THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES IN MEMORY OF EDWIN CORLE PRESENTED BY JEAN CORLE By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO Trans fa ted by ARTHUR SYMONS CHICAGO THE DRAMATIC PUBLISHING COMPANY MCMXIll v ' 3 PRINTED IN ENGLAND College Librarv PQ FOR ELEONORA DUSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL HANDS Cosa lella mortal passa, e non iTartf , LEOKARDO DA VINCI DRAMATIS PERSONS Lucio SBTTALA LORENZO GADDI COSIMO DALBO SILVIA SETTALA FBANCESCA DONI GlOCONDA DlANTI LITTLE BEATA LA SlEENETTA At Florence, and on the coast of Pisa, at the present time GIOCONDA THE FIRST ACT A quiet, foursquare room, in winch the arrangement of everything indicates a search after a singular harmony, revealing the secret of a profound corre- spondence between the visible lines and the quality of the inhabiting mind that has chosen and loved them. All around seems to have been set in order by the hands of one of the thoughtful Graces. The aspect of the place evokes the image of a gentle and secluded life. Two large windows are open on the garden beneath ; through one of them can be seen, rising against the placid fields of the sky, the little hill of San Miniato, and its bright Basilica, and the convent, and the church of the Or onaca, "la Bella Villanella," the purest vessel of Franciscan sim]}licity. A 2 GIOCONDA There is a door opening into an inner room, another leading out. It is the afternoon. Through loth windows enter the light, breath, and melody of April. SCENE I. SILVIA SETTALA and the old man LORENZO GADDI are seen on the threshold of the first door, side by side, as they both come into the fresh spring atmos- phere. SILVIA SETTALA. Ah, blessed be life ! Because I have always kept one hope alight, to-day I can bless life. LORENZO GADDI. New life, dear Silvia, good brave soul, so good and so strong ! The storm is over. Lticio has come back to you, ( full of gratitude and of tenderness, after all the evil It is as if he were born again. Just now he had the eyes of a child. SILVIA SETTALA. All his goodness comes back to him when you are with him. When he calls you Maestro his voice becomes so affectionate that it must make your heart beat, the father's heart that you have for him. GIOCONDA 3 LORENZO GADDI. Just now he had the same eyes that I saw in him when he came to me for the first time and I put the clay into his hands. His eyes were gentle and wondering ; but from that moment his thumb was full of energy, a revealing thing. I have kept his first sketch. I thought of giving it to you on the day of your betrothal. I will give it to you in token of your new happiness. SILVIA SETTALA. Thanks, Maestro. LORENZO GADDI. It is the head of a woman crowned with laurels. I remember there was rather a bad model there. As he worked, he hardly looked at her. Sometimes he seemed absorbed, sometimes anxious. There came out of his hands a sort of confused mask, through which one half saw I know not what heroic linea- ments. For some moments he remained perplexed and discouraged, almost ashamed, at the sight of his work, not daring to turn to me. But suddenly, before letting it out of his hands, with a few touches he set a crown of laurel about the head. How it delighted me ! He wanted to crown in the clay his 4 G10CONDA own. unaccomplished dream. The end of his day's work was an act of pride and of faith. I loved him from that instant, for that crown. I will give you the sketch. Perhaps, if you look at it closely, you will discover the ardent face of Sappho, that ideal figure which, only a few years later, he was able to bring to perfection, in a masterpiece. SILVIA SETTALA. [Listening eagerly.] Sit down, sit down, Maestro ; stay a little longer, I beg of you. Sit here, by the window. Stay a few minutes longer. I have a thousand things to tell you, and I do not know how to tell you one of them. If I could overcome this continual tremor ! I want you to understand. . . . LORENZO GADDI. Is it joy that makes you tremble ? \JTe sits doicn near the window. SILVIA, leaving back against the window-sill, remains with her face turned towards him ; her face is seen against the blue air, the little Mil standing out in the background. SILVIA SETTALA I do not know if it is joy. Sometimes everything that has been, all the evil, all the sorrow, and even GIOCONDA 5 the blood, and the wound, all melts away, vanishes, is wiped out into oblivion, is there no more. Some- times everything that has been, all that horrible weight of memory, thickens and thickens, and grows compact and opaque and hard as a wall, like a rock that I shall never be able to surmount. Just now, when you spoke to me, when you offered me that unexpected gift, I thought : " Ah, now I shall take that gift in my hands, that morsel of clay into which he cast the first seed of his