The conquest of Rome

by Matilde Serao

Beside him he saw that sweetest of women, Donna Angelica, of truly angelic mien. She was habited in black, in deep mourning, as was seemly in the Pantheon, sacred through the glory and the death of the Hero, and her sad eyes were fixed upon a candle that was consuming away. She saw nothing, and appeared to hear nothing, plunged in thoughts assuredly sorrowful, lost in her mournful dreams. Sitting next to a pillar, she had tried to read in her prayer-book the prayers beseeching peace, invoking rest for the departed; but soon the book had fallen into her lap half open, and her listless hands had not taken it up again.

And to him that dearest of mourners, pale as a pearl under her black veil, her sweet lips still apart for the passage of her prayer, her gaze dissolved in sad religious meditation—to him she appeared as a divine shape. And everything, the fitful, blue glare of the lamps, the thin, streaming flames of the candles, the atmosphere of woe, the sorrowful music, the dire gloom that had overcast even the ancient, stolid walls of the Pantheon, the incurable malady of the spirit—to him it was all embodied in that female form sitting near him: she personified the whole of that tepid, damp winter's day, on which the sun was dead; she was the moral seat of the tears that welled from all things; she was the magnetic abyss of sorrow, which the sorrow of all things could never fill, and in the profound shock of his system, in the thrill of his entire being, of flesh, blood, nerves, muscle, in all the strong composition of a strong man, there was aroused, there started into life, grew, abounded, a sentiment of amorous compassion.

She, all unwitting, gave herself up to her woman's fancies, which wandered among the tapers, the dark sacerdotal vestments glittering with gold, the tall, almost colossal, human cuirassier caryatides, among all the pale, dejected, sad, sorrowful, or indifferent faces. In spite of the immense throng of people surrounding the catafalque, in spite of the vague murmur detaching itself from them, in that hour of spiritual freedom she lost herself completely—in that brief restful hour, that hour of freedom in which private grief was renascent, and melted and flowed into the universal grief. Now and then, at a more lugubrious strain of music, at the voice of a singer bathed, as it were, in tears, at a sentence monotonously chanted in minor by the officiating priest, she would start, and her desolate dream would begin again, moving through other phases and other degrees, in other circles of melancholy; and in a new, intenser mood did she set out upon the path of pain that gentle souls all must travel. She did not weep, for the occasion was too big, too solemn; but he perceived how her delicate eyelids, as finely made as the petals of a flower, were shaded about with violet; there had tears been, there more would flow.

And while he thus ardently gazed upon that sweetest of faces, to which the shadows of pain imparted a nobly ideal expression, and was thinking of naught but that white face, half impregnate, half saturate with tears, and had forgotten all else in his amorous contemplation of the lady, he felt a wonderful change within himself. The infinite grief by which she seemed oppressed he naturally and gradually absorbed into his own spirit; it was like penetration into her heart, slow, but infallibly sure. He asked not the meaning of it, but felt his whole self disappear, drown, perish in that woman; he was mastered, not by her, perhaps, but by what she felt. The whole vagueness, mysteriousness, and unfathomableness of a feminine grief, without lament and without tears, without foundation and without limit, which had appealed to his heart now seized upon his brain, invaded it and took possession, driving out all other ideas whatever. No, it was no longer compassion, the great, natural compassion of a man towards a suffering woman; compassion is, after all, a personal feeling; compassion is something egoistic; compassion is a cry from one's self. It was he, he who was suffering now, as if the torture of that female heart were his own torture and anguish; it was he who felt the sharp pricking of the unshed tears scorching his lids; it was he who was in the throes of altruistic sympathy, and seemed to be lost in anguish, in a great waste of anguish, as that woman seemed to be struggling in a void of suffering.

And as the obsequial hour advanced, in the pagan temple where the Hero lay in state, a subtle odour of Christian incense went up; from altar to roof the smoke curled upward in graceful spiral shapes, which became more and more attenuated and ethereal until they vanished above, even like prayers ascending to the Most High. The incense, too, partook of the aromatic savour of tears, and the perfume of it, going through the nostrils to the brain, profoundly affected the nerves, caressing them into a state of voluptuous woe. In the half-light everything seemed to sway under that tragic, aromatic kiss; the women had all bent their brows to conceal the trembling of their lips, and the head of the woman he was watching was bowed down, as though her strength was gone. He sustained a shock, and made a motion as if to support her; but a sort of paralysis fell upon his limbs. The incense burned and burned in the silver censers, without flame, overcoming his last efforts of resistance.

A bell rang faintly, but in the midst of such silence it sounded sonorous; Donna Angelica slid from her seat down upon the cold marble floor, covered her face with her hands, and was no more than a heap of black clothes on the ground, unseen, unseeing, forlorn. And he, without kneeling, without inclining his head, without praying, felt annihilated in the woman's annihilation; everything seemed at an end for him, as everything was for her. And at each sound of the bell, as she gave a start as though called by a distant voice, the same action was reflected in him; nothing that spiritually took rise in her but was expressed in him by reflection.

A line of priests, with lighted tapers, drew up round the catafalque; a silver cross, on which hung the dying Saviour, stood fronting the bier. And through the music a strident, rending voice was heard—a voice that did not sing, but cried; a voice that did not ask, but implored: 'Libera, libera, libera me, Domine.' The Christian prayer, the painful cry begging salvation, made the sweet lady raise her eyes. And in her features, consuming away in their pallor like a fading flower, in her transfigured features, a true, intense aspiration was declared.

Now, while the piercing, distressful voice of the singer sued to heaven for deliverance with religious fervour, Donna Angelica, after passing through all the stages of undefined grief, felt a distinct need form in her heart. She now spoke to God, her lips moving as she prayed for deliverance. What had been indefinite till then now was defined: it was deliverance—deliverance from all that had been, good or evil, happiness or wretchedness—'From all, even this, O Lord! From all, even what has been, merciful Lord! From all, even the dreadful past, O God of pity!'

As for him who lay in the sepulchre, and whose funeral obsequies were being celebrated, deliverance had come to him at the glorious height to which he had risen; he had found deliverance, and perhaps special grace. The weight of a royal crown, the burden of a reign, the heavy responsibility of the law and of the majestic will, a load of thought and care—deliverance had come to lift all from his soul, now at rest in the ineffable peace. 'As the King sleeps, so let me sleep, O Lord!' she prayed. 'As Thou hast delivered the strong soul of the King, O Lord, so do Thou deliver my weak soul! Even if Death be the deliverer, let me die and be delivered, O Lord!'