SACRILEGE—LOVE'S DREAM FLED

Bianca Maria Cavalcanti and Antonio Amati's love for each other had got stronger and sadder. Indeed, the secret sorrow gave some attractive flavour of tears to their passion; what had been an idyll between the innocent pious girl of twenty and the man of forty had acquired dramatic force and depth. Innocently, with the trustingness of hearts that love for the first time, they had dreamt of living, spending their life together, holding each other by the hand as they went on the long road; but Formosa's hostile face rose continually between them. In that troubled summer which had unhinged the Marquis di Formosa's mind more, the position of the lovers had gone on getting worse, together with the old lord's increasing moroseness. People cannot live with impunity alongside of physical or moral infirmities, even if they are heroic or indifferent; and neither Bianca Maria nor Antonio Amati was selfish or indifferent. They did not manage to shut themselves from moral contact with Carlo Cavalcanti, nor to give themselves up entirely to their deep love. Moral as well as physical fevers fill the air with miasma; there is an infectious warmth that sets the atmospheric elements out of balance and poisons the air subtly and heavily, so that the healthiest have to bend their heads, feeling oppressed and suffocated. They were good, honest, and pitiful, their souls were purely filled with love, so that no acid, however powerful, could corrode the noble metal; but the air around was poisoned by Carlo Cavalcanti's moral disease, and they could hardly exist now in that atmosphere.

It was an unhealthy summer. Whatever means of persuasion Dr. Amati used, he could not get Carlo Cavalcanti to send his sickly daughter to the country. Stronger than any argument or anger was the obstinacy of the hardened gambler; he looked on his daughter as a spiritual source of lottery numbers, and put her to torture, so that she might fall into visions again, and he with his disturbed brain, like an old fool, tried to force her to see. When the doctor, in despair and anger, insisted she must go to the country, the Marquis, who felt no shame now in asking money from him, promising always to give it back, took up a tone of offended pride, and the doctor, intimidated at bottom by the old lord's grand airs, gave up insisting, and put off the attack till another time. Once he very nearly got Carlo Cavalcanti to go away too, with his daughter, by describing to him the healthy freshness of this out-of-the-way country place, and the old noble almost got ready to start. But he must have made inquiries, and found out that in that small village there was no lottery shop; it was necessary to write or telegraph to Campobasso. Even the telegraph-office was in another village; there were endless difficulties in playing a ticket, and he must have felt at that time more than ever chained to Naples, to the company of gamblers, and to Don Crescenzio's lottery shop. He bluntly refused to go, without giving any reason. The girl bent her head before his decision; she had always obeyed him, and she could not rebel. Amati trembled with rage, angry with her as well; but at once a great pity subdued him. The poor, innocent, suffering girl was wasting away; she could not bear that her lover should refuse to submit. She gazed at him so earnestly with astonished sad eyes that he forgave her for her filial submission.

It was an unhealthy summer. Each year the doctor had kept up the attentive habit of spending a month with his mother, the good old peasant woman in the country, doing the simplest kinds of work—resting, not reading, neither calling nor seeing visitors, keeping always with his mother, speaking the peasant's dialect again, building up his physical and moral health by rustic habits. Well, that year, tied by love's chain, he put off his start from day to day to Molise, feeling all the loss of putting it off, growing pale every time a letter came from his mother, dictated by her to the estate agent—letters that were full of melancholy summonses to come to her. The doctor stayed on in Naples, displeased with himself and others, worshipping Bianca Maria, hating the Marquis. The poor thing's dreams were always disturbed by her father's delusions; she fell off daily in health, and the doctor could do nothing to cure her. All he could manage was that, by offering his carriage, Bianca Maria should take long drives by the sea on the gentle slopes that lovingly enclose Naples. Old Margherita went with her, and sometimes the doctor also dared to go out with the young girl. When he heard of such a thing, the Marquis di Formosa frowned, the old family blood boiled; he felt inclined to punish the bold plebeian, who behaved as if he was affianced to the high-born maiden. But he held his tongue; he had had so many money transactions with Amati, and went on having them every day, keeping up still more pride, decorum, and honour with it. Besides, everyone said, with a compassionate smile, that Dr. Amati would soon marry the Marchesina Cavalcanti, as if the doctor would be doing a kindly act to marry her.

Up there, in green Capodimonte woods, with its hundred-year-old trees, its fields carpeted with flowers, down there along the charming Posillipo Road, that goes down to the vapoury Flegrei fields, the lovers' idyll began again before Nature, ever lovely in Naples, with its gentle lines and colouring. The maiden's delicate, bloodless cheeks, with the sun and the open air going round her head, got coloured by a thin pink flush, as if her impoverished blood was moving quicker. She smiled sometimes, and threw back her head to drink in the pure air; she managed to laugh, showing white teeth and pinky gums that anÆmia had made colourless. Then the doctor, become a boy again, chattered and laughed with her, looking into her eyes, taking her by the hand, sometimes loading her with field flowers. They forgot old Margherita, who forgot them, as she sat on the grass stupefied by the free summer air, as old people are apt to be; but they were so loving and modest with it, that the forgetfulness was no sin. The maiden went back to the house intoxicated with light, sun, and love, her hands full of flowers, her pink nostrils dilated fully to breathe in the pure air still; but as the carriage got into the city streets her youthful smile died away, and when they went under the Rossi Palace entrance she bent her diminished head.

'What is the matter with you?' the doctor asked her anxiously.

'It is nothing,' she replied, the great answer of timid, distracted women who hide their fears.

