- 
 
 OF LIFE-
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT 
 
 From the library of 
 
 Henry Goldman, Ph.D. 
 
 1886-1972
 
 THE FLAME OF LIFE
 
 The Works f 
 
 GABRIELE 
 D'ANNUNZIO 
 
 THE CHILD OF PLEASURE 
 
 (II Piacere) 
 
 THE INTRUDER^ 
 
 (L'Innocente) 
 
 THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH 
 
 (II Trionfo della cTVIorte) 
 
 THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS 
 
 (Le Vergini delle Rocce) 
 
 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 (II Fuoco) 
 
 Each one volume, library i2mo, cloth. 
 Per volume, $1.50 
 
 L. C. PAGE C& COMPANY 
 53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.
 
 I
 
 The ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE 
 
 THE FLAME 
 OF LIFE 
 
 3 Ttfotoel 
 By GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO 
 
 Author of "THE TRIUMPH or DEATH," etc. 
 Tran-lated by 
 
 KASSANDRA VIVARIA 
 
 Author of " VIA Lucis," etc. 
 
 ... fa come natura face in poco. Dantt 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 L. C. PAGE fcf COMPANY (INCORPORATED) 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 Copyright, /poo, 
 BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 (INCORPORATED) 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Fifth Impression, April, 1909 
 Sixth Impression, September, 1911 
 Seventh Impression, January, 1914 
 
 THE COLONIAL PRESS 
 C. H. 8IMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
 
 Annex 
 
 ?Q 
 4XO5 
 
 TO TIME and TO HOPE 
 
 Without Hope it is impossible to find the unhoped for. Heraclitut 
 
 of EfAesus. 
 He who sings to the god a song of Hope shall see his wish 
 
 accomplished. &scAy!ui of Eleusit. 
 Time is the Father of Miracles. Hariri of Basra.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 
 
 II. 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE ....... 157
 
 I 
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME
 
 The Flame of Life 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 
 
 " STELIO, does not your heart fail you for the first 
 time? " La Foscarina asked with a slight smile, touch- 
 ing the hand of the silent friend sitting beside her. 
 " I see you are a little pale, and you seem preoccu- 
 pied. Yet this is a beautiful night for the triumph of 
 a great poet ! " 
 
 She gathered into one deeply conscious glance all 
 the beauty scattered so divinely through that last hour 
 of the September twilight. In the dark, living firma- 
 ment of her eyes the neighbouring garlands of light, 
 created by the oar as it dipped in the water, seemed 
 to encircle the fiery angels that shone from afar on the 
 towers of San Marco and of San Giorgio Maggiore. 
 
 " As ever," she added in her sweetest voice, " as 
 ever, all things are favourable to you. On an even- 
 ing like this what soul could remain closed to the 
 dreams that it shall please your words to bring forth? 
 Do not you feel already that the crowd is eager to 
 welcome your revelation? " 
 
 Thus, delicately, she soothed her friend, wrapping 
 him round with continual praise, exalting him with 
 continual hope.
 
 2 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " No more unusual and no more magnificent festi- 
 val could have been imagined for the purpose of en- 
 ticing from his ivory tower a disdainful poet such as 
 you are. This joy, of entering for the first time into 
 communion with a multitude in a sovereign place 
 such as the Hall of the Greater Council, was reserved 
 for you alone. You will speak from the throne 
 whence once the Doges addressed the assembled pa- 
 tricians ; their background the Paradiso of Tintoretto, 
 and over their heads the Gloria of Paolo Veronese." 
 
 Stelio Effrena looked her deep in the eyes. 
 
 "Do you wish to intoxicate me?" he said, with 
 sudden gaiety. " This that you are offering me is the 
 cup you would place before one going to the scaffold. 
 Well, then, yes, my friend, I confess that my heart 
 does shrink a little." 
 
 A sound of applause burst from the Passage of San 
 Gregorio, echoing along the Grand Canal, re-echoing 
 in the precious discs of porphyry and serpentine 
 adorning the house of the Darios, that stooped under 
 their weight like a decrepit courtesan under the pomp 
 of her jewels. 
 
 The royal barge was passing. 
 
 " Here is the one among your listeners whom the 
 ceremony bids you crown with some flower of your 
 speech in the preamble," said the woman, allud- 
 ing to the Queen. " In one of your first books, I be- 
 lieve, you confess your taste and your respect for 
 ceremonials. One of your most extraordinary feats 
 of imagination is that which has for its motive the 
 description of a day of Charles II. of Spain." 
 
 The two occupants of the gondola saluted the barge 
 as it passed them. The Queen, blonde, rosy, illu-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 3 
 
 mined by the freshness of the inexhaustible smile that 
 was for ever rippling among the pale meshes of her 
 Buranese laces, looked back, moved by an impulse of 
 spontaneous curiosity, as she recognized the poet of 
 Persephone and the great tragic actress. By her side 
 was Andriana Duodo, the patroness of Burano, the 
 industrious little island where she cultivated a dainty 
 garden of thread for the marvellous renewing of 
 antique flowers. 
 
 "Don't you think, Stelio, that those two women 
 have twin smiles?" La Foscarina said, watching the 
 water gurgle in the furrow left by the receding gon- 
 dola, where the reflection of that double glamour 
 seemed to prolong itself. 
 
 "The Countess is a magnificent and ingenious 
 spirit, one of those rare Venetian souls that have re- 
 mained strongly coloured like their ancient can- 
 vases," said Stelio, with grateful remembrance. " I 
 have a deep devotion for her sensitive hands. They 
 are hands that tremble with joy when they touch beau- 
 tiful lace or velvet, and linger there with a grace that 
 seems half shy of being so languid. One day, as I 
 was taking her through the halls of the Academia, 
 she stopped before the Massacre of the Innocents, 
 by the first Bonifazio (you certainly remember the 
 green of the prostrate woman that the soldier of 
 Herod is about to strike: it is a note you cannot 
 forget). She remained standing there a long time, 
 the joy of full and perfect sensation diffused all over 
 her. Then she said, 'Take me away, Effrena, I must 
 leave my eyes behind on that dress, I want to see 
 nothing else.' Ah, dear friend, don't smile, she 
 was simple and sincere in saying this. She had in all
 
 4 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 truth left her eyes behind on that fragment of canvas 
 which art, with a little colour, has made the centre 
 of an indefinitely joyous mystery. In all truth, it 
 was a blind woman that I was leading. And I 
 was all reverence for that privileged soul, in which 
 the spell of colour had had the power to abolish for 
 a time every vestige of its ordinary life and to stop 
 all other communications from the outside. What 
 would you call this? A filling up of the chalice 
 to the brim, it seems to me. This, for instance, is 
 what I would do to-night, if I were not discouraged." 
 A fresh clamour, louder and longer, rose from 
 between the two watchful columns of granite, as the 
 barge came to shore by the crowded Piazzetta. A 
 confused roar, like the imaginary rushing that ani- 
 mates the spirals of some sea-shells, filled the open 
 spaces of the ducal balconies at the surging of the 
 dense, dark multitude. Then, suddenly, the shout 
 rose higher in the limpid air, breaking up against 
 the slim forest of the marbles, vaulting over the 
 brow of the taller statues, shooting beyond the 
 pinnacles and the crosses, dispersing in the far dis- 
 tances of twilight. The manifold harmonies of the 
 sacred and pagan architectures all over which the 
 Ionic modulations of the Biblioteca ran like an agile 
 melody, continued unbroken in the pause which again 
 followed, and the summit of the naked tower rose like 
 a mystic cry. And that silent music of motionless 
 lines was so powerful, in its contrast with the spec- 
 tacle of an anxious multitude, that it created almost 
 visibly the phantom of some richer and more beauti- 
 ful life. That multitude, too, seemed to feel the 
 divinity of the hour, and in the greeting it sent
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 5 
 
 up to the modern symbol of royalty stepping on 
 its ancient landing-place, the fair Queen beaming 
 with her inextinguishable smile, perhaps it exhaled 
 its obscure aspiration to transcend the narrowness of 
 its daily life and to reap the harvest of eternal poetry 
 growing over its stones and its waters. In those 
 men, oppressed by the tedium and labour of their 
 long mediocrity, the strong covetous souls of their 
 forefathers, who had applauded so many returning 
 conquerors of the sea, seemed to be waking up con- 
 fusedly, and as they woke they seemed to remember 
 the rush of the air, stirred by the hissing, implacable 
 banners of old that had shamed enemies without 
 number as they dropped to rest, refolding like the 
 great wings of victory. 
 
 " Do you know, Perdita," suddenly asked Stelio, 
 " do you know of any other place in the world like 
 Venice, in its power of stimulating at certain mo- 
 ments all the powers of human life, and of exciting 
 every desire to the point of fever? Do you know of 
 any more terrible temptress?" 
 
 The woman he called Perdita did not answer, her 
 head bent as if in greater concentration, but in all 
 her nerves she felt that indefinable quiver that the 
 voice of her friend always called up when it un- 
 expectedly revealed the vehement and passionate 
 soul to which she was drawn by limitless love and 
 terror. 
 
 " Peace ! oblivion ! Do you ever find them down 
 there, at the end of your deserted canal, when you 
 return home parched and exhausted from having 
 breathed the atmosphere of the theatre of the 
 theatre that any gesture of yours lashes to frenzied
 
 6 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 enthusiasm? For my part, I can never find myself 
 on these dead waters without feeling that my life is 
 being multiplied at a bewildering speed, and at times 
 my thoughts seem to take fire as if delirium were 
 imminent." 
 
 "The flame and the strength are in yourself, 
 Stelio," said the woman, without raising her eyes, 
 almost humbly. 
 
 He was silent, intent. Images and impetuous 
 music were being generated within him, as if by 
 the magic of some instantaneous fertilisation. And 
 the unexpected flood of that abundance was filling his 
 spirit with joy. 
 
 It was still the hour that in one of his books he 
 had called " Titian's hour," because in it all things 
 seemed, like that painter's nude creations, to shine 
 with a rich glow of their own, and almost to illumine 
 the sky rather than receive light from it. The 
 strange, sumptuous octagonal temple drawn by Bal- 
 dassare Longhena from the dream of Polifilo was now 
 emerging from its blue green shadow with its cupola, 
 its scrolls, its statues, its columns, its balustrades, 
 like a temple dedicated to Neptune, constructed 
 after the pattern of tortuous marine shapes, and shad- 
 ing off into a haze of mother of pearl. In the hollows 
 of the stone the wet sea-salt had deposited something 
 fresh and silvery and jewel-like, that vaguely sug- 
 gested pearl shells lying open in their native waters. 
 
 " Perdita," said the Poet, a kind of intellectual joy 
 running through him, as he saw the things which his 
 imagination called to life multiplying themselves 
 everywhere, " does it not strike you that we seem to 
 be following the princely retinue of dead Summer?
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 7 
 
 There she lies, sleeping in her funeral boat, all 
 iressed in gold like the wife of a Doge, like a Lore- 
 dana, or a Morosina, or a Soranza, of the enlightened 
 centuries. And the procession is taking her to the 
 Island of Murano, where some masterly Lord of Fire 
 will make her a crystal coffin. And the walls of the 
 coffin shall be of opal, so that when once submerged 
 in the Laguna, she may at least see the languid play 
 of the sea-weed through her transparent eyelids, and 
 while awaiting the hour of resurrection give herself 
 the illusion of having still about her person the con- 
 stant undulation of her voluptuous hair." 
 
 A smile poured over La Foscarina's face, springing 
 from eyes that might have well seen the beautiful 
 figure. Indeed that sudden allegory in both its form 
 and rhythm truthfully expressed the feeling that was 
 permeating all things. As the milky blue of the opal 
 is rilled with hidden fire, so the pale monotonous 
 water of the harbour held dissimulated splendours 
 that were brought to light by each shock of the oars. 
 Beyond the straight forest of ships motionless on 
 their anchors San Giorgio stood out like a vast 
 rosy galley, its prow turned to the Fortuna that 
 attracted it from the height of its golden sphere. A 
 placid estuary opened out in the centre of the Giu- 
 decca. The laden boats that came down the rivers 
 flowing into it brought with their weight of splintered 
 trunks what seemed the very spirit of the woods that 
 bend over the running waters of their far-away sources. 
 
 And from the Molo, from the twofold miracle of 
 the porticoes open to the popular applause, where the 
 red and white wall rose as if to enclose that dominant 
 will, the Riva unfolded its gentle arch towards the
 
 8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 shady gardens and the fertile islands, as if to lead 
 away the thoughts excited by the arduous symbols 
 of art to the restfulness of nature. And almost as 
 if still further to complete the avocation of Autumn 
 there passed a string of boats laden with fruit, like 
 great floating baskets that spread over the waters 
 reflecting the perpetual foliage of the cusps and 
 capitols, the fragrance of the island fruit gardens. 
 
 " Do you know, Perdita," began Stelio, gazing with 
 visible pleasure at the golden bunches and the purple 
 figs not inharmoniously heaped in those boats from 
 poop to prow; "do you know a detail of ducal 
 chronicles which is quite charming? The wife of the 
 Doge, to defray the expenses of her state dress, 
 was given certain rights over the duty on fruit. 
 Does not this amuse you, Perdita? The fruit of the 
 islands clothing her in gold and girding her round 
 with pearls, Pomona giving Arachne her due; an 
 allegory that Veronese might well have painted for 
 the ceiling of the Vestiario. Whenever I picture to 
 myself the stately lady standing on her high slippers 
 with the gemmed heels, I like to think that something 
 fresh and rural clings to her between the folds of 
 heavy cloth, the tribute of the fruit. How many new 
 savours seem thus added to her magnificence. Well, 
 dear friend, let us now imagine that these figs and 
 grapes of the new Autumn are to yield the price of 
 the golden dress in which dead Summer is wrapped." 
 
 " What delightful fancies, Stelio ! " said La Fosca- 
 rina, youthfulness springing up in her for a moment, 
 so that she smiled in the surprised manner of a child 
 before a picture-book. "Who was it that one day 
 called you the Image-maker?"
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 9 
 
 " Ah ! those images ! " exclaimed the poet, pene- 
 trated. " In Venice, in the same way that one can- 
 not feel except in music, one cannot think if not in 
 images. They come to us from all quarters, in 
 countless numbers, in endless variety, and they are 
 more real, more living, than the people that elbow us 
 in the narrow streets. They let us bend down to 
 scrutinize the depths of their lingering eyes, and we 
 can divine the words they are going to say by the 
 curves of their eloquent lips. Some are tyrannical, 
 like imperious mistresses, and hold us long under the 
 yoke of their power. Others come to us wrapped 
 in veils, like virgins ; or tightly swaddled, like infants ; 
 and only he who can tear away those husks will raise 
 them to perfect life. When I awoke this morning, 
 my soul was already full of them ; it was like a great 
 tree with a load of chrysalides." 
 
 He stopped and laughed. 
 
 " If they all break open to-night," he added, " I 
 am saved. If they remain closed, I am lost." 
 
 " Lost?" said La Foscarina, looking at him in the 
 face with eyes so full of confidence that his gratitude 
 to her became immense. " You cannot lose yourself, 
 Stelio. You are always safe, you carry your fate in 
 your own hands. I think your mother can never 
 have feared for you, even in the worst of moments. Is 
 it not true? It is only the excess of your pride that 
 causes your heart to falter." 
 
 " Ah, dear friend, how I love you for this, and 
 how grateful I am to you ! " Stelio confessed can- 
 didly, taking her hand. " You are constantly feeding 
 my pride in myself and letting me half believe that 
 I have already acquired those virtues to which I con-
 
 io THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 tinually aspire. Sometimes you seem to have the 
 power of conferring I know not what divine quality 
 to the things that are born of my soul, and of placing 
 them at such a distance that they appear adorable in 
 my own eyes. You put in me the religious wonder of 
 the sculptor, who, having taken his idols to the temple 
 at fall of day, still warm from his touch, and I would 
 almost say still clinging to the moulding fingers that 
 shaped them, finds them next morning raised on 
 pedestals and wrapped in a cloud of incense, breath- 
 ing divinity from every pore of the deaf and dumb 
 matter in which his perishable hands had fashioned 
 them. You never enter my soul without accomplish- 
 ing a like deed of exaltation, and because of this, 
 every time that my good fortune allows me to be 
 near you, you become necessary to my life. And 
 nevertheless, during our too long separations, I can 
 live on, and so can you, both knowing to what splen- 
 dours the perfect union of our lives might give birth. 
 Thus while I fully know all you bring me, and further, 
 all you could bring, I consider you as lost to me, and 
 I call you by that name I have given you because 
 I want to express this boundless consciousness and 
 infinite regret " 
 
 He interrupted himself, feeling the hand he still 
 held tremble in his own. 
 
 "When I call you Perdita," he added in a lower 
 voice, after a pause, " I feel that you ought to see my 
 desire advancing towards you with a deadly weapon 
 thrust in its heaving side. Even if it succeed in 
 touching you, the chill of death will have already 
 reached the points of its rapacious fingers." 
 
 A suffering that she knew too well flooded her as
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME n 
 
 she listened to the beautiful, the perfect words flow- 
 ing from her friend's lips with a readiness that proved 
 their sincerity. It was once again a fear and anxiety 
 that she herself did not know how to define. She 
 seemed to lose the sense of her personal being and to 
 find herself thrown into a kind of fictitious life both 
 intense and hallucinating, that made even breathing 
 difficult. Once drawn into that atmosphere, as fiery 
 as the encircling neighbourhood of a forge, she felt her- 
 self capable of suffering all the transfigurations that it 
 should please the Life-Giver to work in her for the 
 satisfaction of his own constant desire of poetry and 
 of beauty. She felt that in his poetic spirit her own 
 image was not of far different nature to the image, so 
 evident as to be nearly tangible of the dead Sum- 
 mer wrapped in her opalescent shroud. And an 
 almost childish desire assailed her, of seeking in 
 his eyes, as in a mirror, the reflection of her true 
 likeness. 
 
 What made her suffering heavier was the fact that 
 she could trace a vague resemblance between this 
 agitated feeling and the anxiety that always possessed 
 her at the moment of entering into a stage fiction in 
 order to incarnate some sublime creation of Art. 
 Was he not drawing her on to live in a similar higher 
 zone of life, and, that she might figure there oblivious 
 of her everyday personality, was he not covering her 
 with a splendid mask? But, while to her it was only 
 given to prolong such a state of intensity by a su- 
 preme effort, she knew that he moved in it, as easily 
 as if it were his natural mode of being, ceaselessly 
 enjoying the miraculous world of his own that he 
 renewed by an act of continual creation.
 
 12 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 He had brought about in himself the intimate 
 marriage of art with life, and he thus found in the 
 depths of his own substance a spring of perennial 
 harmonies. His spirit had found the means of unin- 
 terruptedly maintaining itself in that mysterious con- 
 dition which gives birth to the work of beauty and 
 of thus suddenly transforming into ideal species the 
 passing figures of his varied existence. It was pre- 
 cisely to this conquest of his that he alluded when he 
 put the following words in the mouth of one of his 
 personages : " I stood by and watched within myself 
 the continual genesis of a finer life wherein all ap- 
 pearances were transfigured as in a magic mirror." 
 He was gifted with an extraordinary facility of lan- 
 guage that enabled him to instantly translate into 
 words even his most complex modes of feeling with 
 a precision so detached and vivid that they seemed 
 at times to belong to him no longer, to have been 
 made objective by the isolating power of style. His 
 limpid and penetrating voice, that seemed to draw a 
 clear outline round the musical figure of each word, 
 still further enhanced this singular quality of his 
 speech; so much so that an ambiguous feeling 
 made of admiration and aversion crept over those 
 who heard him for the first time, because of his mani- 
 festing himself in a form so sharply defined that it 
 seemed to be a result of his constant determination 
 to establish between himself and those who were to 
 remain strangers to him a deep and impassable dif- 
 ference. His sensibility, however, equalling his in- 
 tellect, it was easy for those who came near to him 
 and who loved him to catch the glow of his vehement 
 and passionate soul through the crystal of his words.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 13 
 
 These knew how wide were his powers of feeling and 
 of dreaming, and from what combustion he drew the 
 beautiful images into which he was wont to convert 
 the substance of his inner life. 
 
 She whom he called Perdita knew it well. As the 
 pious one awaits from her God the supernatural help 
 that is going to work her salvation, she seemed wait- 
 ing for his guidance to place her at last in the neces- 
 sary state of grace. Then perhaps she might elevate 
 and maintain herself in that fire to which she was 
 impelled by her mad desire of burning and melting 
 away. The loss of even the last vestige of her youth 
 made her desperate. She was terrified of finding 
 herself alone in a gray desert. 
 
 " Now it is you, Stelio," she said, with her slight 
 concealing smile, gently taking her hand away from 
 her friend, " now it is you who wish to intoxicate 
 me. Look," she exclaimed, to break the spell, 
 pointing to a laden boat that was coming slowly 
 towards them, " look at your pomegranates." 
 
 But her voice was unsteady. 
 
 Then in the evening dream they watched the boat 
 pass on the delicate water that was green and silvery 
 like the new leaves of the river-willow, the boat over- 
 flowing with the emblematic pomegranates. They 
 suggested the idea of things rich and hidden, they 
 seemed caskets of red leather bearing the crown of 
 the kingly giver, some tightly closed, some half-open 
 over their agglomeration of gems. 
 
 In a hushed voice the woman murmured the words 
 Hades addresses to Persephone when in the sacred 
 drama the daughter of Demeter tastes the fata] 
 pomegranate :
 
 14 THE .FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " When thou shalt pluck the Colchian herb in flower 
 Upon the tender meadow-grass of Earth, 
 Beside thy blue-robed mother, and, one day, 
 See glimmer on the tender meadow-grass 
 The white feet of the Oceanides, 
 Then there shall come to thine immortal eyes 
 Remembrance, and a sudden weariness, 
 The weariness of daylight ; and thy soul 
 Shall tremble in thy heart, Persephone, 
 Mindful of its deep sleep, and looking back, 
 Persephone, to its deep kingdom. Then 
 Thy blue-robed mother shalt thou see in silence 
 Weeping apart, and thou shalt say to her: 
 ' O Mother, Hades calls me to his deep 
 Kingdom ; now Hades calls me far from day 
 To queen it among shadows ; Hades calls 
 Me lonely to his insatiable love.' " 
 
 " Ah, Perdita, how well you diffuse the shadows 
 over your voice," interrupted the poet, feeling the 
 harmony of the night that darkened the syllables of 
 his verse. " How well you become nocturnal at the 
 fall of day! Do you remember the scene where 
 Persephone is on the point of sinking into Erebus, 
 while the chorus of the Oceanides is moaning? Her 
 face is like yours when you darken it Her crowned 
 head drops backwards as she stands rigid in her 
 crocus-dyed peplum ; it seems as if night itself were 
 flowing into her bloodless body, deepening under 
 her chin, in the hollow of her eyes, round her nos- 
 trils, transforming her into a sombre mask of trag- 
 edy. It is your mask, Perdita. The memory of you 
 helped me to bring forth her divine person while I 
 was composing my ' Mystery.' That little velvet 
 ribbon that you nearly always wear round your neck 
 taught me the colour most fit for the peplum of
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 15 
 
 Persephone. And one night, in your own house, as 
 I was taking leave of you on the threshold of a room 
 where the lamps had not yet been lit (an agitated 
 evening last autumn, if you remember), you suc- 
 ceeded with a mere gesture in bringing the creature 
 to light in my soul that was still lying there undevel- 
 oped, then, unconscious of having produced that 
 sudden nativity, you disappeared into the intimate 
 shadow of your own Erebus. Ah, I was quite cer- 
 tain I could hear you sob, yet a torrent of ungovern- 
 able joy was coursing through me. I have never 
 told you this before, have I ? I ought to have con- 
 secrated my work to you, as to an ideal Lucina." 
 
 She sat there suffering under the gaze of the Life- 
 giver ; suffering because of the mask that he admired 
 on her face, and of the joy that she felt was for ever 
 springing up within him as from a source that could 
 never run dry. The whole of her own self gave her 
 pain; the mutability of her features; the strange 
 mimic power possessed by the muscles of her face, 
 the unconscious Art that regulated the meaning of 
 her gestures, the expressive shadow that she had so 
 often known how to wear on the stage like a veil 
 of sorrow in some moment of expectant silence. 
 And this was the shadow that now was filling up the 
 hollows carved by time in her no longer youthful 
 body. The hand she loved caused her cruel suffer- 
 ing, the noble, delicate hand whose gift or caress 
 yet had such power to hurt her. 
 
 " Don't you believe, Perdita," Stelio said after 
 another pause, " in the occult beneficence of signs? " 
 As a river's meandering forms, encircles, and nour- 
 ishes the islands of the valley, that clear though tor-
 
 16 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 tuous, course of thought to which he gave himself up 
 left in his spirit dark isolated spaces whence he knew 
 full well that some new treasure would be forthcom- 
 ing in his own good time. " I am not speaking of 
 astral science, of the signs of the horoscope. I mean 
 that as some believe themselves subject to the influ- 
 ence of a certain star, likewise we can create an ideal 
 correspondence between our soul and some earthly 
 thing, so that the latter, saturating itself little by little 
 with our own essence, and itself being magnified by 
 our illusion, at last appears almost representative to 
 us of some unknown fatality, and becomes something 
 like the figure of a mystery by appearing at certain 
 crises of our life. This, Perdita, is the secret by which 
 we may restore something of a primeval freshness to 
 our souls that have become a little arid. I know by 
 experience what wholesome effects are derived from 
 intense communion with some natural thing. Our 
 soul must now and then become like the hamadryad 
 in order to feel the fresh energy of the tree, the life 
 of which gives it its own life. You have gathered 
 already that in saying this I allude to your own words 
 on the passing of the boat. Briefly and obscurely 
 you were expressing this same truth when you ex- 
 claimed ' Look at your pomegranates ! ' To you 
 and to those who love me they can never be any- 
 thing but mine. To you and to them the idea of 
 my person is indissolubly bound up with the fruit that 
 I have chosen for an emblem, and have overcharged 
 with mysterious significances more numerous than its 
 own grains. If I had lived in the ages when the men 
 who excavated the old Greek marbles used to find 
 the roots of the ancient fables still moist in the earth,
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 17 
 
 no painter could have represented me without placing 
 the Punic apple in my hand. To sever my person 
 from that symbol would have seemed to his ingenu- 
 ous soul like cutting off a living part of me, because, 
 to his paganly inclined imagination the fruit would 
 have seemed joined to my arm as to its natural 
 bough. His idea of me would have been no different 
 from that which he would have had of Hyacinthus, of 
 Narcissus, or of Ciparissus, who all three would neces- 
 sarily appear to him alternately under the aspect of 
 youth and symbolised by a plant. And even in our 
 own times there are a few agile and highly coloured 
 spirits ready to understand all the meaning and enjoy 
 all the savour of my invention. Yourself, Perdita, 
 have you not trained a beautiful pomegranate in your 
 garden that each summer you might see me blossom 
 and bring forth fruit? A letter you once wrote me 
 that was winged like a heavenly message describes 
 the graceful ceremony by which you decked out the 
 ' Effrenic ' shrub with necklaces on the day you re- 
 ceived the first copy of Persephone. Thus, you see, 
 for you and for those who love me, I have truly 
 renewed an antique myth by thus projecting myself 
 into one of the forms of eternal Nature; so that 
 when I die (and Nature grant that before then I may 
 have manifested myself wholly in my work!) my 
 disciples will honour me under the symbol of the 
 Pomegranate. In the sharpness of the leaf, in the 
 flame-colour of the blossom, in the gem-like pulp 
 of the crowned fruit, they will recognise some of the 
 qualities of my art: by that leaf, by that flower, 
 and by that fruit, as if by a posthumous teaching of 
 their master, their intellects will be led to that same
 
 1 8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 flame, sharpness, and enclosed opulence. You see 
 now, Perdita, what the true benefit is. By affinity I 
 myself am led on to develop myself in accordance 
 with the magnificent genius of the tree by which I 
 chose to signify my aspirations to rich and ardent 
 life. It seems as if this vegetating effigy of myself 
 were sufficient to reassure me that my powers are 
 conforming to nature in their development, so as to 
 obtain in a natural way the effect for which they were 
 destined. ' Thus hath nature disposed me,' is Leo- 
 nardo's epigraph that I wrote on the title-page -of my 
 first book ; and the pomegranate as it blossoms and 
 brings forth fruit unceasingly repeats that simple 
 motto. We can only obey the laws written in our 
 own substance and by them we must remain com- 
 plete in a fulness and unity that fill us with joy 
 amongst so many dissolutions. There is no discord 
 between my art and my life." 
 
