'Salvossi il Ferrufin, resto il Cantelmo.’
“He stayed, one against a thousand. And the divine Ludovico places his beautiful bleeding figure at the beginning of a song telling how Bradamante performed prodigies with his golden lance. But the death of Alessandro is like that of a demi-god. At Fornovo in the hottest of the battle a hurricane arises, and the Taro overflows its banks with terrible violence. Alessandro suddenly disappears, like one of those ancient Greek heroes, carried away from the earth in a whirlwind, and supposed to be transported to heaven. His body was never found on the field or anywhere else. But he lives, lives on through the ages, with life more intense than our own. Not only his portrait has been transmitted to me by da Vinci, but his life, his true life. Ah, dear father, if you had once seen that picture, you would never be able to forget it. It is impossible to forget. Nothing in the world is of such value to me, and no treasure was ever guarded with such passionate jealousy. Who gave me strength to bear such long solitude and such hard discipline? Who poured into my spirit in the midst of the harshest rigour of discipline that kind of sober intoxication which makes all effort seem light? Who but Alessandro? He represents to me the mysteriously significant power of style, inviolable in my own person by any one, even by myself. All my life develops beneath his steady gaze; and in truth, dear father, he who can stand the searching trial of that fire is not degenerate. 'Oh thou, be what thou oughtest to be!’ that is his daily precept. But while he thus urges me to keep my personality entire, he also places before my eyes the vision of an existence superior to my own in dignity and power. And I am always thinking of Him who is to come.”
I stopped, for I felt my voice change, and I feared that the blood filling my heart might of a sudden overflow. And the old man’s soul was in such deep communication with mine, that at that moment he involuntarily stretched out both hands to me.
“Since a double will is necessary for the creation of that one who is to outstrip his creators,” I added in a low voice, bending towards him, “I could aspire to no higher union than that which would give me the right to call you father, as I am doing now....”
And overcome by emotion, I sat leaning forward with his trembling hands in mine, while his lips touched my brow without a word being spoken. But in the silence, between the throbbing of my heart and her father’s quick breathing, I heard the light step of Anatolia gliding out of the room. Was she going to weep by herself? Her form, which I had seen motionless and white in the shadow, shone on my inner heaven like a constellation of tears. Was she going to weep alone? Perhaps she would meet her sisters on the way.... This doubt suddenly made me uneasy. My eyes fell on the cameo that shone on the father’s hand.
And as the perfume of evening rose up from the walled garden, a dim sentiment spread through my soul, like a spell deepening round me with the slow falling of the twilight.
How in the meantime fared the heart of her who was about to depart? In what manner was her mystical life disposing itself round the memory of that supreme hour marked by the hand on the luminous dial?
“ME LUMEN, VOS UMBRA REGIT.”
Perhaps she may have returned more than once to the little cemetery with the yew-trees and anemones, and may perhaps again have laid her slender hands on the dial to feel its heat, and she may have remembered my exhortation: “Warm your hands in the sun, bathe them in the sun, poor hands, for soon you will carry them crossed on your breast or hidden under the coarse brown woollen habit in the shadow....” And more than once perhaps, with her palm laid over the figures indicating the divine moment, she may have waited, quivering in the great silence, to see the shadow of the hand reach the extremity of her ring-finger, as it did on that day of dreams; and perhaps she may have wept that the miracle of love had not been renewed.
“SINE SOLE SILEO.”