Nostalgia

by Grazia Deledda

NOSTALGIA

BY

GRAZIA DELEDDA

AUTHOR OF 'CENERE,' ETC.

TRANSLATED BY

HELEN HESTER COLVILL

(KATHARINE WYLDE)

AUTHOR OF 'THE STEPPING-STONE,' ETC.

LONDON

CHAPMAN AND HALL, Ltd.

1905

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

INTRODUCTION

Since the days of Latin, to how few authors has it been given to obtain an European reputation!

We English seem exceptionally slow in making ourselves acquainted with the works of foreigners. Dante and Cervantes, Goethe and Dumas, are perhaps no worse known among us than they are in their homes; but we seldom find out a modern writer till he has been the round of all the other countries. We are opinionated in England. We think other folk barbarians, even if we don't call them so; we visit them for the making of comparisons, generally in our own favour; of trying their manners and customs, arts and morals, not by their standard but by ours. We never forget that on the map of Europe there is the big continent, and away in a corner, by themselves, extraneous, cut off, and "very superior," physically and morally isolated and self-contained, are our two not over enormous islands. We don't regret that sea-voyage, literal and metaphorical, which is necessary to transport us to the lands of the barbarians; and though we travel a great deal, I declare I think we all (and especially newspaper correspondents) go about enclosed in a little bubble of our own foggy atmosphere, seeing only the things we intend to see, hearing the things we mean to hear, and already believe. We are poor linguists moreover, and when we talk with the barbarians we only catch half they say and omit all attention to what they hint; we frighten them by our abruptness, our unintentional hortatoriness and unconscious conceit, so that they don't say to us what they mean, nor tell what they suppose to be true. We come home swollen with false report and evil surmise, and at once commit ourselves to criticism and laudation equally beside the mark. I wonder now do we really understand the errors of Abdul Hamed and Nicholas II as thoroughly as we think we do? and in our long glibness about the Dreyfus case has it never occurred to us we may have been partly deluded?—as the barbarians were deluded when they chattered of us in the time of the Boer War!

Well, we can't help our position in the far-away corner of the map; but perhaps we should become less odd and more sympathetic if we read the barbarian's books a little oftener; books in which he is talking to his brother barbarians, and has not been questioned by an island catechist; books, superior or inferior to our own it matters little, which at least are written from another standpoint, and which by their mere perusal must extend our knowledge, and remind us that "it takes all sorts to make a world."

The best way, of course, is to read foreign books in their original language. Don Quixote was right when he said translation was a bad job at its best. But life is short and the gift of tongues is miraculous; some of us are too busy with our Dante and our Schopenhauer to waste time on a railway novel, and more are lazy and can't be bothered to look out words in a dictionary. The humble translator has his function. If he can succeed in giving any of his author's spirit, he may interest his reader enough to send him to the original itself next time;—in which case the translator will have done a worthy deed, and the author will perhaps forgive a certain mangling of his ideas, spoiling of his best passages and general rubbing of the bloom from his peach, inevitable in a process scarce easier than changing the skin of an Ethiopian or repainting the spots of a leopard.

---

Grazia Deledda, the new writer, for not so many years have passed since the publication of her first book, has already conquered not only her fellow-countrymen but many more distant peoples. Several of her novels have been put into French for the Revue des Deux Mondes and have appeared in Germany in various magazines and journals. One at least has been published in America, and this particular book, Nostalgie, is in process of translation into German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Swedish, and French. In England alone—poor, isolated, ignorant England—is the author's name almost unknown.

She is a Sardinian, and most of her books have been about her native island, the simple folk, and quiet histories of a forgotten corner where the tourist has hardly penetrated. But Signora Deledda now lives in Rome, and true to her method she observes and describes the things and places about her, the people among whom her lot is cast. The scene of Nostalgie is therefore laid in the capital, but with constant allusion to a district in the north of Italy evidently familiar—her husband's country—which she tells us is dear to her as a second home, and from which she has dated her preface. As a writer she prides herself on her Realism—strange, ill-comprehended, often misapplied word! The realism of the highly imaginative may easily seem romance to the prosaic; and Signora Deledda will pardon us if we say that if only in her pictures of scenery, in her intimate knowledge of the influence of Nature on the heart and the mind of her votaries, there is something very superior to realism—at least in the common acceptation of the term. Grazia Deledda sees her figures set in a landscape, belonging to it, born of it. Half the tragedy of this book arises from the fact that the heroine having lived alone with Nature is suddenly transplanted to a city where she imagines herself bereaved of the mighty mother. Years have to go over before she realises that the mighty mother never really deserts her children, and that the "still sad music of Humanity" is as much a part of Nature as the sough of the wind, the rustling of the leaves in the poplar-trees, and the unending roll of the river waters.

The form of Signora Deledda's novels is almost autobiographical. There is one principal character, hero or heroine as the case may be, and the story develops from his or her point of view. In the book before us, we know all about Regina, we are, as it were, inside her; but the other personages are known to us only in so far as she knows them. We are never admitted to a scene from which she is absent, nor is anything explained to us but in so far as she understood or guessed it herself. The minor characters are little more than sketched; figures in a crowd of which Regina saw the outside and occasionally touched the soul. One feels the gracious influence of her mother as she felt it, but we are told little about her and practically never see her in action. The plot is slight, but it hangs together perfectly with unity and focus, never giving a feeling of strain. It is all very un-English; neither the life nor the actors are like ours, nor at all like what is described in our novels. The history and romance of Rome are sternly omitted. History and romance are already the property of the foreigners "who come down on Rome like a swarm of locusts," who wear "dress fasteners" and "impossible hats," who "resemble a nation of inquisitive children amusing themselves in the desecration of a stupendous sepulchre."

Yet even for the foreigner the supreme interest of Rome must be that it is no mere museum, but a living city still. Busy with churches and temples, statues and paintings, inscriptions and sites, we are apt to overlook the contemporary Romans whom we have not come forth to see. To themselves they must necessarily be the most important part of the Eternal City; and the greater number of them are not princes and dukes with historic names, nor even renowned churchmen, or patriots and kingdom builders, but good, simple, workaday, middle-class persons such as are the backbone of all countries and of all societies.

It is among such unnoticed folk that Grazia Deledda has taken us in Nostalgie; and it is not too much to say that her pages have a distinction and a force which recalls, at least in a measure, the style qui rugit of the author of Madame Bovary.

Helen Hester Colvill.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

To my Husband—

Do you remember a young and attractive lady who called on us one day in the course of our first year's residence in Rome? Her visit was surprising; for I did not know the coronet-surmounted name on her card, and at that time few outside our small circle of intimates had discovered our nest in Via Modena, or had courage to climb a century of steps in pursuit of two useless persons unpractised in giving letters of introduction or inditing dedicatory epistles. The lady, whom I will call Regina, explained, however, that she came from your native province and was the bearer of messages from your friends. We talked a long time of that vicinity, dear to me as a second home; then she asked if I did not yearn after my native Sardinia, whose children are reputed always great sufferers from homesickness.

"Not so much," I replied. "I love Rome with all my heart; besides, I am so busy with my work that I have no time for the indulgence of idle phantasies."

"You work so hard? Happy you!" sighed the young lady; and added, "But, no! no! Homesickness is not mere phantasy; nor is it a disease, as so many call it! It is a passion; and, like other passions, can drive one mad if ungratified. During my first months in Rome I suffered from acute and morbid nostalgia; but now I have been home for a while and have come back almost cured."

"I don't know——," I said; "such nostalgia as I have felt has been quite harmless."

"Then there must be several kinds, some harmless, some dangerous," conceded the young lady with a smile; and she continued rather shyly: "but our whole existence is one long chain of nostalgia—don't you think so? The nostalgia of yesterday, the nostalgia of to-morrow; the longing for what is lost, the yearning for what can never be attained——"

After this first visit we saw Regina several times. I liked her, she was so clever and original; but to you she proved unsympathetic. "I can't see clearly into her life," you complained to me more than once.

This much we learned about her. Her husband was far from rich and she had brought him but a slender dowry, yet they rented a handsome Apartment and lived almost luxuriously. We, on the other hand, who worked hard and between us made an income the double of theirs, were content with the modest life of poor artists; gladdened indeed—like the careless existence of the birds building in the laurel below our windows—by the songs of love and the mere joy of living and struggling on in good hope of victory.

Remembering, as I minutely do, the whole simple romance of our early married life—on this day when we have attained to almost all our hopes (a little by my good-will, chiefly by your intelligence and activity, never by stooping to any transaction disapproved by our conscience)—to you, dear comrade of my work and of my life, I dedicate this tale. In it the reader will not find one of those stale themes for which my romances have been unjustly blamed. It is a simple narrative, a transcript from life, from this our modern life, so multiform, so interesting, sometimes so joyous, oftener so sad; beautiful always as an autumn tree laden with fruit—some of it rotten,—and with leaves—many of them already dead.

A simple narrative, I say; so simple that criticism deeming it a test of my literary powers, hitherto devoted only to the passions and sorrows of a primitive society, may deem that I have failed. But such judgment will not disturb me. This novel has not been written as a test; and criticism resembles the Exchequer which almost always taxes us on capital greater than what we really possess.

Alas! that we cannot contest its terrible authority! nor make it understand that our patrimony, though small, is at least our own! If we forced ourselves to give all it has the audacity to demand, we should not only ruin ourselves, but to the last remain unsuccessful in appeasing our creditor.

Grazia.

Roncadello (Casalmaggiore). October, 1904.

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
INTRODUCTION	[iii]
AUTHOR'S PREFACE	[ix]
PART I	[1]
CHAPTER I	[3]
CHAPTER II	[27]
CHAPTER III	[59]
CHAPTER IV	[76]
CHAPTER V	[82]
CHAPTER VI	[90]
CHAPTER VII	[109]
PART II	[131]
CHAPTER I	[133]
CHAPTER II	[150]
CHAPTER III	[164]
CHAPTER IV	[177]
PART III	[193]
CHAPTER I	[195]
CHAPTER II	[214]
CHAPTER III	[219]
CHAPTER IV	[241]
CHAPTER V	[261]
CHAPTER VI	[273]
CHAPTER VII	[295]

PART I

NOSTALGIA

CHAPTER I

Rome was near.