She went up to her bare, sad room very slowly, but still had a smile for Antonio Amati on the threshold. She went into the house with a resolute look, as if she were keeping down alarm or distaste. Often Carlo Cavalcanti came to meet her, coldly angry, his face distorted by his bad hours of passion. She shivered, while his very look made the blood fly from her face, and chased away the whole idyll of love, took away all the sweetness from the sun and from love. When she got into the drawing-room, she put her big bundle of flowers down on a corner of the table. The old lord questioned her anxiously and greedily about what road she had gone and what she had seen. Bianca answered feebly in short phrases, turning her head away; but he persisted—he wanted to know all she had seen. Nowadays, everything his daughter saw filled him with uncertainties, curiosity, and sorrow; he tried continually to find out in whatever she saw a mystic source of the cipher of lottery numbers. He now considered she was a medium, a much better one than Don Pasqualino, because she was a woman, an innocent maiden, and unconscious of her powers. She did not know it, but she was a medium. Had she not seen the spirit that fatal night weeping and hailing her? He went on wildly with his close questioning, obliging his daughter to follow him in his freaks.

'What have you seen? what have you seen?' the gambler, who forgot he was a father, asked in anguish.

How love's young dream flew away, with its light and happiness! how all the oppressive ghosts of the bare old house gathered round her from that old man raving alarmingly, and obliging her to go through the same terror. Also, every time she mentioned the name of Antonio Amati, her preserver, friend, and lover, the Marquis di Formosa reddened with rage. She saw that her father had ended by hating Amati thoroughly for the very services he had done him, for the very gratitude he owed him. Formosa's face grew so hard and fierce that Bianca Maria was frightened. Her heart was torn between her unwavering daughterly respect and her love for Antonio Amati. Once Margherita hinted before Formosa at rumours of a marriage between her ladyship and the doctor. The Marquis got into a fury and said 'No!' with such a yell that Margherita put her hands to her ears in a fright.

'Still, her ladyship must marry some day,' she remarked timidly and maternally, 'and the doctor might be better than another.'

'I said no,' the Marquis retorted darkly.

From that time forward he spoke in a still more wild and eccentric way. Sometimes in the middle of the many mysterious ghostly incoherencies his mind wandered amongst he came back in speaking to his daughter to a ruling thought—to love looked on as a stain, a sin, an ingrained want of purity in soul and body. The girl often blushed in her simplicity on hearing the abuse heaped on love, and then he praised the chastity that keeps the heart in a state of grace—that allows human eyes to see supernatural visions, and go through life in a sweet, dreamy state. He would get excited, and curse love as the source of all defilement, all evils and sorrow. Bianca Maria hid her face in her hands, as if all her father's strictures fell on her head.

'My mother was a saintly woman, and she loved you,' she remarked one day, repenting at once of her audacity.

'She died from that love,' he answered darkly, as if he was speaking to himself.

'I would like to die like her,' the maiden whispered.

'You will die accursed—cursed by me, remember that!' he shouted, like a demon. 'Woe to the daughter of Casa Cavalcanti who stifles her heart in the shame of an earthly love! Woe to the maiden who prefers the vulgar horrors of earthly passion to the purest heights of spiritual life!'

She bent her head without answering, feeling that iron hand ever weighing more on her life to bend and break it. She dare not tell her lover of such scenes; only sometimes, breaking momentarily the bonds of respect her father held her in, she repeated to Amati her despairing cry:

'Take me away—take me away!'

He, too, now had lost all his calm. He himself was taken by this plan of carrying her off, of taking the maiden away as his comrade, his adored companion—of freeing her from the dark nightmare of a life that was a daily agony to her. Yes, he would carry off the poor victim from the unconscious executioner; he would tear her from that atmosphere of vice, mystery, and sadness; bring her into his house, his heart; defend her against all this folly, these tempests. The Marquis di Formosa would be left to struggle with his passion alone. He would no longer drag to the abyss of desolation he was plunging into this poor meek, innocent girl. Every day this longing to save her grew in his heart, until it became all-powerful. He longed to speak so that his grand dream should become a reality. Gravely and solemnly he had promised Bianca Maria that sad evening she had confided her sad family secret to him that he would save her, and an honest man must keep his promise, even if it induce in him the wildest ecstasies or bring on a sorrowful depression at certain times. He longed to do it. In the meanwhile the days ran on. Some uncertainty still withheld him, even when he was most strongly resolved to ask Formosa for his daughter's hand. He vaguely felt that the answer would be decisive—that after it was said his life would be settled for him. But an important incident all of a sudden made him come to a decision. The Marquis di Formosa, amidst the fluctuations of his mind, kept up his mystical piety, and every Friday he spent hours in prayer in the chapel before Our Lady of Sorrows and the life-sized pierced Ecce Homo crowned with thorns. With that faith of Southerners which has bursts of enthusiasm, but is also bound in by a close net of the commonplace keeping it down to the earth, he constantly mingled heavenly things with all the worldly complications of his ruling passion, and sometimes in his despair he made the responsibility of his ruin rest on his Creator.

