The Intruder

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

In the violence of my multiple and contrary agitations, in the first tumult of pain, beneath the menace of imminent perils, I had not yet had the leisure to think of the Other. Moreover, from the very first, I had not conceived even the shadow of a doubt of my former suspicion. In my mind, the Other had immediately taken the form of Filippo Arborio, and from the first outburst of carnal jealousy that had seized me in the alcove, it was his abominable image which was coupled with that of Juliana in a series of horrible visions.

Even now, while Federico and I trotted toward the forest, along the banks of the tortuous river, contemplated so painfully on the afternoon of Holy Saturday, the Other trotted beside us. Between my brother and me interposed the image of Filippo Arborio, revived by my hate, animated by my hate with life so intense that, on regarding it with a sensation of reality, I felt a physical spasm, something similar to the savage quivering that I had more than once felt on the duelling field, at the signal of attack, when face to face with an adversary.

My brother's presence extraordinarily increased my uneasiness. Compared with Federico, that man's face, so thin, so nervous, so feminine, grew smaller, became impoverished, seemed contemptible and ignoble to me. Beneath the influence of the new ideal of virile strength and simplicity that my brother's example inspired in me, I not only hated, but I despised that complicated and equivocal being, who yet belonged to my own race, and who had several particularities in his cerebral constitution in common with me, to which his works of art bore witness. I pictured to myself a type of one of those literary men, affected by the saddest maladies of the mind, a libertine, cruelly curious, hardened by the habit of cold analysis of the warmest and most spontaneous passions of the soul, accustomed to consider every human creature as a subject of pure psychological speculation, incapable of love, incapable of a generous action, of an abnegation, of a sacrifice, hardened in falsehood, enervated by disgust, lascivious, cynical, cowardly.

Such was the man who had seduced Juliana, but who had certainly not loved her. Did not the very manner appear in the dedication written on the fly-leaf of The Secret, in that emphatic dedication, the only document known to me that bore on the relations between the romancer and my wife? To take by assault the "Ivory Tower," to corrupt a character whom public opinion declared to be incorruptible, to experiment with a method of seduction on so rare a subject, that was an enterprise, difficult but full of attraction, entirely worthy of the refined artist, the abstractor of physiological quintessence who had written The True Catholic and Angelica Doni.

The more I thought of it, the more the facts appeared to me in their ugliest crudity. Filippo Arborio had certainly made Juliana's acquaintance during one of those crises when the woman of whom people say, "She has a soul," after a long period of loneliness, feels herself overcome by poetical aspirations, by indefinable desires, vague languors—all those phenomena which are only the masks that disguise passion. Filippo Arborio, with his experience, had divined the special physical state of the woman whom he coveted, and had made use of the most appropriate and the surest method; that is to say, he had spoken of the ideal, of superior regions, of mystical alliance, while his thoughts were turned in more material channels. And Juliana, the "Ivory Tower," the great silent creature made of ductile gold and steel, the unique, had been captured by the old trick, had allowed herself to be taken in the old snare, had, she also, obeyed the old law as to the frailty of woman.

A horrible irony tortured my soul. I seemed to have, not in the mouth but in the heart, the convulsion caused by the herb that produces death by making one hysterical with laughter.

I spurred my horse and put him to a gallop on the steep bank of the river.

The bank was dangerous, with very precipitous bends, and made more menacing in some places by deep holes, obstructed in others by the branches of great gnarled trees, in still others traversed by enormous roots close to the ground. I was perfectly conscious of the peril to which I exposed myself; yet, instead of tightening the rein, I still urged the beast forward, not with the intention of facing death, but because I sought in danger a respite from my intolerable torture. I already knew the efficacy of such madness. Ten years before, when still very young and while an attaché of the embassy at Constantinople, in order to overcome an attack of grief caused by the recollection of a recent passion, I entered on horseback, one moonlight night, one of the Mussulman cemeteries crowded with tombs, and I rode on the incline of polished stones exposing myself a thousand times to the risk of a fatal fall. Death, mounted with me on the crupper, overshadowed every other care.

"Tullio! Tullio!" cried Federico after me. "Stop! Stop!"

I paid no attention to him. It is marvellous that a dozen times I escaped crushing in my forehead against the horizontal branches. It is marvellous that a dozen times I prevented my horse from stumbling against the trunk of a tree. A dozen times, at difficult passages, I saw a certain fall into the river that glistened beneath my feet. But when I heard another gallop behind me, when I perceived Federico was following me with loosened rein, I became frightened for him, and I tightened the bit suddenly. The poor animal reared up, remained an instant upright as if to make a plunge into the river, and then came to a standstill, trembling.