More
than once she had repeated to him who had perhaps
forgotten : " She is waiting for you ! " More than
once she had presented that distant mysterious ex-
pectancy to his perhaps careless imagination. As in
that Dionysian night when the conflagration of Venice

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 299

had lit up the two young faces with one same re-
flection, it was now her passion that kindled them,
and they only burned because she chose that she
should burn. " Certainly," she was thinking, " he now
possesses that image and is possessed by it. My very
anguish excites his desire. It gives him joy to love
her under the eyes of my despair. . . ." And her
torture was nameless, and because it was her own love
that had fed the love that was killing her, she felt her
own ardour encircling it like a necessary atmosphere,
without which perhaps it could not have lived.

" As soon as it is formed the vase is put in the
furnace room to be tempered," one of the master
glaziers answered Stelio, who had questioned him.
" It would break into a thousand fragments, if it were
all at once exposed to the air."

They could see the shining vases, still the slaves of
the flame, still under its dominion, gathered together
in a receptacle that prolonged the furnace where they
had been fused.

" They have already been there for ten hours," said
the glazier, pointing to his graceful family. Later the
delicate, beautiful creatures would abandon their father
and be separated from him for ever, would grow cold
and become icy gems, would live their own new life
in the world, would subject themselves to voluptuous
men, would go out to meet danger, would follow the
variations of light, holding the cut flower or the
intoxicating wine.

" Is it our great Foscarina ? " the small, red-eyed
man asked of Stelio in a low voice.

He had recognised her, when, suff'ocating, she had
raised her veil.

300 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Trembling with ingenuous emotion, the master gla-
zier took one step towards her and bowed humbly.

" One evening, mistress, you have made me trem-
ble and cry Hke a child. Will you allow me, in mem-
ory of that evening, which I can never forget as long
as I live, to offer you a little work made by the hands
of the poor Seguso? "

"A Seguso," exclaimed Stelio Effrena, bending
quickly towards the little man to look him in the face
— " of the great family of glaziers, a pure one of the
genuine race?"

" At your service, master;"

"A prince, then?"

" Yes. A harlequin shamming as prince."

" You know all the secrets, then ? "

The man of Murano made a mysterious gesture
that conjured up all the deep ancestral knowledge
of which he had declared himself the last heir.

The other glaziers smiled round the furnace, inter-
rupting their work while the glass at the end of
their irons changed colour.

" Then, mistress, you will deign to accept? "

He seemed to have stepped from a panel of
Bartolomeo Vivarini, to be the brother of one of the
faithful ones kneeling under the mantle of the Virgin
in Santa Maria Formosa : thin, bent, dried up, as if
refined by fire, frail as if his skin covered a frame-
work of glass, with thin grey hanging curls, a thin
rigid nose, sharp chin, two thin lips from the corners
of which there started the wrinkles of wit and
attention, two flexible prudent hands, reddened by
scars where they had been burnt, expressive of
dexterity and precision, accustomed to gestures

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 301

leading beautiful lines in sensitive matter, true in-
struments of delicate art made perfect in the last heir
by the uninterrupted practice of so many laborious
generations.

" Yes, you are a Seguso," said Stelio Effrena, who
had examined all this, " the proof of your nobility is
in your hands."

The glazier gazed at them smiling, stretching them
out flat.

" You should bequeathe them in your will to the
museum of Murano, together with your blowing-
pipe."

" Yes, indeed, for them to be preserved like the
heart of Canova and the morello cherries of
Padova. "

The frank laugh of the workmen ran round the
forge and the unformed vases trembled at the end of
the irons, half rosy and bluish like clusters of hydran-
gea about to change colour.

" But the decisive proof will be in your glass.
Let us see ! "

La Foscarina had not spoken, fearing the unsteadi-
ness of her voice; but all her graceful sweetness
suddenly reappearing above the edge of her sadness
had accepted the gift and compensated the giver.

" Let us see, Seguso."

The little man scratched his perspiring temple with
an air of perplexity, divining the expert.

" Perhaps I can guess," added Stelio Effrena, draw-
ing near the crucible chamber and throwing a glance
of election on the vases gathered there. " If it be
that one. . . ."

Behold with his presence he had brought an

302 THE FLAME OF LIFE

unusual animation in the midst of a daily labour,
the bright ardour of the game that he perpetually
unfolded through life. All those simple souls, after
having smiled, passionately awaited the test, awaited
his choice with the curious anxiety with which one
awaits the result of a bet, soliciting a comparison
between the subtlety of the master and that of the
judge. And the young unknown man who moved in
their laboratory as in a familiar place, equaUing him-
self to the men and the things around him with such
rapid and spontaneous sympathy, was no longer a
stranger to them.

" If it be that one. . . ."

La Foscarina was attracted by the game and
almost forced to unbend, suddenly emptied of all
bitterness and rancour before her friend's happiness.
There too and without effort he had kindled a
fugitive moment with beauty and passion, communi-
cated to his companions the fervour of his vitality,
raised the spirits he had met to a superior sphere,
reawakened in those degenerate artisans the ancient
pride in their art. In few moments the harmony of
a pure line had become the centre of their world.
And the Life-^iver was bending over the grouped
vases as if the fortune of the little hesitating glazier
depended on his choice.

"Yes, it is quite true. You alone know how to
live," she was telling him tenderly. " It is necessary
that you should have all. I shall rest content with
seeing you live, with seeing your pleasure. And do
with me what you will."

She smiled as she annihilated herself. She
belonged to him, Hke a thing that can be held in a

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 303

clenched hand, like the ring on a finger, like a
garment, like a word that can be spoken or held back,
like a wine that can be drunk or spilt on the ground.

" Well, Seguso ? " exclaimed Stelio Effrena, grow-
ing impatient at his prolonged hesitation.

The man looked him in the face, then growing
bolder, trusted to his inborn instinct. Five vases,
among many others, had come from his own hands.
One could distinguish them, as if they had belonged
to a different species ; but which of the five was the
most beautiful?

The workmen had their faces turned to him while
they exposed the vases fixed on their pipes to the
flames lest they should grow cold. And the flames,
clear as the flame from the crisp laurel leaf, swayed
in the furnace, seeming to keep those men chained
there with the irons of their art.

" Yes, yes," cried Stelio Effrena, as he saw the
master glazier pick out the chosen vase with infinite
care. " Blood cannot speak false, the gift is worthy
of the Dogaressa Foscarina, Seguso."

The Muranese holding the stem of the chalice
between his finger and thumb stood smiling before
the woman, illumined by the warm praise. His sharp
sagacious look put one in mind of the little golden
fox on the cock's tail in the blazon of Murano ; the
eyelids, reddened by the violent glare of his furnace,
twinkled over the eyes that were turned to the frail
work still glittering in his hand before going away,
and his almost caressing fingers and his whole attitude
revealed the hereditary faculty of feeling the difficult
beauty of simple lines and extremely delicate colour-
ings. The chalice held by the bent man who had

304 THE FLAME OF LIFE

created it was like one of those miraculous flowers
that blossom on thin contorted shrubs.

It was indeed beautiful, mysterious as natural things
are mysterious, holding the life of a human breath
in its hollow, its transparency emulating skies and
waters, similar in its purple rim to a seaweed wander-
ing on the ocean ; pure, simple, with no other orna-
ment but that rim, no other limbs but its foot, its stem
and its lip ; and no man could have told why it was
so beautiful, not with one word nor with a thousand.
And its value was either none or incalculable, accord-
ing to the quality of the eye that gazed upon it.

" It will break," said Stelio.

La Foscarina had chosen to take her gift with her
without having it wrapped up, like one carries a
flower.

" I will take my glove off."

She stood the goblet on the edge of the well that
rose in the centre of the green. The rust of the
weather-cock, the worn facade of the basilica with
its Byzantine remains, the red brick of the belfry,
the gold of the hayrick beyond the wall and the
bronze colour of the high laurels and the faces of the
women threading glass beads on the doorsteps, and
the grass and the clouds and all the surrounding ap-
pearances there varied the sensibility of the luminous
glass. All colours melted into its own colour. And
it seemed to be living a manifold life in its frailty, like
an animated rainbow in which the universe mirrors
itself.

" Imagine the sum of experience which has gone to
the production of this beautiful thing," said Stelio,
in his wonder. " All the generations of the Seguso

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 305

contributed across the centuries with their breath
and touch to the birth of this creature, in the happy
instant in which that little unconscious glazier was
enabled to follow the remote impulse and transmit it
with precision to inert matter. The fire was equal,
the paste was rich, the air was tempered ; all things
were favourable. The miracle took place."

La Foscarina held the stem of the chalice between
her naked fingers.

" If it were to break, we should raise up a mauso-
leum to it as Nero did to the shades of his broken
cup. Oh, the love of things. Another despot,
Xerxes, has preceded you, my friend, in adorning a
beautiful tree with necklaces."

There was on her lips below the edge of her veil a
barely visible but continual smile ; and he knew that
smile through having suffered from it on the banks of
the Brenta, in the fields haunted by the statues.

" Gardens, gardens ; gardens everywhere. Once
they were the most beautiful in the world, earthly
paradises as Andrea Calmo calls them, dedicated to
love, music, and poetry. Perhaps one of those old
laurels has heard Aldo Manuzio conversing in Greek
with the Navagero or Madonna Gasparina sighing
in the footsteps of the Conte di Collalto. . . ."

They were going along a road that was shut in
by the walls of desolate gardens. At the summit of
the walls, in the interstices of the blood-red bricks,
strange grasses trembled, long and stiff as fingers.
The bronze-like laurels were gilded at the tips by the
decHning sun. The air seemed filled with a kind of
glittering gold-dust.

" How sweet and terrible was the fate of Gaspara

3o6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Stampa! Do you know her rhymes? I saw them
one day on your table. What a mixture of ice and
fire ! Now and then her deadly passion, across the
petrarchism of Cardinal Bembo, gives out some fine
cry. I know a magnificent verse of hers : —
" ' Vi vere ardendo e non sentire il male ! ' " ^

" Do you remember, Stelio," said la Foscarina, with
that inextinguishable smile that gave her the appear-
ance of one walking in her sleep, — " do you remember
the sonnet that begins :

" ' Signore, io so che in me non son piu viva,

E veggo omai ch' ancor in voi son morta ' ? . . ." ^

" I don't remember, Fosca."

" Do you remember your own beautiful image of
dead summer? Summer was lying in the funeral
boat dressed in gold like a dogaressa and the proces-
sion was leading her to the island of Murano where
a Lord of Fire was to enclose her in a veil of opales-
cent glass so that when submerged in the lagoon she
could at least watch the sea-weed's undulations. . . .
Do you remember?"

" It was an evening in September."

" The last of September, the evening of the Alle-
gory. There was a great light on the water. . . .
You were a little excited : you talked on and on. . . .
How many things you said ! You had just come
from solitude and you wefe full to overflowing. You
poured a stream of poetry over your friend. There
passed a boat laden with pomegranates. I was called
Perdita then. . . . Do you remember?"

* " To live consumed by fire and not to feel the pain I "
^ " My lord, I know that I live no more in me,
And I see henceforth that in you too 1 die."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 307

She herself, as she walked, felt the extreme elas-
ticity of her step, felt that something was disappearing
in her as if her body were about to change into an
empty chrysalis. The sensations of her own physical
person seemed to depend on the glass she was carry-
ing, seemed only to exist in the anxiety caused by
its frailty and the fear of letting it fall, while her bare
hand httle by little became colder, and her veins
changed to the colour of the violet edge running
round the lip of the goblet.

" My name was still Perdita. . . . Have you in mind,
Stelio, another sonnet of Gaspara's that begins ;

" ' lo vorrei pur che Amor dicesse come
Debbo seguirlo ' ? . • . *

And the madrigal that begins :

" ' Se tu credi piacere al mio signore ' ? . . ." ^

" I did not know you to be so familiar with the
poor Anassilla, my friend."

" Ah, I will tell you. ... I was barely fourteen,
years old when I acted in an old romantic tragedy
called Gaspara Stampa. I was doing the leading
part. ... It was at Dolo where we passed the other
day on our way to Stra. It was in a small country
theatre in a kind of tent. ... It was a year before
my mother died. ... I remember quite well. ... I
can remember certain things as if they had happened
yesterday, — and twenty years have passed. I can re-
member the sound of my voice, which was weak then,
when I forced it in the tirades because some one in

1 " I would that Love would also say

How I should follow him."

2 " If you think to please my lord."

308 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the wings was whispering to me to speak louder, still
louder. . . . Gaspara was in despair, sorrowed, raved
for her cruel Count. . . . There were so many things
that I did not know, that my small, profaned soul did
not understand, and I know not what instinct of sor-
row led me to find the accent and the cries that were
to shake the miserable crowd from which we expected
our daily bread. Ten starving people tortured me,
like an instrument of gain ; brutal necessity was cut-
ting and tearing away from me all the dream flowers
born of my trembling precocity. It was a time of
weeping and suffocation, of dismays, of uneasy fatigue,
of reserved horror. Those who made my martyrdom
did not know what they were doing, poor things,
blunted by poverty and weariness. God forgive
them and let them rest. Only my mother who, she
also, SteHo,

" ' Per amar molto ed esser poco amata
Visse e morl infelice,' *

d^only my mother took pity on me and suffered from
the same torment as myself and knew how to hold
me in her arms, how to calm my horrible trembling,
how to weep with me and comfort me. My blessed,
blessed one ! "

Her voice changed. The eyes of her mother once
more opened within her, kind and firm and infinite as
an horizon of peace. " You must tell me, you must
tell me what I should do. Guide me, teach me, you
who know." Her soul felt the clasp of those arms and
from the distance of years the pain flowed back to
her in all its fulness, but not harsh, having turned

' " For having loved too well and been too little loved,
Sorrowing lived and died "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 309

almost sweet. The memory of her struggle and of
her sufferings seemed to moisten her soul with a
warm flood, upraise and comfort it. On what anvils
had the iron of her will not been forged, in what
waters had it not been tempered? The test had
indeed been hard for her and the victory difficult,
bought at the price of labour and perseverance, bought
from brute forces that had been hostile. She had
witnessed the darkest poverties and sombre ruin, she
had known heroic efforts, pity, horror, and the thresh-
old of death.

" I know what hunger is, Stelio, and what the
approach of night is when a refuge is uncertain," she
said softly, stopping between the two walls. And
she raised her veil towards her forehead, looking into
her friend's face with her free eyes.

He grew pale under those eyes, so sudden was his
emotion, so great his dismay at the appearance of
that unexpected attitude. He found himself con-
fused as in the incoherence of a dream, incapable of
connecting that extraordinary apparition with the
recent traces of life, incapable of putting the meaning
of those words on that same woman who was smiling
to him, still holding the delicate glass in her naked
fingers. Yet he had heard what she had said, and
she was there before him in her great sable cape
with the softness still about her of the beautiful eyes
that lengthened out under the eyelashes misty as if a
tear continually rose into them, and melted unshfed,
there before him in the solitary path between the two
walls.

" And there are other things that I have known."

It did her good to speak in this way. His humility

3ro THE FLAME OF LIFE

seemed to give her heart strength like the most dar-
ing act of pride. She 'had never felt the conscious-
ness of her dominion and her worldly glory exalt her
before the man she loved, but now the memory of
her obscure martyrdom, of her poverty and hunger,
created in her a feeling of true superiority over him
whom she believed invincible. As along the banks
of the Brenta his words had seemed vain for the
first time, thus for the first time she felt herself in her
experience of hfe stronger than him whom all good
fortune had protected from' his cradle and who had
not suffered except from the fury of his desires and
the anxieties of his ambition. She imagined him
grappling with necessity, forced to labour like the
slave, oppressed by material narrownesses, subject to
vile discomforts. Would he have found the energy
to resist, the patience to endure? Under the sharp
pinch of necessity, she pictured him weak and lost,
humbled and broken. " Ah, all bright superb things
are for you as long as you live, as long as you live."
She could not bear the sadness of that image and
rejected it with an almost maternal impulse of defence
and protection. And by an involuntary movement she
laid one hand on his shoulder, drew it back when he
noticed, then placed it there again. She smiled like
one who knows what he should never know, hke
one who has won victory over things that he could
never have conquered. She heard within herself the
words heavy with the terrible promise: "Tell me
you are not afraid of suffering. . . I believe your
soul to be capable of bearing all the sorrow of the
world." Her eyelids, that were hke violets, dropped
over her secret pride, but an infinitely subtle, com-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 311

plex beauty appeared in the lines of her face, a beauty
that was shed by a new concordance of inner forces,
by a mysterious direction of her reawakened will ; in
the shadow that descended from the folds of her
veil gathered up round her eyelashes an inimitable
life animated her pallor.

" I am not afraid of suffering," she said, answering
him who had spoken on the bank of the distant river.
And lifting her hand from his shoulder, she stroked
her friend's cheek and then he understood that she
had answered his distant words.

He was silent, intoxicated as if she had given him
to drink the very essence of her heart pressed out
into that goblet. Of all the natural forms that sur-
rounded them, in the diffused light, none seemed to
him to equal the beauty and mystery of that human
face, showing as it did beyond its features glimpses of
a sacred depth where doubtless some great thing had
been accomplished in silence. Quivering, he waited
for her to continue.

They walked on side by side between the two
walls. The path was a narrow one, dull and soft un-
der foot, but the refulgent clouds hung above it.
They reached the cross roads where a wretched hovel
stood half ruined. La Foscarina stopped to look at
it, the gnarled, unhinged windows were held open by
a cane fixed across them. The low sun as it pene-
trated there beat on the smoky walls, revealed the
accessories : a table, a bench, a cradle.

" Do you remember, Stelio," she said, " that inn
where we went in at Dolo, to wait for the train —
Vampa's inn? A huge fire was burning in the grate,
the crockery shone on the walls, the slices of polenta

312 THE FLAME OF LIFE

were toasting on the gridiron. Twenty years ago,
they were just the same — the same fire, the same
crockery, the same polenta. My mother and I used
to go in after the performance ; we used to sit down
on a bench in front of a table. I had wept in the
theatre, I had shrieked, raved and died of poison, or
by the sword. The sound of the verses would still
remain in my ears, like a voice that was not my own,
and a strange will persisted in my soul which I could
not drive away, like a figure trying to perform those
steps and those gestures over again despite my inert-
ness. . . . The counterfeit of life remained in the
muscles of my face, and some evenings they could
not rest. The mask, the sense of the living mask
that was already growing. . . . My eyes would re-
main staring. A steady chill continued at the roots
of my hair. ... I could not succeed in recovering
full consciousness of myself and of what was going on
around me. . . .

" The odours that came from the kitchen nauseated
me ; the food that was on the dishes seemed to me
too coarse, heavy as stones, impossible to swallow.
My repugnance rose from something unspeakably
delicate and precious, which I felt at the depths of
my weariness, from a confused nobility which I felt
beneath, my humiliation. ... I cannot tell. ... It
was perhaps the obscure presence of that force which
developed itself in me afterwards, of that election,
of that difference from others by which Nature has
marked me out. . . . Sometimes the feeling of that
diversity became so great that it almost estranged
me from my mother — may God forgive me ! — that
almost separated me from her. ... A great soli-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 313

tude was making its way within me ; nothing that
was around me seemed to touch me. ... I used to
be alone with my fate. My mother, who was be-
side me, was retreating into infinite distance. Ah !
she was near death at the time, and was being pre-
pared for the parting, and perhaps these were the
signs. She would urge me to eat with the words
she only could say. I used to answer : ' Wait ! wait.'
I could only drink, I had a great thirst for fresh water.
Sometimes when I was still more tired and trembling
I would go on smiling a long, long smile. And even
my blessed one, with her deep heart, could not under-
stand whence came my smile. . . .

" Incomparable hours, in which it seemed as if the
bodily prison were being broken by the soul that
went wandering to the further limits of life ! What
must your youth have been, .Stelio? Who can
imagine it? We have all felt the weight of the
sleep that falls on our flesh, all of a sudden, swift
and heavy like a blow from a hammer after toil or
ecstasy, and seems to annihilate us. But the power
of dreams, too, during our watching, sometimes takes
hold of us with that same violence ; it grasps us, and
we are powerless to resist it, and it seems as if the
whole tissue of our existence were being destroyed,
as if our hopes were weaving another, brighter and
more strange, with those same threads. . . . Ah, there
come back to my memory some of the beautiful
words you said in Venice that evening, when you
pictured her marvellous hands intent on ordaining her
own Hghts and shadows in an uninterrupted work of
beauty. You alone can describe the unutterable. . . .

" On that bench there in front of the rough table.

314 THE FLAME OF LIFE

in Vampa's inn at Dolo, where Fate led me with you
again the other day, I had the most extraordinary
visions that dreams have ever awakened in my soul.
I saw that which cannot be forgotten; I saw the real
forms that surrounded me clothe themselves with the
figures that were growing from my intellect and my
instinct. Under my fixed eyes, burnt by the smoky
red naphtha lights of the temporary stage, the world of
my expressions began to take shape. The first Hnes
of my art developed themselves in that condition of an-
guish and weariness, of fever and repugnance, in which
my sensibility became in a manner almost plastic,
like the incandescent material we saw the glass work-
ers holding at the end of their tubes. There was in it
a natural aspiration to receive form and breath, to fill
the hollow of a mould. On certain evenings, on that
wall covered with copper saucepans, I could see my-
self as in a mirror, in an attitude of pain or rage,
with a face that I did not recognise; and my eye-
lids would beat rapidly to escape that hallucination
and to break the fixity of my look. My mother
would say again and again : ' Eat, my child, eat this
at least.' But what were bread, wine, meat, fruits,
all those heavy things bought with hard toil, com-
pared to what I had within me? I used to repeat:
' Wait ! ' and when we rose to go I used to take a
piece of bread with me. I liked to eat it next morn-
ing in the country, under a tree or on the banks of the
Brenta, sitting on a stone or on the grass. . . . Oh,
those statues ! "

La Foscarina stopped once more at the end of an-
other path between two walls, that led to a deserted
field, to the Campo-di-San-Bernardo, where the old

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 315

monastery stood. The steeple of Santa-Maria-degli-
Angeli rose beyond it, and a glorious cloud hung
over it like a rose upon its stem ; and the grass was
as soft, as green, as placid as in the park of the Pisani
at Stra.