dreams, as into a fruitful soil ; I shall take it in my hands, I shall go to him smiling, bearing intact the better part of his soul and of his life ; and I shall not speak, and he will see in me the guardian of all his goods, and he will never go away from me any more, and we shall be young again, we shall be young again ! " I thought that, and the thought and the act were mingled in one, with an incredible ease. Your words transfigured the world. Then, do you know, a breath passed, a vapour, the merest breathing, a mere nothing, and cast down everything, and destroyed everything, and the anxiety came back, and the dread, and the tremor. O April ! [Suddenly she turns to the light, drawing a deep breath. How this air troubles one, and yet how pure it is ! 6 GIOCONDA All one's hope and despair pass in the wind with the dust of flowers. [She leans out, calling .] Beata ! Beata ! LORENZO GADDI. Is the little one in the garden ? SILVIA SETTALA. There she is, she is running about between the rose-bushes. She is wild with delight. Beata ! She has hidden herself behind a hedge, the rogue. She is laughing. Do you hear her laughing ? Ah, when she laughs, I know the joy of flowers when they are tilled to the brim with dew. That is how her fresh laughter fills my heart to overflowing, LORENZO GADDI. Perhaps Lucio too hears her, and is consoled. SILVIA SETTALA. [Grave and trembling, leaning towards the Maestro, and taking his hands.'] You think then that he will really be healed of all his wounds ? You think he will come back to me with all his soul ? Did you feel that, when you saw him, when you talked with him ? What did your heart s;iy ? GIOCONDA 7 LORENZO GADDI. It seemed to me, just now, that he had the look of a man who begins to live over again with a new sense of life. He who has seen the face of death cannot but have seen in that instant the face of truth also. The bandage is taken off his eyes. He knows you now wholly. SILVIA SETTALA. Maestro, Maestro, if you deceive yourself, if it is a vain hope, what will become of me ? All my strength is worn out. LORENZO GADDI. But what is there now to fear ? SILVIA SETTALA. He wanted to die ; but tlie other, the other woman lives, and I know that she is implacable. LORENZO GADDI. And what could she do now ? SILVIA SETTALA. She could do anything, if she were still loved. LORENZO GADDI. Still loved ? Beyond death? 8 GIOCONDA SILVIA SETTALA. Beyond death. Ah, if you knew my anguish ! It was for her that he wanted to die, in a moment of rage and of delirium. Think how he must have loved her, if the thought of me, if the thought of Beata, could not restrain him ! Then, in that awful moment, he was her prey wholly ; he was at the height of his fever, of his agony, and all the rest of the world was blotted out. Think how he must have loved her ! [The woman's voice is subdued but lacerating. The old man bows his head. Now, who can say what took place in him, after the blow, when the mist of death passed before his soul ? Has he awakened without memory ? Does he see an abyss between his life as it renews itself and the part of himself that he left behind in that mist ? Or else, or else the image has risen again out of the depths, and remains there, against the shadow, dominant, in indestructible relief ? Tell me ! LORENZO GADDI. [Perplexed.'] Who can say ? SILVIA SETTALA. [In a sorrowful voice.] Ah, now you yourself dare GIOCONDA 5 not console me any longer. Then, it is so ? There is no help? LORENZO GADDI. [Taking her hands.] No. no, Silvia. I meant : who can say what change is brought about in a nature like his by so mysterious a force ? Everything in him speaks of some new good thing that has come to him. Look at him when he smiles. Just now, yonder, before you left him to come out with me, when he kissed those dear hands of yours, did you not feel that his whole heart melted into tenderness and humility ? SILVIA SETTALA. [Her face slightly flushed.] Yes, it is true. LORENZO GADDI. \Lodking at her hands.] Dear, dear hands, brave and beautiful, steadfast and beautiful ! Your hands are extraordinarily beautiful, Silvia. If sorrow has too often set them together, it has sublimated them also, perfected them. They are perfect. Do you remember the woman of Verrocchio, the woman with the bunch of flowers, with the clustering hair? Ah, she is there ! [H e perceives, from the look and smile of SILVIA, that there is a copy of the bust on a little cupboard in a corner of the room. io GIOCONDA So you have realised the relationship. Those two hands seem of the same blood as yours, they are of the same essence. They live do they not ? with so luminous a life that the rest of the figure is darkened by them. SILVIA SETTALA. [Smiling.] Oh, young, always young in soul ! LORENZO GADDI. When Lucio comes back to his work, he ought to model your