"A succession of tombs: fifteen bodies, intact, one lying beside another, on a golden bed, with masks of gold on their faces, their brows crowned with gold and breasts bound with gold; and covering them, on their forms, at their sides, at their feet, everywhere, a prodigality of golden things, countless as the leaves falling in a fairy forest. Do you see? Do you see?"
"Yes, yes, I see! I see!"
"For a second, that man's soul has traversed hundreds and thousands of years, has breathed the terrible legend, has palpitated in the horror of the ancient carnage. For a second, his soul has lived that antique life of violence. The slain ones were all there: Agamemnon, Eurymedon, Cassandra, and the royal escort, and for a moment they lay under his eyes, motionless. Then—they vanished into nothingness—do you see?—like a vapor exhaled, like scattered foam, like flying dust, like I know not what frail and fleeting thing—engulfed in the same fatal silence that surrounded their radiant immobility. And there was only a handful of dust and a mass of gold!" Daniele Glauro, deeply moved, seized his friend's hand; and the Inspirer read in his faithful eyes the mute flame of enthusiasm consecrated to the great work.
They stopped near a door in the dark wall. A mysterious sense of distance possessed the mind of each, as if their souls were lost in the mists of time; and they fancied that behind that door an ancient people lived enthralled by a changeless Destiny. The sound of a rocking cradle came from the house, and the croon of a soft lullaby to a wailing child. The stars glowed in the narrow glimpse of sky; against the walls the sea was moaning. And in another spot a hero's heart suffered while waiting for death.
"Life!" said Stelio, resuming his walk, and drawing Daniele with him. "Here, at this moment, all that trembles, weeps, hopes, breathes, and raves in the immensity of life, gathers itself in your mind, condensing itself there with a sublimation so rapid that you believe yourself able to express it all in a single word. But what word? What word? Do you know it? Who will ever know it well enough to speak it?"
Again he was distressed at his inability to embrace all and express all.
"Have you ever seen, at certain times, the whole universe standing before you, as distinct as a human head? I have, a thousand times. Ah, to cut it off, like him that cut off Medusa's head, at one stroke, and hold it up before the multitude so that it never should be forgotten! Have you ever thought that a great tragedy might resemble the attitude of Perseus? I tell you this: I should like to take the bronze of Benvenuto Cellini from the Loggia of Orcagna and place it in the foyer of the new theater as an admonition. But who will give to a poet the sword of Hermes and the mirror of Athena?
"Perseus!" continued the Inspirer. "In the ravine, below the citadel of Mycenæ, is a fountain called Perseia, and it is the only living thing in that place where all is parched and dead. Men are attracted toward it as to a spring of life in that region where the melancholy whiteness of the dried river-beds is visible late in the twilight. All human thirst ardently approaches that freshness. And throughout my work the music of that stream shall be heard—the water, the melody of the water. I have found it! In that, the pure element, shall be accomplished the pure Act which is the aim of the new tragedy. On its clear, cold waters shall sleep the virgin destined to die 'deprived of nuptials,' like Antigone. Do you understand? The pure Act marks the defeat of antique Destiny. The new soul suddenly breaks the iron band that held it, with a determination born of madness, of a lucid delirium that resembles ecstasy, or a deeper, clearer vision of Nature. In the orchestra, the final ode is of the salvation and liberation of man, obtained through pain and sacrifice. The monstrous Fate is there, vanquished, near the tombs of the Atridæ, before the very corpses of the victims. Do you understand? He that frees himself by means of the pure Act, the brother that kills his sister to save her soul from the horror that was about to seize her, has himself in reality seen the face of Agamemnon!"
The fascination of the funereal gold had taken fresh hold upon his fancy; the evidence of his internal vision gave him a look as of one under a spell of hallucination.
"One of the corpses surpasses all the others in height and in majesty: his brow is crowned with a golden diadem, and he wears a cuirass, shoulder-plates, and a girdle of gold, surrounded with swords, lances, daggers, cups, and countless golden discs scattered like petals over his body, more venerable than a demigod. The man bends over this body, while it is vanishing in the light before his very eyes, and lifts the heavy mask. Ah, does he not then see the face of Agamemnon? Is not this corpse perhaps the King of kings? The mouth and the eyes are open. Do you remember that passage of Homer's? 'As I lay dying, I raised my hands to my sword; but the woman with dog-like eyes went away, and would not close my eyes and my mouth, at the moment when I was about to descend to the abode of Hades.' Do you remember? Well, the mouth of this corpse is open, and its eyes are open. He has a high brow, ornamented with a single large golden leaf; the nose is long and straight, the chin oval"—