" Those statues ! " repeated the actress, with an
intent look as if they stood there in front of her in
great numbers, hindering her on her way. " They did
not recognise me the other day, but I recognised
them, Stelio. "

The distant hours, the wet misty landscape, the
leafless trees, the villas falling to ruin, the silent river,
the relics of queens and empresses, the crystal masks
on the feverish faces, the wild labyrinth, the vain pur-
suit, the terror, and the agony, the splendid, terrible
pallor, the frozen body on the cushions of the car-
riage, the lifeless hands, all that sadness was suddenly
illumined by a new light in the spirit of her beloved.
And he looked at the marvellous creature, panting
with surprise and dismay, as if he were seeing her for
the first time, and her features, her step, her voice,
her garments held manifold and extraordinary signi-
ficances that were as inaccessible to him in their num-
ber and rapidity as flashes of lightning.

There she was, a creature of perishable flesh, sub-
ject to the sad laws of time ; yet a vast mass of real
and ideal life weighed upon her, widened round her,
throbbed with the very rhythm of her breath. The
wandering, despairing woman had touched the limits
of human experience : she knew that which he would
never know. He, the man of joy, felt the attraction
of so much accumulated sorrow, of so much humility
and so much pride, of so great a war and so great a

3i6 THE FLAME OF LIFE

victory. Willingly he would have lived that life him-
self. He envied her her fate. Astonished, he watched
the veins on the back of that bare hand, dehcate and
blue as though the skin did not cover them, and the
small nails that glittered round the stem of the goblet.
He thought of a drop of that blood circulating through
her substance, limited by common outlines, and yet
as immeasurable as the Universe. It seemed to him
that there was only one temple in the world, and that
temple was the human body. An anxious longing
possessed him to stop the woman, to stand before
her and examine her attentively, to discover all her
aspects, to question her endlessly.

Strange questions rose up in his spirit. "Did
you pass along the main roads when you were a
young girl on the cart loaded with scenery, lying on
a bundle of leaves, followed by a group of strolling
players? Did you pass through the vineyards, and
did some villager offer you a basket of grapes? Had
the man who possessed you for the first time the
figure of a satyr and did you hear the wind roaring on
the plain in your terror, sweeping away that part of
you which you will seek for ever but never find again ?
How many tears you must have drunk on the day I
heard you, for the voice of Antigone to sound so pure
in you ? Did you win the nations one after another
as battles are won to conquer an empire ? Do you
recognise them by their different odours as one rec-
ognises wild beasts? One nation rebelled, resisted
you, and in subjecting it you loved it more than those
which had worshipped you at your first appearance.
Another, on the other side of the ocean, to which you
revealed a new unknown manner of feeling, cannot

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 317

forget you, and continually sends you messages for
you to return. What sudden beauties shall I see aris-
ing from your love and your sorrow? "

She appeared to him on the solitary meadow in the
forgotten island, under the clear wintry sky, as she
had appeared to him in the far-off Dionysian night in
the midst of the praises of the poets who had sat at
the supper table. The same power of imparting life,
the same power of revelation, emanated from the
woman who had said as she lifted her veil, "I know
what hunger is. . . ."

" It was in the month of March, I remember, " con-
tinued la Foscarina, softly, " I was going out in the
meadows early, with my bread. I was walking at
random. The statues were my destination. I went
from one to the other and stopped before each, as if
visiting them. Some seemed to me lovely and I
would try to imitate their gestures, but as if by in-
stinct, I remained longer with the mutilated ones, to
comfort them. In the evening, on the stage during
the performance I would remember some of them,
with such a deep feeling of their distance and of their
solitude in the quiet country under the stars, that it
seemed to me as if I could not speak any more. The
crowd would lose patience at these too prolonged
pauses. At certain times when I had to wait for my
interlocutor's first tirade to be finished, I would stand
in the attitude of some one of them which was familiar
to me, and remain motionless as if I too had been of
stone. I was already beginning to shape my own
self . . ."

She smiled. The grace of her melancholy sur-
passed the grace of the declining day.

3i8 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" I tenderly loved one that had lost the arms it
had once used to hold a basket of fruit on its head.
But the hands were fastened to the basket and moved
my pity. It rose on its pedestal in a field of flax; a
small canal stagnated close by, and in it the sky's re-
flection continued the blue of the flowers. If I shut
my eyes I can still see the stony face and the sun
that coloured itself in passing through the stalks of
the flax, as through a green glass. Always, ever
since that time, on the stage, in the most heated
moments of my art, there rise visions of some land-
scape to my memory, especially when by the mere
force of silence I succeed in communicating a great
quiver to the crowd that is listening. , . ."

She had flushed a little at the cheekbones, and, as
the oblique sun wrapped her round, drawing sparks
from her sables and from the goblet, her animation
seemed an increase of light.

" What a spring that was ! In one of my wander-
ings I saw a great river for the first time. It appeared
all of a sudden, swollen, flowing rapidly between wild
banks in a plain burning like stubble under the level
rays of the sun, that grazed its outskirts like a red
wheel. I felt then how much divinity there is in a
great river flowing through the earth. It was the
Adige, coming down from Verona, from the city of
Juliet. . . ."

An ambiguous emotion was taking hold of her as
she recalled the poetry and poverty of her youth.
She was driven to continue by a kind of fascination,
nevertheless she did not know how she had arrived
at these confessions, when she had meant to speak to
her friend of another young Hfe which was not past.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 319

but present. By what deception of love had she
been brought from the sudden tension of her will,
from her resolute decision of facing the painful truth,
from the gathering up of her mislaid energy to linger
in the memory of by-gone days, and to cover with
her own lost virgin self that other one which was so
different?

" We entered Verona one evening in the month of
May through the gate of the Palio. Anxiety suffo-
cated me. I held the copy-book, where I had copied
out the part of Juliet with my own hand, tightly
against my heart, and constantly repeated to myself
the words of my first entrance : ' How now ! Who
calls ? I am here. What is your will ? ' A strange
coincidence had excited my imagination : I was four-
teen years old on that very day, — the age of Juliet !
The gossip of the Nurse buzzed in my ears ; little by
little my destiny seemed to be getting mixed up with
the destiny of the Veronese maiden. At the corner
of every street I thought I saw a crowd coming
towards me and accompanying a coffin covered with
white roses. As soon as I saw the Arche degli
Scaligeri, closed with iron nails, I cried out to my
mother, ' Here is the tomb of Juliet.' And I be-
gan to weep bitterly with a desperate desire of love
and death. ' Oh, you, too early seen unknown, and
known too late.' "

Her voice, as it repeated the immortal words, pene-
trated the heart of her lover like a heart-rending
melody. She paused a moment and repeated, —

" Too late."

They were the very words uttered by her beloved,
which she herself had repeated in the garden where

320 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the hidden stars of the jessamine blossoms had given
forth their sharp perfume and the fruit had smelt as
it does in the island gardens, when both had been
about to yield to their cruel desire : " It is late,
too late ! " The ageing woman on the good grass
now stood before the old image of herself, of her own
virginity, panting in the garb of Juliet before her
love's first dream. Having attained the limit of her
experience, had she not preserved that dream intact
over men and time ? — but to what end ? Here she
was, bringing up her dead, distant youth only to tread
it under foot as she led her lover to that other woman
who was alive and expectant.

With the smile of her inimitable suffering she said :
" I have been Juliet."

The air around them was so calm that the smoke
from the furnace chimneys tarried there, contaminat-
ing it. Gold quivered everywhere. The cloud on
the belfry of the Angeli was growing crimson round
the edges. The water was invisible, but its sweetness
was passing over the face of things.

" One Sunday in May, in the immense arena in the
ancient amphitheatre under the open sky, I have
been JuHet before a popular multitude that had
breathed in the legend of love and death. No quiver
from the most vibrating audiences, no applause, no
triumph has ever meant the same to me as the ful-
ness and the intoxication of that great hour. Truly,
when I heard Romeo saying, ' Ah, she doth teach the
torches to burn bright ! ' truly my whole being
kindled ; I became a flame. I had bought a great
bunch of roses with my little savings, in the Piazza
delle Erbe, under the fountain of Madonna Verona.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 321

The roses were my only ornament. I mingled them
with my words, with my gestures, with each attitude of
mine. I let one fall at the feet of Romeo when we
first met; I strewed the leaves of another on his
head from the balcony ; and I covered his body with
the whole of them in the tomb. The air, the hght, and
their perfume ravished me. Words slipped from me
with strange ease, almost involuntarily as in delirium,
and together with them I could hear the continual
accompaniment made by the dizzy throb of my veins;
I could see the deep amphitheatre, half in sunshine,
half in shadow, and in the illuminated part a glitter as
of thousands and thousands of eyes. The day was a
quiet one like to-day. There was not a breath to
ruffle the folds of my dress or the hair that fluttered
on my bare neck. The sky was very far, yet now
and then it seemed as if my weakest words must
sound in its farthest distances, like a clap of thunder,
or that its blue was becoming so deep that I was
coloured by it as by a sea water that was drowning
me. And at intervals, my eyes would travel to the
long grasses growing at the summit of the walls, and
there seemed to come to me from them I know not
what encouragement to what I was saying and doing ;
and when I saw them sway at the first breath of wind
that was rising from the hills, I felt my animation
increase and with it the strength of my voice. How
I spoke of the lark and the nightingale ! I had heard
them both in the country a thousand times. I knew
all their melodies of the wood, the field, and the sky ;
I had them wild and living in my ears. Each word
before leaving my Hps seemed to have passed through
all the warmth of my blood. There was no fibre in

322 THE FLAME OF LIFE

me which did not give forth an harmonious sound.
Ah, grace ! the state of grace ! Each time it is given
me to touch the summit of my art I recover that un-
speakable abandonment. I was Juliet. ' It is day, it is
day ! ' I cried out in my terror. The wind was in
my hair. I could feel the extraordinary silence on
which my lamentation fell. The crowd seemed to
have disappeared below ground. It sat silent on the
curved steps that were now in shadow. Above it
the top of the wall was still red. I was telling of the
terror of day, but I already truly felt ' the mask of
night' on my face. Romeo had descended. We
were already both dead, both had already entered
into darkness. Do you remember? ' Now that you
are there, you appear like a corpse at the bottom of a
sepulchre. Either my eyes deceive me or you are
very pale.' I was icy cold as I said these things.
My eyes sought the glimmer of light at the top of the
wall. It had gone out. The people were clamour-
ing in the arena, demanding the death scene; they
would no longer listen to the mother or the nurse or
the monk. The quiver of its impatience intolerably
quickened the throbbing of my own heart. The
tragedy was hurrying on. I still have the memory of
a great sky white as pearls, and of a noise as of the
sea that quieted down when I appeared, and of the
smell of pitch that came from the torches, and of
the roses that covered me being faded by my fever,
and of a distant sound of bells that brought the sky
nearer to us, and of that sky that was losing its light
little by little as I was losing my life, and of a star,
the first star, that trembled in my eyes with my tears.
, . . When I fell lifeless on the body of Romeo, the

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 323

howl of the crowd in the shadow was so violent that I
was frightened. Some one raised me up and dragged
me towards that howl. Some one brought the torch
close to my tear-stained Jace ; it crackled hard and
smelt of pitch and was red and black, smoke and
flame. That too, like the star, I shall never forget.
And my face must certainly have been the colour
of death. . . . Thus, Stelio, one night in May, Juliet
came to life again and was shown to the people of
Verona."

She stopped once more, closing her eyes as if she
had suddenly turned dizzy, but her sorrowful lips still
smiled at her friend,

" Then ? The need of moving, of going anywhere,
of passing through space, of breathing in the wind. . . .
My mother followed me in silence. We crossed a
bridge, walked along the Adige, then crossed another
bridge, entered a small street, lost ourselves in the
dark alleys, found a square with a church in it, and
so on, on, ever on. My mother asked me now and
then, 'Where are we going?' I wanted to find a
Franciscan convent where the tomb of Juliet was
hidden, since to my great sorrow they had not buried
her in one of those beautiful tombs closed in by fine
gates. But I did not want to say it, and I could not
have spoken. To open my mouth, to utter a single
word was as impossible to me as to detach a star
from the sky. My voice had lost itself with the last
syllable of the dying Juliet. My lips had remained
sealed by a silence necessary as death. And all my
body seemed half alive, now icy, now burning, and
now I don't know, as if only the joints of my bones
were burning and all the rest were icy. ' Where are

324 THE FLAME OF LIFE

we going?' that kind anguish asked of me once more.
Ah, the last word of Juliet answered within me. We
were again near the water on the Adige, at the head
of a bridge. I think I began to run, because shortly
afterwards I felt myself seized by my mother's arms
and I remained there crushed against the parapet,
suffocated by my sobs. 'Let us throw ourselves
down ! let us throw ourselves down ! ' I would have
said, but I could not. The river was carrying in
it the night with all its stars, and I felt that that desire
of annihilation was not in me alone. . , . Ah, blessed
one ! "

She turned very pale, her whole soul feeling once
more the clasp of those arms, the kiss of those hps, the
tears of that tenderness, the depth of that suffering.
But she glanced at her friend and suddenly a quick
flood of blood spread over her cheeks and rose as
far as her brow, as if brought there by a feeling of
secret modesty.

" What am I telling you ? Why am I speaking to
you of all these things? One talks on and on with-
out knowing why."

She lowered her eyes in her confusion. At the
memory of the mysterious terror that had preceded
her womanhood, at the memory of her mother's
grieved love, the original instinct of her sex stirred
in her barren bosom. Her feminine avidity, that re-
belled against the heroic design of total abnegation,
experienced a strange emotion, became wiUing to be
deluded. From the very roots of her substance there
arose an unformed aspiration that she dared not con-
template. The possibility of a divine compensation
flashed on the sadness of the inevitable renunciation.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 325

She felt the shaking of her heart, but she was Hke
one who dares not look up to an unknown face for
fear of reading there a sentence of life or death.
She was afraid of suddenly seeing that thing dissolve
which was not hope and yet was similar to hope,
born of her soul as well as of body in so unexpected
a manner. She became impatient of the great light
that kindled the sky, of the places they were passing,
of the steps she was taking, of the very presence of
her friend. She thought of the half-waking softness,
the lingering slumber of dawn when a veiled design
lightly guides a happy dream. She longed for soli-
tude, for quiet, for her distant secluded room, for the
shadow of heavy curtains. Suddenly, with an impet-
uous anxiety that rose from that impatience as if' she
wanted to fix by a mental act a phantom that was
about to melt away, she formed some words, and they
reached as far as her lips, but did not move them:
" A child, from you ! "

She turned to her friend and all trembling looked
him in the eyes. Her secret thought swayed in her
eyes, like a thing that was both prayer and despair.
She seemed to be anxiously seeking in him some un-
revealed mark, some unknown aspect, almost another
man. She called him gently, —

" Stelio 1 "

And her voice was so changed that the young man
started inwardly and turned as if to help her.

" My friend, my friend ! "

Fearful and surprised he watched the wide waves
of life that were passing through her, the extraordi-
nary expressions, the alternate lights and shadows,
and he dared not speak and dared not interrupt

326 THE FLAME OF LIFE

the occult workings that were agitating the powers of
that great, miserable soul; he could only feel con-
fusedly beneath her words the beauty and the sad-
ness of unexpressed things ; and while he was certain
that some difficult good was about to rise from so
great a fever, yet he knew not the aim to which that
love would be led by its necessity of becoming per-
fect or perishing. His spirit hung in an expectation
that was full of wonder, feeling itself hve with so
much fervour in those forgotten places, on the lowly
grass, along the silent path. He had never ex-
perienced a deeper feeling of the incalculable strength
of which the human heart is capable. And it seemed
to him as he listened to the throb of his own heart,
as he divined the violence of the other's throbbing,
that he could hear the strokes of the hammer beating
on the hard anvil where human destiny is forged.

" Tell me more," he said. " Let me get still
nearer to you, dear soul. No moment since I have
loved you has been worth the road along which we
have gone together to-day."

She was moving on with bent head, rapt in the illu-
sion " Could it be? " She felt her barrenness about
her like an iron belt. She considered the inexorable
obstinacy of the maladies rooted in brute flesh. But
the power of her passion, and of her desire, strength-
ened by an idea of justice, appeared to her in the act
of accomplishing a miracle. And all that was super-
stitious in her nature rose to blind her lucidity and
flatter a rising hope. " Have I ever loved before
now? Have I not waited for years for this great love
that is to save or destroy me ? From which of all those
who have increased my wretchedness would I have

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 327

desired a child? Is it not just that a new life should
come forth from my life, now that I have made the
entire gift of myself to my master? Have I not
brought him my girlhood's dream intact, the dream
of Juliet? Has not all my life been abolished, from
that spring evening to one autumn night? " She
saw the whole universe transfigured by her illusion.
The memory of her mother gave her a sublime image
of maternal love ; the kind, firm eyes opened within
her again and she prayed to them. " Oh, tell me
that I too shall be for a creature of my flesh and of
my soul what you have been for me. Give me that
assurance, you who know." Her past solitude
seemed terrifying. All she could see in the future
was death or that one hope of salvation. She thought
she could have borne every test in order to deserve it,
looked upon it as a grace to be implored, felt herself
invaded by a religious ardour of sacrifice. It seemed
as if the feverish throb of her distant youth which she
had called up were being renewed in her emotion, and
that she were being once more impelled on her way
under the sky by an almost mystic force.

She was going towards the figure of Donatella Ar-
vale, outlined on the inflamed horizon at the end of a
road that opened on the water. And her first sudden
question re-echoed within her : " Do you often think
of Donatella Arvale, Stelio? "

A short road led to the Fondamenta degli Angeli,
to the canal encumbered with fishing-boats, whence
the great lagoon was visible, calm and radiant.

She said : —

" How beautiful the light is ! It is like that evening
when my name was still Perdita, Stelio."

328 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She was touching a note that she had already-
touched in a prelude that had been interrupted.

" It was the last evening in September," she added ;
" do you remember? "

She had lifted up her heart so high that it seemed
at times as if it failed her, as if the strength of her
feeling was no longer in her power, but could escape
her from one moment to another, and leave her a
prey to those troubled furies, to the sudden impulse
to which she had already yielded more than once.
She intended that her voice should not tremble in
uttering the name that must needs rise in the silence
between her friend and herself.

" Do you remember the man-of-war anchored in
front of the gardens ? — a salute greeted the flag as it
slipped down the mast. The gondola grazed the
ironclad as it passed."

She gave herself a moment's pause. An inimitable
life animated her pallor.

" Then in its shadow you uttered the name of
Donatella."

She made a fresh eflfort, like a person swimming
and submerged by a new wave shaking his head above
the foam.

" She began to be yours."

She felt herself stiffening from head to foot, as if
under the effect of a poisoned prick. Her eyes were
staring fixedly at the dazzling waters.

" She must be yours," she said, with the hardness
of necessity in her voice, as if to resist with a second
shock the terrible things that were struggling to rise
from the depth of her fire.

Seized by violent anguish, incapable of speaking,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 329

of interrupting with a vain word the lightning-Hke ap-
paritions of her tragic soul, SteHo Effrena stopped,
and laid his hand on his companion's arm to make
her stop also.

" Is it not true? " she asked him with almost quiet
sweetness, as if her contraction had relaxed sud-
denly and her passion had accepted the yoke laid
upon it by her will. " Speak to me. I am not afraid
of suffering. Let us sit down here. , I am a little
tired."

They rested against a low wall in view of the
waters. The calm of the winter solstice on the la-
goon was so pure that the shape of the clouds and
of the objects along the shore seemed given a kind of
ideal quality in their reflection there, as if they were
being imitated by art. Near and distant things, the
red palace of the Da Mula on the canal, and farther
the fort of Tessara, had the same distinctness, — the
black boats with their folded sails, with their nets hung
along the masts, seemed to gather in their hulls the
feeling of infinite repose that came from the horizon.
Human pain seemed powerless to move any of those
lines, and all seemed to teach silence, giving man a
promise of peace in time.

" What can I tell you ? " said the young man, in a
suffocated voice, almost as if he had been speaking to
himself, instead of to the woman, unable to overcome
the agitation made up of the certainty of his present
love and the consciousness of his desire, which was
inexorable as destiny. " Perhaps what you have im-
agined is true, perhaps it is only a thought of your
own mind. There is to-day only one certain thing
which I know : that I love you, and that I recognise

330 THE FLAME OF LIFE

in you all which is noble. I also know another thing :
that I have a work to accomplish and a Hfe to live ac-
cording to the disposition of nature. You, too, must
remember. On that evening in September I spoke
to you at great length of my life and of the genii that
lead it to its aim. You know that I can give up
nothing. . . ."

He trembled as if he were holding a sharpened
weapon in his hands, and in moving it could not
avoid hurting the unarmed.

"Nothing; and especially I cannot give up your
love, which every day exalts my strength and my
hope. But have you not promised me more than
love .'' Are you not capable, for me also, of those
things which love cannot do? Do you not wish to be
a constant, quickening breath for my life and my
work? "

She was listening, motionless, without so much as
the throb of an eyelid. Like an invalid, in whom the
action of voluntaiy motion is suddenly suspended, and
who assists, like a spirit in a statue, at a sight full of
horror.

" It is true," he went on, after an anxious pause,
recovering his courage, dominating his compassion,
feeling that on his sincerity of that moment the fate
depended of that free alliance by which he intended
to be upraised and not lowered, — " It is true ; when
I saw you come down that staircase on that night ac-
companied by her who had sung, I believed that
some secret thought was guiding you not to come
alone towards me. . . ."

