After saying three final Paternosters, she rose. Grace had not come to her: the Eternal had not permitted her to hear His voice: she arose from prayer offered in vain: God the Father had not heard her. She crossed the whole length of the church and tottered up to the image of the Madonna, where she fell on her knees. She was an ancient Madonna delle Grazie, with a cadaverous face and large pitiful eyes that appeared to look at you, to appeal to you, to follow you as you departed. Lucia told the Madonna of her trouble, of her misery, and with her head resting on the balustrade, weeping and sobbing, she said to her:
“O! Vergine Santissima, as Thou hast suffered in Thy motherhood, so do I suffer in my womanhood. The anguish of these sorrows was not Thine, but from high Heaven. Thou seest and dost fathom them. O! Vergine Santissima, mine was not the will to do this thing. Before the Divine mercy, I am innocent and unhappy. I was led into evil and it overcame me, for my strength could not withstand it; it was weakened by the misfortunes inflicted on me by Heaven. O! Holy Virgin, I may have sinned, but I am not a wicked woman. I am a tempest-tossed, tortured creature, a plaything of the fates. O! Holy Virgin, like unto Thee have they thrust seven swords into my heart; like unto Thee, for fifteen years, am I pursued by the sinister vision of martyrdom. I am the most bitter tribulation that is upon the earth. My heart bleeds, my brain is bound in leaden bands, my nerves are knotted by an iron hand, my mouth is parched. Madonna, do Thou help me, do Thou console me. O! Madonna, who hast not known human love, mercy on her who has learnt to know it, ardent, immense, devouring. O! Madonna, Thou who knowest not desire, mercy on her who has it within her, long, savage, insatiable. O! Madonna, do Thou tell me, shall I give myself to Andrea?”
But Lucia’s passionate eyes were turned in vain on the Madonna: the Virgin continued to consider Lucia who was praying earnestly, and a little woman who was reciting her rosary and beating her bosom, with the same compassionate gaze. Then Lucia recited half the rosary, on that lapis-lazuli fragment of hers. She stopped at a Paternoster, and looked at her watch. It was ten o’clock. Absent and indignant at last that Divine grace had been withheld from her, she was now only praying with her lips. They all left her to her fate, even God and the Madonna—poor leaf that she was, fallen from the bough and whirled in the vortex of destiny. It was of no avail: they were all against her, they left her defenceless and bereft of succour. In that dark hour, the ingratitude of the world and the indifference of Heaven were revealed to her. “Hyssop and vinegar, hyssop and vinegar, the drink they gave to Christ,” she kept repeating to herself, while she rearranged the folds of her black dress, and drew her crape veil over her face. Once more, when she passed the chief altar, she knelt and said a Gloria Patri, crossing herself from sheer force of habit. And it was with a gesture of decision that she sped through the little door and dropped the curtain behind her.
The two-horsed hired landau was waiting in front of the five steps. The wide quadrangle of the cloister was deserted. Perhaps the noble Sisters were peeping from behind those gratings. The fine close rain continued: the driver, indifferent and motionless, sheltered himself under a big umbrella. The carriage bore the letter M and the number 522. The door nearest the church was open. Lucia took in all these details. She walked down firmly, without looking behind her, and with one spring was inside the carriage. A voice cried: “A Posilipo,” to the driver, and the carriage-door closed with a snap; then it started.
“O! love, love, love,” murmured Andrea, folding her in his embrace.
She tore herself away, and laughing ironically, said:
“Do you know that our position is to be found in Madame Bovary? This is a novel by Flaubert!”
“I have not read it. How can you be so cruel as to say these things to me?”
“Because we are the performers in a bourgeois drama, or in a provincial one, which comes to the same thing.”
“I don’t know anything about it, I only know that I love you.”