Matilde Serao

“ It is as if I had taken her by the hand, led her up there to the Isola Persa, and pointing to the precipice had said to her—'Throw yourself down.' Thus am I guilty."
"Your reasonable grief blinds you, Lucio."
"No, no," he answered in his desperate voice, "I am [310] not blind, I am not mad. Time has passed over my sorrow: it has become vast and deep like a great, black lake which I have in the depths of my soul. I am neither mad nor blind. I exist, I live, I perform coldly and surely all the acts of life. ”

“ Mabel, you alone can make of me another man, with another soul, with another heart! Mabel, remember, remember our dreams of love in the Engadine, remember that you consented to love me up there; you did love me, you have been my beloved, you can't forget! Change yourself, change me; be another woman, give yourself to love, as I let myself be taken in the great battle for you! Change yourself, as I change myself! Deny not the arguments of love; be a woman as other women, as I ask to be a man in every strife however cruel. ”

“ After the snow of the 26th of August a pure sky was resplendent in vain in the Upper Engadine, an exaltation for the eye and the imagination; in vain a wondrous golden sun enlivened everything, in vain did an even more victorious and absorbing fascination emanate from the whole countryside, and in vain the beauty of things became more absorbing and penetrating. Everything was in vain for a crowd that wished to depart, and nothing availed to keep it now that it was bent on fleeing. It was a crowd that no longer had eyes, or feelings, or nerves, with which to see and feel and respond ”

“ To the left in the lifeless air is the little church and campanile of San Gian di Celerina, where nowadays only the office for the dead is said, and for the departed who have been buried and have slept for so many years in the little cemetery; the broad green stretch towards Samaden, and on high the white peaks of Languard and Albris, and very far-off the Roseg glacier, and the lady of the mountains, of snow and ice—the white and fearsome Bernina. It is a landscape of silence and peace, a landscape of thought and dream. ”

“ Create none, Vittorio. When at last the beautiful, dazzling figure of Mabel Clarke has vanished from your spirit, love your wife, who is good and sweet, who has been humble and patient, who is fond of you, and attends your good. Love her, not another woman; love her, and never the woman of another. Vittorio, don't be lost as I am lost; don't throw to the monster adultery—your flesh, and senses, and heart. Don't create for yourself remorses which will render your life a place of torment as it is for me. ”

“ Yet whiter seemed the snows of the Margna and the Lunghino; and below, behind the glimmering light of the moon, scintillated like a great metal shield the lake of Sils. Now and then the night wind screeched in fury.
"Shall we close the carriage?" Vittorio Lante asked. "Are you cold?"
"I am cold; but unless you insist on it, I prefer not to close it. In a closed carriage time becomes eternal."
[15]
"Eternal; that's true! This is a long night."
"And the country is so desolate!" said Lucio Sabini. "But it doesn't matter; you will have delightful evenings where you are going." ”

“ Only those who had had a caprice, a flirtation, a little affair of passion, or love, those who had known how to play with love or whom love had mocked, those who had been chained for a short time, or those who were chained for ever, they only, even the most sceptical and most superficial—and much more so those with feeling heart and soul—experienced the sharp bitterness of having to leave that country, were pierced by the nostalgia for all they were abandoning, and turned to gaze at for the last time, to smile at and bless for the last time the Upper Engadine. ”

“ In the immense hall that—with its richly painted but very low ceiling, the general vastness of which is broken by strange pillars, broad and low to support it—resembles, or is meant to resemble, an Egyptian temple; in this immense and characteristic hall, where the whole of one wall opened out on to a verandah of shining glass, overlooking lake and wood, a crowd of women kept fluctuating, gathering in groups or separating amongst the pillars or thick clusters of green plants, as they sat for a while on the divans and rocking-chairs, or rose to go to the salons or the ballroom. ”

