“Marco, try to love Vittoria. That is all. Try to love her.
“Maria.”
For a long time neither heard from the other.
PART III
USQUE AD MORTEM
I
The Fragolata[1] was the last festivity of the season, and, on account of the originality and grace of the occasion and the charm of the late Roman April, many strangers had delayed their departure after even a very late Holy Week. Since the middle of March, in the first languors of a spring laden with delicate perfumes, there had been daily gaieties in gardens and the shady majestic parks, which still surround the Roman villas. The poesy of such re-unions, in the soft, clear afternoon hours in the avenues, when light steps have a seducing rustle; in the broad meadows, covered in emerald green, which slope towards the wooded distance, when the ladies’ bright dresses in the background make them appear like nymphs;—this penetrating poesy tempts every soul, even the most barren of feeling, and the least susceptible to visions of beauty.
[1] Strawberry feast.
In various ways Roman society, by fancy-dress balls, theatricals, kermesses, had called on public charity, Italian and foreign, to help in works of well-doing for so much of the suffering which society sees, feels, and, grieving for and seeing, tries every fashionable and crafty means to alleviate. In short, the idea had been hit on to close the season with a fragolata at the Villa Borghese on behalf of the foundlings. The suggestion ran swiftly from the Court to the embassies, from the tea-rooms to the big hotels, from the most select patrician clubs to the sport clubs; and people, tired of balls in over-heated rooms, of shutting themselves up in theatres, people fond of new sensations, learnt at first with a curiosity and later with impatience that a fragolata was being arranged at Villa Borghese, and that the most fascinating dames and damsels would sell the strawberries. Later, it was known that, as well as baskets of strawberries, there would be sold roses, since April was entering into May, and lovers of strawberries are lovers of roses. So the discussion was great at the last receptions and teas. The young men shrugged their shoulders with a pretence at being bored at another charity festivity. Some declared that they could not stand strawberries, some hated roses, and some declared that they were leaving before the fragolata, while others added maliciously that they would procure a false telegram to absent themselves. But the ladies laughed, shaking their heads, knowing that all their friends and lovers would come that afternoon under the majestic trees of the Villa Borghese to take from their white hands a leaf-full of strawberries or a bunch of fragrant roses. They only were afraid of bad weather—the protectors of abandoned infancy—but not of the hardness and indifference of the human heart before everything that was attractive and pleasant; strawberries, roses, women, at a beautiful time in lovely surroundings.
Nor was the sun’s smile wanting on that day for the fragolata; a sun not too hot, a light not too strong, a sky not of an intense, but a light blue, occasionally traversed and rendered whiter by a slow soft cloud, melting towards an unknown horizon where all clouds go one never sees again. On that day the Villa Borghese was not open to the public, and on its broad, undulating paths, around its thick woods and spreading lawns, around its fountains spouting and singing their lively and crystalline measure, around its temples and little casine, with all the windows closed as if no one had lived there for years, one heard no more the dull and irritating rumbling of a hundred hired carriages, which passed there five times a week, full of unknown faces where often one reads idiocy and perversion, or often one wants to read it, in the profound irritation of seeing the Villa Borghese, the sanctuary of beauty and poesy, violated by strangers.
Towards four o’clock the carriages kept on increasing. The troop of ladies dressed in white, in stuffs of spring-like softness, of young girls in summerish muslin, in straw hats covered with flowers, became thicker, and at that moment the fragolata presented an enchanting appearance. Under the wooded plateau of the Piazza di Siena, amidst thick groups of tall trees, with their shining, almost metallic, verdure, and yet transparent with the softness of May, a large counter had been placed, on whose white cloth bunches of roses and baskets of strawberries, most graceful rustic baskets, covered with favours and ribbons of soft colours, and all sorts of strawberries, big and small, were placed on broad fresh leaves. Behind the stall were five or six ladies, Donna Flaminia Colonna, Margherita Savelli, the Princess della Marsiliana, Countess Maria Santacroce, and Maria Guasco, whose care was the sale of the baskets.