The Intruder

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

Absorbed, listening no longer, I opened the book, I turned the leaves at several places, and ran through the beginning of several pages. I noticed that there were several pages turned down at the corners, as if to mark them; on others, there were finger-nail marks, the habit of the reader. Then I wished to read in turn, curious, almost anxious. In the scene between Pierre Besoukhow and the unknown old man at the Torjok post-house, many passages were marked.

"Let your spiritual look fall back on your inner being. Ask yourself if you are satisfied with yourself. At what result have you arrived, having but your intelligence for a guide? You are young, you are rich, you are intelligent. What have you done with all these gifts? Are you satisfied with yourself and with your life?"

"No, I have a horror of it!"

"If you have a horror of it, change it, purify yourself. And, in measure as you transform yourself, you will learn to recognize wisdom. How have you passed your existence? In orgies, in debauches, in depravities, receiving everything from society without giving it anything. What use have you made of the benefits of fortune? What have you done for your fellow-man? Have you thought of your tens of thousands of serfs? Have you assisted them morally or materially? No, you have not. You have profited by their labor in order to live a life of corruption. Have you sought to employ yourself in the service of your fellow-man? No. You have lived in indolence. And then you married; you accepted the responsibility of serving as a guide to a young woman. And then? Instead of helping her to find the path of truth, you have plunged her into the abyss of deceit and of misery...."

Again the unbearable load weighed me down, crushed me; and it was a more atrocious torture than that I had already suffered, because Juliana's presence exasperated the crisis. On the leaf, the passage transcribed was marked by a single pencil stroke. Without any doubt, Juliana had marked it, thinking of me, of my misconduct. But the last line? To whom did that refer? To me? To us?

Had I thrown her, had she fallen "into the abyss of deceit and misery"?

I feared that she and Federico would hear the beating of my heart.

There was another page turned down, with a very pronounced mark—that on the death of the Princess Lisa.

"The eyes of the dead woman were closed; but her small face had not changed, and she seemed constantly saying: 'What have you done to me?' Prince André did not weep; but he felt his heart break as he thought that he was guilty of wrongs henceforth irreparable and unforgettable. The old prince came also, and kissed one of the frail waxen hands that lay crossed over one another. And one would have thought that the poor, small face was again repeating to him: 'What have you done to me?'"

That gentle yet terrible question pierced me like a dagger. "What have you done to me?" I kept my eyes fixed on the page, not daring to make a movement, to look at Juliana, yet agonized by a desire to do so; and I feared that both she and Federico might hear my heart-beats, that they might turn toward me to look at me and that they would discover my agitation. My agitation was so great that it seemed to me that my face was distorted, that I was incapable of rising, incapable of uttering a single syllable. I threw a single rapid, stealthy glance at Juliana, and her profile impressed itself on me so strongly that I seemed to continue to see her before me on the page, beside the "poor, small face" of the dead princess. It was a pensive profile, rendered graver by attention, shaded by long lashes; and the lips, tightly closed, somewhat depressed at the corners, appeared as if involuntarily confessing a feeling of fatigue and great sadness. She was listening to my brother. And my brother's voice resounded confusedly in my ears, seemed to me far off, although he was quite close. And all these flowers shed by the elms, that rained, rained ceaselessly, all these dead flowers, almost unreal, almost bereft of being, induced in me an inexpressible sensation, as if that psychic vision were transformed in me into strange internal phenomena, as if I had been present at the continuous passage of these thousands of impalpable shadows in an inner sky, at the bottom of my soul. "What have you done to me?" repeated the voice of the dead and the living, both the one and the other without moving their lips. "What have you done to me?"