"Life belongs to the strong," she thought, "and who knows, who knows but that I too may succeed in achieving fortune? From this out I am a different person. What has changed me I do not know!" she exclaimed, wandering along by the river as if lovelorn.
"How full of strange incoherence and contradiction is the human soul! Who is it says that inconsistency is the true characteristic of man? Certainly the greater part of our disasters come from punctiliousness, from pride, as to letting ourselves be inconsistent. We often ought to be, we often wish to be, inconsistent. Well!" she continued, increasingly surprised at herself, "it's very strange! A month, a fortnight ago, I was another person! Why, how have I changed like this? Here I am ready, without the smallest complaint, to leave this world which held me so tight. Here I am ready to follow my husband and to take up again the modest monotonous life which I did detest, but which now I do not mind in the least. Is it because I love Antonio? Yes; certainly; but there is some other reason as well—something which I can't make out. I don't want to make it out. I won't torment myself any more. I will understand only that happiness lies in love, in domestic peace, in the picture which life makes, not in the picture's frame. But how wonderfully changed I am!" she repeated, in astonishment. "Such a strange, sudden metamorphosis would seem unnatural in a novel. Yet it is true! the soul—what a strange thing it is! Well, I won't think any more! He is coming, and that is all the world!"
She walked on and on, analysing, and, at the same time, enjoying her happiness. Rays of pleasure flashed across her spirit as she remembered Antonio's eyes, lips, hands. Hers! Hers! Hers, this young man! his love, his soul, his body! She had never before rightly realised this great, this only happiness!
She walked and walked. The sunset hour came. Though it was mid-July, the country was still fresh. Now and then a transparent cloud veiled the sun. A gabbia[5] passed her. The driver, fair complexioned and careless as a child, was singing to himself. The wheels seemed mere diaphanous clouds of dust, rosy lilac in the sunset. Quietly the great river rolled in from the horizon; quietly it vanished to the horizon, passing along, calm, luminous, solemn. In its omnipotent force the river also appeared beneficent and happy, bringer of peace to its fertile shores. In the very depths of her soul Regina was stirred by the peace of the wide-stretched valley, by the far-reaching beauty of the horizon, by the sublime, health-giving tranquillity of the fields, the woods, the shores, by all the emanations of grace from what she fancied a god transformed into a stream. She had renewed her youth. Everything within, everything around her was poetic, beautiful, stainless. Sorrow and evil had fled far off, carried away by the river, vanished below the meeting line of earth and heaven. The western sky had become all one soft yet burning rose colour; the Po grew ever redder and more resplendent; the woods were drawn out in long black lines against the flaming background; the pungent perfume of grass hung on the air. Regina, vaguely watching a laden boat as it descended the sunlit water from Cicognara, became pensive and even sad. She asked herself whether all the enchantment of this peace did not hide something insidious, whether it were not like those mock islands covered with evanescent verdure, amorously encircled by the river which yet reserved the right of swallowing them at the first flood; enchanted islets for the eye, unstable and engulfing for the unwary foot.
There were three mills on the river close to where Regina was standing. She had often admired the most ancient one, the lower walls of which were rudely decorated with prehistoric pictures, red and blue scrawls representing the Madonna and St. James, a bush, and a boat. The mill was surrounded by silvery-green water, which dashed against the shining wheel. Boats came and went laden with white sacks. On the platform stood the white figure of the miller, a young woman sometimes by his side.
Regina had often seen those two figures. The man was elderly but still erect, his face shaven, lean and sallow, his cynical green eyes half shut. The young woman also had half-shut, light eyes. She was tall and lithe, pretty, in spite of too rosy a face, and hair dishevelled and over red. She must be the miller's daughter, Regina had supposed, probably in love with the mill servant. Life at the mill must be happy as in a fairy tale.
But later she had heard that the girl was the miller's wife, that he drank, that he was jealous, and kept his wife imprisoned with him in the mill. Evidently a tragedy was being played in the interior of this prehistoric habitation! The running water, the turning wheel, were reciting the eternal tale of human grief—were singing of the jealous, tipsy, disagreeable old man, and of the girl, fiery as her curls, brooding continually over rebellious and sinful thoughts.
The boat, laden with workmen, touched the shore, and Regina recognised one or two whom she knew. They invited her to go with them to the mill, to eat gnocchi.[6]
She agreed.
The Po was becoming more and more splendid, reflecting the whole west, the great golden clouds, the reversed woods. An enchanted land seemed to be submerged there in the water. Regina admired and was silent, listening to the lively chatter of her companions. They were talking of ghosts. Old Joachin, the rich miller—big, purple-faced, goggle-eyed—one night, when he was passing along the bank in his cart, saw a huge white dog, which jumped out of a bush and silently and obstinately followed him. Who could believe this dog a dog? It was a spirit.