'You allowed this to happen; it is all Your fault, Jesus Christ!' the Marquis called out in his prayer. But on terrible days his faith became still more accusing and sacrilegious, unjust. 'It is all Your fault; You allowed it to happen!' he cursed on, tears burning his eyes, his voice choked. Indeed, one evening when Bianca Maria thought her father had gone out, on passing the chapel door she heard angry, sorrowful words coming from it. She put in her head, and saw her father kneeling with his arms thrown round the Ecce Homo. First he deplored his misfortunes; then he set to calling out blasphemies, cursing all the names of the Godhead impiously; then he repented quickly, asking pardon for his untrue and sacrilegious words, until a new outburst of rage came on, and he unclasped the holy image with scorn and threatening words. In his raving he threatened Jesus Christ his Saviour, bound to the column, to punish Him—yes, punish Him—if by next week He did not allow him to win a large sum at the lottery. Bianca Maria, horrified, seeing no end now to his sacrilegious madness, fled, hiding her face in her hand; and, shut up in her own room, she prayed the Lord all night that her father's ignorant heresy should not be punished. Now she always shut herself up at night, to shield her slumbers from her father's influence, because he always wanted her to call up the spirit, and spoke to her of those ghosts as of living persons—in short, keeping her constantly under that frightful nightmare. But she slept very little, in spite of the solitude and silence of her room; for her strained nerves shook at the slightest noise, because she was always afraid that her father would knock at her door, and try to open it with another key, to get her to ask the ministering spirit for lottery numbers. While she was slumbering in a light sleep from which the slightest noise wakened her, she started as if excited voices were calling her, and gazed into the shadow with wide-open eyes, as if she saw a spectre rising up by her bed. How often she got up, half dressed, and ran bare-footed over the floor, because she thought a light hand scratched on the pillow, touched her forehead, or patted her hair! One night, a Saturday, she heard her father going up and down, as she lay awake, all through the house, passing before her door several times, in the wild cogitations of his storm-tossed soul. In a whisper she called down on him Heaven's peace—the peace that seemed to have deserted his mind altogether. But just as she was going to sleep again, a queer, dull noise wakened her, quivering; it was as if a very heavy body was being pulled along, making the doors and windows shake with that dull rumble. Sometimes the mysterious noise quieted down and was silent; after about a minute's pause it began again, stronger, and at the same time more deadened. She remained raised on her pillows, fastened there by an unknown iron hand: what was happening there? She would have liked to cry out, ring the bell, get hold of people, but that rumble deprived her of voice; she kept silence in a cold sweat, the whole nerves of her body strained to hear only. The noise, like an earthquake, was getting nearer and nearer to her door; she clasped her hands in the dark, and shut her eyes hard not to see, praying she might not see. Together with that dragging of a heavy, unsteady object, she heard laboured breathing, as if someone was attempting a task above his strength; then a hard knock, as if her door had been hit by a catapult. She thought her door had violently burst open, and fell back on her pillows, not hearing or seeing anything else, losing her feeble senses. Later on, a good time after, she recovered consciousness, frozen, motionless; she stretched her ears, but she heard nothing else for a long time. In the confusion there now was between her dreams and realities, she believed that all she had heard was only a doleful nightmare that had oppressed her with its terrors. Had she dreamt it, therefore—that queer earthquake, that laboured breathing, that strong blow on her door?

In the morning, having rested a little, she got up easier, and, after saying her prayers, went to her father's room, as she had to do every day, to wish him good-morning. But she did not find him; the bed was unused. Several times lately the Marquis di Formosa had not come home at night. The first time it had caused Bianca Maria and the servants great alarm, but when his lordship came in, he scolded them for having sent to look for him, saying he would not stand being spied upon, he would do what he liked. Still, every time Bianca Maria knew that he had spent the night out of the house she got uneasy; he was so old and eccentric; his madness led him into dangerous company, and made him weak and credulous. She always feared some danger would befall him one of these nights on the road, or in some secret Cabalist meeting. She trembled that morning, too, and went on into the other rooms, thinking over what had happened at night, again asking herself if all that did not point to a dreadful mystery. She found Giovanni sweeping carefully.

'Did his lordship not come home last night?' she asked with pretended carelessness.

'He did come in, but he went out very soon again,' answered the servant.

'He did not go to bed, I think,' she said in a low voice, casting down her eyes.

'No, my lady, he did not,' said old Giovanni.

Margherita came up just then; she said something hurriedly to her husband, who agreed to it, and vanished into the kitchen.

'I asked Giovanni to draw the bucket of water from the well this morning,' the old waiting-woman said. 'I am not strong enough to-day.'

'Poor thing! it tires you too much,' Bianca Maria remarked compassionately, her eyes full of tears.

'I am rather old, but I could do anything for you,' said the faithful one in a motherly voice. 'But I don't know what has come to the bucket this morning; it is so heavy I can't pull it up. I begged Giovanni, who is stronger than I am, to take my place.'

Both went away from there, because Margherita held to the honour of combing out Bianca Maria's thick black tresses. But Giovanni came and interrupted the combing. He called his wife out, not daring to come in, and they chattered together some time, while Bianca Maria waited, her black hair loose over her white wrapper. Margherita came back in disorder; the comb shook in her hand.

'What is the matter?' asked Bianca Maria.

'Nothing, nothing,' the woman uttered hastily.

'Tell me what it is,' the other persisted, looking at the old woman.

'It is that Giovanni, even, cannot pull up the bucket.'

'Well, but why are you alarmed?'

'Giovanni says there is something in the way.'

'Something in the way? What do you mean?'

'He has called Francesco, the porter. They will pull together. Perhaps they will get over the difficulty.'

'What can it be?' the girl stammered, growing deadly pale.

'I don't know, my lady—I don't know,' said the old woman, trying to begin her combing again.

'No,' said the other firmly, waving off the hand with the comb, and gathering up her hair with a pin—'no; we had better go and see.'

'My lady, my lady, what can we do? Giovanni and Francesco are there. We had best stay here.'

'I am going there,' the girl insisted, going towards the kitchen.

Old Giovanni and Francesco in their shirt-sleeves were pulling at the rope with all their strength, and it hardly moved, creaking as if it was going to break. Both Giovanni's and Francesco's faces showed, besides the great fatigue they were enduring, that they were in a great fright.

Occasionally, with heaving sides and cramped arms, they gave up pulling, and cast a frightened look at each other. From the kitchen doorway, in a white wrapper, with her hair down, Bianca Maria looked on, while Margherita, standing behind her, begged her in a whisper to go away for the love of the Virgin! to go away, in God's name!