hands the first day. I have a fragment of ancient marble, found in the Oricellari Gardens. I will give it to him, that he may chisel them in that, and lay them up like a votive offering. SILVIA SETTALA. [A cloud passing across her forehead. .] Do you think he will come back to his work soon ? Will he wish to ? Have you spoken of it with him ? LORENZO GADDI. Yes, just now, when you were not there. SILVIA SETTALA. What did he say ? GIOCONDA II LORENZO OTADDI Vague, delicious things, a convalescent's dreams. I know them. I too was once ill. It seems to him now as if he has lost hold of his art, as if he had no longer any power over it, as if he had become a stranger to beauty. Then again it seems to him as if his thumbs had assumed a magic force, and that at a mere touch he can evoke forms out of the clay as easily as in dreams. He is somewhat uneasy about the disorder in which he fancies his studio was left, on the Mugnone yonder. He asked me to go and see. Have you the key ? SILVIA SETTALA. [Anxiously^ There is the caretaker. LORENZO GADDI. How long is it since you were there ? SILVIA SETTALA. Since this began. I never had the courage to go back again. I feel as if I should see the stains of blood, and find traces of her everywhere. She is still mistress there. That place is still her domain. LORENZO GADDI. The domain of a statue. 12 GIOCONDA SILVIA SETTALA. No, no. Do you not know that she had a key ? She came and went there as if it belonged to her. Ah, I have told you, I have told you ; she lives, and is implacable. LORENZO GADDI. Are you sure that she came back, after what happened ? SILVIA SETTALA. Sure. Her insolence has no bounds. She is with- out pity and without shame. LORENZO GADDI. And he, Lucio, does he know ? SILVIA SETTALA. He does not know. But he will surely know it sooner or later. She will find a way of letting him know. LORENZO GADDI. But why ? SILVIA SETTALA. Because she is implacable, because she will not relinguish her prey. [A pause. The old man is silent. The woman's voice becomes harsh and tremulous. And the statue, the Sphinx, have you seen it ? CIOCONDA 13 LORENZO GADDI. [After a moments hesitation.] Yes. I have seen it. SILVIA SETTALA. Was it he who showed it to you ? LORENZO GADDI. Yes, one day last October. He had just finished it. [A pause. SILVIA SETTALA. \In a trembling voice, which almost Jails herJ\ It is wonderful, is it not ? Tell me. LORENZO GADDI. Yes, it is exquisitely beautiful, SILVIA SETTALA. For eternity ! \_A pause, burdened with a thousand undefined and inevitable things. THE VOICE OF BEATA. [From the garden.] Mamma ! Mamma ! LORENZO GADDI. The child is calling you. 14 GIOCONDA SILVIA SETTALA. [Starting up, and leaning out of the window.] Beata ! Ah, there she is ; my sister Francesca is coming across the garden ; she is coming here with Cosimo Dalbo. Do you know ? Cosimo has returned from Cairo ; he arrived at Florence last night. Lucio will be delighted to see him. LOEENZO GADDI. [Rising to go.~\ Good-bye, then, dear Silvia : I shall see you perhaps to-morrow. SILVIA SETTALA. Stay a little longer. My sister would like to see you. LORENZO GADDI. I must go. I am late now. SILVIA SETTALA. When shall I have the gift you promised mo ? LOKENZO GADDI. Perhaps to-morrow. SILVIA SETTALA. No perhaps, no perhaps. I shall expect you. You must coma here often, every day. Your presence GIOCONDA 15 does us good. Do not forsake me. I trust in you, Maestro. Remember that a menace is still hanging over my head. LORENZO GADDI. Do not fear. Keep up your courage ! SILVIA SETTALA. [Moving towards the door.] Here is Francesca. SCENE II. FRANCESCA DONI enters, goes up to her si.ster, and embraces her. COSIMO DALBO, who follows her, shakes hands with LORENZO GADDI, who is on the point of going out. FRANCESCA DONI. Do you see whom I am bringing? We met out- side the gate. How are you, Maestro ? Are you going jiibt as I come in ? [She shakes hands with the old inan.~\ SILVIA SETTALA [Holding out her hand cordially.] Welcome back, Dalbo. We were expecting you. Lucio is impatient to see you. 16 GIOCONDA COSIMO DALBO. [With affectionate solicitude.] How is he now ? Is he up ? Is he quite well ? SILVIA SETTALA. He is convalescent ; still a little weak ; but getting stronger every day. The wound is entirely closed. You will see him in a minute. The doctor is with him ; I will go and tell him you are here. It will be a great delight for him. He has asked after you several times to-day. He is impatient to see you. [She turns to LOKENZO GADDI.] To-morrow, then. [She goes out ivith a light and rapid step. The sister, the MAESTRO, and the friend follow her with their eyes. FRANCESCA DONI. [With a kindly smile] Poor Silvia ! For the last few days, she seems as if she had wings. When I look at her sometimes, it seems to me as if she is going to take