Then she understood. Again she let herself fall on my breast, and shuddering, making me shudder, she said to me her mouth against my shoulder (never, never, shall I forget that indefinable tone), she said to me:
"No, no, no, Tullio; no!"
Ah! what else in the world can equal the vertiginous acceleration of our inner life? We remained in this attitude in the middle of the room, silent; and, in a single moment, the inconceivable immensity of a universe of feelings and thoughts surged up in me with frightful distinctness. "And if it were true?" demanded the voice; "if it were true?"
Continual starts shook Juliana against my breast—she still kept her face hidden; and I myself knew well that, in spite of the sufferings of her poor flesh, she thought only of the possibility of the deed I had suggested—she thought only of my mad terror.
A question rose to my lips: "Have you ever been tempted?" Then another: "Is there a possibility of your giving way to the temptation?" I did not give expression to either of them, and yet it seemed to me that she understood. From then on, we were both under the empire of this thought of death, this picture of death; we both were subjected to a kind of tragic exaltation which made us forget the moment of doubt in which it was born, and lose consciousness of the real. All at once she burst into sobs, and her tears provoked my tears. We mingled our tears, such hot tears, alas! which yet were powerless to change our destiny.
I knew later that, for several months already, she had been tormented with complicated internal troubles, those terrible occult maladies which, in the woman, disturb all the vital functions. The doctor whom I consulted gave me to understand that another pregnancy might be fatal to her.
This grieved me, and, nevertheless, relieved me from two sources of anxiety. I was convinced that I had nothing to do with Juliana's decline, and I had an excuse in my mother's eyes for our separate beds and all the other changes that had taken place in our domestic life. About that time my mother was coming to Rome from the country, where, since my father's death, she passed the greater part of the year with my brother Federico.
My mother was very fond of her young daughter-in-law. In her eyes Juliana was truly the ideal wife, the companion of whom she had dreamed for her son. She did not believe that anywhere in the world there was a more beautiful, more gentle, more noble woman than Juliana. She could not conceive that I could desire other women, abandon myself in other arms, sleep upon other hearts. As she had been loved for twenty years by a man, always with the same devotion, with the same fidelity, until death, she was ignorant of the lassitude, the disgust, the treachery, and all the miseries and all the shames that the conjugal alcove shelters. She was ignorant of the wounds that I had inflicted and that I was still inflicting on this dear soul which did not deserve them. Deceived by Juliana's generous dissimulation, she still believed in our felicity. How it would have grieved her had she known the truth!
At that period I was still under the domination of Teresa Raffo, whose violent and empoisoned charms evoked in me the image of Menippo's mistress. Do you remember what Appollonius says to Menippo in the ravishing poem: "O beautiful young man, thou art caressing a serpent; a serpent is caressing thee!"
Chance favored me. The death of an aunt compelled Teresa to leave Rome and to remain absent some time. I was then able by unusual assiduity when with my wife to fill the great void that the departure of the "Biondissima" left in my days. The disturbance which had taken place in me that evening had not yet been quieted. Since that evening there floated between Juliana and myself something new, indefinable.