'But, in any case, what can it be?' asked Bianca Maria steadily, turning to the two men, whose growing fears deprived them of strength.

'Who can tell, my lady?' Giovanni stammered. 'This weight is not a good thing.'

But while all kept their eyes fixed on the well, waiting on in anguish, all feeling a shudder from the delay and fear of the unknown, the thing the two men were pulling up hit twice against the sides of the well, noisily from right to left. The dull, heavy noise echoed in Bianca Maria's heart, for it was the same she had heard at night. A little frightened cry came from her mouth; she pressed her nails right into her flesh, wringing her hands to keep down her alarm before the servants. But once more, with a stronger, nearer sound, the thing beat against the side of the well.

'It is coming,' said the message-boy affrightedly.

'It is coming,' Giovanni repeated in consternation.

Margherita, standing behind Bianca Maria, could not command her strained nerves; she prayed in a trembling whisper, 'Madonna, help us! Madonna, deliver us!' But what came up to the well-brink, bounding, quivering, with the bucket-rope wound three times round its neck, the chain hanging on the breast, made her yell with fright. It was a man's trunk, water and blood dripping from the forehead over the sorrowful cheeks and bared breasts, water and blood flowing from the wounded side; blood and tears were in his eyes, and over the face and breast, which all had death's livid hue.

Yelling from fright, Francesco and Giovanni ran off, calling for 'Help! help!' The women, mistress and maid, rushed to the drawing-room and fell in each other's arms, the one hiding her face on the other's breast, not daring to raise it, haunted by the frightful sight of the murdered body. It was quite livid, bloody in the face, breast, and enfolded arms, with a despairing look in the eyes and half-open mouth, which seemed to be sobbing. It stood against the parapet dripping blood and water, bound by the cord and chain. The message-boy and the butler had flung downstairs, calling out there was a dead man, a murdered man. At once, on the stairs, the gateway, the whole neighbourhood, the news spread that a murdered man's body had been found in the Rossi Palace well.

Everyone opened doors and rushed to windows; but Francesco and Giovanni's confused, breathless story caused such fright no one dared go in at the Marquis di Formosa's open door, or to the kitchen where the corpse lay. The women were still clinging to each other in the drawing-room; though Margherita tried to command herself for her mistress' sake, she felt the girl's body grow flabby from want of vital force—sometimes it stiffened as in a nervous convulsion. But the great whispering in the palace had got even into the doctor's flat, and his heart was always quivering, expecting a catastrophe. He put his head out of the window and saw people everywhere; the sound of voices came up even to him, saying that a murdered man had been found in the Rossi Palace well, and that the body was in the Cavalcantis' kitchen. Just then Giovanni, on thinking it over that the two women had been left alone, felt sorry that he had made such a fuss, for he knew the scandal would be reflected on the Cavalcanti family, and he was going upstairs again.

'Is there really a dead man?' Amati asked him, not managing to conceal how disturbed he was, in spite of his strength of mind.

'Yes, sir, there really is,' said the butler, with desperation in his eyes and voice.

'Who saw it?'

'Everyone saw it.'

'What! everyone? Did your mistress see it, too?'

'Yes, sir, she did.'

The doctor cast a furious look at him and went into the fatal house, where a tragic breath had always blown from the first moment he put his foot in it, where any queer, doleful tragedy was possible to happen. He wandered about the rooms like a madman in search of Bianca Maria, and found her sitting on a large drawing-room chair, so pale, so terrified, so silent, that Margherita was kneeling before her in alarm, holding her hands, begging her to say a word—only a word.

Bianca Maria glanced at Amati, but seemed not to know him; she kept cold and inert and stiff in her frightened attitude.

'Bianca,' said the doctor gently. She still kept silence. 'Bianca,' he said louder, and he took her hand. At the light touch she quivered, gave a cry, and came back to consciousness. 'My love, my love! speak to me—weep,' he suggested, looking at her magnetically, trying to put his strong will and courage into her. All of a sudden, as if that will and strength had unsealed her lips, she began to cry out:

'The dead man! take him away—take away the dead man!'

'Now, now, don't be frightened; we are taking him away; keep calm,' the doctor said to her.

'The dead man—the dead man!' she cried out, covering her face with her hands wildly. 'For goodness' sake take the dead man away, or he will carry me off. Do not let him take me away, I entreat you, darling, if you love me.'

The doctor gave Margherita a look bidding her take care of Bianca, and went into the kitchen, followed by Giovanni. In the lobby were some people who were already speaking of calling the magistrate; there were the porter, his wife, the FragalÀ and the Parascandolos' servants, and Francesco the errand boy, but not one of them dared enter the kitchen, even after the doctor went in. They let him go alone, waiting on silently in the pantry, still wild with fear. The doctor, though accustomed to see dead bodies, being shaken by that catastrophe that affected him so particularly, broken-spirited with the thought of the consequences, went into the kitchen a victim to the deepest melancholy, and the sight of the bleeding forehead, weeping eyes, the tied, wounded hands, the livid trunk, wounded, bleeding, and bound, increased the feeling. But the coolness of a man of science, accustomed to see death, took the upper hand; going right up to it, he saw the head had a crown of thorns, and with perfect stupefaction he understood it all.

It was the Ecce Homo. The wooden, life-sized half-figure of the Redeemer tied to the column, powerfully carved and painted, had all the disagreeable appearance of a bleeding corpse; the well water it had fallen into had discoloured the flesh and the vermilion blood, making it run, with the double magical effect of murder and drowning. Still, Dr. Amati felt his heart tighten on finding out this doleful farce—that mixture of cruelty and grotesqueness. Amazement was his predominant feeling; the strong man only thought of Bianca Maria's great suffering, of her sickness and sorrow, now mortally wounded, perhaps, by this gloomy, mystical, childish madness that the Marquis di Formosa was proud of. All that was urgent now was to save her.

