Luce

“ Like to the evening Angelus there rose up to them, conjured up, the voluptuous melancholy of the lovely chords of Debussy which they had so greatly loved. More than it had ever done in any other time, music responded to the need of their hearts. Music was the only art which rendered the voice of the delivered soul behind the screen of forms.
On Holy Thursday they walked, Luce on Pierre's arm and holding his hand, along the streets of the suburb, soused with the rain. ”

“ I hope to have good luck to horse flesh, now she is a parson's wife?
Franc. You have lain with her, then, sir.
Shal. I cannot tell you that; but if you saw a woman with child without lying with a man, then perhaps I have not.
Luce. Impudent coxcomb! Barest thou say that ever thou layest with me? Didst thou ever so much as kiss my hand in private?
Shal. These things must not be spoken of in company.
Luce. Thou know'st I ever hated thee.
Shal. But when you were i' th' good humour, you would tell me another tale.
[574]
Luce. The fool is mad; by heaven, my Francisco, I am wronged! ”

“ Under Pierre's umbrella, which scarcely protected her head and shoulders, Luce, her legs hanging down and her hands wet, her rubber coat all steeped, looked at the water dripping down. When the wind stirred the branches a little fire of drops sounded "clop, clop!" Luce was silent, smiling, tranquilly luminous. A profound joy bathed them.
"Why does one love so much?" said Pierre. ”

“ Luce, "and it was your seleckman that done it, and I hold the whole town responsible. I don't know what I'm li'ble to do next. I've showed him—now I'm li'ble to show the town. I dunno! It depends."
He went out and stood on the store platform, and gazed about him with the air of Alexander on the banks of the Euphrates. For the first time in his lowly life Mr. Luce saw mankind shrink from before him. It was the same as deference would have seemed to a man who had earned respect, and the little mind of Smyrna's outlaw whirled dizzily in his filbert skull. ”

“ Luce took his hand:
"Do you believe in Him?"
"No, Luce, I believe no longer. But he remains always the friend of those he has accepted, even once, at his table. And you, do you know him?"
"Hardly," responded Luce. "They never talked to me about him. But without knowing him I love him.... For I know that he loved."
"Not as we do."
"Why not? We ourselves have a poor little heart that knows only how to love you, my love. But He; He loved all of us. But it's always the same love."
"Would you like we should go tomorrow," asked Pierre, much moved, "in honor of His death?... ”

“ When they had exhausted the mournful delights of the impossible future they were overcome with fatigue, as if they had lived through all of it. Then they rested themselves, seated under the arbor with the dried-up vines, while the sun melted the congealed sap; and, Pierre's head on Luce's shoulder, they listened dreamily to the humming of the earth. Behind the passing clouds the young sun of March played bo-peep, laughed and disappeared. Clear sunrays, somber shadows ran across the plain as in a soul run joys and sorrows. ”

“ Thank you for that choice!" said Luce.
"Oh, Luce, little ugly one, how ugly you talk," said Pierre laughing.
"Yes, it's very bad, I know it. I am good for nothing. Nor you either, my friend. You are just as ill fitted for killing or maiming men as I am for sewing them up again, like those wretched horses when they are ripped up at the bullfights, so that they can serve again at the next affray. ”

“ But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me
60 For undertaking so unstaid a journey?
I fear me, it will make me scandalized.
Luc. If you think so, then stay at home, and go not.
Jul. Nay, that I will not.
Luc. Then never dream on infamy, but go.
65 If Proteus like your journey when you come,
No matter who’s displeased when you are gone:
I fear me, he will scarce be pleased withal.
Jul. That is the least, Lucetta, of my fear:
A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears,
70 And instances of infinite of love,
Warrant me welcome to my Proteus.
Luc. All these are servants to deceitful men. ”

“ Luce sprang up impetuously, threw herself on Pierre's neck, repeating:
"Forgive me!"
And their mouths found each other.
The two children felt the need of consoling one another, both of them. Without saying it aloud they were thinking:
"Luckily we are going to die! The most frightful thing would be to become one of those men who are proud of being man—to destroy, to render vile...."
Lips touching lips, eyelashes brushing eyelashes, they plunged their gaze one in the other, smiling and with a tender pity. They did not tire of that divine sentiment which is the purest form of love. ”

