“I am so lonely, so lonely.
“In this Casa Guasco, in this Rome, in this world, Marco, I am more lonely than ever woman was, and I cry to you, not as a lover, not even as a friend, but as a soul which was once mine while mine was yours, I cry out my impotence, anguish, and mortal solitude.
“Marco, I am afraid of myself: I know myself. If the hand even of an enemy is stretched towards me with the impetus of unexpected sympathy, my soul at once trembles with emotion and opens its inviolate doors, and abandons itself with tenderness and enthusiasm. If a person who loves me ill-treats me or offends me it is impossible for me not to rebel; all my pride invests me wonderfully and magically with a steel cuirass, and I feel I love no longer, and I disdain the love of the other one who knows not how to love. I am capable of breaking a heart, two hearts, my own and the other’s, with a violence which nothing can stop. You know me. You conquered me with your youthful grace, with your sincere passion mixed with gentle languor, which conquers the proudest and most reserved souls. Never once did you offend me, never once, perfect friend and perfect lover, pleasant and sweet to dream of and remember. In those three years, passed together, my simple and impetuous character, so sincere and yet inflammable, found every sentimental delight. Our short life was beautiful, beautiful with unspeakable harmony, and we could separate full of sorrow, but still without anger or a single bitter thought of each other.
“Marco, this unfortunate man for whom I returned a year ago, to heal of all the poison he had absorbed on my account, not only is he more poisoned than at first, but he vents all his revenge on me by a love composed of suspicion, contempt, sensuality, and jealousy. This man who seemed to me a hero, and was one for a single moment when he pronounced the words of pardon, this hero whom I had poetised proudly in my mind, and who deserved the lofty place of poesy for a brief moment, when he pronounced the words of pardon, is no longer a betrayed lover who must be made to forget the betrayal by lavished caresses, is no longer an offended husband whose pardon is asked and given, with whom a new, loyal, and lasting peace is re-established. No, he is now an enemy, who now loves and now hates, who now wants you and now spurns you, who adores you by day and execrates you by night, who would keep you eternally pressed to himself and who flies from you, who thinks you capable of every black action, and makes you understand his suspicions, and declares them. Emilio Guasco is an enemy to me, Maria, an enemy whose name I bear, whose fortune I share; an enemy in whose love I live, an enemy who now keeps me because I have returned, an enemy who doesn’t wish to see me dead because he would kill himself on my tomb, who wants me to be alive with him and for him, to torture me and himself.
“O Marco, Marco, how terrified I have been lest all the good with which my heart is filled be at an end! how deeply I feel that my kindness which is not superhuman, since I am a woman and not an angel, will dissolve like a cloud, and I may become a naked rock, sharp and fierce of aspect—a rock!
“Marco, if he doesn’t calm himself and stop, if he doesn’t become more humane, kinder, more generous; if he doesn’t become the man of pardon and not him of after the pardon, that is sad and contemptuous for having pardoned, how shall I pour the balsam over him which ought to restore him to health, the jar of which is perhaps already empty and wobbling in my hand? Marco, if he doesn’t restore to me his esteem, his trust and his friendship, unless he is affectionate and magnanimous with me, how shall I be able to improve and exalt his life? What shall I do here if he continues to be an enemy who loves me? O Marco, I tremble to the very roots of my soul, even to the most mysterious essence of my spirit, lest all my mission of peace, beauty, and affection, can never be accomplished, and lest all my rebellious heart may revolt against the enemy who loves me. Marco, what will become of me to-morrow, a week hence, a year hence?
“Maria.”
At the same time Marco wrote to Maria—
“Maria, my delight, do you know that there has not been a single day since that fatal and tragic one on which we left each other, that I have ceased to think of you, far away or near, deeply separated from me by the depth of our divine dream of love, separated for ever since we wished it to be so, but always present to my spirit, which reflects itself in you as in the coolest and most crystal mountain stream? I have thought of you, Maria, as a dear mother, as a sister, as a friend, as a womanly creature who has been and is most dear to me, wherever I have found myself, whatever the idle words which left my mouth, whatever my careless deeds, however intense my silence and immobility. I thought of you then, soul of beauty, without ardour or desire, because that flame which was so devouring is extinguished in me as in you, but I have thought of you with sweet and melancholy moral sympathy, without jealousy, without bitterness, without gall, without any of the dregs which passion leaves in the heart, but with a measured and calm recollection, as for a memory which will be ever dear. I have never sought you; I have never thought of seeking you: I have never avoided you or wished to avoid you, nor have I written to you. Only your place has been, and is within me, high, unshakable, strong, and you are like a mother, a sister, a friend, the inspirer of my thoughts and sentiments. From the high extinguished pyre a slender warmth of life prevents my heart from getting cold; a thin light, that which they say remains after a star is dead in the firmament, seems to guide me in my unstable and uncertain way.
“But at last, after such a long silence, Maria, on the anniversary of my marriage, since you are always a source of warmth and light to me, and since you can still give me light and tell me what is necessary, I am writing to you and am breaking this division of time, of place, of persons which seemed inseparable between us, and I have come to implore help as formerly, as yesterday, as to-morrow, as always. I come to ask moral help of you, because you were always my conscience, even when we broke together the ties of society and laws, since you taught me nobly the way of liberty and truth, even in that which the world calls a mistake and the Faith a mortal sin, but which we called, and shall call, by a single word—Love—whatever it may be, from wherever it may come to us, wherever it may drag us. Maria, you who in the supreme hour of farewell, when I wept upon your hand the most burning tears of my life, you who showed me what to do with my existence; you who reminded me of a great duty to be accomplished; you who spoke no more to me of happiness, no longer possible for me from the moment that our love was ended, but of that which I could still give to a human creature; you who exalted for me this duty even to making it appear adorned with every attraction: Maria, to-day you must tell me, if you know, if you will, what is necessary, since I no longer know.