"I loved without having thought about it, without appreciating the consequences of my extravagant passion, without fearing them for the future, for I lived completely in the impressions of the present. I loved a woman who would be universally recognizable were I to depict the rare qualities that she is clothed with, combining with beauty all the perfections of intelligence and soul, and that heaven seems only to have entrusted to earth to remind us of the ineffable joy of the condition we have lost. I loved her without remembering that she was, of all aristocrats, the noblest, of all the affluent, the most affluent and that I was only Francesco Colonna, the unknown pupil of Bellini, and that all my efforts to be happy in my work would only ever lead me to the acquisition of a sterile reputation. Such is the effect of that passion that dazzles, that blinds, that kills. When reflection had restored me to myself, when I had sounded with a frightened eye, with the bitter laughter of despair, the chasm towards which I had made so much headway without even knowing it, it was too late to go back: I was lost. The first thought of a wretch is to die. That thought is as commodious as it is natural because it answers all questions and remedies all inconveniences. But might not this desperate death, far from hastening to bring about the day when I may draw nearer to her in a better world, separate me from her forever? It was a totally new idea that held back my arm when it was ready to strike; I took in the future that my inability to endure a few days without her was going to deprive me of. I was painfully condemned to live without hope, but without fear, to reach that moment when two souls, freed from all the ties that have weighed down on them, look for each other, recognize each other and are then brought together for all time. I made of her I loved an object of worship my whole life long. I raised to her an inviolable altar in my heart and dedicated myself to her as an everlasting sacrifice. Can I say that, under my invincible sadness, this plan, once decided upon, was mingled with some joy? I grasped that this marriage, which started with widowhood to end up having, was perhaps preferable to ordinary marriages, which shatter on bad days. I no longer saw in the years that remained to me to spend among men anything other than a long engagement that death would crown with an eternal felicity. I felt the need to isolate myself from the world to recollect myself in a nevertheless delightful feeling of austerity that I would not have to share, and that is why I embraced the duties of the would-be monk. May God pardon his creature's weakness! The oath that will bind me to Him in three days' time is the oath that will bind me indissolubly to her I love and that will only give me rights over her in heaven. Allow me to repeat, by way of conclusion, that the accomplishment of this plan will now cost nothing to my resignation since a generous compassion has let me conceive of the hope of not being forgotten."
"In only three days!" exclaimed Polia. "In effect," she went on, "I have had too little time to reflect on the secret you have just confided in me to dare to form an opinion and even less a judgement, but it seems to me that if the woman for whom you resolved to do such things does not remain in ignorance of them as I was ignorant of them before now, she did not deserve to inspire them."
"She is ignorant of them," replied Francesco, "because she does not know that I love her. Oh! Without a doubt, my heart could have found ineffable consolations in the idea that my love was known to her, that she was not entirely insensitive to it, and that she might, at the very least, remember it with pity! Of all the torments of love, the most cruel perhaps is to remain an unknown quantity to the person one loves; of all the feelings one inspires that dull feeling of indifference for a stranger is perhaps the most painful that love has to fear. But why throw into a heart that is peaceful and happy pains that one is hardly capable of bearing oneself? Either my passion will be rejected, as I suppose, and what will I have gained from having this sad intuition confirmed, or it will be mutual and I will have to suffer for both of us. What am I saying: suffer for both of us? My despair is my life since I have found in myself enough strength to live with it. Hers would have killed me already."
"You take your suppositions too far, Francesco," Polia replied buoyantly. "Who can know if she does not feel the same sorrows and the same anguish as you do? Who can know if she does not aspire to find a moment to tell you that? What would you say if this noble and rich female whose shine dazzles you, but whose soul is probably no calmer than yours, what would you say, Francesco, if she came to offer you her hand freely, if, subject to a sway both respectable and inflexible, she came to promise it you in marriage?"
"What would I say, Polia?" Francesco answered with cold dignity, "I would refuse it. In order to dare love her I love, one needs to be to a certain extent worthy of her, and my most constant application has been to ennoble my soul so that it would be closer to hers. What right would I have to accept the perks of a high position that society denies me? With what impudence could I take my seat at the banquet of fortune, I who have only obscurity and misery as my prerogatives? Oh! I would a thousand times rather have the horrid sorrow that consumes me than the shameful reputation of an adventurer rebuffed by the world and made rich by love!"
"I had not finished," Polia broke in. "You are overscrupulous, but I understand your scruple and share it. The world as it goes demands odd sacrifices and one would perhaps be asked of you by reason of your character, but a character of the same calibre as yours might answer with a different sort of denial. Greatness and fortune are accidents of fate one can get rid of if one wants to. The artist and the poet are everywhere the same. Everywhere they have success and glory, but beyond an arm of the sea the woman who is rich and titled who has known how to shake off these vain privileges of birth is no more than a woman. If this woman came to say to you: I renounce my greatness, I abandon my fortune, I am ready to become even humbler and poorer than you, and to commit to your charge, as to my sole source of support, the whole of my life's destiny, what would you say to that, Francesco?"
"I would fall at her knees," said Francesco, "and answer thus: Heavenly angel, keep the rank and the advantages that heaven has conferred on you; you must be and stay what you are, and the wretch who would be capable of letting himself be carried along by this tender and sublime urge of your heart would never have deserved to occupy a place in it. He can no longer raise himself up to you except by constant resignation, easy for one who hopes, and especially for one who is loved. It is not I who would make you come down from the position in which God did not put you without a motive, in order to submit you to the varying fortunes of an anxious existence, poisoned by needs incessantly renewed, and perhaps one day by incurable regrets. My happiness is complete now. It exceeds all my hopes since you have granted to me all that you could take from the duties that your name imposes on you. You love me, I'd add, and you will always love me since you have not recoiled from resolving to give your life to mine. Your life, my beloved, I accept and take as a sacred pledge for which I will render an account before my Lord and Judge, for life is short, even for those who suffer, whatever weak hearts have to say about it. This earth is just a place of transit where souls come to be tested, and if your soul, as faithful as it is devoted, stays married to mine during the years that time still allows us, the whole of eternity is ours…"
Polia was silent for a time. "Yes! Yes!" she exclaimed exaltedly. "God has not instituted a holier or more inviolable sacrament. It is in this way that a love such as yours must have reconciled its hopes and its duties in a marriage of the heart that the rest of mankind does not know, and your heavenly spouse would speak to you as I speak to you if she had heard you."
"She has heard me, Polia," Francesco replied, letting his head at that moment fall into his hands with a torrent of tears.
"So," Polia went on, as if she had not understood the last words he had spoken, "you will assume in three days the habit of one of the religious orders to be found in Venice?"