“ Luce saw again in her thought that little girl with reddish hair. And behold it seemed to her that she recalled how she had seen her before in a dream the past night. She could not reach the point of knowing whether that was actually true, or if she were projecting the vision of the present back to the past slumber. Then, weary of the effort, her thoughts allowed themselves to float.
Pierre pondered over the days of his short, expended life. The lark that rises from the misty plain to reach the sun . . . How far it is! How high it is! Will it ever be reached? . . . The fog thickens. ”

“ Even less than Pierre did Luce inform herself about the news. The war did not interest her in the least. It was only one misery more amongst all the various miseries which form the web and woof of social existence. Those who can be astonished about it are those only who stand sheltered from naked realities. ”

“ It was her exacting heart which thus interpreted his look—which counted the days—forgot his many engagements—saw impatience in the quickness with which he corrected her faults in manner or language instead of the old indulgence which met each error with a smile. Love cannot always keep at fever-heat. He, the cynosure of the whole foreign element, had the world at his feet here as in Lucerne. ”

“ And Pierre felt upon his own lips the lips and the teeth of the passionate girl. They remained palpitating in the darkness of the street. Some paces away some men, issuing from the houses, picked the dying coachman from among the remnants of the smashed vehicle; they passed quite close to them with the unfortunate man whose blood was falling drop by drop. Luce and Pierre remained petrified; so closely knit together that when consciousness revived in them it seemed as if their bodies had been naked in the pressure. ”

“ Closely pressed together, Pierre supporting his arm on the arm of Luce and holding her hand with fingers interlaced, they strolled along with short steps immersed in the hungry and gluttonous tenderness of Eros and Psyche as they lie at length on the nuptial couch in the Farnesina. The close embrace of their gaze fused them into a single being like a waxen group. Philip, leaning against a tree, looked upon them as they passed, stopped, went on and disappeared in the dark. ”

“ Besides, the weather was too lovely; it was a pity to bury one's self alive: before noon all the world was out of doors; and the streets and gardens, the terraces of the cafés had a festival air on this radiant and burning afternoon.
It was this afternoon Pierre and Luce had selected to pass, far from the crowd, in the forest of Chaville. For the past ten days they had existed in an uplifted calm. Profound peace at the heart, and nerves on edge. They had a feeling like existing on an islet, about which rushed a frantic current: a vertigo of sight and hearing carried them away. ”

“ Pierre was amazed at the hard heartedness of these bourgeois parents. Luce did not find it extraordinary.
"Don't you believe there are a great many people like that? Not wicked. No, I am sure that my grandparents are not, and even believe that it pained them not to say to us: 'Come back!' But their self-respect had been mortified too much. And self-love among these people, there's nothing else that is so great. It is stronger than all the rest. When one has done them wrong it is not merely the wrong that one has done them; there is the Wrong; the others are wrong and they themselves are right. ”

“ Life was enough for her. Luce found life delightful, but it all hangs by a thread and it takes so little to make the thread break that really it is not worth the trouble to torment oneself about what may turn up tomorrow. ”

“ And Pierre, a thinking piano, divined the meaning of the little waves that sped under the tips, the emotions that passed through the soul of his darling. He heard her sigh before she had begun to sigh. Luce had raised herself with her body leaning forward and, with breathing oppressed, she moaned in a whisper:
"Pierre, oh, Pierre!"
Pierre looked at her troubled.
"Oh, Pierre! What are we, anyway? . . . What is it they want of us? . . . What do we want? . . . What is this going on within us? These guns, these birds, this war, this love. . . . These hands, body, eyes. ”

