She seemed distracted. She had a furious desire to seize hold of me; but not daring she twisted her hands in an effort to control herself, her whole body convulsed. I seized her by the arms, and drew her toward me.
"So I am to know nothing?" I said to her, speaking almost on her mouth, now distracted myself, carried away by a cruel instinct that made my hands rough.
"I love you, I have always loved you, I have always been yours. I expiate by this hell a moment's weakness—do you understand? One moment's weakness! That is the truth. Cannot you feel that it is the truth?"
Once more, overwhelmed by the weight of our misfortune, I clasped the poor trembling creature to my heart and silently kissed away her scalding tears.
XVII.
The external indications of Juliana's condition were not yet visible. The tie that bound the infant to the mother must be very frail. How was it that the violent emotions of the day at the Lilacs and of the following night had not sufficed to provoke a liberating crisis? Everything was against me, everything conspired against me. And my hate became more savage. To prevent the birth of the child, such was my secret design.
And I considered the future with a sort of divining clear-sightedness. Juliana would give birth to a boy, sole heir of our ancient name. The son who was not mine would grow up without accident; he would usurp the love of my mother and my brother; he would be caressed, adored; he would be preferred to Maria and to Natalia, my own creations. The force of habit would dull Juliana's remorse; she would abandon herself without restraint to her maternal feeling. And the son who was not mine would grow up under her protection, surrounded by her assiduous cares; he would become robust and handsome; he would become capricious like a little despot; he would reign in my house. By degrees these visions became particularized. Such or such an imaginary spectacle took the shape and motion of an actual scene; such or such a trait of that imaginary life was impressed so strongly in my consciousness that it retained there for some time the characteristics of an effective reality. The child's traits were modified to infinity; his acts, his gestures, were diversified without cease. At times I represented him to myself as being thin, pale, taciturn, with a large, heavy head bent on his chest; at other times I saw him all rosy, plump, gay, chattering, graceful and coaxing, particularly affectionate toward me, very good; at other times, on the contrary, he was nervous, bilious, a little spiteful, full of intelligence and evil instincts, rough with his sisters, cruel to animals, incapable of tenderness, undisciplinable. This last image ended by dominating all the others, eliminated them by becoming more lasting, fixed itself into a precise type, became animated with an intense chimerical life, ended by taking a name: the name that I had long since chosen for the male heir, my father's name, Raymond.
That little perverse phantom was a direct emanation of my hate, and he bore against me a hostility equal to that I had for him. He was an enemy, an adversary, with whom I was about to begin a struggle. He was my victim, and I was his. I could not escape from him; he could not escape from me. We were both shut in as it were in a circle of iron.
He had gray eyes like Filippo Arborio. Among the various expressions of his face one struck me above all, in an imaginary scene that often arose before me. This scene is as follows: I entered a room filled with darkness, with strange silence. I thought I was alone there. All at once, on turning round, I perceived Raymond looking at me fixedly with his gray and wicked eyes. Suddenly the temptation to commit the crime assailed me so strongly that, so as not to throw myself on the malefic being, I took to flight.
XVIII.