flight towards happiness. And no one deserves happiness more ; is it not true, Maestro ? You know her. LORENZO GADDI. Yes, she is really as your sisterly eyes see her. She comes winged out of her martyrdom. There is a sort GIOCONDA 17 of incessant quiver in her. I felt it just now, when she stood near me. Truly she is in a state of grace. There is no height to which she could not attain. Lucio has in his hands a life of flame, an infinite force. FRANCESCA DONI. You were with him some time to-day. LORENZO GADDI. Yes, hours. FllANCESCA DONI. How was he ? LORENZO GADDI. Running over with sweetness, and a little be- wildered. You will see him presently, Dal bo. His sensitiveness is a danger. Those who love him can do him much good and much harm. A word agitates and convulses him. Watch over all your words, you who love him. Good-bye. I must go. [Takes leave of them loth. FRANCESCA DONI. Good-bye, Maestro. Perhaps we shall see you here igain to-morrow. I hope so. You have a horror of my stairs ! [She accompanies the old inan to the door ; then returns to the friend. What a fire of intelligence and of goodness, in that B 18 GIOCONDA old man ! When he comes into a room he seems to bring comfort to all. The sad rejoice and the merry become fervent. COSTMO DALBO. He inspires the soul ; he belongs to the noblest race of mankind. His work is a continual exaltation of life; it is the continual force of communicating a spark, whether to his statues or to the creatures whom he meets by the way. Lorenzo Gaddi seems to me to deserve a far higher fame than he receives from his contempories. FKANCESCA DONI. It is true, it is true. If you. knew what enprgy and what delicacy he showed, in that horrible affair ! When the thing happened, my sister was not there ; she was with our mother, at Pisa, with Beata. The thing happened in the studio, there, on the Mugnone, in the evening. Only the caretaker heard the report. When he discovered the truth, he ran to tell Lorenzo Gaddi before any one else. In the anguish and horror of that winter evening, in the midst of all the confusion and uncertainty, he alone never lost his presence of mind, nor had a single instant's hesitation. He preserved a strange lucidity, by which every one was dominated. He made every arrangement : all obeyed him. It was he who had poor Lucio brought GIOCONDA 19 to the house here, half dead. The doctor despaired of saving him. He alone declared, with an obstinate faith : " No, he will not die, he will not die, he cannot die." I believed him. Ah, what a heroic night, Dalbo. And then the arrival of Silvia, his telling her himself, forbidding her to enter the room where a mere breath might have quenched that glimmer of life : and her strength, her incredible endurance under watching and waiting for whole weeks, the proud and silent vigilance with which she guarded the threshold as if to hinder the coming of death ! COSIMO DALBO. And I was far away, unconscious of all, blissfully idle in a boat on the Nile ! Yet T had a kind of pre- sentiment, before leaving. That was why I tried every means to persuade Lucio to go with me, as we had often dreamed of doing together. He had then finished his statue ; and I thought that his liberty was in that wonderful marble. He said, " Not yet ! " And a few months after he was seeking it in death. Ah, if I had not gone away, if I had stayed by him, if I had been more faithful, if I had known how to defend him against the enemy, nothing would have happened. 20 GIOCONDA FRANCESCA DONI. There is nothing to regret if so much good can come out of so much evil. Who knows in what sadness of despair my sister might have perished, if the violence of that act had not suddenly reunited her to Lucio ! But do not think that the enemy has laid down arms. She has not abandoned the field. COSIMO DALBO. Who ? Gioconda Dianti ? FUANCESCA DONI. [Motioning to him to be silent, and lowering her voice.] Do not say that name ! SCENE TIT. Lucio SETTALA appears on the threshold of the door, leaning on the arm of SILVIA; he is pale and thin, and his eyes look extraordinarily large ivith suffering ; a faint, sweet smile gives refinement to a voluptuous mouth. Lucio SETTALA. Cosimo ! GIOCONDA 21 COSIMO DALBO. [Turning and running up to himJ\ Oh, Lucio, dear, dear friend ! \_lle puts his arms about the convalescent, ivhile SILVIA moves aside, nearer to her sister, and goes out with her, slowly, pausing for a moment to look at her husband before going. You are well again, are you not ? You are not suffering now ? 1 find you a little pale, a little thin, but not so very much. You look as I have seen you sometimes after a period of feverish work, when you have been with your clay for twelve hours a day, consumed with that fire. Do you remember ? Lucio SETTALA. [Looking confusedly about him, to see if SILVIA is still in the room.] Yes, yes. COSIMO DALBO. Then too your eyes looked larger. . . . Lucio SETTALA. [With an indefinable, almost childish restlessness] And Silvia? Where is Silvia gone Wasn't she here with Francesca ? 