The Intruder

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

"An unexpected fall, and I should have ceased to think, I should have ceased to suffer, I should have ceased to support the weight of my miserable flesh. But perhaps I should have dragged my brother with me down the precipice; and my brother's life is a model of nobleness, my brother is a Man. I escaped by a miracle, as he escaped by a miracle. My madness has made him run a supreme risk. With him would have disappeared a world of beauty and of goodness. What is this fatality that condemns me to be harmful to those who love me?"

I looked at Federico. He had become thoughtful and grave. I did not dare question him, but I felt a poignant remorse at having grieved him. Of what was he thinking? On what reflections did his agitation feed? Perhaps he had divined that I was dissimulating suffering and that the sole cause which had driven me to my perilous race was the spur of some fixed idea.

We followed the path, one behind the other, step by step. Then we turned into a side-path that led through the bush, and, as it was wide enough, we trotted side by side, while our horses whinnied, bringing their nostrils together as if to exchange confidences, and mingling the froth from their bridles.

From time to time I glanced at Federico, and, seeing that he was still pensive, I thought: "Assuredly, if I were to reveal the truth to him, he would not believe me. He could not believe in Juliana's sin, in the sister's stain. Between his affection and that of my mother for Juliana, I really could not decide whose is the more profound. Had he not always kept on his table the two portraits of Juliana and our poor Constance, united as in a diptych for the same adoration? This morning even, how gentle his voice became in naming her!" Suddenly, by contrast, the infamous image reappeared, more hideous. The bared chest I caught a glimpse of in the dressing-room of the fencing-salon flitted now before my imagination. And on that face my hate worked just like nitric acid on the engraver's copper plate: the bitten characters became sharper and sharper.

Then, while I still felt in my blood the excitement produced by the ride, by the effect of that exuberance of physical courage, of that instinct of hereditary combativeness that, so often, surged up in me at the contact with other men, I felt that I would not have the strength to resist challenging Filippo Arborio. "I will go to Rome, I will find out all about him; I will incense him, no matter how; I will force him to fight. I will do everything to kill him or cripple him." I imagined the poltroon to myself.

There recurred to my memory a rather ridiculous retreat which he had not been able to prevent at the salle d'armes, when he received a thrust in the breast from the fencing-master. I also remembered his questioning me regarding my duel, that puerile curiosity of those who have never been on the field of honor. I recalled that, during my assault, he had kept his eyes fixed on me ceaselessly. The consciousness of my superiority, the certainty of vanquishing him, excited me. In my imagination, a thread of red blood furrowed that pale and disgusting flesh. And I saw him bleeding and inert on a mattress, with two doctors leaning over him.

How often I, the ideologist, the analyst, the sophist of an epoch of decadence, had prided myself on being the descendant of that Raymond Hermil of Panedo who, at the Goulette, had accomplished prodigies of valor and of ferocity beneath the eyes of Charles the Fifth! The excessive development of my intelligence and of my many-souled state had not been able to modify the depths of my substance, in the deepest stratifications of which were preserved the imprint of every hereditary characteristic of my race. In my brother, whose organization was well balanced, thought was always associated with labor; in me thought predominated. I was, in short, a violent and a passionate person conscious of himself, in whom the hypertrophy of certain cerebral centres rendered impossible the coördination necessary to the normal state of the mind. I was able to contemplate my actions with perfect clear-sightedness, and yet I had every undisciplinable impulse of primitive natures. More than once had I been possessed by sudden criminal ideas; more than once I had been surprised by feeling the surging up of a cruel instinct within me.

"There are the charcoal-burners." said my brother to me, putting his horse at a trot.

The blows of the axe could be heard in the forest and the spirals of smoke could be seen rising between the trees. Federico interrogated the workmen as to the progress made in their labor, gave them advice, while examining their work with an experienced eye. Every one of them assumed a respectful attitude, and listened attentively. Around about, the labor seemed to become more eager, easier, lighter, and even the crackling of the fire more efficacious. Men ran right and left, throwing earth here and there wherever the smoke poured out in too great abundance, to stop up with clods the holes caused by the explosions; they ran, they shouted. With these rude voices mingled the guttural sounds of the wood-cutters. The surroundings resounded with the crash of some falling tree. During the few moments of our halt could be heard the whistling of blackbirds. And the great, motionless forest contemplated the wood-cutters, to whom its life served as food.

While my brother proceeded in his examination of the work, I withdrew, leaving to my horse the choice of the unfamiliar paths that led into the bush. Behind me the sounds decreased, the echoes died away. A heavy silence fell from the tree-tops. I thought: "What shall I do to regain courage? What will my life henceforth be? Can I continue to live in my mother's house with my secret? Can I associate my life with that of Federico? What man in all this world, what event could ever resuscitate in my soul a spark of faith?" The sounds of the workers away behind me; the solitude became complete, "To work, to accomplish good, to live for others! ... I henceforth recover in these things the true sense of life? And are there really only these things which, to the exclusion of individual happiness, permit of finding the true sense of life? The other day, while my brother was speaking, I believed I understood his remarks; I believed that the doctrine of truth was revealed to me by his mouth. The doctrine of truth, according to my brother, is not in laws, not in precepts, but simply and solely in the interpretation that man gives to life. It seemed to me I had understood it fully. But, all at once, I now found myself fallen back among the shadows; I had become blind again. I no longer understood. What man in all the world, what event, could console me for all the good I had lost?" And the future seemed frightful and hopeless to me. The undefined image of the infant to be born grew, enlarged, like horrible and formless things one sees sometimes in a nightmare, and ended by enveloping everything. It was no longer a question of regret, of remorse, of an indestructible recollection, of no matter what inner bitterness; it now concerned a living being. My future was fettered to a being whose life was tenacious and malefic; it was shackled to a stranger, to an intruder, to an abominable creature, against whom not only my mind, but also my flesh, all my blood and every fibre, rose with a brutal, ferocious, implacable aversion, until death, beyond death. I thought: "Who could have imagined a worse torture for torturing the soul and the flesh at the same time?"