She felt a subtle chill run along the roots of her
hair and her eye grow dim, although they remained

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 331

quite dry. Her fingers trembled round the stem of
the goblet, while the colours of sky and water tinted
the glass that trembled in the sorrowful hand.

" I believed that you yourself had chosen her. . . .
You had the appearance of one who knows and fore-
sees. ... I was moved by it."

She measured by her frightful torture how sweet
his falsehood would have been. She longed for him
to lie, or be silent. She measured the space that
divided her from the canal, from the water that
swallows and deadens.

" There was in her something hostile, as if she
were against me. . . . She remained obscure to me,
impenetrable. . . . You remember the way she dis-
appeared ; her image grew pale, and it was only the
desire of her song that remained. You who led her
to me have more than once revived her image. You
have seen her shadow where it was not."

She saw the face of death. No other thrust had
pierced farther, had wounded her more deeply.
" With my own hand ! With my own hand ! " And
she heard once more the cry that had been her ruin :
" She awaits you ! " And from second to second
her knees seemed to give way still more, her worn-
out body seemed nearer to obeying the furious im-
pulse that was pushing her towards the water. But
there remained one lucid point in her, and she con-
sidered that that was neither the place nor the time.
The sand banks left dry by the low tide were be-
ginning to blacken on the lagoon. All of a sudden,
the inner storm seemed to lose itself behind a mere
appearance. She believed herself to be non-existent,
marvelled at seeing the glass shining in her hand,

332 THE FLAME OF LIFE

lost all sense of her own body. All that was happen-
ing was imaginary. Her name was Perdita. The
dead summer lay in the depths of the lagoon. Words
were only words.

"Could I love her?"

One breath more and darkness would have come.
As the flame of a candle bends under the wind as if
about to separate from the wick, yet still adheres to
it by a slight azure fragment, almost by a pale spark,
yet will soon kindle and straighten itself again at the
ceasing of the wind, the wretched woman's reason
came near to being extinguished. The breath of
madness passed over her. Terror whitened and
convulsed her face.

He did not look at her, but stared fixedly at the
stones.

" Were I to meet her again, should I long to turn
her destiny towards me?"

He could see her youthful person again with its
curved, powerful figure arising from the sonorous
forest among the alternate motions of the violin bows
that seemed to draw their occult note from the
hidden music that was in her.

" Perhaps."

Again he saw the Hermes-like face, almost ada-
mantine in its hardness, filled with some most secret
thought, and the frown that made it hostile.

" And of what avail would that be? Of what avail
would all the vicissitudes and all the necessities of
life be against the faith which binds us? Could
we two ever resemble meaner lovers who spend
their days struggling to overcome each other, weep-
ing and cursing? "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 333

She ground her teeth ; the wild instinct to defend
herself, and to hurt as in a desperate struggle over-
powered her. The flash of a murderous desire darted
on the fluctuations of her thought.

" No, you shall not have her — "

And the cruelty of her master seemed monstrous
to her. She seemed to be bleeding under the meas-
ured and repeated blows like the man she had once
seen on the white road in a mining town. The hor-
rible scene returned to her memory : the man pros-
trated by a blow from a mace rising and trying to
throw himself against his enemy, and the mace that
was hurled at him again, the blows aimed one after
another by a firm, calm hand, their dull thud on the
man's head, the obstinate rising, the tenaciousness of
life, the flesh of his face reduced to a kind of red pulp.
The images of the frightful memory mingled with the
reality of her torture in her mental incoherence.
She rose as if moved by a spring, impelled by the
savage force that had invaded her veins. The glass
broke in her convulsed hand, wounded her, fell at her
feet in atoms.

The man started. Her motionless silence had de-
ceived him, and now he looked at her and saw her ;
and again he saw, as on that evening when the fire-
brands had crackled, the features of folly outline
themselves on her disordered face. He stammered
as if in pain, but impatience was boiling beneath his
dismay.

"Ah," said the woman, overcoming her tremor
with a bitterness that contorted her mouth, " how
strong I am ! Another time your wounds should not
be so slow, since I resist so little, my friend."

334 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She noticed that the blood was dripping from
her fingers; she wrapped them in her handker-
chief; crimson stains spotted it. She glanced at
the fragments of glass scattered shining on the
ground.

" The goblet is broken. You had praised it
too much. Shall we raise a mausoleum for it
here?"

She was very bitter, almost mocking, her lips con-
tracted by a sharp laugh that had no resonance. He
was silent, disappointed, full of rancour at having
seen the destruction of so beautiful an effort as that
perfect vase.

" Let us imitate Nero, having already imitated
Xerxes."

She felt even more acutely than her friend the
harshness of her sarcasm, the dissonance of her voice,
the malignity of that laugh that was like a spasm of
her muscles. But she was unable to recover her
hold over her soul, and she saw it slipping away from
her will, irreparably, like the sailors on a ship from
whose grasp the handle has slipped and who remain
inert before the crane that turns fearfully backwards,
unfolding, unreeHng chains and cables. She felt an
acrid, irresistible need of scorning, scattering, tread-
ing under foot as if invaded by some malignant
demon. Every trace of goodness and tenderness had
disappeared, and every hope and every illusion. She
could discern in the man's glance the same shadow
that passed over her own.

"Do I annoy you? Would you like to return to
Venice alone? Would you like to leave dead sum-
mer behind you ? The tide is getting low, but there

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 335

is still enough water for one who has no intention of
returning to the surface. Would you like me to try?
Could I be more docile? "

She was saying these insensate things with a hiss in
her voice ; she had become almost livid, as if all at
once consumed by some corroding poison. And he
remembered having seen that very same mask on her
face one distant day of pleasure, fury, and sadness.
His heart contracted and then relaxed.

"Ah, if I have hurt you, forgive me," he said, try-
ing to take one of her hands so as to quiet her with
an act of gentleness.

"But had we not started together towards this
point? Was it not you . . ."

She interrupted him, impatient at the gentleness
of his usual balsam.

"Hurt me? And what does it matter? Have no
pity, have no pity. Do not weep over the beautiful
eyes of the wounded hare. . . ."

She was walking along the footpath by the side
of the purplish canal, passing in front of doorsteps
where the women still sat in the waning light with
their baskets full of glass beads on their knees. The
words broke between her teeth. The contraction of
her lips changed into a frenzied convulsion of laughter
that sounded like a peal of heart-rending sobs. Her
companion shuddered, spoke to her under his breath
in his dismay, followed by the curious gaze of those
who looked on.

" Be calm ! Be calm ! Oh, Foscarina, I beg of
you ! Do not behave like this, I beg of you. Soon
we will have reached the shore. We shall soon be
home again. ... I will tell you. , . . Then you

336 THE FLAME OF LIFE

will understand. . . . We are in the street now. . . .
Are you listening to me? "

She had discerned a woman enceinte standing on
one of the doorsteps. She was a big woman, and
filled up the space between the door-posts ; she was
eating a piece of bread with a far-off, dreamy look.

"Are you listening? Foscarina, I beg of you.
Take courage ; lean on me."

He feared she would fall in her horrible convulsion,
and held himself ready to support her. But she only
quickened her pace, unable to answer, suffocating
her peals of laughter with her bound-up hand. She
seemed to feel the skin of her face cracking in her
spasm.

"What is the matter? What is it you see?

Never will that man forget the change in those eyes.
They stared sightless with a deadly stillness, in spite
of the implacable heaving as if their lids had been cut
off; and yet they saw, they saw something which was
not there ; they were full of an unknown vision, occu-
pied by a monstrous image that perhaps generated
that laughter full of anguish and madness.

" Would you Uke to stop ? Would you like a little
water?"

They had come out again on the Fondamenta dei
Vetrai, where the shops were now shut, where their
steps re-echoed, where the bursts of atrocious merri-
ment seemed to prolong themselves as if under a
portico. How long was it since they had passed
along that dead canal? How much of their Hfe had
passed away meanwhile? How much shadow had
they left behind them ?

In the gondola, wrapped in her mantle, paler than

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 337

she had been on the way to the Dolo, the woman
tried to control her spasms, holding her jaws with
both hands, but from time to time the mahgnant laugh
would escape, hissing in the sleepy silence, breaking
through the rhythm of the two oars ; she would press
her hands to her mouth more firmly, as if she were
trying to suffocate herself Between her veil raised
above the eyebrows and the blood-stained handker-
chief, her eyes remained open and staring on the
immensity of the twilight.

The lagoon and the darkness swallowed up all
forms and all colours ; only the groups of posts, like a
procession of monks on a pathway full of ashes,
interrupted the grey monotony. Venice in the back-
ground was smoking like the remains of a vast
pillage.

When the roll of the bells reached them her soul
remembered, her tears fell, the horror was conquered.

The woman took her hands from her face, bent a
little towards her friend's shoulder, recovered her
voice to say. . . .

" Forgive me ! "

She humbled herself, ashamed ; each act of hers
from that day silently begged for pardon and
oblivion.

A new grace seemed born in her. She became
lighter, she talked in a lower voice. She would move
delicately about the room dressed in quiet stuffs, veil-
ing with the shadow of her lashes her beautiful eyes,
that dared not look on her friend. The fear of
oppressing him, of being irksome to him, gave wings

338 THE FLAME OF LIFE

to her instinct. Her ever waking sensibility watched
and Hstened round the inaccessible door of his
thoughts. She reached the point at certain hours of
feeling the rhythm of that other life beating under
her own pulse.

Her soul, intent on creating a new feeling that
should be capable of conquering the violence of in-
stinct, revealed in her face with resplendent signs the
difficulty of her secret task. Her supreme art had
never before found expressions so singular; never
had significances so obscure come to life in the
shadow of her features. Looking at her one day, her
friend spoke of the infinite power accumulated in the
shadow produced by the helmet on the face of II
Pensieroso.

" Michael Angelo," he said, " has concentrated all
the effort of human meditation in a small hollow of
his marble. As the stream fills the hollowed palm,
so the eternal mystery by which we are surrounded
fills the small space opened by the Titan's chisel in
the material that had come from the mountain, and
it has remained there and grown denser with the
centuries. I only know the changing shadow of
your own face, Fosca, that sometimes rivals it in
intensity, and even at times surpasses it."

She stretched herself out towards the Life-giver,
yearning for poetry and knowledge. She became to
him the ideal figure of her who listens and under-
stands. The wild, powerful fold of her hair imitated
the impatience of wings round her pure forehead.
A beautiful phrase would suddenly draw the tears
from her eyes as if it had been a drop which falls
into a vessel that is full and causes it to overflow.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 339

She read out to him pages from the sovereign
poets. The august shape of the Book seemed mag-
nified by her attitude in holding it, by her gesture in
turning the pages, by the religious gravity of her
attention, by the harmony of the lips that changed the
printed signs into vocal numbers. In reading the
poetry of Dante she became as noble and severe as
the sibyls in the dome of the Sixtine Chapel, bear-
ing the weight of the sacred volumes with all the
heroism of their bodies agitated by the breath of
prophecy. The lines of her attitude, down to the
slightest folds of her garment, together with her
modulations, revealed the divine text.

When the last syllable had fallen she saw her
friend rise impetuously, trembling with fever, wander-
ing about the room, agitated by the god, panting in
the anxiety imparted to him by the confused tumult
of his creative force. She saw him coming towards
her with radiant eyes transfigured by a sudden beati-
tude, illumined by an inner flame, as if a sovereign
hope had all of a sudden been kindled in him, or an
immortal truth revealed. With a shudder that abol-
ished in the blood the memory of every caress, she
saw him come to her and bend over her knees, over-
thrown by the terrible shock of the world he was
carrying in himself, by the upheaval that accom-
panied some hidden metamorphosis. She knew pain
and pleasure ; not knowing whether his were pleasure
or pain, she was filled with piety, fear, and reverence
in feeling that voluptuous body labouring thus in the
genesis of the idea. She was silent, she waited, she
adored the unknown thoughts in the head that rested'
on her knees.

340 THE FLAME OF LIFE

But she understood his great striving better when,
one day after she had read to him, he spoke to her
of the Exile.

" Imagine, Fosca, if you can without bewilderment,
the fire and rush of the vast soul, in uniting itself to
the elementary energies in order to conceive its
world. Imagine an Alighieri on the road to exile,
already possessed by his vision, an implacable pil-
grim driven from land to land by his passion and
his misery, from refuge to refuge, across fields, across
mountains, along rivers, along seas, in every season,
suffocated by the sweetness of spring, stricken by the
harshness of winter, ever alert, attentive, his vora-
cious eyes ever open, anxious with the inner travail
that was forming the gigantic work. Imagine the
fulness of that soul in the contrast between common
necessities and the flaming apparitions that suddenly
came to meet him at a turning of the road, on some
river bank, in a rocky cave, on the slope of a hill, in
the thick of' a forest, in a meadow bright with the
song of the lark. Manifold life poured into his
spirit by means of his senses, transfiguring the'
abstract ideas that filled him into living images.
Wherever he went unexpected sources of poetry
flowed from his sorrowful step. The voice, the
appearance, and the essence of the elements entered
into his occult labour and increased it with sounds,
with lines, with colours, with movements, with innu-
merable mysteries. Fire, air, earth, and water worked
in collaboration at the sacred poem, pervaded the
sum of its doctrine, warmed it, modified and watered
it, covered it with leaves and flowers. . . . Open this
Christian book and imagine the statue of a Greek

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 341

god on the other side. Do you not see shadow or
light break from the one as from the other, the flash
or the wind of the sky? "

Then she began to feel that her own life was
drifting into the all-absorbing work, that her own
soul was entering drop by drop into the person of the
drama, that her aspects, her attitudes, her gestures,
and her accents were contributing to the formation
of the figure of the heroine " living beyond life."
She became the prey of those voracious eyes which
she sometimes found fixed upon her with intolerable
violence. She became acquainted with another man-
ner of being possessed. It seemed to her that she
was dissolving into her elements in the fire of that
intellect, only to be afterwards more perfectly re-
composed according to the necessities of a heroism
that was to dominate destiny. Her secret task
being in harmony with the virtue of the life which
was being created, she was attracted by the desire
of producing no discord between herself and the
image which was to be like her. Art seconded the
apparition of the new feeling she had prepared.

Nevertheless, she suffered from the image that
threw its shadow on the reality of renunciation and
sorrow. A strange ambiguity was born of the
resemblance between the image and her own being.
Sometimes it seemed to her that her hidden effort
was preparing her for her success on the stage, and
not for the conquest of her conscience over the
darkness of instinct. It seemed to her sometimes
that she was losing her human sincerity, and was
only in the state of fictitious concentration in which
she was wont to put herself while studying the

342 THE FLAME OF LIFE

character of the tragic part she was to incarnate.
Thus she became acquainted with another torment.
She shut and contracted her soul under his pene-
trating glance as if to prevent his piercing her and
robbing her of her secret life. She grew to be terri-
fied of the Seer. " He will read in my soul the
silent words which he will put on the lips of his crea-
tion, and I shall only pronounce them on the stage
under the mask." She felt her spontaneity being
arrested. She underwent strange bewilderments and
discouragements, whence she would rise at times with
an impetuous need of breaking that spell, of making
herself different, of separating herself from that image
which was to be like her, of marring those lines of
beauty that imprisoned her and forced her to a deter-
mined sacrifice. — Was there not also a virgin thirst-
ing with love and yearning for joy in the tragedy, a
virgin in whom a great spirit recognised the living
apparition of his lightest dream, the Victory so often
invoked that was to crown his life? And was there
not also a loving woman no longer young, whose one
foot was already in the shadow, and who had but a
short step to take in order to disappear? — More than
once she was tempted to contradict that resignation
by some violent act.

Then she would tremble at the possibility of once
more falling into the horror, of being once more
seized by the horrible fury, grasped by the insidi-
ous beast that was not killed yet, but was liv-
ing and watching in the dark for the right moment
to spring upon her. Like a penitent, she increased
her fervour because of the danger, hardened her dis-
cipline, sharpened her vigilance; she repeated with

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 343

a kind of intoxication the act of supreme abandon-
ment that had risen from the depths of her misery
before the purifying fire. ..." You must have all ;
I shall rest content with seeing you live, with seeing
your joy. And do with me what you will."

Then he loved her for the unexpected visions she
brought him, for the mysterious sense of inner events
that she communicated to him by her vicissitudes
of expression. It astonished him to find that the
lines of a face, the movements of a human body
could so powerfully touch and fertilise the intellect.
He shuddered and turned pale one day on seeing
her enter the room with her silent step, her face
fixed in an extraordinarily calm sorrow, as if she were
coming from the depths of wisdom whence all human
agitations seem a play of the wind in the dust of
an endless road.

" Ah, I have created you, I have created you ! " he
cried, deluded by the intensity of the hallucination,
thinking he saw his heroine herself standing on
a threshold of the distant room occupied by the
treasures taken from the tombs of the Atrides.
" Stop a moment ! Do not move your eyelids I
Keep your eyes motionless like two stones ! You
are blind. And you see all that others do not see.
And nothing can be hidden from you. And here in
this room the man you love has revealed his love to
another, who is still trembling at the revelation. And
they are still here, and their hands have not long been
parted, and their love is in the air. And the room is'
full of funeral treasures, and on two tables are dis-
posed the riches that covered the bodies of Agamem-
non and Cassandra. There are the chests full of

344 THE FLAME OF LIFE

necklaces, and here are the vases full of ashes, and
the balcony is open looking out to the plain of Argos
and the distant mountains. And it is sunset, and all
this terrible gold gleams in the shadow. Do you
understand ? You are there on the threshold, led by
the Nurse. You are blind, and nothing is unknown
to you. Stop a moment ! "

He was speaking in the sudden fever of invention.
The scene appeared and disappeared before him,
submerged in a torrent of poetry.

" What will you do? What will you say? "

The actress felt a chill in the roots of her hair.
Her soul vibrated with sonorous strength to the
limits of her body. She became bhnd and pro-
phetic. The cloud of tragedy descended and stopped
above her head.

"What will you say? You will call them. You
will call one and the other by name in the silence full
of great royal spoils."

The actress could hear the throb of her blood, her
voice was to resound in the silence of thousands of
years from the distances of time. It was to reawaken
the ancient sorrow of men and heroes.

" You will take their hands and you will feel their
two lives stretching towards each other with all their
strength and gaze fixedly at each other across your
motionless sorrow, as if it were a crystal about to
break."

The blindness of immortal statues was in her eyes.
She saw herself sculptured in the great silence, and
felt the quiver of the dumb crowd, seized at the heart
by the sublime power of the attitude.

"And then, and then?"

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 345

The Life-giver rushed towards her as if he would
have struck her to draw sparks from her.

" You must call Cassandra from her sleep, you
must feel her ashes live once more in your hands,
she must be present in your vision. Will you do it?
Do you understand? Your living soul must touch
the ancient soul and mingle with it into one only
soul and one only misfortune, so that the error of
time seems destroyed and that unity of life to which
I tend by the effort of my art be made manifest.
Cassandra is in you and you are in her. Have you
not loved her? Do you not also love the daughter
of Priam? Who that has once heard it will ever for-
get, who will ever forget the sound of your voice and
the convulsion of your lips at the first cry of the
prophetic fury. . . . ' O Earth ! O Apollo ! ' I can
see you again, deaf and dumb on your car, with
that aspect on your face of a wild beast newly cap-
tured. Ah, but among so many terrible cries there
were some infinitely soft, sad tones. The old men
compared you to ' the tawny nightingale.' How are
they.' How are they? — the words when you re-
member your beautiful river? And when the old
men question you concerning the love of the god, do
you not remember them? "

The tragic actress throbbed as if the breath of the
god were again invading her. She had become an
ardent ductile matter subject to all the animations of
the poet.

" Do you not remember them? "

" O espousals, espousals of Paris fatal to the dear
ones ! O you, paternal waters of Scamandros, then
on your shores my youth fed upon you ! "

346 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Ah, divine one ! Your melody does not let one
forget the syllables of ^schylus. I remember. The
soul of the crowd, gripped by the ' lamentation of
discordant sounds,' unbent and was blessed by that
melodious sigh, and each of us received the vision of
her distant years and her innocent bliss. You can
say, ' I have been Cassandra.' In speaking of her
you will remember an anterior life. . . . Her mask of
gold shall be in your hands. . . ."

He seized her hands, unconsciously torturing them.
She felt no pain. Both were intent on the sparks
generated by their mingled forces ; one same electric
vibration ran along their nerves.

" You are there, close to the spoil of the enslaved
princess, and you are feeling her mask. . . . What
will you say? "

They seemed in the pause to be waiting for the
flash to illumine them. The eyes of the actress
became once more motionless ; their blindness filled
them once more. Her whole face became as marble.
Instinctively the Life-giver left her hands free, and
they sketched the gesture of feeling for the sepulchral
gold. In a voice that created the tangible form she
said : —

" How large her mouth is !"

He throbbed with almost fearful suspense.

"You see her, then?"

She remained silent with her intent, sightless
eyes.

" I too can see her. It is large, the horrible effort
of divination had dilated it ; she cried out, cursed, and
lamented ceaselessly. Can you imagine her mouth in
silence? "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 347

Slowly, still in the same attitude, almost in ecstasy,
she said : —

" How wonderful is her silence !"

She seemed to be repeating words suggested to
her by some mysterious genii ; while it seemed to the
poet as he heard them that he himself had been
about to utter them. A deep tremor shook him as
if he had been assisting at a miracle.

"And her eyes?" he asked, trembling. "What
colour do you think her eyes were? "

She did not answer.

The marble lines of her face changed as if a slight
wave of suffering had passed there. A furrow carved
itself between her eyebrows.

" Black, perhaps," he added softly.

She spoke.

" They were not black, but they seemed so because
in the prophetic ardour the pupils were so dilated
that they swallowed up the iris. . . ."

She stopped as if her breath were about to fail her.
A thin veil of moisture was spreading over her fore-
head. Stelio gazed at her, silent and very pale ; and
the interval was filled by the deep throbs of his
heart.