The November moon illuminated the Campagna—an immense mother-o'-pearl moon, clear and sad. The violence of the express train was met by the violence of a raging wind.

Regina dozed and was dreaming herself still at home; the rumble of the train seemed the clatter of the mill upon the Po. Suddenly Antonio's hand pressed hers and she awoke with a start.

"We are near arriving," said the young husband.

Regina sat up, leaned towards the closed window and looked out. The glass reflected the interior of the compartment—the lamp, her own figure wrapped in a long, light-coloured cloak, her face wan with weariness. She half-closed her large, short-sighted eyes, and in the misty moonlight, against the grey background caused by the reflection of her cloak, she made out the landscape—bluish undulations fleeting by, a mysterious pathway, a tree with silver leaves lashed by the wind, and in the distance a long line of aqueducts, the arches of which disappeared into the moonlight and seemed like a row of immense inhospitable doors. This of the aqueducts was no doubt optical illusion; but Regina, who had little confidence in her eyes yet was obstinate in refusing spectacles, felt none the less excited by the sublime visions she believed herself seeing in the dimness of the wind-swept window-pane. Rome! she was filled with childish joy at the mere thought that Rome was near. Rome! the long-dreamed-of wonder city, the world's metropolis, the home of all splendours, all delight—Rome, which was now to become her own! She forgot everything else; fatigue, mourning for the dear things lost, trepidation as to her future, fear of the strangers awaiting her, the embarrassments of the first days of marriage, all sadness, disappointment, delusion—all disappeared in the realisation of her long dream so ardently indulged.

Antonio got up and joined her at the window, which reflected his fine person—tall, fair, easy in attitude, dominant in manner. Regina saw—still in the glass—his long grey eyes looking at her caressingly, his well-shaped mouth smiling and suggesting a kiss, and she felt happy, happy, happy!

"Think!" said Antonio, bending over her as if to confide a secret; "think, my queen! We are at Rome!"

She did not reply. "Are you thinking of it?" he insisted.

"Of course I am!"

"Does your heart beat?"

Regina smiled, a trifle contemptuously, not choosing to let him see all her excitement and delight.

Antonio looked at his watch.

"A quarter of an hour more. If there wasn't such a wind, I'd make you look out."

"I will. Put down the glass."

"I tell you there's too much wind."

"I'll look out all the same," she said, with the obstinacy of a spoilt child.

Antonio tried to open the window, but the wind was really too strong, and Regina changed her mind.

"Shut it up! Shut it up!" she cried.

He obeyed.

"But think! think!" he repeated, "you are at Rome! They will be just starting for the station," he observed gravely, and advised her to put on her hat and get herself ready. "Settle your hair," he said; "and where have you put the powder?"

"Am I very hideous?" asked Regina, passing her hand over her face.

She sat down, opened her dressing-bag, smoothed her hair, powdered her face; then again put on the grey cloak which Antonio held for her, and buttoned it up. Her little face emerged from its sable collar as from a cup. It was pale and tired, all lips and eyes, reminding one of the pretty little face of a kitten.

"That's all right!" said Antonio, surveying her adoringly.

Again she rose and leaned against the door. A long wall was fleeting past the train; then came houses, hedges, gardens, canes bending under the wind, now and then lamps flaring yellow in the great whiteness of the autumn moon.

"San Paolo! The Tiber!" said Antonio, still at Regina's side.

San Paolo! The Tiber! Regina just perceived the sheen of the river and her heart beat strongly. Yet, as often happened to her, after the first moment's wild delight, a shadow of melancholy diffidence stole over her soul.

"Yes!" she thought, "Rome! the capital, the wonder city; where there is no fog, which is full of sunshine and flowers! But what is there in store for me there? Young, happy, loved, I have come to throw myself into the arms of Rome as I have thrown myself into the arms of Antonio. What will Rome be able to give me? We are not rich, and the great city is like—like people, who give little to and care little for those who are not rich. But we aren't poor either!" she concluded, comforting herself.

The engine whistled, and Regina started involuntarily. Behind a wind-blown hedge, straight before her in the moonlight and the glare of the lamps which now had multiplied in number, a small house started into sight for a moment, and vanished as if by magic.

"It might be my home!" she told herself sadly, remembering the dear maternal nest, planted pleasantly on the high bank of the Po.

The train shrieked again, beginning to slacken speed.

"Here we are!" said Antonio; and Regina's recollections dissolved as the apparition of the house had dissolved a moment before.

After this, notwithstanding her resolution not to be upset, not to be surprised, but to make calm study of her own impressions, she became hopelessly bewildered and saw everything as through a veil.

Antonio was pulling the light luggage down from the rack; he overturned the bonnet-box containing the bride's beautiful white hat; she stooped to pick it up, flushed with dismay, then returned to the window and rearranged her cloak and fur collar. Lines of monstrous houses, orange against the velvety blue of the sky, fleeted by rapidly; the wind abated, the lamps became innumerable, golden, white, violet—their crude rays vanquishing the melancholy moonlight. The glare grew and grew, became magnificent, pervaded an enclosure into which the train rushed with deafening roar.

Rome!

Hundreds of intent egotistic faces, illuminated by the violet brilliance of the electric light, passed before Regina's agitated gaze. Here and there she distinguished a few figures, a lady with red hair, a man in a check suit, a pale girl with a picture hat, a bald gentleman, a raised stick, a fluttering handkerchief—but she saw nothing distinctly; she had a strange fancy that this unnamed alien crowd was a deputation sent to welcome her—not over-kindly—by the great city to which she was giving herself.

The carriage doors were thrown violently open, a babel of human voices resounded above the whistles and the throbbing of the engines; on the platform people were running about and jostling each other.

"Roma—a—a!"

"Porter—r—r!"

Antonio was collecting the hand luggage, but Regina stood gazing at the scene. Many smiling, curious, anxious persons were still standing in groups before the carriage doors; others had already escaped and were disappearing out of the station exit.

"There's no one for us, Antonio," said Regina, a little surprised; but she had no sooner spoken than she perceived a knot of persons returning along the platform, and understood that these were they. She jumped out and looked harder. Yes, it was they—three men, one in a light-coloured overcoat; two women, one short and stout, the other very tall, very thin, her face hidden in the shadow of her great black hat. The thin lady held a bouquet of flowers, and her strange figure, tightly compressed in a long coat of which the mother-o'-pearl buttons could be seen a mile off, struck Regina at once. This must be Arduina, her sister-in-law, editress of a Woman's Rights paper, who had written her two or three extraordinary letters.

"Mother!" cried Antonio, flinging himself from the carriage.

Regina found herself on the fat lady's panting bosom; then she felt the pressure of the buttons she had seen from afar; in one hand she was holding the bouquet, the other was clasped by a plump, soft, masculine hand.

The slightly amused voice of Antonio was introducing—

"My brother Mario, clerk in the Board of Control; my brother Gaspare, clerk at the War Office; my brother Massimo, junior clerk at the War Office——"

"That's enough," said the last, bowing graciously. All smiled, but Antonio went on—

"And this is Arduina, the crazy one——"

"Joking as usual!" cried the latter.

"Well, here is Regina, my wife! Here she is! How are you, Gaspare?"

"Pretty fit. And you? Hungry?"

"Are you very tired, my dear?" asked the trembling voice of the old lady, her face close to Regina's.

Notwithstanding the scent of the flowers, Regina could have wished her mother-in-law's lips further off, and she shuddered involuntarily. In that strange place, at that late hour, under that metallic, unpleasantly glaring, electric splendour, all these people, pressed upon the bride, speaking in an unfamiliar accent and staring at her with ill-concealed curiosity. She conceived a dislike to them all. Even Antonio, who at that moment was more taken up with them than with his wife, seemed unlike himself, a stranger, a man of a different race from hers. She felt completely alone, lost, confused; had presently the sensation of being carried away, borne along in a wave of the crowd. Outside she saw a mountain of enormous vehicles drawn up in line on the shining wood pavement; it seemed to her made of blue tiles, and on the damp air she fancied the scent of a forest. The electric light blinded her short-sighted eyes; she thought she saw the forest in the distance, a line of trees black against the steely sky; and the violet globes of the lamps suggested in the heart of those black trees some sort of miraculous burning fruit. There was magic in the late hour, in the vastness of the enclosure bounded by the imaginary wood; the people silently lost themselves and disappeared as into a wet and shining morass.

"Let's walk—it's quite close," said Antonio, taking her arm. "Well! it's pretty big, isn't it, this station yard?"

"It is big!" she responded, genuinely astonished; "but it's been raining here, hasn't it? How lovely it all is!"

Regina felt happy again, at Antonio's side, squeezed up against him by the large and panting person of her mother-in-law. Yes, certainly! Rome was the dream-city, full of gardens, fountains, sublime buildings; a city great and splendid by day and by night! She felt joyous as if she had drunk wine; she chattered with feverish animation. Never afterwards did she succeed in remembering what she said in that first hour of arrival; she did remember that her pleasure was marred by the panting and sighing of her mother-in-law, by Arduina's silly laughter, by the talk of the brothers who stepped just behind her, arguing about trifles.

Antonio had requested his family not to announce his arrival to the more distant relations; however, no sooner had they got to Via Torino and the great palace in which the Venutellis lived on the fourth and fifth floors, than the panting old lady confessed—

"Clara and her girl are here. They came in to spend the evening, and we couldn't get rid of them. They guessed, you see."

"The deuce!" said Antonio; "never mind, I'll soon pack them off for you!"

The gas was lighted, and Regina was impressed by the grand entrance hall and the marble staircase, which seemed continuation of the splendours she had found in piazza and street.

"Courage, my queen!" said Antonio; "this is a veritable Jacob's ladder! Go on in front, you fellows!"

The three men and Arduina pressed forward with the nimbleness of habit; Regina herself tried to run, but she soon got tired and out of breath.

"These stairs are the death of me!" sighed the mother-in-law; "ah! my dear child, I did not always live on a fourth floor!"

