And it was just at the time that the nausea set in that I—who fed on dreams, who drank of the ideal—found the ingenuities of my adolescence, thought of nothing but of gathering flowers. Oh! those flowers, those heart-breaking flowers that I so timidly offered her. And, after a great intoxication, half-sentimental, half-sensual, I received the delightful news, from whom? from my mother! And after the news, I experience a feeling of generous exaltation, I accept in good faith a noble rôle, I sacrifice myself in silence, like one of Octave Feuillet's heroes! What heroism! The irony tortured my soul, bruised every fibre.... Then, for the second time, I conceived the mad idea of escaping from my fate.
I looked before me. Close at hand, between the tree-trunks, unreal like the illusion of a hallucination, shone the glistening Assoro. "Strange!" I thought, with a curious shudder. Up to this time I had not noticed that my horse, left to himself, had entered a path that led to the river. The Assoro seemed to have a fatal fascination for me.
I hesitated a moment between two things—to go on as far as the cliff, or return. Finally, I stopped, fascinated by the water and the guilty thought. I made my horse curvet.
A heavy oppressiveness succeeded the internal convulsion. It seemed to me that, all at once, my soul had become a poor, faded thing, a bruised, diminished, miserable thing. I became softened; I felt pity for myself, I felt pity for Juliana, I felt pity for every creature upon whom suffering had set its seal, that trembled under the embrace of life as some vanquished enemy in the power of some pitiless conqueror. "What are we? What do we know? What do we wish for? No one has ever obtained what he would like; no one will ever obtain what he would like. We seek goodness, virtue, enthusiasm, the passion that will fill our soul, the faith that will calm our inquietudes, the inspiration that will give us courage, the work to which we consecrate ourselves, the cause for which we will joyfully die. And the result of so many efforts is an empty lassitude, the sensation of strength spent in pure loss, and of the flight of time." At that moment, life appeared to me like a distant vision, confused, strange, monstrous. Madness, imbecillity, poverty, blindness, every malady, every misfortune, the obscure and continuous agitation of unconscious atavic, bestial powers in the depths of our substance, the highest manifestations of the ever-unstable, fugitive mind necessarily subordinated to a physical condition, connected with the functions of an organ, instantaneous metamorphoses produced by an imperceptible cause, by a mere nothing, the infallible amount of egotism in the noblest actions, the inutility of so much moral energy directed toward an uncertain object, the futility of amours that we believe to be eternal, the frailty of virtue that we believe unshakable, the feebleness of the most robust wills, every shame, every misery, appeared before me in that instant. "How is it possible to live? How is it possible to love?"
The axes resounded in the forest; a short and savage cry accompanied every blow. Here and there, in the clearings, great piles of wood, in the form of truncated cones or of quadrangular pyramids, were smoking. Columns of smoke, thick and straight as the trunks of trees, arose in the quiet air. To me, everything was symbolical at that moment.
I turned my horse toward the neighboring charcoal-burner, where I had recognized Federico.
He had descended from his horse and was speaking to a tall old man with shaven chin.
"Ah! At last!" he cried, on seeing me. "I was afraid that you were lost."
"No, I was not far off."
"Let me introduce to you Giovanni di Scordio—a Man," he said, placing his hand on the old man's shoulder.