22 G10CONDA COSIMO DALBO. They have left us alone. Lucio SETTALA. Why? She thinks, perhaps. . . . No, I have nothing to tell you, I know nothing now any more. Perhaps you know. For me, no ; I don't remember. I don't want to remember. Tell me about yourself ! Tell me about yourself ! Is the desert beautiful ? [He speaks in a singular way, as if in a dream, with a mixture of agitation and stupor. COSIMO DALBO. I will tell you. But you must not tire yourself. I will tell you all my pilgrimage ; I will come here every day, if I may ; I will stay with you as long as you like, only not long enough to tire you. Sit here. Lucio SETTALA. [Smiling J\ Do you think I am so feeble? COSIMO DALBO. No, you are all right now, but it is better for you not to tire yourself. Sit here. [He makes him sit down near the window, and looks out at the hill clearly outlined against the April sky. GIOCONDA 23 Ah, my dear friend, I have seen marvellous things with these eyes, and they have drunk light in com- parison with which this seems ashen ; but, when I see again a simple line like that (look at San Miniato !) I seem to find myself again, after an interval of wandering. Look at that dear hill ! The pyramid of Cheops does not rmike one forget the Bella Villanella ; and more than once, in the gardens of Koubbeh and Gizeh, hives of honey, chewing a grain of resin, I thought of a slim Tuscan cypress on the edge of a narrow giove of olives. Lucio SETTALA. [Half closing his eyelids under the breath of Spring.] It is good to be here, is it not ? There is an odour of violets. Perhaps there is a bunch of violets in the room. Silvia puts them everywhere, even under my pillow. COSIMO DALBO. Do you know, I have brought you the violets of the desert, between the pages of a Koran. I gathered them in the garden of a Persian monastery, near the Thebaid, on the side of the Mokattam, on an eminence of sand. There, in a cavern dug out of the mountain, covered with carpets and cushions, the 24 GIOCONDA monks offer their visitors a tea with a special flavour, Arab tea, perfumed with violets. Lucio SETTALA. And you have brought them for me, buried in a book ! How happy you were to be able to gather them, so far away ; and I might have been with you. COSIMO DALBO. There, all was oblivion. I went up by a long, straight stone staircase, that leads from the foot of the mountain to the gate of the Bectaschiti. The desert was all about ; vast, hallucinating dryness, in which there was no life but the stirring of wind and the quivering of heat. I could only distinguish here and there, between the sand-heaps, the white stones of Arab cemeteries. I heard the crying of hawks high up in the sky. I saw on the Nile multitudes of boats with great lateen sails, white, slow, going on, going on, like snow-flakes. And little by little I was caught up into an ecstasy that you can never have known, the ecstasy of light. Lucio SETTALA. [In a far off voice.] And I might have been with you, loitering, forgetting, dreaming, drunk with light. You went down the Nile, did you not ? in an ancient GIOCONDA 25 boat loaded with wine-skins, sacks, and cages. You landed on an island towards evening ; you were dressed in white serge ; you were thirsty ; you drank at a spring ; you walked barefoot upon flowers; and the odour was so strong that you seemed to have for- gotten hunger. Ah, I thought, I felt, these things from my pillow. And I followed you through the desert, when the fever was at its height ; through a desert of red sand, sown with glittering stones that splintered crackling like twigs in the fire. A pause. He leans forward a little, saying in a clear voice and with open eyes : And the Sphinx ? COSIMO DALBO. I saw it first at night, by the light of stars, sunken into the sand that still keeps the violent imprint of whirlwinds. The face and the croup rose out of that quieted storm, all that was human and all that was bestial in it. The face, whose mutilations were hidden by the shadow, seemed to me at that moment exquisitely beautiful : calm, august, cerulean as the night, almost meek. There is nothing in the world, Lucio, so much alone as that ; but my mind was, as it were, before multitudes who had slept, and on whose eyelashes the dew had fallen. Then I saw it 26 GIOCONDA again by day. The face was bestial, like the croup ; the nose and throat were eaten away ; the droppings of birds fouled the fillets. It was the heavy wingless monster imagined by the excavators of tombs, by the embalmers of corpses. And I saw, in the sun before me, your Sphinx, pure and imperious, with wings imprisoned alive in the shoulders. Lucio SETTALA. [TF^A a sudden emtionJ] My statue ? You mean my statue ? You saw it, ah, yes, before you went ; and you found it beautiful. \IIe looks uneasily toirards the door, fearing SILVIA might hear him, and lowers his voice. You found it beautiful ? COSIMO DALBO. Exquisitely beautiful. [Lucio covers his eyes with both hands and remains for some seconds as if trying to evoke a vision in the darkness. Lucio SETTALA. [Uncover ing his eyes.