The Virgins of the Rocks

by Gabriele D'Annunzio

“Our father wants so much to see you again,” and we all began to ascend the steps towards the palace.

The three sisters went first, a little apart from each other, Anatolia first, Massimilla last. They said a few words now and then in turn, for the silence of things around demanded the sound of their voices, and perhaps they hoped to chase away the sadness of that silence from over the head of their guest. Those short sonorous cadences flowing from unseen lips grew fainter as I advanced; and I ascended with the voices and the shadows of the maidens round me, feeling as amazed and perplexed as if I were in enchantment. But though the three rhythms alternated in my ear, to my sight they appeared simultaneous and continuous, so that from time to time my spirit would listen attentively to seize the difference, or would take a concave form, so to speak, that therein they might melt into one deep harmony. And like those episodes which in a fugue fill up the silence of the theme, the aspect of the things we passed, or the peculiarities of the forms, entered into me, and enriched my musical sense without ruffling it. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn over the ancient steps, here and there still encumbered with the spoils of the previous autumn. There was the statue of a recumbent nymph, with the head bent in a painful position, for the moss-stained brow was deprived of the support of the arm. In a long vase of reddish clay, like a sarcophagus, common grass was growing, and in the midst of this hostile invasion a single plant of daffodils was flowering feebly and tremulously. Under a bit of broken parapet thrown down by the penetrating roots of the ivy appeared an inner channel like a broken artery; and one saw the sparkle and heard the murmur of the water as it flowed to fill the heart of the weeping fountain. Marks of decay and neglect were strewn on our path. The statue, the flower, and the water spoke to me of the same truth. And Violante, and Massimilla, and Anatolia were transfigured in my mind by means of mysterious analogies.

“Oh, beautiful souls,” I thought, as I measured the rhythm of their visible existence, “is not the perfection of human love perhaps to be found in your trinity? You are the triple form which appeared to my desire in the hour of the great harmony. In you all the highest needs of my flesh and spirit might be satisfied; and you might become the miraculous instruments of my will and of my fate in the fulfilment of the work I have to do. Are you not such as I myself would have created to adorn with sublime beauty and sorrow, the mysterious world of which I am the creator? To-day, I know nothing of you beyond the outward appearance and a few passing words; but I feel that ere long each one of you in her entire being will correspond to the image which breathes and throbs within me.”

Thus did the three sisters ascend in my aspirations and my prayers, each one obedient to the secret music that was guiding her life towards an unknown end. And their figures threw great shadows on the stone.

When I set foot on the threshold, the fantastic image of the mad woman took hold of my mind so vividly and fiercely that I gave a secret shudder. The whole place seemed to me to be under her sinister sway, saddened and cast down by her perpetual presence. I thought I read the same uneasiness in the faces of her children. And I felt as if we should find her awaiting us at the top of the stairs.

Anatolia guessed my thoughts, and softly said to reassure me—

“Don’t be afraid.... You won’t see her.... I have arranged that you should not see her, just now at any rate.... Try not to think of her, so that our hospitality may not seem too gloomy.”

Antonello was looking up through the glass of the loggia which surrounded the court, and watching with those anxious eyes and trembling eyelids of his.

“Do you see the grass?” exclaimed Oddo, pointing out to me the long blades of green growing along the walls and in the interstices of the paving-stones.

“It is the token and augury of peace,” I said, trying to shake off the oppression and be cheerful. “I was sorry not to find it yesterday in my own courtyard. They had taken it away, but I should have preferred it to all the festive leaves of myrtle and laurel. Grass ought to be allowed to grow, especially in very large houses. It is a living thing the more.”