Regina was not listening. Cries, laughter, exclamations, a merry uproar, rang from the top of the stair;—then came a whirlwind, a rustle, a whiff of scent, a vision of flounces, chains, lace, yellow hair, which overwhelmed and nearly overturned the bride, the bridegroom, and the old lady.

"Mind you don't break your neck, Claretta, my dear!" cried Antonio.

The lovely being clasped Regina tight in her fragrant arms, covering her with impassioned kisses.

"Dearest! Welcome! Welcome, dearest! A thousand good wishes and congratulations! Mamma is up there waiting for you!"

"Pray reserve some kisses for me!" said Antonio, dryly.

Claretta, without ado, kissed him rapidly on the cheek; then again seized Regina's hand, and drew her up and up, shouting and laughing, tall, rustling, fragrant, elegant. Regina followed, a little envious, even jealous, but childishly bewitched by so much easy loveliness. Claretta, filling the whole stair with her cries and peals of laughter, almost carried the bride, brought her into the drawing-room, threw her on the soft bosom of fat Aunt Clara, and then herself dragged her through the whole Apartment on a tour of inspection. The rooms were lighted by gas, and all the furniture was polished and smelly with paraffin: space everywhere was narrow and choked up with furniture, coarse draperies, jute carpets, crochet work, great cushions embroidered in wool, Japanese fans and umbrellas. In some of the rooms it was impossible to move. Regina's throat was caught by a feeling of suffocation. The remembrance of her beautiful country home, of its large rooms, so sunny and so simple, assailed her with an anguish of tenderness. To comfort herself she had to say to Claretta—

"We shall only stay here till we've found a nice Apartment for ourselves. That'll be easy, won't it?"

"Not so very easy. The foreigners come down on Rome like a swarm of locusts."

This was the discouraging reply of the cousin, who stopped before every mirror to admire herself, bending this way and that, and talking loud that the young men in the dining-room might hear her.

"Here! this is your own room, your nid d'amour, you birds of passage!" she said, taking Regina into a corner room, where they found Antonio, his mother, Arduina, the maid-servant, and the portmanteaux.

The room was large, but had an oppressively low ceiling, painted grey with vulgar blue arabesques; three windows, one close to the foot of the bed, were smothered in heavy draperies, and the massive bed itself was burdened with huge pillows and counterpanes. The bridal trunks and portmanteaux completed the barricade, and Regina's sense of asphyxia perceptibly increased. Silent and sad she surveyed the ugly room; she seemed lost in some painful dream, in some strange prison where everything fettered and mortally oppressed her. Oh dear! all these people! These women, who surrounded, crushed, smothered her! Tired and sleepy, her physical irritability made itself almost morbidly felt at the touch of all these unknown, inquisitive, cruel people. She was yearning for solitude and repose; at any rate she wanted to wash, dress, rearrange her hair. They did not leave her a moment alone. Claretta had no notion of forsaking the looking-glass; Arduina, on the look out for copy, catechised her about her impressions; the mother-in-law never stopped staring with lachrymose eyes.

Regina took off her hat and cloak; her little face, all eyes and lips, seemed pale and frightened under the waves of her hair, black, abundant and curly. Antonio was paying no heed to his bride; he arranged the luggage, and asked his mother news of this one and that. The old lady puffed and sighed, and answered his questions, but never took her eyes off the new daughter-in-law.

"Where shall I wash my hands?" asked Regina. Her warm brown eyes, generally velvety and sweet, were now drooping with fatigue, and in expression almost wild.

"Here!" cried Arduina, precipitating herself on the washstand, "you'll find everything here, dear! soap, powder, comb—What sort of soap do you like?"

Regina did not answer. Mechanically she washed herself, accepting the towel which her sister-in-law presented, and smoothed her hair, stooping to look in the low looking-glass.

"Sit down," said Arduina, setting a chair, "you can't see like that."

"No, I can't see sitting; I'm short-sighted," said Regina, with increasing irritation.

This piece of news plunged the ladies into consternation. Claretta actually turned her back on the glass; Signora Anna, who was examining the lining of Regina's cloak, looked up almost in tears; Arduina studied her sister-in-law's beautiful orbs with astonishment.

"Short-sighted? With such lovely eyes! and so young!" exclaimed the old lady.

"Have you eye-glasses?" asked Claretta.

"Yes, but they're no good. I hate them."

"They're very chic though," said Arduina. "My dear, do loosen your hair at your temples—it's too dragged. What splendid hair you have! I'll do it for you to-morrow. Wait a moment—" and she raised her hand; but the bride's little head, which seemed so small and insignificant, shook itself fiercely.

"No, no. It will do well enough," she said.

Her tone admitted of no reply; and the authoress understood that Regina was a commanding creature of a superior race. For this reason she looked at her with pitying tenderness and compassionate admiration. Struck by this look, Regina for the first time noticed her sister-in-law, whom Antonio had described as a fool. Arduina was tall, with a narrow chest and a countenance of yellowish wood. She had small, colourless, frightened eyes, thin lips with discoloured teeth, and three curls of pale hair. She was singularly plain, and now Regina perceived further that she was melancholy and enslaved. But this produced no pity in the bride, rather a sense of malicious consolation. In this odious world into which she had stepped through the door of the Apartment, there were victims like Arduina, in comparison with whom she was an empress! All this passed through her mind during the few minutes in which she was settling her hair in the presence of the three staring women.

Antonio at last noticed his bride's annoyance, and sent the ladies away, pushing his cousins out familiarly.

"Be so kind as to take yourselves off. I don't require your assistance at my toilette. Go away. Make haste. We want rest."

"You can sleep all to-morrow. It's going to rain," said his mother.

"Let us hope not."

"I expect it will."

"Bother the weather prophets!" said Regina.

At last the women were gone; and in an instant Antonio was by Regina's side, kissing her, leaning his face against her troubled one, and saying in his caressing voice—

"Cheer up; don't be so depressed! You shall just eat a mouthful and then get at once to bed. To-morrow we'll escape—we'll go out by ourselves. We won't let them bore us. Cheer up!"

He put his arm round her and drew her to the dining-room, humming a merry tune—

"Mousey doesn't care for cream,
Mousey wants to marry the Queen;
If the King won't let her go,
Mousey'll break his bones, you know."

But Regina had no smiles left.

Scarcely was she seated on one of the comfortless Vienna chairs which surrounded the overburdened table than she felt her back broken and her eyelids weighed down by the whole fatigue of the journey. Again she seemed in a bad dream, looking through a veil at a picture of vulgar figures. Yes, vulgar the face of her mother-in-law—fat, red, puffy, outlined by the hard line of hair, over-shiny and over-black for nature; vulgar that of Mario, which was much like his mother's, with the same small blue eyes, the same mouth hanging half-open as he breathed slowly and noisily; vulgar, again, the face of Gaspare—rosy all over, hairless below the shining line of his bald forehead; and that of Massimo, who was dandified but decadent, something like Antonio, but with long, reddish, oily hair and bold grey eyes. Claretta herself was vulgar; the very type of a bourgeois beauty. Without understanding why, Regina remembered the crowds half-seen at the passing stations and on the Roman platform; the faces now surrounding her stood out from the confusion of those unnoticed ones, but themselves belonged to the crowd, and were no better than the crowd. A whole world separated her from them.

Notwithstanding the hour and Antonio's promise of dispatch, the supper lasted an immense time. It was served by a strapping, fair-haired girl in a pink blouse, who never took her astonished eyes from the bride's face, and every moment tripped and stumbled, as if determined to break something.

This figure which came and went seemed the principal one of the picture. Every one watched the girl and talked to her. Signora Anna started every time she opened the door.

Even Antonio addressed her.

"Well, Marina, and how are all the sweethearts?" he asked; and added, indicating Regina, "are you satisfied? Which is the prettier, she or Signora Arduina?"

Marina blushed, giggled, ran away, and did not return.

Presently Gaspare rose gravely, threw his napkin over his shoulder, and went in search of her. An altercation was heard in the kitchen. Then Gaspare returned, wrathful and very red.

"Mother, the mutton is burnt!" he announced tragically; "you must go and see after it."

The old lady groaned, got up, went out, came back—and did not stay quiet for another moment!

"Mother!" implored Antonio, "do sit down!"

"Mother!" urged Gaspare, still wrathful, "go and look after her!"

"Oh, these servants!" said the mother-in-law, turning to Regina, "one shouldn't mention them, I know, but they're the ruin of families. I'll tell you afterwards——"

"It's one of the gravest of social problems," said Massimo, sarcastically, looking straight before him.

"But one can't live without servants," cried Gaspare.

"Yet the servants are the death of you?"

"Oh, I'll be the death of them if they don't do their business," said Gaspare, and they all laughed.

Notwithstanding the old lady's irruptions into the kitchen the courses were a long time coming. Talk grew animated. Massimo chattered with the cousin; Signora Anna expatiated to Signora Clara on the delinquencies of the maid.

"How are you getting on with your Gigione?" Antonio asked Gaspare; and his brother replied, abusing his chief as he had abused Marina.

"Did you get my last letter?" Arduina demanded of Regina, under cover of the general noise.

"Which?"

"The one in which I asked information about the state of private benevolence in Mantua."

"Oh, pray leave her in peace," interrupted Antonio testily.

Regina thought of her old home, of the beautiful picture seen through the window of the great dining-parlour, the woods, the silver river sparkling in the summer sunshine—all lost! The actual picture of the woods, and the painted picture above the chimneypiece, a river scene by Baratta, showing the green banks of the Parma, and white boats against a violet sky—all vanished—vanished for ever! Seated on this back-breaking chair, among all these people who chattered of vulgar things, dismay again invaded her soul, the dismay felt by the condemned at the thought of association with his fellow-prisoners. Antonio paid her little attention; he was sucked into the current of his brothers' talk and had become a stranger to her. Again he made some jest at Arduina's expense; the maid looked at the ladies and laughed. Indeed, they all laughed. Why did they laugh? Was happiness making Antonio cruel? His brother Mario—a man no longer young, who seldom spoke, but always reddened when he heard his thought expressed by somebody else—detested, as they all knew, his wife's scribbling mania. So Antonio persisted in questioning his sister-in-law about her newspaper, The Future of Woman.