 He spoke with complete freedom, and in a flowing 
 stream, as if he felt the spirit of the listening woman 
 become concave like a chalice to receive that wave, 
 and wished to fill it to the brim. An ever clearer 
 intellectual joy was spreading over him, together 
 with a vague consciousness of the mysterious process 
 that was preparing his mind for the effort which 
 awaited it. Now and then as he bent over his lonely 
 friend and heard the oar measuring the silence that 
 rose from the great estuary, he would catch a glimpse, 
 like a flash, of the crowd with its innumerable faces 
 that was thickening in the great hall, and a quick 
 tremor would shake his heart. 
 
 " It is very singular, Perdita," he went on, gaz- 
 ing at the pale far waters where the low tide
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 19 
 
 blackened the shore, " it is very singular to note 
 how easily chance assists our fancy in giving a mys- 
 terious character to the conjunction of certain appear- 
 ances with the aim we have imagined. I cannot 
 understand why the poets of our day wax indignant 
 at the vulgarity of their age and complain of having 
 come into the world too early or too late. I believe 
 that every man of intellect can, to-day as ever, create 
 his own beautiful fable of life. We should look into 
 life's confused whirl in the same spirit of fancy that 
 the disciples of Leonardo were taught to adopt in 
 gazing at the spots on a wall, at the ashes of fire, at 
 clouds, even mud and other similar objects, in order 
 to find there ' admirable inventions ' and ' infinite 
 things.' The same spirit prompted Leonardo to 
 add : ' In the sound of bells you will find every 
 word and every name that you choose to imagine.' 
 That master well knew as the sponge of Apelles 
 had already pointed out that chance always be- 
 friends the ingenious artist. To me, for example, the 
 ease and grace with which chance seconds the har- 
 monious unfolding of my invention is a constant 
 source of astonishment. Don't you think that black 
 Hades forced his bride to eat the seven grains on 
 purpose to furnish me with the subject-matter of 
 a masterpiece ? " 
 
 He interrupted himself with a burst of the youth- 
 ful laughter that always so clearly revealed the native 
 joy dwelling within him. 
 
 " See, Perdita," he added, laughing, " whether I 
 am right. In the very beginning of last October I 
 was invited to Burano by Donna Andriana Duodo. 
 We spent the morning in her gardens of thread;
 
 20 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 during the afternoon we went to visit Torcello. 1 
 had already begun living in the myth of Persephone 
 in those days, and the work was being slowly formed 
 within me, so that I felt as if I were gliding on 
 Stygian waters and passing into the regions that lie 
 beyond them. Never had I known a purer and 
 sweeter foretaste of death, and that feeling had made 
 me so light that I could have walked on the meadow 
 of Asphodel without leaving a footprint. The air 
 was damp, soft, and grayish ; the canals meandered 
 between banks overgrown with discoloured herbs. 
 (Perhaps you only know Torcello in the sunshine.) 
 But meanwhile some one was talking and discussing 
 in Charon's boat. The sound of praise awoke me. 
 Alluding to me, Francesco de Lizo was lamenting 
 that a princely artist so magnificently sensual they 
 are his own words should be forced to live apart 
 far from an obtuse and hostile crowd, and to cele- 
 brate the feast ' of sounds, of celours, and of forms ' 
 in the palace of his lonely dream. Giving way to 
 a lyric impulse he recalled the splendidly festive 
 lives of the Venetian artists, the public consent that 
 lifted them up like a whirlwind to the heights of 
 glory, the beauty, strength, and joy that they multi- 
 plied around them and reflected in the numberless 
 figures they painted on high walls and arched ceil- 
 ings. And Donna Andriana said : ' Well, then, I 
 solemnly promise you that Stelio Effrena shall have 
 his triumphant festival in Venice itself.' It was the 
 Dogaressa who spoke. At that moment I saw a 
 pomegranate laden with fruit break the infinite 
 squalor of the low, greenish bank like a hallucinat- 
 ing apparition. Donna Orsetta Contarini, who was
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 21 
 
 seated next to me, gave a ery of delight, and held 
 out two hands as impatient as her desire. Nothing 
 pleases me so much as the sincere and powerful 
 expression of desire. ' I adore a pomegranate ! ' 
 she exclaimed, as if already enjoying its pleasant 
 sub-acid flavour. She was as childlike over it as 
 her archaic name. I was stirred, but Andrea Con- 
 tarini seemed deeply to disapprove of his wife's 
 eagerness. He is an Hades having but little faith, 
 it would seem, in the mnemonic virtue of the seven 
 grains as applied to lawful wedlock. The boatmen, 
 however, had been stirred too, and were making for 
 the shore. I jumped on the bank first and fell to 
 stripping the tree, my blood relation. It was truly 
 a case of repeating with pagan lips the words of the 
 Last Supper : ' Take, eat, this is my body, which is 
 given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' 
 How does all this strike you, Perdita ? You must 
 not think I am inventing. I am quite truthful." 
 
 She was being carried away along that free and ele- 
 gant play of words by which he seemed to exercise the 
 nimbleness of his spirit and the facility of his elo- 
 quence. There was something undulating, variable, 
 and powerful about him that conjured up the twofold 
 image of flame and of water. 
 
 " Now," he continued, " Donna Andriana has kept 
 her promise. Guided by that taste for antique splen- 
 dour that so largely survives in her, she has prepared 
 a festival truly worthy of the Doges in the Ducal 
 Palace, in imitation of those that were celebrated 
 towards the close of the sixteenth century. It is she 
 who thought of rescuing the Ariadne of Benedetto 
 Marcello from her oblivion, and of making her sigh
 
 22 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 out her lamentation in the very place where Tin- 
 toretto has painted the Minoide in the act of receiv- 
 ing the crown of stars from Aphrodite. Does not 
 the same woman who left her clear eyes behind on 
 the ineffable green gown shine in the beauty of this 
 thought? Add to it that there is an ancient counter- 
 part to this musical performance in the Hall of the 
 Greater Council. A mythological composition by 
 Cornelio Frangipani, the music by Claudio Merulo, 
 was recited in the same hall in the year 1573 in 
 honour of the most Christian emperor Henry III. 
 Confess, Perdita, that my learning bewilders you. 
 Oh, if you knew how much of it I have accumulated 
 on the subject. I will read you my discourse some 
 day when you deserve severe punishment." 
 
 " But will you not read it at the festival to-night?" 
 La Foscarina asked, surprised and fearful lest he 
 should have resolved to disappoint the expectation 
 of the public, with his well-known careless ignoring 
 of obligation. 
 
 He divined his friend's anxiety and confirmed it. 
 
 " This evening," he said, with quiet assurance, " I 
 am coming to take an ice in your garden and to 
 enjoy the sight of the begemmed pomegranate, 
 gleaming under the sky." 
 
 "Oh, Stelio ! What are you doing?" she ex- 
 claimed, starting up. 
 
 There was in her words and action so sharp a 
 regret, and at the same time so strange an evocation 
 of the expectant crowd, that they troubled him. The 
 image of that crowd, the formidable monster with the 
 numberless human faces, stood before him amid the 
 purple and gold of the great hall, bringing him a
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 23 
 
 foretaste of its fixed stare and its stifling breath. 
 Suddenly, too, he measured the danger he had de- 
 cided to face in trusting only to the inspiration of the 
 moment, and he realised what the horror would be of 
 a sudden mental darkening, of some unlooked-for 
 bewilderment. 
 
 " Reassure yourself," he said. " I was jesting. I 
 will go ad bestias, and I will go unarmed. The sign 
 appeared again a moment ago; did you not see it? 
 Do you think it can have appeared in vain after the 
 miracle of Torcello? It has come to warn me once 
 more that I must only assure those attitudes for 
 which Nature has disposed me. Now you well know, 
 dear friend, that I can only speak of myself. There- 
 fore from the throne of the Doges I must only speak 
 to the audience of my own soul under the veil of 
 some seductive allegory and with the enchantment of 
 some beautiful musical cadence. This I shall do ex 
 tempore, if the flaming spirit of Tintoretto will only 
 pour down to me from his Paradise something of his 
 own fervour and daring. The risk tempts me. But 
 what a singular self-deception I was about to fall into, 
 Perdita ! When the Dogaressa announced the festi- 
 val and invited me here to do it honour, I began 
 writing a pompous discourse, a truly ceremonious 
 piece of prose, ample and solemn, like one of the 
 purple state gowns in the glass cases in the Correr 
 Museum ; not without a deep genuflection to the 
 Queen in the preamble, not without a leafy garland 
 for the head of the most serene Andriana Duodo. 
 And for some days, with curious complacency I 
 dwelt very near the spirit of a Venetian patrician of 
 the sixteenth century, Cardinal Bembo, for instance,
 
 24 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 adorned with all learning, academician of the Urania 
 or the Adorni, and assiduous frequenter of the gar- 
 dens of Murano and the hills of Asolo. I am sure 
 there was a certain correspondence between the turn 
 of my periods and the massive gold frames that en- 
 circle the paintings in the ceiling of the Council Hall. 
 But, alas ! as I reached Venice yesterday morning, and 
 in passing by the Grand Canal dipped my weariness 
 in the moist transparent shadows where the marble 
 still exhaled the spirituality that night gives it, I felt 
 that my sheets were worth much less than the dead 
 sea-weeds rocked by the tide, and seemed strangers 
 to me no less than the Trionfi of Celio Magno or the 
 Favoli Maritti of Anton Maria Consalvi that I had 
 quoted and commented on in them. What was I to 
 do, then?" 
 
 He cast an exploring glance round sky and water 
 as if to discover an invisible presence, or recognise 
 some newly arrived phantom. A yellowish glare was 
 stretching to the more solitary shores, that stood out 
 in it as if drawn there in finely pencilled lines, like the 
 opaque veining of agates ; behind him, towards the 
 Salute, the sky was scattered over with light-spreading 
 vapours, violet and rosy, that made it comparable to 
 a changing sea peopled by sea-anemones. From the 
 neighbouring gardens there descended an exhaled fra- 
 grance of plants saturated with light and warmth, like 
 floating aromatic oils heavy on the bronze-like water. 
 
 " Do you feel the autumn, Perdita? " he asked his 
 absorbed friend, awakening her with his voice. 
 
 The vision returned to her of dead Summer being 
 lowered among the sea-weeds of the laguna, shrouded 
 in its opalescent glass.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 25 
 
 " It is upon me," she answered, with a melancholy 
 smile. 
 
 " Did you not see it yesterday, when it descended 
 on the city? Where were you yesterday at sun- 
 down?" 
 
 " In a garden of the Giudecca." 
 
 " I was here, on the Riva. Does it not seem to you 
 that when human eyes have seen a similar vision of 
 joy and beauty, the lids ought to close over them for 
 ever to keep them sealed? It is of these secret hid- 
 den things that I should like to speak to-night, Per- 
 dita. I should like to celebrate in myself the marriage 
 of Venice with Autumn, giving it an intonation as 
 little different as possible from that of Tintoretto when 
 he painted the Marriage of Ariadne and Bacchus for 
 the hall of the Anticollegio, azure, purple and 
 gold. Yesterday an old germ of poetry suddenly 
 broke open in my soul. I remembered the fragment 
 of a forgotten poem in nona rima that I began writ- 
 ing here when I came to Venice for the first time, one 
 September in my earliest youth that I spent at sea. 
 It was called The Allegory of Autumn, and it sang the 
 praises of the god no longer crowned with vine-leaves, 
 but with jewels like one of Veronese's princes, fired 
 with passion, about to migrate to the sea-city with 
 the arms of marble and the thousand girdles of green. 
 At that time the idea had not reached the degree of 
 intensity necessary for it to enter into the life of Art, 
 and instinctively I abandoned the effort of manifesting 
 it as a whole. But, in the active spirit as in the fertile 
 soil, no seed is ever lost: it returns to me now at the 
 right moment urgently demanding expression. What 
 a just but mysterious fate governs the world of the
 
 26 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 mind ! It was essential that I should respect that 
 first germ in order to feel its multiplied virtue expand 
 in me to-day. That Vinci, who has darted a glance 
 into every profound thing, certainly meant to convey 
 this particular truth by his fable of the grain of millet 
 that says to the ant, ' If you will in so far please me 
 as to let me enjoy my desire of new birth, I will re- 
 store myself to you an hundredfold.' Admire this 
 touch of grace in those fingers that could bend iron. 
 Ah, he ever remains the incomparable master. How 
 shall I forget him awhile that I may give myself up 
 to the Venetians?" 
 
 Of a sudden the gay irony with which he addressed 
 himself in his last words died out, and his whole 
 attention seemed to bend over his thoughts. With 
 bowed head, his body feeling a kind of convulsed 
 contraction that answered to the extreme tension of 
 his spirit, he began to trace some of the secret analo- 
 gies which should bind together many images ap- 
 pearing to him as if in the rapid intervals between 
 successive lightning flashes, and to determine some 
 of the broader lines upon which those images should 
 be developed. Such was his agitation that the 
 muscles of his face quivered visibly under the skin, 
 and the woman felt, as she watched him, a reflected 
 anguish not unsimilar to what she would have felt 
 had he made before her a spasmodic effort to draw 
 the string of a gigantic bow. And she knew that 
 he was far away, estranged, indifferent to everything 
 that was not his own thought. 
 
 " It is already late, the hour is drawing near, we 
 must go back," he said, suddenly pulling himself 
 together as if pressed by anxiety, as if the formi-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 27 
 
 dable monster with its innumerable human faces that 
 would occupy the great resounding hall had reap- 
 peared. " I must get back to the hotel in time to 
 dress." 
 
 And his youthful vanity blossomed again at the 
 thought of the unknown women whose eyes were to 
 fall upon him for the first time that night. 
 
 " To the Hotel Daniele," La Foscarina called to the 
 oarsman. 
 
 As the dentellated iron at the prow veered round 
 on the water with a slow swing like a crawling ani- 
 mal, both felt a different but equally acute suffer- 
 ing at leaving behind them the infinite silence of the 
 estuary, already mastered by shadow and death, 
 at turning back towards the magnificent City of 
 Temptation, in whose canals, as in the veins of a 
 voluptuous woman, the fever of night was kindling. 
 jC.They were silent awhile, absorbed by the internal 
 tempest that belaboured them, penetrating to the 
 roots of their being and forcing them as if to tear 
 them up. The aromas descended from the gardens 
 swimming like oil on the water, that showed a glitter 
 as of burnt bronze here and there in its folds. There 
 was something like the phantom of past pageants in 
 the air, which they perceived in the same way that 
 they had felt a worn note of gold while contemplat- 
 ing the harmony of the durable marbles on the 
 palaces that age had dimmed. That magic evening 
 seemed to renew the breath and reflection of the 
 east clinging as of old to the round, hollow sails and 
 curved flanks of the galleys that brought them home 
 with their beautiful spoil. And all things around 
 seemed to exalt the forces of life in the man who
 
 28 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 would have drawn the very universe to himself in 
 order not to die, in the woman who would have 
 thrown her burdened soul to the stake if that could 
 have made her die pure. And both sat with their 
 anxiety growing upon them, listening to the flight 
 of time, as if the water on which they glided were 
 flowing through a fearful clepsydra. 
 
 Both started at the sudden burst of the salute that 
 hailed the lowering of the flag on board a man- 
 of-war anchored near the gardens. They saw the 
 striped bunting flutter above the black mass and 
 descend along its staff, and its folds drop like some 
 heroic dream suddenly vanishing. The silence seemed 
 deeper for a moment, and the gondola slipped into 
 denser shadow as it grazed the flank of the armed 
 giant. 
 
 " Perdita," Stelio Effrena said unexpectedly, " do 
 you know that Donatella Arvale who is going to 
 sing in Ariadne f" 
 
 In that deeper shadow his voice echoed with singu- 
 lar resonance against the ironclad. 
 
 " She is the daughter of Lorenzo Arvale, the great 
 sculptor," La Foscarina answered after a moment's 
 pause. " She is one of my dearest friends, and she is 
 also my guest. You will meet her, therefore, at my 
 house after the festival." 
 
 " Donna Andriana spoke to me about her last 
 night with great warmth as a marvellous being. She 
 told me that the idea of unearthing this Ariadne 
 came to her one day on hearing Donatella Arvale 
 sing the air, ' Ah come mat puoi Vedermi piangere.' 
 We are going to have some wonderful music at your 
 house, then, Perdita. Ah, how I thirst for it ! Down
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 29 
 
 there in my solitude I have had no music for many 
 months but that of the sea, which is too terrible, and 
 my own, which is too confused as yet." 
 
 The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the 
 Angelus, and their ponderous roll dilated in long 
 waves along the mirror of the harbour, vibrated 
 through the masts of the ships, spread afar towards 
 the infinite lagoon. From San Giorgio Maggiore, 
 from San Giorgio dei Greci, from San Giorgio degli 
 Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in Bragora, from San 
 Moise, from the churches of the Salute and the Re- 
 dentore and beyond, over the whole domain of the 
 Evangelist, from the far towers of the Madonna dell' 
 Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant' Andrea, bronze voices 
 answered, mingling in one great chorus, spreading 
 over the silent company of stones and water one great 
 dome of invisible metal, the vibrations of which 
 seemed to reach the twinkling of the earliest stars. 
 In the purity of evening the sacred voices gave the 
 City of Silence a sort of immensity of grandeur. 
 From the summit of their temples they brought 
 anxious mankind the message sent by the immortal 
 multitudes hidden in the darkness of deep aisles, or 
 mysteriously troubled by the light of votive lamps ; 
 they brought to spirits worn out by the day the mes- 
 sage of the superhuman creatures figured on the 
 walls of secluded chapels and in the niches of inner 
 altars, who had announced miracles and promised 
 worlds. And all the apparitions of the consoling 
 Beauty invoked by unanimous Prayer, rose on that 
 storm of sound, spoke in that aerial chorus, irradiated 
 the face of the marvellous night. 
 
 " Can you still pray? " asked Stelio, in a low voice,
 
 30 
 
 on seeing that the woman's lids were lowered and 
 motionless, her hands clasped on her knees, her whole 
 person absorbed in some interior act 
 
 She did not answer, only pressing her lips closer 
 together. And both listened on, feeling that their 
 distress was about to overtake them, in the fulness of 
 its tide, like a river no longer interrupted by a cata- 
 ract. Both had a grave, confused consciousness of 
 the strange interval, in which a new image had sprung 
 up unexpectedly between them and a new name had 
 been uttered.' * The ghost of the unforeseen sensation 
 they had felt on entering the shadow of the ironclad 
 seemed to have remained in them, like an isolated 
 encumbrance, like an indistinct, and nevertheless per- 
 sistent, point round which was a kind of unexplored 
 void. Distress in the fulness of its tide now sud- 
 denly seized them, throwing them towards each 
 other, uniting them with such vehemence that they 
 dared not look into each other's eyes for fear of 
 reading there some too brutal desire. 
 
 " Shall we not meet again to-night, after the festi- 
 val? " asked La Foscarina, with a tremble in her faint 
 voice. " Are you not free? " 
 
 She hastened to detain him, to imprison him, as if 
 he were about to slip from her, as if she hoped that 
 night to find some philtre that would lastingly attach 
 him to her. And, while she felt that the gift of her- 
 self had at length become a necessity, yet the fearful 
 lucidity that pierced the flame within her had shown 
 her the poverty of the gift so long denied. And a 
 sorrowful modesty, made of fear and of pride, con- 
 tracted her faded limbs. 
 
 " I am free ; I am yours," the young man answered
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 31 
 
 in a lower voice, without looking at her. " You know 
 that nothing is worth to me that which you can 
 give." 
 
 He too was trembling to the depths of his heart, 
 with the two aims before him that caused him to 
 strain his energy like a mighty bow, the city and the 
 woman ; both deep and tempting and tired with hav- 
 ing lived too much, and languid with too many loves; 
 both over-magnified by his dream, and fated to de- 
 lude his expectation. 
 
 For some seconds a violent wave of regret and 
 desires overcame him. The pride ; the intoxication of 
 his hard, dogged labour; his boundless, uncurbed am- 
 bition that had been forced into a field too narrow for 
 it ; his bitter intolerance of mediocrity in life ; his claim 
 to princely privileges; the dissembled craving for 
 action by which he was propelled towards the multi- 
 tude as to the prey he should prefer; the vision of 
 great and imperious art that should be at the same time 
 a signal of light in his hands and a weapon of sub- 
 jection ; his strangely imperial dreams ; his insatiable 
 need of predominance, of glory, of pleasure, rebelled 
 tumultuously, dazzling and suffocating him in their 
 confusion. And his sadness inclined him to the last 
 love of the lonely, wandering woman who seemed to 
 carry in the folds of her dress the silenced frenzy of 
 those far-off multitudes from whose pent-up brutality 
 her cry of passion or burst of sorrow or enthralling 
 pause had wrenched the sublime pulsation that Art 
 quickens. A troubled desire drew him to the de- 
 spairing woman in whom the traces of every pleasure 
 were visible towards that ageing body saturated 
 with endless caresses, yet still unknown to him.
 
 32 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " Is it a promise? " he asked, controlling his agita- 
 tion. "Ah, at last ! " 
 
 She did not answer, but gave him a look of almost 
 insane ardour, which escaped him. 
 
 And they remained silent, and the roll of the bells 
 passing over their heads was so strong that they felt 
 it at the roots of their hair, like a quiver of their own 
 flesh. 
 
 " Good-bye," she said, near the landing-place. 
 " On coming into the courtyard let us meet at the 
 second well on the side of the Molo." 
 
 " Good-bye," he said. " Place yourself so that I 
 may distinguish you among the crowd when I am 
 about to utter the first word." 
 
 An indistinct clamour came from San Marco, 
 above the sound of the bells, spreading over the 
 Piazzetta, dwindling away towards the Fortuna. 
 
 " May all light be on your forehead, Stelio," said 
 the woman, holding out her dry hands to him pas- 
 sionately. 
 
 Stelio Effrena entered the court by the south 
 door. On seeing the Giant's Staircase invaded by 
 the black and white multitude that swarmed up 
 under the reddish light of the torches fixed in the 
 iron candelabra, he felt a sudden movement of 
 repugnance, and stopped in the long covered gallery. 
 There was a contrast that jarred on him too acutely 
 between the meaner intruding crowd and the sight 
 of those architectural forms, magnified still more by 
 the unusual illumination in which the strength and 
 the beauty of their former life were expressed in 
 such varied harmonies.
 
 33 
 
 " Oh, how wretched ! " he exclaimed, turning to the 
 friends who accompanied him. " In the Hall of the 
 Greater Council, from the throne of the Doges, how 
 can one find a metaphor that will bring emotion to 
 a thousand starched shirt-fronts! Let us go back; 
 let us go and drink in the odour of the other crowd 
 outside, the real crowd. The Queen has not yet 
 left the palace ! We have plenty of time." 
 
 " Until I see you on the platform," Francesco de 
 Lizo said, laughing, " I shall not be sure that you are 
 really going to speak." 
 
 " I think Stelio would prefer the balcony between 
 the two blood-like columns to the platform in the 
 hall, would prefer haranguing a rebellious populace 
 that had threatened to set fire to the new Procuratie 
 and the old Libreria" said Piero Martello, wishing 
 to flatter the master's taste for sedition and the fac- 
 tious spirit that he himself imitated in his affectation. 
 
 " Yes, certainly," said Stelio, " if the harangue 
 were sufficient to stop or hasten an irreparable act. 
 I grant you that the words we write should be used 
 to create a pure form of beauty contained and shut 
 in by a book as by a tabernacle that is only ap- 
 proached by election, and by an act of that same 
 deliberate will necessary for the breaking of a seal ; 
 but it seems to me that the words we address directly 
 to a multitude should have no other aim but action, 
 even violent action, if need be. Only on this con- 
 dition can a spirit that is a trifle haughty commu- 
 nicate with the crowd by means of voice and gesture 
 without lowering itself. In any other case his game 
 can only be of a histrionic nature. For this reason 
 I bitterly repent having accepted my present office
 
 34 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 of ornate and pleasure-giving orator. Each of you 
 may grasp how much is humiliating to me in this 
 honour of which I am made the mark, and how 
 much is useless in my coming effort. All these 
 outside, wrested for one night from their mediocre 
 occupations or their favourite pastimes, are coming 
 to hear me with the same futile and stupid curiosity 
 with which they would go and listen to any vir- 
 tuoso. To the women among my listeners the art 
 with which I have composed the knot of my cravat 
 will be far more appreciated than the art with which 
 I round my periods. And, after all, the effect of 
 my speech will probably be a burst of deadened 
 applause from gloved hands, or a low, discreet 
 murmur which I shall acknowledge with a bow. 
 Don't you think that I am indeed about to touch the 
 highest summit of my ambitions? " 
 
 " You are wrong," said Francesco de Lizo. " You 
 must congratulate yourself on having succeeded in 
 impressing the rhythm of art on the life of a forget- 
 ful city for a few hours, and in having given us a 
 glimpse of the splendours that might beautify our 
 existence through a renewed marriage of art with 
 life. If the man who built the Festival Theatre 
 at Bayreuth were present, he would applaud this 
 harmony which he himself has announced. But the 
 admirable part of it is that, though you were absent 
 from and ignorant of it, the festival seems to have 
 been disposed by the guidance of your own spirit, 
 by an inspiration, a design of your own. This is 
 the best proof of a possibility of restoring and 
 diffusing taste, even in the midst of present barbari- 
 ties. Your influence is deeper at the present day
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 35 
 
 than you think. The lady who has wished to do 
 you honour, she whom you call the Dogaressa, has 
 asked herself at every new idea rising in her mind, 
 ' Would this please Stelio Effrena? ' You don't know 
 how many men of the younger generation are now 
 asking themselves the same question when they 
 consider the aspects of their inner life ! " 
 
 " For whom should you speak, if not for these? " 
 said Daniele Glauro, the fervent, sterile ascete of 
 Beauty, in that spiritual voice of his that seemed 
 to reflect the inextinguishable white-heat of a soul 
 cherished by the master as the most faithful. " If 
 you look round when you stand on the platform 
 you will easily recognise them by the expression 
 of their eyes. They are very numerous, some, 
 too, have come from afar, and they are waiting 
 with an anxiety that you perhaps cannot under- 
 stand. Their number is made up of those who 
 have drunk in your poetry, who have breathed the 
 fiery ether of your dream, who have felt the clutch 
 of your own chimera. It is made up of those 
 to whom you have promised a stronger and more 
 beautiful life, to whom you have announced the 
 world's transfiguration by the miracle of a new art. 
 They are the many, many whom your hope and joy 
 have carried away. They have heard that you are 
 going to speak in Venice, in the Ducal Palace, in 
 one of the most glorious places on earth. They 
 are going to see and hear you for the first time, 
 surrounded by the magnificence that seems to them 
 the only fitting frame to your nature. The old 
 Palace of the Doges, that has slept in darkness for 
 so long, is suddenly reillumined and revivified.
 
