[CHAPTER V]
Elena left the Farnese palace very soon after this, almost stealthily, without taking leave of Andrea or of any one else. She had therefore not stayed more than half an hour at the ball. Her lover searched for her through all the rooms in vain. The next morning, he sent a servant to the Palazzo Barberini to inquire after the duchess, and learned from him that she was ill. In the evening he went in person, hoping to be received; but a maid informed him that her mistress was in great pain and could see no one. On the Saturday, towards five o'clock, he came back once more, still hoping for better luck.
He left his house on foot. The evening was chill and gray, and a heavy leaden twilight was settling over the city. The lamps were already lighted round the fountain in the Piazza Barberini like pale tapers round a funeral bier, and the Triton, whether being under repair or for some other reason, had ceased to spout water. Down the sloping roadway came a line of carts drawn by two or three horses harnessed in single file, and bands of workmen returning home from the new buildings. A group of these came swaying along arm in arm, singing a lewd song at the pitch of their voices.
Andrea stopped to let them pass. Two or three of the debased, weather-beaten faces impressed themselves on his memory. He noticed that a carter had his hand wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, and that another, who was kneeling in his cart, had the livid complexion, deep sunken eyes and convulsively contracted mouth of a man who has been poisoned. The words of the song were mingled with guttural cries, the cracking of whips, the grinding of wheels, the jingling of horse bells and shrill discordant laughter.
His mental depression increased. He found himself in a very curious mood. The sensibility of his nerves was so acute that the most trivial impression conveyed to them by external means assumed the gravity of a wound. While one fixed thought occupied and tormented his spirit, the rest of his being was left exposed to the rude jostling of surrounding circumstances. Groups of sensations rushed with lightning rapidity across his mental field of vision, like the phantasmagoria of a magic lantern, startling and alarming him. The banked-up clouds of evening, the form of the Triton surrounded by the cadaverous lights, this sudden descent of savage looking men and huge animals, these shouts and songs and curses aggravated his condition, arousing a vague terror in his heart, a foreboding of disaster.
A closed carriage drove out of the palace garden. He caught a glimpse of a lady bowing to him, but he failed to recognise her. The palace rose up before him, vast as some royal residence. The windows of the first floor gleamed with violet reflections, a pale strip of sunset sky rested just above it; a brougham was turning away from the door.
'If I could but see her!' he thought to himself, standing still for a moment. He lingered, purposely to prolong his uncertainty and his hope. Shut up in this immense edifice she seemed to him immeasurably far away—lost to him.
The brougham stopped, and a gentleman put his head out of the window and called—'Andrea!'
It was the Duke of Grimiti, a near relative of his.
'Going to call on the Scerni?' asked the duke with a significant smile.