"It has reached a circulation of three copies," said Massimo, "and it's clearly anxious to provoke quarrels, for it has printed a sonnet from a Calabrian paper without leave."

"My goodness! how witty you are!" cried Arduina, laughing, but her whole face expressed a vague terror.

Sor Mario, his eyes on his plate, grunted and munched like an angry bullock. There followed a perfect explosion of childish cruelty towards the poor creature, who, even to Regina, suggested a caricature.

"I've never succeeded in discovering the office of her paper," said Claretta; "one ought to be able to go there if only to find the editor."

"There are plenty of editors in the street," answered Arduina; "a girl like you could find one anywhere."

"I don't see the sense of that!" cried Gaspare.

"We never expect you to see the sense of anything."

"Come, show sense yourself!" interposed her husband, threatening her with his fork.

"Are you in the Woman Movement, Regina?" some one asked.

"I? No!" answered the bride, as if starting from a dream. Then, wishing to defend her sister-in-law, less out of pity for her than out of dislike to the brothers, she added, "Perhaps Arduina will convert me."

"Antonio! get out your stick!" cried Gaspare, and again they all laughed.

The topic changed. They discussed a certain Madame Makuline, a Russian princess long resident in Rome, to whom Antonio had been introduced by Arduina, and who occasionally employed him in the administration of her affairs.

"She should give a wedding present to Regina," said the authoress; "I expect her to dinner to-morrow; will you two come?"

This intelligence somewhat restored Arduina's prestige, and Regina breathed more freely. The conversation ran on countesses and duchesses; Claretta cried, turning to Massimo—

"Oh, now I remember! You were seen yesterday——"

"Wasn't I seen to-day?"

"——running after Donna Maria del Carro's carriage. It was raining, and you had no umbrella."

"That's why I ran," he said, flattered and pleased.

"No, my dear boy; you ran after the carriage."

"Why?" asked the innocent Regina.

"How sweet you are!" said the cousin. "He ran to be seen, of course! The Marchesa del Carro likes handsome young men, even when she doesn't know them."

"Thank you very much," said Massimo, making a bow.

Then they all got excited and talked of innumerable titled persons of their acquaintance, telling their "lives and miracles." Signora Clara, not to be left out, was insistent in describing the reception costume of a countess.

Regina listened. She did not confess it to herself, but she was certainly pleased that her new relations had friends among the aristocracy.

At last they arrived at the coffee, and Signora Anna turned to Regina intending to say something pleasant.

"I expect you miss your Mamma," she began; "you can't get accustomed to the idea of a second mother."

But she was interrupted by Gaspare, who came from a second inspection of the kitchen.

"My dear mother, just come and look. Come!" he insisted, flicking the corner of his napkin, "there's a flood in the kitchen. She has left the tap running."

The old lady had to get up; panting and puffing she followed her son to the kitchen. Presently Marina was heard sobbing.

"The man's unbearable!" said Arduina; "is that poor girl a slave? From the point of view of——"

"From the social point of view—" suggested Massimo.

"Pardon me," observed Aunt Clara, "she left the tap running."

"If ever I marry a man who meddles in the kitchen," said Claretta, tightening her sash at the looking-glass, "I'll give him—from the social point of view—such a hiding——"

"I too!" agreed the authoress.

Sor Mario, who was picking his teeth ferociously, uttered a grunt.

Signora Anna came back followed by Marina, her eyes red, her lips quivering.

"Pooh! don't cry!" said Massimo, "it makes a fright of you. If the pastrycook saw you now——"

"What, is it a pastrycook this time?" joked Antonio.

"Yes; his name's Stanislao."

"But when I went away it was a penny-a-liner!"

"I got rid of him. For more than three months I had no one," declared Marina, all smiles again.

"Brava!" said Claretta, "that's the best plan. Have you had a great many?"

"Four. No—five, counting the first. He was Peppino. He was an official."

"Good gracious! Where?"

"At Campo Verano."

"Oh! Did he perhaps dig there?"

"Yes," said the girl, simply.

They all burst out laughing, and again Regina felt choked.

Were they always like this in this house? Even Antonio, her Antonio, who was always gay, but with her never had shown himself vulgar—even he appeared in a new light.

Suddenly, however, while Signora Clara was repeating her description of the countess's dress, Regina saw her husband looking at her with distressed eyes, and she knew that her brows must have been contracted in a frown. He got up, came over, and stroked her hair.

"It's time for bed now. You're tired, aren't you?" he whispered, his voice almost supplicating.

Regina rose. Arduina and Claretta thought it necessary to run after her, embracing and kissing her. When they had conducted her to the bedroom, they kissed her again.

Now she was alone with Antonio, and great was her relief. But alas! the door opened immediately, and in came the mother-in-law.

"What is it?" asked Regina, dismayed; and she threw herself on one of the immense, encumbering arm-chairs, and closed her eyes.

Signora Anna, sighing as usual, advanced to the bed.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, in accents of tragedy, "these maids, now-a-days, know nothing of their business! They have no heads. Forgive me, my dearest child——"

"What on earth has happened?" asked Antonio, half undressed.

"She hasn't turned down the bed!" cried the poor lady, attacking the pillows with her fat and trembling arms.

She fussed about, altered all the blankets, tidied the dressing-table, examined the jugs. Regina was waiting to undress; but as the old lady would not go away, she leaned back in the arm-chair, her eyes still closed, her hands folded in her lap. She listened to her mother-in-law's uncertain step and panting breath; and she thought with anguish of to-morrow.

"And the morrow of that, and the next day, and for ever and ever, I shall have to put up with these people! It's awful!"

"Where are your things?" asked Antonio, in his pyjamas.

Regina opened her eyes, got up hastily, and searched her portmanteau. Lo! behind her the heavy panting of the old lady!

"Let me, dear child! You go and undress. I'll find everything for you."

"No, no!" said Regina, vexed, "I'll do it myself."

"Leave it all to me. Go and undress."

"No!"

"There's nothing for me but to dance!" said Antonio, cutting capers; he was well made, and agile as a clown.

"My dear daughter! what are you thinking of? That's a petticoat, not a night-dress! This? Surely that's one of Antonio's flannel shirts? Ah! a flannel night-dress! Dear me! doesn't it tickle you? But I believe it's very cold in your part of the country. It's cold here, too, when the tramontana blows. The tramontana blows for three days at a time. Dear! what lovely embroidery! Did you do it yourself? Listen——"

But Regina could listen no longer. Rage possessed her, while the old lady rummaged in the portmanteau, examining everything with the greatest curiosity. Antonio was waltzing round the arm-chair; he suddenly seized Regina, and whirled her away with him.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, with a cry of suffering protest, "it's time now to leave me in peace!"

The hint was lost upon the old lady. She put everything straight in the portmanteau, then came to Regina and embraced her lengthily.

At last she did take herself off, and at last Regina was really alone with her husband, but it was too late for her to feel great comfort in the fact. She undressed and got into bed; into the huge, solid bed, hard, and wide and cold as the bed of a river! She felt shipwrecked; around her floated gaping trunks, boxes, curtains, unpleasing furniture; above beetled the grey ceiling, overwhelming as a rainy sky. Confused noises, vibrations in the silence of night, penetrated from the distance, from some unknown and mysterious place. Arduina's foolish laughter, Claretta's hysterical shrieks, echoed on in the next room. And above these, above all voices far and near, sounded a melancholy whistle, the sibilant lament of some nocturnal train, which seemed to Regina a voice out of other times from a distant place, a cry which called, invited, implored her to—what? She did not know, did not remember; but she was sure she knew that cry, that it had once told her something wonderful, that it was sounding now only for her, having sought her out in the night of the vast, unknown city;—that it was repeating to her things wild, sweet, lacerating——

"At last!" said Antonio, embracing her. "This bed is a limitless desert! Where are you? Oh, what little cold hands! You're trembling! Are you cold?"

"No."

"Then why do you tremble?" he asked, in another tone; "are you not happy, Regina?"

She made no answer.

"Are you not happy?"

"I'm tired," she said, her eyes shut; "I still feel the shake of the train. Do you hear that whistle?"

"Ah!" she went on, as if speaking in a dream, "I know it now! It's the whistle of the little steamer on the Po! Ah! let us start!"

"We have hardly arrived, and already you want to go?" he said, his voice half jesting, half bitter.

She made no response. He thought she slept, and kept motionless for fear of waking her. But presently he heard her laugh and felt quite cheered.

"What's the matter?" he asked, fondling her hand, which was beginning to grow warm.

"That official—was a gravedigger!" she murmured, still dreaming; "if my sister Toscana had been here how she would have laughed!"

"She's still in that old home of hers!" thought Antonio jealously.

Long afterwards he confided to Regina that that night he had been unable to sleep. He wanted to ask how she liked his mother and the rest, but dared not put the question, guessing intuitively that she would not answer him sincerely.

He, too, heard the whistle which had reached the half-slumbering Regina, and had lulled her in memories and hope.

"Go? Is she already dreaming of going?" he thought, bitterly; and remembered, not without resentment, her cold, sad, now and then contemptuous manner during those first hours of communion with her new relatives. Yet he could not but feel the measureless distance which divided those relatives from the thoughtful, delicate creature of a superior race whom he had dared to marry.

"But she knew all about it!" he reflected; "I had told her everything. I said to her: We're a family of working people, descended from working people. My mother is just the housewife, my sister-in-law is a harmless lunatic. She said she did not care—she loved me, and that was enough. Then what more does she want?"

He had a foolish desire to push her away, to distance her from himself in that great, limitless bed; but she was so fragile, so slight, so cold, lying like a dead thing on his warm, pulsing breast!

"I've been wrong in bringing her here! I ought to have prepared our own nest, and taken her there at once. She's like an uprooted flower which must be planted at once in an adapted soil."

He looked at her with profound tenderness, and remained motionless, lest he should disturb the slumber which had descended on her homesickness and fatigue.

CHAPTER II

On waking next morning Regina found herself alone in the big hard bed.