 36 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 In their eyes it is you alone who have had the 
 power of relighting its torches. Do you not under- 
 stand their expectations? And does it not seem to 
 you that you ought to speak for them alone? You 
 can carry out the condition you just laid down for 
 him who speaks to a multitude, you can stir up 
 a vehement emotion in their souls that shall turn 
 them towards the Ideal and hold them there for ever. 
 For how many of them, Stelio, you might make this 
 Venetian night unforgettable ! " 
 
 Stelio laid his hand on the prematurely bent 
 shoulders of the mystic doctor and smilingly re- 
 peated the words of Petrarch : " Non ego loquar 
 omnibus sed tibi, sed mihi et his" . . . 
 
 The eyes of his unknown disciples shone within 
 him; and with perfect clearness he now felt within 
 himself, like a tuneful modulation, the sound of his 
 own exordium. 
 
 " Nevertheless," he added merrily, turning to Piero 
 Martello, " to rouse a tempest in this sea would be a 
 much more stirring thing." 
 
 They were standing near the corner column of the 
 portico, in contact with the noisy, unanimous crowd 
 gathered in the Piazzetta that prolonged itself towards 
 the Zecca, was engulfed near the Procuratie, barri- 
 caded the black tower, occupied every space like 
 a formless wave, communicated its living warmth 
 to the marble of the columns and the walls against 
 which it pressed in its continual overflowing. Now 
 and then a greater outcry would come from the 
 distance, at the further end of the Piazza, growing 
 in volume until it burst quite close to them like 
 a clap of thunder; then it would dwindle until it
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 37 
 
 expired beside them like a murmur. The upper 
 outline of the arches, the loggias, the spires, and 
 the cupolas of the golden Basilica, the attics of 
 the Loggetta, the entablatures of the Biblioteca 
 were shining with numberless little lights, and the 
 high pyramid of the Campanile, twinkling together 
 with the silent constellations in the bosom of night, 
 conjured up for the multitude drunk with its own 
 noise the immensity of the silent heavens, the 
 boatman at the far end of the laguna, to whom this 
 light must seem a new kind of signal, the cadence 
 of a solitary oar disturbing the reflection of the stars 
 in the water, the holy peace closed in by the walls of 
 some island convent. 
 
 " To-night I should like to be for the first time with 
 a woman whom I desired on a floating bed some- 
 where beyond the Gardens, towards the Lido," said 
 Paris Eglano, the erotic poet, a fair, beardless youth 
 who had a handsome and voracious red mouth in 
 contrast to the almost angelic delicacy of his features. 
 " In an hour's time Venice will offer some Nero-like 
 lover hidden in some gondola-cabin the Dionysian 
 spectacle of a city that has been set on fire by its 
 own delirium." 
 
 Stelio smiled as he noticed to what extent those 
 who approached him were steeped in his own es- 
 sence, and how deeply the seal of his own style had 
 stamped itself on those intellects. / \The image of 
 La Foscarina flashed on his desire, La Foscarina as 
 she was: poisoned by art, laden with voluptuous 
 learning, with the savours of maturity and of cor- 
 ruption in her eloquent mouth, with the dryness of a 
 vain fever in those hands that had pressed out the
 
 38 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 substance of all deceitful fruits, with the traces of a 
 hundred masks on that face that had simulated the 
 fury of mortal passions. It was thus he pictured 
 her to his desire, and his pulse quickened at the 
 thought that before long he would see her emerging 
 from the crowd as from an element by which she was 
 enslaved, and would draw from her look the neces- 
 sary intoxication. 
 
 "Let us go," he said to his friends, ready now; 
 " it is time." 
 
 The cannon announced that the Queen had left 
 the residence. A long quiver ran along the living 
 human mass, like that which precedes a squall at 
 sea. From the shore of San Giorgio Maggiore a 
 rocket darted up with a vehement hiss, rose straight 
 in the air like a stem of fire, scattered a rose of fire 
 at its summit, then bent downwards, dwindled, dis- 
 persed in trembling sparks, died out on the water 
 with a dull crackling. And the joyous acclamation 
 that greeted the beautiful Queen, the united cry of 
 love echoed by the marbles and repeating her name, 
 the name of the white starry flower of the rocket 
 that had the pure pearl for its meaning, all this 
 summoned up in Stelio's mind the pomp of the 
 ancient Promissione, the triumphant procession of the 
 art that accompanied the new Dogaressa to the ducal 
 palace ; the immense wave of joy on which Morosina 
 Grimani, resplendent in her gold, soared to her throne, 
 while all the arts bowed down to her laden with gifts. 
 
 " If the Queen loves your books," said Francesco 
 de Lizo, " she will wear all her pearls to-night. You 
 will find yourself in a labyrinth of precious stones, 
 all the heirlooms of the patricians of Venice."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 39 
 
 "Look, Stelio, at the foot of the staircase," said 
 Daniele Glauro, " there is a group of your devotees 
 awaiting your passage." 
 
 Stelio paused at the well indicated by La Foscarina, 
 and bent over its bronze rim, feeling the carved out- 
 lines of its cariatides against his knees, and discern- 
 ing in its deep, dark mirror the vague reflection of 
 the far-off stars. For a few seconds his soul isolated 
 itself, grew deaf to surrounding voices, withdrew into 
 the circle of shadow whence came a slight chill re- 
 vealing the dumb presence of water. The fatigue 
 brought on by his state of tension made itself felt, 
 and with it a desire to be elsewhere, an indistinct 
 need of going beyond even the ecstasy that the 
 night hours were to bring him, and in the last ex- 
 treme depth of his being the consciousness of having 
 there a secret soul that, like the mirror of water, re- 
 mained strange to all things, motionless and intangible. 
 
 " What is it you see? " said Piero Martello, he too 
 bending over the edge, worn by the ropes of the 
 pitchers that had been lowered down over it for 
 centuries. 
 
 " The face of Truth," answered the master. 
 
 In the rooms surrounding the Hall of the Greater 
 Council, once inhabited by the Doges, now by the 
 pagan statues forming part of the booty of ancient 
 wars, Stelio Effrena was awaiting a sign from the 
 master of ceremonies to appear on the platform. He 
 smiled calmly on the friends who were talking to 
 him, but their words reached his ears between one 
 pause and another like the intermittent sounds that 
 wind brings from afar. Now and then he would
 
 40 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 approach one of the statues with an involuntar> 
 movement as if seeking some frail spot where he 
 might break it, or bend intently over a medal as if to 
 read there some sign impossible to decipher. But 
 his eyes were sightless, being turned inwards to that 
 region where the accumulated powers of his will 
 called up the silent forms which his voice would pres- 
 ently raise to perfection of verbal music. His being 
 contracted under the effort of bringing the represen- 
 tation of the singular feeling that possessed him to 
 the highest degree of intensity. Since he was going 
 to speak only of himself and his own world, he would 
 at least gather into one ideal image the more resplen- 
 dent qualities of his art, thus showing those who fol- 
 lowed him what an invincible force it was that hurried 
 him through life. Once more he would prove to them 
 how, in order to obtain victory over man and circum- 
 stance, there is no other way but that of constantly 
 feeding one's own exaltation and magnifying one's 
 own dream of beauty or of power. 
 
 As he bent over a medal of Pisanello's he felt the 
 pulse of his thought beating with incredible rapidity 
 against his burning temples. 
 
 " Do you see, Stelio," said Daniele Glauro, drawing 
 him on one side with that pious reverence that veiled 
 his voice whenever he spoke of those things which 
 made up his religion, " do you see how the myste- 
 rious affinities of art are working upon you, and how 
 your spirit, about to manifest itself, is being led by 
 an infallible instinct in the midst of so many forms 
 towards the one model or footprint of the highest and 
 most accurate expression of style. Through the ne- 
 cessity of coining your own idea, you are brought
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 41 
 
 to bend over a medal of Pisanello's; you come in 
 conjunction with the sign of one who is among the 
 greatest stylists that have appeared in the world ; the 
 most frankly Hellenic soul of the whole Renaissance. 
 And your brow at once becomes marked by a ray of 
 light." 
 
 On the bronze was the effigy of a young man with 
 fair, waving hair, imperial profile, and Apollo-like neck. 
 His was so perfect a type of elegance and vigour 
 that the imagination could not picture him in life ex- 
 cept as entirely exempt from all decadence, change- 
 less for all eternity. Dux equitum fr&statts Mala- 
 testa Novellus Ceseruz dominus. Opus Pisani pictoris. 
 And close to it lay another medal by the same hand, 
 bearing the effigy of a virgin with narrow bosom, 
 swan-like neck, and hair drawn back as if it were a 
 heavy bag, with a high receding forehead that seemed 
 already vowed to the halo of the blessed ; a vessel of 
 purity for ever sealed, hard, precise, and clear as the 
 diamond, an adamantine pyx enshrining a soul that, 
 like the Host, seemed consecrated to sacrifice. Cici- 
 lia Virgo, Filia Johannis Frencisci primi Marchionis 
 Mantua. 
 
 " See," said the subtle expert, pointing out the two 
 rare impressions, " see how Pisanello has gathered 
 with an equally wonder-working hand the proudest 
 flower of life and the purest flower of death. Here 
 you have the image of profane desire and the image 
 of sacred aspiration in the same metal, both fixed by 
 the same idealism of style. Don't you recognise in 
 them the analogies that unite this form of art to your 
 own art? When your Persephone picks the luscious 
 fruit of the infernal pomegranate, there is also some-
 
 42 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 thing mystic in her fine gesture of desire, because in 
 breaking it to eat the grains she unconsciously de- 
 termines her fate. The shadow of mystery, therefore, 
 accompanies her sensuous act. This reveals the char- 
 acter of your whole work. No sensuality is more 
 ardent than yours, yet your senses are so sharpened 
 that, while enjoying the appearance, they penetrate to 
 the greater depths until they come upon the great 
 mystery, and shudder. Your vision prolongs itself 
 beyond the veil on which life has painted the volup- 
 tuous images that give you pleasure. Thus, concili- 
 ating in yourself that which seems irreconcilable, 
 blending without effort the two terms of an antithesis, 
 you are setting the example of a complete and ultra- 
 powerful life. You should make this felt to them 
 that listen to you, because it is this, above all, that 
 should be recognised for the sake of your glory." 
 
 He had celebrated the imaginary marriage of the 
 proud Malatesta, leader of knights, and the blessed 
 Mantuan virgin, Cecilia Gonzaga, with the faith of a 
 pious priest at the altar. Stelio loved him for this 
 faith ; loved him, too, because in no other man had he 
 ever felt so deep and sincere a belief in the reality of 
 the poetic world, and because his own consciousness 
 often found some revealing expression in him and 
 his comments often threw unforeseen light on his own 
 work. 
 
 " Here comes La Foscarina with Donatella Arvale," 
 announced Francesco de Lizo, who was watching the 
 crowd that came up the Censor's Staircase and grew 
 denser in the large hall. 
 
 Once more distress took hold of Stelio Effrena. 
 He could hear the murmur of the multitude ming-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 43 
 
 ling in his ears with the throb of his arteries as 
 in some indefinite distance, and Perdita's last words 
 came back to him above that roar. 
 
 The murmur rose again, then dwindled, and ceased 
 altogether as with a light, sure tread he ascended the 
 steps of the platform. Turning towards the crowd 
 he saw for the first time the formidable monster with 
 the numberless human faces staring in his dazzled 
 eyes from among the gold and sombre purples of the 
 great hall. 
 
 A sudden leap of pride helped him to master him- 
 self. He bowed to the Queen and to Donna Andri- 
 ana Duodo ; both threw him the same twin smiles as 
 from the gliding barge on the Grand Canal. His 
 glance sought La Foscarina in the glitter of the first 
 rows, travelled to the back of the assembly, where 
 only a dark zone dotted with pale spots appeared. 
 The silent, expectant multitude appeared to him in 
 the image of a gigantic many-eyed chimera, its bosom 
 covered with shining scales, stretching its blackness 
 under the enormous scrolls of the rich, heavy ceiling 
 that hung over it like a suspended treasure. 
 
 Splendid indeed was that chimeric bosom on which 
 necklaces glittered, that had certainly flashed before 
 under that same ceiling on the night of some coro- 
 nation festival. The diadem and ornaments of the 
 Queen and her many pearl necklaces, graduated 
 drops of light that suggested a miraculous falling in 
 grains of a smile just about to break out; the dark 
 emeralds of Andriana Duodo, originally torn from the 
 hilt of a scimitar; the rubies of Giustiniana Memo, 
 set after the manner of carnations by the inimitable
 
 44 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 workmanship of Vettor Camelio ; the sapphires of 
 Lucrezia Priuli, taken from the heels of the high san- 
 dals on which the Most Serene Zilia had stepped to 
 her throne on the day of her triumph; the beryls of 
 Orsetta Contarini, so delicately set in opaque gold by 
 the artist hand of Silvestro Grifo ; the turquoises of 
 Zenobia Corner, turned strangely pale by the myste- 
 rious disease that had changed them one night as 
 they lay on the moist bosom of the Lusignana among 
 the pleasures of Asolo, the proudest jewels that had 
 adorned the old-time festivals of the Sea-City, flashed 
 with renewed fire on the chimera's bosom, and from 
 it a tepid exhalation of feminine skin and breath went 
 up to Stelio. The rest of that shapeless, strangely 
 spotted body stretched backwards into an appendage 
 something like a tail, between the two gigantic 
 spheres that recalled to the memory of the image 
 maker the two bronze spheres on which the blind- 
 folded monster presses its leonine claws in the Alle- 
 gory of Giambellino. And that accumulation of 
 blind animal life, void of all thought before him who 
 in that hour was alone to think, gifted with the same 
 inert fascination possessed by enigmatic idols, cov- 
 ered by its own silence as by a shield capable of 
 receiving and repulsing any vibration, waited for the 
 air to palpitate under his first dominating word. 
 
 Stelio Effrena measured the silence in which his 
 first word should fall. As his voice rose to his lips, 
 an effort of will leading it and strengthening it against 
 his instinctive emotion, he caught sight of La Foscarina 
 standing against the iron railing round the celestial 
 sphere. The head of the tragic actress rose from her 
 unadorned neck, and the purity of her bare shoulders
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 45 
 
 above the orbit of the signs of the zodiac. Stelio 
 admired the art of that apparition. Fixing his own 
 on those far-off adoring eyes, he began speaking very 
 slowly, as if the rhythm of the oars was still in his 
 ears. 
 
 " One afternoon not long ago, returning from the 
 Gardens along the warm bank of the Schiavoni, that 
 must often have seemed to some wandering poet like 
 I know not what golden magic bridge stretching out 
 over a sea of light and silence to some infinite dream 
 of beauty, I thought, or rather I stood by and watched 
 my own thoughts as I would an intimate spectacle, 
 I thought of the nuptial alliance of Autumn and 
 Venice under those skies. 
 
 " A sense of life was diffused everywhere ; a sense of 
 life made up of passionate expectation and restrained 
 ardour, that surprised me by its vehemence, but yet 
 could not seem new to me, because I had already 
 found it gathered in some belt of shadow under the 
 almost deathly immobility of summer, and I had also 
 felt it here vibrating now and then like a mysterious 
 pulsation under the strange, feverish odour of the 
 waters. Thus, I thought, this pure City of Art truly 
 aspires to the supreme condition of that beauty that 
 is an annual return in her as is the giving forth of 
 flowers to the forest. She tends to reveal herself 
 in a full harmony as if she still carried in herself, 
 powerful and conscious, that desire of perfection 
 from which she was born and formed through the 
 ages like some divine creature. Under the motion- 
 less fires of a summer sky she seemed pulseless and 
 breathless, dead indeed in her green waters ; but my 
 feeling did not deceive me when I divined her
 
 46 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 secretly labouring under a spirit of life that would 
 prove sufficiently powerful to renew the highest of 
 older miracles. 
 
 " This I thought as I stood by and witnessed the 
 splendid spectacle that my eyes were made capable 
 of contemplating by a peculiar gift of love and poetry, 
 seeming to change their faculty of sight into a deep 
 and lasting vision. . . . But how shall I ever commu- 
 nicate to those who hear me my vision of joy and 
 beauty? There can be no dawn and no sunset 
 to equal such an hour of light on the waters and 
 among the stones. And no sudden appearing of a 
 beloved woman in a wood in spring could be in- 
 toxicating like the unexpected revelation in full day- 
 light of the heroic and voluptuous city, bringing to 
 my arms, to be crushed there, the richest dream ever 
 dreamed by a Latin soul." 
 
 The voice of the speaker, clear, penetrating, almost 
 icy at first, seemed to have been suddenly warmed 
 by the invisible sparks that doubtless were wrung 
 from his brain by the effort of improvisation governed 
 by the acute vigilance of his fastidious ear. As the 
 words flowed without impediment, and the rhythmic 
 line of his periods closed round them like a figure 
 drawn at one stroke by a bold hand, his listeners 
 could feel under that harmonious fluidity the excess 
 of the tension tormenting his spirit, and were held 
 captive by it as by one of those savage Circensian 
 games in which all the energies of the athlete are 
 made manifest, the vibration of his sinews and the 
 swollen tissue of his arteries. They could feel how 
 much was actual, warm, and alive in the thoughts so 
 expressed, and their enjoyment was greater because
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 47 
 
 so unlocked for, all having expected from that un- 
 tiring seeker after perfection the studied reading of a 
 laboriously composed discourse. With deep emotion 
 his devotees witnessed the audacious test, as if the 
 mysterious process whence the forms had arisen that 
 had held out to them so many gifts of joy was being 
 laid bare before them. And that first emotion diffused 
 by contagion and indefinitely multiplied by numbers 
 became unanimous, and flowed back to him who had 
 produced it, threatening to overcome him. 
 
 It was the expected peril. He swayed as if under 
 the shock of a wave too strong for him. And for 
 some seconds a thick darkness filled his brain, the 
 light of his thought went out like a torch at the 
 breath of some irresistible wind, his eyes clouded as 
 in the early stage of faintness. He felt how great 
 the shame of defeat would be if he yielded to that 
 bewilderment. And in that darkness, with a kind of 
 sharp percussion, as of steel on flint, his will created 
 the new spark. 
 
 With a look and gesture he lifted the eye of the 
 crowd up to the masterpiece spreading over the ceil- 
 ing of the hall, a kind of sun-given radiance. 
 
 "Thus I am sure," he exclaimed, "thus the city 
 appeared to Veronese while he was seeking within 
 himself the image of the triumphant Queen. Ah, I 
 am sure he must have trembled to his remotest fibres 
 and bent his knee like one stricken and bewildered 
 by a miracle, prostrating himself in adoration, and 
 when he tried to manifest his wonder to mankind 
 and to paint her here, he, the prodigal artist who 
 seems to have collected in himself all the imagina- 
 tions of the most unbridled satraps, the magnificent
 
 48 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 poet whose soul was like that Lydian river called by 
 the harmonious Greeks Chrysorroes, from whose gold- 
 yielding springs a whole dynasty of kings came 
 forth laden with wealth, he, Veronese, scattered 
 in profusion gold, jewels, amaranth, purple, ermine, 
 all that is sumptuous elsewhere, but he could only 
 picture the glorious face in a halo of shadow. 
 
 " We should unite in exalting Veronese if only 
 for that veil of shadow ! All the mystery and the 
 fascination of Venice are in that shadow, small yet 
 infinite, composed of things living but unknowable, 
 gifted with the portentous virtue of the fabulous cav- 
 erns where gems had eyes to see, and where men 
 have found coolness and ardour at the same time in 
 one inexpressibly ambiguous sensation. We must 
 praise Veronese for this. The giving a human as- 
 pect to his representation of the queenly city has 
 enabled him to grasp its essential spirit, which is 
 only symbolically an inextinguishable flame seen 
 through a veil of water. And I know of one whose 
 spirit, having been long saturated with these things, 
 withdrew it enriched by a new power, and hence- 
 forth treated his art and his life with a more ardent 
 touch." 
 
 Was he not himself that one? He seemed to re- 
 cover all his assurance and to feel himself out of 
 danger after this assertion, master of his thoughts 
 and words, capable of drawing into the circle of his 
 dream the giant chimera of the bosom covered with 
 glittering scales, the elusive and versatile monster 
 from whose sides emerged the tragic muse, her head 
 raised above the belt of constellations. 
 
 Obeying his gesture, the numberless faces turned
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 49 
 
 to the apotheosis. The unveiled eyes gazed won- 
 deringly at the marvel, as if they saw it for the first 
 time, or under a hitherto unknown aspect. The 
 wide, bare shoulders of the woman with the golden 
 helmet shone on the cloud with strongly accentuated 
 muscular life that made it as tempting as a palpable 
 body. And from that living nudity, conqueror of 
 time that had obscured beneath her the heroic 
 images of sieges and battles, a voluptuous charm 
 seemed to emanate, made sweeter by the breath of 
 the autumn night floating through the open windows 
 that stirred it as it stirred the wave of perfume hov- 
 ering round the fragrant rose-bushes, while the prin- 
 cesses from on high, bending over the balustrades 
 between the two spiral columns, inclined their burn- 
 ing faces and their opulent bosoms towards their 
 latest worldly sisters in the hall below. 
 
 Under this incantation, the poet began tossing his 
 periods to his audience, harmonising them like lyric 
 stanzas. 
 
 " It was indeed some such flame which I felt 
 yesterday rising to extreme vehemence and confer- 
 ring on the beauty of Venice a power of expression 
 never before seen^V The whole city kindled with 
 desire before my eyes, and throbbing with expecta- 
 tion within its thousand girdles of green like a woman 
 in love awaiting her hour of joy~J She held her 
 marble arms out to the wild autumn whose per- 
 fumed breath reached her from the delicious death 
 of the distant landscape, and watched the light va- 
 pours that rose from the confines of the lagoon draw- 
 ing near her, silent, like furtive messages. Intently 
 she listened to the slightest sounds in the silence she
 
 50 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 herself had made, and the breath of the wind flying 
 through her rare gardens had a musical continuation 
 that prolonged it outside the enclosures. A kind of 
 stupor gathered round the solitary imprisoned trees 
 that were changing colour, becoming resplendent like 
 some burning things. The dry leaf that had fallen 
 on the worn stone of the bank shone like some pre- 
 cious thing; at the summit of the wall adorned with 
 fair lichens the pomegranate, swollen with maturity, 
 burst suddenly like a beautiful mouth that breaks 
 open by an impulse of cordial laughter. A boat 
 passed, slow and wide, rilled with bunches like a 
 wine-press spreading through the air, and above the 
 waters with their tangle of sea-weed, the intoxication 
 of the vintage season, and a vision of solitary vineyards 
 full of young men and women singing. A deep 
 eloquence spoke from all surrounding objects, as if 
 invisible signs adhered to visible aspects and all were 
 living by some divine Hellenic privilege in the higher 
 truth of art. 
 
 " Surely, then," I thought, " surely there must be 
 in the city of stone and water, as in the spirit of the 
 pure artist, a spontaneous and constant aspiration 
 to ideal harmonies. A kind of fictitious rhythmical 
 imagination seems to spaciously elaborate its repre- 
 sentations, conforming them to an idea, as it were, 
 and directing them to a premeditated end. Her 
 marvellous hands seem to weave her light and 
 shadows into a continual work of beauty; she 
 dreams over her work, and from her own dream, 
 transfiguring the heritage of centuries, she draws 
 that tissue of inimitable allegories by which she is 
 covered. And, because poetry alone is truth, he
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 51 
 
 who knows how to contemplate it and draw it into 
 himself by the virtue of thought will be near know- 
 ing the secret of victory over life." 
 
 He had sought the eyes of Daniele Glauro while 
 uttering the last words, and had seen them shine 
 with joy under the vast, thoughtful brow that seemed 
 swollen by the presence of an unborn world. The 
 mystic doctor was there with his whole legion, with 
 some of those unknown disciples whom he had de- 
 scribed to Stelio as eager and anxious, full of faith 
 and expectation, panting to break through the nar- 
 rowness of their daily servitude, and to know some 
 free ecstasy of joy or pain. Stelio saw them there, 
 serried together in a group, like a nucleus of com- 
 pressed forces, leaning against the great reddish 
 bookcases whose numberless volumes of forgotten 
 and inert science lay buried. He could tell them by 
 their intent, animated faces, their long, thick hair, 
 their mouths that were either opened in child-like 
 stupor or tightened with a sort of violence full of 
 sensitiveness, their light or dark eyes to which the 
 breath of his words seemed to bring alternate lights 
 and shadows like the passing of a breeze over a bed 
 of delicate flowers. He seemed to be holding their 
 united souls in his hands, able to agitate one or the 
 other, and crush it, or tear it and burn it as if it were 
 only some light banner. Whilst his spirit stretched 
 and relaxed in its continual discharge, there still re- 
 mained to him an extraordinary lucidity of exterior 
 analysis, a kind of separate faculty of material obser- 
 vation, that seemed to become ever more acute and 
 more sharply defined as his eloquence warmed and 
 quickened. Little by little he felt his effort becom-
 
 52 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 ing easier and the efficacy of his will being supple- 
 mented by an energy free and obscure as an instinct 
 that rose from the depths of his unconsciousness, 
 operating by an occult process impossible to gauge. 
 Association reminded him of the extraordinary mo- 
 ments in which in the silence and intellectual heat 
 of his remote chamber his hand had written an 
 immortal verse that had seemed to him not born 
 of his brain, but dictated by an impetuous deity to 
 which his unconscious organ had obeyed like a blind 
 instrument. A not unsimilar miracle was now taking 
 place within him, surprising his ear by the unforeseen 
 cadence of the words that fell from his lips. An 
 almost divine mystery was unfolding through the 
 communion into which his soul had entered with the 
 soul of the crowd. Something greater and stronger 
 was adding itself to the feeling he had about his own 
 person. And at every moment it seemed that his 
 voice was acquiring a higher virtue. 
 