~\ I no longer see it. It escapes me. It comes and goes in a breath, confusedly. If I had it here before me now it would seem new to me : GIOCONDA 27 I should cry out. And yet I carved it, with these hands ! \IIe looks at his thin, sensitive hands. His agita- tion increases. I don't know. I don't know. In the beginning of my fever, when I still had the bullet in my flesh, and the continual murmuring of death in my lost soul, I saw it standing at the foot of the bed, lit like a torch, as if I myself had moulded it out of some incandescent material. So for many days and nights I saw it through my eyelids. It grew brighter as my fever increased. When my pulse burned it turned to flame. It was as if all the blood shed at its feet had gone up it into and boiled up in it ... COSIMO DALDO. \Uneasily, looking towards the door, with the same fear.] Lucio, Lucio, you said just now that you knew nothing now, that you did not want to remember anything. Lucio ! \_lle gently shakes his friend, who remains rigid. Lucio SETTALA. [Recollecting himself.] Do not fear. I have left it all far, far behind me, at the bottom of the sea. The statue was drowned too, with all the rest, after the 28 GIOCONDA shipwreck. That is why I can no longer see it except confusedly, as if through deep water. COSIMO DALBO. It alone shall be saved, to live for ever ; and so much sorrow shall not have been suffered in vain, so much evil shall not have been useless, if one thing so beautiful remains over, to be added to the ornament of life. Lucio SETTALA. [Smiling again with his faint smile and speaking in his far-off voice.] It is true. I sometimes think of the fate of one whose ship and all that was in it went down in a storm. On a day as calm as this, he took a bout and a net, and he returned to the place of the ship- wreck, hoping to draw something up out of the depths. And, after much labour, he drew on shore a statue. And the statue was so beautiful that he wept for joy to see it again ; and he sat down on the sea-shore to gaze upon it, and was content with that gain, and would seek after nothing more: "well, I forget the rest ! " \He rises hastily. "Why has not Silvia come back ? [He listens. Who is laughing? Ah, it is Beata in the garden. Look ; San Miniato is all gold ; it lightens. Is there a more glorious light at Thebes ? GIOCONDA 29 COSIMO DALBO. The ecstasy of light ! I told you : you can know it nowhere else. Circles, garlands, wheels, roses of splendour, innumerable sparkles. . . . The verses of the Paradiso recur to one's mind. Only Dante has found dazzling words. In certain hours the Nile becomes the flood of topazes, the " marvellous gulf." Like a stone in water, a gesture in the air arouses thousands and thousands of waves. All things swim in light; all the leaves drip with it. The women, who pass along the stream with full wine-skins, actually flame like the angelic host in the song, " dis- tinct in light and form." [Lucio, catching sight of a bunch of violets on the table, takes them up and buries his face in them, to drink in their odour. Lucio SETTALA. [Still holding the violets to his nostrils and half- closing his eyes with delight.] Are the women of the Nile beautiful ? COSIMO DALBO. Some, in youth, have bodies of marvellous purity and elegance. You, who like tirm and active muscles, a certain acerbity in form, long, nervous legs, would 30 GIOCONDA find incomparable models there. How often have I thought of you ! In the island of Elephantina I had a little friend of fourteen ; a girl golden as a date, thin, lithe, firm, with strong, arched loins, straight, strong legs, perfect knees ; a very rare thing, as you know. In all that hard slenderness, which gave one the impression of a javelin, sharp and precise, three things delighted me with their infinitely soft grace : the mouth, the shadow of the eyelashes, the tips of the fingers. She braided her hair with fingers rosy- tipped like petals dyed with purple : and to watch her in that act, on the threshold of her white house, was the delight of my mornings. I should like to have taken her away with the statuettes, the scarabsei, the cloths, the tobacco, the scents, the weapons. I have brought you a beautiful bow that I bought at Assouan, and that is a little like her. Lucio SETTALA. [TF&A a slight perturbation, throwing back his head. ] She must have been a delicious creature ! COSIMO