It was raining; the room was oppressed by a grey, melancholy twilight which seemed thrown from the ceiling. Vehicles were already rolling in the street; screaming trams passed by; there was continued howling of tempestuous wind, the whole making on Regina an impression of unutterable dreariness. The luminous city of her dreams seemed pervaded by this howling wind through which resounded a thousand other voices; a ceaseless booming of toilsome life, dismal under eternal rain.

Presently she looked at the room, screwing up her eyes to distinguish the various objects. The grey ceiling, the three grey windows, especially that one at the foot of the bed, were positively funereal; the rough linen of the sheets and pillow-case, the coarse embroidery of their adornment filled her with horror.

And Antonio, where was he? In her ill-humour Regina resented his having risen silently so as not to wake her, his having left her alone in the immensity of that strange bed; but almost immediately the door was gently pushed open and Antonio looked in.

"There they are, her big eyes!" he said gaily, and came over hurriedly to kiss her lips; "so you've come to, little one, have you? Are you awake?"

"I think so," she murmured rather hoarsely, and threw her arm round his neck. "Is it raining?"

"Yes; it's raining needlessly hard!" he said, heaving an exaggerated sigh, "but it will soon leave off."

"Let us hope so! Open the shutters!"

He moved to obey. "This is Sunday; don't you know that in Rome it always rains on Sunday?—result of the Papal curse! Never mind. It will leave off. I assure you it will! Stay in bed a little longer. I'll ring for your coffee."

"No, no!" she cried, terrified lest the summons should bring her mother-in-law; "I'll get up at once! I'm anxious to write home."

"We'll go out the moment the rain stops," said Antonio. "If you don't mind we'll take Gaspare with us. He knows all about archæology. We'll go to the Forum."

"To the Forum!" she echoed, her eyes sparkling with revival of joy.

"Yes, my dear—to the Forum. Think of that! To the Forum! Have you realised where you are?"

She smiled at him without answering. He had changed his costume, was wearing a shining collar, a beautiful green tie, had curled his moustache. He was fresh, fragrant, very handsome. Light had come in with him, love, joy. Regina pulled him down to her, kissed his hair, which she said smelt of "burnt flowers," pretended to whisper something in his ear, and made instead a childish shout. He jumped in feigned terror, threatened her and shook her. They laughed, they played, they forgot everything but their own felicity.

"Where have you awaked, levrottin?" (leveret), he asked, using one of the pretty pet names he had learned in her country, where he had been for three months on a Royal Commission; "where are you? This time yesterday we were at Parma; to-day we are here. Think, what a distance! And three months ago we didn't so much as know each other! Do you remember the first day we made friends on the river-bank? And that great crimson sun behind the woods? The Master kept looking at us and smiling; he knew we'd have to get married!"

"'Here is the Signor Antonio Venutelli, junior clerk at the Treasury, and here is the noble Signorina Regina Tagliamari,'" continued Antonio, imitating the nasal voice of the school-master who had arranged their introduction; "'she is a real queen of goodness and of genius, fit to reign in the Eternal City, in unequalled Rome.'"

"Poor old man!" said Regina, more gravely. "Yes, we certainly owe our meeting to him."

"And what do you suppose they'd say in your home, now? They'd say, 'Regina is in Rome, and she's still in bed, the little sluggard, and she hasn't even been to Mass, the little heathen! Fancy being in Rome and not going to Mass!'"

"But look here!" she began, clapping her hands and imitating her husband's mock-heroic tone. However she was no longer merry. A sweet vision had melted her heart. She saw her mother—her dear, delicate mother, her pretty sister, her youngest brother, her darling, all starting for the nine o'clock Mass. The house on the river-bank was deserted. It stood among poplar-trees veiled in mist, like a fancy house in the background of a stage picture. Inside a fire burned on the great hearth, the black cat sat contemplating the flames, the Baratta painting was illuminated with grey and rosy tints which gave it a suggestive relief. The sound of a bell, singularly pure in tone, was dying on the still air in metallic vibrations; the northern landscape, with the great river winding along like an immense blue vein in the whiteness of that snowy plain, was spread out under the vaporous heaven. Silence—mysterious immensity—the mist of dream!

But this nostalgic vision, which gave her a melancholy pleasure seen thus under the caresses of him for whom she had abandoned all, was snatched from her by the entrance of Signora Anna. The old lady, round and enormous in her red flannel dressing-gown, her hair already dressed, and blacker and oilier than yesterday, advanced with circumspection, puffing and panting as was her wont. Regina blushed, removed her arms from Antonio's neck, and covered herself hastily.

"Why so?" said the young man, taking the coverlet away, "show your lovely little arms at once! Look, mother! see how white my Regina is!"

"No, no! let me alone!" said the girl, hiding under the sheet. But the old lady came nearer, helped Antonio to unbutton the wrist of Regina's jacket, and passed an approving finger over the bride's white and child-like arm.

"Upon my word!" she exclaimed, "you are really lovely!"

"Oh, dear me! Do please let me alone!" said Regina, flattered all the same.

"Isn't she lovely? Isn't she?" insisted Antonio, kissing the fair arms.

"Lovely! Very well made indeed! Brava!" said the mother-in-law, almost as if Regina had made herself. "And indeed I was white and shapely enough myself once," she went on; "now I'm an old woman, but in my day I was very much admired, I assure you!"

"Well really!" thought Regina, looking at her mother-in-law's thick hands, brown, chapped, smelling of garlic, and very unlike the blue-veined whiteness of her own delicate members.

"Won't you have some coffee? Do you take it with milk? I'll go and get the coffee and the milk—a little scalded cream—whipped eggs?"

"For pity's sake!" cried Regina. "No, thank you, I don't want anything."

"Get up! Get up!" said Antonio, "the rain's stopping. Let's go out!"

"You're not going to take her out in this weather!" protested the mother-in-law. "You're insane! She shall stay in bed. When I was a girl" (she turned to Regina), "I always stayed in bed the whole morning. But those days were different. The servants then were faithful, sensible, active, and the mistress could do the lady even if she wasn't one—thank heaven, I could."

"So you can now. What's to hinder you?" said Regina politely.

"Goodness me! What! with such maids as we get now? Dishonest, untruthful, ungrateful hussies! They're the torment of one's existence. There was a time when I loved my servants just as if they were members of the family; now I don't love them at all. They don't deserve it. This girl I have now makes me sick with the worries she causes me."

"Get up! Get up!" repeated Antonio.

But Regina would not stir till she was left alone. Then she jumped out of bed, and, clad in her long white nightgown, stood disconsolately looking at the chaos of objects in the room and at the grey light which penetrated by the three doleful windows. She made also the sad discovery that at Rome it was colder than in her own north country! She washed, dressed, and did her hair awkwardly. Everything was inconvenient from the washstand to the looking-glass, the latter a panel in the wardrobe draped with a heavy curtain. Having tucked this up she saw herself in the glass; pale, worn out, ugly. Her depression reasserted itself.

She was long in appearing, and at last Antonio came to look for her. She had peevishly pulled up all the blinds, tucked away all the curtains, and was engaged settling the things in her trunk.

"What on earth are you about?" he asked a little impatiently; and, taking her hand, led her to the dining-room, where Signora Anna was waiting at a table laid for two, but groaning under food sufficient for ten.

"I only want a drop of black coffee," said Regina.

"Only black coffee? My dear, you are crazy—so to speak—I don't mean any offence. But, you know, one must eat at Rome! Here is the black coffee. A little brandy in it?"

"No, thanks. It doesn't agree with me."

"Just try. You'll like it, I'm sure."

"No, no!"

"Yes, yes! If you don't mean to vex me——"

She had to take the brandy in the coffee, and then café au lait; and cream, and bread and butter, and biscuits, and the whipped eggs. At last tears rose in her eyes, so overwhelmed was she by her mother-in-law's insistence. By way of comfort Signora Anna at once offered a basin of broth and the wing of a roast chicken.

"But you're trying to kill me!" cried the girl, jesting, though desperate. Antonio laughed, and ate heartily.

Fortunately an alarming noise was heard in the kitchen, and the Signora ran, much agitated and tripping over her red dressing-gown. Regina seized the opportunity and fled to her room.

She put on a beautiful white scarf and a black hat with a pink ribbon, which she thought very smart; powdered herself carefully, and imagined every one was going to admire her as they did at home.

"Behold how lovely my Regina is!" said Antonio, half serious, half amused; "and just you look at her hat!"

Gaspare, buttoned up in his new great-coat, fat, heavy, rosy and pompous, was waiting at the dining-room door. He looked at Regina out of the corner of his eye, then saluted her and said gravely—

"Your hat is like a swallow's nest."

"I'd like to hear what you know about hats, when you know nothing about women," said Antonio.

"I shall never marry," declared Gaspare; "but if I should be overtaken by such unhappiness, at least my wife shall not make herself ridiculous."

"Ridiculous?" retorted Regina. "Who? the unhappy one?"

Gaspare deigned no reply. They started.

Regina never forgave her husband for taking Gaspare with them on this their first walk through Rome.

"We'll go down Via Cavour to the Forum, and come back by Piazza Venezia and Via Nazionale," proposed Antonio, consulting his watch; "it's late already."

The weather had cleared. Great drops of shining water fell from the trees in the Via Torino gardens. Santa Maria Maggiore, rose-coloured and grey against the blue sky, towered like a mountain above her broad flight of rain-washed steps. Gaspare pointed to the church with his umbrella and named it. Regina looked indifferently; the edifice seemed to her ugly.

They went down Via Cavour. The wood pavement was drying rapidly, and Regina naïvely remarked that it wasn't polished as she had supposed last night.

"I should hope not!" said Gaspare, who dropped behind now and then to hawk and spit. "What extraordinary things women do suppose! The very opposite of the facts!"

"Men too," retorted Regina.

"Men oftener than women," added Antonio, gallantly.

"Eh! Possibly. Sometimes," said Gaspare, with a disagreeable smile.

Gaspare's rude manners offended Regina, though she had been warned he was "quite a character." Presently, however, she forgot him, and became absorbed in contemplation of the new things she was seeing.