'It is the Ecce Homo,' he said shortly, as he went out to the people assembled in the pantry.

'What do you say, sir?' Giovanni cried out, feeling the same astonishment, increased by horror, of the sacrilege.

'It is the Ecce Homo,' he repeated, looking coldly at them all with that imperious look of his that permitted of no reply. 'Go into the kitchen, dry it, and take it back to the chapel.'

They looked at each other, asking opinions; having got over the horror of a dead man, the outrage on the Divinity shocked them.

'You may send for the priest afterwards,' he said, 'to give a blessing;' for he knew the heart of the Naples folk.

The girl was still lying on the armchair, her eyes covered with her hands, always muttering to herself:

'The dead man—the dead man, dear love! Take him away. Get the dead man carried away.'

'There is no dead man, dear,' he said, with the gentleness that came from his great pity.

'Yes, yes there was,' she whispered, shaking her head in a melancholy way, as if nothing would convince her to the contrary.

'There was no dead man,' he answered gravely, feeling it was necessary to bring her back to reason.

He tried to take her hands from her eyes, but they stiffened, and an agonized expression came over the girl's face.

'Look at me for a moment,' he whispered in an insinuating tone.

'I can't—I can't!' she said in a sad, mysterious voice.

'Why not?'

'Because I would see the dead man, love—my love!' she said, still with that deep sadness that brought tears to the doctor's eyes.

'Dear, I swear to you that there is no dead man,' he replied again gently, as persistent as with a sick child.

In the meanwhile he tried to feel her pulse, and the temperature of her skin. Strange to say, while she seemed almost delirious, her hand was icy and the pulse was slow and feeble. It gave him a pang at the heart, for that want of life and strength showed him a continuous incurable wasting away. He would have liked to find out about that curious disease which made the blood so feeble and the nerves so irritable, but his heart loved Bianca Maria too well for his science to keep its clear-sightedness. He could not find out the secret of the impoverished blood or the disordered nerves; he only understood thus, darkly, that her constitution was wasting away from weakness and sensitiveness. He did not think of medicine or rare remedies; he just thought, in a confused way, he must save her—that was all. Ah, yes, he must snatch her at once from that madman's claws—this poor innocent girl that was subjected daily to being startled by this hopeless folly; he must take her away from that growing wretchedness of soul and body, from that fatal going downhill to sin and death—his poor darling who only knew how to suffer without rebellion or complaint. He must act at once; he was a man and a Christian. He must save this unhappy girl, as he so often had saved people from hydrophobia, or as, on one occasion, he had saved a wretched man who had got tetanus. At once—at once—he must save her, or he would not be in time. Where was the Marquis, then? Where was the cruel madman that staked his name, his honour, his daughter?

'Sir, it is done,' said Giovanni, putting in his head at the door. The old servant was very pale. After being relieved from the terrifying impression of what he thought was a murdered corpse, the serious insult his master had done to the Godhead came to disturb his humble religious conscience. That figure of the Redeemer, with the cord round His neck, hung down in the well, as if it was the mangled remains of a murdered man—to see that representation of the meek Jesus so scorned made him think that his master's reason had given way; such sacrilege must bring a curse on the house. He called out Margherita, to tell her what had happened, while the neighbours round about—on the stair, at the entrance, and in the shops—were going about saying that the Ecce Homo of Cavalcanti House had done a miracle, resuscitating a man that had been murdered, by putting Himself in his place. Everywhere, in different ways, they got lottery numbers out of the extraordinary event.

'The dead man, poor fellow!' the girl went on, half unconscious, the voice like a faint breath from her lips.

'Do not say that again, Bianca Maria. Believe what I say,' the doctor replied with gentle firmness. 'There was no dead man; it was the Ecce Homo statue.'

'Who was it?' she cried out, getting up and looking wildly at him.

He gave a start. He thought it was the crisis, her mind having wandered so long, so he repeated, trying to influence her by his steady gaze:

'It was the Ecce Homo figure. Your father flung it in the well, with a rope round its neck.'

'My God!' she shrieked in a loud voice, raising her arms to heaven. 'God forgive us!'

She fell on her knees and bent forward, touching the ground with her lips. Weeping, praying, sobbing, she went on imploring the Lord to forgive her and her father. Nothing served to quiet her, to get her up from the ground, where she often burst out in long crying-fits. The doctor vainly tried gentleness, kindness, force, violence; he did not succeed in quieting her. Bianca Maria's excitement increased, though there were some stupefied intervals, after which it burst out louder again. Sometimes, while she seemed to be keeping calm, a quick thought crossed her brain, and she threw herself on the ground, crying out: 'Ecce Homo! Ecce Homo, forgive us!'

The doctor looked on, shuddering, his head down on his breast, feeling his will powerless, his science useless. What was to be done? He called in Giovanni and wrote two lines on a card—an order for morphia, which he sent for to the druggist's. But he was afraid to use it: Bianca Maria was not strong enough to bear it. She despairingly, with strong, queer vitality, beat her breast, muttering the Latin words of the Miserere, weeping always, as if she had an inexhaustible fountain of tears.

This had gone on for an hour, when quietly the Marquis came into the room. He looked older, wearied, and broken with the weight of life.

'What is the matter with Bianca Maria?' he asked timidly. 'What have you done to her?'

'It is you that are killing her,' the doctor said freezingly.

'You are right—quite right. Darling, I am an assassin!' shrieked the old man.