DALBO. Delicious and harmless. She was like a beautiful bow, but her arrows were without venom. GIOCONDA 31 Lucio SETTALA. You loved her ? COSIMO DALBO. As I love my horse and my dogs. Lucio SF.TTALA. Ah, you were happy there; your life was light and easy. It must have been the island of Elephantiua where I saw you come on shore, in a dream. I might have been with you ! But I will go, I will leave here. Do you not long to return ? I will have a white hou=e on the Nile; I will make my statues with the slime of the river, and set them up in that light of yours that will turn them to gold for me. Silvia ! Silvia ! \lle calls towards the door as if seized by a sudden impatience^ an anxious will to live. "Would it be too late ? COSIMO DALBO. It is too late. The great heats are coining on. Lucio SETTALA. What does it matter? I love summer heat, sultri- ness even. All the pomegranates will be in flower in the gardens, and when it rains they will see those 32 GIOCONDA large, warm drops that make the earth sigh for pleasure. COSIMO DALBO. But the Khamsin ? when all the desert rises up against the sun ? [SILVIA appears on the threshold, smiling, her whole being visibly animated. She has changed her gown ; she is dressed in a clearer, more spring-like colour ; and she carries in her hands a bunch of fresh roses. SILVIA SETTALA. What do you say, Dalbo, against the sun ? Did you call, Lucio ? Lucio SETTALA. [Re-taken by a kind of restless timidity, as of a man who feels the need of self-abandonment, to which he dares not give wayl\ Yes, I called you, because I thought you were never coming back. Cosimo was telling me of so many beautiful things. I wanted you to hear them too. [He looks at his ivife with surprise in his eyes, as if he discovered a new charm in her, Were you going out ? SILVIA SETTALA. [Blushing slightly.] Ah, you are looking at my gown. GIOCONDA 33 I put it on to see how it looked, while Francesca was there. My sister sends her apologies to you both for having gone without coming to say good-bye. She was in a hurry : her children were waiting for her. She hopes, Dalbo, that you will come and see her soon. [She puts the roses on a table. Will you dine with us to-night ? COSIMO DALBO Thanks. I cannot to-night. My mother expects ine. SILVIA SETTALA. Naturally. To-morrow, then ? COSIMO DALBO. To-morrow. I will bring my presents for you, Lucio. Lucio SETTALA. [ With childish curiositi/.~\ Yes, ye. c , bring them, bring them. SILVIA SETTALA. [Smiling mysteriously.] I too am to have a present to morrow. Lucio SETTALA. From whom ? SILVIA SETTALA. From the Maestro. 34 GIOCONDA Lucio SETTALA. What ? SILVIA SETTALA. You shall see. Lucio SETTALA. [With a joyous movement.] You too shall see all the beautiful things that Cosimo has brought me : cloths, scents, weapons, scarabsei. . . . COSIMO DALBO, Amulets against every evil, talismans for happiness. On Gebel-el-Tair, in a Coptic convent, I found the most powerful of scarabsei. The monk told me a long story of a cenobite who, at the time of the first perse- cution, took refuge in a vault, and found a mummy there, and took it out of its swathings of balm, and restored it to life, and the resuscitated mummy, with its painted lips, told him the story of its old life, which had been one whole tissue of happiness. In the end, as the cenobite wished to convert it, it preferred to lie down again in its embalmings ; but first it gave him the guardian scarabseus. To tell you what use was made of it by the solitary, and through what vicissi- tudes it passed across the centuries into the hands of the good Copt, would take too long. Certainly, a GIOCONDA 35 more powerful one is not in all Egypt. Here it is : I offer it to you, I offer it to you both. [He hands the amulet to SILVIA, who examines it carefully and then passes it to Lucio, with a sudden light in her eyes. SILVIA SETTALA. How blue it is It is brighter than a turquoise. Look. COSIMO DALBO. The Copt said to me : " Small as a gem great as a destiny ! " [Lucio turns the mystic stone between his fingers. uhich tremble a little, fumblingbj. Good-bye then : to-morrow ! Good night. SILVIA SETTALA. [Picking a rose out of the bunch and offering it to himJ\ Here is a fresh rose in exchange for the amulet. Take it to your mother COSIMO DALBO. Thanks. To-morrow ! [ffe salutes them again and goes out. 36 GIOCONDA SCENE IV. Lucio SETTALA smiles timidly, turning the scarabceus between his fingers, while SILVIA puts the roses in a vase. Both, in the silence, hear the beating of their anxious hearts. The setting sun gilds the room. In the square of the window is seen the pallid sky ; San Miniato shines on the height ; the air is soft, without a breath of wind. Lucio SETTALA. [Looking into the air, and listening anxiously.] There is a bee in the room. SILVIA SETTALA. [liaising her head.] A