 He saw the ideal picture complete and living within 
 himself, and his manifestation of it in the language of 
 poetry was after the manner of the master-colourists 
 who reign in that place. The luxuriance of Veronese, 
 the ardour of Tintoretto, was in his speech. 
 
 " And the hour was approaching; the hour of the 
 supreme feast was at hand. There was an unusual 
 light in the heavens coming from the far-away hori- 
 zon, as if the wild bridegroom were waving his purple 
 banner as he drew nearer in his fiery chariot. The 
 wind roused by his speed was heavy with all the per- 
 fumes of the earth, and reminded the expectant one 
 on the water where the vague sea-locks floated of the 
 white, compact rose-bushes that here and there grew
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 53 
 
 against the balustrades of the gardens overlooking 
 the Brenta, melting little by little like masses of 
 snow. The distant country seemed entirely reflected 
 in the crystal of the air as by the fallacious mirage 
 of the desert; and that impression of nature served 
 to magnify the rarity of the dream of art, for no 
 autumnal pageant of woods and meadows was com- 
 parable in the memory to the divine life and transfig- 
 urations of those ancient stones. 
 
 " Is not some god coming to the city who offers 
 herself? I asked of my own spirit, overcome by the 
 anxiety and desire of pleasure expressed around me 
 as if a fever of infinite passion invaded all things. 
 And I called up the most powerful artist to picture 
 that young, expected god with proud form and re- 
 fulgent colours. 
 
 " He was indeed coming ! The inverted goblet of 
 the sky poured down a stream of splendour that, at 
 first, seemed incredible to me, for it was of a quality 
 richer even than the richest light of inspired thought 
 or involuntary dream. The water was like some 
 starry matter of an unknown, changeable nature, sug- 
 gesting in myriads the indistinct images of a fluid 
 world. A perpetual quiver drew from it harmonies 
 for ever new by a series of stupendously easy destruc- 
 tions and creations. Between the wonders of sky and 
 water the stones that were multiform and many-souled, 
 like a forest or like a people, the silent company of 
 marbles from which the genius of art has extracted 
 the occult conceptions of nature, on which time has 
 accumulated its mysteries and glory engraved its 
 signs, along the hidden veins of which the human 
 spirit rises towards the ideal, as the sap ascends to
 
 54 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the flower through the fibres of the plant, the mul- 
 tiform and many-souled stone constantly took on 
 some expression of life so new and intense that law 
 seemed destroyed for it, and its original inertness 
 flooded by a miraculous sensibility. 
 
 " Each second after vibrated on these things 
 like an unbearable flash. From the crosses on the 
 tops of the cupolas swollen by prayer to the slight 
 saline crystals hanging under the arch of the bridges, 
 all glittered in a supreme jubilation of light. Like 
 the sentinel on the rampart throwing his sharp cry 
 to Expectation quivering like a storm below him, 
 so the golden angel from the summit of the greater 
 tower at last flashed out the announcement. 
 
 " And He appeared. He appeared sitting on a 
 cloud as on a chariot of fire, the long ends of his 
 purple raiment trailing behind him, imperious though 
 gentle, his half-open lips full of sylvan murmurs and 
 silences, his hair floating over his strong neck, his 
 titanic breast, hardened by the breath of the forest 
 quite bare. He turned his youthful countenance to 
 the City Beautiful. An indescribable inhuman fasci- 
 nation emanated from that countenance. I know not 
 what refined yet cruel brutality that contrasted with 
 his deep eyes full of knowledge shining under heavy 
 lids. His blood leapt and pulsated violently through- 
 out his body to the extreme joints of the firm hands 
 and to the toes of the nimble feet ; and occult things 
 were about his whole being, concealing joy as the 
 grape still in flower conceals the wine; and all the 
 tawny gold and purple that He brought with him 
 were like the raiment of his senses. . . . 
 
 "With what passion, palpitating under her thousand
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 55 
 
 girdles of green and the weight of her great jewels, 
 the City Beautiful gave herself up to the magnificent 
 God ! " 
 
 Lifted up in the vortex of those words, the soul of 
 the crowd seemed to reach the sense of Beauty at 
 one bound, at a height never before attained, and to 
 stand surprised there. The poet's eloquence was 
 seconded by the expression of all that surrounded 
 him; it seemed to resume and continue the rhythms 
 obeyed by all that effigied strength and grace; it 
 seemed to sum up the unlimited concordances be- 
 tween the forms created by human art and the 
 qualities of the natural atmosphere that perpetu- 
 ated themselves. This was why his voice had so 
 much power; why his gesture so easily enlarged the 
 outlines of images ; why in every syllable he pro- 
 nounced there was added to the significance of the 
 letter the suggestive power of sound. And it was 
 not the effect of the usual electric communication 
 established between speaker and audience only, but 
 of the spell that held the wonderful edifice to its 
 foundations and that gathered extraordinary vigour 
 from the unaccustomed contact of that palpitating 
 agglomerated humanity. The pulse of the crowd 
 and the voice of the poet seemed to restore their 
 own life to those ancient walls, and to renew its origi- 
 nal spirit in the cold museum with its nucleus of 
 powerful ideas, made concrete and organic in the 
 most durable of substances to bear witness to the 
 nobility of a race. 
 
 A splendour of youth almost divine fell on the 
 women, as it might have fallen in a sumptuous al- 
 cove; they too had felt the anxiety of expectance
 
 56 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and the joy of surrender, like the City Beautiful. 
 They were smiling with vague languor as if exhausted 
 by a sensation that had been too stirring, their bare 
 shoulders emerging like flowers from their corollas 
 of gems. The emeralds of Andriana Duodo, the 
 rubies of Giustiniana Memo, the sapphires of Lu- 
 crezia Priuli, the beryls of Orsetta Contarini, the 
 turquoises of Zenobia Corner, all the heirlooms in 
 whose flame there was a little more than the mere 
 value of their substance, just as in the decorations 
 of the great hall there was a little more than even 
 the value of art, seemed to throw on the white faces 
 of the patrician women the reflection of a joyous, 
 shameless anterior life, as if awakening in them and 
 by some secret virtue raising from the abyss the 
 souls of the voluptuous women who had offered men 
 their bodies saturated with myrrh, with musk, and 
 with amber, and to the public their rouged uncovered 
 breasts. 
 
 As he watched the bust of the large many-eyed 
 chimera on which the feathers of the women's 
 fans flapped softly, hot intoxication swept over his 
 thoughts, disquieting him, suggesting words of al- 
 most carnal essence, some of those living sub- 
 stantial words with which he had often touched 
 women as if with caressing and inviting fingers. 
 The multiplied reverberation in himself of the vibra- 
 tion produced by him shook him so deeply that he 
 was about to lose his usual balance. He felt himself 
 swinging above the crowd like a concave and sono- 
 rous body in which the various resonances were 
 generated by the action of an indistinct though 
 infallible will. During the pauses he would anx-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 57 
 
 iously await the unforeseen manifestation of that will, 
 while the interior echoes still remained as of a voice 
 not his own having pronounced words expressive of 
 thoughts that were new to him. And that sky, and 
 that water, and those marbles, and the autumn as he 
 had described it, seemed to have no connection with 
 his own late sensations, but to belong to a world of 
 dreams of which he had caught sight while he was 
 speaking in a rapid succession of flashes. 
 
 It surprised him, this unknown power that con- 
 verged in him, abolishing the limits of his own 
 person and conferring the fulness of a chorus on 
 his solitary voice. This, then, was the mysterious 
 truce that the revelation of beauty could bring to 
 the daily existence of the breathless multitude ; this 
 the mysterious will that could possess the Poet about 
 to answer the multiform soul questioning him as to 
 the value of life and yearning to raise itself, if once 
 only, towards the eternal idea. He was only the 
 means by which beauty held out the divine gift of 
 oblivion to the men gathered in a place consecrated 
 by centuries of human glory. He was only trans- 
 lating in the rhythm of words the visible language 
 with which the ancient artists had already set forth 
 in that very spot the prayer and aspiration of the 
 race. Those men would now contemplate the world, 
 for an hour at least, with different eyes ; surely they 
 would think and dream with a different soul. 
 
 It was the highest benefit of beauty made mani- 
 fest; it was the victory of art, the liberator, over 
 the misery and anxiety and tedium of ordinary 
 existence; it was one of those happy intervals in 
 which the stabs of necessity and pain seem to cease
 
 58 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and the clenched hand of destiny slowly to relax its 
 hold. His thoughts overstepped the walls that 
 closed the palpitating crowd into a sort of heroic 
 cycle, a zone of red triremes and fortified towers and 
 triumphant processions. The place seemed too nar- 
 row now for the exaltation of his new feeling, and 
 once again the real crowd attracted him, the great, 
 unanimous crowd he had seen outside and had heard 
 sending up in the starry night a clamour by which it 
 was itself intoxicated as by wine or blood. 
 
 And his thoughts went out not only to this but 
 to infinite other multitudes. He conjured them up 
 crowded in a theatre, held by a dominating idea oi 
 truth and beauty ; silent and intent before the great 
 arch of the stage open on some marvellous trans- 
 figuration of human life, or frenzied by the sudden 
 splendour radiating from an immortal phrase. And 
 his dream of higher Art as it rose again showed him 
 mankind once more seized by reverence for the poets 
 as for those who alone can interrupt human anguish 
 for a while, assuage its thirst, and dispense oblivion. 
 And the test he was undergoing, now seemed much 
 too slight : he felt himself capable of creating gigan- 
 tic fictions. And the still formless work that he was 
 nourishing within him leapt with a great shudder of 
 life as he saw the tragic actress standing out from the 
 sphere of constellations, the Muse with the diffusing 
 voice who seemed to carry the very frenzy of those 
 distant multitudes silenced in the folds of her dress. 
 
 Almost as if the intensity of the life he had lived 
 during the pause had exhausted him, there was a 
 more subdued note in his voice when he began 
 speaking again.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 59 
 
 " Under this image," he resumed, " under this 
 image so real and evident to me at the time I saw it 
 that it seemed nearly tangible, do you not see the 
 analogies that make it significant of singular things? 
 
 " The mutual passion of Venice and Autumn that 
 exalts the one and the other to the highest degree of 
 their sensuous beauty has its origin in a deep affinity; 
 for the soul of Venice, the soul fashioned for the City 
 Beautiful by its great artists is autumnal. 
 
 "The correspondence between the external and 
 the interior spectacle once discovered, my enjoyment 
 found itself unspeakably multiplied. The crowd of 
 imperishable forms that peoples its churches and 
 palaces seemed from these latter to answer the har- 
 mony of daylight with a chord so deep and powerful 
 that it soon became dominant. And because the 
 light of Heaven alternates with shadows, but the light 
 of Art lasts in the human soul and cannot be extin- 
 guished when the miracle of the hour ceased to 
 cover all those things, my spirit felt itself alone and 
 ecstatic among the splendours of an ideal autumn. 
 
 " It is under this aspect that the artistic creation 
 hemmed in between the youth of Giorgione and the 
 old age of Tintoretto appears to me. It is purple, 
 golden, rich, and expressive, like a pageant of the 
 earth under the sun's last flame. Whenever I con- 
 sider the impetuous creators of so much powerful 
 beauty an image presents itself to my mind drawn 
 from a fragment of Pindar, ' When the centaurs 
 became acquainted with the virtues of wine, which is 
 sweet as honey and conquers men, they at once ban- 
 ished the white milk from their tables and hastened 
 to partake of their wine in silver horns.' None in
 
 60 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the world knew and tasted of the wine of life more 
 than they. They drew from it a sort of lucid in- 
 toxication that multiplied their power and communi- 
 cated a fertilising energy to their eloquence. And in 
 the most beautiful of their creations the violent throb 
 of their pulses seems to have persisted through the 
 ages, like the very rhythm of Venetian Art. 
 
 " How pure and poetic is the sleep of the Virgin 
 Ursula on her immaculate bed ! A gentle silence 
 hovers in the solitary room ; the habit of prayer 
 seems sketched on the pious lips of the sleeper. The 
 shy light of dawn pierces through the doors and the 
 half-open windows, pointing to the word written on the 
 corner of her pillow. INFANTIA is the simple word 
 spreading round the maiden's head, something like 
 the freshness of morning : INFANTIA. The maiden, 
 already betrothed to the princely barbarian and des- 
 tined for martyrdom, sleeps on. As she lies there 
 fervent, ingenuous, and chaste, does she not seem the 
 image of art such as the precursors saw it in the 
 sincerity of their child-like eyes? INFANTIA. The 
 word calls up all the forgotten ones round that pil- 
 low, Lorenzo Veneziano and Simone da Cusighe, 
 and Catarino and lacobello, and Maestro Paolo and 
 Giambono, and Semitecolo and Antonio, Andrea and 
 Quirizio da Murano, and the whole of the laborious 
 family by which colour, afterwards the rival of fire, 
 was prepared in the burning island of furnaces. 
 
 " But would not they themselves have uttered a 
 cry of surprise had they seen the wave of blood 
 that poured from the breast of the Virgin when 
 pierced by the handsome pagan archer? Blood so 
 crimson flowing from a maiden nurtured on ' white
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 61 
 
 milk ' ! It is a very orgy of slaughter ; the archers 
 have brought their finest arms to it, their richest 
 apparel, their most elegant gestures, as to a festival. 
 The golden-haired barbarian aiming his dart at the 
 martyr with so proud an act of grace seems the 
 youth Eros chrysalised and wingless. 
 
 " This same agreeable slayer of innocence will 
 presently give himself up to the enchantment of 
 music, and laying aside his bow will dream a dream 
 of infinite pleasure. 
 
 " Well may Giorgione be considered as the one 
 to infuse the new soul into him, and to kindle 
 it with an implacable desire. The music that 
 enchants him is not the melody of angelic lutes 
 diffused between the arches that curve over radiant 
 thrones, or dwindling into serene distances in the 
 visions of the third Bellini. It is still at the touch of 
 religious hands that it rises from the harpsichord, 
 but the world it awakens is full of a joy and of a sad- 
 ness in which sin lies hidden. 
 
 " Whoever has looked at the Concerto with saga- 
 cious eyes has fathomed an extraordinary and irrevo- 
 cable moment of the Venetian soul. By means of 
 the harmony of colour, the power of significance of 
 which is unlimited as the mystery of sound, the 
 artist shows us the first workings of a yearning soul 
 to whom life suddenly appears under the aspect of 
 a rich inheritance. 
 
 " The monk sitting at the harpsichord and his 
 older companion are not monks like those that Vit- 
 tore Carpaccio painted flying from the wild beast 
 that Jerome had tamed, in San Giorgio degli Schia- 
 voni. They are of nobler and stronger essence, and
 
 62 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the air they breathe is finer and richer: it is pro- 
 pitious to the birth of a great joy or a great sorrow, 
 or a haughty dream. What notes do the beautiful, 
 sensitive hands draw from the keys where they lin- 
 ger? Magic notes they must be, certainly, to succeed 
 in working in the musician so violent a transfigura- 
 tion. He is half-way through his earthly existence, 
 he is already detached from his youth, already 
 on the verge of decay, and life is only now revealing 
 itself adorned with all its good things, like a forest 
 laden with purple fruit, of which his hands that were 
 intent on other work have never known the velvet 
 bloom. He does not fall under the dominion of some 
 solitary tempting image, because his sensuality slum- 
 bers, but he undergoes a confused kind of anguish in 
 which regret overcomes desire while on the web of 
 the harmonies that he seeks, the vision of his past 
 such as it might have been and was not weaves itself, 
 before his eyes like a design of Chimerae. His com- 
 panion, who is calm because already on the threshold 
 of old age, divines this inner tempest; kindly and 
 gravely he touches the shoulder of the passionate 
 musician with a pacifying movement. Emerging from 
 the warm shadow like the expression of desire itself, 
 we see the youth with the plumed hat and the un- 
 shorn locks, the fiery flower of adolescence, whom 
 Giorgione seems to have created under the influence 
 of a ray reflected from the stupendous Hellenic myth 
 whence the ideal form of Hermaphrodite arose. He 
 is there, present and yet a stranger, separated from 
 the others as one having no care but for his own 
 good. The music seems to exalt his inexpressible 
 dream and to multiply infinitely his power of enjoy-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 63 
 
 ment. He knows that he is master of the life that 
 escapes both the others ; the harmonies sought after 
 by the player seem only the prelude to his own 
 feast. He glances sideways intently as if turning to 
 I know not what that fascinates him, and that he 
 would fascinate ; his closed mouth is a mouth heavy 
 with a yet ungiven kiss ; his forehead is so spacious 
 that the leafiest of crowns would not encumber it, but 
 if I consider his hidden hands, I can only imagine 
 them in the act of crumpling the laurel leaves to per- 
 fume his fingers." 
 
 The hands of the Life-giver moved as if they were 
 imitating the gesture of the covetous youth and truly 
 extracting its essence from the aromatic leaf; the 
 manner of his voice gave to the image thus presented 
 an appearance so strongly detached that all those 
 among his listeners who were young thought their 
 unspeakable desire was at last finding expression, 
 and their inner dream of uninterrupted and unending 
 pleasure being made manifest. A profound emotion 
 seized them, an obscure agitation of controlled im- 
 pulses ; they seemed to divine new possibilities, the 
 prey that was unhoped for and distant seemed hence- 
 forth tangible. Stelio recognised them here and there 
 along the whole length of the hall, leaning against 
 the great reddish bookcases where the numberless 
 volumes of inert and forgotten wisdom lay buried. 
 They occupied the space left free all round, making 
 a border for the compact mass that was like a living 
 hem ; and as the extreme edges of a flag that waves 
 in the wind have a stronger flutter, thus they too 
 throbbed more than the rest of the audience at the 
 valiant breath of the poet's words.
 
 64 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Stelio recognised them all. Some he could distin- 
 guish by the singularity of their attitude, by the ex- 
 cess of emotion betrayed in the curve of their lips, or 
 the throb of their temples, or the fire of their cheeks. 
 On the faces of some that were turned to the open 
 balcony he divined the enchanting effect of the 
 autumn night and their delight in the breezes coming 
 from the weedy lagoon. The eyes of another, in a 
 ray of love, would point out to him some seated 
 woman, looking as if she had given herself up to her- 
 self, with an indefinable expression of impure languor, 
 with a soft snow-white face where the mouth seemed 
 the entrance to a hive moist with honey. ~~^S 
 
 A strange lucidity possessed him, whicrf gave un- 
 usual evidence to the things he saw, as if they ap- 
 peared to him in the hallucination of fever. All 
 things in his eyes were living a hyperbolic life ; the 
 portraits of the Doges that recurred round the room 
 among the white meandering of the maps breathed 
 as truly as the bald old men at the further end whose 
 monotonous gestures he could discern at intervals as 
 they wiped their pale, heated brows. Nothing escaped 
 him ; not the persistent tearfulness of the hanging 
 torches in the bronze baskets that gathered up the 
 wax yellow as amber, nor the extreme fineness of a 
 gemmed hand that would press a handkerchief to 
 sorrowful lips as if to soothe a burn, nor the folds of 
 a light scarf thrown round bare shoulders to which 
 the night breeze breathing through the open bal- 
 conies had brought a shiver. And, nevertheless, 
 while he noted these thousand transient aspects, there 
 remained in his vision the entire image of the vast 
 thousand-eyed chimera, from whose side the tragic
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 65 
 
 Muse emerged, her head rising above the belt of 
 constellations. 
 
 His eyes constantly returned to the promised 
 woman who was appearing to him there as the living 
 fulcrum of a starry world. He was grateful to her 
 for having chosen such a way of appearing to him in 
 the moment of that first communion. He no longer 
 saw in her now the passing mistress of a night, a 
 body ripened by long ardour, laden with voluptuous 
 knowledge, but as the admirable instrument of a new 
 art, the apostle of the highest poetry. He saw in her 
 the woman who was to incarnate his future fictions 
 of beauty in her manifold person ; whose unfor- 
 gettable voice was to carry the words of enlighten- 
 ment to distant peoples. It was not by a promise of 
 pleasure that he now bound himself to her, but by a 
 promise of glory, and the work that was still formless 
 within him leapt once more. 
 
 " You who are listening to me," he continued, " do 
 you not see some analogies between these three sym- 
 bols of Giorgione's and those three generations liv- 
 ing at the time and illumined by the dawn of a new 
 century? Venice, the triumphant city, reveals her- 
 self to their eyes like a great overpleasing banquet 
 where all the wealth gathered by all the centuries 
 of war and commerce is to be spread out without 
 measure, y What richer fountain of pleasure could 
 there be to initiate life in insatiable desire ?\flt 
 is a moment of emotion, almost of bewilderment, 
 that, because of its fulness, is worthy an hour of 
 heroic violence. Stirring voices and laughter seem 
 to come from the hills of Asolo, where in the midst 
 of her pleasures reigns the daughter of San Marco,
 
 66 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Domina Aceli, who found the girdle of Aphrodite in 
 the myrtle gardens of Cyprus. The youth of the 
 white feathers comes at last towards the banquet, a 
 leader followed by an unbridled retinue ; and at last 
 we see all the strongest appetites burning like torches, 
 the flames of which are ceaselessly quickened by an 
 impetuous wind. 
 
 " Thus begins that divine autumn of Art to the 
 splendour of which man will turn with a deep throb 
 of emotion as long as the human soul is capable 
 of aspiring to transcend the narrowness of its daily 
 existence to live a more fervent life or die a nobler 
 death. 
 
 " Giorgione is now imminent on that marvellous 
 sphere, but I cannot recognise his mortal person, and 
 I seek him in the mystery of the fiery cloud that 
 girds him round. He appears more like a myth to 
 us than a man. The destiny of no poet on earth is 
 comparable to his. All, or nearly all, concerning him 
 is unknown. Some have gone so far as to deny his 
 existence. His name is written on no work of his, 
 and no work is attributed to him with certainty. 
 Yet the whole of Venetian art seems to have been 
 inflamed by his revelation. The great Cisan appears 
 to have received from him the secret of infusing a 
 stream of luminous blood into the veins of the beings 
 he creates. In all truth Giorgione represents in Art 
 the Epiphany of the Flame. He deserves to be called 
 the Bearer of Fire, like Prometheus. 
 
 " When I consider the rapidity with which the sa- 
 cred gift has passed from artist to artist, glowing ever 
 more gloriously from colour to colour, the image 
 rises spontaneous in my spirit of one of those festi-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 67 
 
 vals by which the Greeks attempted to perpetuate the 
 image of the Titan son of Japetus. On the day of the 
 festival a group of young Athenian horsemen would 
 ride, galloping from Ceramicus to Colonos, their 
 leader waving a torch lit at the altar of the temple. 
 Whenever the rapidity of their course extinguished 
 it, the bearer would give it up to his companion, who, 
 still galloping, would relight it, and this one passed 
 it to the third, and the third to the fourth, and so on 
 ever galloping until the last laid it, still burning, on 
 the altar of the Titan. This image, with all that is 
 vehement in it, is in some way significant to me of 
 the feast of the master-colourists of Venice. Each of 
 them, even the least glorious, has had the sacred gift 
 in his hand, at least for a moment Some even, like 
 that first Bonifacio whom we should glorify, seem 
 to have gathered with their incombustible fingers the 
 inner flower of this flame." 
 
 His own fingers moved in the air as if to pick the 
 ideal flower from the invisible summit of the wave 
 that the seething soul of the chimera was propelling 
 towards the poet who had conquered it. And his 
 eyes travelled to the celestial sphere, silently offering 
 the fiery gift of that flower to her who watched over 
 the godlike beasts of the Zodiac. " To you, Perdita." 
 
 But the woman was smiling to some one far away, 
 pointing to some one with her smile. And so, by 
 following the thread of her smile, he was led to an 
 unknown person suddenly lit up on a background 
 of shadow. 
 
 Was not that the creature of music whose name 
 had resounded against the iron of the ship in the 
 silence and the shadow?
 
 68 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She seemed to him almost an interior image sud- 
 denly sprung up in that part of his soul where 
 the ghost of the sensation that had fallen upon 
 him as he entered the shadow of the ironclad had 
 remained like an obscure and indistinct point. For 
 a second she was beautiful, with the beauty of his 
 own unexpressed thoughts. 
 
 "A City to which similar creatures have given so 
 powerful a soul," he added, agile on the rising wave, 
 " is only considered to-day, by the many, as a great 
 inert shrine full of relics, or as a refuge full of peace 
 and oblivion ! 
 
 " Indeed I know of no other place in the world 
 unless it be Rome where an ambitious and robust 
 spirit can spur on the active virtue of his intellect 
 and all the energies of his being towards the supreme 
 degree, better than on these sluggish waters. And 
 I know of no marsh capable of provoking in human 
 pulses a fever more violent than that which at times 
 creeps towards us from the shadow of a silent canaL 
 And those men who spend their noontide buried in 
 the ripe crop during the dog-days feel no wilder 
 wave of blood rise to their temples than that which 
 dims our eyes when we bend too intently over these 
 waters, seeking lest by chance we should discover in 
 the depths below them some ancient sword or old lost 
 diadem. 
 
 " Nevertheless, do not all fragile souls come here 
 as to a place of refuge? those who hide some secret 
 wound, those who have accomplished some final 
 renunciation, those whom a morbid love has emascu- 
 lated, and those who only seek silence the better to 
 hear themselves perish? Perhaps Venice is in their
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 69 
 
 eyes a clement city of death, embraced by a sleep- 
 giving pool. Their presence, however, weighs no 
 more than the wandering weeds floating about the 
 steps of the marble palaces. They only serve to 
 increase the singular odour of sickly things, the 
 strange feverish odour on which we have often found 
 it sweet, towards evening, after a laborious day, to 
 nurse the fulness of our own feelings, at times so 
 akin to languor. 
 
 " Yet the ambiguous city does not always indulge 
 the illusion of those who worship her as a peace- 
 giver. I know of one who started up from his rest 
 on her bosom as terrified as if he had been lying 
 with the pliant fingers of his beloved on his tired 
 eyelids and had heard snakes suddenly hissing in 
 her hair. 
 
 " Ah, if I could only show you the prodigious life 
 that I see throbbing under her vast necklaces and 
 her thousand girdles of green ! Day by day she 
 absorbs more of our soul : now giving it back to us 
 intact and fresh, and renewed with a primitive new- 
 ness on which the traces of the morrow's things will 
 impress themselves with ineffable clearness; now 
 giving it back to us infinitely subtle and voracious, 
 like a flame melting all that approaches it, so that at 
 evening, among the dross and ashes of it, we some- 
 times come upon some extraordinary sublimate. 
 She entices each of us into the act that is the very 
 genesis of our species : the effort to surpass our- 
 selves unceasingly. She shows us the possibility of 
 transforming pain into the most efficacious of stimu- 
 lating energies ; she teaches us that joy is the most 
 certain means of knowledge offered us by Nature,
 
 70 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and that he who has suffered much is less wise than 
 he who has much enjoyed." 
 