" In the pauses," continued the revealer, with pain-
ful slowness, when she had wiped the foam from her
livid lips, " her eyes were sweet and sad as two
violets."

She stopped again, breathless, with the appearance
of one who dreams and suffers in the dream. Her
mouth seemed parched, her temples were wet.

" Thus they must have been before they were closed
for ever."

348 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Henceforth he was entirely carried away by the
lyric whirlwind ; he breathed only in the inflamed
ether of his poetry. The musical sentiment that
had generated the drama determined itself in the
forms of the Prelude he was composing. On the
sonorous fulcrum the tragedy found its perfect bal-
ance between the two forces that were to animate it,
the power of the stage and the power of the orchestra.
A motive of extraordinary vigour marked in the sym-
phonic ocean the apparition of the ancient Fate.

"You will perform the Agamemnon in the new
theatre, the Antigone, and lastly the Victory of Man.
My tragedy is a battle : it celebrates the renovation
of the Drama, with the discomfiture of the monstrous
will that dragged down the races of Labdacus and
Atreus. It opens with the moan af an ancient victim,
and closes with a cry of light."

Revived by the melody, the Moyra lived before
him again in visible shape such as she appeared be-
fore the wild eyes of the Coefore, by the mound of
the slaughtered king.

" Do you remember," he said to the actress, in
order to signify that violent presence, " do you re-
member the decapitation of Marcus Crassus in Plu-
tarch's narration? One day I proposed drawing from
it an episode for the stage. Under the royal tent
the Armenian, Artavasdes, is entertaining Orodes, the
king of the Parthians, at a great banquet, and the cap-
tains sit drinking round the table; and the spirit of
Dionysius invades those barbarians, who are not in-
sensible to the power of rhythm, because a performer
of tragedies, called Jason Trallianus, is singing the
adventures of Agave in the Bacchaittes of Euripides.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 349

They have not yet risen from the table when Sillaces
enters, bearing the head of Crassus, and having
saluted the king, throws it bleeding in their midst.
A great cry of joy arises from the Parthians. Then
Jason gives the garments of Pentheus to one of the
chorus, while he, seizing the head of Crassus, and
full of the Dionysian fury, sings these verses : —

" ' Portiamo dai monti

alle case un' edera tagliata di recente
insigne preda. . .' ^

" And the chorus leaps with joy, and as Agave tells
them how she had caught that lion cub without a
net, the chorus asks, Who had wounded him first,
and Agave answers, —

" ' Mio h il vanto. . . .' >

" But Pomaxoethres, who had -been still supping,
starts to his feet and tears the head from the hands of
the furious actor, crying out that it is he, rather than
Jason, who should say those words, because he is the
slayer of the Roman. Do you feel the portentous
beauty of the scene? — the fierce face of life suddenly
flashes by the side of the waxen mask of metal, the
odour of human blood excites the rhythmic fury of
the chorus, a death-bringing arm tears asunder the
veils of the tragic fiction. This unusual, astonishing
epilogue closing the expedition of Crassus fills me
with enthusiasm. Well, the eruption of the ancient
Moyra in my modern tragedy is like the sudden ar-
rival of Sillaces at the banquet of the Armenian. At

1 " Let us take home from the hills the

newly cut ivy as an illustrious
spoil. . . ."

2 " Mine is the boast. . . ."

3 so THE FLAME OF LIFE

the beginning, on the loggia that guards the Cyclopic
walls and the gate of the hons, the virgin has in her
hands the book of the Tragedians, and is reading the
lamentation of Antigone. The fatal divinity is en-
closed in the book, dominating the images of pain and
crime. But those images are called up by the living
words ; and close to the pure peplum of the Theban
martyr glows the insidious crimson stretched out by
Clytemnestra, and the Heroes of the Orestidae seem
to recommence a new life while a man explores their
tombs in the Agora. They seem to move at the
back of the stage like shadows, impelled by obscure
agitation ; they seem to bend down Hstening to the
dialogues, to poison the air with their breath. Sud-
denly a cry is heard announcing the great event.
Here comes the man who has uncovered the tombs
and has seen the face of the Atridae. Here he comes
irradiated by the wonders of death and of that gold.
He stands there, hke one delirious. Their souls are
trembling. Is the fable rising from the soil to delude
men once more? Their souls are anxious and trem-
bling. Suddenly the power of the curse and ruin
rushes upon them and seizes them to drag them
towards infamous crimes ; the desperate struggle
begins. The tragedy no longer wears its motionless
mask, but shows its naked face ; and the book that
the unconscious virgin was reading can no longer be
re-opened without a shudder, because their souls have
felt that that distant horror has become living and
present, and that they are breathing and raving in
it, as in an inevitable reality. The Past is in action.
The illusion of Time has fallen. Life is one."
The very greatness of his conception filled him

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 351

with dismay. At times he would look anxiously
about him, examine the horizon, question dumb
things as if he were calling for help or hoping for a
message. He would lie in silence for a long time, his
eyes shut, waiting.

" I must raise this enormous mass at one stroke
before the eyes of the multitude. In this, you see,
lies the difficulty of my prelude. This first effort is
the greatest that my work will demand of me. At
the same time I must call my world forth from
nothing and place the manifold soul in the musical
state most apt to receive the unusual revelation.
The orchestra must produce this miracle. ' Art, like
magic, is practical metaphysics,' Daniele Glauro
says. And he is right."

He would sometimes come to the house of his
friend panting and agitated as if pursued by Erinnys.
She never asked him questions, but her whole person
would soothe the unquiet one.

" I was afraid," he said one day, smiling, — " afraid
of being suffocated. . . . You beUeve I am a little
mad, do you not? Do you remember that stormy
evening when I returned from the Lido? How sweet
you were, Fosca ! Not long before on the Bridge of
Rialto I, had found a Motive. I had translated the
words of the element into notes. . . . Do you know
what a Motive is? It is a small spring that may give
birth to a flock of streams, a small seed that may give
birth to a wreath of forests, a small spark that may
give birth to an endless chain of conflagrations: a
nucleus producing infinite strength. There is no
more powerful thing in the world of ideal origins, nor
more virtuous organ of generation ; and there is no

352 THE FLAME OF LIFE

greater joy for an active mind than that which may
be given him by the developments of that energy. . . .
Joy, yes, but also terror sometimes, my friend."

He laughed his ingenuous laugh. The manner in
which he spoke of these things was a symptom of the
extraordinary faculty which likened his spirit to that
of the primitive transfigurations of nature. There
was a deep analogy between the spontaneous forma-
tion of myths and his instinctive necessity of animat-
ing all that fell under his senses.

" A little while ago I had begun developing the
Motive of that stormy evening, which I shall call the
Wind-bags of ^Eolus. Here it is. It is this."

He went to the keyboard and struck a few notes
with one hand.

" No more than this, but you cannot imagine the
generating force of these few notes. A storm of
music has arisen from them, and I have not been able
to master it. ... I have been overcome, suffocated,
forced to fly."

He laughed again, but his soul was swaying Uke
the sea.

" The Wind-bags of Prince .^olus, opened by the
companions of Ulysses. Do you remember it? The
imprisoned winds break forth and push the ship back.
Man trembled with fear."

But his soul could find no rest, and nothing could
free it of its agitated workings. And he kissed the
hands of his friend, and walked away from her and
wandered about the room, stopping before the in-
strument that Donatella had touched in singing
Claudio's melody; restlessly he went to the win-
dow, saw the leafless garden, the beautiful solitary

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 353

clouds, the sacred towers. His aspiration went out
to the musical creature who was to sing his hymns
at the summit of the tragic symphonies.
In a low limpid voice the woman said : —
" If only Donatella were here with us ! "
He turned, took a few steps towards her, and looked
at her fixedly, silently. She smiled her slight con-
cealing smile on seeing him so near to her and yet
so far away. She felt that he loved no one at that
moment: not her and not Donatella; but that he
considered them both as pure instruments of his art,
as forces to be used, " bows to be drawn." He was
burning in his own poetry, and she was there with her
poor wounded heart, with her secret torture and her
silent prayer, intent on nothing but the preparation
of her sacrifice, ready to pass away beyond love and
life as the heroine of the future drama.

"Ah, what is it that could draw you near me, that
could throw you on my faithful heart, quivering with
another anguish ? " she thought, seeing him estranged
and lost in his dream. " A great sorrow perhaps, a
sudden blow, a cruel disappointment, an irreparable
evil."

There returned to her memory the verse of Gaspara
Stama which he had praised : —

" Vivere ardendo e non sentire il male ! "

And she remembered his sudden pallor when she
had stopped in the path between the two walls, and
had declared her first titles of nobility in the struggle
to live.

" Ah, if only one day you could be brought to feel
the value of a devotion such as mine, of a servitude

23

354 THE FLAME OF LIFE

such as the one I offer you, if you were truly to need
me one day, and, discouraged, you should draw a new
faith from me, and weary, you should draw your
strength from me ! "

She was reduced to invoking sorrow to strengthen
her hope and while saying to herself " if only one
day ! " . . . the sense occupied her, the sense of time
that flies, the sense of the flame that is consuming
itself, of the body that is fading, of the infinite things
that wear out and perish. Henceforth each day must
dig its mark in her face, discolour her lips, destroy
her hair ; henceforth each day was in the service of
old age, would hasten the work of destruction in her
miserable flesh. " What then? "

Once more she recognised that it was desire, un-
conquerable desire, that forged all the illusions and
all the hopes which seemed to help her in accom-
plishing "what even love cannot do."

She recognised that every effort to root it out
would be vain, and, discouraged, she saw the artifice
into which her soul had been forced by her will drop
away in an instant. With secret shame she felt how
miserably she resembled at that moment the actress
who lays aside her mask on coming away from the
stage. In pronouncing those words that had inter-
rupted the silence and expressed an unreal regret
with the accents of sincerity, had she not been like
one reciting a part? But she had suffered, but she
had wrung her heart, but she had extracted that
sweetness from the bitterness of her blood. What
then?

She recognised that the torturing constraint of
those days had not succeeded in creating in her even

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 355

a symptom of the new feeling by which love was to be
made sublime. She was like those gardeners who
with their shears have given an artificial shape to
tenacious plants which still preserve their powerful
trunk and all their roots intact, and outrun the de-
sign with rapid expansion, if the work of the shears
round their branches be not assiduous. Her effort
was therefore as useless as it was painful, since it only
had an outward efficacy, leaving her depths un-
changed; on the contrary even increasing there the
intensity of her evil by compressing it. Her secret
task, therefore, was reduced to a constant dissimula-
tion. Was it worth while living for this?

She could not and would not go on living except
on condition of at last finding her harmony. But the
experience of those days had done nothing beyond
making the discord greater between her goodness
and her desire, had only succeeded in sharpening
her restlessness and her sadness, or in losing itself
entirely in the whirl of the creative soul that was at-
tracting her to mould her like a plastic substance.
She was indeed so far removed from the harmony
she sought that she had at one moment felt her
spontaneity ceasing and her sincerity clouding itself;
a dull ferment of rebellion swelling her , heart and a
threatened return of the feared madness.

Was it not the same woman sitting in shadow
among the cushions of the divan who had said to
her friend one evening in October burnt up by the
poison, " It is necessary ; I must die"? Was it not
the same woman, — was it not the same woman who
had risen thence when he had prodded her and had
sprung upon him as if to devour him?

356 THE FLAME OF LIFE

If the young, man's turbid desire had then caused
her to suffer cruelly, she now suffered still more
cruelly in observing that his ardour had quieted itself
and that a kind of reserve had taken its place in her
friend, — a kind of reserve that was sometimes im-
patient of the gentlest caress. She was ashamed of
her regret, seeing that he was possessed by his idea
and intent on concentrating all his energies on his men-
tal effort alone. But a dark rancour would master
her of an evening when he took his leave of her, and
blind suspicions at night tormented her sleepless soul.

She yielded to the nightly evil. Throbbing and
feverish in the darkness of a gondola cabin, she
wandered along the canal, hesitated before giving
the oarsman the name of a distant Rio, tried to turn
back, sobbed, suffocated over her wound, felt her
pain becoming intolerable, inclined herself towards the
lethal fascination of the water, conversed with death,
then gave herself up to her misery. She watched
the house of her friend. She remained there during
long hours in fearful and useless expectation.

They were her worst agonies those which she en-
dured in that melancholy Rio della Panada that ends
in a bridge under which the mortuary island of San
Michele was visible in the open lagoon. The old
Gothic palace at the corner of San Canciano was
Hke a suspended ruin that must all at once crash
down upon her and bury her. The black peate went
to pieces along the corroded walls, uncovered by the
low tide, exhaling the odour of dissolution ; and once
she heard the little birds awakening at dawn in the
garden of the Poor Clares.

" To go away ! " The necessity of the act came

upon her, suddenly urgent. She had already told her
friend on one memorable day: " Now it seems to me
that there is only one thing I can do : go away, dis-
appear, and leave you free with your fate. This
thing I can do which even love could not do."
Henceforth delay was no longer possible ; she must
break through every hesitation ; she must emerge at
last from that kind of fatal immobility of events, in
which she had been agitated for so long between life
and death, as if she had fallen into the dumb troubled
water, close to the sepulchral island, and were strug-
gling there in anguish, feeling the soft sand give way
beneath her feet, ever believing herself to be swal-
lowed up, ever having before her eyes the level
stretch of that great calm, and never drowning. . . .
Nothing indeed had happened, nothing was hap-
pening. Since that October dawn their outward life
had continued unchanged. No word had been pro-
nounced that might have established an end, that
could point to an interruption. It almost seemed as
if the sweet promise of the visit to the Euganean hills
were about to be kept, as the time for the blossoming
of the peach-trees drew nearer. Nevertheless, she
felt at that moment the absolute impossibility of going
on living as she was then living by the side of her
beloved. It was a definite and unquestionable feeling,
like the sensation of one who finds himself in a burn-
ing house, of one who is stopped on a mountain-side
by a chasm, or of one who in the desert has drunk of
the last drop from his gourd. There was in her
something that was fully accomplished as in the tree
that has given forth all its fruit, as in the field where
the harvest has been reaped, as in the current that has

358 THE FLAME OF LIFE

reached the sea. Her inner necessity was as the
necessity of natural facts, of tides, seasons, and celes-
tial vicissitudes ; she accepted it without examination.

And her courage revived, her soul grew stronger,
her activity reawakened, the virile qualities of the
leader rose up in her once more. In a very short
time she settled her tour, reassembled her people,
fixed the date of her departure. " You must go and
work down there among the barbarians beyond the
ocean," she told herself harshly. " You must still go
on wandering from town to town, from hotel to hotel,
from theatre to theatre, and every night you will raise
a howl in the crowd that pays you ; you will earn
much money, you will come back laden with gold
and with wisdom unless it so happens that you remain
crushed by chance under a wheel at a crossing of the
roads some foggy day.

" Who knows ! " she added. " From whom have
you received the order to go away ? From some one
who is within you, deep, deep within you, and who
sees that which you cannot see, like the blind woman
in the tragedy. Who knows whether down there on
one of those great peaceful rivers your soul will not
find its harmony, and your hps will not learn that
smile which they have so often attempted in vain !
Perhaps you will discover a few white hairs and that
smile in your mirror at the same time. Go in peace."

And she began preparing her viaticum for her
journey.

From time to time the breath of the premature
season seemed to be passing in the February sky.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 359

"Don't you feel the spring?" said Stelio to his
friend, and his nostrils quivered.

She threw herself back a little, feeling that her
heart was melting, and offered her face to the sky,
which was full of scattered vapours like slight feathers.
The hoot of a siren prolonged itself in the pale estu-
ary, becoming little by little as sweet as a flute-note.
It seemed to the woman that something had escaped
from her inmost heart and faded away in the distance
with that sound like a pain that Httle by little is
changing into a memory.

She replied :

" It has arrived at the Tre Porti."

Once more they wandered at random along the
lagoon on the water which was as familiar to their
dream as the web to the weaver.

" Did you say * to the Tre Porti'? " exclaimed the
young man, quickly, as if some spirit were awaking in
him. " Precisely there in the neighbourhood of the
low beach, when the moon goes down, the sailors take
the wind prisoner and bring it in chains to Dardi
Seguso. One day I will tell you the story of the
Archorgan."

She smiled at the mysterious way in which he had
alluded to the mariners' act.

" Which story? " she said, yielding to the enchant-
ment; " and how does Seguso come into it? Is it the
master glazier? " -

" Yes ; but an ancient one, who knew Greek and
Latin, music and architecture ; who was admitted to
the Academy of the Pellegrini; who had his gardens
in Murano, and was often invited to supper by
Vecellio in his house on the Contrada dei Biri ; who

36o THE FLAME OF LIFE

was the friend of Bernado Capello, of Jacopo Zane
and other Petrarchian patricians. It was in the house
of Caterino Zeno that he saw the famous organ
built for Matthias Corvinus King of the Hunga-
rians, and it was there that his fine idea came to
him, in the course of a dispute with that Agostino
Amadi who had succeeded in picking up for his
collection of instruments a real Greek lyre, a great
Lesbian heptachord adorned with gold and ivory. . . .
Ah, do you imagine that relic of the school of Mity-
lene brought to Venice by a galley that in passing
through the waters of Santa Maura, caught and
dragged the dead body of Sappho as far as Mala-
mocco like a bundle of dead grass? But this is
another story."

Once more the wandering woman seemed to
recover her youth, and to smile with the surprise of a
child who is being shown a picture-book. What
marvellous stories, what delightful inventions, had not
the Image-maker found for her on the water in the
slowness of that hour ! How many enchantments he
had composed for her to the rhythm of the oar with
those words of his that made everything visible !
How many times, sitting by his side in the light boat,
she had tasted of that kind of lucid slumber in which
all agitations were interrupted, and only the visions
of poetry were allowed to live on !

" Tell it me," she begged ; and she would have
added, " It will be the last," but refrained because
she had as yet concealed her resolution from her
friend.

He laughed.

" Ah, you are as greedy for stories as Sophia."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 361

At that name, as at the name of spring, she felt her
whole heart melting and the cruelty of her lot passing
through her soul, and her whole being turning to the
things she had lost.

" Look," he said, pointing to the silent level of the
lagoon, creased here and there by the passage of a
breeze. " Do not those infinite lines of silence aspire
to become music?"

The islands stood lightly on the afternoon illusion
of the estuary as the lightest clouds hung from the
sky. The long thin streaks of land seemed as vain
as the black gatherings of refuse that sometimes
float in zones on the calm waves. In the distance
Torcello, Burano, Mazzorbo, San Francesco del De-
serto did not seem like real landing-places, but more
like submerged regions, the summits of which pierced
the level of the water like the protruding parts of
vessels that have gone to the bottom. The traces of
man were faint indeed in that level solitude, like
letters corroded by time in ancient inscriptions.

" Well, then, the master glazier, hearing the famous
organ of Matthias Corvinus praised in the house of
Zeno, cried : ' Corpo di Baco ! They shall see what
organ I cari make with my tube, my liquid Muse
of song. I will make the god of organs. Dant
sonitum glaucce per stagna loquacia canncs. . . .
The water of the lagoon shall give forth its sound
and the posts and the stones shall sing too. Mu/-
tisonum silentium. . . . They shall see ! Corpo di
Diana ! ' All who were present laughed, except
Giulia da Ponte, who did not laugh because her teeth
were dark. And Sansovino straightway began a
dissertation on hydraulic organs. But the boaster

362 THE FLAME OF LIFE

before taking his leave invited the company to hear
his new music on the day of the Sensa and promised
that the Doge and his Bucintoro would stop to Usten
in the middle of the lagoon. That night a rumour
spread through Venice that Dardi Seguso had lost
his reason. And the Council, which was extremely
careful of its glaziers, sent a messenger for news to
Murano. The messenger found the artist with his
mistress Perdilanza del Mido, who was caressing him
anxiously and in dismay because it had seemed to
her that he was raving. The master, after having
looked at him with flaming eyes, burst into a mighty
laugh that reassured him more than any words, and
calmly ordered him to refer to the Council that by
the day of the Sensa Venice, besides San Marco, the
Canalazzo and the Palace of the Doges would possess
another wonder; and the day after he appUed for
leave to take possession of one of the five little
islands round Murano like the satellites of a planet,
that have disappeared to-day, or are changed into
sand-banks. After having explored the waters about
Tem6dia, Trenc6re, Galbaia, Mortesina, and la Fo-
l^ga, he chose Trem6dia as one chooses a bride, and
Perdilanza del Mido entered into great affliction. . . .
Look, Fosca, we are perhaps passing now upon the
memory of Tremodia. The pipes of the organ are
buried in the mud, but they cannot know decay.
They were seven thousand. We are passing over
the ruins of a singing forest of glass. How deHcate
the seaweeds are here ! "

He was bending over the beautiful waters, and she
was bending over them too on the other side. The
ribbons, the feathers, the velvet, the other delicate

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 363

substances that made up the head-gear of la Fosca-
rina mingled with sober art, her eyes and the blue
shadows that encircled them, the very smile with
which she made an enchanting grace of her waning
beauty, the bunch of jonquils that was fixed in the
prow in place of the lantern, the rare imaginings of the
Life-giver, the dream-names of the vanished islands,
the blue appearing and disappearing in the snowy mist,
the faint cries coming now and then from a flock of
invisible birds, — all the most delicate things seemed
conquered by the play of those transient apparitions,
by the colour of the salt locks that lived in the
vicissitudes of the tide, coiling and turning as if at an
alternating caress. Two mingled miracles seemed
to colour them. Green as the grain fresh growing in
the furrow, tawny as the leaf dying on the young oak,
and green and tawny in their innumerable variations
as of plants that both live and die, they gave the
impression of an ambiguous season reigning exclu-
sively in the bed of the lagoon. The light which
illumined them through the clear water lost none of
its strength ; while its mystery was increased so that
there lurked in their languor a memory of their obe-
dience to the moon's attraction.

