My voice trembled, but it no longer trembled in the same manner.
As soon as I reached my room, I threw myself again face down on the bed. And, at last, I burst into distracted sobs.
XII.
When I awoke from the heavy and, so to speak, brute slumber that, at some moment during the night, had suddenly overwhelmed me, I could scarcely regain an exact idea of the reality.
But soon my mind, freed from the nocturnal exaltations, stood face to face with the cold, naked, implacable reality. What were my recent anguishes in comparison with the fright that invaded me then? One must live! And that had the same effect on me as if someone had presented me with a deep cup, saying: "If you wish to drink, if you wish to live to-day, you must drain into this cup, even to the last drop, the blood of your heart." A repugnance, a disgust, an indefinable repulsion, assailed the inmost part of my being. And yet I must live; I must, to-day too, accept life. But, above all, I must act.
The comparison that I made, to myself, between this actual awakening and that which I had dreamed and hoped for, the evening before at the Lilacs, contributed also to revolt me. "It is impossible," I thought, "that I can accept such a situation; it is impossible that I should rise, dress myself, leave this room, see Juliana again, speak to her, continue to dissimulate before my mother; that I should wait for a suitable moment for a definite understanding between us, that in this interview I should establish the conditions of our future relations. That is impossible. But what then? Destroy with one blow, and radically, all that was suffering in me. Deliver myself—free myself. There is nothing else to be done." And, on considering the facility of the act, on imagining the rapidity of its execution, the explosion of the firearm, the immediate effect of the ball, the darkness that would follow, I felt through my entire body a singular, agonized thrill, mingled, however, with a sensation of solace, almost of sweetness. "There is nothing else to be done." And, in spite of the torment that the anxiety of knowing gave me, I thought with relief that I should have nothing to know, that that anxiety even would instantaneously cease—that, in short, all would be at an end.
I heard a knock at the door, and my brother's voice cried:
"Are you not up yet, Tullio? May I come in?"
"Come in, Federico."
He entered.