After this the blessed maiden seemed to resume the aspect of a figure of Prayer, in which she had appeared to me the first day, as she sat between her two brothers. Lifting her veil to look into the depth of her eyes, I had seen a swift miracle worked under my gaze. The memory of it dazzled me still, but the veil had fallen again, and for ever.
Once more she seemed to me like one who has “departed from this present age.”
So much so, that when Oddo, one day, told me the pitiful story of her engagement broken off by death, I listened as one listens to a legend of ancient times, and felt then how strong and genuine my intellectual detachment was.
She had been loved and asked in marriage by Simonetto Belprato two years before; and, like Iphanea, had lost her betrothed almost on the eve of the wedding.
“Già vicino alle sue nozze, beata
Le ghirlande apprestava; e le fu spento.”
Oddo recalled to my mind the faint memory of Simonetto, and described to me the gentle youthful figure of the student, last heir of a noble family of Trigento, living a retired life with his widowed mother in the country, where he studied botany and died.
“Poor Simonetto!” said Oddo with brotherly regret, “I can see him still in his botanising dress, his tin case slung over one shoulder, his iron-shod stick and his green morocco pocket-book. He used to spend almost his whole time botanising, or preparing and drying the plants he had collected. His house was full of herbariums, and he might well stamp his floreated coat-of-arms as an emblem on their covers. You know what the Belprato arms are?—a shield divided by a bar of gold, the upper half red with a silver lily, the lower green, strewn with red flowers and golden leaves. Is it not a strange coincidence, Claudio? That the last of the Belprato should be a botanist! I used to prophesy to Massimilla in fun: 'You will end between two leaves of grey paper.’ They were betrothed to each other in the garden over his collecting, and they seemed made for each other. We were pleased too, for Massimilla would have entered a good family, and would not have lived very far away from us. (The Belprato, as you know, are of very ancient nobility, though during the last few centuries they have decayed. They came over from Spain to Naples with Alphonso of Aragon.) Everything was ready for the wedding. I remember so well the day that the wedding-dress, the kind gift of our aunt Sabrano, arrived from Naples with its wreath of orange blossom. Massimilla tried it on; it was delicious. Antonello and I wanted Anatolia and Violante to try it on for luck; poor dear creatures! The wreath, I remember, got twisted among Violante’s hair in such a strange way that it was impossible to take it off without tearing out a few hairs clinging to the flowers. One of the servants muttered that it was a bad omen. She was right. Simonetto was, indeed, to fall a victim to his mania. It was autumn, and he used often to go to Linturno to gather the water plants on the stagnant river. There it was that he contracted the germs of the poisonous fever which carried him off in two days. We had a funeral instead of a wedding. Our usual bad fortune!”
We were in Antonello’s rooms; the blinds were drawn, and the place was half dark, for outside the day was clouding over. I could not see the sky out of the windows, yet I could feel the sensation of the gentle, rather enervating, heat outside, and I felt sure that out of doors a few drops of rain had begun to fall, some of those warm tears that are so soft when they fall on face or hands. Antonello was lying motionless on his bed without speaking. Every now and then a swallow could be heard chattering.
“Perhaps,” I asked Oddo, “that is why Massimilla is going into the convent?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t think so,” he replied. “It is a long time ago now. But certainly life in this house must be more wearisome for her than for the others. I always think she must feel as dried up and extinguished as the plants in the herbariums Simonetto left her in his will. Ah, that wedding-dress laid by in a cupboard like a relic! Think of it! That white robe which by this time must be full of the odour of dried plants! Think of it! Do you think that death can have any museum in the world sadder than that of which Massimilla is the guardian? Sometimes I am unjust; sometimes I cannot conceal the bitterness that rises in my heart when I think that Massimilla is going away, is going to forsake us. I feel as if her departure would bring about the final dissolution. I feel as though a whirlwind would come to scatter and destroy us all, like a heap of useless rags. And she in the meantime is seeking to save herself. But I am unjust. She is perhaps the most unhappy of all us here. What I used to say to her in jest has come true. She believes herself to have become like the leaves and flowers in a herbarium. To revive herself, to call up the illusion of living, she forces herself into contact with living things. Have you not seen her plunge her hands in the grass and hold them there, so as to feel the caterpillars and insects among it run over her skin? Don’t you know the hours and hours she spends in the garden looking for animals, and making friends with them? In all this she is, as you said, a pattern of Franciscan perfection. But what would you say if you knew that it is really nothing but an anxious desire to realise life? I understand it; I am perhaps the only one who understands....”