“ Today she could not do that any more, for since she had come to know Pierre her love had caused her to be filled with the tastes and distastes of her friend; but that was not her fundamental nature. Calm and smiling by reason of her race, not pessimistic at all. Melancholy, and the grand detached airs of life were not her business. Life is as it is. Let us take it as it is! It might have been worse! The hazards of an existence which Luce had always known to be precarious, on the lookout for expedients—and particularly since the war—had taught her to be careless of the morrow. ”

“ One could not see farther than ten yards. It became thicker and thicker as they passed down the old streets perpendicular to the Seine. Friendly fog, in which a dream stretches itself between ice-cold linen and shudders with delight! They were like the almond in the shell of the nut, like a flame enclosed in a dark lantern. Pierre held the left arm of Luce closely pressed to him; they walked with the same step, almost of the same stature, she a trifle taller, twittering in a halfvoice, their figures quite close together ”

“ In this epoch of heroes!"
"There are too many," said Pierre. "I would rather be a little fellow who loves, a babe of a man."
"The babe of a woman who still has on his lips the milk from my breast," cried Luce, seizing him round the neck. "My babe, my own!"
Survivors of those days who, since then, have been witness to the dazzling change of fortune, will have forgotten doubtless the menacing heavy flight of the dark wing which, during that week, covered the Ile de France and touched Paris with its shadow. ”

“ One is never sure of anything any more; in the morning one says to oneself: What is it I am going to experience this night? Shall I recognize it? One is as if on a plank in the water just about to upset."
"What is it that's happened?"
"I don't know," said Luce, "I can't explain it. But it has come since the war. There is something in the air. Everybody is troubled. In families one sees people who were not capable of doing without one another marching off today, each one in his own direction. And as if intoxicated each one runs along with nose on the trail." ”

“ Poor mama! She would be so sorry if she knew that her love for me is no longer in her heart as the first of all! She would never confess that, never.... O, how queer it is, this life!"
She wore a sweet smile, sorrowful and roguish. Upon her hands placed on the table Pierre put his hands tenderly, and sat without motion.
"We are poor creatures," he muttered.
Luce continued in a moment:
"We two, how tranquil we are!... The others have the fever. The war. The factories. People are in a hurry. They hustle. To work hard, to live, to enjoy themselves...."
"Yes," said Pierre, "the time is short." ”

“ What use in painting without a purpose? And did not Pierre think that almost all those who produce art do it without actual necessity, through vanity, in order to occupy their time, or else because at first they think they need it and later on will not confess they were mistaken? One should not be an artist save when one absolutely cannot keep to oneself the feeling one has—only when one has too much feeling. But Luce said she possessed just enough for one. ”

“ You perceive now that I have good reason to make my smears!"
"But if it were necessary to have money and there were no other way than to work in one of those factories that produce bombshells, would you go?"
"If it were necessary to make money and no other means? . . . Why, surely! I would run for it."
"Luce! Do you realize what it is they're doing in there?"
"No, I don't think about it."
"Everything that will make people suffer, die, that tears them to pieces, that burns, that tortures beings like you, like me . . ." ”

“ But of all the appurtenances and appendages which the English farmer possesses, and the Italian farmer does not possess, that of which the Englishman would least tolerate the absence, and the presence of which would be least cared for by the Italian, would be a garden. On that charmingly sheltered hill-side in front of the house, on that magnificent terrace on either side of it, situations that seem calculated to inspire the idea of creating a little paradise, if it had never occurred to any man before, no inhabitant of Bella Luce has ever dreamed of creating anything of the kind. ”

“ Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
Without a murmur, without a cry;
And a bell was tolled, in that far-off town,
For one who had passed from cross to crown,
And the neighbors wondered that she should die. ”

“ The Astronomica in five Books of hexameter verse. The poem should rather be called Astrology, as Astronomy is treated only in Book I. He is proud of being the first writer on this subject in Latin literature. A close study of Lucretius is obvious from several passages: he often imitates Vergil, and in the legends (e.g. of Perseus and Andromeda) Ovid.
316 3. Style.
He is not a great poet; but he is a writer of real power both in thought and style. In his introductions to each Book, and in his digressions, he shows sincere feeling and poetical ability. ”