 Here and there a vague murmur of dissent rip- 
 pled through the audience; the Queen denied the 
 assertion with a slight shake of her head; some 
 ladies communicated a sort of graceful horror to each 
 other in an exchange of glances. Then all was lost 
 in the zeal of the youthful applause that on every 
 side went out to him who taught with such truthful 
 daring the art of ascending to superior forms of life 
 by the power of joy. 
 
 Stelio smiled as he recognised his own, who were 
 many; smiled on recognising the efficacy of his 
 teaching that had already cleared the mists of inert 
 sadness from more than one spirit, and in more than 
 one had killed cowardice and vain tears, and in more 
 than one had instilled for ever a scorn of complain- 
 ing sorrows and weak compassions. He was glad of 
 having given utterance once more to that principle 
 of his doctrine which flowed naturally from the soul 
 of the art he was glorifying.^And they who had 
 withdrawn' into a hermit's cell to adore a sad phantom 
 that only lived in the blurred mirror of their own 
 eyes ; and they who had made themselves kings of 
 a windowless palace, from time immemorial awaiting 
 a visitation there ; and they who had hoped to dig 
 up the image of Beauty from under some ruin and 
 had only found a worn sphinx that had tormented 
 them with its endless enigmas; and they who sat 
 down evening after evening on their doorsteps, pale, 
 to await the arrival of a mysterious stranger bringing 
 endless gifts under his mantle, and pressed their 
 ears flat on the ground to hear the footsteps that
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 71 
 
 now seemed to draw near and now to fade away ; all 
 those who were sterilised by a resigned mourning or 
 devoured by a desperate pride ; those who were hard- 
 ened by a useless obstinacy or kept sleepless by some 
 continually disappointed expectation, he would 
 have bid them all come and recognise their disease 
 under the splendour of that ancient yet ever-resurgent 
 soul. >Js. 
 
 " If its whole population were to emigrate," he said, 
 in a voice full of exaltation, " forsaking its homes, 
 attracted by other shores, as once its own heroic 
 youth were tempted by the arch of the Bosphorus 
 in the time of the Doge Pietro Ziani, and no prayer 
 were again to strike the sonorous gold of the curved 
 mosaics, no oar were again to perpetuate with its 
 ihythm the meditation of the silent stones, Venice 
 would yet and for ever remain a City of Life. The 
 ideal creatures guarded by its silence live in the 
 whole past and in the whole future. We constantly 
 find in them new concordances with the edifice of 
 the Universe that is about to be, unexpected meet- 
 ings with the idea that was born only yesterday, 
 clear announcements of that which is only a fore- 
 boding in us as yet, and open answers to that which 
 we have not yet dared to ask. They are simple, and 
 yet charged with numberless significances ; they are 
 ingenuous, and yet clothed in curious raiment. If we 
 contemplated them for an indefinite length of time, 
 they would never cease from pouring dissimilar 
 truths into our spirits. If we visited them every 
 day, they would appear to us every day under an 
 unforeseen aspect, like the sea, the rivers, the fields, 
 the woods, and the rocks. Sometimes the things
 
 72 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 which they say to us do not r&ach as far as ouf 
 intellect, but are revealed to us in a kind of confused 
 happiness causing our own substance to dilate and 
 quiver from its very depths. Some clear morning 
 they will show us the way to the distant forest where 
 the beautiful one awaits us from time immemorial, 
 buried in her mystic hair. 
 
 "Whence comes their unlimited power? 
 
 " From the pure unconsciousness of the artists 
 who created them. 
 
 " Those profound men ignored the immensity of the 
 things which they expressed. Striking a million roots 
 into the soil of life, not like single trees, but like the 
 vastest forests, they have absorbed infinite elements, 
 which have been transfused and condensed by them 
 into ideal species whose essences have remained un- 
 known to them, as the taste of the apple remains un- 
 known to the branch that bears it. They have been 
 the mysterious means continually chosen by Nature 
 to satisfy her continual aspiration to those types which 
 she has not succeeded in producing in an integral 
 manner. Because of this, while continuing the work 
 of the Divine Mother, their mind has become trans- 
 formed, as Leonardo says, into a ' likeness of the 
 divine mind.' And because creative force inces- 
 santly rushed to their fingers like sap to the buds 
 of the trees, they have created with joy." 
 
 All the desire of the artist panting to obtain the 
 Olympic gift, all his envy of those colossal, untir- 
 ing, and undoubting forgers of beauty, all his thirst 
 for happiness and glory, stood revealed in the 
 accent with which he pronounced the last words. 
 Once more the soul of the multitude was in the
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 73 
 
 poet's power, strained and vibrating like one only 
 chord made of a thousand chords, that incalculably 
 prolonged every resonance. That resonance awak- 
 ened in it the sense of a truth that it had contained 
 all along, but that the words of the poet were sud- 
 denly revealing in the form of a message never 
 heard before. It no longer felt a stranger in the 
 sacred place, where one of the most splendid of 
 human destinies had left so deep a trace of its 
 splendour; but it could feel the aged mass living 
 round it and beneath it, from its deepest foundations, 
 as if its memories, no longer motionless in the shadow 
 of the past, were circulating through it like the free 
 winds of a deeply-stirred forest. In the magic res- 
 pite given to it by the virtue of strength and poetry 
 the multitude seemed to perceive in itself the inde- 
 structible signs of its primitive generation, almost 
 a vague effigy of its remote ascendency; it seemed 
 to recognise its right to an old heritage of which 
 it had been despoiled, that heritage which the 
 messenger was telling them was still intact and 
 within their power to recover. It was experiencing 
 the agitation of one about to regain a lost fortune. 
 And over the night that could be seen glittering 
 through the open balconies, with the red glare of 
 the illumination that was to encircle the harbour be- 
 low beginning to appear, there seemed to be spread 
 the expectation of a foretold home-coming. 
 
 In that sonorous silence the solitary voice reached 
 its climax. 
 
 " To create with joy ! " It is the attribute of 
 Divinity ! It is not possible to imagine at the 
 summit of our spirit a more triumphal act. The
 
 74 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 very words that express it have about them the 
 qualities of the dawn's resplendence. 
 
 " And these artists created by a means that is in 
 itself a joyous mystery: by colour which is the 
 ornament of the world ; colour, which seems the 
 effort of matter to become light. 
 
 " And such was their extreme musical sense of 
 colour that their creation transcends the narrow 
 limits of the pictured symbols, and takes on the 
 high revealing power of an infinite harmony. 
 
 " Never has the sentence pronounced by that 
 Vinci on whom Truth flashed one day with its thou- 
 sand sacred faces appeared so evident as before their 
 great symphonic canvases. Music cannot be called 
 other than the sister of painting. Their painting 
 is not only silent poetry, it is also silent music. 
 For this, the subtlest seekers of rare symbols and 
 those most anxious to impress the signs of an in- 
 ternal Universe on the purity of a thoughtful brow 
 seem to us almost barren in comparison to these 
 great unconscious musicians. 
 
 " When we see Bonifacio in his Parable of Dives 
 intoning with a note of fire the most powerful har- 
 mony of colour in which the essence of a haughty 
 and voluptuous soul has ever stood revealed, we do 
 not pause with our inquiry at the fair youth listening 
 to the music, seated between the two magnificent 
 courtesans, whose faces have the gleam of lamps lit 
 in pure ether. But piercing through the material 
 symbol we give ourselves up with anxious emotion 
 to the power of evocation held by those far-reaching 
 chords, in which our spirits of to-day seem to find 
 the foresight of I know not what evening, heavy with
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 75 
 
 autumnal gold as with beautiful destinies, on a har- 
 bour quiet as a basin of perfumed oils where a galley 
 throbbing with oriflames shall enter in the midst of a 
 strange silence, like a twilight butterfly fluttering into 
 the veined chalice of a great flower. 
 
 " Shall not our mortal eyes really see it landing 
 under the palace of the Doges some glorious evening? 
 
 " Does it not appear to us from a prophetic horizon 
 in that Allegory of Autumn which Tintoretto offers 
 us, like a superior created image of our dream of 
 yesterday? 
 
 " Seated on the shore like a deity Venice receives 
 the ring from the young vine-crowned god who has 
 descended into the water, while Beauty soars on her 
 wings with the diadem of stars to crown the wonder- 
 ful alliance. 
 
 " Look at the distant ship ! it seems to bring some 
 announcement. Look at the body of the symbolic 
 woman ! both seem capable of bearing the germs of 
 a world." 
 
 The vast bursting applause was overpowered by 
 the youthful clamour that rose like a whirlwind 
 towards him who had made so great a hope flash 
 before their anxious eyes, towards him who had 
 revealed himself as possessing so lucid a faith in the 
 occult genius of their race, in the growing virtue of 
 the ideals handed down by their fathers, in their 
 sovereign dignity of spirit, in the indestructible power 
 of Beauty, in all the great values held as nothing by 
 modern barbarity. The hearts of his disciples went 
 out to the master with an impulse of love, with all 
 the effusion of gratitude, for his ardent words had 
 brought torch-lights to their souls, and had excited
 
 76 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 their sense of life to the point of fever. Giorgione's 
 creation lived again in each of them : the youth with 
 the beautiful white feathers, about to grasp the im- 
 mense accumulated spoil. And to each it seemed as 
 if his power of enjoyment had been infinitely multi- 
 plied. Their cry was so expressive of internal tumult, 
 that the Life-giver shivered inwardly, filled by a 
 sudden tide of sadness as he thought of the ashes of 
 that transient fire, of the morrow's cruel awakening. 
 Against what sharp and ignoble hindrances would 
 it not have to break, this, their terrible desire of liv- 
 ing, and the violent will to direct all the energies of 
 their being to a sublime end, to shape the wings of 
 victory for their own fate ! 
 
 But the night was favourable to that youthful 
 delirium. The dreams of domination, of pleasure, 
 and of glory that Venice has first nursed, and then 
 suffocated in her marble arms, seemed to rise again 
 from the foundations of the palaces, entering by the 
 open balconies, throbbing like a people newly restored 
 to life under the enormous scrolls of the ceiling that 
 was rich and heavy like a suspended treasure. The 
 strength that was swelling the muscles of the gods, 
 kings, and heroes effigied round the ample dome and 
 the high walls; the beauty that flowed like visible 
 music through the nudity of the goddesses, the 
 queens, and the courtesans ; the human strength and 
 beauty transfigured by centuries of art, harmonised 
 in one single image, that those intoxicated men 
 seemed to see real and breathing before their eyes, 
 erected there by the new poet. 
 
 Their intoxication vented itself in the shout they 
 sent up to him who had offered their parched lips a
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 77 
 
 cup of his own wine. All henceforth would be able 
 to see the inextinguishable flame through the veil of 
 water. Some one among them already imagined him- 
 self crumpling laurel leaves to perfume his fingers, and 
 some already dreamt of discovering at the bottom of 
 a silent canal the ancient sword and the old, lost 
 diadem. 
 
 Stelio Effrena was alone with the statues in one 
 of the rooms of the neighbouring museum, impatient 
 of any other contact, feeling the necessity of recollect- 
 ing himself and quieting the unusual vibration by 
 which his whole essence had been dissipated and dis- 
 persed over the manifold spirit of the crowd. There 
 was no trace in his memory of his recent words ; he 
 could find no sign of his recent images. All that 
 persisted in his mind was that " inner flower of the 
 flame " that he had mentioned when glorifying the 
 first Bonifacio, and had gathered with his own incom- 
 bustible fingers for the promised woman. It again 
 struck him how at the moment of a spontaneous 
 offer, the woman had withdrawn herself, and how, in 
 the place of her absent eyes, he had found the indi- 
 cating smile. The cloud of ecstasy that had been on 
 the point of dissolving seemed to again condense 
 above his head ; assuming the vague shape of the 
 creature of music, and holding the flaming flower in 
 an attitude of dominion, it seemed that she was 
 emerging above his inward agitation as on the inces- 
 sant tremble of a summer sea. The first notes of the 
 symphony of Benedetto Marcello reached him from 
 the neighbouring hall as if to celebrate that image,
 
 ;8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 their fugue-like movement at once revealing its char- 
 acter of great style. A clear, sonorous idea, strong 
 as a living person, developed itself in the measure of 
 its power, and in that music he recognised the virtue 
 of the same principle round which as round a thyrsus 
 he had entwined the garland of his poetry. 
 
 Then the name that had already echoed against the 
 flank of the ironclad, in the silence and the shadow, 
 the name that had been scattered like a sibylline leaf 
 by the immense wave of the evening bells, seemed to 
 propose its syllables to the orchestra for him, like a 
 new theme picked up by the bows of the instruments. 
 The violins, the viols, and the violoncellos sang it in 
 turn ; the sudden blasts of the heroic trumpets ex- 
 alted it; finally, with a uniform impetus the whole 
 quartette launched it into that heaven of joy where 
 the crown of stars offered to Ariadne by the golden 
 Aphrodite would presently shine. 
 
 In the pause which followed, Stelio underwent a 
 singular bewilderment, almost a religious stupor, as if 
 he had assisted at an annunciation. He understood 
 what a precious thing it was to him to be alone among 
 those pure, silent images in that inestimable lyric 
 moment. 
 
 A shred of the same mystery that he had grazed 
 under the flank of the ironclad as one touches a float- 
 ing veil seemed to waver before his eyes in that de- 
 serted room that was yet so near to the human crowd. 
 It was silent, like the sea-shell lying on the shore by 
 the rushing waves. Again, as before at other extraor- 
 dinary hours of his journey, he felt that his fate was
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 79 
 
 present and about to give his being a new impulse, 
 perhaps to call to life in it a marvellous act of will. 
 And as he reflected on the mediocrity of the many 
 obscure destinies hanging over those heads in the 
 crowd, that were eager for the apparitions of ideal 
 life, he rejoiced at being where he was to adore the 
 auspicious demon-figure that had secretly come to 
 visit him and to bring him a shrouded gift in the 
 name of an unknown mistress. 
 
 He started at the burst of human voices saluting 
 the unconquered king with a triumphant acclamation. 
 "Viva il forte, viva il grande." . . . 
 
 The deep hall echoed like a vast timbrel, and the 
 reverberation diluted along the staircase of the cen- 
 sors and the Golden Staircase, to the loggias, the pas- 
 sages, the porches, the vestibules, to the wells, to the 
 foundations of the palace, like a thunder of gladness 
 rolling in the serene night. 
 
 " Viva il forte, viva il grande 
 Vincitor dell' Indie dome." * . . . 
 
 It seemed that the chorus was saluting the appari- 
 tion of the magnificent god invoked by the poet upon 
 the Sea-City. It seemed as if the hem of his purple 
 raiment fluttered in those vocal notes like flames in a 
 crystal tube. The living image hung suspended over 
 the crowd that it was nourishing with its own dream. 
 " Viva il forte, viva il grande." . . . 
 
 In the impetuous fugue movement of the bassi, the 
 contralti and the soprani repeated their frenzied ac- 
 clamation of the Immortal of the thousand names and 
 
 1 " Hail to the strong, hail to the great conqueror of vanquished 
 India."
 
 80 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the thousand crowns, " born on an ineffable bed, 
 like to a young man in his first youth." 
 
 The old Dionysian intoxication seemed to revive 
 and diffuse itself over the divine Chorus. The ful- 
 ness and freshness of life in the smile of Zeus, who 
 loosed the hearts of men from human sufferings, was 
 expressed there with a luminous burst of joy. The 
 inextinguishable fires of the Bassarides flamed and 
 crackled there. As in the Orphean hymn the light 
 of a conflagration illumined the young brow crowned 
 with azure hair. " When the splendour of fire in- 
 vaded all the earth, he alone chained up the shrill 
 whirlwinds of flame." As in the Homeric hymn the 
 barren bosom of the sea throbbed there, the meas- 
 ured stroke of the numerous oars that were pushing 
 the well-built vessel to unknown lands echoed there. 
 The Florid, the Fruit-bearer, the visible Remedy of 
 mortals, the sacred Flower, the Friend of pleasure, 
 Dionysius the liberator, suddenly reappeared before 
 the face of man on the wings of song, crowning that 
 nocturnal hour with bliss, incessantly holding out to 
 his senses as in a full chalice all the good things of life. 
 
 The strength of the song was increasing, the voices 
 blending in its rush. The hymn now celebrated the 
 tamer of tigers, of panthers, of lions, and of lynxes. 
 The Maenads seemed to scream out here with heads 
 thrown back, and locks scattered, and dresses loos- 
 ened, striking their cymbals, shaking their citherns. 
 " Evoe ! " 
 
 A broad pastoral rhythm rose unexpectedly from 
 these heroic sounds, bringing forth the images of the 
 Theban Bacchus of the pure brow circled with gentle 
 thoughts.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 81 
 
 "Quel che all' olmo la vite in stretto nodo 
 Pronuba accoppia, e i pampini feconda." l 
 
 Only two voices in a succession of sixths now sang 
 the leafy nuptials, the green marriage-feast, the flexi- 
 ble ties. The image of the boat on the lagoon, laden 
 with bunches like a wine-press about to be trodden, 
 already created by the poet's words, passed again 
 before the eyes of the multitude. And the song 
 seemed to repeat the miracle witnessed by the pru- 
 dent pilot Medeia. " And it came to pass that a 
 sweet and most fragrant wine ran along the swift, 
 black boat. . . . And a vine unfolded itself up to 
 the top of the sail, and from it hung numberless 
 bunches. And a dark ivy twisted itself about the 
 mast, and it was covered with flowers, and beautiful 
 fruits grew on it, and garlands were about the row- 
 locks." 
 
 The spirit of the fugue then passed into the orches- 
 tra, disburdened itself there in beautiful volutes while 
 the voices struck the web of the orchestra with a 
 simultaneous percussion. And like a light thyrsus 
 brandished above the Bacchic crowd, a single voice 
 repeated the impartial melody, smiling with the grace 
 of that pastoral marriage. 
 
 " Viva dell' olmo 
 E della vite 
 L' almo fecondo 
 Sostenitor!"* 
 
 The single voices seemed to call forth a picture 
 of erect Tiades gently waving their thyrsi in the 
 
 1 " He who tightly clasps the vine to the elm-tree, weds them one 
 to the other, and fructifies its tendrils." 
 
 * " Hail to the great, fruitful supporter of the vine and the elm-tree."
 
 82 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 fumes of their intoxication, dressed in long crocus- 
 coloured garments, their faces alight, palpitating 
 like the women of Veronese who were bending 
 from aerial balustrades to drink in the song. 
 
 The heroic applause came up once more with 
 final vehemence. The face of the conquering God 
 flashed again among the madly waved torches. 
 Voices and orchestra thundered in unison in a 
 supreme impulse of joy at the huge chimera full oi 
 eyes under the hanging treasure of the ceiling in the 
 circle of red triremes and armed towers and trium- 
 phant processions. 
 
 " Viva dell' Indie, 
 Viva de' mari, 
 Viva de' mostri 
 Ildomator!" 1 
 
 Stelio Effrena had come as far as the threshold ; 
 through the throng that gave way as he passed he 
 penetrated into the hall, and remained standing 
 against one of the sides of the platform occupied by 
 the singers and the orchestra. His anxious eyes 
 sought la Foscarina by the heavenly sphere, but did 
 not find her. 
 
 The head of the tragic muse no longer rose above 
 the belt of constellations. Where was she? Where 
 had she withdrawn herself? Could she be seeing 
 him without his seeing her? An obscure feeling of 
 agitation perturbed him, and all they had seen that 
 evening on the waters returned to his spirit con- 
 fusedly accompanied by her parting words of promise. 
 As he looked through the open balconies he thought 
 
 1 " Hail to the conqueror of India, of the seas, and of the 
 monsters."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 83 
 
 she had gone out into the night air, and that perhaps 
 she was leaning against the parapet, feeling the waves 
 of music pass over her cold neck, deriving from them 
 a joy as of shivers communicated by long kisses. 
 
 The expectation of the revealing voice, however, 
 overpowered every other thought, abolished every 
 other anxiety. He noticed that a deep silence had 
 come over the hall, as in the moment when he had 
 opened his lips for his first syllable. As in that 
 moment the elusive and versatile monster with the 
 thousand human faces seemed to stretch out dumbly, 
 making a void in itself to receive a new soul. 
 
 He heard some one round him whisper the name 
 of Donatella Arvale ; he turned his eyes towards the 
 platform beyond the dark hedge of the violoncelli. 
 The singer was invisible, concealed by the delicate, 
 quivering forest, whence the sorrowful harmony 
 was about to arise that was to accompany Ariadne's 
 lament. 
 
 In the propitious silence the violins unfolded the 
 prelude. The viols and the violoncellos then added 
 a deeper sigh to that imploring moan. After the 
 Phrygian flute and the Berecinthian cithern, after the 
 instruments of revelry the sounds of which trouble 
 the reason and spur on delirium, was not this, grave 
 and sweet, the august Doric lyre, the harmonious 
 fulcrum of song? It was the birth of the Drama 
 from the noisy Dithyramb. The great metamor- 
 phosis of the Dionysian rite, the frenzy of the sacred 
 festival converted into the creative enthusiasm of the 
 tragedian, seemed figured by that musical vicis- 
 situde. The fiery breath of the Thracian god had 
 given life to a sublime form of art. The crown and the
 
 &4 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 tripod decreed as the prize of the poet's victory had 
 taken the place of the lascivious goat and the Attic 
 basket of figs. ^Eschilus, keeper of a vineyard, had 
 been visited by the god, and had received the infusion 
 of his spirit of flame. On the slope of the Acropolis, 
 by the sanctuary of Dionysius, a marble theatre had 
 arisen worthy of containing the chosen people. 
 
 Thus, suddenly in the inner world of the Life-giver 
 the pathways of the centuries had opened up, and 
 were stretching away into the distance of primitive 
 mysteries. That form of art to which the effort of 
 his genius was tending, attracted by the obscure 
 aspirations of human multitudes, now appeared to 
 him in all the sanctity of its origins. The divine 
 sorrow of Ariadne, coming like a melodious cry out 
 of the furious Thiaros, imparted a throb to the already 
 living, though still formless, work that he was nourish- 
 ing within him. Again his glance sought the Muse 
 of the propagating voice against the belt of con- 
 stellations. As he did not see her, he turned to the 
 forest of instruments whence the moan arose. 
 
 Then, among the slight bows that rose and fell on 
 the strings with an alternating motion, he saw the 
 singer. She was standing straight as a stem, and 
 like a stem swaying a little to the hushed harmony. 
 The youthfulness of her agile yet robust body seemed 
 resplendent through the tissue of her garments like a 
 flame seen through the thinness of polished ivory. 
 The bows seemed to draw their note from the occult 
 music that was in her as they rose and fell round her 
 white form. When she curved her lips for her first 
 words Stelio felt the strength and purity of the voice 
 before he heard its modulation, as if she were before
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 85 
 
 him like a crystal vase in which he could trace the 
 ascension of a living spring. 
 
 " Come mai puoi 
 Vedermi piangere?" * . . . 
 
 The melody of antique love and sorrow flowed 
 from those lips with an expression so strong and 
 pure, that as it passed into the manifold soul of the 
 audience it immediately changed into mysterious joy. 
 Was it indeed the divine weeping of the daughter 
 of Minos as she h'eld out her deluded arms to the 
 Flavian guest from the deserted shore of Naxos? 
 The fable vanished, abolishing the deception of time. 
 The eternal love and eternal sorrow of gods and 
 men breathed in the sovereign voice. The useless 
 regret of each lost joy, the last recalling of each 
 fugitive good, the supreme prayer to every sail van- 
 ishing in the sea, to every sun hiding in the moun- 
 tains, the implacable desire and the promise of death 
 passed into the great, solitary song, transformed 
 by the virtue of art into sublime essences that the 
 soul could receive without suffering. The v/ords 
 themselves dissolved in it, lost all meaning, changed 
 into indefinitely revealing notes of love and sorrow. 
 Like a circle that is closed and yet dilates continually 
 with the same throb as universal life, the melody had 
 circumscribed the manifold soul that yet dilated with 
 it in an immense joy. Through the open balconies, 
 in the perfect calm of the autumn night, the fascina- 
 tion spread over the torpid waters, rose to the vigi- 
 lant stars, went beyond the motionless masts of the 
 ships, beyond the sacred towers inhabited by the 
 
 * " How can you bear to see me weep ? "*
 
 86 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 now silent bells. In the interludes the singer would 
 bend her young head, apparently lifeless as an image, 
 all white in the forest of instruments, surrounded by 
 the alternate motion of the long bows, perhaps un- 
 conscious of the world that her song had in a 
 moment transfigured. 
 
 Stelio Effrena reached the courtyard by a secret 
 outlet, so as to be spared the curiosity of the im- 
 portunate, and took refuge in a fragment of shadow. 
 Thence he watched the throng at the head of the 
 Scala dei Giganti and waited for the two women, 
 the singer and the actress, who had promised to 
 meet him at the well. 
 
 At every instant his expectation became more 
 anxious. The immense cry rising round the outer 
 walls of the palace reached him and then lost itself 
 in the heavens that were illumined by a red glare as 
 of a conflagration. An almost terrible joy seemed 
 spreading over the Sea-City. It seemed that a vehe- 
 ment breath had suddenly come to dilate the narrow 
 hearts, and that a superabundance of sensual life was 
 swelling the arteries of man. The repetition of the 
 Bacchic chorus celebrating the crown of stars laid 
 by Aphrodite on the forgetful head of Ariadne, the 
 great hymn of glory followed by the supreme clam- 
 ours of the revels of Thiaros, had drawn a cry from 
 the throng gathered on the Molo under the open 
 balconies. 
 
 At the final elevation, in unison on the word 
 " Viva!" in the chorus of Maenads, Satyrs, and 
 Egipans, the chorus of the populace in the harbour
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 87 
 
 of San Marco had answered like a formidable echo. 
 And at that point it had seemed as if their delirium, 
 remembering the woods burned of old on the sacred 
 nights, had given the signal of the conflagration in 
 which the beauty of Venice was finally to stand 
 resplendent. 
 
 The dream of Paris Eglano flashed on Stelio's 
 desire, the spectacle of the miraculous flames 
 offered to love on the floating bed. The image of 
 Donatella Arvale persisted in his eyes : a nimble, 
 youthful figure, powerful and shapely, standing out 
 of the forest of sound in the midst of the alternating 
 motion of the bows that seemed to draw their note 
 from the hidden music that was in her. And, with 
 a strange pain in which there passed something like 
 a shadow of horror, he saw the image of the other 
 woman, poisoned by art, overcharged with volup- 
 tuous knowledge, her eloquent mouth full of the 
 savours of maturity and corruption, a dryness as of 
 fever in her hands that had pressed the juice from 
 all deceitful fruits, and the traces of a hundred masks 
 on her face that had shammed the fury of mortal 
 passions. To-night at last, after the long interme- 
 diate desire, he was to receive the gift of the age- 
 ing body, that was saturated with caresses and yet 
 still unknown to him. How he had trembled and 
 vibrated a little while ago, as he sat by the side 
 of the silent woman, gliding towards the City Beau- 
 tiful on waters that had seemed to both as if rushing 
 through a fearful clepsydra ! Ah, why was she now 
 coming towards him with the other temptress? Why 
 was she placing, by the side of her knowledge full of 
 despair, the pure splendour of that young life?
 
