The Triumph of Death

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

And she fell fainting into Camille's arms, extended to receive her.

Then Diego went out, livid with rage, muttering between his teeth a word which George did not understand, and they heard his heavy steps grow fainter as he passed through the gloomy enfilade of rooms in which the daylight was already dying.

CHAPTER V.

It was a rainy evening. Stretched out on his bed, George felt himself so broken physically, and so sad, that he had given up thinking, so to speak. His thoughts wavered, vague and incoherent; but his sadness was modified and exasperated by the influence of the slightest sensations—occasional words pronounced in the street by passersby, the tick-tick of the clock on the wall, the tinkling of a distant bell, the stamping of a horse, a whistle, the banging of a door. He felt alone, isolated from the rest of the world, separated from his own anterior existence by the abyss of incalculable time. His imagination represented to him, in an indistinct vision, the gesture with which his mistress had lowered her black veil after the last kiss; it represented to him the child with the crutch collecting the waxen tears. He thought: "There is nothing more left to me but to die." Without definite cause, his anguish increased all at once, and became unbearable. The palpitations of his heart choked him, as if in a nightmare. He threw himself from his bed and paced up and down his room, distracted, agitated, incapable of containing his anguish. And his steps resounded in his brain.

"Who is there? Someone calling me?" The sound of a voice rang in his ear. He strained his ear to listen. He heard nothing more. He opened the door, walked in the corridor, and listened. All was silent. His aunt's room was open, and lit up. A strange fear seized him, a sort of panicky terror, as he thought that he might all at once see that old woman, with the mask of a cadaver, appear on the threshold. One doubt crossed his mind; she was perhaps dead, seated over there in her easy-chair, motionless, her chin on her bosom—dead. This vision had the clearness of reality, and froze him with veritable fright. He did not stir, no longer dared make a movement, standing still with a band of iron around his head, a band which, like some cold and elastic substance, expanded and contracted according to the pulsation of his arteries. His nerves tyrannized him, imposing on him the disorder, the excess, of their sensations. The old woman commenced to cough, and that made him start. Then he retired softly, quietly, on tiptoe, so as not to be heard.

"What is the matter with me this evening? I cannot stay any longer alone in this room. I must go down." Besides, he foresaw that, after the atrocious scene, it would be equally impossible for him to bear his mother's unhappy appearance. "I will go out. I will go to Christine's." What prompted him to make this visit was the recollection of the touching and sad hour spent with his sweet sister in the garden.

It was a rainy evening. In the streets, already almost deserted, the few gas-jets threw out a dull glow. From a closed bakery came the voices of the bakers at work, and an odor of bread; from a cabaret came the sounds of a guitar and the refrain of a popular air. A band of wandering dogs ran by and was lost in the sombre alleys. The hour struck in the belfry.

By degrees, the walk in the open air calmed his exaltation. He seemed to have freed himself from the phantasies which encumbered his conscience. His attention was attracted to all he saw and heard. He stopped to listen to the sounds of the guitar, to smell the odor of the bread. Someone passed in the shadow on the other side of the street, and he thought he recognized Diego. Meeting him caused him agitation; but he felt that all his rancor was gone, that no violence remained at the bottom of his sorrow. Certain of his brother's words came back to his memory. He thought: "Who knows if he did not speak the truth? I have never done anything for anybody; I have always lived for myself alone. Here I am a stranger. Everyone here judges me perhaps in the same way. My mother said: 'You see now the life we lead? You see now, don't you?' I might see all her tears flow, and still should not have the strength to save her." ...

He arrived at the gate of the Celaia palace. He entered, and crossed the vestibule. As he traversed the court, he raised his eyes. Not a light was visible at any of the high windows; there was in the air an odor of rotten straw; the tap of a water-fountain dripped in an obscure angle; beneath the portico, beneath an image of the Virgin covered with a grating, a little lantern was burning, and through the grating, at the feet of the Virgin, could be seen a bouquet of artificial roses; the steps of the large stairway were hollowed in the centre by usage, like those of an antique altar, and every hollow in the stone shone with yellowish reflections. Everything expressed the melancholy of the old, hereditary house to which Don Bartolomeo Celaia, left to solitude, and arrived at the threshold of old age, had conducted his bride and in which he had begotten his heir.

As he went upstairs, George saw with the eyes of his soul the young, pensive wife and the anæmic child; he saw them in the distance, at a chimerical distance, at the end of an out-of-the-way room to which nobody could penetrate. For a moment he had the idea to turn back, and he stopped, perplexed, in the middle of the high and silent white staircase. He was in a state of indefinable uneasiness. Once more he had lost the sense of the present reality; he felt himself once more under the influence of a vague terror, like a short time before in the corridor, when he had perceived the door open and the room empty. But, suddenly, he heard a noise, and a voice as if someone were chasing something; and a gray dog, a gaunt and dirty-looking mongrel, doubtless driven to enter the house by hunger, came flying down the stairway half a dozen steps at a time, and brushed by him. A servant, noisily chasing the fugitive, appeared on the landing.