People passed rapidly along the pavements, umbrellas under their arms; vivid light poured from the blue sky still furrowed by metallic clouds; through the bright moist air strayed the smell of roasted chestnuts. Yes! this wide, brilliant street was really fine! In a shop window were exhibited five astonishing hats, which Regina admired more than Santa Maria Maggiore. But presently the brothers made her deviate into a lane, dismal with old houses and old gardens hanging under high bastion-like walls, which went up and down, where there were no pavements, no shops, only a dirty crowd of hawkers, herb-sellers, street arabs. They walked on and on, but this melancholy street seemed endless. Regina grew tired; she leaned on Antonio's arm, and began again to feel a dull weight of sadness. Was this Rome?

The brothers made the blunder of supposing that Regina could walk as far as they. They dragged her on to the Forum, where, her eyes blinded by fatigue, she saw no more than a field of drenched ruins, a sorrow-stricken place, a cemetery over which the metallic clouds brooded, hiding the blue heaven and wrapping arches and columns in veils of doleful shade. Gaspare discoursed learnedly, but she did not listen. The tragic solitude of the vast graveyard was profaned by a great number of persons with eye-glasses and English gowns girded up with pins and dress-fasteners. The columns and the glorious fragments, still soaked with rain, seemed to Regina gigantic marble bones, exhumed by a nation of inquisitive children who amused themselves desecrating this stupendous sepulchre of a dead civilisation.

From the Forum they moved homewards towards Piazza Venezia. It was almost noon; the crowds took the trams by assault; a broad river of smartly-dressed women came down Via Nazionale, spread over the Piazza, and went up the Corso. A confused noise of trams, motors, carriages, human voices, sounded on the air which was still damp, but illuminated by changing light from between the clouds. Regina felt a kind of vertigo. She, who could see little that was distant, began to see even the near things confusedly. The incessant rumble of a thousand noises, among which the motors emitted roars like rampant wild beasts, gave her a vague sensation of terror. She fixed her wide eyes on the crowd, fascinated by the coming and going as by the flowing of a stream. She looked up and saw a network of telephone wires hiding the sky, which renewed her feeling of oppression; and yet, though tired and overwhelmed, she would not admit herself wondering or surprised. The elegance of the women certainly struck her. She felt envious, but also displeased. It was impossible there could be so many shapely and handsome women! They must be painted and padded! Oh, she knew very well! She knew how much corruption, falsity, hidden misery, that crowd carried within itself, the first contact with which on that uncertain autumn morning under the network of metallic threads awoke in her a mysterious sentiment of aversion and pity. Antonio fixed enamoured eyes on his bride's face; but those enamoured eyes failed to perceive the apathy of fatigue which was showing more and more plainly on the beloved features.

"Let's take a carriage," he suggested.

"Why not the tram?" asked Gaspare.

Antonio said the carriage would be quicker, but really he wanted at least for the first day to treat his Regina royally. Gaspare argued for the tram.

"Let's walk," said Regina.

"Walk? When we can't get you along?" exclaimed the brother-in-law.

"Then we'll have the carriage," said Regina to spite him.

"Oh, I see! We've become aristocrats!" said the misogynist.

They found a carriage and drove up Via Nazionale, now beginning to empty and a little somnolent. It appeared immense under the white light of a heaven which had become all silver. In the distant and vaporous background of Piazza Termini, the fountains looked like huge crystal flowers. The great street was a thing of exquisite beauty at that hour, under that tender and melancholy sky, with that grand yet delicate background. Antonio looked at his wife, hoping at last to find a ray of admiration in her bewildered eyes. But the great eyes, shadowed and full of weariness, were only following the floating flags, and did not notice the grandeur and beauty of the splendid street. At Via Napoli he said—

"Let's throw a glance into those cross-streets. We'll perhaps find our street, Regianotta!"

"It would take me three months to recognise it. I don't know what to look out for."

"But you aren't observing!"

"Very likely not. What's the good of observing?"

"What's the good of having eyes?" put in Gaspare.

"Yes, what's the good? One generally blunders with them."

Gaspare did not appear to understand. He merely spat, and reflected that women are all either fools or flirts.

From that day out, he classed Regina with what he called the "avalanche" of fool-women. She was like Arduina, like Marina the maid, like other women of his acquaintance. Supreme and reciprocal contempt reigned for their whole life between this brother and sister-in-law.

They came in, and Signora Anna declared the lunch "Ready, ready!" yet kept them waiting for half-an-hour. Regina had to give minute descriptions of everything she had seen. The three brothers argued about politics, their ideas being widely apart. Gaspare was a "forcaiuolo"[1] of the first water, uncompromising and cruel; Massimo was a Tolstoyan Socialist, as much against war as his brother was against liberty; Antonio was Liberal and a little opportunist. Signora Anna made excursions into her sons' conversation in a manner peculiar to herself. No matter what public character was named, she knew the history of his marriage and could give the name of his mistress. On all such matters she appeared singularly well informed.

After lunch Regina retired to her room, lay down, and slept. When she awoke her ears told her it was again raining, and very heavily. Finding herself once more in the big, hard bed under that detestable ceiling, in the gloom of the chilly room, her depression became almost desperation. She jumped up, and resolved to write her letter home. Antonio established her at the bureau in Signora Anna's room, and she began—

"It's pouring. I am in the lowest spirits."

But come! this was idiotic. Why distress her Mamma with useless lamentations?

"Is it not my own doing?" she thought, tearing the note-paper. "Who forced me to change my state, to leave my family, and my home? For the future I am alone. Alone! Even if I were to explain, no one would ever understand!"

Leaning against the desk, she philosophised bitterly.

"Have I the smallest right to complain? No. And there's no sense in complaining when the cause of discomfort is in oneself. My soul is sick; it's a plant torn from the place where it sprang; every little shock withers it. Why should I lament? It's useless. Nothing can cure me, not even Antonio's love. The rain will stop, the fine days will come, I shall have my own house, and needn't be bothered with any one's company; but shall I even then be happy? Who can tell? Yet, after all, what does it matter? One must just accept life as it is, and resign oneself, and try to live to oneself. I don't understand the mania for company. Isn't it possible to live alone? Isn't it better? What company so good as one's own? And," she concluded, "it won't last for ever. We've all got to die."

She took this for resignation, and decided to write a letter full of pious lies. But, searching the pigeon-holes for an envelope, she came upon Antonio's letters to his mother during the three months he had served on the Commission at C——e.

Curiosity prompted her to look into them.

In the beginning of the correspondence Antonio described the place with rapid touches, and praised the inhabitants, whom he found energetic, lively, quick-witted.

"I have established myself," he wrote, "in an excellent family, thoroughly honest and sensible. The father is school-master in a neighbouring village, but lives here that his own children may attend secondary schools. The boy Gabriele is smart, active, and ambitious. Gabriella, the girl, is very clever, and intends to be an authoress. The school-master (nick-named the guendol [spindle], because he's never quiet for a single moment) is an excellent fellow. He discourses of Raphael and Michaelangelo, making highly original criticisms. For instance, speaking of Raphael (whose surname he never omits), he says 'the painter of La Madonna delle Seggiole (plural), etc.'"

In a postscript to this letter Antonio added—

"The Master has suggested a marriage to me—a young lady of noble family, once very wealthy, now come down in the world—twenty-three—neither pretty nor ugly—clever—fortune, 30,000 lire."

In another letter Antonio boasted of tender regards from several young ladies in the neighbourhood, but said the Master still held to his idea.

"The Tagliamari are one of the best families in this part. They still have 200,000 lire to be divided into four parts. At present the elder daughter has 30,000. The Signora T—— is most distinguished widow of a noble who in his day ran through half-a-million. The Master paints the young lady as a model of wisdom and goodness. 'È fine, sa,' he says to me, 'fine, fine, fine!'[2] She has been educated at Parma in a school for ladies of rank. 'You ought to take her away from this,' he says, 'to Rome—that's her place.'"

"Poor old man," commented Antonio. "He imagines that I am a prince—I with my small berth at the Treasury!—fit to marry and carry off a young lady who is fine, fine, fine!"

"To be sure," he wrote in his letter of September 2nd, "30,000 lire are not to be despised; but I must first see the lady."

The next letter described the meeting with Regina on the banks of the Po, near her home.

"She is not beautiful. She has a muzzle like a cat; but she is very attractive, cultured, particularly intelligent. The Master must have talked to her of me, for she got red and looked at me in a shy sort of way. She asked if I was really private secretary to a princess. Evidently she would think that much more interesting than to be merely a junior clerk in the Treasury office!

"Yesterday I went to the Tagliamaris' villa. The mother is the most charming of women, a genuine great lady. She told me the whole story of her life, perhaps with intention, but in the most delicate way. She belongs herself to a distinguished family. Her husband was wealthy, but what she calls unlucky speculations, the floods of —80, and other misfortunes, completely ruined him——"

"What are you about, Regina?" asked Antonio, appearing at the door.

"Oh!" she cried, looking up, "I've discovered some most curious human documents!"

And she held up the letters. He flushed, and sprang to put them back in their pigeon-holes, then changed his mind and began to read them himself.

"Aren't you ashamed?" she said; "a 'signorina fine, fine, fine!' '30,000 lire not to be despised,' 'Private secretary to a princess more interesting in her eyes, etc., etc., etc.' You were horrid!"

"Read here! Read here!" said Antonio. "See what I say afterwards!"

But she got up and looked at herself in the glass.

"I declare it's true! I am like a cat!"

"Read here!" repeated Antonio, pursuing her, a letter in his hand.

"We'll read it later. Now I'm going to write home," she said, reseating herself at the bureau.

Antonio took all the letters and set himself to read them over, buried in a corner of the ottoman. Every now and then, while Regina wrote rapidly, he burst into exclamations and little laughs, then suddenly became serious, as if in the lively recollection of the last days passed at C——e he were living his happiness over again.

Later the pair presented themselves at Arduina's Apartment, where they were to dine. The authoress lived on the top floor of the palace in a small suite of rooms furnished in rather strange taste and pervaded by what seemed to Regina affected disorder.