" Why, then, did Perdilanza enter into great afflic-
tion?" asked the woman, still bending on the beau-
tiful waters.

" Because her name had been conquered in the
mouth and in the soul of her lover by the name of
Trem6dia, which he uttered passionately, and because
the island was the only place to which she might not
follow him. There he had constructed his new works,
and he would remain there a great part of the day

364 THE FLAME OE LIFE

and nearly the whole night, assisted by his workmen,
whom he had bound by an oath of silence sworn at
the altar. The Council, having given orders that the
master should be provided with all that might be
needful for his terrible work, condemned him to de-
capitation, in case the same work should turn out
inferior to his pride. Then Dardi tied a scarlet thread
round his bare neck."

La Foscarina straightened herself to arrange her-
self more comfortably. She was in a dream. She
was losing herself as in the labyrinth, between the
apparitions at the bottom of the lagoon and those of
the story, and she was beginning to feel the same
anxiety as reality mingled with the phantoms in
her spirit. He seemed to be speaking of himself in
those strange images, as when in the last hour of the
September twilight he had declared to her the myth
of the pomegranate ; and the name of the imaginary
woman began precisely with the first two syllables
of the name he used to give her then ! Did he wish
to signify something under the veil of his story?
And what then? And why did it please him, in
the neighbourhood of the place where she had been
seized by that horrible laughter to call up by that
phantasy the memory of the broken cup? — The en-
chantment was broken, oblivion vanished. By trying
to understand, she herself fashioned with that dream-
matter an instrument of torture. She seemed to for-
get that her friend was unconscious of her coming
farewell. She looked at him, recognised in his face
the intellectual joy that always shone in him like
something sharp and adamantine. Instinctively she
said to herself, " I am going; do not wound me ! "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 365

" Zorzi, what is that white thing floating there under
that wall? " he asked the boatman behind him.

They were coasting by Murano. The garden walls
appeared and the tops of the laurel shrubs ; the black
smoke of the furnaces floated like mourning raiments
hanging in the silvery air.

Then, with sudden horror, the actress saw the dis-
tant port where the great throbbing ship was waiting
for her, saw the perpetual cloud on the brutal city of
the thousand and thousand roads, with its mountains
of coal, its forests of masts, its monstrous arms. She
heard the thud of sledge-hammers, the creaking of
the cranes, the panting of the engines, the vast moan
of the iron under the burning darkness.

" It is a dead dog," said the oarsman.

A swollen, yellowish carcass was floating under the
red brick wall in the cracks of which grasses and
flowers trembled that were children of ruin and wind.

" Row," cried Stelio, full of disgust.

The woman closed her eyes. The boat leaped un-
der the effort of the oars, gliding swiftly on the milky
water ; the sky had become quite white ; an equally
diffused splendour reigned on the estuary. Fisher-
men's voices came from a barge laden with green
stuff. A twittering of sparrows came from San
Giacomo di Palude. A siren screeched in the dis-
tance.

" And then the man with the scarlet thread? . . ."
la Foscarina asked, anxious to hear the remainder
because she wanted to understand.

" Often he felt his head shaking on his shoulders,"
Stelio continued, laughing. " He was obliged to blow
tubes that were as thick as the trunks of trees, and

366 THE FLAME OF LIFE

he had to do it with the art of a hving mouth, not
with the strength of a bellows, and at a single breath,
and without interruptions. Imagine ! The lungs of
a Cyclops would not have been sufficient. Ah, one
day I shall tell the ardour of that life placed between
the executioner's axe and the necessity of a miracle,
in communion with the elements. He had fire, earth,
and water, but air was missing, the motion of air.
Meanwhile the Ten sent him a red-haired man to bid
him good-day every morning: you know? that red-
haired man with his cap on his eyes, who stands em-
bracing the column in the Adoration of the Magi by
the second Bonifazio. After infinite attempts -a
good idea came to Dardi. That day he conversed
with the Priscianese, under the laurels of the palace,
of ^olus and his twelve sons and of the landing of
the Laertian on the western island. He re-read
Homer, Virgil, and Ovid in Aldo's beautiful types.
Then he went and sought a wizard who had the
fame of being able to cast a spell on the winds
in favour of long navigations. ' Mi gavaria bisogno
de un venteselo ne tropo forte ne tropo fiapo docile
da podermelo manipolar come che vogio mi, un
venteselo che me serva per supiar certi veri che go
in testa. . . . Lenius aspirans aura secunda venit. . . .
M' astu capio, vechio?' "^

The story-teller burst into a ringing laugh, because
he could see the scene with all its details in a house
in the Calle de la Testa at San Zanepolo, where the

^ " I am in need of a little wind, neither too strong nor too feeble,
and quite docile, that I could manage as I please ; a little wind with
which to blow some glass which I have in my head. . . . Lenius
aspirans aura secunda venit. . . . Have you understood me, old man ? "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE . 367

Schiavone lived with his daughter Cornelia Schivo-
netta, honorata cortegiana (piezo so pare scudi 2).^

" What is the matter with him ? Is he going mad ? "
thought the two boatmen, on hearing him speak their
dialect, mingled with obscure words.

La Foscarina tried to second his gaiety, but she
was suffering from his youthful laughter as once
before in the mazes of the labyrinth.

" The story is long," he added ; " one day I shall
do something with it, but I am keeping it for some
idle time. . . . Imagine ! the Schiavone works the
spell. Every night Dardi sends his boatman to the
Tre Porti to lay the trap for the Little Wind. At
last one night not long before dawn, while the moon
is setting they surprise it sleeping on a sand-bank in
the midst of a flock of tired swallows brought hither
by it. . . . It is lying there prostrate, sleeping as
lightly as a child in the aroma of the sea-salt, almost
entirely covered by the numberless forked tails.
The rising tide favours its sleep ; the black and white
travellers flutter all over it, wearied by their long
flight. . . ."

" How pretty ! " exclaimed the woman at the fresh
picture. " Where have you seen it? "

" And here begins the grace of the fable : they
seize it, bind it with willows, take it on board, and
sail towards Tremidia. The boat is invaded by the
swallows that will not abandon their leader."

Stelio stopped, because the details of the adven-
ture were thronging to his imagination in such num-
bers that he did not know which of them to choose.
But he listened to a song that was in the air coming

1 An honourable courtesan (at the house of her father, two crowns).

368 THE FLAME OF LIFE

from the direction of San Francesco del Deserto.
They could discern the slightly inclined belfry of
Burano, and behind the island of thread the belfry of
Torcello in its solitary splendour.

" And then," urged his companion.

" I can say no more, Fosca ; I know too many
things. . . . Imagine that Dardi falls in love with
his prisoner. ... Its name is Ornitio because it is
the leader of migrating birds. A continual twitter of
swallows is about Tremodia; the nests hang from
the posts and the shafts of the scaffolding that sur-
rounds the work! Sometimes a wing is burnt by
the flame of the furnace when Ornitio blows into the
iron, making a hght luminous column with the in-
candescent paste. Ah, but what trouble had to be
gone through before it could be tamed and taught
its work ! The Lord of the Flame began by talking
Latin to it and reciting to it some of Virgil's poetry,
thinking to be understood. But the blue-haired
Ornitio spoke Greek, of course, with a slightly hissing
accent. ... It knew two of Sapho's odes by heart
unknown to classical scholars that it had brought one
spring day from Mitylene to Chio ; and in breathing
through the unequal tubes, it remembered the pipe
of Pan . . . One day I will tell you all these things."

" And what did it live on ? "

" On pollen and salt. "

" And who brought it this food?"

" No one. It was sufficient for it to breathe the
pollen and the salt that are diffused in the air."

" And did it not try to escape? "

" Always. But Dardi used infinite precautions, like
the lover he was. "

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 369

" And did Ornitio return his love ? "

" Yes, it began to return his love because it liked
the scarlet thread that the master always wore round
his bare neck. "

"And Perdilanza?"

" She languished in her sorrow, forsaken. Some
day I will tell you. ... I will go one summer on the
seashore of Palestrina to compose this fable for you
by the golden sand."

" But how does it end? "

" The miracle takes place ; the arch-organ is built
in Tremodia with its seven thousand glass pipes, like
one of those congealed forests that Ornitio, inclined
to magnify its journeys, declared it had seen in the
country of the Iporborrei. And on the day of the
Sensa, the Serenissimo, between the Patriarch and the
Archbishop of Spalatro goes forth upon the harbour
of San Marco in the Bucintoro. Ornitio believes it
must be the Cronide returning in triumph, so great is
the pomp. The cataracts are let loose round Tremo-
dia, and animated by the eternal silence of the lagoon,
the gigantic instrument, at the magic touch of the
new musician, spreads a wave of harmonies, so vast
that it reaches the mainland and travels down the
Adriatic The Bucintoro .stops because its forty oars
have suddenly dropped along its sides like wounded
wings, abandoned on their rowlocks by the bewildered
crew. But suddenly the wave breaks, dwindles to a
few discordant sounds, hesitates, and melts away.
Dardi suddenly feels the instrument growing dumb
under his hands as if its soul had failed it, — as if
some strange force working in its depths had ravaged
the prodigious instrument. What has happened?

24

3;o THE FLAME OF LIFE

All he hears is the great clamour of scorn that passes
between the silenced pipes, with the noise of artillery
and the tumult of the populace. A canoe leaves the
Bucintoro bearing the red-haired man with his block
and his axe. The blow aims at the scarlet thread.
The head falls, and is thrown on the water, where it
floats like the head of Orpheus. ..."

"What had happened?"

" Perdilanza had thrown herself in the cataract !
The water had dragged her into the depths of the
organ. The body with all its famous hair thus placed
itself across the great dehcate instrument stifling its
musical heart. . . ."

"But Ornitio?"

" Ornitio picks up the bleeding head on the water
and flies away towards the sea. The swallows hear
of its flight and follow it. In a few seconds a black
and white cloud of swallows thickens round the
fugitive. All the nests remain empty at this sud-
den departure, in Venice and in the islands. The
summer has no more flights. September no longer
knows the farewells that once made it both sad and
joyful. . . ."

"And Dardi'shead?"

" Where it can be, no one knows ! " the story-teller
concluded, laughing.

And again he fell to listening to the song that was
in the air, in which he was beginning to distinguish a
rhythm.

" Do you hear? " he said.

And he signed to the oarsmen to stop. The oars
rested on the rowlocks.

The silence was so intense that one could hear

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 371

both the song in the distance and the dripping of
the water from the posts.

"That is the wood-lark," Zorzi informed them in
a subdued voice ; " it still sings, poor thing, to the
memory of Saint Francis."
" Row ! "

The gondola glided on the milky quiet of the
water.

" Would you Uke to row on to San Francesco,
Fosca?"

The woman's head was bent in thought.
" Perhaps there is a hidden meaning in your story,"
she said after a pause. " Perhaps I have understood."
"Alas, yes, if there were any similarity between
my daring and that of the man of Murano. I think
that I too should wear as a warning a scarlet thread
round my neck."

" You will have your great destiny. I have no fear
for you."

His laugh ceased.

" Yes, my friend, I must win, and you shall help
me. Every morning I too receive my threatening
visitor, — the expectation of those who love me and of
those who hate me, of my friends and of my enemies.
Expectation should wear the executioner's dress
because nothing on earth is more pitiless."
" But it is the measure of your power."
He felt the vulture's beak at his heart. Instinc-
tively he drew himself up, seized by a blind impatience
that made the slowness of their progress a suffering.
Why was he lying idle? At every hour, at every
moment, he should be feeling, struggling, increasing
and asserting himself against destruction, diminu-

372 THE FLAME OF LIFE

tion, violation and contagion. At every hour, at
every moment, his eyes should be fixed on his aim, all
his energies should be made to converge to it with-
out fail and without respite. — Thus the need of
glory seemed ever awakening within him a warlike
instinct, the madness of struggle and retaliation.

" Do you know this maxim of the great Heracli-
tus,' ' the name of the bow is BIOS and its work is
death ' ? This is a maxim that excites our spirit even
before communicating to it its precise meaning. I
heard it continually repeated within me while sitting
at your table that autumn night at the Epiphany of
the Flame. I went through an hour of truly Diony-
sian life, an hour of delirium restrained but as terrible
as if I were holding in myself the burning mountain
where the Thyades howl and writhe. Now and then
I actually seemed to hear songs and clamours and the
cries of a distant massacre. And it surprised me that
I could remain motionless, and the sense of my bodily
stillness seemed to increase my deep frenzy, and I
could see nothing else but your face, which had sud-
denly become most beautiful; and in your whole per-
son I could see the might of all your soul, and behind
it I could also see other countries and multitudes.
Ah, if I could only tell you how I saw yflu in the
tumult while the marvellous images passed accom-
panied by gusts of music ! I spoke to you as if across
a battle-field. I threw out a rallying cry that you
perhaps heard, not for love only, but for glory, not for
one thirst, but for two thirsts, and I knew not which
was the most ardent. And the face of my work
appeared to me then the same as your face. I saw
it! Do you hear? With incredible rapidity my

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 373

work shaped itself into words and song and gesture
and symphony. It was so Hving that if only I suc-
ceeded in breathing a small part of it into the forms I
wish to express I could truly inflame the world."

He spoke, controlling his voice ; and the smothered
impulse of his words seemed to have a strange reflec-
tion in the calm water, in the white glare that
prolonged the even cadente of the two oars.

" Expression, that is the necessity. The greatest
vision has no value unless it be manifested and con-
densed in living forms. And I have everything to
create. I am not pouring my substance into heredi-
tary forms. My whole work is an invention ; I can-
not and will not obey other than my own instinct and
the genius of my race. And, nevertheless, like Dardi,
who saw the famous organ in the house of Caterino
Zeno, I too have another work before my spirit, a
work accomplished by a formidable creator that
stands gigantic in the midst of men."

The image of the barbaric creator reappeared to
him ; the blue eyes shone under the vast forehead ;
the lips tightened above .the robust chin armed with
sensuality and pride and disdain. Then he saw once
more the white hair blown about by the sharp wind
on the aged neck, under the wide brim of the felt
hat and the almost livid ear with the swollen lobe.
Then he saw the motionless body lying unconscious
on the knees of the woman with the face of snow,
and the slight tremor in one of the hanging feet.
He thought of his own ineffable quiver of fear and
joy when he had suddenly felt that sacred heart
beating again beneath his hand.

" Ah ! not before but round my spirit, I should

374 THE FLAME OF LIFE

say. Sometimes it is like the sea in a tempest, try-
ing to drag me down and swallow me. My Temodia
is a rock of granite in the open sea, and I am like
an artisan intent on building up on it a pure Doric
temple, having to defend the order of his columns
from the violence of the waves, his spirit incessantly
strained that he may never cease through all that
noise to hear the secret rhythm which alone must
regulate the intervals between his lines and his spaces.
In this sense, too, my Tragedy is a battle."

Once more he saw the patrician palace as it had
appeared to him in the early October dawn with its
eagles, its horses, its pitchers, and its roses, closed
and dumb like a great sepulchre, while above it the
breath of the day was kindling the sky.

" In that dawn," he added, " passing through the
Canal after the night's delirium, I gathered from a
garden wall some violet flowers that grew in the in-
terstices of the brick, and I made the gondola stop
by the Palazzo Vendramin and threw them before
the door. The offering was too small ; I thought of
laurels and myrtles and cypresses. But the sponta-
neous act served to express my gratitude towards
Him who was to impose on my spirit the necessity
of being heroic in its liberating and creating effort."

Bursting into sudden laughter, he turned to the
oarsman at the poop : —

" Do you remember, Zorzi, our regatta one morn-
ing to reach the braghozso ? "

" Indeed I remember ! What a row it was ! My
arms are still stiff ! And that rascally hunger, master,
where do you put it? Every time I see the master of
the boat, he asks after the stranger who ate up that

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 375

loaf of bread with that basket of figs and raisins. He
says that he will never forget that day, because he
drew the heaviest net of his life. He caught such
mackerel as is never to be seen. . . ."

The oarsman went on chattering until he noticed
that his master was no longer listening to him and
that he was expected to keep quiet, even to hold his
breath.

" Do you hear the song? " said Stelio to his friend,
gently taking one of her hands because it distressed
him to have awakened a memory which gave her
pain.

Raising her face she said : —

"Where is it? Is it in Heaven? Is it on earth?"

An endless melody was flowing over the peaceful
whiteness.

She said : —

" How it rises ! "

She felt a quiver pass through her friend's hand,.

" When Alessandro enters the illuminated room
where the virgin has been reading the lamentation of
Antigone," he said, gathering from his consciousness
some sign of the obscure process which was going on
in the depths of his mystery, " he tells how he has
come on horseback through the plain of Argos,
crossing the Inachus, a river of burnt up flint; the
whole country is covered with little wild flowers
that are dying, and the song of the larks fills the
sky . . . thousands of skylarks, a multitude without
number. . . . He tells how one fell all of a sudden
at the feet of his horse, heavy as a stone, and re-
mained there silent, struck down by its own frenzy,
by having sung with too much joy. He picked it

376 THE FLAME OF LIFE

up. ' Here it is.' You then hold out your hand
towards him; you take it and murmur: 'Ah, it is
still warm.' . . . While you are speaking the virgin
trembles. You can feel her trembling." . . .

Again the tragic actress felt the chill at the roots
of her hair as if the soul of the blind woman were
re-entering her own soul.

" At the end of the Prelude the impetus of the
chromatic progressions expresses this growing joy, the
anxiety of delight. . . . Listen, listen ! . . . Ah, what
a marvel ! This morning, Fosca, only this morning
I was at my work. . . . My own melody now develops
itself in the heavens. ... Is not grace upon us?"

A spirit of life was running through the solitude ;
a vehement aspiration filled the silence with emotion.
It seemed as if a natural desire of ascension were
passing like an awakening, or the announcement of
some great return, over the motionless lines, the empty
horizon, the flat waters, and the outstretched shores.
The woman gave up her whole soul to it as a leaf
gives itself up to the whirlwind, ravished to the
heights of love and faith. But a feverish impatience
to act, a desire of work, a need of hastening the ac-
complishment, seized the young man. His capacity
for work seemed multiplied. He considered the ful-
ness of the hours to come. He saw the concrete
aspects of his work, the mass of pages, the volume of
scores, the variety of the task, the wealth of the sub-
stances capable of receiving rhythm. In the same
way he saw the Roman hill, the rising building, the
harmony of cut stones, the workmen busy with their
masonry, the architect watching them, severe and
vigilant, the Vatican standing before the Theatre of

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 377

Apollo, and the Holy City beneath it. Smiling, he
called up the image of the little man who was sup-
porting the work with truly papal magnificence, sa-
luting the bloodless, large-nosed figure of the Roman
prince who had not degenerated from the traditions
of his name, and who, with the gold accumulated in
centuries of plunder and nepotism, was building up
an harmonious temple for the Renaissance of the
Arts that had thrown a ray of beauty on the mighty
lives of his fathers.

" In a week's time, Fosca, if grace assist me, my
Prelude will be finished. I should like to try it with
an orchestra immediately. I shall perhaps go to
Rome for this. Antimo della Bella is more anxious
even than I am. I get a letter from him nearly
every morning. I think my presence in Rome for
a few days is necessary also in order to avoid some
error in the construction of the Theatre. Antimo
writes concerning the possibility of pulling down the
old stone steps leading from the Corsini Garden to
the Janiculum. I don't know whether you remember
the aspect of the place? The road that will lead
to the Theatre passes under the Arch of Septimus,
turns along the side of the Palazzo Corsini, crosses
the garden, and reaches the foot of the hill. The
hill — do you remember? — is all green, covered with
little fields, canes, cypresses, plane-trees, laurels, and
holm-oaks; it has a wooded and sacred look, with
its crown of tall Italian pines. There is quite a
forest of holm-oaks on its slope watered by subterra-
nean streams. All the hill is steeped in a wealth of
living waters. The fountain Paulina towers on the
left. The Parrasio wood, the ancient seat of the

378 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Arcadi, blackens below it. A flight of stone steps
in two branches, passing along a succession of wide,
overflowing basins, leads to a raised plain from
which open two paths flanked by truly Apollo-like
laurels, indeed worthy of leading men towards poetry.
Who could imagine a more noble entrance? Cen-
turies have shrouded it in mystery ; the stone of the
steps, of the balustrades, of the basins, of the statues,
vies in roughness with the bark of the venerable
plane-trees that old age has made hollow. No sound
is heard but the song of birds, the splash of the
fountains, and the murmur of leaves. Ah ! and I
believe that poets and simple souls can even hear the
throb of the Hamadryads and the breath of Pan. . . ."

The aerial chorus was rising, rising untiringly, fill-
ing every space with itself like the immense desert,
like the infinite light. The impetuous melody created
in the sleep of the lagoon, the illusion of a unani-
mous anxiety that rose from the waters, from the
sands, from the grasses, from the vapours, from all
natural things to follow the ascension. All those
things which had seemed inert, now seemed to be
breathing deeply, to be gifted with a soul that was
full of emotion, possessed by a desire of expression.

" Listen ! Listen ! "

And the images of hfe created by the Life-giver,
and' the ancient names of those immortal energies
circulating in the Universe, and the aspirations of
men to transcend the circle of their daily torment,
to appease themselves in the splendour of an Idea,
and all wishes, and hopes, and daring, and effort in
that place of hope and obHvion, before that humble
island where the Spouse of Poverty had left the traces

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 379

of himself, seemed delivered from the shadow of
Death by the mere virtue of that song.