 88 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 With a deep throb he noticed the figure of la 
 Foscarina standing in the light of the smoking 
 torches at the top of the marble staircase, so tightly 
 pressed by the crowd upon that of Donatella Arvale 
 that they blended into each other in one same white- 
 ness. His eyes followed them down the staircase in 
 the same suspense, as if at every step they were put- 
 ting their feet on the margin of an abyss. In those 
 brief hours the stranger had already lived within 
 him a life so intense that his emotion on seeing her 
 draw near him was such as he would have felt had 
 he suddenly been met by the living incarnation of 
 one of the ideal creatures born of his art. 
 
 She was coming slowly down through the human 
 tide that her song had raised for a moment to the 
 height of joy. Behind her, the Palace of the Doges, 
 crossed by sudden flashes and confused sounds, gave 
 the impression of one of those fabulous awakenings 
 that suddenly transfigure the inaccessible palaces in 
 the midst of a wood where the long hair on some royal 
 head had grown in their solitude through the ages, 
 feeding on their silence like the eternal willows on 
 a lethal river. The two guardian Giants blazed red 
 in the red light of the torches; the cusp of the 
 Golden Gate glittered with little lamps ; beyond the 
 north wing, the five cupolas of the basilica reigned 
 in the heavens like vast mitres studded with chryso- 
 lites. And still the great clamour rose, rose above 
 the crowd of marbles, bold as the lowing of the 
 sea in a storm against the walls of Malamocco. 
 Stelio saw the two temptresses come to his desire 
 in the midst of this festive tumult, in this con- 
 trast of unusual appearances, both emerging from
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 89 
 
 the crowd as from the clasp of a monster. And 
 his desire pictured to him extraordinary promiscui- 
 ties which he believed could be realised with the 
 facility of dreams and the solemnity of liturgic 
 ceremonies. He thought Perdita must be leading 
 that magnificent prey to him for some recondite 
 aim of beauty, for some great work of love which 
 she herself would help him accomplish. Perdita's 
 words that night, he thought, would be wonderful 
 in their meaning. And the indefinable melancholy 
 he had felt on leaning over the bronze edge, on 
 gazing at the reflection of the stars in the dark 
 inner well, passed over his spirit; he seemed to feel 
 himself in the expectation of some event about to 
 stir that secret soul in the last depths of his being 
 which had remained, like the mirror of water, un- 
 moved and strange and intangible. By the dizzy 
 quickening of his thoughts, he understood that he 
 had attained the state of grace, that he was near 
 the divine delirium which only the virtues of the 
 lagoon could give him. And he went forth from the 
 shadow to meet the two women with an intoxicating 
 presentiment. 
 
 " Oh, Effrena," la Foscarina said, coming up to 
 the well, " I did not hope to find you here. We 
 are very late, are we not? But we were hemmed in 
 by the crowd without escape. ..." 
 
 Turning to her companion, she added, smiling, 
 " Donatella, here is the Lord of the Flame." 
 
 Without speaking, yet smiling, Donatella Arvale 
 acknowledged Stelio's deep salute. 
 
 Drawing her towards her, la Foscarina resumed : 
 
 " We must go and look for our gondola. It is wait
 
 90 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 ing for us at the Ponte della Paglia. Are you coming 
 with us, Effrena? We must seize our moment. The 
 crowd is rushing towards the Piazzetta. The Queen 
 comes out by the Porta della Carta." 
 
 A long, united cry greeted the appearance of the 
 fair pearled Queen at the head of the staircase, whence 
 at one time, in the presence of the people, the Doge 
 was wont to receive the ducal ensign. Once more 
 the name of the white starry flower and of the pure 
 pearl was repeated by the crowd and echoed by the 
 marble. Flashes of joy sparkled in the sky; a thou- 
 sand pigeons of fire flew away from the pinnacles of 
 San Marco like flaming messengers. 
 
 "The Epiphany of the Flame," exclaimed la 
 Foscarina, as on reaching the Molo she came upon 
 the hallucinating spectacle. 
 
 By her side Donatella Arvale and Stelio Effrena 
 stopped, struck with wonder, looking at each other 
 with dazed eyes. And their faces, lit up by the 
 reflection, shone as if they were bending over a 
 furnace or the mouth of a crater. 
 
 All the innumerable appearances of volatile and 
 many-coloured Fire spread over the firmament, 
 crawled on the water, twined round the masts of the 
 vessels, garlanded the cupolas and the towers, adorned 
 the entablatures, wrapped themselves round the 
 statues, budded on the capitals, enriched every line, 
 transfigured every aspect of the sacred and profane 
 architectures in the midst of which the deep harbour 
 was like an enchanted mirror that multiplied the 
 marble. The astonished eye could no longer distin-
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 91 
 
 guish the quality of the various elements : it was 
 deluded by a mobile and measureless vision, all the 
 forms of which lived a lucid, fluid life suspended in 
 vibrating ether, so that the slim prows curving on the 
 waters and the myriad pigeons of fire in the heavens 
 seemed to vie with each other in a similar flight and 
 to both reach the summit of the immaterial edifices. 
 That which in the twilight had seemed a silvery 
 palace dedicated to Neptune and built after the like- 
 ness of tortuous marine forms, had now become a 
 temple built by the willing genii of Fire. It seemed, 
 on a giant scale, one of those labyrinthian dwellings 
 rising on the andirons at the hundred doors of which 
 the two-faced presages with their ambiguous gestures 
 appear to the watching maiden ; it seemed, on a giant 
 scale, one of those frail, regal palaces, ail vermilion, 
 at the thousand windows of which the salamander 
 princesses look out for an instant, laughing voluptu- 
 ously at the thoughtful poet. The sphere of the 
 Fortuna, borne on the shoulders of the Atlantides, 
 radiated on the triple loggia near by, rosy as a wan- 
 ing moon, a cycle of satellites springing from its 
 reflection. From the Riva, from San Giorgio, from 
 the Giudecca, fiery bunches of stars sparkled cease- 
 lessly, converged on high and burst there into roses, 
 lilies, palms, into flowers of Paradise forming an aerial 
 garden that continually melted and continually re- 
 newed itself with ever richer and stranger blossoms. 
 It was like a rapid succession of supernal springs and 
 autumns; an immense rain of sparks made of leaves 
 and petals fell from the dissolution of the heavens, 
 wrapping all things in its tremulous gold. Through 
 the gap that opened out in that thickness one could
 
 92 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 see still far off a beflagged flotilla advancing from 
 the lagoon: a flock of galleys similar perhaps to 
 that which might float through the dream of a child 
 of pleasure, sleeping his last sleep on a bed steeped 
 in deadly perfumes ; like those dream-vessels, they 
 too perhaps had cables made .of the twisted hair of 
 female slaves brought from conquered countries and 
 still dripping with sweet oils ; like them, perhaps, 
 their hulls too were full of myrrh, spikenard, ben- 
 zoin, balsam of Syria, cinnamon, all the aromas ; 
 and of sandal, cedar, terebinth, all the odoriferous 
 woods in different layers. The indescribable colours 
 of the flags that adorned them suggested perfumes 
 and spices. Blue and green and greenish blue, 
 crocus-coloured, violet, and of indistinct blendings, 
 those flags seemed to escape from an internal con- 
 flagration and to have been coloured by unknown 
 processes. Thus, perhaps, in the fury of ancient 
 sieges fire was set to reservoirs that contained the 
 essences destined to the wives of the Syrian princes; 
 and thus, on the water dotted over by the molten 
 matters gathered in its hulls, the magnificent lost 
 fleet advanced towards the harbour, slowly as if its 
 pilots were ecstatic dreams that would lead it to the 
 foot of the columned Lion, there to consume itself 
 like a gigantic votive pyre, perfuming and stupefying 
 the soul of Venice for all eternity. 
 
 " The Epiphany of the Flame ! What an unfore- 
 seen commentary to your poem, Effrena ! The City 
 of Life responds by a miracle to your act of adora- 
 tion. She is all burning, through her veil of water. 
 Are you not satisfied? Look! Millions of golden 
 pomegranates are hanging everywhere."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 93 
 
 The actress was smiling and the festival illumined 
 her face. She seemed under the empire of that 
 singular gaiety of hers that Stelio well knew, and 
 that because of its dull creaking sound gave him the 
 idea of a deep, shut-up house where violent hands 
 suddenly opened all the doors and windows, causing 
 them to turn on their corroded hinges. 
 
 " We must praise Ariadne," he said, " for having 
 given this harmony its highest note." 
 
 He only said those words that the singer might 
 be induced to speak, only because of his desire to 
 hear what the tone of her voice would be when not 
 lifted up in song. But his praise was lost in the 
 reiterated clamour of the crowd that overflowed on 
 the Molo, making delay impossible. From the shore 
 where he stood he helped the two friends into their 
 gondola, then sat down on the stool at their knee, 
 and the long dentellated prow, throwing out sparks, 
 entered into the enchantment. 
 
 " To the Rio Marin, by the Canalazzo," la Foscarina 
 ordered the boatman. "Do you know, Effrena, we 
 are going to have some of your best friends to 
 supper, Francesco de Lizo, Daniele Glauro, Prince 
 Hoditz, Antimo della Bella, Fabio Molza, Baldassare 
 Stampa ? " 
 
 " It is going to be a banquet, then? " 
 
 " Alas ! not that of Cana ! " 
 
 " But will Lady Myrta not be there with her 
 Veronese-like greyhounds?" 
 
 " Certainly, Lady Myrta will not fail ; did you not 
 see her in the hall? She was sitting in one of the 
 first rows wrapped up in you." 
 
 Because they had looked each other in the eyes
 
 94 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 as they spoke, a sudden confusion invaded them. 
 And the remembrance of the full twilight hour they 
 had lived on that same water cleaved by that same 
 oar filled their souls like a tide of troubled blood; 
 they were surprised by a swift return of that same 
 anguish which both had felt when on the point of 
 leaving behind them the silence of the estuary already 
 in the power of shadow and death. And their lips 
 rebelled against vain, deceitful words, and their souls 
 withdrew from the effort of inclining themselves for 
 the sake of prudence towards the passing ornaments 
 of the life of joy that now seemed worthless, absorbed 
 as they were in the consideration of the strange figures 
 that were rising from their own depth with an aspect 
 of monstrous wealth never before seen, like the heaped 
 up treasures that shafts of light were discovering in 
 the night waters. 
 
 And because they were silent as they had been 
 when they approached the vessel with the descending 
 flag, they felt the presence of the creature of music 
 weigh the more heavily on their silence, as in the 
 interval when they had first heard her name ; and, 
 little by little, that weight became intolerable. 
 Nevertheless, she appeared to be as distant from 
 Stelio, who was sitting at her knee, as she had been 
 a moment ago among the forest of instruments : apart 
 and unconscious, as a moment ago in the joy of her 
 song. She had not yet spoken. 
 
 Almost timidly and only to hear her speak, Stelio 
 asked her: 
 
 " Are you staying some time longer in Venice?" 
 
 He had tried to choose the words he should address 
 to her : all those that had come as far as his lips had
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 95 
 
 troubled him, had seemed too full of ambiguous 
 meanings, too much alive, insidious, fit for incal- 
 culable transformations of life like the unknown 
 seed from which spring the thousand roots. And 
 it had seemed to him that none of these could be 
 heard by Perdita too without her love being left the 
 sadder for them. 
 
 Only after having uttered the simple, usual question 
 he noticed that even in its words an infinity of hope 
 and desire could lie hidden. 
 
 " I shall have to leave to-morrow," answered Dona- 
 tella Arvale ; " even now I ought not to be here." 
 
 Her voice, that was so clear and powerful in the 
 heights of song, sounded low and sober as if suffused 
 with a slight opaque quality, suggesting the image of 
 a precious metal wrapped in the most delicate velvet. 
 Her brief answer suggested a place of suffering to 
 which she was about to return, where she would 
 submit herself to some well-known torture ; a sor- 
 rowful strength of will, like iron tempered in tears, 
 sparkled through the veil of her young beauty. 
 
 " To-morrow ! " exclaimed Stelio, with sincere regret. 
 " Have you heard, Signora?" 
 
 " I know," said la Foscarina, gently, taking Dona- 
 tella's hand. " And it is a great sorrow to me to see 
 her go. But she cannot remain too long away from 
 her father. Perhaps you still ignore . . ." 
 
 "What?" Stelio asked quickly. "Is he ill? It 
 is true, then, that Lorenzo Arvale is ill ! " 
 
 " No, he is tired," la Foscarina answered, touching 
 her forehead with an involuntary gesture that showed 
 Stelio the horrible threat hanging over the genius of 
 the artist who had seemed as fertile and untiring as
 
 96 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 one of the old masters : a Delia Robbia or a Verroc- 
 chio. " He is only tired. He needs rest and sooth- 
 ing balsams, and his daughter's song is an unequalled 
 balm to him. Do not you too, Effrena, believe in the 
 healing power of music?" 
 
 " Certainly," he said. " Ariadne has a divine gift 
 by which her power transcends all limits." 
 
 The name of Ariadne came spontaneously to his 
 lips to indicate the singer such as he saw her. It 
 seemed to him that he could not utter the girl's own 
 name preceded by the ordinary generic epithet im- 
 posed by social customs. As he saw her, she was 
 singular and entire, freed from the small ties of cus- 
 tom, living her own secluded life, like a great work 
 on which style should have set its inviolable seal. In 
 his eyes, she was isolated like those figures that stand 
 out because of sharp and deepened outline, a stranger 
 to ordinary life, fixed on some profoundly secret 
 thought; and already, before the intensity of that 
 concentration, he felt a kind of passionate impatience 
 not dissimilar to that of the curious man who should 
 find himself before sbme hermetically closed thing 
 that tempts him. 
 
 " Ariadne had for the healing of her sorrows 
 that gift of oblivion," she said, " which is denied 
 to me." 
 
 A perhaps involuntary bitterness coloured her 
 words. In it Stelio perceived the landmarks of an 
 aspiration towards some life that should be less 
 oppressed by useless suffering. His rapid intuition 
 divined her indignation at her state of slavery, her 
 horror of the sacrifice to which she was forcing her- 
 self, the vehement desire in her of rising towards joy,
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 97 
 
 and the aptitude in her of being drawn like a beauti* 
 ful bow by some strong hand that should know how 
 to use it as its weapon for a great conquest. He 
 divined that she had lost all hope of her father's 
 recovery; that it was painful to her to henceforth 
 feel herself no more than the custodian of an extin- 
 guished hearth, of ashes that had no sparks ; and the 
 image of the great stricken artist appeared to him 
 not such as he was, since he had never seen his per- 
 ishable mask, but such as he was pictured to him 
 by the ideas of beauty which he had expressed in 
 lasting bronze and marble. And he gazed fixedly at 
 that image in an agony of terror more icy than that 
 which the most awful aspects of death could have 
 inspired. And all his strength and all his pride 
 and all his desire seemed to resound within him 
 like a bundle of arms scattered by a threatening 
 hand, and there was no fibre in him which did not 
 quiver. 
 
 La Foscarina raised the funeral pall that in the 
 midst of the splendours of the festival had changed 
 the gondola into a coffin. 
 
 " See there, Effrena," she said, pointing to the 
 balcony of Desdemona's house. " See the fair 
 Nineta receiving the homage of the Serenade seated 
 between her monkey and her pet dog." 
 
 " Ah, the fair Nineta," exclaimed Stelio, shaking 
 off his sad thoughts, bending towards the smiling bal- 
 cony and, with cordial vivacity, sending a greeting to 
 the little woman who was listening to the musicians by 
 the light of two silver candelabra. Garlands of the 
 year's last roses hung entwined about the sconces. 
 a I have not seen her again yet. She is the gentlest
 
 98 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and most graceful animal I know. What a piece of 
 good fortune it was for our dear Hoditz to have dis- 
 covered her behind the lid of a harpsichord while 
 rummaging in an old curiosity shop at San Samuele ! 
 Two pieces of good fortune in one day: the fair 
 Nineta and a lid painted by Pordenone. From that 
 day the harmony of his life has been complete. How 
 I should like you to penetrate to his nest ! You 
 would find there a truly admirable example of what I 
 was saying to-day at sunset. Here is a man who by 
 obeying his native taste for subtlety has composed 
 his own little fable with minute art, and in it he lives 
 as happy as his Moravian ancestor in the arcadia of 
 Rosswald. Ah, how many exquisite things I know 
 of him ! " 
 
 A wide peota adorned with many-coloured lanterns 
 full of singers and musicians was floating under the 
 house of Desdemona. The old song of brief youth 
 and passing beauty rose sweetly to the little woman 
 who listened, smiling her childlike smile, between 
 her monkey and her little dog as in a print by Pietro 
 Longhi. 
 
 ** Do beni vu ghave, 
 Beleza e zoventu ; 
 Co i va no i torna piu, 
 Nina, mia cara." 1 
 
 " Don't you think that this is the true soul of 
 Venice and that the other one which you have pic- 
 
 1 " Two good things are yours, 
 Beauty and youth ; 
 When they go they will not return 
 Nina, my dear."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 99 
 
 tured to the crowd is only your own, Effrena?" said 
 la Foscarina, her head swaying a little to the languid 
 melody that floated all along the Grand Canal, 
 repeated far away by the other song-boats. 
 
 " No, this is not it," answered Stelio. " There is 
 within each of us, flitting like a butterfly on the sur- 
 face of our deep souls, a more trivial soul, an animula 
 vagula, a slight playful-spirit that often carries us away 
 and persuades us to yield to easy, mediocre pleasures, 
 to puerile pastimes and light melodies. This ani- 
 mula vagula is there, even in the gravest and most 
 violent natures, like the clown attached to the per- 
 son of Othello, and often it deceives our judgment. 
 You are listening now to the child-soul of Venice, 
 humming on its guitars ; but her real soul is only 
 to be discovered in her silence, and most terribly, 
 be sure of that, in full summer, in the full noon- 
 tide, like the great Pan. Nevertheless, there on 
 the harbour of San Marco I had indeed thought 
 that you were feeling its vibration in the immense 
 conflagration. You are forgetting Giorgione for 
 Rosalba." 
 
 Round the peota full of song other boats had as- 
 sembled, full of languid women, who turned towards 
 the music with gestures of lassitude, as if on the 
 point of sinking into invisible arms. And round all 
 that accumulated voluptuousness, the reflections of 
 the lanterns in the water trembled like a flowering 
 of luminous multicoloured water-lilies. 
 
 " Se lassar& passar 
 La bela e fresca eta, 
 Un zorno i ve dirk 
 Vechia maura ;
 
 ioo THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 E bramar&, ma invan, 
 Quel che shavevi in man 
 Co av lassa scampar 
 La congiontura." l 
 
 It was truly the song of the year's last roses fading 
 away as they twined round the sconces. In Perdita's 
 soul it conjured up the pageant of dead summer, 
 the opalescent veil in which Stelio had wrapped the 
 gentle corpse dressed in gold. Through the glass 
 sealed by the Lord of the Flame, she could see her 
 own image lying at the bottom of the lagoon, on 
 its field of seaweeds. A sudden chill took hold of 
 her limbs ; again the horror and disgust of her own 
 ageing body gripped her. And, remembering the 
 recent promise, thinking how her beloved might that 
 very night exact the keeping of it, her whole body 
 contracted in the pulsation of her sorrowful modesty 
 made of fear and of pride. Her experienced, des- 
 pairing eyes ran over the woman beside her, sought 
 her out, penetrated her, felt her occult but certain 
 strength, her intact freshness, her pure healthiness, 
 and that indefinable virtue of love emanating like 
 an aroma from the chaste bodies of virgins once they 
 have attained the perfection of their blossoming. 
 She seemed to admit the secret affinity that already 
 ran between the girl and the Life-giver. She seemed 
 to divine the words with which he silently addressed 
 her. The anguish was so fearful that it bit her 
 
 1 " If you let your fine, fresh age pass away, 
 One day it will call you 
 A ripened old thing ; 
 And you will desire, but in vain, 
 All that you had 
 When you let the occasion slip."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 101 
 
 bosom intolerably, and her convulsed fingers clutched 
 the black rope running along the side of the gon 
 dola, and the little metal griffin that held it creaked 
 at her involuntary movement. 
 
 That movement did not escape Stelio, who was 
 watching her anxiously. He understood her ex- 
 treme anguish and himself suffered from it acutely 
 for a few moments ; but his feeling was mixed with 
 an almost angry impatience, because her anguish, 
 like a cry of destruction, crossed and interrupted a 
 fiction of transcendant life that he had been in- 
 wardly composing in order to conciliate the con- 
 trast, to conquer the new force presenting itself 
 before him, like a bow ready to be drawn, and at 
 the same time not to lose the savour of that maturity 
 which life had steeped in all its essences, the benefit 
 of that passionate attention and faith by which his 
 intellect was sharpened, as by a kindling drug, and 
 his pride nourished as by a continual act of praise. 
 " Ah, Perdita," he was thinking, " why has not a 
 pure spirit of human love sprung from the fermen- 
 tation of 'your numberless human loves? Ah, why 
 have I finally conquered you with my desire, al- 
 though I know that it is too late ; and why do you 
 let me read in your eyes the certainty of your com- 
 ing gift, in the midst of a flood of doubts that will 
 not be sufficient to revive the abolished prohibition? 
 Both of us, well knowing that all the ability of our 
 long communion was in that prohibition, have not 
 known how to preserve it, and are going to yield 
 blindly, at the last hour, to the command of a tur- 
 bid, nocturnal voice. Even a little while ago, when 
 your head was standing out from the belt of con-
 
 102 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 stellations, I no longer saw in you the carnal mis- 
 tress, but the muse and the apostle of my poetry. 
 And all the gratitude of my soul went out to you 
 for your promise of glory, not for your promise of 
 pleasure. Have you not understood, as you always 
 do? With marvellous fancy, as ever, have you not 
 led my desire along the ray of your smile towards 
 something resplendent with youth that you yourself 
 had chosen and reserved for me? In descending 
 the staircase and coming towards me together with 
 her, had you not the appearance of one bearing a 
 gift, of one bringing an unexpected announcement? 
 Nor wholly unwaited for, Perdita, not wholly un- 
 waited for, because I knew some extraordinary act 
 must come from your infinite wisdom." 
 
 " How happy the fair Nineta is with her monkey 
 and her little dog ! " sighed the despairing woman, 
 looking back towards the light song and the laughing 
 
 balcony. 
 
 " La zoventu xe un fior 
 Che apena nato el mor, 
 E un zorno gnanco mi 
 No saro quela." 1 
 
 Also Donatella Arvale turned and Stelio Effrena 
 with her. The light skiff carried the three faces of 
 that heavy destiny, without sinking, over the water 
 and the music. 
 
 " E vegna quel che vol, 
 Lassfe che vaga ! " * 
 
 1 " Youth is a flower 
 
 No sooner born than dead j 
 
 And I, too, one day, 
 
 Will be the same no longer." 
 
 * " And come what will, 
 And let it go 1 "
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 103 
 
 All along the Grand Canal, repeated in the dis- 
 tance by all the boats, flowed the melody of transient 
 pleasure. Fascinated by its rhythm, the slaves of 
 the oar united their voices to the joyful chorus. 
 That joy, which had seemed terrible to the Life-giver, 
 when he heard it in the first cry of the crowd massed 
 on the Molo, had now become attenuated, more las- 
 civious, had blossomed into grace and playfulness, 
 had become soft and indulgent. The more frivo- 
 lous soul of Venice repeated the refrain of forgetful 
 life, lightly touching its guitars and dancing among 
 the festoons of lanterns. 
 
 " E vegna quel che vol, 
 Lass& che vaga ! " 
 
 Suddenly, in the curve of the canal, before the red 
 palace of the Foscari, a great galleon flamed like a 
 burning tower. More lightning crackled in the sky. 
 More fiery pigeons flew up from the fortress, sur- 
 passed the small light towers, slipped down along the 
 marbles, fluttered, hissed on the water, multiplied 
 themselves in numberless sparks, and floated there, 
 smoking. Along the parapets, from the decks, from 
 the poop, from the prow, a thousand fountains of fire 
 opened up, dilated, blended, illuminating the canal 
 from one part to the other, painting it a violent red 
 as far as San Vitale, as far as the Rialto. The gal- 
 leon disappeared from sight, transformed by the ceas- 
 ing of the fireworks into a purplish thunder-cloud. 
 
 " Turn down San Polo, turn down San Polo," la 
 Foscarina called to the oarsman, lowering her head 
 as under a storm, and pressing her hands to her ears 
 to defend them from the roar. 
 
 And with dazzled eyes Donatella Arvale and
 
 104 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Stelio Effrena again glanced at each other. And 
 their faces were as resplendent, lit up by the reflected 
 glare, as if both had been bending over a furnace or 
 the mouth of a crater. 
 
 The gondola entered the canal of San Polo and 
 slipped into its shade. A sudden veil of ice fell on 
 its three silent occupants. Under the arch of the 
 bridge, the cadence of the oar struck upon their souls 
 and the noise of the festival seemed infinitely far 
 away. All the houses were dark ; the belfry rose 
 lonely and silent among the stars, the Campiello del 
 Remer and the Campiello del Pistor were deserted, 
 and the grass breathed there in peace ; the trees 
 hanging over the walls of the little gardens seemed 
 to feel their leaves dying on their branches lifted up 
 to the quiet sky. 
 
 " The rhythm of art and the pulse of life then have 
 again beaten in Venice with one same throb, at least 
 for a few hours," said Daniele Glauro, lifting from the 
 table a chalice from which only the sacred Host was 
 missing. " Let me express, also, in the name of so 
 many who are absent, the gratitude and fervour that 
 are blending in one single image of beauty the three 
 persons to whom we owe the miracle, the lady of 
 the banquet, the daughter of Lorenzo Arvale, and 
 the poet of Persephone." 
 
 "Why the lady of the banquet, Glauro?" la Fos- 
 carina asked, smiling, with astonished grace. " I, like 
 yourself, have not given but have received joy. It is 
 Donatella whom we should crown and Stelio Effrena 
 The glory of it goes to both."
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 105 
 
 " But your silent presence in the Hall of the Greater 
 Council, near the celestial sphere, a little while ago," 
 answered the mystic doctor, " was not less eloquent 
 than Stelio's words, nor less musical than Ariadne's 
 song. Once more you have divinely carved your 
 own statue in silence, and it shall live in our mem- 
 ory together with the words and the song." 
 
 Stelio Effrena, with a deep, inward shiver, again 
 saw the ephemeral, versatile monster from whose side 
 the tragic muse had emerged, with her head lifted to 
 the belt of constellations. 
 
 " True, true," exclaimed Francesco de Lizo. " I 
 think so too. Whoever saw you, while listening to 
 the song, the words, and the symphony, could not 
 but recognise in you the visible centre of that ideal 
 world that each one of us us the faithful, us the 
 near ones felt was growing out of his own aspi- 
 rations." 
 