That man of sixty cast himself at his daughter's feet, trembling with shame and humiliation, shaken by dry sobs. Under the doctor's eyes the scene went on, with filial and paternal positions reversed. That bald, gray-haired father, with his tall, failing form, full of dread and sorrow, shedding old folks' rare burning tears, feeling the whole horror of his fault, bent before his young daughter, begging her to forgive him, with a childish stammer in his voice, just like a boy relieving his childish repentance by crying. The daughter was still trembling from the great wound his inconsiderate cruelty had given her soul; it was quivering with the gall his cruelty still poured into it, while her father's humiliation made her groan still more dolefully. To the strong man, whose life had always been an honest, noble struggle, directed always towards the highest ideals, both of them seemed so weak, so wretched, so utterly unhappy—the one as torturer, the other as victim—that he once more regretted the time when the tragic Cavalcanti family had not got hold of his heart, to grind it to powder. But it was too late; that misery, unhappiness, and weakness struck him so directly now that Amati, strong man as he was, suffered in all these spasms, and could not control his instinct to give help, the feeling that was the secret of his noble soul.

'Forgive me, dear—forgive your old father; trample on me, I deserve it—but forgive me,' the Marquis di Formosa went on saying, seized with a wild, grovelling humility.

'Do not say that—do not say it. I am a wretched sinner; ask forgiveness of Ecce Homo, whom you have insulted, or our house is accursed, and we will all die and be damned. For the sake of our eternal salvation ask Ecce Homo to forgive you.'

'Whatever you wish, whatever you order me, I will do,' he answered, still grovelling, holding out his hands beseechingly; 'but Ecce Homo deserted me, Bianca Maria—he betrayed me again, you see,' he ended by saying, again seized with the rage that had led him to do the sacrilegious, wicked, grotesque act.

'You frighten me,' she cried out, stepping back and putting out her arms to prevent him touching her: 'you—a man—wanted to punish the Divine Jesus. Ask for forgiveness if you do not want us all to die damned.'

'You are right,' he muttered, frightened, humbled again. 'Do what you like with me. I will do penance. I will obey you as if you were my mother. I am a murderer, a scoundrel.'

The Marquis threw himself into a chair, broken down, his breast upheaving, his head bent, and keeping a glassy stare on the ground. His daughter was standing in a white dressing-gown that modestly covered her from head to foot, her black hair loose on her shoulders, and she had the dreamy, sorrowful look of one walking in her sleep, wakened from wandering, pleasant dreams. The doctor broke in:

'Bianca Maria,' he said.

'What is it you want?' she replied, feebly looking at her father, who was still plunged in deep dejection.

'Your father is much distressed; you are in pain—you must both forget this sad scene. Will you listen to kindly good advice from me?'

'You are goodness and kindness itself,' she whispered, raising her eyes to heaven. 'Speak—I will obey you.'

'This has been a very sad time, Bianca Maria, but it may bring good fruit. Your father and you have wept together—tears cleanse. By your common sufferings, by the love you bear him, you ought to ask your father not to humiliate himself so far as to ask your pardon, but to promise you, in the name of all you have suffered, to do what you will request him later on, when you are calmer; tell him so, Bianca Maria.'

The girl's mobile face, which had been drawn and quivering, at the doctor's commanding, quiet, amiable words, at that voice that had the magic power of giving her ease and faith in life, was getting tranquillized. Her soul, broken and tired, was resting.

'So be it,' she whispered, as if she was finishing an inward prayer aloud. Going up to the big chair, where her father lay looking quite broken down, she bent towards him, and in a very gentle voice said:

'Father, you love me, do you not?'

'Yes, dear,' said he.

'Will you do me a favour?'

'I will do everything—all, Bianca Maria.'

'I only want one favour for my good, for my future health and happiness; promise to do it.'

'Whatever you like, dear; I am your servant.'

'It is a great favour. I will tell you later on, when we are in God's grace again, when we are both quieter, what it is. I have your word, father, your word—you have never failed.'

'You have my word,' he said, panting as if he were not fit to go on talking.

She understood; she bent with her usual filial submission and touched his hand with her lips; he lightly touched her forehead as a blessing. She went to Amati, held out her hand, and looked at him with such loving intensity that he grew pale, and, to hide his emotion, bowed down to kiss her hand. Slowly dragging her slender person, from failing strength, she went out of the room, leaving the two alone. The old man seemed wrapped in deep and rather sad reflections, for he raised his face to heaven and cast it down in an anguished way, shaking his head as if discouraged. The doctor saw that the right moment had come.

'Can you listen to me?' he asked very coldly.

'I would prefer ... I would like to wait for some other day, rather,' the Marquis answered in a feeble voice.

'It will be better to have the talk out to-day,' Amati said, with the same commanding coldness.

'I am much disturbed ... very.'

'It may be that from what I tell you you will find something to soothe you. You know that I am devoted to you.'

'Yes, yes,' the other said vaguely.

'I cannot say much to prove my devotion; I try when I can to act in that spirit. I am sincerely attached to both of you.'

'We know it; our debt of gratitude is great.'

'Do not speak of that. For some time past I have wished to tell you of a hope of mine, and I dared not. You know me better than to suppose that any material interest would influence me. You see, my lord, I do not want to recall the past to your memory, it is so sorrowful, but it is necessary to do it. You and your daughter have been in poor circumstances for some years, and it is certainly not your daughter's fault. Your intentions are loving and holy; they have a high motive all honest men must approve of—the setting up of your house and fortune, to get happiness for your daughter; it is a good intention, I do not deny it. I myself admire this noble wish of yours.'

The Marquis held up his head now and then, glanced at the doctor with a flutter of his eyelids, showing approval of what he was saying, with such care and delicacy not to offend, not to cast an old man down more, for he suffered so much from his humiliation.