" Does it not seem like the frenzied joy of an
assault? "

The squalid shores, the crumbling stones, the
putrefying roots, the traces of destroyed works,
the odours of dissolution, the funereal cypresses, the
black crosses, in vain reminded him of the same
words that the statues along the river had spoken
with their lips of stone. Only that song of victory
and liberty, stronger than all other signs, touched
the heart of him who was to create with joy. " On !
on ! Higher ! ever higher ! "

And the heart of Perdita, purified from all coward-
ice, ready for every test, seconding the hymn's ascen-
sion, betrothed itself to life again. As in the distant
hour of that night's delirium the woman repeated:
" Let me serve ! Let me serve ! "

The boat entered a canal closed between two green
banks, which reached the line of the eye so precisely
that one could see the numberless reeds and point
out the new ones by their lighter colour.

" Laudato si, mi signore, per sora nostra matre terra,
la quale ne sustenta at governa
et produce diversi fructi con coloriti ilori at herba."

From the fulness of her soul the woman measured
the love of the Poor Man of Assisi for all created
things. Such was her abundance that she sought for
living things to worship everywhere; and her look

1 " Be praised, my Lord, for our Lady the Motlier Earth who feeds
and governs us and brings forth divers fruits with coloured flowers
and grass."

38o THE FLAME OF LIFE

became childlike again, and all those things were
reflected in it as in the peace of the water, and some
seemed to return from the far past and reappear like
unexpected apparitions.

When the ship touched the shore, she was aston-
ished at having arrived already.

" Would you like to land or would you prefer to go
back? " Stelio asked her, pulling himself together.

She hesitated a moment, because her hand was in
his, and the separation would have been a lessening of
the sweetness.

"Yes," she answered, smiling. "Let us walk a
little on this grass too."

They landed on the island of San Francesco. A
few young cypress-trees greeted them shyly. No
human face appeared. The invisible myriads filled
the desert with their praise. The mist was rising,
massing into clouds, obscuring the sun.

" How much grass we have walked on, have we
not, Stelio?"

He said, —

" But now comes the steep boulder to climb."

She said, —

" Let the boulder come and let the ascent be steep."

He wondered at the unusual joy in her tone. He
looked at her and saw intoxication in her beautiful eyes.

" Why," said he, " do we feel so free and happy in
this lonely island ? "

" Do you know why ? "

" This is a sad pilgrimage for other people. Those
who come to this place leave it with the taste of death
in their mouths."

She said : —

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 381

" We are in a state of grace."

He said : — -

" They who hope most, live most."

She said : —

" They who love most, hope most."

The rhythm of the aerial song went on, attracting
their ideal essences.

He said : —

" How beautiful you are ! "

A sudden blush covered the impassioned face.
She paused for a moment, quivering. She half
closed her eyes. In a suppressed voice she said : —

" A warm current is passing. Did you not feel a
rush of warmth on the water from time to time?"

She drank the air in.

" There is something like a smell of new-mown hay.
Do you notice it? "

" It is the smell of the banks full of seaweeds that
are being uncovered.'"

" Look what a beautiful landscape."

" Le Vignole. And that is the Lido. And that is
the island of Sant' Erasmo."

The sun had cast its veils and was now embracing
the estuary. The moisture of the emerging sand-
banks suggested the brightness of flowers. The
shadows of the small cypress-trees were beginning to
lengthen and becoming of a deeper blue.

" I am sure," she said, " that almond-trees are
blossoming in the neighbourhood. Let us go on the
dyke."

She threw her head back with one of those move-
ments that were natural to her, that seemed to break
a bond or rid her of an impediment.

382 THE FLAME OF LIFE

" Wait ! "

And drawing out the two pins that fastened her hat,
she quickly uncovered her head. She went bacic to
the steps of the landing and threw the shining thing
into the gondola. Then she returned to her friend
nimbly, running her fingers through the mass of her
hair, and the air passed through it and the sun shone
on it. She seemed to feel relieved, as if her breathing
were easier.

"Did the wings hurt?" said Stelio, laughing.

And he looked at the rough furrow, not ploughed
by the comb, but by the storm.

" Yes, the smallest weight worries me. If it did
not seem strange, I Oould always go bareheaded.
But when I see the trees, I cannot hold out any more.
My hair remembers its wild birth, and longs to
breathe in its own way, in the desert at least."

She spoke frankly and vivaciously, walking on the
grass with her quick swinging movement. And Stelio
remembered the day when, in the Gradenigo garden,
she had seemed to him very like the beautiful tawny
greyhound.

" Oh, here is a Capuchin friar ! "

The friar was coming towards them and greeted
them affably. He offered to show the visitors round
the monastery, but informed them that the cloister
was closed to his companion.

" Shall I go in?" said Stelio, looking at his com-
panion, who was smiling.

" Yes, go ! "

" And you will remain alone? "

" I will remain alone."

" I will bring you a piece of the sacred pine-tree."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 383

He followed the Franciscan under the portico where
the empty swallows' nests hung from the raftered ceil-
ing. Before crossing the threshold he turned once
more to say good-bye to his companion. The door
closed upon him.

" O BEATA SOLITUDO 1
O SOLA BEATITUDO ! "

Then, as a sudden change in one of the stops at
once changes all the notes in an organ, all the
woman's thoughts were transfigured. The horror of
absence, the worst of all evils, stood before her loving
soul. Her friend was no longer there : she no longer
heard his voice, no longer felt him breathing ; she no
longer grasped his kind, firm hand. She no longer
saw him live, no longer felt the air, the light, the
shadows, the whole life of the world, harmonise with
his life. " What if he should not come back, if that
door were not to reopen?" It could not be. He
would certainly cross that threshold again in a few.
minutes, and she would receive him again into her
eyes and her very being. But it was thus, thus, that
he would disappear in a few days ; and first the plain,
then the mountain, and then plains and mountains
and rivers, and then the strait and the ocean, the
infinite spaces that cries and tears cannot overcome,
would step between her and that forehead, those
eyes, those lips. The image of the brutal city to
which she was going, blackened by coal and bristling
with weapons, filled the quiet island. The crash of
sledge-hammers, the shriek of cranes, the panting of
engines, the immense groan of iron, drowned the
melody of spring. And in contrast to each of those
simple things, to the grass, the sands, the water, the

384 THE FLAME OF LIFE

seaweed, the soft feather dropping perhaps from the
throat of a song-bird, there appeared streets, invaded
by the human stream, houses with their thousand de-
formed eyes, full of fevers that make sleep unknown,
theatres filled with the breath or the stupor of a
crowd that has relaxed for an hour the tension of its
will and fiercely outstretched in the war of lucre.
And she saw her name and her portrait on walls
defiled by advertisements, on boards carried about
by stupefied porters, on great factory bridges, on the
doors of swift vehicles, high and low and everywhere.

" Here ! look ! The branch of an almond-tree.
The almond-tree is blossoming in the convent gar-
den, in the second cloister, near the grotto with
the sacred pine-tree. And you knew it ! "

Her friend was hastening to her, joyful as a child,
followed by the Capuchin friar, who was holding a
little bunch of thyme.

" Take it ! See what a marvel ! "

Tremblingly she took the branch, and tears dimmed
her eyes.

" You knew it ! "

He noticed the sudden brightness between her eye-
lashes, something tender and silvery, — a shining and
trembling moisture which made the white of her
eyes like the petals of a flower. Of all her beloved
person, he passionately loved the delicate marks that
went from the corners of the eyes to the temples, and
the small dark veins which made the eyelids like
violets, and the undulation of the cheeks, and the
weary chin, and all that could not flower again, all
the shadows on the impassioned face.

" Ah, Father," she said with a merry look, re-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 385

straining her sorrow, " will not Christ's Poor Man
weep in heaven for this torn off branch ? "

The Father smiled with sprightly indulgence.

" This good gentleman," he answered, " did not
give me time to say a word when he saw the tree.
He already had the branch in his hand, and all I
could say was 'Amen.' But the almond-tree is
rich."

He was placid and affable, with a crown of hair
nearly all black still round the tonsure, with a refined,
olive face, with two large tawny eyes, shining as clear
as topazes.

" Here is the savoury thyme," he said, offering the
herbs.

They heard a choir of young voices singing a
Response.

" They are the novices ; we have fifteen of them."

And he accompanied the visitors to the field be-
hind the convent. Standing on the bank, at the foot
of a cypress-tree that had been destroyed by light-
ning, the Franciscan pointed to the fertile islands,
praised their fruitfulness, enumerated their kinds of
fruit, extolled the most luscious according to the
various seasons, pointed out the boats sailing to
the Rialto with the new crops.

" Be praised to Thee, O Master, for our Mother
Earth," said the woman with the blossoming branch.

The friar, sensitive to the tenderness of that feminine
voice, was silent.

Tall cypress-trees surrounded the pious meadow;
and four of them, — the oldest, — leafless, sapless, bore
signs of lightning. Their tops were motionless, — the
only emerging things in that level posture of the

25

386 THE FLAME OF LIFE

fields and waters that stretched on a line with the
horizon. Not even the faintest breeze ruffled the in-
finite mirror. The depths full of seaweeds were trans-
parent and seemed like bright treasures; the marsh
reeds shone like rods of amber; the freshly un-
covered sands had the changing colours of mother-
of-pearl ; the very mud imitated the opaline tender-
ness of the medusae. A profound enchantment that
was like rapture filled the desert with joy. The
melody of winged creatures still continued from in-
visible places; but it, too, seemed to be quieting
down at last into the holy silence.

" At this time, on the hills of Umbria," said he
who had robbed the almond-tree in the cloister,
" every olive-tree has at its feet, like a cast-off slough,
a bunch of its cut branches ; and it seems tenderer
because the bunch hides the roughness of the crooked
roots. Saint Francis passes in mid-air healing with
his finger the pain of the wounds made by the pruning
knife."

The friar crossed himself and took his leave.

" Praise be to Jesus Christ ! "

The guests saw him moving away among the
shadows cast by the cypress-trees on the meadowi

" He is in peace," said the woman. " Does it not
seem to you, Stelio? A great peace was on his face
and in his voice. Look at his step, too."

First a ray of sunshine, then a ray of shadow,
touched his tonsure and his tunic.

" He gave me a splinter of the pine-tree," said
Stelio. " I will send it to Sophia, who has a great
devotion for the Seraphic Saint. Here it is. It no
longer smells of resin. Smell it."

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 387

For Sophia's sake she kissed the relic. The lips
of the good sister would be laid on the same place
where hers had rested.

" Send it."

They walked in silence a while with lowered heads,
in the footsteps of the man who was at peace, going
towards the quay between the rows of cypress-trees
laden with berries.

" Do you not want to see her again?" la Foscarina
asked her friend with a tremor of shyness.

" Yes, very much."

" And your mother? "

" Yes ; my heart goes out to her who daily expects
me."

" And you would not like to go back ? "

" Yes, I will go back, perhaps."

"When?"

" I do not know yet, but I long to see my mother
and Sophia. I desire it indeed greatly, Foscarina."

"And why do you not go? What keeps you
here ? "

He took the hand that was hanging loosely at
her side, and they continued their walk. As the
oblique rays of the sun lighted up their right cheeks,
they saw their united shadows preceding them at one
level on the grass.

" When you pictured to yourself the hills of Umbria
a moment ago," said the woman, " perhaps you were
thinking of the hills of your own country. That figure
of the pruned olive-trees was not a new one to me.
I remember your talking to me one day of the prun-
ing. ... In no other labour can the peasant acquire
a deeper sense of the dumb life that is in the tree.

388 THE FLAME OF LIFE

When he stands in front of the apple or pear or peach
tree with the pruning knife and scissors that should
increase their strength and could at the same time
cause their death, the spirit of divination rises in him
from all the wisdom acquired in his communings with
earth and sky. The tree is then at its most delicate
moment, when its sensibility re-awakens, flowing to
the buds which are swollen and about to open. Man
with his cruel knife must regulate the mysterious
movements of the sap. The tree is still intact,
ignorant of Hesiod and Virgil, labouring with its
blossom and its fruit, and every branch in the air is
as much alive as an artery in the arm of the pruner.
Which is the one to be lopped off? Will the sap
heal the wound ? . . . Thus, one day you spoke to
me of your orchard. I remember. You told me
that all the cuts should be turned to the north that
the sun should not see them."

She was speaking as on that distant November
evening when the young man had come to her
through the violent wind, panting after having carried
the hero.

He smiled. He let the dear hand lead him. And
he drank in the fragrance of the blossoming branch,
very like the smell of some bitter milk.

" It is true," he said. " And Laimo would pre-
pare the ointment of Saint Fiacre, mixing it in the
mortar, and Sophia would bring him the strong
linen to bind the larger wounds, after they had been
dressed. . . ."

He could see the peasant on his knees mixing cow-
dung, clay, and barley husks in the stone mortar,
according to the rules of antique wisdom.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 389

" But in ten days," he added, " the whole hill seen
from the sea will be like a fresh, rosy cloud. Sophia
has written to remind me of it. . . . Has she ap-
peared to you any more?"

" She is with us now."

" She is looking out of the window at the sea,
which has become purple, and my mother is with her
at the window, and she is saying, ' Who knows if
Stelio may not be in that sailing boat waiting at the
mouth of the river for the coming of the wind? He
promised me he would return unexpectedly by sea, in
a brig.' And her heart aches."

"Ah, why do you disappoint her?"

" Yes, it is true, Fosca ; I can be away for months
and months, and feel that my life is full. But then,
an hour comes when nothing in the world seems to
me sweeter than those eyes ; and there is a part of
myself that remains inconsolable. I have heard the
sailors of the Tyrrhenean Sea call the Adriatic the Gulf
of Venice. To-night I am thinking that my home is
on the Gulf, and that seems to bring it nearer."

They were at the landing. They turned to look
once more at the island of Prayer with its beseeching
cypresses.

" Yonder is the canal of the Tre Porti that leads to
the open sea," he said, homesick. He saw himself
on the deck of the brig in sight of his tamarisks and
myrtle-trees.

They went on board. They were silent for a long
time. Quietly, meanwhile, the melody descended
on the archipelago. As the light from the sky pene-
trated the waters, so the song from the sky came and
rested oh the fields. But Burano and Torcello ap-

390 THE FLAME OF LIFE

peared like two broken galleons against the dazzling
west, and the clouds were ranging themselves in
phalanxes, down towards the Dolomites.

" Now that the scheme of the work is finished, all
you want is peace for your work," said the woman,
softly continuing her persuasion, while her soul trem-
bled in her breast. " Have you not always worked
best in your own home? In no othfer place will you
be able to appease the anxiety which oppresses you.
I know it."

He said : —

" It is true. When the craving for glory seizes us,
we believe that the conquest of art resembles the
siege of a stronghold, and that noise and sound ac-
company the bravery of the assault. But it is only
the work which has grown in the austerity of silence
that is of any value ; only the work done with slow
and indomitable perseverance; work done in hard,
pure solitude. Nothing is of any value but the com-
plete surrender of spirit and flesh to the Idea which
we long to establish among men as a commanding
force for ever."

" Ah, you know it."

The woman's eyes filled with tears on hearing his
smooth words, in which she felt all the depth of his
manly passion, the heroic need of spiritual dominion,
the firm determination to surpass himself and to
force his destiny.

" You know it ! "

And she felt a shudder like that which is caused
by cruel sights; and in the face of that living will
everything else seemed vain, and the other tears that
had blinded her when he had offered her the bios-

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 391

soms seemed mean and effeminate compared with
those that were now rushing to her eyes, and were
alone worthy to be drunk in by her friend.

" Well, then, go back to your sea, to your own
lands, to your house. Re-light your lamp with the
oil of your own olives."

His lips were closed, and there was a furrow
between his eyelids.

" The kind sister will come again to lay a blade of
grass on the difficult page."

He bent his brow which a thought was oppressing.

" You will rest by talking to Sophia at the window,
and perhaps you will see the flocks passing again on
their way from the plains to the mountains."

The sun was nearing the gigantic acropolis of the
Dolomites. The immense phalanx of clouds was dis-
ordered as if by a battle, shot through by number-
less beaming arrows, and bathed in a marvellous
blood-like crimson. The waters extended the great
battle fought round the impregnable towers. The
melody had melted into the shadow of the already
distant islands. The whole estuary seemed mantled
in gloomy warlike magnificence as if myriads of
flags were bending over it, a silence that seemed only
waiting for a flourish of imperial trumpets.

Softly, after a long pause, he said : —

" And if she were to question me about the fate of
the virgin who reads the lamentation of Antigone? "

The woman started.

" And if she were t6 question me about the love of
the brother who searches the tombs?"

The phantom filled the woman with fear.

" And if the page on which she lays the blade of

392 THE FLAME OF LIFE

grass were the one where the trembling soul tells its
desperate hidden fight against the horrible evil ? "

The woman could find no words in her sudden dis-
may. Both remained silent, gazing at the sharp
peaks of the mountains in the distance, which shone
as if they had only just emerged from primordial
fire. The sight of that solitary, eternal grandeur
brought a sense of strange fatality to their two souls
and almost an uncertain terror, which they could
neither conquer nor scrutinise. Venice was darkened
by the masses of burning porphyries ; she lay on the
waters all wrapped in a violet veil ; from it the marble
pillars emerged, carved by man to guard the bells
that give the signal for customary prayer. But the
customary work and prayer of man, the old city
tired with having lived too long, its mutilated mar-
bles and its worn-out bells, — all those things op-
pressed by the weight of memories, and all perishable,
become lowly in comparison with the tremendous
inflamed Alps that lacerated the sky with their thou-
sand inflexible points, themselves an enormous, soli-
tary city, waiting perhaps for a young nation of
Titans.

Abruptly, after the long silence, Stelio Effrena
asked the woman : —

"And you?"

She did not answer.

The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the
Angelus, and the powerful roll dilated in long waves
over the still crimsoned lagoon which they were leav-
ing in the hands of shadow and death. From San
Giorgio Maggiore, from San Giorgio dei Greci, from
San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 393

Bragora, from San Moise, from the Salute, from the
Redentore, and on through the whole domain of the
Evangelists, from the far towers of the Madonna dell'
Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant' Andrea, the bronze
voices answered, mingled in one great chorus spread-
ing on the quiet gathering of stones and waters
one great invisible dome of metal which seemed to
communicate by its vibrations with the twinkling of
the first stars.

Both shivered when the gondola entered the
damp of the dark Rio, passing under the bridge
that looked towards the island of San Michele,
passing near the black peate putrefying along the
corroded walls. From the nearest belfries, from San
Lazzaro, from San Canciano, from San Giovanni e
Paolo, from Santa Maria dei Miracoli, from Santo
Maria del Pianto, other voices answered. And the
roll above their heads was so strong that they seemed
to feel its vibration in the very roots of their hair
like a quiver of their own flesh.

" Is it you, Daniele? "

It seemed to Stelio that he had recognised the
figure of Daniele Glauro on the Fondamenta Sanudo,
near the door of his house.

" Oh, Stelio, I was waiting for you ! " cried the
agitated voice, in the storm of sound. " Richard
Wagner is dead."

The world seemed to have lost value.

The wandering woman armed herself with her
"courage and went on preparing her viaticum. From
the hero lying on his bier a great inspiration rose to

394 THE FLAME OF LIFE

all noble hearts. She knew how to receive it and
convert it into living thoughts and actions.

It happened that her friend came upon her while
she was collecting her familiar books, the small things
that were never parted from her, the pictures that had
over her a power of enchantment or of consolation.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

" I am preparing to start."

She saw his face change, but did not hesitate.

" Where are you going?"

" Far away. I am crossing the Atlantic."

He became a shade paler. And at once he doubted ;
thought that perhaps she was not speaking the truth ;
that perhaps she was only sounding him ; that the
resolve was not a fixed one, and that she was only
expecting to be urged to stay.

His unexpected disappointment on the shores of
Murano had left its traces on his heart.

" Have you decided on it, then, all of a sudden?"

She was simple, sure, and ready.

" Not all of a sudden," she answered. " My idleness
has been lasting too long, and I have the burden of
all my people upon me. While I wait for 'the Theatre
of Apollo to be opened and for 'The Victory of Man '
to be ready, I shall go and take my leave of the Bar-
barians. I will work for the great undertaking. We
will need a great deal of gold to build up again the
treasures of Mycene ! And everything connected
with your work should have the aspect of an unusual
magnificence. I do not want the mask of Cassandra
to be of some base metal. . . . And what I espe-
cially want, is to satisfy your desire : that the people
shall have free access to the Theatre for the first

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 395

three days, and always after that, on one day in the
week. This faith helps me to leave you. Time
flies. Every one must be at his place, in full posses-
sion of all his powers, when the time comes. I will
not fail you. I hope you will be satisfied with your
friend. I am going to work ; and certainly I find
it more difficult this once than at other times. But
you, but you, my poor child, what a burden you
have to bear ! What an effort we are asking of you !
What great things we expect from you ! Ah, you
know it! . . ."

She had begun bravely, in a tone that at times had
seemed almost cheerful, trying to appear what she
was meant to be above all, — a good and faithful in-
strument at the service of genius ; a virile, willing
companion. But some wave of repressed emotion,
escaping, would come into her throat and choke her
voice. Her pauses became longer, and her hand
became uncertain in its wandering among her books
and relics.

" May all things be ever propitious to your work !
This only matters ; all the rest is nothing. Let us
keep our hearts on high ! "

She shook back her head with its two wild wings,
and held out her two hands to her friend. He pressed
them, pale and serious. In her dear eyes that were
like living springs of water he caught a gleam of the
same flash of beauty that had dazzled him one night
in the room where the logs roared, and he had heard
the unfolding of the two splendid melodies.

" I love you and believe in you," he said ; " I will
not fail you, and you will not fail me. Something
proceeds from us that will be stronger than life."

396 THE FLAME OF LIFE

She said : —

" A melancholy."

