[VIII]
We arrived at Geneva, where we remained only long enough to rest. We soon travelled into the interior of Switzerland and there laid aside all fear of pursuit and discovery. Ever since our departure, Leoni's only thought had been to make his way with me to some peaceful rural retreat, there to live on love and poetry in a never-ending tête à-tête. That delicious dream was realized. We found in one of the valleys near Lago Maggiore one of the most picturesque of chalets in a fascinating situation. At a very small expense we had it arranged conveniently inside, and we hired it at the beginning of April. We passed there six months of intoxicating bliss, for which I shall thank God all my life, although He has made me pay very dear for them. We were absolutely alone and cut off from all relations with the world. We were served by a young couple, good-humored, sturdy country people, who added to our contentment by the spectacle of that which they enjoyed. The woman did the housework and the cooking, the husband drove to pasture a cow and two goats, which composed all our live stock, milked and made the cheese. We rose early, and, when the weather was fine, breakfasted a short distance from the house, in a pretty orchard, where the trees, abandoned to the hand of nature, put forth dense branches in every direction, less rich in fruit than in flowers and foliage. Then we went out to drive in the valley or climbed some mountain. We gradually adopted the habit of taking long excursions, and every day discovered some new spot. Mountainous countries have the peculiar charm that one can explore them for a long time before one becomes acquainted with all their beauties and all their secrets. When we went on our longest excursions, Joanne, our light-hearted major-domo, attended us with a basket of provisions, and nothing could be more delightful than our lunches on the grass. Leoni was easily satisfied except as to what he called the refectory. At last, when we had found a little verdure-clad shelf half-way down the slope of some deep gorge, sheltered from wind and sun, with a lovely view, and a brook close at hand sweetened by aromatic plants, he would himself arrange the repast on a white napkin spread on the ground. He would send Joanne to pick strawberries and plunge the wine into the cool water of the stream. He would light a spirit lamp and cook fresh eggs. By the same process I used to make excellent coffee after the cold meat and fruit. In this way we had something of the enjoyments of civilization amid the romantic beauties of the desert.
When the weather was bad, as was often the case in the early spring, we lighted a huge fire to keep the dampness from our little dwelling of fir; we surrounded ourselves with screens which Leoni sawed out, put together and painted with his own hand. We drank tea; and while he smoked a long Turkish pipe I read to him. We called those our Flemish days; while they were less exciting than the others, they were perhaps even pleasanter. Leoni had an admirable talent for apportioning the time so as to make life easy and agreeable. In the morning he would exert his mind to lay out a scheme for the day and arrange our occupations for the different hours; and when it was done he would come and submit it to me. I always found it admirable, and we always adhered strictly to it. In this way, ennui, which always pursues recluses and even lovers in their tête-à-têtes, never came near us. Leoni knew all that must be avoided and all that must be looked after to maintain mental tranquillity and bodily well-being. He would give me directions in his adroitly affectionate way; and, being as submissive to him as a slave to his master, I never opposed a single one of his washes. He said, for instance, that the exchange of thoughts between two people who love each other is the sweetest thing imaginable, but that it may become the greatest curse if it is abused. So he regulated the hours of our interviews and the places where they were to be held. We worked all day; I looked after the housekeeping; I prepared dainty dishes for him or folded his linen with my own hands. He was extremely sensible of such petty refinements of luxury, and found them doubly precious in our little hermitage. He, on his side, provided for all our needs and remedied all the inconveniences of our isolation. He had a little knowledge of all sorts of trades; he did cabinet work, he put on locks, he made partitions with wooden frames and painted paper panels, he prevented chimneys from smoking, he grafted fruit trees, he diverted the course of a stream, so that we had a supply of cool water near the house. He was always busy about something useful, and he always did it well. When these more important duties were performed, he painted in water-colors, composed lovely landscapes from the sketches we had made in our albums during our walks. Sometimes he wandered about the valley alone, making verses, and hurried home to repeat them to me. He often found me in the stable with my apron full of aromatic herbs of which the goats were very fond. My two lovely pets ate from my lap. One was pure white, without a speck: her name was Snow; she had a gentle, melancholy air. The other was yellow like a chamois, with black beard and legs. She was very young, with a wild, saucy face; we called her Doe. The cow's name was Daisy. She was red, with black stripes running transversely, like a tiger. She would put her head on my shoulder; and when Leoni found me so, he called me his Virgin at the Manger. He would toss me his album and dictate his verses, which were almost always addressed to me. They were hymns of love and happiness which seemed sublime to me, and which must have been sublime. I would weep silently as I wrote them down; and when I had finished, "Well," Leoni would say, "do you think they are pretty bad?" At that I would raise my tear-stained face to his; he would laugh and kiss me with the keenest delight.
