The Intruder

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

The sky was quite white, like a scaffolding of superimposed veils between which the air circulated, producing large mobile folds. One of these veils seemed at times to detach itself and approach the earth, graze the tops of the trees, break up, be reduced to falling fragments, undulate on the ground, fade away. On the horizon, the lines of the heights were confusedly unrolled, disappearing to reappear in the fantastic landscapes, like a vista perceived in a dream, without reality. A lead-colored shadow covered the valley, and the Assoro, whose shores were invisible, animated it with its reflections. This tortuous river, glistening in that sombre gulf, beneath that slow and continued disaggregation of the sky, attracted the attention, and had for the mind the fascination of symbolical things, seemed to bear in itself the occult sense of that indefinable spectacle.

My pain gradually lost its acuteness, became appeased and calm. "Why do you aspire with such avidity to a happiness of which you are not worthy? Why do you base the whole edifice of your future life on an illusion? Why believe with such blind faith in a privilege that does not exist? All men perhaps, in the course of their lives, encounter a decisive period in which the most perspicacious are able to understand what their life should be. That period you have already met. Remember the moment when the white and faithful hand which offered you love, indulgence, peace, dreams, forgetfulness, everything that is good and beautiful, trembled in the air, was extended toward you as if for the supreme offering..."

Bitterness swelled my heart with tears. I leaned my elbows on the balustrade, my hands to my face, and, my eyes fixed on the windings of the river at the bottom of the leaden valley, while the scaffolding of the sky ceaselessly disaggregated, I remained for several minutes under the menace of an imminent punishment, I felt that an unknown disaster was suspended above me.

But, suddenly, from the room below arose the sound of the piano; and instantaneously, that heavy oppression disappeared, and I was seized by a confused anxiety in which all the dreams, every desire, each hope, every regret, remorse, and terror were mingled anew with inconceivable and suffocating rapidity.

I recognized the music. It was a Romance without Words of which Juliana was very fond, and which Miss Edith often played; it was one of those veiled yet profound melodies in which the Soul appeared to ask Life, with ever-changing accents, this single question, "Why have you disappointed my expectation?"

Yielding to a kind of instinctive impulse, I went out, agitated, traversed the corridor, descended the staircase, and stopped before the door from which issued the sounds. The door was ajar; I slipped in without making any noise, and looked through the portières. Was it Juliana? At first my eyes, blinded by the light, were incapable of distinguishing anything, before adapting themselves to the darkness; but I was struck by the penetrating perfume of the hawthorns, that odor of mingled thyme and bitter-almond, fresh as country milk. I looked in. The room was poorly lighted by a greenish light that struggled in from between the slats of the Venetian blinds. Miss Edith was alone at the piano, and she continued to play without noticing my presence. The polished case of the instrument glistened in the dark; the branches of hawthorns made a white spot. In the quiet of this retreat, in this perfume emanating from the branches that recalled the happy matinal intoxication, and Juliana's smile and my own fear, the romance seemed more desolate than ever.

Where was Juliana? Gone upstairs? Still out of doors? I withdrew; I went down the other stairs; I traversed the vestibule without meeting anyone. I had an unconquerable desire to seek her, to see her; I thought that, perhaps, it would suffice me to be near her in order to recover my calmness, to regain confidence. On going out on the lawn, I perceived her beneath the elms, sitting with Federico.

Both smiled at me. When I came up to them my brother said smilingly:

"We were speaking of you. Juliana thinks you will soon be tired of the Badiola.... If so, what will become of our projects?"

"No, Juliana does not know," I replied, making an effort to recover my habitual ease. "But you will see. On the contrary, it is of Rome that I am tired ... and of everything else."