The familiar books lay on the table before her
with their dogs' ears and marked margins, with some
leaves, a flower, a blade of grass between page and
page, with their landmarks of the sorrows which
had asked and obtained from them consolations of
enlightenment or oblivion. All the small beloved
objects were scattered before her, strange, various,
and nearly all valueless things, — a doll's foot, a votive
offering in the shape of a silver heart, a small ivory
compass, a dialless watch, a little iron lantern, an odd
earring, a flint, a key, a seal, other refuse; but all
were consecrated by some memory, animated by
some superstitious belief, touched by the finger of
love or death, relics that could only speak to one soul,
and that spoke to it of tenderness and cruelty, of war
and peace, of hope and dejection. Before her, too,
were images suggesting thought, and disposing for
reflection, — figures to which artists had intrusted a
secret confession, mazes of signs in which they had
enclosed an enigma, simple lines that imparted peace
like a glimpse of the horizon, profound allegories,
veihng some truth that, like the sun, could not be
gazed on by mortal eyes.

" Look," she said, to her friend, pointing to an old
engraving, " you know it well."

They both knew it well, yet together they bent
down to examine it again, and it seemed to them as
new as music which, whenever questioned, gives
some different answer. It came from the hand of
Albert Diirer.

The great Angel of Earth with the eagle's wings,

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 397

the sleepless spirit crowned with patience, sat on the
bare stone with his elbow on his knee, his cheek sup-
ported on his hand, a book on his other knee, and a
compass in his other hand. At his feet, coiled round
like a serpent, lay the faithful greyhound, the dog
which has hunted side by side with man from the
very dawn of time. By his side, almost crouching
on the edge of a millstone, like a bird, slept a child,
sad already, holding the style and the tablet with
which to write down the first word of his science.
All round him were scattered the instruments of the
works of man, and on his watchful head, near the
summit of a wing, the silent sands of time ran through
their hourglass; and in the background there was
the sea with its gulfs and its ports and its lighthouses,
the calm, unconquerable sea over which, when the
sun had set in its rainbow glory, the twilight bat
would fly with the revealing word written on its
membrane. And those ports and those lighthouses
and those cities were the work of the sleepless spirit
crowned with patience. He had broken the stone
for the towers, cut down the pine-tree for the ships,
tempered the iron for every struggle. He himself
had laid on Time the instrument that measures it.
Seated not to rest, but to meditate on some new work
to be accomplished, he fixed on life the powerful eyes
shining with the free Hght of the sun. Silence rose up
to him from every surrounding form but one. And
that only voice was the voice of the roaring fire in
the furnace, under the crucible where sublimated
matter would presently generate some new force that
would serve to cure some evil, or to teach some
law. And this was the answer of the great Angel of

398 THE FLAME OF LIFE

Earth with the eagle's wings from whose steel-bound
flank hung the keys that open and shut, to those who
were questioning him : " The sun sets. The light
that is born in the heavens dies in the heavens, and
each day is ignorant of the light of another day. But
the night is one, and its shadow is on every counten-
ance, and its blindness is in every eye except on the
countenance and in the eyes of him who feeds his fire
in order to illumine his strength. I know that the liv-
ing are as the dead, the waking as the sleeping, the
young as the old, because the change of the one
brings forth the other, and each change has pain and
joy for equal companions. I know that the harmony
of the Universe is made of discords as in the lyre and
in the bow. I know that I am and that I am not,
and that one alone is the way, high or low. I know
the putrid odour and the numberless infections that
go hand in hand with human nature. And yet, be-
yond my knowledge, I continue the accomplishment
of my manifest or secret works. I see some perish
while I still last, I see others that seem as if they
must last eternally beautiful and exempt from all
miseries, no longer mine, although born from my deep-
est evils. I see all things changing before fire as
fortunes do before gold. Only one thing is constant,
and that thing is my courage. I can never sit down,
except to rise again."

The young man passed his arm round his friend's
waist; and together, speechless, they went to the
window.

They saw the far, far distant sky, the trees, the
cupolas, the towers, the end of the lagoon over which
the face of twilight was bending, and the Euganean

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 399

hills as quiet and blue as if they were the wings of
earth folded in the repose of evening.

They turned, facing each other, looking into the
depths of each other's eyes.

Then they kissed each other, as if sealing an
unspoken compact.

The world seemed to have lost value.

Stelio Effrena had asked the widow of Richard
Wagner for the two young Italians who had carried
the unconscious hero from the boat to the shore one
November night, and four of their companions, to be
granted the honour of carrying the bier from the
death-chamber to the boat and from the boat to the
carriage. She had granted it.

It was the sixteenth of February. It was one
o'clock in the afternoon. Stelio Effrena, Daniele
Glauro, Francesco de Lizo, Baldassare Stampa, Fabio
Molza, and Antimo della Bella were waiting in the
hall of the palace. The latter had arrived from
Rome after having obtained permission to bring
with him two artisans engaged in the construction
of the Theatre of Apollo, that they might carry
at the funeral bunches of laurels gathered on the
Janiculum.

Speechless, without even looking at each other,
they waited, each overcome by the beating of his
own heart. Nothing was heard except the feeble
splash of the water on the steps of the great door
where on the candelabra at the doorposts two words
were engraved, Domus Pads.

The boatman, who had been dear to the hero, came

40O THE FLAME OF LIFE

down and called them. His eyes, in his faithful,
manly face, were burnt by tears.

Stelio Efifrena went first ; his companions followed
him. When they had ascended the staircase, they
entered a low half-dark room, full of a sad odour of
flowers and perfume. They waited a few seconds.
The other door opened. One by one they entered
the adjoining room ; one by one they turned pale.

The body was there, shut in its crystal coffin, and
standing beside it was the woman with the face of
snow. The second coffin of burnished metal shone
open on the pavement.

The six bearers stood before the body waiting for
the signal. The silence was very great, and none
stirred; but an impetuous sorrow had forced itself
into their souls like a gust of wind, and was shaking
them to their deepest roots.

All were gazing fixedly at the chosen one of Life
and Death ; an infinite smile illumined the face of the
prostrate hero — a smile as distant and infinite as
the rainbow of a glacier, as the gleam of the sea, as
the halo of a star. They could not bear to see it,
but their hearts, with a wondering fear that made
them religious, felt as if they were receiving the reve-
lation of a divine secret.

The woman with the face of snow moved slightly,
yet remained in the same attitude, rigid as a monument.

Then the six companions moved towards the bier,
held out their arms, gathered up their strength.
Stelio Effrena had his place at the head and Daniele
Glauro at the foot, as on that other day. They raised
their burden at one effiirt, at a low command from
their leader. A glamour struck their eyes as if fi

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 401

belt of sun had crossed the glass. Baldassare Stampa
broke into sobs. One same knot gripped all their
throats. The coffin wavered, then was lowered again,
entered its metal wrapper as in an armour.

The six companions remained prostrate all round,
hesitating before closing the cover, fascinated by that
infinite smile. On hearing a slight rustle, Stelio
Effrena looked up. He saw the face of snow bend-
ing over the body, like a superhuman apparition of
love and sorrow't That second was like all eternity.
The woman disappeared.

When the coffin was closed, they lifted up its in-
creased weight ; they bore it slowly out of the room
and down the staircase. Wrapped in a kind of sub-
lime anguish, they could see their fraternal faces re-
flected in the metal case.

The funeral boat awaited them at the door. The
pall was drawn over the coffin. The six companions
waited with bared heads for the family to come down.
It came, gathered close together. The widow passed
veiled. But the splendour of her countenance was
in their memories for ever.

The procession was brief: the funeral boat went
first; the widow followed with her dear ones, then
the group of young men. The sky was encumbered
with clouds, above the wide pathway of stone and
water. The great silence was worthy of Him who
had transformed the forces of the Universe for man's
worship into infinite song.

A flock of pigeons, starting from the marbles of
the Scalsi, flew with a quivering flash over the bier
and across the canal, wreathing the cupola of San
Simeone.

26

402 THE .FLAME OF LIFE

At the landing a silent group of devoted friends
was waiting. The large wreaths perfumed the grey-
air; they could hear the water beating under the
curved prows. The six companions lifted the coffin
from the boat and carried it on their shoulders to
the compartment that was waiting for it in the
station. The friends drew near and laid their wreaths
on the pall. No word was spoken.

The two artisans drew near with their bunches of
laurels gathered on the Janiculum.' -

They were vigorous, powerful men, chosen among
the strongest and finest, and they seemed to be
shaped in the ancient mould of the Roman race.
They were quiet and grave, with all the wild liberty
of the Agro in their bloodshot eyes. Their strong
outlines, narrow forehead, low crisp hair, firm jaws
and bull-like neck, recalled the profile of some of
the Consuls of old. Their attitude, exempt from any
servile obsequiousness, made them worthy of their
mission.

The six companions in turn, equal now in their
fervour, strewed branches from the bunches of laurel
over the hero's coffin.

Noble indeed were those Latin laurels, cut from
the shrubs of the hill where, in the days of remote
antiquity, the eagles descended with their prophe-
cies, where in recent though still fabulous times a
stream of blood has been shed for the beauty of
Italy by the soldiers of the Liberator. They were
straight, dark robust branches ; the leaves were
hard, strongly veined, with sharp margins, green
as the bronze of fountains, rich with the aroma of
triumph.

THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 403

And they travelled towards the Bavarian hill still
slumbering under its frost, while their noble trunks
were already budding in the light of Rome to the
murmur of hidden springs.

SETTIGNANO DI DESIDERIO :
XIII DI FEBRUARY, MDCCC.

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Author of " Adventures of John Johns."
Library izmo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 350 pages . $1.50

A novel that wUl be widely read and much discussed. A power-
ful sketch of an adventuress who has much of the BecHy Sharpe in
her. The story is crisply written and told with directness and in-
sight into the ways of social and political life. The characters are
strong types of the class to which they belong.

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

Ada Vernham, Actress. By richarb marsh.

Author of " Frivolities," " Tom Ossington's Ghost," etc.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 300 pages . jSi-SO

This is a new book by the author of "Frivolities," which was
extremely well received last season. It deals with the inside life of
the London stage, and is of absorbing interest.

The Wallet of Kai Lung. By ernest bramah.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 350 pages . {1.50

This is the first book of a new writer, and is exceedingly well
done. It deals with the fortunes of a Chinese profession^ story-
teller, who meets with many surprising adventures. The style
suggests somewhat the rich Oriental coloring of the Arabian
Nights.

Edward Barry : south sea pearler. By louis

Becke.
Author of " By Reef and Palm," « Ridan, the Devil," etc.
With four full-page illustrations by H. C. Edwards.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 300 pages . $1.50
An exceedingly interesting story of sea life and adventure, the
scene of which is laid in the Lagoon Islands of the Pacific.

This is the first complete novel from the pen of Mr. Becke, and
readers of his collections of short stories will quickly recognize that
the author can write a novel that will grip the reader. Strong, and
even tragic, as is his novel in the main, " Edward Barry " has a
happy ending, and woman's love and devotion are strongly por-
trayed.

Unto the Heights of Simplicity. By jo

HANNES ReiMERS.

Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . JfSi.zS

We take pleasure in introducing to the reading public a writer of
unique charm and individuality. His style is notable for its quaint
poetic idiom and subtle imaginative flavor. In the present story, he
treats with strength and reticence of the relation of the sexes and
the problem of marriage. Certain social abuses and false standards
of morality are attacked with great vigor, yet the plot is so interest-
ing for its own sake that the book gives no suspicion of being a
problem novel. The descriptions of natural scenery are idyllic in
their charm, and form a fitting background for the love story.

LIST OF NEW FICTION

The Black Terror, a romance of Russia. By John
K. Leys.
With frontispiece by Victor A. Searles.
Library_i2mo, doth decorative, 350 pages . . . ?i.5o

A stirring tale of the present day, presenting in a new light the
aims and objects of the Nihilists. The story is so vivid and true to
life that it might easily be considered a history of political intrigue
in Russia, disguised as a novel, while its startling incidents and
strange denouement would only confirm the old adage that " truth
is stranger than fiction," and that great historical events may be
traced to apparently insignificant causes. The hero of the story
is a young Englishman, whose startling resemblance to the Czar is
taken advantage of by the NihUists for the furtherance of their
plans.

The Baron's Sons. By maurus jokai.

Author of " Black Diamonds," " The Green Book," " Pretty
Michal,"" etc. Translated by Percy F. Bicknell.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, with photogravure
portrait of the author, 350 pages . . . . ^fSi-So

An exceedingly interesting romance of the revolution of 1848,
the scene of which is laid at the courts of St. Petersburg, Moscow,
and Vienna, and in the armies of the Austrians and Hungarians.
It follows the fortunes of three young Hungarian noblemen, whose
careers are involved in the historical incidents of the time. The
story is told with all of Jokai's dash and vigor, and is exceedingly
interesting. This romance has been translated for us directly from
the Hungarian, and never has been issued hitherto in English.

Slaves of Chance. By ferrier langworthy.

With five portraits of the heroines, from original drawings by

Hiel.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 350 pages . ^1.50

As a study of some of the realities of London life, this novel is
one of notable merit. The slaves of chance, and, it might be added,
of temptation, are five pretty girls, the daughters of a pretty widow,
whose means are scarcely sufficient, even living as they do, in a
quiet way and in a quiet London street, to make both ends meet.
Dealing, as he does, with many sides of London life, the writer
sketches varied types of character, and his creations are cleverly
defined. He tells an interesting tale with delicacy and in a fresh,
attractive style.

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

Her Boston Experiences. By Margaret allston

(nom de plume).
With eighteen full-page illustrations from drawings by Frank

O. Small, and from photographs taken especially for the

book.
Small i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 225 pages . $1.25

A most interesting and vivacious tale, dealing with society life
at the Hub, with perhaps a tinge of the flavor of Vagabondia. The
story has appeared serially in The Ladies' Home Journal, where it
was received with marked success. We are not as yet at liberty to
give the true name of the author, who hides her identity under the
pen name, Margaret Allston, but she is well known in literature.

Memory Street. By martha baker dunn.

Author of " The Sleeping Beauty," etc.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . $1.25

An exceedingly beautiful story, delineating New England life and
character. The style and interest will compare favorably with the
work of such writers as Mary E. Wilkins, Kate Douglas Wiggin,
and Sarah Orne Jewett. The author has been a constant con-
tributor to the leading magazines, and the interest of her previous
work will assure welcome for her first novel.

Winifred, a story of the chalk cliffs. By s.
Baring Gould.
Author of " Mehala," etc.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 350 pages . $1.50

A striking novel of English life in the eighteenth century by this
well known writer. The scene is laid partly in rural Devonshire,
and partly in aristocratic London circles.

At the Court of the King : being romances of

France. By G. Hembert Westley, editor of " For Love's

Sweet Sake."
With a photogravure frontispiece from an original drawing.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . jfi.2,5

Despite the prophecies of some literary e.xperts, the historical
romance is still on the high tide of popular favor, as exemplified by
many recent successes. We feel justified, consequently, in issuing
these stirring romances of intrigue and adventure, love and war, at
the Courts of the French Kings.

LIST OF NEW FICTION

God's Rebel. By hulbert fuller.

Author of " Vivian of Virginia."

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 375 pages . . . $1.25

A powerful story of sociological questions. The scene is laid in
Chicago, the hero being a professor in " Rockland University,"
whose protest against the unequal distribution of wealth and the
wretched condition of workmen gains for him the enmity of the
" Savior Oil Company," through whose influence he loses his posi-
tion. His after career as a. leader of laborers who are fighting
to obtain their rights is described with great earnestness. The
character drawing is vigorous and varied, and the romantic plot
holds the interest throughout. The Albany Journal is right in
pronouncing this novel " an unusually strong story." It can hardly
fail to command an immense reading public.

A Georgian Actress. By Pauline Bradford Mackie.
Author of " Mademoiselle de Bemy," " Ye Lyttle Salem

Maide," etc.
With four full-page illustrations from drawings by E. W. D.

Hamilton.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 300 pages . jSi.So

An interesting romance of the days of George III., dealing with
the life and adventures of a fair and talented young play-actress,
the scene of which is laid in England and America. The success of
Miss Mackie's previous books will justify our prediction that a new
volume wiU receive an instant welcome.

God — The King — fly Brother, a romance.

By Mary F. Nixon.
Author of " With a Pessimist in Spain," " A Harp of Many

Chords," etc.
With a frontispiece by H. C. Edwards.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . $1.25

An historical tale, dealing with the romantic period of Edward
the Black Prince. The scene is laid for the most part in the
sunny land of Spain, during the reign of Pedro the Cruel —
the ally in war of the Black Prince. The well-told story records
the adventures of two young English knight-errants, twin brothers,
whose family motto gives the title to the book. The Spanish maid,
the heroine of the romance, is a delightful characterization, and the
love story, with its surprising yet logical denouement, is enthralling.

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

Punchinello. By Florence Stuart.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 325 pages . $1.50

A love story of intense power and pathos. The hero is a hunch-
back (Punchinello), who wins the love of a beautiful young girl.
Her sudden death, due indirectly to his jealousy, and the discovery
that she had never faltered in her love for him, combine to unbalance
his mind. The poetic style relieves the sadness of the story, and
the reader is impressed with the power and brilliancy of its concep-
tion, as well as with the beauty and grace of the execution.

The Golden Fleece. Translated from the French of
Amedee Achard, author of " The Huguenot's Love," etc.
Illustrated by Victor A. Searles.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 450 pages . fi-So

Amedee Achard was a contemporary writer of Dumas, and his
romances are very similar to those of that great writer. "The
Golden Fleece " compares favorably with " The Three Musketeers "
and the other D'Artagnan romances. The story relates the adven-
tures of a young Gascon gentleman, an officer in the army sent by
Louis XIV. to assist the Austrians in repelling the Turkish Invasion
under the celebrated Achmet Kiuperli.

The Good 5hip York. By w. clark russell.

Author of " The Wreck of the Grosvenor," " A Sailor's Sweet-
heart," etc.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 350 pages |i-50

A romantic and exciting sea- tale, equal to the best work of this
famous writer, relating the momentous voyage of the clipper ship
York, and the adventures that befell Julia Armstrong, a passenger,
and George Hardy, the chief mate.

" Mr. Russell has no rival in the line of marine fiction," — Mati and Express.

Tom Ossington's Ghost. By richard marsh.

Author of " Frivolities," " Ada Vernham, Actress," etc. Illus-
trated by Harold Pifford.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 325 pages . $1-50

*' I read * Tom Ossington's Ghost * the other night, and was afraid to go up-stairs
in the dark after it." — Truth.

" An entrancing book, but people with weak nerves had b^+ter not read it at
night." — To-day.

" Mr. Marsh has been inspired by an entirely original idea, and has worked it out
with great ingenuity. We like the weird but n9i repulsive story better than anything
he has ever done." — World.

LIST OF NEW FICTION

The Glory and Sorrow of Norwich. By

M. M. Blake.
Author of "The Blues and the Brigands," etc., etc., with

twelve full-page illustrations.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, 315 pages . $1.50

The hero of this romance, Sir John de Reppes, is an actual
personage, and throughout the characters and incidents are instinct
with the spirit of the age, as related in the chronicles of Froissart.
Its main claim for attention, however, is in the graphic representa-
tion of the age of chivalry which it gives, forming a series of brilliant
and fascinating pictures of mediaeval England, its habits of thought
and manner of life, which live in the mind for many a day after
perusal, and assist to a clearer conception of what is one of the most
charming and picturesque epochs of history.

The nistress of Haidenwood. By hulbert

Fuller.
Author of " Vivian of Virginia," " God's Rebel," etc.
library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 350 pages . . . $1.50
A stirring historical romance of the American Revolution, the
scene of which for the most part being laid in and about the debatable
ground in the vicinity of New York City.

Dauntless, a tale of a lost cause. By Captain Ewan
Martin.
Author of '' The Knight of King's Guard."
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 400 pages, illustrated . i^i.SO

A stirring romance of the days of Charles I. and Cromwell in
England and Ireland. In its general character the book invites
comparison with Scott's " Waverley." It well sustains the reputa-
tion gained by Captain Martin from " The Knight of King's Guard."

The Flame of Life. (Il Fuoco.) Translated from

the Italian of Gabriel D'Annunzio, author of " Triumph of

Death," etc., by Kassandra Vivaria, author of "Via

Lucis."

Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 350 pages . . . #1.50

This is the first volume in the Third Trilogy, "The Romances
of the Pomegranate," of the three announced by the great Italian
writer. We were fortunate in securing the book, and also in securing
the services as translator of the talented author of " Via Lucis,"
herself an Italian by birth.

Selections from

L. C. Page and Company's

List of Fiction.

An Enemy to the King. {Thirtieth Thousand.)

From the Recently Discovered Memoirs of the

SlEUR DE LA TOURNOIRE. By ROBERT NeILSON STE-
PHENS.

Illustrated by H. De M. Young.

Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, gUt top, 460 pages . $1.30

"Brilliant as a play ; it is equally brilliant as a romantic novel." — Pkiladelphia
Press.

" Those who love chivaliy, fighting, and intrigue will find it, and of good quality,
in this book." — New York Critic.

The Continental Dragoon. (Eighteenth Thousand.)

A Romance of Philipse Manor House, in 1778. By

Robert Neilson Stephens.

Author of " An Enemy to the King.'"

Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . $1.50

"It has the sterling qualities of strong dramatic writing, and ranks among the
most spirited and ably written historical romances of the season. An impulsive ap-
preciation of a soldier who is a soldier, a man who is a man, a hero who is a hero, is
one of the most captivating of' Mr. Stephens's charms of manner and style." —
Boston Herald.

The Road to Paris. (Sixteenth Thousand:^ By Robert
Neilson Stephens.

Author of " An Enemy to the King," " The Continental Dra-
goon," etc.

Illustrated by H. C. Edwards.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 500 pages . . . I1.5C

" Vivid and picturesque in style, well conceived and full of action, the novel is
absorbing from cover to cover." — Philadelphia P-uhlic Ledger.

" In the line of historical romance, few books of the season will equal Robert
Neilson Stephens's ' The Road to Paris.' " — Cincintmii Times-Star.

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

A Qentleman Player. {TUny-fifth Thousand.) his

Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen Eliza-
beth. By Robert Neilson Stephens.

Author of " An Enemy to the King," " The Continental Dra-
goon," " The Road to Paris,'' etc.

