The prince drove across a long bridge, whose arches were the remains of an ancient aqueduct and now stood in the river, the bed of which was quite dried up, with children playing in it. Then he let the little horses climb at a foot’s pace. The road led steeply, winding, barren and rocky, up to the castle, while valleys of olives sank beneath them, affording an ever wider view over the ever wider panorama of blue-white mountains and opal horizons gleaming in the sun, with suddenly a glimpse of the lake, the oval goblet, now sunk deeper and deeper, as in a fluted brim of sun-scorched hills, its blue growing deeper and more precipitous, a mystic blue that caught all the blue of the sky, until the air shimmered between lake and sky as in long spirals of light that whirled before the eyes. Until suddenly there drifted an intoxication of orange-blossom, a heavy, sensual breath as of panting love, as though thousands of mouths were exhaling a perfumed breath that hung stiflingly in the windless atmosphere of light, between the lake and the sky.
The prince, happy and vivacious, talked a great deal, pointed this way and that with his whip, clicked at the horses, asked Cornélie questions, asked if she did not admire the landscape. Slowly, straining the muscles of their hind-legs, the horses drew the carriage up the ascent. The castle lay massive, huddling close to the ground. The lake sank lower and lower. The horizons became wider, like a world; a fitful breeze blew away some of the orange-blossom breath. The road became broad, easy and level. The castle lay extended like a fortress, like a town, behind its pinnacled walls, with gate within gate. They drove in, across a courtyard, under an archway into a second courtyard, under a second archway with a third courtyard. And Cornélie received a sensation of awe, a vision of pillars, arches, statues, arcades and fountains. They alighted.
Urania ran out to meet her, embraced her, welcomed her affectionately and took her up the stairs and through the passages to her room. The windows were open; she looked out at the lake and the town and the cathedral. And Urania kissed her again and made her sit down. And Cornélie was struck by the fact that Urania had grown thin and had lost her former brilliant beauty of an American girl, with the unconscious look of a cocotte in her eyes, her smile and her clothes. She was changed. She had “gone off” a little and was no longer so pretty, as though her good looks had been a short-lived pretence, consisting of freshness rather than line. But, if she had lost her bloom, she had gained a certain distinction, a certain style, something that surprised Cornélie. Her gestures were quieter, her voice was softer, her mouth seemed smaller and was not always splitting open to display her white teeth; her dress was exceedingly simple: a blue skirt and a white blouse. Cornélie found it difficult to realize that the young Princess di Forte-Braccio, Duchess di San Stefano, was Miss Urania Hope of Chicago. A slight melancholy had come over her, which became her, even though she was less pretty. And Cornélie reflected that she must have some sorrow, which had smoothed her angles, but that she was also tactfully accommodating herself to her entirely novel environment. She asked Urania if she was happy. Urania said yes, with her sad smile, which was so new and so surprising. And she told her story. They had had a pleasant winter at Nice, but among a cosmopolitan circle of friends, for, though her new relations were very kind, they were exceedingly condescending and Virgilio’s friends, especially the ladies, kept her at arm’s length in an almost insolent fashion. Already during the honeymoon she had perceived that the aristocracy were prepared to tolerate her, but that they could never forget that she was the daughter of Hope the Chicago stockinet-manufacturer. She had seen that she was not the only one who, though she was now a princess and duchess, was accepted on sufferance and only for her millions: there were others like herself. She had formed no friendships. People came to her parties and dances: they were frère et compagnon and hand and glove with Gilio; the women called him by his Christian name, laughed and flirted with him and seemed quite to approve of him for marrying a few millions. To Urania they were just barely civil, especially the women: the men were not so difficult. But the whole thing saddened her, especially with all these women of the higher nobility—bearers of the most famous names in Italy—who treated her with condescension and always managed to exclude her from every intimacy, from all private gatherings, from all cooperation in the matter of parties or charities. When everything had been discussed, then they asked the Princess di Forte-Braccio to take part and offered her the place to which she was entitled and even did so with scrupulous punctiliousness. They manifestly treated her as a princess and an equal in the eyes of the world, of the public. But in their own set she remained Urania Hope. And the few other, middle-class millionaire elements of course ran after her, but she kept these at a distance; and Gilio approved. And what had Gilio said when she once complained of her grievance to him? That she, by displaying tactfulness, would certainly conquer her position, but with great patience and after many, many years. She was now crying, with her head on Cornélie’s shoulder: oh, she reflected, she would never conquer them, those haughty women! What after all was she, a Hope, compared with all those celebrated families, which together made up the ancient glory of Italy and which, like the Massimos, traced back their descent to the Romans of old?