 " Each one of us," said Fabio Molza, " felt that there 
 was great and unusual significance in your person as 
 it stood before the poet, dominating the crowd." 
 
 "It seemed that you alone were about to assist at 
 the mysterious birth of a new idea," said Antimo 
 della Bella; "everything seemed animating itself to 
 generate that idea which must soon be revealed to us, 
 if having waited for it with so much faith has made 
 us at all worthy." 
 
 The Life-giver, with another shudder, felt the work 
 which he was nourishing leap within him, formless 
 still, but already a living thing, and his whole soul 
 stretched out with an impetuous movement, as if 
 carried away by a lyric breath, towards the power of 
 fertilisation and of revelation that emanated from the
 
 106 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Dionysian woman to whom the praise of those fer- 
 vent spirits was rising. 
 
 She had suddenly become very beautiful, a noctur- 
 nal creature forged out of dreams and passions on an 
 anvil of gold, a breathing image of immortal fate and 
 eternal enigmas. Although she was motionless, al- 
 though she was silent, her well-known accents and 
 her memorable gestures seemed to live about her, 
 vibrating indefinitely, like melodies round the chords 
 that repeat them, like its rhymes round the closed 
 book where love and pain go in search of them, 
 to find comfort and intoxication. The heroic fidel- 
 ity of Antigone, the fury of Cassandra, the devour- 
 ing fever of Phaedra, the fierceness of Medea, 
 the sacrifice of Iphigenia; Mirra before his father, 
 Polissena and Alcestes before the face of death, 
 Cleopatra, changeable like the wind and flame of the 
 world ; Lady Macbeth, that dreaming murderess of 
 the little hands and the large lilies pearled over with 
 dew and with fears; Imogen, Juliet, Miranda; and 
 Rosamund and Jessica and Perdita, the sweetest souls 
 and the most terrible and the most magnificent, 
 were all in her, living in her body, flashing through her 
 pupils, breathing in her mouth that knew of honey 
 and of poison, of the gemmed goblet and the cup of 
 wormwood. Thus, with an unlimited vastness and 
 through endless time, the outlines of human age and 
 substance seemed to widen and perpetuate them- 
 selves ; and for no other reason than the motion of a 
 muscle, a sign, a gesture, a line of feature, a tremor 
 of the eyelids, a slight change of colour, an almost 
 imperceptible bend of the brows, a changing play of 
 light and shade, a lightning-like virtue of expression
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 107 
 
 radiating from that thin, frail body, infinite worlds 
 of undying beauty were continually generated. The 
 very genii of the places consecrated by poetry 
 breathed over her and girded her round with alterna- 
 ting visions : the dusty plain of Thebe, the parched 
 Argolide, the burnt up myrtles of Trezene, the sacred 
 olives of Colonus, the triumphant Cydnus, the pale 
 landscape of Dunsinane, Prospero's cave, the wood in 
 the Ardennes, regions furrowed with blood, laboured 
 by pain, transfigured by a dream or lighted by an 
 inextinguishable smile, appeared, receded, and melted 
 away behind her head. And other remote regions : 
 regions of mist, northern plains, the immense con- 
 tinents beyond the ocean where she had passed like 
 an unknown force, carrying her voice and her flame 
 with her, melted away behind her head ; with the 
 multitudes, their hills and rivers, the gulfs, the impure 
 cities, the ancient forsaken races, the strong peoples 
 panting for the dominion of the world, the new 
 peoples that wrest from nature her most secret 
 energies to make them the slaves of omnipotent labour 
 in edifices of iron and glass, the colonies of bastard 
 races that ferment and grow corrupt on virgin soil, 
 all the barbarous crowds to which she had appeared 
 as a sovereign revelation of Latin genius, all the 
 unconscious masses to which she had spoken the 
 sublime language of Dante, all the innumerable 
 human herds whence the aspiration to beauty, had 
 risen towards her on a wave of confused hopes and 
 anxieties. As she stood there, a creature made of 
 perishable flesh and subject to the sad laws of time, 
 an immeasurable mass of real and ideal life seemed 
 to weigh upon her and widen round her, throbbing
 
 108 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 with the rhythm of her breath. It was not on the 
 stage only that she had cried out and suffocated her 
 sobs, but she had loved, fought, and suffered vio- 
 lently in her daily life for herself, for her own soul, 
 for her flesh and blood. What loves? What battles? 
 What spasms? From what depths of melancholy 
 had she drawn the sublimate of her tragic power? 
 At what springs of bitterness had she watered her 
 free genius? Certainly she had witnessed the cruel- 
 est misery, the darkest ruin ; she had known heroic ef- 
 forts, pity, horror, and the threshold of death. All her 
 thirsts had kindled again in the delirium of Phaedra; 
 and in the submission of Imogen all her tenderness 
 had trembled anew. Thus Life and Art, the irrevo- 
 cable past and the eternally present, had made her 
 profound, many-souled and mysterious, had magnified 
 her ambiguous fate beyond human limits, making her 
 equal to the temples and the forests. 
 
 She stood on, breathing under the eyes of the poets, 
 who saw her one and yet different. 
 
 "Ah, I will possess you as in a vast orgy; I will 
 shake you like a bundle of thyrsi ; I will shake from 
 the knowledge of your body all the divine and 
 monstrous things that weigh upon you ; the things 
 you have accomplished, and those still in travail that 
 are growing in you as in a sacred season," spoke the 
 lyric demon of the Life-giver, recognising in the 
 woman's mystery the surviving power of the primitive 
 myth, the renewed initiation of the deity which had 
 fused all the energies of nature in one single ferment, 
 and with the varying of its rhythms and in the en- 
 thusiastic worship of himself had raised human senses 
 and the human spirit to the summit of joy and pain.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 109 
 
 " It will be good, it will be good, to have waited so 
 long. The passing of years, the tumult of dreams, 
 the agonies of the struggle and the swiftness of 
 triumph, the impurity of many loves, the enchant- 
 ment of poets, the applause of the crowd, the wonders 
 of earth, the patience and the fury, the footsteps in 
 the mud, the blind flights, all the evil, all the good, 
 what I know and what I ignore, what you know and 
 what you ignore, all this had to be, to make the ful- 
 ness of my night that is coming." 
 
 He felt himself suffocate and turn pale. Desire 
 seized him by the throat with a wild impulse, to leave 
 him no more ; and his heart swelled with that same 
 anxiety that both had felt in the evening when they 
 had glided over the water that had seemed flowing 
 in a frightful clepsydra. 
 
 As the exaggerated vision of places and events 
 vanished suddenly, the nocturnal creature reappeared 
 stilll more profoundly knitted to the city of the vast 
 necklaces and the thousand girdles of green. In the 
 city and in the woman he now saw a power of ex- 
 pression that he had never seen before. The one and 
 the other burned in the Autumn night, and the same 
 fever that ran through the canals was running through 
 her veins. 
 
 The stars glittered, the trees swayed behind Per- 
 dita's head, a garden stretched out beyond the 
 windows open on the balconies. Whiffs from the 
 sky stole into the supper-room, agitating the little 
 flames of the candelabra and the chalices of the 
 flowers; they passed through the doors, giving 
 the curtains a light throb, animating that old house 
 of the Capello where the last great daughter of San
 
 I io THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Marco whom the people had covered with glory and 
 with gold had collected her relics of republican 
 magnificence. Galleon lamps, Turkish targets, quiv- 
 ers of leather, bronze helmets, velvet sheaths, adorned 
 the rooms of the last descendant of that marvellous 
 Cesare d'Arbes who had kept the Art of Comedy 
 alive against the goldonian reform, and changed the 
 agony of the Serene Republic into a convulsion of 
 laughter. 
 
 " All I ask is to serve that idea humbly," la 
 Foscarina said to Antimo della Bella, with a slight 
 tremor in her voice because she had met Stelio's 
 gaze. 
 
 " You alone can make it triumph," said Francesco 
 de Lizo. " The soul of the crowd is subject to you 
 for ever." 
 
 " The drama," declared Daniele Glauro, " can only 
 be a rite or a message. The performance should be 
 once more solemn as a ceremony, including as it 
 does the two elements that make up all worship, the 
 living person on the stage in whom, as before the 
 altar, the word of the revealer is made incarnate, 
 and the presence of the multitude silent as in its 
 temples. . . ." 
 
 " Bayreuth ! " interrupted Prince Hoditz. 
 
 " No, the Janiculum ! " cried Stelio Effrena, sud- 
 denly emerging from his dizzy silence, " a Roman hill. 
 Not the bricks and the wood of Upper Francony. 
 We will have a marble theatre on our Roman hill." 
 
 The sudden opposition of his words seemed to 
 have been almost brought about by a kind of joyful 
 contempt. 
 
 " Do you not admire the work of Richard Wagner?"
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME in 
 
 asked Donatella Arvale, with a slight frown that for an 
 instant made her Hermes-like face seem almost hard. 
 
 He looked her straight in the eyes, feeling all that 
 was obscurely hostile in the girl's manner and himself 
 sharing against her that indistinct enmity. He saw 
 her living her own encircled life apart, immovable 
 in some deeply secret thought, a stranger and 
 inviolable. 
 
 " The work of Richard Wagner," he answered, " is 
 founded on the German spirit, and its essence is 
 purely northern. His reform has some analogy with 
 that which Luther attempted; his drama is nothing 
 if not the supreme flower of the genius of a race, the 
 extraordinarily efficacious summing up of the aspira- 
 tions that have burdened the soul of the symphonists 
 and of the national poets from Bach to Beethoven, 
 from Wieland to Goethe. If you could imagine his 
 work on the shores of the Mediterranean, among our 
 light olive-trees and our slender laurels, under the 
 glory of the Latin sky, you would see it grow pale 
 and dissolve. Since, according to his own words, it 
 is given to the artist to see a still unformed world 
 shining in its future perfection, and to enjoy it pro- 
 phetically in desire and in hope, I announce the 
 advent of a new or renewed art that by the powerful, 
 sincere simplicity of its lines, by its vigorous grace, 
 by the ardour of its spirit, by the pure force of its 
 harmonies, shall continue and crown the immense 
 ideal edifice of our elect race. I glory myself that I 
 am a Latin, and forgive me, dreaming Lady Myrta, 
 forgive me, Prince Hoditz, I see a barbarian in 
 every man of different blood. 
 
 " But he, too, Richard Wagner, started from the
 
 H2 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Greeks in developing the thread of his theory," said 
 Baldassare Stampa, who, having just returned from 
 Bayreuth, was still full of the ecstasy. 
 
 " A confused and unequal thread," answered the 
 master. " Nothing is further from the Orestiades 
 than the tetralogy of the Ring. The Florentines of 
 Casa Bardi have perceived the essence of Greek 
 tragedy far more deeply. All homage to the Cam- 
 erata del Conte di Vernio." 
 
 " I have always thought that the Camerata was an 
 idle gathering of savants and rhetoricians," said 
 Baldassare Stampa. 
 
 " Do you hear, Daniele?" exclaimed Stelio, turn- 
 ing to the mystic doctor. " When was there in the 
 world a more fervid fire of intelligence? They sought 
 the spirit of life in Greek antiquity; they tried to 
 develop all human energies harmoniously, to manifest 
 man in his integrity by all the means of art. Giulio 
 Caccini taught that not only things in particular, but 
 all things together are needful to the excellence of 
 the musician ; the tawny hair of Jacopo Peri and of 
 Zazzerino flamed in their song like that of Apollo. 
 In the discourse that precedes his Rappresentazione 
 di Anima et di Corpo, Emilio del Cavaliere gives us 
 the same ideas on the foundation of the new theatre 
 that have since been carried out at Bayreuth, even to 
 the precept of perfect silence, of propitious darkness, 
 of an invisible orchestra. Marco da Gagliano in cele- 
 brating a festive performance eulogises all the arts 
 that contributed to it ' in such a manner that every 
 most noble feeling is flattered through the intellect at 
 one same time by the most pleasure-giving arts that 
 human talent has discovered.' Is not that enough? "
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 113 
 
 " Bernino," said Francesco de Lizo, " gave an 
 opera in Rome for which he himself had constructed 
 the theatre, painted the scenery, carved the orna- 
 mental statues, invented the machinery, written the 
 words, composed the music, regulated the dancing, 
 instructed the actors, in which he himself danced, 
 sang, and recited." 
 
 " Enough, enough ! " cried Prince Hoditz, laughing ; 
 " the barbarian is conquered." 
 
 " And it is still not enough," said Antimo della 
 Bella ; " we should glorify the greatest of these inno- 
 vators, he who is anointed a Venetian by his passion 
 and death, whose sepulchre in the Church of the 
 Frari is worthy of a pilgrimage, the divine Claudio 
 Monteverde." 
 
 " His was an heroic soul of pure Italian essence," 
 Daniele Glauro confirmed reverently. 
 
 " He accomplished his work in the storm, loving, 
 suffering, struggling, alone with his fate, his passion, 
 and his genius," la Foscarina said slowly, as if 
 absorbed in the vision of the brave life full of pain 
 that had fed the creatures of its art with its warmest 
 blood. " Tell us about him, Effrena." 
 
 Stelio quivered as if she had suddenly touched 
 him. Again the expressive power of her diffusing 
 voice called up an ideal figure, that rose from some 
 indefinite depths as from a tomb, assuming before 
 the eyes of the poets the colour and the breath of life. 
 The old viola-player, bereaved and ardent and sad 
 like the Orpheus of his own fable, appeared in the 
 supper-room. 
 
 It was a fiery apparition, prouder and more daz- 
 zling by far than that which had lit up the harbour of
 
 114 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 San Marco; an inflamed force of life, expelled 
 from the inner bosom of nature towards the expec- 
 tancy of the multitudes ; a vehement zone of light 
 breaking out from an interior sky to illumine the 
 more secret depths of human will and desire, an un- 
 known Word springing from primitive silences to say 
 that which is eternal and eternally inexpressible in 
 the heart of the world. 
 
 " Should we speak of him, if he himself could 
 speak to us? " said the Life-giver, troubled, unable to 
 contain the growing fulness that surged within him 
 like an anguished sea. And he gazed at the singer; 
 and he saw her as when she had first appeared to 
 him in the pauses, among the forest of instruments 
 white and lifeless as a shadow. 
 
 But the spirit of beauty which they had invoked 
 was to manifest itself through her. 
 
 " Ariadne," Stelio added in a low voice, as if to 
 awaken her. 
 
 She rose without speaking, went to the door, 
 entered the neighbouring room. They heard the 
 rustle of her skirts, her light footfall, and the sound 
 of the instrument being opened. All were quiet and 
 intent. A musical silence seemed to occupy the 
 place that had remained empty in the supper-room. 
 Once only a breath of wind slanted the candle flames, 
 disturbing the flowers. Then all became anxious 
 again, and motionless in expectation. 
 
 " Lasciatemi morire ! " * 
 
 Suddenly their souls were ravished by a power 
 that seemed the lightning-like eagle by which Dante 
 1 " O let me die I "
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 115 
 
 in his dream was ravished up to the flame. They 
 were burning together in undying truth ; they heard 
 the world's melody pass through their luminous 
 ecstasy. 
 
 " Lasciatemi morire ! " 
 
 Was it Ariadne, still Ariadne, who was weeping in 
 some new pain? rising, still rising, to new height in 
 her martyrdom? 
 
 E che volete 
 Che mi conforte 
 In cosi dura sorte, 
 In cosi gran martire ? 
 Lasciatemi morire 1 " l 
 
 The voice ceased ; the singer did not reappear, 
 The aria of Claudio Monteverde composed itself in 
 the memory like a changeless feature. 
 
 " Is there any Greek marble that has reached a 
 simpler and securer perfection of style? " said Daniele 
 Glauro, in a low voice, as if he feared to disturb the 
 silence which was still ringing with the music. 
 
 " But what sorrow on earth has ever wept like 
 this?" stammered Lady Myrta, her eyes full of tears 
 that ran down the furrows of her poor bloodless face, 
 while her hands, deformed by gout, trembled as they 
 wiped them away. 
 
 The austere intellect of the aesthete and that of 
 the sweet sensitive soul in the old infirm body 
 gave witness to the same power. In the same way, 
 nearly three centuries before in Mantua, six thousand 
 spectators had been unable to control their tears, and 
 
 1 " And what can comfort me 
 In my hard fate, 
 In my great martyrdom ? 
 O let me die 1 "
 
 ii6 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 poets had believed in the living presence of Apollo 
 on the new stage of the famous theatre. 
 
 " Here, Baldassare is an artist of our own race," 
 said Stelio Effrena, " who, by the simplest means, 
 has succeeded in touching the highest degree of that 
 beauty which the German rarely approached in his 
 confused aspirations towards the fatherland of 
 Sophocles." 
 
 " Do you know the lamentation of the ailing 
 King?" asked the young man with the long sunny 
 hair worn by him as an heirloom of the Venetian 
 Sappho, of the " high Gasparra," the unfortunate 
 friend of Collatino. 
 
 " All the anguish of Amfortas is in a mottetto I 
 know: ' Peccantem me quotidie;' but with what 
 lyric impulse, what powerful simplicity ! All the 
 forces of tragedy are there, I should almost say sub- 
 limated like the instincts of a multitude in the heart 
 of a hero. Palestrina's much older expression seems 
 to me also purer and more virile. 
 
 " But the struggle of Kundry and of Parsifal in the 
 second act, the Herzeleide motive, the impetuous 
 figure, the figure of pain drawn from the motto of 
 the sacred banquet, the motive of Kundry's aspira- 
 tion, the prophetic theme of the promise, the mad 
 kiss on the mouth of the youth, all that heartrending 
 and intoxicating contrast of desire and horror. . . . 
 'The wound, the wound ! Now it is burning, it is bleed- 
 ing in me ! ' And above the despairing restlessness 
 of the tempter, the melody of submission. . . . ' Let 
 me weep on your bosom, let me be united to thee 
 for an hour, and even if God repel me I shall be re- 
 deemed and saved by thee ! ' And Parsifal's answer
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 117 
 
 in which the motive of the madman now transfigured 
 into the promised hero returns with so grand a so- 
 lemnity: ' Hell is before us for all eternity, if only 
 for one hour I let thee fold me in thy arms.' And 
 the wild ecstasy of Kundry. . . . ' As my kiss has 
 made thee a prophet, the entire caress of my love 
 shall make thee divine. One hour, one hour only 
 with thee, and I shall be saved ! ' And the last ef- 
 forts of her demoniac will, the supreme gesture of 
 inducement, the prayer and the furious offer. . . . 
 ' Only thy love can save me ! Let me love thee ! 
 Mine for one only hour ! Thine for one only hour.' " 
 
 Madly Perdita and Stelio looked into each other's 
 eyes. For a second they rushed into each other, 
 were united, knew joy, and gasped as on a bed of 
 pleasure and death. 
 
 The Marangona, the largest bell of San Marco, 
 rang out in the night, and as once before in the 
 evening hour, they seemed to feel the roll of the 
 bronze in the roots of their hair almost like a quiver 
 of their own flesh. They again felt, passing over 
 their heads, the vortex of sound in which the appari- 
 tions of the consoling beauty invoked by unanimous 
 Prayer had suddenly arisen. The phantoms on the 
 water, the infinite waverings of dissimulated desire, 
 the anxiety, the promise, the farewell, the festival, 
 the monster with the innumerable human faces, and 
 the great starry sphere, and the applause and the 
 symphony and the song, and the miracles of Fire, and 
 the passage along the sonorous canal, the song of 
 brief youth, the struggle and mute anguish in the 
 boat, the sudden shadow on their three destinies, the 
 banquet illumined by the beautiful idea, the an-
 
 n8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 nouncement, the hope, the pride, all the pulsations 
 of strong life met and renewed themselves within 
 them, quickened, became a thousand, and became 
 one. And it seemed to them that they had lived 
 beyond human limits in that instant, that an un- 
 known immensity was spreading before them which 
 they could absorb as the ocean absorbs, because 
 having lived so much, they yet were empty, having 
 drunk so much, they yet were parched. A violent 
 illusion mastered their souls full of riches. The one 
 seemed to grow immeasurably in the other's wealth. 
 The maiden had disappeared. The eyes of the wan- 
 dering, despairing woman were repeating: " The full 
 caress of my love shall make thee divine. One hour, 
 one only hour with thee, and I shall be saved ! Mine, 
 even if for one only hourl Thine, even if for one 
 only hour! " 
 
 And the eloquence of the enthusiast continued 
 building up the sacred tragedy. Kundry, the furious 
 tempter, the slave of desire, the rose of hell, the 
 original perdition, the cursed one, now reappeared 
 in the spring dawn, reappeared humble and pale in 
 the garb of the messenger, her head bent, her gaze 
 dim, her hoarse, broken voice knowing one word 
 only : " Let me serve ; let me serve 1 " 
 
 The melodies of solitude, of submission, of purifi- 
 cation, prepared round her lowliness the enchantment 
 of Good Friday. And Parsifal reappeared in his 
 black armour, with closed helmet, with lowered spear, 
 absorbed in an infinite dream : " I have come by 
 perilous roads, but perhaps this day shall see me 
 saved because I hear the murmur of the holy forest." 
 Hope, pain, remorse, remembrance, promise, faith
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 119 
 
 panting for salvation, sacred, mysterious melodies 
 seemed to weave the ideal mantle that was to cover 
 the Simple, the Pure one, the Promised Hero sent 
 to heal the incurable wound. " Will you lead me 
 to Amfortas to-day?" He grew languid, fainting 
 in the arms of the old man. " Let me serve; let me 
 serve ! " The melody of submission spread through 
 the orchestra again, destroying the original impetu- 
 ous figure. " Let me serve ! " The faithful woman 
 was bringing water, was kneeling in her lowliness, 
 fervently washing the beloved feet. " Let me serve ! " 
 The faithful woman drew from her bosom a vase of 
 ointment to anoint the beloved feet, and then wiped 
 them with her loosened hair. The Pure One bent 
 over the sinner, pouring water on her wild head: 
 "Thus I accomplish my first office; receive this 
 baptism and believe in the Redeemer." The brow 
 of Kundry lay low in the dust as she burst out weep- 
 ing, freed from desire, freed from the curse. And 
 then, from the profound final harmonies of the prayer 
 to the Redeemer, the melody of the flowery meadow 
 spread and rose with superhuman sweetness. " How 
 beautiful the meadow is to-day ! marvellous flowers 
 once drew me to them, but the grass and the 
 flowers were never before so fragrant." Parsifal in 
 his ecstasy gazes at the meadow and the dewy 
 forest, smiling in the morning light. 
 
 " Ah, who shall forget the sublime moment," ex- 
 claimed the fascinated man, his thin face flashing 
 again with the lightning-stroke of joy. " All, in the 
 darkness of the theatre, were fixed in perfect stillness 
 like one single compact mass. In each of our veins 
 our blood had stopped, seeming to listen. The
 
 120 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 music rose like light from the Mystic Gulf; the 
 notes seemed to transform themselves into rays of 
 spring sunshine, coming to life with the same joy 
 as the blade of grass that breaks through the earth, 
 as the flower that opens, as the branch that buds, as 
 the insect bringing forth its wings. And all the 
 innocence of things just born entered into us, and 
 our souls lived again I know not what dream of far 
 away infancy. . . . Infantia, the device of Vettor 
 Carpaccio. Ah, Stelio, how well you repeated it to 
 our old age a little while ago, and how well you 
 have found the way of making us feel our sorrow 
 for what we have lost, and our hope of recovering 
 it by means of an art that shall be indissolubly re- 
 united to life ! " 
 
 Stelio Effrena was silent, oppressed by the weight 
 of the gigantic work of the barbaric creator whom 
 the enthusiasm of Baldassare Stampa had called up 
 and placed against the burning figure of the trage- 
 dian of Ariadne and Orpheus. A kind of instinctive 
 rancour, of obscure hostility which was not of the 
 intellect, raised him up against the tenacious German 
 who had succeeded in inflaming the world. To 
 obtain his victory over men and things, he too had 
 exalted his own image and magnified his own dream 
 of dominating beauty; he too had been drawn to 
 the crowd as to the preferable prey, he too had 
 made his discipline of the effort to surpass himself 
 without respite. And now he had his temple on the 
 Bavarian hills. 
 
 " Art alone can bring men back to unity," said 
 Daniele Glauro. " Let us honour the great master 
 who has always had this for his faith. His theatre,
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 121 
 
 although of bricks and wood, although small and im- 
 perfect, has a sublime significance. In it the work of 
 art is religion brought under the senses in a living 
 form ; the drama there becomes a rite." 
 
 " Let us honour Richard Wagner," said Antimo 
 della Bella ; " but if this hour is to be memorable as 
 the hour of an announcement, and a promise from 
 him who a little while ago was pointing the mysteri- 
 ous vessel out to the crowd, let us again invoke as 
 our patron the heroic soul which has spoken to us 
 through the voice of Donatella Arvale. In laying the 
 foundation stone of his theatre, the poet of Siegfried 
 consecrated it to the hopes and the victories of his 
 German people. The theatre of Apollo which is 
 rapidly rising on the Janiculum, where once the eagles 
 descended with their prophecies, must be no other 
 than the monumental revelation of the idea towards 
 which our race is led by its genius. Let us reinforce 
 the privilege by which nature has made our blood so 
 great." 
 