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 450 pages . . . $1.50

"A thrilling historical romance. ; . ; It is a well-told tale of mingled romance
and history, and the reader throughout unconsciously joins in the flight and thrills
with the excitement of the dangers and adventures that befall the fugitives." —
Chicago Tribune.

" ' A Gentleman Player ' is well conceived and well told." — Bostonjournal.

Rose ^ Charlitte. (Eighth Thousand) An Acadien

Romance. By Marshall Saunders.

Author of " Beautiful Joe," etc.

Illustrated by H. De M. Young.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 500 pages . . . ^1.5°

"A very fine novel we unhesitatingly pronounce it -. . . one of the books that
stamp themselves at once upon the imagination and remain imbedded in the memory
long after the covers are closed." — Literary Worlds Boston.

Deficient Saints, a Tale of Maine. By Marshall

Saunders.

Author of " Rose a Charlitte," " Beautiful Joe," etc.

Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 400 pages . . . Jl.So

" The tale is altogether delightful ; it is vitally charming and expresses a quiet
power that sparkles with all sorts of versatile beauty." — Boston Ideas:

Hel" Sailor, a novel. By Marshall Saunders.
Author of " Rose a Charlitte," " Beautiful Joe," etc.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 325 pages Ji-^S

A story of modern life of great charm and pathos, dealing with
the love affairs of an American girl and a naval officer.

" A love story, refreshing and sweet." — Utica Herald.

" The wayward petulance of the maiden, who half-resents the matter-of-course
wooing and wedding, her graceful coquetry, and final capitulation are prettily told,
making a fine character sketch and an entertaining story." — Bookseller, Chicago.

LIST OF FICTION

Pretty Michal. a romance of Hungary. By Maurus

JOKAI.

Author of " Black Diamonds," " The Green Book," " Midst the
Wild Carpathians," etc.

Authorized translation by R. Nisbet Bain

Illustrated with a photogravure frontispiece of the great Mag-
yar writer.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 325 pages . . . S1.50

" It is at once a spirited tale of ' border chivalry,' a charming love story full of
genuine poetry, and a graphic picture of life in a country and at a period botli equally
new to EngU^ readers." — Literary Worlds London*

Midst the Wild Carpathians. By maurus

JOKAI.

Author of " Black Diamonds," " The Lion of Janina," etc.

Authorized translation by R. Nisbet Bain.

Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . ijli.25

" The story is absorbingly interesting and displays all the virility of Jokai's
powers, his genius of description, his keenness of characterization, his subtlety of
humor, and ms consummate art in the progression of the novel from one apparent
climax to another." — Chicago Evening Post.

In Kings' Houses, a romance of the reign of

Queen Anne. By Julia C. R. Dorr.
Author of " A Cathedral Pilgrimage," etc.
Illustrated by Frank T. Merrill.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 400 pages . . . $1.50

" We close the book with a wish that the author may write more romances of the
history of England which she knows so well." — Booktnany New York.

" A fine strong story which is a relief to come upon. Related with charming,
simple art." — Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Omar the Tentmaker. a romance of old

Persia. By Nathan Haskell Dole.
Illustrated by F. T. Merrill.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 350 pages . , . $1.50

" The story itself is beautiful and it is beautifully written. It possesses the true
spirit of romance, and is almost poetical in form. The author has undoubtedly been
inspired by his admiration for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam te write this story of
whidi Omar is the hero." — Troy Times.

" Mr, Dole has built a delightful romance." — Chicago Chronicle.

" It ii a strong and vividly written story, full of the life and spirit of romance." —
N*w Orleans Picayune,

L. C. PACfE AND COMPANY S

ManderS. a tale of Paris. By Elwyn Barron.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 350 pages 5^1.50

" Bright descriptions of student life in Paris, sympathetic views of human frailty,
and a dash of dramatic force, combine to form an attractive story. The book contains
some very strong scenes, plenty of life and color, and a pleasant tinge of humor.
. . . It has grip, picturesqueness, and vivacity," — Tlte Speaker, London.

"A study of deep human interest, in which pathos and humor both play their
parts. The descriptions of life in the Quartier Latin are distinguished for tiieir
freshness and livelmess." — ^/./a»£ej Gazette, London.

"A romance sweet as violets." — Town Topics, New York.

In Old New York, a romance. By Wilson Bar-
rett, author of " The Sign of the Cross," etc., and Elwyn
Barron, author of " Manders.*'
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 350 pages j?i.50

" A novel of great interest and vigor." — Philadelphia Inquirer.

" * In Old New York ' is worthy of its distinguished authors." — Chicago Times-
Herald.

" Intensely interesting. It has an historical flavor that gives it a substantial value."
— Boston Globe.

The Golden Dog. a romance of Quebec. By

William Kirby.

New authorized edition.

Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 620 pages . . , $1.25

" A powerful romance of love, intrigue, and adventure in the time of Louis XV.
and Mme. de Pompadour, when the French colonies were making their great
struggle to retain for an ungrateful court the fairest jewels in the colonial diadem of
France." — New York Herald.

The Knight of King's Guard, a romance of

THE Days of the Black Prince. By Ewan Martin.
Illustrated by Gilbert James.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . JJi-SO

An exceedingly well written romance, dealing with the romantic
period chronicled so admirably by Froissart. The .scene is laid at a
border castle between England and Scotland, the city of London,
and on the French battle-fields of Cressy and Poitiers. Edward the
Third, Queen Philippa, the Black Prince, Bertrand du Guesclin, are
all historical characters, accurate reproduttions of which give life
and vitality to the romance. The character of the hero is especially
well drawn.

LIST OF FICTION

The Making of a Saint. By w. somerset

Maugham.
Illustrated by Gilbert James.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 350 pages . , , J?i.S0

"An exceedingly strong story of original motive and design. . . . The scenes are
imbued with a spirit of frankness . . . and in addition there is a strong dramatic
flavor." — Philadelphia Press,

" A sprightly tale abounding in adventures, and redolent of the spirit of mediaeval
ItaXy:'— Brooklyn Times.

Friendship and Folly, a novel. By maria

Louise Pool.
Author of " Dally," " A Redbridge Neighborhood," " In a Dike

Shanty," etc.

Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . ^1.25

'The author handles her elements with skilful fingers — fingers that feel their
.._y most truthfulW^ among the actual emotions and occurrences of nineteenth
century romance. Hers is a frank, sensitive touch, and the result is both complete

way most truthfulW^ among the actual emotions and occurrences of nineteenth
century romance. Hers is a frank, se; ■' ■ '- -' -'^ 1. :_ 1.-^1 i_^-

and full of interest." — Boston Ideas.

" The story will rank with the best previous work of this author." — Indianapolis
News.

The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore.

A Farcical Novel. By Hal Godfrey.

Illustrated by Etheldred B. Barry.

Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . i!>i-25

" A fanciful, laughable tale of two maiden sisters of uncertain age who are induced,
by their natural longing for a return to youth and its blessings, to pay a large sum
for a mystical water wliich possesses the value of setting backwards the hands of
time. No more delightfully fresh and original boolt has appeared since Vice
Versa' charmed an amused world. It is well written, drawn to the life, and full of
tile most enjoyable humor." — Boston Beacon.

The Paths of the Prudent. By J. S. Fletcher.
Author of " When Charles I. Was King," " Mistress Spitfire," etc.
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . ^1.50

" The story has a curious fascination for the reader, and the theme and characters
are handled with rare ability." — Scotsman.

"Dormthia is charming. The story is told with great humor," — />«?/ Mall
Gazette.

" An excellently well told story, and the reader's interest is perfectly sustained to
the very end." — Punch.

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

Cross Trails. By victor Waite.
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy. ^
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 450 pages . . . f i-5o

"A Spanish- American novel of unusual interest, a brilliant, dashing, and stirring
story, teeming with humanity and life. Mr. Waite is to be congratulated upon the
strength with which he has drawn his characters," — San Francisco Chronicle.

" Every page is enthralling." — A cadeiny.

" Full of strength and reality." — A ikencBum,

"The book is exceedingly powerful." — Glasgow Herald.

BijH

the Dancer. By james blythe patton.

Illustrated by Horace Van Rinth.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 350 pages . , . $1.50

*' A novel of Modem India. . . . The fortunes of the heroine, an Indian nautch-
eirl, are told with a vigor, pathos, and a wealth of poetic sympathy that makes the
book admirable from first to last," — Detroit Free Press.

" A remarkable book." — Bookman.

" Powerful and fascinating." — Pall Mall Gazette.

"A vivid picture of Indian life." — Academy, London.

Drives and Puts, a book of golf stories. By

Walter Camp and Lilian Brooks.,
Small i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 250 pages . $1.25

" It will be heartily relished by all readers, whether golfers or not." — Boston
Ideas.

" Decidedly the best golf stories I have read." — Milwaukee Journal.

" Thoroughly entertaining and interesting in every page, and is gotten out with
care and judgment tloat indicate rare taste in bookmaking." — CkUago Saturday
Evening Herald.

Via. Lucis. By Kassandra Vivaria.
With portrait of the author.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 480 pages . . . jSii.50

"'Via Lucis'is — we say it unhesitatingly — a striking and interesting produc-
tion." — London AtheniEitm.

"Without doubt the most notable novel of the summer is this strong story of
Italian life, so full of local color one can almost see the cool, shaded patios and the
flame of the pomegranate blossom, and smell the perfume of tlie grapes growing on
the hillsides. It is a story of deep and passionate heart interests, of fierce loves and
fiercer hates, of undisciplined natures that work out their own bitter destiny of woe.
There has hardly been a finer piece of portraiture than that of the child Arduina, —
the child of a sickly and unloved mother and a cruel and vindictive father, — a mor-
bid, q^ueer, lonely little creature, who is left to grow up without love or training of
any kmd." — New Orleans Picayune.

LIST OF FICTION

*' To Arms I " being some passages from the Early
Life of Allan Oliphant, Chirurgeon, Written by
Himself, and now set forth for the First Time.
By Andrew Balfour.

Illustrated by F. W. Glover.

Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 575 pages . . . $1.50

" A tale of ' Bonnie Tweedside,' and St. Dynans and Auld Reekie, — a fair picture
of thekCoiintry under misrule and usurpation and all kinds of vicissitudes. Allan Oli-
phant is a great hero." — Chicago Times-Herald,

" A recital of thrilling interest, told with unflagging vigor." — Globe,
" An unusually excellent example of a semi-historic romance." — World.

The River of Pearls ; or, the red spider, a

Chinese Romance. By Ren6 de Pont- Jest.
With sixty illustrations from original drawings by Felix Re-

gamey.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 300 pages . . . $1.50

Close acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Chinese
has enabled the author to write a story which is instructive as well
as interesting. The book, as a whole, shows the writer to be pos-
sessed of a strong descriptive faculty, as well as keen insight into
the characters of the people of whom he is writing. The plot is
cleverly conceived and well worked out, and the story abounds with
incidents of the most exciting and sensational character. Enjoy-
ment of its perusal is increased by the powerful illustrations of Felix
Regamey.

The book may be read with profit by any one who wishes to
realize the actual condition of native life in China.

Lrally of the Brigade, a romance of the Irish

Brigade in France during the Time of Louis the

Fourteenth. By L. McManus.
Author of "The Silk of the Kine," "The Red Star," etc.
Illustrated.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 250 pages . . . r!!i.25

The scene of this romance is partly at the siege of Crimona (held
by the troops of Louis XIV.) by the Austrian forces under Prince
Eugene. During the siege the famous Irish Brigade renders valiant
service, and the hero — a dashing young Irishman — is in the thick
of the fighting. He is also able to give efficient service in unravel-
ling a political intrigue, in which the love affairs of the hero and the
heroine are interwoven.

8 L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY'S

Frivolities, especially addressed to those who are
Tired of being Serious. By Richard Marsh.
Author of " Tom Ossington's Ghost," etc.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, 340 pages . . . fi.So

A dozen stories in an entirely new vein for Mr. Marsh. The
humor is irresistible, and carries the reader on breathlessly from one
laugh to another. The style, though appealing to a totally different
side of complex human nature, is as strong and effective as the
author's intense and dramatic work in " Tom Ossington's Ghost."

Sons of Adversity, a romance of queen Eliza-
beth's Time. By L. Cope Cornford.
Author of " Captain Jacobus," etc.
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 325 pages . . . iSi.25

"A tale of adventure on land and sea at the time when Protestant England and
Catholic Spain were stru^ling for naval supremacy. Spanish conspiracies against

the peace of good Queen Bess, a vivid description of the raise of the Spanish siege of
Leyden by the combined Dutch and English forces, sea fights, the recovery of stolen
treasure, are all skilfully woven elements in a plot of unusual strength." — Piiisburg
Bulletin*

The Count of Nideck. from the French of
Erckmann-Chatrian, Translated and Adapted by
Ralph Browning Fiske.

Illustrated by Victor A. Searles.

Library i2ino, cloth decorative, 375 pages . . . ^^1.25

" * The Count of Nideck,' adapted from the French of Erckmann-Chatrian by
Ralph Browning Fiske, is a most interesting tale, simply told, and moving with
direct force to the end in view." — Minneapolis Tidies.

" Rapid in movementj it abounds in dramatic incident, furnishes graphic descrip-
tions of the locality, and is enlivened with a very pretty love story." — Troy Budget.

Muriella ; or. le selve. By ouida.

Illustrated by M. B. Prendergast.

Library lamo, cloth decorative, 250 pages . . . $i''2-^

"Ouida's literary style is almost perfect in 'Muriella.'" — Chicago Times-
Herald.

"'Muriella' is an admirable example of the author's best ■^ox}/." — Breoklyn
Times.

" It dwells in the memory, and bears the dramatic force, tragic interest, and
skilfulness of treatment that mark the work ef Ouida when at her best." — Pittskm-g
BulUiin.

LIST OF FICTION

The Archbishop's Unguarded Moment.

By Oscar Fay Adams.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, 300 pages i(Si.25

" A very captivating volume." — Evening Wisconsin.
" Brinuning over with humor." — Chicago Chronicle.

" He who cares to pass a few hours in quiet enjoyment and subdued laughter will
do well to become the possessor of this clever volume." — A mericaUt Philadelphia.

The Works of Gabriel d' Annunzio.

The Triumph of Death.
The Intruder.
The Maidens of the Roclcs.
The Child of Pleasure.

Each, I vol., library i2mo, cloth decorative . . $^-S0

" The writer of the greatest promise to-day in Italy, and perhaps one of the most
unique figures in contemporary nterature, is Gabriel d'Annunzio, the poet-novelist."
— TAe Bookman.

*' This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so. But the realism is that
of Flaubert and not of Zola. There is no plain speaking for the sake of plain speak-
ing. Every detail is justified in the fact tl^t it illuminates either the motives or the
actions of the man and woman who here stand revealed. It is deadly true. The
author holds the mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his own experiences
duplicated in passage after passage, has something of the same sensation as all of us
know on the first reading of George Meredith's Egoist.' Reading these pages is
like being out in tiie country on a dark night in a storm. Suddenly a flash of light-
ning comes and every detail of your surroundings is revealed." — Review of the
Trtum^h 0/ Death, in the New York Evening Sun.

Ye Lyttle Salem Maide. a story of witch-
craft. By Pauline Bradford Mackie.

With four full-page photogravures from drawings by E. W. D.
Hamilton.

Printed on deckle-edged paper, with gilt top, and bound in
cloth decorative, 321 pages jSi-SO

A tale of the days of the reign of superstition in New England,
and of a brave "lyttle maide" of Salem Town, whose faith and
hope and unyielding adherence to her word of honor form the basis
of a most attractive story. Several historical characters are intro-
duced, including the Rev. Cotton Mather and Governor and Lady
Phipps, and a very convincing picture is drawn of Puritan life during
the latter part of the seventeenth century. An especial interest is
added to the book by the illustrations, reproduced by the photo-
gravure process from originals by E. W. D, Hamilton.

lO L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

Mademoiselle de Berny. a story of valley

Forge. By Pauline Bradford Mackie.
With five full-page photogravures from drawings by Frank T.

Merrill.
Printed on deckle-edged paper, with gilt top, and bound in

cloth decorative, 272 pages jfSi.So

" The charm of * Mademoiselle de Beray ' lies in its singular sweetness." — Boston
Htrald.

" One of the very few choice American historical stories." — Boston Transcript.

" Real romance . . . admirably written." — Washington Post.

" A stirring romance, full of life and action from start to finish." — Toledo Daily
Blade.

" Of the many romances in which Washington is made to figure, this is one of the
most fascinating, one of the best." — Boston Courier.

Captain FraCaSSe. translated from the French
OF Gaxttier. By Ellen Murray Beam.
Illustrated by Victor A. Searles.
Library 1 2mo, cloth decorative, 575 pages . . . $1.25

" The story is one of the best in romantic fiction, for upon it Gautier lavished his
rare knowledge of the twelfth century. — San Francisco Chronicle.

" One of those rare stories in which vitality is abundant. — New York Herald.

In Guiana Wilds, a study of tv^o women. By

James Rodway.
Author of " In the Guiana Forest," etc.
Library i2mo, cloth, decorative, illustrated, 250 pages $1.25

" In Guiana Wilds " may be described as an ethnological
romance. A typical young Scotchman becomes, by the force of
circumstances, decivUized, and mates with a native woman.

It is a psychological study of great power and ability.

The Gray House of the Quarries. By mary

Harriott Norris.
With a frontispiece etching by Edmund H. Garrett.
8vo, cloth decorative, 500 pages $1.50

" The peculiar genre, for which, in a literary sense, all must acknowledge obliga-
tion to the author of a new type, is the Dutch-American species. The church-goinp,
the courtings, the pleasures and sorrows of a primitive people, their lives and deaths,
weddings, suicides, births, and burials, are Rembrandt and Rubens pictures on a
fresh canvas." — Boston Transcript.

" The fine ideal of womanhood in a person never once physically described will
gratify the highess tone of tlie period, and is an ennobling conception," — Time and
the Hour, Boston.

LIST OF FICTION II

Vivian of Virginia, being the memoirs of our

First Rebellion, by John Vivian, Esq., of Middle
Plantation, Virginia. By Hulbert Fuller.

With ten full-page illustrations by Frank T. Merrill.

Library i2mo, doth decorative, gilt top, deckle-edge
paper, 375 pages $1.50

" A stirring and accurate account of tiie famous Bacon rebellion." — Los Angeles
Sunday Times.

" We sliall have to search far to find a better colonial story than this." — Denver
Republican,

" A well-conceived, well-plotted romance, full of life and adventure." — Chicago
Inter-Ocean.

" A story abounding in exciting incidents and well-told conversations." — Boston
Journal.

" Mr. Fuller will find a large circle of readers for his romance who will not be
disappointed in their pleasant expectations." — Boston Transcript.

" Instead of using history as a background for tlie exploits of the hero, the author
used the hero to bring out history and the interesting events of those early days in
Virginia. The author has preserved the language and customs of the times admi-
rabfy." — Philadelpkia Telegram.

A nan=at=AfniS. a romance of Italy in the days

OF Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the Great Viper. By

Clinton Scollard.
Author of " Skenandoa,'' etc.
With six full-page illustrations and title-page by E. W. D.

Hamilton.
Library i2mo, cloth decorative, gilt top, deckle-edge

paper, 360 pages ^1.50

"The style is admirable, simple, direct, fluent, and sometimes eloquent; and the
story moves with rapidity from start to finish." — The Bookman.
" A good story." — A^. Y. Commercial Advertiser.
" It is a triumph in style." — Uiica Herald.

Bobbie IVIcDuff . By Clinton Ross, Author of " The
Scarlet Coat," "Zuleika," etc.
Illustrated by B. West Clinedinst.
Large 1 6mo, cloth decorative, 260 pages . . . $1.00

" ' Bobbie McDuff,' by Clinton Ross, is a healthy romance, tersely and vigorously
told." — Louisville Courier-Journal.

"It is full of mystery and as fascinating as a fairy ale." — San Francisco
Chronicle.

" It is a well-written story, full of surprises and abounding in vivid interest" —
The Coneregaiionalitt, Boston.

12 L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY S

A Hypocritical Romance and other stories.

By Caroline Ticknor.
Illustrated by J. W. Kennedy.

Large i6mo, cloth decorative jSl.oo

Miss Ticknor, well known as one of the most promising of the
younger school of American writers, has never done better work
than in the majority of these clever stories, written in a delightful
comedy vein.

A Mad Madonna and other stories. By l.

Clarkson Whitelock. ^
With eight half-tone illustrations.

I vpl., large i6mo, cloth decorative .... $i.o&

A half dozen remarkable psychological stories, delicate in color

and conception. Each of the six has a touch of the supernatural, a

quick suggestion, a, vivid intensity, and a dreamy realism that is

matchless in its forceful execution.

On the Point. a summer idyl. By Nathan Has-
kell Dole.
Author of " Not Angels Quite," with dainty haJf-tone illustra-
tions as chapter headings.
I vol., large i6mo, cloth decorative .... Si.oo
A bright and clever story of a summer on the coast of Maine,
fresh, breezy, and readable from the first to the last page. The
narrative describes the summer outing of a Mr. Merrithew and his
family. The characters are all honest, pleasant people, whom we
are glad to know. We part from them with the same regret with
which we leave a congenial party of friends.

Cyrano de Bergerac. a heroic comedy from

the French of Edward Rostand, as Accepted and
Played by Richard Mansfield. Translated by How-
ard Thayer Kingsbury.
I vol., cloth decorative, with a photogravure frontis-
piece $1.00

I vol., paper boards .50

The immediate and prolonged success of " Cyrano de Bergerac,"
in Paris, has been paralleled by Mr. Mansfield's success with an
English version, dating from its first night at the Garden Theatre,
New York, October 3, 1898.

As a literary work, the original form of Rostand took high rank ;
and the preference of Mr. Mansfield for Mr. Kingsbury's new trans-
lation implies its superior merit.