'But the means,' the doctor went on to say—'the means were risky, hazardous, very dangerous. Your passionate desire for fortune made you go beyond bounds, made you forget all the sufferings you were unconsciously spreading around you. Do you not see, my lord? You have sickness, wretchedness, around you, and in you. Passion has carried you away, and the loveliest, dearest of women, your daughter, must fall into the abyss with you.'

'Poor darling! poor darling!' the Marquis muttered pityingly.

'You love your daughter, do you not?' Dr. Amati asked, wishing to touch all the chords of feeling.

'I love no one but her; I love her above everything,' Formosa said quickly, with tears in his eyes again.

'Well, there is a way of protecting that innocent young life from all the physical and moral anguish that daily eats it up; there is a means of taking her out of these unhealthy surroundings of decent but stern poverty that she suffers from in every nerve; there is a means of securing her a healthy, comfortable future, with the peace and quietness her pure soul deserves; there is a way for her to recover, and it is in your hands.'

'I tried it, you know,' the Marquis di Formosa said despairingly; 'but I did not succeed.'

'You do not take my meaning,' the doctor went on, barely keeping in his impatience, as he saw that the Marquis was still blinded. 'I am not speaking of the lottery, which has been so disastrous to your family, a torment to your daughter, the despair of all who love you and wish you well. How can you suppose I was referring to the lottery?'

'Still, it is the only way to make money—a lot of money. Only with that can I save Bianca Maria.'

'You are making a mistake,' the doctor answered still more coldly. 'I am speaking of something else; ease and fortune can be found elsewhere.'

'It is not possible. There is no limit to what one can win at the lottery....'

'My lord, I am speaking seriously. This madness of your Cabalist friends does not influence me; indeed, it infuriates me when I think of the sorrow it causes. I can recognise the good intentions, but they stand for an unpardonable frenzy. Never refer to it with me again—never!'

Formosa looked up; his face, which till then was undecided and disturbed, got icy and hard. That 'never,' said so firmly by Antonio Amati, made him frown rather.

'What methods are you referring to, then?' he asked in a queer voice, in which Amati noted hostility again.

'Perhaps to-day we are too excited; let us put off talking about it till another occasion,' muttered Amati, who saw he was about to lose an important advantage. 'To-morrow will do.'

'There is no use in delaying,' the Marquis di Formosa insisted coldly and politely. 'As it has to do with Bianca Maria's welfare, I am ready.'

'Give me your daughter for my wife,' said Dr. Amati quickly and energetically.

The Marquis di Formosa shut his eyes for a moment as if a bright light dazzled them, as if he wanted to hide his flashing glance, and did not answer.

'I think I am offering your daughter a position worthy of the name she bears,' the doctor went on again at once, determined to go to the bottom of it, 'for my work has brought me money and credit; it is no use being modest. I will work still harder, so that she may be rich, very rich, happy, and in an assured position, protected by my love and strength.'

'You love Bianca Maria, do you?' Formosa said, without looking Amati in the face.

'I worship her,' he said simply.

'Does she love you?'

'Yes, she loves me.'

'You are a liar, sir!' the Marquis di Formosa answered, in a deep voice.

'Why insult me?' asked the doctor, determined to stand everything. 'An insult is no answer.'

'I tell you that you are lying, and that you have no ground for saying you are loved.'

'Your daughter told me that she loves me.'

'That is all lies.'

'She wrote it to me.'

'Lies. Where are the letters?'

'I will bring them.'

'They are not genuine. All lies.'

'Ask her.'

'I will not ask her. My daughter cannot love without having told her father.'

'Ask her about it.'

'No, she confides in me. You lie.'

'Question her on the subject.'

'She would have spoken to me before; my daughter is obedient; she tells me everything.'

'It does not look as if she did.'

'I am her father, by Gad!'

'You have often forgotten that you are; she may have forgotten it this time.'

'Dr. Amati, don't go on speaking on this subject,' the Marquis said, with cold, ironical politeness.

'I insist on it, it is my right; I have not lied. Besides, I spoke distinctly; I offer myself to your daughter, who is sick, poor and sad, as husband, friend, protector, to care for her, body and soul, to love and serve her as she deserves. Will you give me your daughter? You ought to answer this.'

'I will not give her to you.'

'Why will you not?'

'There is no need for me to give my reasons.'

'As the refusal is insulting, I have a right to ask them. Perhaps it is because it is I am not of noble birth?'

'It is not for that.'

'Do you not think me young enough?'

'It is not that, either.'

'Have you a particular dislike to me?'

'No, I have not.'

'Why is it, then?'

'I repeat that I do not choose to tell you the reason; I can only answer "No."'

'You will not agree even if I wait?'

'No.'

'You give me no hope for the future?'

'None.'

'Not in any circumstances?'

'Never,' the Marquis said decisively.

They said no more. Both were vexed in a different way.

'Do you want your daughter to die?' said the doctor, after thinking a minute.

'Never fear, she won't die; there is something keeps her up.'

'To-morrow she, a Cavalcanti, will be a beggar.'

'I will make her a millionaire, sir; I alone have the right to enrich her.'

'I told you that I love her.'

'Nothing can equal my affection.'

'But woman's destiny is love in marriage, and to have children.'

'Of common, vulgar women, but not of Bianca Maria Cavalcanti. She has a very high mission, if she will carry it out.'

'My lord, you will ruin her.'

'I am saving her. I assure her immortal fame and immortal life.'

'My lord, I beg, you see how I implore, I who have never prayed to anyone. Don't say "No" so obstinately without even consulting Bianca Maria. You are preparing a new, heavy sorrow for her. You give me no chance of living for her, and insult me, an honest man, like this for no reason. I beg you think over it; don't make up your mind at once.'

'To-morrow or any other time would be the same. It is "No"—always "No"; nothing else but "No." You will not get Donna Bianca Maria Cavalcanti,' he said, grinning devilishly.