Arduina came to meet her guests screaming with delight. She was dressed in a long white overall, her sleeves tucked up and displaying lean, yellow arms.

"Come in!" she said, hiding her hands behind her back; "give me a kiss, Regina!"

Regina kissed her without enthusiasm, and Antonio said—

"I've explained that to get time for writing you prepare dinner at 5 a.m. God only knows what sort of meal you'll give us!"

"Here's what will reassure you!" said Arduina, revealing floury hands. "I write easily, you know," she went on, "at any hour and in any place; so it's true, sometimes, when the inspiration comes I do sit down with a pen at a corner of the kitchen table. And I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing that the meat's apt to get burned. But what does it matter?" she added, laughing with her rather silly but apparently conceited laugh; "roast meat is no more than roast meat, and art is art. But come in; sit down; amuse yourself with these papers, dear. I'll be with you in a moment, and then you'll give me that information about female benevolence in Mantua."

"Leave her in peace," said Antonio, as before.

"Don't you interfere with me! There's no one cares for your wife so much as I do. Why, I adore her! Do you hear," she repeated, turning to Regina, "I adore you. It seems as if I'd known you for years. If for no other reason I love you because of your queenly name. By the way, have you seen the queen yet?"

"Of course! in my dreams last night."

"True; you only arrived last night. Still, you've had time. Where did you go this morning? To the Colosseum? Ah! I adore the Colosseum! I'd like to live in it! Have you read Quo Vadis? What! you have not?—and it's the finest of all modern books! I'll make you read it. I'll make you read all sorts of books. I'll introduce you to ever so many authors. I'll take you to intellectual circles, artistic gatherings, to lectures, to wherever one may live not by bread alone——"

"Are we to have bread alone here?" asked Antonio, in feigned alarm; "well, whatever you do, you're not to make Regina write for your paper."

"Why not?"

"I'd kill you—have you taken up!"

Regina laughed, and Arduina disappeared again into the kitchen.

When they were alone Antonio pulled Regina to the looking-glass. "We mayn't be beautiful," he said, kissing her, "but we make a good group. Look, my queen, and laugh; laugh as you used! You don't know what dumps I fall into when I see you displeased."

"I'm not displeased," she said, putting her hands on his breast.

"But neither are you pleased. You aren't my Regina of the river-side. Your face is long, your eyes are far away. You don't seem to care that you're in Rome—Rome of your dreams."

"It's the weather—the weather," she said in a dull voice.

"The weather will clear up," said Antonio, taking her to the window. "You'll see how beautiful Rome is in fine weather! It's almost always fine, and never cold. Just see all the gardens! Even here in Via Torino there's so much green. Shall we look out a bit? It's not raining now."

He opened the French window. Regina stepped out among the flower-pots—filled with consumptive little plants, on whose sparse leaves the melancholy of the grey sky was reflected. She looked down on the wet and deserted street.

Taking shelter under a doorway was a little old woman, dressed in black, and with a meagre basket of lemons by her side. She was hurriedly wringing out her stockings, and she was pale, huddled up, shaking with cold.

Regina had noticed her in the morning, and now, instead of admiring the palaces and gardens—squeezing up her eyes to see distinctly from this altitude of fifth storey—she looked again at the little old woman with the withered lemons.

Antonio pointed out the Costanzi Theatre, and tried to cheer her by saying that Bellincioni was expected at Carnival time.

"Just think, little one! You shall hear Bellincioni!"

But Regina was looking at the muddy pavement, presided over by that little black figure, whose whole fortune consisted in those seven miserable lemons. It seemed as if she had no right to rejoice in the pleasures offered by a great city, when in that same city, at a street corner, while it rained, that little old woman was to be seen tired and shaking with cold. Her soul must have turned sour and sad like the lemons which made up her ridiculous fortune, all her subsistence, the total of her long life of labour and sorrow.

"To be poor and old!" murmured Regina, trying to express her idea to her husband.

"What is it you've got in your head?" he returned; "do you imagine the old crone is suffering? Not she! She's used to that sort of life. If you altered her habits, even if you offered her a more comfortable existence, she'd be perfectly wretched."

Regina remembered her own case, and questioned whether Antonio were not right. Her thoughts flew to her old home, where the firelight would be just beginning to gild the semi-obscurity of the great parlour. The recollection was enough to make her feel sadder still, here in this cold and untidy little city drawing-room.

She was roused from her homesickness by Arduina, who brought tidings.

"The Princess is coming after all! She had promised, but I feared she'd never turn out a day like this. She is so kind! and so clever. I adore her. I must go and dress. Mario!" she cried, running to her husband, who was entering, "Mario, make haste! Put on at least your——"

Sor Mario entered, very grave, very fat, much out of breath. He pressed Regina's hand, gasped, and in compliance with his wife's insistence went away to dress. Regina could not make out if he were pleased or not that the Princess was honouring his board. As for herself she was curious, even anxious, to meet a lady of authentic rank, or, at any rate, of wealth, however little flattering her portrait as drawn by Antonio. It did not occur to her that the Princess in question could not be a very exalted personage if she deigned to sup with Arduina!

"She's old and deaf," Antonio had said; "she sets up to be a critic, and patronises, or at least receives visits from, the worst scribblers in Rome. But oh! these authors! They penetrate everywhere like flies. It's a fine thing, genius!—worth even more than money."

"Certainly," Regina had answered, "genius can buy even money; or, at any rate, can despise it!"

"I think we'd better dress, too," said Antonio thoughtfully, and added hastily, "not, of course, for her sake—for our own."

They descended the stair again, and Regina put on her prettiest silk, her lace scarf, her jewelled brooch, her rings. She powdered herself, and, following Antonio's suggestion, puffed her hair a little at the temples.

"That's it," he said approvingly, "you look another girl."

He changed his own attire, and curled his moustache.

"A perfect fop!" laughed Regina; "you intend to captivate the lady with that moustache!"

"Surely you don't imagine any one could fall in love with me?—not even that 'vecchia corna' (scarecrow)!"

"I fell in love with you!"

He caught her and kissed her.

"But is it true you were in love? I don't believe it!"

"It was you who didn't fall in love! A 'signorina fine, fine, fine.' '30,000 lire not to be despised,' 'a muzzle like——'"

"Yes; a muzzle, a muzzle, a muzzle!" he said, like a child persisting in some innocent insult.

As they were going forth the second time Signora Anna ran to see Regina's finery. She examined the stuff of her dress, and looked if it were lined with silk, while deep and painful sighs swelled her capacious bosom. In the kitchen Gaspare was heard scolding Marina.

Regina felt acute pleasure in the thought that Gaspare and the mother-in-law were not coming to Arduina's dinner. However, she was no sooner back in the squeezy drawing-room, where they sat awaiting "Madame," than her low spirits returned.

Evening fell rapidly; the shadows deepened like black impalpable clouds. Arduina was busy with final preparations. Sor Mario grunted benevolently, sunk in an arm-chair, his trousers drawn very tight over the knee. Antonio was thoughtful and silent. No one remembered to light the lamps.

Regina felt a weight of sadness upon her soul. What was it? The gloom, the oppression of twilight in this remote and unknown place to which destiny had carried her, or was it the mere reflection of Antonio's unwonted seriousness? She walked to the window, and again looked for the little old woman with the black raiment; lamps white and yellow pierced the cloudy twilight; the pavement glistened; an infinite sadness, a mystery of fearful shadow fell blacker and blacker from the heavens.

The bell rang. In rushed the servant and lighted the gas, barely in time for the great lady's entrance.

With eyes dazzled by this suddenly kindled light, Regina first saw the Princess, and was at once disillusioned. The tall, stout, flat-chested form, the felt hat, fastened by an elastic under the black chignon stuck at the nape of the neck—suggested something masculine. Thick, colourless lips, a small nose slightly awry, small metallic eyes of yellowish-green, marked the pale heavy face. The whole made up a figure which, once seen, was not likely to be forgotten.

"Bon soir," she said, in a soft, harmonious voice, oddly in contrast with her stout and malformed person. She talked on in French while Arduina hurried to relieve her of her hat and handbag. "I am pleased to see you back, Monsieur Venutelli. I received your letter. This is your bride? She is charming!"

Antonio bowed, and Regina looked at her with wondering eyes, saying shyly—

"You are very kind, Signora."

"Beg pardon?" said Madame, turning her left ear to Regina, who nearly laughed, remembering Antonio's mimicry of the deaf Princess.

But Signora Makuline had taken her hand, and was slipping a sapphire ring on one of its fingers, saying—

"You will allow me? With a thousand good wishes!"

"Oh, thank you! You are really too good!" cried Regina, delighted, and Antonio also looked at the ring and expressed thanks. Then they all sat down; the Princess removed her dirty white gloves, and, to Regina's surprise, displayed hands small as a child's, and covered with flashing rings.

"What shocking weather," said Madame, her small feline eyes not looking at any one. "I've been many years in Rome, but never remember an autumn like this. It's not manners to talk of the weather; but when it becomes a matter of health, the weather has certainly more influence over us than even the most important events of our lives!"

"Monsieur Antonio, this abominable storm will spoil your honeymoon," said Arduina, trying to joke; but Regina, rather offended, muttered some words of protest.

"Beg pardon?" said the Princess.

"Arduina is right," said Antonio; "my wife is, in point of fact, in the very worst of humours."

"N'est ce pas? In the worst possible humour!"

"It's not true!" protested Regina, "quite the contrary; I am extremely cheerful."

However, Madame was tiresome enough to observe that during dinner Regina spoke very little.

"I like to be silent! I like listening," explained the bride, rather shortly.

"Well," said the Princess, "there's a certain cachet about a young woman who doesn't talk. A woman's silence suggests something mysterious, something occult; even something charming. Georges Sand spoke little. One of my uncles was her intimate friend, and he told me Georges was designedly silent."

"Perhaps you yourself knew Georges Sand?" said Massimo ungallantly.

"No," replied Madame, unmoved.

"Her mother, perhaps?" murmured Antonio.

"Beg pardon?"

"I've been reading an article on Georges Sand's mother," said Antonio louder. "Most interesting! She was a woman of fiery genius, and of fiery heart, too, whose adventures no doubt influenced her daughter's imagination."