“ Some time passed; suddenly something far on high gleamed whitely amidst the increasing shadows.
"It is the glacier," said Lucio Sabini; "the Forno Glacier." And as if that whiteness, already expanding [8] in the night at the edge of the Val Bregaglia, had sent them an icy blast, they wrapped the rug closer round them, and hid their gloved hands under its covering.
"Do you expect to amuse yourself in the Engadine, Lucio?" asked Vittorio.
"Of course, I am sure to amuse myself very much, as I do every year."
"Leading a fashionable life?" ”

“ Once again Lucio stopped, as if speaking to himself; Vittorio stopped beside him, patiently, affectionately, pitifully.
"Oh, these Englishwomen, these Englishwomen," he said, passing his hand over his forehead. "Even if they are very young, even if they are twenty, as my poor love, as my poor Lilian, they have an interior life of singular intensity, whilst an absolute calm reigns in their faces and actions. They hide sentiments within their souls with a force, power, and ardour which would stupefy and frighten us if we could see within them for an instant. ”

“ Lucio and Vittorio went and sat in the front of the boat, at the prow, receiving in their faces the fresh evening breeze, no longer the strong wind of the day which for so many hours had blown from the Adriatic on the shores of the Lido, but the little wind of the lagoon which scarcely ruffled the blackish waters, a breeze that blew from the Canal of the Giudecca and rendered more charming the Venetian evening. With even movement the little steamer threaded its way, cleaving the almost motionless waters; making for the brown, fragrant mass, in the evening [315] light, of the Venetian gardens. ”

“ Lilian pressed and immersed her rather too heated face in those delicate, glacial flowers, like stars, as if to seek there a refuge for her ardour. And scoffing, gracious, efficient Paul Léon, who had been Lucio Sabini's friend for years, incited him to fence in a dialogue and a diatribe against all the people who come to live a life à outrance in a land of simplicity and peace, against the snobs who nowadays penetrated everywhere, who climbed the virgin heights and disturbed the sky and earth and waters of the Engadine. ”

“ Waves of movement in every sense passed over the crowd: a noise first dull, then higher and higher, became a deafening din, amidst the crashing of carts, the rumbling of baggage, the thousand voices and calls, the arrival of fresh carriages and unloading of fresh luggage, and over all was the invincible anxiety to clamber into the train, to close the eyes, to be transported far, far-away from the Engadine, not even putting the head out to see how everything was disappearing to right and left, as if now the Engadine were a dream that was over, as if it had never been either reality or dream. ”

“ Like you, she has twelve flirts."
"I have fourteen," replied Lia Norescu promptly, as she flashed her magnificent eyes. "And Miss Clarke, with her dowry of fifty, one hundred, or one hundred and fifty millions; why not pay court to her?"
Never in a soft womanly voice, in a voice young and sweet, in a French pronounced exquisitely, hissed such irony and such bitterness.
"I do not pay court to millionaire girls," replied Lucio Sabini, a little coldly.
"You court the others, the poor ones," replied Lia vivaciously; "but you marry neither: you don't want to marry anyone." ”

“ All the morning he had visited in his carriage sick people who could not leave their houses, from those isolated in far-off villas to those isolated in the dépendances of hotels, since in the summer-time, especially, no hotel-keeper wished to have consumptives in his own hotel, so as not to put to flight other travellers who came to the Engadine, travellers who came there through love of gaiety, of pleasure, of luxury, who came to the high mountains through a refinement of the senses, wishing to unite the spectacle of the beauty of things to an ardent, febrile, worldly life. ”

“ He grew pale with love, as their row towards Sils Maria, where the two old maids were waiting for them, ended in a gentle movement, that almost seemed a gliding upon the waters. Both more moved than at any other time, more touched in the deepest essence of their souls, by that beautiful hour, by the landscape of peace and grandeur, by the words they had pronounced, by those they had not said, they experienced in every glance they exchanged, in every rare accent and gesture, an emotion they strove in vain to calm. ”