Then he would sit down on the sweet-smelling hay and read me poems in other languages, which he translated with incredible rapidity and accuracy. Meanwhile I was spinning in the half-light of the stable. One must be familiar with the exquisite cleanliness of Swiss stables to understand our choosing ours for our salon. It was traversed by a swift mountain stream which washed it clean every moment, and which rejoiced our ears with its gentle plashing. Tame pigeons drank at our feet, and under the little arch through which the stream entered, saucy sparrows hopped in to bathe and steal a few wisps of hay. It was the coolest spot in warm days, when all the windows were open, and the warmest on cold days, when the smallest cracks were stuffed with straw and furze. Leoni, when tired of reading, would often fall asleep on the freshly-cut grass, and I would leave my work to gaze at that beautiful face, which the serenity of sleep made even nobler than before.
During these busy days we talked little, although almost always together; we would exchange an occasional loving word or caress and encourage each other in our work. But when the evening came, Leoni became indolent in body and mentally active. Those were the hours when he was most lovable, and he reserved them for the outpouring of our affection. Fatigued, but not unpleasantly, by his day's work, he would lie on the moss at my feet, in a lonely spot near the house, on the slope of the mountain. From there we would behold the gorgeous sunset, the melancholy fading away of the daylight, the grave and solemn coming of the night. We knew the moment when all the stars would rise, and over which peak each of them would begin to shine. Leoni was thoroughly familiar with astronomy, but Joanne, too, knew that science of the shepherds after his manner, and he gave the stars other names, often more poetic and more expressive than ours. When Leoni had amused himself sufficiently with his rustic pedantry, he would send him away to play the Ranz des Vaches on his reed-pipe at the foot of the mountain. The shrill notes sounded indescribably sweet in the distance. Leoni would fall into a reverie which resembled a trance; and then, when it was quite dark, when the silence of the valley was no longer broken by aught save the plaintive cry of some cliff-dwelling bird, when the fireflies lighted their lamps in the grass about us and a soft breeze sighed through the firs over our heads, Leoni would seem to wake suddenly from a dream, as if to another life. His heart would take fire, his passionate eloquence would overflow my heart. He would talk to the skies, the wind, the echoes, to all nature with enthusiastic fervor; he would take me in his arms and overwhelm me with delirious caresses; then he would weep with love on my bosom, and, growing calmer, would talk to me in the sweetest, most intoxicating words.
Oh! how could I have failed to love that unequalled man, in his good and in his evil days? How lovable he was then! how beautiful! how becoming the sunburn was to his manly face, and with what profound respect it avoided the broad white forehead over the jet-black, eyebrows! How well he knew how to love and to tell his love! What a genius he had for arranging life and making it beautiful! How could I have failed to have blind confidence in him? How could I have failed to accustom myself to absolute submission to him? All that he did, all that he said, was good and wise and noble. He was generous, sensitive, refined, heroic; he took pleasure in relieving the destitution or the infirmities of the poor who knocked at our door. One day he jumped into a stream, at the risk of his life, to save a young shepherd; one night he wandered through the snowdrifts, surrounded by the most awful dangers, to assist some travellers who had lost their way and whose cries of distress we had heard. Oh! how, how could I have distrusted Leoni? how could I have conceived any dread of the future? Do not tell me again that I am credulous and weak; the most strong-minded of women would have been subjugated forever by those six months of love. As for myself, I was absolutely enslaved; and my cruel remorse for having abandoned my parents, the thought of their grief, grew fainter day by day, and, finally, vanished almost entirely. Oh! how great was that man's power!
Juliette paused and fell into a melancholy reverie. A clock in the distance struck twelve. I suggested that she should rest. "No," said she, "if you are not tired of listening to me, I prefer to go on. I feel that I have undertaken a task that will be very painful for my poor heart, and that when I have finished I shall neither feel nor remember anything for several days. I prefer to make the most of the strength I have to-day."
"Yes, you are right, Juliette," I said. "Tear the steel from your breast, and you will be better afterward. But tell me, my poor child, how it was that Henryet's strange conduct at the ball and Leoni's craven submission at a glance from him did not leave a suspicion, a fear in your mind?"
"What could I fear?" replied Juliette. "I knew so little of the affairs of life and the baseness of society that I utterly failed to understand that mystery. Leoni had told me that there was a terrible secret. I imagined a thousand romantic catastrophes. It was the fashion then in books to introduce characters burdened by the most extraordinary and improbable maledictions. Plays and novels alike teemed with sons of headsmen, heroic spies, virtuous murderers and felons. One day I read Frederick Styndall, another day, Cooper's Spy fell into my hands. Remember that I was a mere child, and that my mind was far behind my heart in my passion. I fancied that society, being unjust and stupid, had placed Leoni under its ban for some sublime imprudence, some involuntary offence, or as the result of some savage prejudice. I will even admit that my poor girlish brain found an additional attraction in that impenetrable mystery, and that my woman's heart took fire at the opportunity of adventuring its entire destiny to repair a noble and poetic misfortune."
"Leoni probably detected that romantic tendency and played upon it?" I said.