Was she not probably the real guardian of the gloomy dwelling? By calling up the memory of death had she not herself raised the image of the lunatic?
“She is still just the same,” she replied, also in a low voice. “It is better you should not see her, to-day at least. It would be too painful for you. And imagine what it is for us! It is a daily torture, a torture that has lasted for years without pause, to the wearing of our souls....” Her eyes cast a momentary furtive look towards Antonello, and I read in them the secret terror that she felt for the poor invalid who was trembling on the precipice.
“We have never had the courage to separate her from us, to send her away,” she added, “for she is not violent; in fact, she is quite gentle. Sometimes she seems cured; we almost believe that a miracle has come to pass; she calls us by our names, remembers some little thing that happened long ago, and smiles calmly. Although we know that it is all an illusion, every time we tremble with hope, every time we choke with anxiety. You understand....”
Her voice lost its tone in her sorrow, like a loose musical string.
“It is impossible to confine her to her rooms, to keep her shut up; it is impossible. And we have not the heart to avoid her when she appears, when she comes to meet us, when she speaks to us. So she is continually at our side; she is mingled with our existence....”
“Some days,” interrupted Antonello suddenly, with a kind of impetuosity, as if driven on by uncontrollable excitement, “some days the whole house is full of her. We breathe her madness. One or other of us stays by her for hours and hours while she talks on; sits opposite her with hands imprisoned in those trembling hands of hers. Do you understand?”
A new and still more oppressive silence fell upon us all. And every one of us was suffering, as he acknowledged in his soul the reality of the sorrow which the slender blue shadows of the trellis, mingled with the gentle gold of the sun, seemed to wrap in a veil of dreams. Through the silence the sound of a light footfall was heard coming up the lower flight of steps. At regular intervals came a faint bubbling sound as if a fountain was overflowing its basin. A mysterious quiver seemed to shake the lonely garden below. And I understood how a gloomy and feeble mind might construct an unreal life out of these phantoms, and nourish it till overcome by it.
Thus the torture to which destiny had condemned these last survivors of a fallen race was suddenly revealed to me in all its horrors; and the vision called up by the words of one who was certainly to become a victim appeared to me magnified by a tragic light. In imagination I could see the mad old princess sitting in the shadow of her distant apartment, and one of her children leaning over her, with hands imprisoned in hers. The attitude of this mournful enchantress seemed to me fatal and inexorable. I felt as if she were unconsciously drawing all the children of her blood one after the other into the circle of her madness, and as if not one of them would be able to escape that blind and cruel force. Like an ancestral Erinnys, she was presiding over the dissolution of her race.
Then through the bare branches of the trellis I gazed up at the silent palace, which till that day had harboured in its grim depths such desperate anguish, and hidden so many useless tears—tears falling from pure and eager eyes, worthy of reflecting the most glorious sights of the world, and of pouring joy into the soul of poets and rulers.
“Eyes of Beauty!” I thought, gazing again at the motionless Violante. “What earthly misery can veil the splendour of the truth that shines forth from you? What afflicted soul can fail to acknowledge the consoling power that flows from you?” The pain I had been feeling ceased suddenly, as if balm had been applied; the troublous images faded away like a mournful vapour.