Was Gilio kind? Yes, but from the beginning he had treated her as “his wife.” All his pleasantness, all his cheerfulness was kept for others: he never talked to her much. And the young princess wept: she felt lonely, she sometimes longed for America. She had now invited her brother to stay with her, a nice boy of seventeen, who had come over for her wedding and travelled about Europe a little before returning to his farm in the Far West. He was her darling, he consoled her; but he would be gone in a few weeks. And then what would she have left? Oh, how glad she was that Cornélie had come! And how well she was looking, prettier than she had ever seen her look! Van der Staal had accepted: he would be here in a week. She asked, in a whisper, were they not going to get married? Cornélie answered positively no; she was not marrying, she would never marry again. And, in a sudden burst of candour, unable to conceal things from Urania, she told her that she was no longer living in the Via dei Serpenti, that she was living in Duco’s studio. Urania was startled by this breach of every convention; but she regarded her friend as a woman who could do things which another could not. So it was only their happiness and friendship, she whispered, as though frightened, and without the sanction of society? Urania remembered Cornélie’s imprecations against marriage and, formerly, against the prince. But she did like Gilio a little now, didn’t she? Oh, she, Urania, would not be jealous again! She thought it delightful that Cornélie had come; and Gilio, who was bored, had also looked forward so to her arrival. Oh, no, Urania was no longer jealous!
And, with her head on Cornélie’s shoulder and her eyes still full of tears, she seemed merely to ask for a little friendship, a little affection, a few kind words and caresses, this wealthy American child who now bore the title of an ancient Italian house. And Cornélie felt for her because she was suffering, because she was no longer a small insignificant person, whose line of life happened to cross her own. She took her in her arms, comforted her, the weeping little princess, as with a new friendship; she accepted her in her life as a friend, no longer as a small insignificant person. And, when Urania, staring wide-eyed, remembered Cornélie’s warning, Cornélie treated that warning lightly and said that Urania ought to show more courage. Tact, she possessed, innate tact. But she must be courageous and face life as it came....
They stood up and, clasped in each other’s arms, looked out of the open window. The bells of the cathedral were pealing through the air; the cathedral rose in noble pride from out of a very low huddle of roofs, a gigantic cathedral for so small a town, an immense symbol of ecclesiastical dominion over the roof-tops of the little town kneeling in reverence. And the awe which had filled Cornélie in the courtyard, among the arcades, statues and fountains, inspired her anew, because glory and grandeur, dying but not dead, mouldering but not spent, seemed to loom dimly from the mystic blue of the lake, from the age-old architecture of the cathedral, up the orange-clad hills to the castle, where at an open window stood a young foreign woman, discouraged, although that phantom of glory and grandeur needed her millions in order to endure for a few more generations....
“It is beautiful and stately, all this past,” thought Cornélie. “It is great. But still it is no longer anything. It is a phantom. For it is gone, it is all gone, it is but a memory of proud and arrogant nobles, of narrow souls that do not look towards the future.”
And the future, with a confusion of social problems, with the waving of new banners and streamers, now whirled before her in the long spirals of light, which, like blue notes of interrogation, shimmered before her eyes, between the lake and the sky.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Cornélie had changed her dress and now left her room. She went down the corridor and saw nobody. She did not know the way, but walked on. Suddenly a wide staircase fell away before her, between two rows of gigantic marble candelabra; and Cornélie came to an atrio which opened over the lake. The walls, with frescoes by Mantegna, representing feats of bygone San Stefanos, supported a cupola which, painted with sky and clouds, appeared as though it were open to the outer air and which was surrounded by groups of cupids and nymphs looking down from a balustrade.