'Think it over, my lord. If you still say "No" to me, I must go away for ever. Do not sever our ties so roughly.'

'You are free to go as far as you like. We will not see each other again. Perhaps it would have been better had we never met.'

'That is true. I am going.'

'Go, certainly. Good-bye, sir.'

'Before going away, however, I want to question your daughter here, before you. We are not in the Middle Ages; a girl's will goes for something, too.'

'It does not.'

'You are mistaken. I will ask her. I will go away when she tells me to go. Call her, if you are loyal and a gentleman.'

The old lord, challenged in the name of honour, got up, rang the bell, telling Giovanni to send in his daughter. The two enemies stood in silence until she came in. She had got back all her calm with the facility of all very nervous temperaments, but a glance at the two she loved disturbed her mind at once.

'I leave the word to you,' said the doctor politely, bowing to the Marquis.

'Bianca Maria,' the other began, in a solemn voice, 'Dr. Amati says he loves you. Did you know that?'

'Yes, father.'

'Did he tell you?'

'Yes, he did.'

'Did you allow him to tell you?'

'Yes; I listened to him.'

'You have committed a great fault, Bianca Maria.'

'We are all apt to do that,' she said in a low tone, looking at Amati to gain courage.

'But there is something much worse. He says that you love him. I told him that he lied—that you could not love him.'

'Why did you call him a liar?'

'Can you possibly ask me, Bianca Maria? Is it possible that you are so lost to all sense of shame and modesty as to love him and tell him so?'

'My mother loved you also, and told you so: she was a modest woman.'

'Keep to the point—do not call witnesses. Answer me, your father. Do you love this doctor?'

'Yes, I love him,' she said, opening out her arms.

'I will never forgive you for saying so, Bianca Maria!'

'May God be more merciful than you, father!'

'God punishes disobedient children. Dr. Antonio Amati asked me for your hand. I said "No": "No" now, to-morrow—for ever "No"!'

'You do not wish me to marry Dr. Amati, then?'

'No, I do not. In reality you do not wish it, either.'

She did not answer; two big tears rolled down her cheeks.

'Answer, my lady,' said Amati, in so anguished a tone that the poor girl shivered with grief.

'I have nothing to say.'

'But did you not say that you loved me?'

'Yes, I said so; I repeat it—I will always love you.'

'Still, you refuse me?'

'I do not refuse you. It is my father who rejects you.'

'But you are free; you are not a slave. Girls have a right to choose. I am an honest man.'

'You are the best, truest man I have ever known,' said she, clasping her fragile hands, as if in prayer. 'But my father will not allow me: I must obey.'

'You know you are causing me the greatest sorrow of my life?'

'I know, but I must obey.'

'Do you know you are breaking my life?'

'I know, but ... I cannot do otherwise. Mother would curse me from heaven, father would curse me on earth. I know it all: I must obey.'

'Will you give up health, happiness, and love?'

'I give it up out of obedience.'

'So be it,' he cried out, with a quick gesture, as if he were throwing off all his weakness. 'We will only say one word more. Good-bye.'

'Will you never come back? Are you going away?' said she, shaking like a tree under a tempest.

'I must go. Good-bye!'

'Are you going?'

'Yes; good-bye.'

'Will you never return?'

'Never.'

She looked at her father. He made no sign. But she felt so desperate for herself and for Antonio Amati that she made another trial.

'A little while ago, father, you promised me, in a time of terror and repentance, to do whatever I wanted. I ask you to do this one thing. It is this: let me marry Antonio Amati. A gentleman's word, a Cavalcanti's, is sacred. Will you break it?'

'I have my reasons—God sees them,' the Marquis said mysteriously.

'Do you refuse?'

'For ever.'

'Would nothing influence you—neither our prayers, nor your love for me, nor my mother's name—would nothing induce you to consent?'

'Nothing.'

'He says "No," love,' she whispered, turning, looking around her with a wandering eye. But Antonio Amati was too mortally wounded to feel compassion for another's suffering. Now one single wish possessed him, that of all strong minds, to lock up the great catastrophe of his life, scorning barren sympathy, and fly to solitude. He needed darkness, silence, a place to hide, to weep in, to cry out in his sorrow. The girl before him was the image of desolation, but he saw nothing, felt nothing: compassion had gone out of his heart; he felt all the unforgiving selfishness of great suffering. 'My love, love!' she still repeated, trying to give expression to the anguish of her passion.

Do not say that, Bianca Maria,' he said, with the bitter grin of the disappointed man; 'it is no use—I do not ask you for it. We have spoken too much. I must go.'

'Stay another minute,' she said, as if it meant putting off death for a little while.

'No, no—at once. Good-bye, Bianca Maria.' He bowed low to the Marquis.

The cruel, impassible old man, whom nothing would move, for his eyes saw nothing but his mad vision, returned his bow. When the doctor passed in front of the girl to leave the room she held out her hand humbly, but he did not take it. She made a resigned gesture, and looked at him with as much passion as an exile for ever banished from his country can express. It was no time for words or greeting; divided by violence, they were leaving each other for ever; words and greetings were of no use now. He went away, followed by Bianca Maria's magnetic gaze, without turning back, going away alone to his bitter destiny. She listened longingly for the last sound of the beloved foot-step, that she would never hear again. She heard the entrance door shut quietly, like a secret prison door. All was ended, then! Her father sat down in a big chair, thoughtful but easy, leaning his forehead on his hand. Quietly she came to kneel by him, and, bending her head, said:

'Bless me.'

'God bless you—bless you, Bianca Maria!' said the Marquis de Formosa piously.

'Your daughter is dead,' she whispered; and, stretching out her arms, she fell back, livid, cold, motionless.