bee ? Lucio SETTALA. Yes. Don't you hear it ? [Both listen to lite murmur SILVIA SETTALA. You are right. Lucio SETTALA. Perhaps you brought it in with the roses. GIOCONDA 37 SILVIA SETTALA. Beata picked these. LUCIA SETTALA. I heard her laughing, just now, down in the garden. SILVIA SETTALA. How pleased she is to be home again ! Lucio SETTALA. It was a good thing to send her away then. SILVIA SETTALA. She is stronger and lovelier for having breathed the odour of the pines. How good the spring must be at Bocca d'Arno 1 Would you not like to go there for a while ? Lucio SETTALA. There, by the sea. . . . Would you like it ? [Their voices are altered by a slight tremor. SILVIA SETTALA. It has always been a dream of mine to pass one spring there. 38 GIOCONDA Lucio SETTALA. [Choked with emotion.] Your dream is mine, Silvia. [The amulet falls from his hands. SILVIA SETTALA. [Stooping quickly to pick it up.] Ah, you have let it fall ! They would say it is a bad omen. See. I put it on Beata's head. " Small as a gem, great as a destiny ! " [She lays the amulet delicately upon the roses. Lucio SETTALA. [Holding out his hands to her, as if imploring. ] Silvia ! Silvia ! SILVIA SETTALA. [Running to him ] Do you feel ill ? You look paler. Ah, you have tired yourself too much to-day, you are worn out. Sit here, come. Will you sip some of this cordial '( Do you feel as if you are going to faint ? Tell me ! Lucio SETTALA. [Taking her hands with an outburst of love.] No, no, Silvia ; I never felt so well. You, you sit down, sit here ; and I at your feet, at last, with all my soul, to adore you, to adore you ! GIOCONDA 39 [She sinks back on the divan and he falls on his knees before her. She is convulsed and trembling, and lays her hand on his lips, as if to keep him from speaking. Breath and words pass between her Angers. At last ! It was like a flood coming from far off, a flood of all the beautiful things and all the good things that you have poured out on my life since you began to love me ; and my heart overflowed, ah, overflowed so that I staggered under the weight of it, and fainted and died of the pain and the sweetness of it, because I dared not say. . . . SILVIA SETTALA. [Her face white, her voice almost extinct.] No more say no more ! Lucio SETTALA. Hear me, hear me ! All the sorrows that you have suffered, the wounds that you have received without a cry, the tears that you have hidden lest I should have shame and remorse, the smiles with which you have veiled your agonies, your infinite pity for my wanderings, your invincible courage in the face of death, your hard fight for my life, your hope always alight beside my bed, your watches, cares, continual tremors, expectation, silence, joy, all that is deep, all 4 o GIOCONDA that is sweet and heroic in you, I know it all, I feel it all, dear soul ; and, if violence is enough to break a yoke, if blood is enough for redemption (oh, let me speak!) I bless the evening and the hour that brought me dying into this house of your martyrdom and of your faith to receive once more at your hands, these divine hands that tremble, the gift of life. [He presses his convulsed mouth against, the palms of her hands , aad she gazes at him through the tears that moisten her eyelids, transfigured with unexpected happiness. SILVIA SETTALA. [In a faint and broken voiced] No more, say no more ! My heart cannot bear it. You suffocate me with joy. I longed for one word from you, only one, no more ; and all at once you flood me with love, you fill up every vein, you raise me to the other side of hope, you outpnss my dreams, you give me happiness beyond all expectation. Ah, what did you say of my sorrows ? What is sorrow endured, what is silence constrained, what is a tear, what is a smile, now, in the face of this flood that bears me away ? I feel as if by-and-by, for you, for you, I shall be sorry not to have suffered more. Perhaps I have not reached the GIOCONDA 41 depths of sorrow, but I know that I have reached the height of happiness. [She blindly caresses his head, as it lies on her knees. Rise, rise ! Come nearer to my heart, rest on me, give way to my tenderness, press my hands on your eyelids, be silent, dream, call back the deep forces of your life. Ah, it is not me alone that you must love, not me alone, but the love 1 have for you : love my love ! I am not beautiful, I am not worthy of your eyes, I am a humble creature in the shadow ; but my love is wonderful, it is on high, on high, it is alone, it is sure as the day, it is stronger than death, it can work miracles ; it shall give you all that you ask. You can ask more than you have ever hoped. [She draivs him to her heart, raising his head. His eyes are, closed, his lips tight set, he is as pale as death, drunk and exhausted with emotion. Rise, rise! Come nearer to my heart ; rest