VIII
No, my dear Silvio, I have not forgotten you; I am not one of those who go through life without a backward glance; my past follows me and encroaches upon my present, and almost upon my future; your friendship is one of the sunlit spots that stand out most clearly on the blue horizon of my later years; often, from the peak on which I stand, I turn to gaze upon it with a feeling of ineffable melancholy.
Oh! what lovely weather it was!—how angelically pure we were!—Our feet hardly touched the ground, we had wings on our shoulders, as it were, our desires carried us away and the fair halo of youth around our foreheads trembled in the breeze of spring.
Do you remember the little island covered with poplars at the spot where the river forms a little arm?—To reach it we had to cross a long, very narrow plank that bent in the middle, with a strange sensation; an excellent bridge for goats and little used, in fact, except by them: it was a delightful spot.—Short, thick grass where the forget-me-not opened its pretty little blue twinkling eye, a path, as yellow as nankeen, that served as a belt for the green robe of the islet and encircled its waist, the constantly moving shadow of aspens and poplars, were not the least charms of that paradise;—there were great pieces of linen that the women stretched out to whiten in the dew;—one would have said they were square patches of snow.—And the little dark, sun-burned girl whose great wild eyes sparkled so brightly under her long locks, and who ran after the goats, threatening them with her osier switch when they were on the point of walking on the linen she was watching—do you remember her?—And the sulphur-colored butterflies, with their irregular, hesitating flight, and the kingfisher we tried so many times to catch, that had its nest in the clump of alders; and the banks sloping to the river, with the steps roughly hewn in the rock, with their posts and stakes, all green at the bottom and almost always closed by a hedge of plants and branches? How smooth and clear the water was! how the golden gravel glistened at the bottom! and how pleasant it was to sit on the bank and dabble our toes in the stream! The water-lily, with its golden flowers unfolding gracefully, seemed like green hairs floating on the gleaming back of some nymph in the bath.—The sky gazed at its reflection in that mirror with azure smiles and transparent rifts of pearl-gray of most bewitching beauty, and at every hour in the day there were turquoise blues, golden yellows, fleecy whites and flickering shades in inexhaustible variety.—How I loved those flocks of ducks with the emerald necks that sailed incessantly from bank to bank and caused an occasional wrinkle on that glassy surface!
And how well adapted we were to be the figures in that landscape!—how attached we became to those sweet, restful scenes, and how easily we harmonized ourselves with them! Springtime without, youth within, the sun on the turf, a smile on the lips, snow-white blossoms on all the bushes, fair illusions blooming in our minds, a modest flush upon our cheeks and on the eglantine, poetry singing in our hearts, invisible birds humming among the trees, bright light, cooing doves, perfumes, a thousand confused murmurs, the beating of the heart, the water stirring a pebble, a wisp of grass or a thought springing up, a drop of water rolling down the side of a flower, a tear flowing from beneath an eyelid, a sigh of love, the rustling of a leaf;—what evenings we have passed there, walking slowly, so near the edge that we often had one foot in the water and the other on land!
Alas!—that lasted a very short time, in my case at least; for you, while acquiring the knowledge of a man, were able to retain the innocence of a child.—The seed of corruption that was within me developed very rapidly, and the gangrene pitilessly devoured all that was pure and saintlike about me. The only good that remained was my friendship for you.
I am accustomed to conceal nothing from you—neither acts nor thoughts. I have laid bare before you the most secret fibres of my heart; however strange, absurd, eccentric the movements of my mind, I must needs describe them to you; but, in truth, my sensations for some time past have been so strange that I hardly dare confess them to myself. I told you at some time that I was afraid that by dint of seeking the beautiful and straining every nerve to attain it, I should fall into the impossible or the horrible.—I have almost reached that point; when, then, shall I get clear of all these currents that cross and recross one another and drag me to right and left; when will the deck of my vessel cease to tremble under my feet and to be swept by the waves of every storm? where shall I find a haven in which I can cast anchor, and an immovable rock out of reach of the waves, whereon I can dry myself and wring the spray from my hair?
You know how ardently I have sought physical beauty, what importance I attach to physical form, and what affection I have conceived for the visible world; it must be because I am too corrupt and too blasé to believe in moral beauty, and to pursue it with any constancy.—I have completely lost the power to distinguish between good and evil, and, by force of depravity, I have almost reverted to the ignorance of the savage and the child. In fact, nothing seems praiseworthy or blameworthy to me, and the most extraordinary actions surprise me but little. My conscience is a deaf mute. Adultery seems to me the most innocent thing in the world; I find it quite natural that a girl should prostitute her person; it seems to me that I would betray my friends without the slightest remorse, and I should not have the slightest scruple in kicking over a precipice people who annoyed me, if I were walking on the brink with them.—I could witness the most atrocious scenes with indifference, and there is something that is not unpleasant to me in the sufferings and woes of humanity.—I have the same sensation of acrimonious, bitter joy when some great disaster falls on the world, that one feels when one takes revenge for an old insult.
O world, what hast thou done to me that I should hate thee so? Who has so filled me with gall against thee? what did I expect from thee that I should bear thee such rancor for having deceived me? what high hope didst thou disappoint? what eaglet's wings didst thou clip?—What doors shouldst thou have opened that have remained closed, and which of us two has failed the other?