“ They delighted in her as the country of their dearest poesy, they shut her up in their fantasy, as the purest of their dreams, they blessed her in the name of their love. The divine Engadine had offered all her most precious treasure to them, even to those seized by a light caprice, even to those transported by a little flirtation in a summer night in the high mountains, even to lovers' tears, even to those who must forget everything at once: the divine Engadine had given to those men and women all her dearest gifts. ”

“ The coachman on the box seemed to be asleep or dreaming, as he drove his horses, with bent shoulders and bowed head; even the two horses seemed to be asleep or dreaming of the ascent to the Maloja, as they tinkled their bells. And in a dream firmament the clouds galloped bizarrely, as they were scattered by the wind, which up above must be blowing strongly.
"There is nothing more delightful or pleasing than to make love to these foreigners," resumed Lucio, in a light tone, but with a slight shade of emotion; "there are some adorable little women, and girls especially. ”

“ Beside her was Don Vittorio Lante della Scala, and the two were carrying on a friendly and lively conversation, as they looked and smiled at each other, Vittorio Lante with sweet and serious eyes, together with that quick virile smile that is a grace in an Italian face. Behind came Mrs. Clarke in a very fashionable and rich dress, certainly too rich to go to tea at the Golf Club. On her old lace cravat shone a solitary jewel, to wit, a small thread of gold from which were hanging, like drops, two enormous emeralds shaped like pears. ”

“ And at last on the penultimate page, in a scrawling writing, like a child that is striving to write something he does not understand, in almost round letters, was a verse of Dante's, copied with an orthographical error: "Amor che a cor gentil ratto si apprende."
Each time at these words so vibrant with love's emotion which the unknown woman's hand had copied letter for letter, which surely she must have understood or someone have explained to her; at these words of the poet Lucio Sabini trembled, charmed as he was by brief loves encompassed by poesy, because of their mystery and their brevity. ”

“ He was sorry for that splendid creature, forced at twenty-two to fight a hard fate without results, when her beauty had the most imperious right to riches and luxury. And softly his spirit fell in love with the idea of being able to offer to the young woman of irresistible beauty the treasures of the earth, of offering her a rich and powerful friend, or a brother of his, or himself, perhaps, so that all the deep poison which rendered that flower venomous might vanish, and Lia Norescu might be a colour, a perfume, a splendour without cark and fret, without blemish. ”

“ Unfailingly every lady who entered, in all the splendour of her ball dress, stopped a moment at the threshold of the hall of the Palace Hotel, to give a glance at the hall, which is divided into two or three parts, curiously divided and united, where the fortunate inhabitants of this Olympus of the Engadine were standing, sitting, or walking about in pairs or groups. And by the lady's rapid and indicative glance, which embraced the spectacle, she was at once recognised as initiated or profane. ”

“ I am a ruined, devastated, dead being; nothing could arouse me. Tell her that! Let her forget me; let her forget the man who is undeserving of her, who has never deserved her; let her forget the being who has scorched his existence at every flame; let her forget the man who has neither [265] faith, nor courage, nor hope—let her forget me. Tell her who I am and what I am. Tell her even worse things, that she may forget me."
"She will not believe me," replied Miss Ford slowly. "Thus she did not know you in the Engadine."
"The man of the Engadine was a phantom," again cried Lucio excitedly. ”

“ The valley was full of a fleeting white mist that concealed the mountains far and near, that billowed over the large, deserted meadows near the church, rendering their grass soft with water and glistening with flowers; it billowed amidst the large hotels, closed and silent, and in the deserted and silent streets of the Bad. The sun, which much later would cause the white morning mist of the Engadine to vanish, had not yet emerged from behind the quaint Piz Languard. The cold was keen and the atmosphere of an equal shade, greyish white and very soft. ”

“ As from his windows he watched the landscape become white with a wintry aspect, but without any of the cruel sadness of a winter day, with a slight whiteness in which he perceived grass and earth, with a whiteness almost ready to melt and vanish, Lucio Sabini moved impatiently. He opened the windows to see better, and leant out. He perceived that on the roads the snow had already vanished, but that the woods and meadows were still covered with it, and that the mountains around were covered with snow right to their base. ”