"Where did you see that article?" cried Arduina; "we'll reproduce it!"

Sor Mario, bending low over his plate, shook his head, and emitted a perhaps unintentional grunt.

Tedious talk followed of the adventures and romances of Georges Sand. Arduina declared that the novels were uninteresting. She liked modern books, and Quo Vadis? above all others.

"Dio Mio!" said Antonio, "do stop about Quo Vadis? And really, you know, it's not precisely modern!"

Regina listened and held her peace. The talk was entirely of books, theatres, authors. The Princess told some story of Tolstoy, whom she knew personally. Towards the close of the repast, violent discussion arose between Massimo and Arduina about a great contemporary Italian poet and novelist—not only about his works, but about his private life. Arduina spoke against the master, hatred darting from her eyes, venom from her lips. She reproached him even for having grown old, bald, and ugly before his time. Massimo, red with fury, withered his sister-in-law with looks of supreme contempt.

"Worms!" he cried, forgetting he sat at her table. "See what you writers are! Merely to blacken the greatest and purest glory of Italy you stoop to absolute nonsense, and don't even know what it is you are saying!"

"Peace! peace!" laughed Antonio.

But now a most extraordinary thing happened. Sor Mario spoke. He had not read one line of the poet's, nor had any scandal to tell of him, but he related:—

"I saw him once at Anzio; he was riding along the shore got up entirely in white; white coat, white hat, white gloves, on a white horse——"

"White gloves on a horse?" queried Massimo, laughing foolishly.

Regina asked the Princess her opinion of the author in question, and the lady replied—

"To tell the truth, I'm not one of his blind admirers; but his prose is certainly lovely—bewitching, like music——"

"True," said Antonio; "but one very quickly forgets what he says."

"That's just my impression," said Regina; "it's music without any echo."

Massimo shook his head; his long hair stood on end like that of an infuriated baby.

"People were coming down to bathe," continued Sor Mario, "and they stared at him and laughed. Some were in hopes the poet would tumble off his white horse——"

About nine, while Arduina was pouring out coffee, the Princess's lady companion arrived; a queer-looking little creature with dark, malignant countenance, a long, pointed chin, and minute, glittering eyes. Small, shrivelled, dressed in grey, this curious person seemed half-animal to Regina, a kind of human rodent. And, really, no sooner had she entered than the room was pervaded and animated by what seemed the scratching and running about of a rat; little cries and exclamations; hand-claspings and kisses which suggested bites, questions, remarks, and, above all, looks which seemed to Regina inquisitive, anxious, mocking, and impudent.

"Take a cup of coffee if you care for it, Marianna," said Arduina, while the companion felt the Princess's forehead with both her hands.

"Why, your head's burning!" she said; "have you been eating a great deal? What have you eaten? Whatever have you made her eat?" she went on, turning to Arduina. "Oh, yes, I'll have some coffee, though I know very well it won't be good! What wretched cups! They're as small as I am!"

Antonio had hinted to his wife that Marianna was commonly supposed to be the Princess's daughter; and Regina, watching her, thought—

"It's clearly the case of the mountain and the mouse."

Apparently, Marianna read her thought, for she turned her little head with the alertness of a mouse, surprised by some slight sound; then came and sat beside the bride, balancing her cup on the palm of her hand, and saying maliciously—

"That husband of yours is a villain; keep your eye on him if you don't want him in every sort of mischief."

"I think you're the villain this time," said Antonio; "what are you insinuating suspicions into my wife for?"

"Because I pity her."

"And pray why?" asked Regina.

"Why? Just because you're married! Here comes another villain," continued Marianna, pointing to Massimo, who had drawn nearer; "for that matter they're all villains, the men! And the good ones are worse than the bad. The good ones are stupid. I don't care if men are bad, terrible even, so long as they have some genius and will-power."

"If I had at least these attributes—" began Massimo, looking at her with his insolent eyes.

"You can't have them," she interrupted; "geniuses never oil their hair as you do." "It's oiled, signora, isn't it?"

"I—don't know," said Regina, "I think not."

"Ah, poor dear! you haven't found it out! You'll never find anything out."

"How silly she is!" thought Regina.

And again she fancied that the young lady read her thoughts.

"Oh, you're thinking me a fool!" she said; "but listen here. I've forgotten to tell you something I always tell people when I meet them first."

"We know what it is," interjected Massimo and Antonio; but Marianna went on—

"Once, seven years ago, at Odessa, the house I was living in went on fire. I was in a top room, all hemmed in by flames—impossible to get me out. The smoke was already blinding and stifling me, and I heard the roar of the flames quite close. I believed in God no more then than now; however, I did feel the need of recourse to some supernatural being, some occult or omnipotent power. So I made a vow. I promised if I were saved, I would henceforth always speak the truth. At that moment the floor fell in. I lost my senses; and when I came to, I found myself safe and sound in the arms of a most hideous fireman. 'How have you managed it?' I asked. 'Like this,' he answered, and told how he had rescued me at great peril of his life. 'Oh, very well,' I said, 'I suspect you're exaggerating; but I'm grateful, all the same, and I'll always remember you; the more vividly that your ugliness is quite unforgettable.'"

Regina laughed. "I seem to be reading a Russian story," she said.

"But is that little tale true?" asked Massimo; and Antonio added—

"You gave me a slightly different version."

"Now you're trying to be witty," said Marianna, "but it's no use. You can't be witty, except for women you wish to please, and you don't in the least wish to please me."

"Oh, yes, I wish to please you," said Massimo; "it's the sole object of my life."

"Well, I don't appreciate your jokes. There are plenty of women very inferior to me, and you won't succeed in pleasing even them."

"I shall succeed with the superior ones, perhaps."

"I don't think there are many women superior to me; if there are, you'll never get within a stone's throw of them."

"Then I suppose I'm one of the inferiors?" said Regina, for the sake of saying something.

"Yes, because you're married. A superior woman never marries. Or if in some spell of unconsciousness she does take a husband, she repents at once. If I wished to pay you a compliment, I should say I believe you are repenting."

"By Jove!" said Antonio, "that's not a matter of joke."

"Do you always tell the Princess the truth?" asked Regina.

"Of course she keeps me only for that purpose," said Marianna, looking, not without affection, at the Princess. Madame was telling Arduina a story of her aunt.

"—the handsomest and smartest woman in Paris," she said. "I've told you of her marriage, haven't I? They married her at fifteen to the lover of a lady who remained her friend for ten years, her friend, her confidante, her guide. For ten years she never guessed——"

Sor Mario, buried in his arm-chair, was listening, fighting with sleepiness and the desire to pick his teeth.

Marianna began to abuse Nietzsche and his opinion of women, but Regina's attention wandered to the Princess's stories, scraps of which reached her across the screaming and the audacities of the younger lady.

"If women understood him, they'd agree," said Massimo; "they don't approve because they don't understand."

"They do better than approve, they refute him," said Marianna.

"If Gaspare were here," said Antonio, "he'd soon settle the question."

Regina's soul shivered at the mere recollection of Gaspare, and his mother, and the servant.

"Her second husband was a Spaniard," narrated the Princess, "the handsomest man you could see, and acquainted with all the literary personages of his time. But his conduct——"

"The education of women has not even begun," said Marianna, turning to Regina; "women will never have any sense till men begin to tell them the truth."

"But what is the truth?" asked Massimo; "truth between man and woman only comes out when they quarrel."

"That's true up to a certain point. I'm always wondering why truth is so disagreeable to everybody. They tell me I'm cracked because I never tell lies. Nobody cares, because my words don't really interest the person I'm talking to. But let's suppose this lady were to tell her husband all she was thinking, her real impressions, her real idea of him, his family, his friends. I'm certain Signor Antonio would fall quite sick——"

"Regina!" cried Antonio, in feigned alarm, "can this be true?"

Regina laughed, but a shudder as of great cold interrupted her false merriment. The Princess was continuing her story.

"'Jeanne!' said my aunt, hammering at the door of the room where he was with the lady's maid, 'hand me the Figaro, if you please.' My aunt was discreet. That was all she said."

"And what did they reply?" asked Sor Mario, sitting up straight, his toothpick in his fingers.

"My dear!" said Arduina, "what a stupid question!"

Before leaving, the Princess invited Regina to her Friday receptions. Regina promised to go; but that night, when she was comfortably in bed, lulled in the quiet and warmth of the first half-slumber, she said—

"Antonio, do you know what? I've taken a great dislike to that Princess!"

"Why? She's all right."

"Yes, but—you see——"

"What?"

She paused—then went on, her voice rather sleepy: "Do you remember that female lion-tamer we saw at Parma? She looked at women in such a strange way. I couldn't think whom the Princess reminded me of, and I thought, and thought——Her eyes are just like that lion-tamer's! Didn't you see how she stared at me?"

"Well? She liked you. Who knows but she'll leave you something in her will!"

"Is she really rich?"

"The deuce she is! A millionaire."

"Her gloves were so dirty."

"Did you see her rings?"

"What do I care for rings if the gloves are dirty?"

Regina relapsed into silence; then she laughed softly, and presently fell into a light sleep. She dreamt she was in a wood on the banks of the Po towards Viadana. The shining waters were churned by a mill, but the mill was a castle with vast rooms hung with red, and the castle belonged to Madame Makuline. The Princess was dead, but her soul had climbed up a poplar-tree, through the silver leaves of which shone the river, a crystalline blue. The mill wheel roared like thunder, and Regina, seated on the entrance stair of the castle, was washing her feet in a runnel of greenish water which overflowed the steps. A white duck came to peck at the little toe of her right foot, and laughed. Regina laughed herself. She was vaguely aware she was dreaming, for she was analysing her sentiments, and knew that a mill is a mill, that ducks can't laugh, and souls can't climb poplar-trees. None the less, she was oppressed by mysterious fear, by a sense of intolerable repugnance and distress.

Antonio heard her laugh, that vague, strange laugh from the profundity of dream which is like a voice from the depths of a well.

"She's having pleasant visions—she is happy, my little queen!" he thought, much moved.