Around the palace the gardens of three centuries stretched out their marble steps, and balustrades crumbling under the weight of matted rose vines, to the Tuscan sun. Mosses and vines crept into the cracks of the stone, tracing out their patterns with supreme indifference to the decay their presence caused. On the driveways the ancient box, cut back to form wide walls and deep triumphal arches, looked as black as the ruins of a burnt city. It was so long now since the gardens had received any care that they were beginning to look like a flowering forest. The paths at the step of infrequent visitors sent out melancholy echoes which startled the birds like the shot of an arrow, disturbed swarms of insects floating under the outspreading branches, startled the little snakes crawling among the tree trunks.
Wearing the clothes of a simple peasant, and served only by a little country girl, the Marquis’ mother lived alone in these vast halls and gardens, accompanied by thoughts of her son, preoccupied with the problem he presented. How was she to provide money for him?
The only visitors at the palace were dealers in antiques to whom she sold one by one the remnants of a splendor already pillaged by those who had preceded her at Torre Bianca. But she must send several thousand lire to that last member of the noble line, who was playing a part worthy of his title in London, Paris, and all the great cities of the world. And convinced that fortune, so mindful of the first Torre Biancas, would finally remember her son, she reduced her own needs to the barest necessities, ate peasant’s food served to her on a rough pine table, in one of those marble rooms in which nothing now remained that could be sold.
Touched, as always, by her letter, the Marquis was murmuring softly to himself, “Mother! Mother!” He read again—
“I didn’t know what to do, Federico, after sending you the money you last received from me. If you could see the house in which you were born, my son, I wonder what you would say? No one will offer me more than a twentieth part of its value. But, until some foreigner who really wants to buy it comes along, I am willing to sell the floors, and even those wonderful old ceilings, the only things left now that have any market value. Anything to get you out of your difficulties, to prevent the slightest reproach from attaching to your name. I can live on very little, perhaps even less than I allow myself now. But isn’t it at the same time possible for you and Elena to reduce your expenses a little without Elena’s giving up in any way the position that being your wife entitles her to? Your wife is rich! Can’t she help you to keep up your establishment?”
The Marquis paused. The simple way in which his mother expressed her anxieties hurt him; and her illusions about Elena stabbed him like remorse. She believed Elena to be rich! She believed that he could induce his wife to live economically and simply ... hadn’t he tried to at the beginning of their marriage ...?
Elena’s arrival cut short his reflections. It was already past eleven, and she was going out to take her daily drive in the Bois. She liked to begin the day with this open air review of her acquaintances.
The somewhat ostentatious elegance of her dress suited her kind of beauty. Although between thirty and forty, frequent fasts and eternal vigilance still preserved her slenderness, which was enhanced by her height; and the care she took of her person kept her in what might be called that “third youth” which the women of our great modern cities enjoy.
It was only when she was absent that Torre Bianca was aware of her faults. As soon as she stepped into the room, his admiration of her took complete possession of him, making him accede blindly to whatever she might ask.
She greeted him now with a smile, to which he responded. Putting her arms about his shoulders she kissed him, and began talking to him with a childish lisp, which, well he knew, presaged a request. And yet this trick of hers had never lost its power to stir him, subduing his will.