 Stelio Effrena was silent, overwhelmed by vor- 
 tex-like forces that laboured in him with a kind of 
 blind fury similar to the subterranean forces that 
 swell, break up, and transfigure a volcanic territory, 
 creating in it new mountains and new abysses. The 
 elements of his inner life, carried away by that shock, 
 seemed at the same time to dissolve and to multiply 
 themselves. Grand, terrible images passed over the 
 tumult in musical storm-clouds. Rapid concen- 
 trations and dispersions of thought succeeded each 
 other like electric discharges in a hurricane. At in- 
 tervals, he seemed to hear shouts and songs, as if 
 a door continually reclosed were being continually
 
 122 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 thrown open ; as if blasts of wind were bringing him 
 the distant cries of a massacre, alternating with 
 an apotheosis. Suddenly, with the intensity of a 
 feverish vision, he saw the dry, fated land, in which 
 he was going to place the souls of his tragedy ; he 
 felt all its thirst in himself. He saw the mythic fount 
 that alone broke in upon its dryness, and on the 
 throb of its springs the whiteness of the virgin who 
 was to die there. He saw the heroine's mask on 
 Perdita's face, in all the beauty of an extraordinarily 
 calm sorrow. The ancient dryness of the plain 
 of Argos then seemed to convert itself into flames, 
 the fount of Perseia flowed like a river. The two 
 primordial elements, fire and water, passed over 
 all things, cancelled every sign, diffused themselves, 
 wandered, struggled, triumphed, spoke, found words 
 and a language with which to reveal their inner es- 
 sence, to tell the innumerable myths born of their 
 eternity. The symphony expressed the drama of the 
 two elemental Souls on the stage of the Universe, the 
 pathetic struggle of the two great living and mobile 
 Beings, of the two forces of cosmic Will, such as the 
 shepherd Arya on his plateaus imagined it, when his 
 pure eyes first saw the spectacle. Then from the very 
 centre of the musical mystery, from the inner depth 
 of the symphonic ocean, the Ode arose, brought by 
 the human voice, and soared to its greatest height. 
 The miracle of Beethoven renewed itself. The winged 
 Ode, the Hymn, burst up from the depths of the 
 orchestra to tell, in an imperious and absolute man- 
 ner, the joy and the sorrow of Man. Not the chorus, 
 as in the Ninth Symphony, but the solitary, domi- 
 nating voice that was the interpreter, the messenger
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 123 
 
 to the multitude. " Her voice ! her voice ! She has 
 disappeared. Her voice seemed to touch the very 
 heart of the world, and she was beyond the veil," 
 said the Life-giver, having once more before his eyes 
 the crystal statue in which he had seen the ascending 
 veins of melody. "I will seek you, I will find you 
 again, I will master your secret You shall sing my 
 hymns, raised up on the summit of my music." Freed 
 from impure desire, he now considered the virgin's 
 form as the receptacle, as the custodian of a divine 
 gift. He heard the disembodied voice rise from the 
 depths of the orchestra to reveal the part of eternal 
 truth hidden in the passing fact, in the fleeting event. 
 The Ode was crowning the episode with light. Then, 
 as if to lead back to the play of images his spirit, 
 which had been rapt " beyond the veil," a dance 
 figure designed itself on the rhythm of the dying Ode. 
 The silent dancer appeared within a parallelogram 
 traced in the arch of the stage, as within the limits of 
 a strophe ; her body, redeemed for a while from the 
 sad laws of gravity, imitating fire and water and the 
 whirlpool and the evolution of stars. " La Tanagra," 
 the flower of Syracuse, made of wings, as a flower is 
 made of petals ! Thus he conjured up the image of 
 the already famous Sicilian who had rediscovered the 
 ancient art as it was in the times when Frinico could 
 boast of having as many dance figures in himself as 
 a stormy winter's night raises up waves upon the sea. 
 The actress, the singer, and the dancer, the three 
 Dionysian women, appeared to him as three per- 
 fect, almost divine instruments of his creations. By 
 means of words, gesture, and symphony, and with 
 incredible rapidity, his work would complete itself
 
 124 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and live its powerful life before the conquered 
 multitude. 
 
 He was silent, rapt in an ideal world, intent on 
 measuring the effort necessary to manifest it. 
 
 " Richard Wagner affirms that the only creator of a 
 work of art is the people," Baldassare Stampa was 
 saying, " and that all the artist can do is to gather 
 up and express the creation of the unconscious 
 throng. . . ." 
 
 The extraordinary feeling that had surprised him 
 while he had been speaking to the crowd from the throne 
 of the Doges returned and occupied him. During that 
 time of communion between his own soul and the soul 
 of the crowd an almost divine mystery had taken place ; 
 something greater and stronger had added itself to 
 the feeling he habitually entertained about his own 
 person, an unknown power had seemed to converge 
 within him, abolishing the limits of his particular per- 
 sonality and conferring the harmony of a chorus to 
 his solitary voice. There must, therefore, be in the 
 multitude some hidden beauty from which only the 
 hero and the poet can draw a flash. Whenever 
 that beauty revealed itself by a sudden clamour 
 arising in theatre or entrenchment or public place, a 
 torrent of joy must swell the heart of him who had 
 called it forth with his verse, his harangue, or the 
 action of his sword. The word of the poet, when 
 communicated to the crowd, must, therefore, be an 
 act like the deed of a hero, an act creating instan- 
 taneous beauty in the numberless obscurities of the 
 soul, in the same way as a wonderful sculptor, from 
 a mass of clay and by the mere touch of his plastic 
 thumb brings forth a divine statue. The silence that
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 125 
 
 had been spread like a sacred veil on the completed 
 poem would then cease. The substance of life would 
 no longer be signified by immaterial symbols, but life 
 itself would be manifested in its entirety through the 
 medium of the poet, the Word made flesh, the rhythm 
 quickened in a breathing, living form ; the idea would 
 spring forth in the fulness of its strength and freedom. 
 
 " But Richard Wagner," said Fabio Molza, " be- 
 lieves that the crowd consists of all those who feel 
 some mutual infirmity. Do you hear, a mutual 
 infirmity? . . ." 
 
 "Towards Joy, towards eternal Joy!" thought 
 Stelio Effrena. " The people are all those who feel 
 an obscure necessity of raising themselves by means 
 of Fiction out of the daily prison in which they serve 
 and suffer." The small city theatres disappeared 
 before him, those theatres where in the midst of a 
 suffocating heat that is saturated with every impurity, 
 before a band of debauchees and harlots, the actors 
 take on themselves the office of prostitutes. On the 
 steps of the new theatre he saw the true crowd, the 
 immense, unanimous crowd that he had smelt and 
 heard a moment ago among the marbles under the 
 stars. His art, though imperfectly understood, would 
 bring to those rough unconscious souls, by the 
 mysterious power of rhythm, an emotion deep as that 
 felt by the prisoner on the point of being freed from 
 his chains. The joy of their liberation spread little 
 by little over the most abject, the furrowed brows 
 cleared and lips opened in wonder that were accus- 
 tomed to violent outcry ; lastly the hands the rough 
 hands enslaved by instruments of toil stretched out 
 in one unanimous movement towards the heroine
 
 126 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 who was exhaling her immortal sorrow under the 
 stars. 
 
 " In the life of a people like ourselves," said Daniele 
 Glauro, " great manifestations of art weigh much 
 more than a treaty of alliance or a tributary law. 
 That which is undying is worth more than that which 
 passes away. The daring and the cunning of a 
 Malatesta are preserved for all Eternity in a medal of 
 Pisanello's. Of all Machiavelli's politics nothing 
 would survive if it were not for the sinews of his 
 prose. . . ." 
 
 " True, true," thought Stelio Effrena ; " the fortunes 
 of Italy are inseparable from the fate of Beauty, of 
 whom she is the mother." And that sovereign truth 
 now seemed to him the approaching sun of the divine, 
 far-away ideal fatherland through which Dante 
 wandered. " Italy ! Italy ! " The name that has in- 
 toxicated the world sounded over his soul like a 
 rallying cry. Should not a new art, robust in both 
 roots and branches, rise from ruins steeped in so 
 much heroic blood, and should not this art sum up 
 within itself all the forces latent in the hereditary 
 substance of the nation? Should it not become a 
 constructive and determining power in the third 
 Rome, pointing out to the men who were taking part 
 in its government the primitive truths to be made 
 the basis of new forms? Faithful to the oldest in- 
 stincts of his race, Richard Wagner had foreseen and 
 forwarded by his effort the aspiration of the German 
 States toward the heroic greatness of empire. He 
 had presented them with the magnificent figure of 
 Henry the Fowler rising up and standing under the 
 ancient tree. ..." Let the warriors rise up from
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 127 
 
 every German land ! " At Sadowa and at Sedan the 
 warriors had won. With one same impulse, with the 
 same doggedness, the people and the artist had accom- 
 plished their aim of glory. One same victory had 
 crowned the work of the sword and the work of the 
 lyre. The poet as much as the hero had accomplished 
 an enfranchising act. His musical figures had con- 
 tributed as much as the will of the Chancellor, as 
 much as the blood of the soldiers, to the work of 
 exalting and perpetuating the soul of his race. 
 
 " He has been here a few days ; he is staying at the 
 Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi," said Prince Hoditz. 
 
 Suddenly the image of the barbaric creator 
 approached him, the lines of the face became visible, 
 the sky-blue eyes shone under the vast forehead, the 
 lips closed tightly above the powerful chin that was 
 armed with sensuality and pride and disdain. The 
 small body bent with old age and glory drew itself 
 up, growing gigantic like its work, the appearance 
 of a god coming over it. Its blood coursed like 
 the streams on a mountain-side ; its breath heaved like 
 the wind in a forest. All of a sudden the youth of 
 Siegfried filled it, was like the dawn shining through 
 a cloud. " To follow the impulse of my own heart, 
 to obey my own instinct, to listen to the voice of 
 nature speaking within me. Let this be my supreme 
 and only law." The heroic words rising from the 
 deep vibrated in it, giving expression to the young 
 healthy will that had overcome every obstacle and 
 every evil enchantment, that had always felt itself in 
 harmony with the law of the Universe. And at this, 
 the flames brought forth from the rock at the stroke 
 of Wotan's staff rose up in a circle.
 
 128 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " A way has been opened through the sea of flames. 
 Great is the joy of being steeped in that fire. Oh 
 that in that fire I might find my bride ! " All the 
 phantoms of the myth seemed to flash and then 
 become dark again. The winged helmet of Brune- 
 hilde glittered in the sun. " Glory to the sun, glory 
 to the light, glory to the radiant day ! My sleep was 
 long ; who has awakened me ? " The phantoms 
 became tumultuous and dispersed. Suddenly Dona- 
 tella Arvale, the Song-maiden, reappeared on a 
 background of shadow, such as he had first seen her 
 in the crimson and gold of the Great Hall holding the 
 fruit of the flame in an attitude of dominion. " Do 
 you not see me, then? My consuming eyes and my 
 flaming blood, do they give you no fear? Do you too 
 feel this wild ardour?" Her power over his dream 
 seemed to return with her absence. Infinite music 
 welled up from the silence that filled her empty place 
 in the supper-room. Her Hermes-like face seemed 
 to withhold an inviolable secret. " Do not touch me, 
 do not disturb me, and I will reflect your luminous 
 image for ever. Love yourself and give me up." 
 Once more, as on the feverish water, a kind of 
 passionate impatience dogged the Life-giver, and 
 again he saw in the absent one the faculty of being 
 drawn like a beautiful bow by a strong hand that 
 should know how to use it as a weapon for some 
 great conquest. "Awake, virgin, awake! Laugh 
 and live ! Be mine ! " 
 
 Violently his spirit was being drawn into the circle 
 of the imaginary world created by the German god ; 
 its visions and harmonies overcame him, the fig- 
 ures of the northern myth built themselves up over
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 129 
 
 the figures of his own art and his own passion ob- 
 scuring them. His own desire and his own hope 
 were speaking the language of the barbarian. " It 
 is necessary that smiling I should love you, and 
 smiling I should blind myself. It is necessary that 
 still smiling we should unite ourselves and lose 
 ourselves in that union. O radiant Love ! O pro- 
 pitious Death ! " The exaltation of the warrior 
 maiden standing on the flame-encircled rock touched 
 its steepest height; her cry of freedom and pleasure 
 rose to the heart of the sun. Ah, what had that 
 formidable stirrer of human souls not expressed? 
 what apex and what abyss had he not reached? what 
 effort could ever equal his effort? what eagle could 
 ever hope to soar higher? His gigantic work stood 
 complete in the midst of men, the last chorus of the 
 Grail, the thanksgiving hymn echoed through the earth. 
 " Glory to the miracle, redemption to the Redeemer ! " 
 
 " He is tired," said Prince Hoditz, " very tired 
 and worn out. This is why we did not see him at 
 the Ducal Palace. His heart is ailing ..." 
 
 The giant became human again, turned into a 
 small body bent with age and glory, worn with pas- 
 sion, dying. And it seemed to Stelio Effrena that 
 he was once more hearing those words, uttered by 
 Perdita, which had made a coffin of their gondola: 
 the words alluding to another great and stricken 
 artist, the father of Donatella Arvale. " The name 
 of the bow is Bios, and its work is Death." The 
 young man saw his way stretching before him, 
 traced out by victory, the long art, the short life. 
 " Forward ! Forward ! Higher and still higher ! " 
 At every hour, at every second, he would have to
 
 130 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 feel, fight, and strengthen himself against destruc- 
 tion, diminution, violation, and contagion. At every 
 hour, at every second, he would have to keep his 
 eyes fixed on his aim, bringing all his energies to 
 converge towards it without truce and without res- 
 pite. He felt that victory was as necessary to him 
 as air. A furious desire of battle was awaking 
 in his agile Latin blood at that contact with the 
 barbarian. " To you I now leave the task of willing," 
 the latter had cried out from the stage of the new 
 theatre on the day of inauguration : " In the work of 
 art of the future the fountain head of all inven- 
 tions shall never run dry." Art was as infinite as 
 the beauty of the world. There are no limits to 
 strength and daring. He must seek further, still 
 further, and find. " Forward ! Forward ! " 
 
 One single, vast, formless wave summed up the 
 anguish and the aspirations of that delirium, con- 
 torting itself into a vortex, rising in a tidal wave, 
 seeming to condense itself, to take on the very 
 qualities of plastic matter, to obey the same inex- 
 haustible energy that shapes all things and all beings 
 under the sun. A form of extraordinary purity and 
 beauty was born of that travail, took life and shone 
 with almost unbearable happiness. The poet saw it, 
 gathered it up into his pure eyes, felt its roots strik- 
 ing into the very centres of his spirit. " Ah, only 
 to express it, to manifest it to mankind, to fix it in 
 its perfection for all eternity ! " It was one of those 
 sublime instants that have no return. Then every- 
 thing vanished. Ordinary life flowed on around him, 
 fleeting words sounded, expectation throbbed, all 
 desire fell consumed.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 131 
 
 And he looked at the woman. Stars twinkled, 
 trees waved behind Perdita's head, a garden deep- 
 ened out, and still the eyes of the woman said : " Let 
 me serve ! Let me serve ! " 
 
 In the garden, the guests had dispersed along 
 the walks- and under the vine-trellises. The night 
 air was damp and lukewarm ; delicate eyelids could 
 feel it on their lashes like the approach of a warm, 
 mobile mouth. The hidden stars of the jessamine 
 shrubs yielded their acute perfume in the shadow; 
 the odour of the fruits too was as strong and even 
 heavier than in the island gardens. A vivid fertilis- 
 ing power emanated from that small space of culti- 
 vated earth that was enclosed like an exiled thing 
 by its girdle of water, becoming all the more intense 
 from its banishment, like the soul of the exile. 
 
 "Do you wish me to stay? Do you wish me to 
 return after the others have gone? Tell me. It is 
 late. " 
 
 " No, no, Stelio, I beg of you. It is late. It is too 
 late. You say so yourself." 
 
 Mortal dismay was in the woman's voice. Her 
 bare neck and her bare arms shuddered in the dark- 
 ness ; and she longed to deny herself and she longed 
 to be possessed, and she longed to die and longed to 
 be shaken by his man's hands. She trembled ; her 
 teeth trembled in her mouth. A stream that seemed 
 to flow from a glacier submerged her, rolled over her, 
 chilled her from the roots of her hair to the tips of her 
 fingers. The joints of each limb ached as if ready 
 to fall asunder, and the jaws stiffened by her terrof
 
 132 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 seemed to change her voice. And she longed to die, 
 and longed to be suddenly taken and overthrown by 
 the violence of his manhood ; and over her dismay 
 and over her chill and over her body that was 
 no longer young the same terrible sentence hung 
 suspended that the loved one had pronounced and 
 that she herself had repeated : " It is late ; it is too 
 late." 
 
 " Your promise, your promise ! I will wait no 
 longer. I cannot, Perdita." 
 
 The harbour, voluptuous like a proffered bosom, 
 the estuary lost in darkness and death, the City 
 kindled by its twilight fire, the water running in 
 the invisible clepsydra, the vibrating bronze of the 
 bells close to the heavens, the suffocating desire, the 
 tightly drawn lips, the lowered lids, and dry hands, 
 the whole fulness of the tide returned with the 
 memory of the silent promise. He desired, with a 
 savage desire, that flesh full of deep things. 
 
 " I will wait no longer." His turbid ardour came 
 to him from far, far away, from the remotest of 
 origins, from the primitive brutality of sudden unions, 
 from the antique mystery of sacred lusts. Like the 
 throng that the god possessed and that descended the 
 mountain-side, tearing up trees, pushing on with a 
 fury ever more and more blind, swelling its numbers 
 with other madmen, spreading insanity along its 
 passage until it became an immense animal and 
 human multitude, spurred on by a monstrous will, 
 the crude instinct in him rushed by, troubling all the 
 figures of his soul and dragging them with it in its 
 rush with one manifold agitation. And what he most 
 desired in that despairing woman full of knowledge,
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 133 
 
 was the creature weighed down by the eternal servi- 
 tude of her nature, destined to succumb to the sudden 
 convulsions of her sex, the creature who habitually 
 slaked the lucid fever of the stage with obscure, 
 sleep-giving pleasures, the actress full of flame who 
 passed from the frenzy of the crowd to the embrace 
 of manhood, the Dionysian creature who was wont to 
 crown her mysterious rites by the act of life as in the 
 Orgies of old. 
 
 His desire lost all proportion and became mad, full 
 of the quiver of conquered multitudes and the intoxi- 
 cation of her unknown lovers and the vision of 
 orgiastic promiscuities; cruelty, rancour, jealousy, 
 poetry, and pride were in his desire. Regret stung 
 him for never having possessed the actress after 
 some theatrical triumph, still warm with the breath 
 of the crowd, covered with sweat, pale and panting, 
 still wearing the traces of the tragic soul that had 
 wept and cried out in her, with the tears of that intrud- 
 ing soul still damp on her convulsed face. For the 
 space of a lightning-flash he saw her outstretched, 
 full of the power that had drawn a howl from the 
 monster, throbbing like a Maenad after the dance, 
 parched and tired, yet needing to be taken, to be 
 shaken, to feel herself contracting in a last spasm, 
 to receive some violent germ, in order to quiet 
 down at last to a lethargy without dreams. How 
 many men had come forth from the crowd to 
 clasp her after having panted for her lost in the 
 unanimous mass? Their desire had been made of 
 the desire of thousands, their vigour multiplied 
 Something of the drunkenness of the people, some- 
 thing of the fascinated monster, would penetrate into
 
 134 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the bosom of the actress with the pleasure of those 
 nights. 
 
 " Don't be cruel ; don't be cruel ! " implored the 
 woman, feeling all that turbulence in his voice and 
 reading it in his eyes. " Oh, do not hurt me !" 
 
 Once more, under the voracious gaze of the young 
 man, her body seemed to contract at the resistance of 
 a painful modesty. His desire reached her like a 
 wound that tore her open. She knew how much was 
 pungent and impure in that sudden excitement, how 
 deeply rooted was his opinion of her that considered 
 her a poisoned and corrupt thing laden with many 
 loves, an expert in all that was pleasure, a wandering, 
 implacable temptress. She divined his ill-will, his 
 jealousy, the malignity of the fever that had suddenly 
 been kindled in the dear friend to whom she had 
 consecrated all that, shut up within herself, was pre- 
 cious and sincere, for whom she had preserved the 
 value of that offering by a constant refusal. Hence- 
 forward all was lost, all had been devastated at a 
 blow, like a beautiful domain that has become the 
 prey of vindictive rebel slaves. And almost as if she 
 had been on her death-bed and in her last agony, the 
 whole of her sharp, stormy life rose up before her, 
 her life of pain and struggle, of bewilderment, passion, 
 and triumph. She felt all the weight, all the encum- 
 brance of it. She remembered the ineffable feeling 
 of joy, of terror, and of liberation that had possessed 
 her when she gave herself up for the first time in her 
 far-away girlhood to the man who had deluded her. 
 And there passed through her soul with a frightful 
 stab the image of the virgin who had withdrawn her- 
 self that day, who had disappeared, who was perhaps
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 13$ 
 
 still dreaming in her solitary chamber, or was weep- 
 ing or promising herself, or prostrate was tasting 
 already the joy of her promise. " It is late ; it is too 
 late ! " The irrevocable word seemed to pass con- 
 tinually over her head like the roll of a bronze bell. 
 And his desire reached her like a wound that tore 
 her open. 
 
 " Oh, do not hurt me ! " 
 
 She stood imploring him, white and slight like the 
 swansdown that ran round her neck and on her rest- 
 less bosom. She seemed to have separated herself 
 from her power, to have become light and weak, 
 clothed with a secret, tender soul that was so easy to 
 be killed, to be destroyed and offered up as a blood- 
 less sacrifice. 
 
 " No, Perdita; I will not hurt you," he stammered, 
 suddenly unnerved by her voice and countenance, 
 seized at the entrails by a feeling of human pity 
 which had arisen from the same depths as his first 
 savage instinct. " Forgive me; forgive me." 
 
 It would have pleased him now to take her in his 
 arms, to nurse her, comfort her, to feel her weeping 
 and to drink in her tears. It seemed to him that he 
 did not recognise her, that it was an unknown person 
 who stood there before him, one infinitely pained 
 and lowly and deprived of all strength. And his 
 pity and remorse were a little like what one would 
 feel if one had unwillingly offended or hurt a sick 
 person or a child, some little and inoffensive lonely 
 being. 
 
 " Forgive me ! " 
 
 It would have pleased him to kneel down before 
 her, to kiss her feet in the grass or say some little
 
 136 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 word to her. He stooped and touched one of her 
 hands. She shuddered from head to foot, turned her 
 widened eyes towards him, then cast them down 
 again and remained motionless. The shadows accu- 
 mulated under the arch of her eyebrows, marking 
 the undulation of the cheek-bone. Again the icy 
 stream submerged her. 
 
 They heard the voices of the guests who were scat- 
 tered about the garden ; then a great silence came. 
 They heard the gravel creak under some footstep ; 
 then again a great silence came. An indistinct clam- 
 our reached them from the distance of the canals. 
 All at once the perfume of the jessamine seemed 
 to have become stronger, like a heart that has quick- 
 ened its throbs. The night seemed to be heavy with 
 wonders. The eternal forces were harmoniously at 
 work between the earth and the stars. 
 
 " Forgive me ! If my desire gives you pain, I will 
 go on suffocating it. I am even capable of giving it 
 up, of obeying you. Perdita, Perdita, I will forget 
 what your eyes said to me up there among the use- 
 less words. . . . What clasp, what caress, could have 
 united us more deeply? All the passion of night 
 urged us and threw us towards each other. I re- 
 ceived you all into myself like a wave. And now it 
 seems that I can no longer divide you from my own 
 blood, it seems that you too cannot go away from 
 me, and that we should set out together towards 
 I know not what daybreak . . ." 
 
 He was speaking in a low voice, putting his whole 
 self into his words, as if he had become some vibrat- 
 ing substance in which at every moment all the 
 changes of that nocturnal creature seemed to impress
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 137 
 
 themselves. It was no longer the heavy human 
 prison, a bodily shape made of opaque and impene- 
 trable flesh that was there before him, but a soul that 
 was revealing itself in a variety of appearances as 
 expressive as melodies, a sensibility delicate and pow- 
 erful beyond all measure that was creating in her in 
 turns the frailty of flowers, the vigour of marble, the 
 vehemence of the flame, all that is shadow and all 
 that is light 
 
 " Stelio ! " 
 
 She only just said the name, and yet in the dying 
 breath that came from her pale lips there was as 
 great an immensity of wonder and exaltation as in 
 the loudest cry. She had caught the sound of love 
 in the words of the man beside her, of love, love ! 
 She, who had so often listened to beautiful perfect 
 words flowing towards her in that limpid voice and had 
 suffered from them as from a torture and a mockery, 
 now, because of this new accent in it, saw her own 
 life and the life of the world transfigured Her soul 
 seemed to reverse itself, the heavy encumbrances fall- 
 ing to unknown depths, disappearing in endless dark- 
 ness, while there came to the surface something light 
 and luminous, something free and spotless, that dilated 
 and curved into a glorious dome like a morning sky; 
 and as the wave of light creeps from horizon to 
 zenith in its silent harmony, the illusion of happi- 
 ness rose upon her lips. An infinite smile diffused 
 itself there, so infinite that the lines of her mouth 
 trembled in it like leaves in the wind, her teeth shone 
 in it like jessamine blossoms in the light of stars, 
 the slenderest of shapes in a vast element. 
 
 " All is abolished ; all has vanished. I have not
 
 138 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 lived, I have not loved, I have not enjoyed, I have 
 not suffered, I am new again. This is the only love 
 I know. I am pure again. I would that I could die 
 in the joy you will reveal to me. Years and their 
 facts have passed over me without touching that part 
 of my soul that I have been keeping for you, that 
 secret heaven which has opened up suddenly and has 
 conquered shadows, and has remained alone to hold 
 the strength and sweetness of your, name. Your love 
 is saving me ; the fulness of my clasp will make you 
 divine. . . ." 
 
 Words of ecstasy sprang from her enfranchised 
 heart, but her lips dared not speak them, and she 
 went on smiling, smiling that infinite smile of hers, 
 still in silence. 
 
 " Is it not true? Tell me! Answer me, Perdita. Do 
 not you too feel this necessity? This necessity that 
 has become stronger with all the strength of our 
 renunciation, with all the constancy we have shown 
 in waiting for the fulness of the hour? Ah, it does 
 indeed seem to me that all my hopes and all my 
 presentiments would be as nothing, Perdita, if this 
 hour were not to come. Tell me that you could not 
 get to that daybreak without me as I could not with- 
 out you. Answer me." 
 
 " Yes, yes ! " 
 
 In that faint syllable, she gave herself up irre- 
 claimably. The smile went out; the mouth became 
 heavy, appearing in almost hard relief against the 
 pallor of her face, as if thirst were swelling it, strong 
 to attract, to take, to hold, insatiable. And her whole 
 person, that had seemed to shrivel in her pain and 
 terror, drew itself up again as if a new framework had
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 139 
 
 suddenly grown within it, reconquered its carnal 
 power, was overswept by an impetuous wave, be- 
 came once more desirable and impure. 
 
 " Let us wait no longer; it is late." 
 
 He was trembling with impatience. The fury was 
 again taking hold of him ; frenzy had again seized 
 him by the throat with its feline claws. 
 
 " Yes," repeated the woman, but in a different 
 tone, her eyes plunged into his as if she were now 
 certain of possessing the philtre that was to bind him 
 to her lastingly. 
 
 He felt the many joys that must pervade that flesh 
 full of deep things enter his heart. He looked at her 
 and turned pale, as if his blood had suddenly been 
 dispersed over the earth and was sinking into it to 
 nourish the roots of growing things, as if he were 
 standing in a dream, outside all time, alone with her 
 who was alone. 
 
 She was standing under the fruit-laden shrub which 
 she had adorned with necklaces; her whole person 
 was sharply drawn and curved like her lips, and 
 fever darted from all her limbs like the breath darts 
 from between the lips. The unexpected beauty 
 made up of a thousand ideal forces that had illu- 
 mined her in the supper-room renewed itself in her 
 still more intensely, made up now of a flame that 
 never fades, of a fervour that never languishes. The 
 magnificent fruits, bearing upon them the crown of 
 the kingly giver, hung above her head, the myth of 
 the pomegranate was revivified in the night as it had 
 been at the passage of the laden boat on the even- 
 ing water. Who was she? Persephone, Queen of 
 Shadows? Had she lived there where all human
 
 140 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 agitations seem but the wind's sport amid the dust 
 of an endless road? Had she seen the world where 
 its springs are, counted in a subterranean world 
 the roots of flowers immovable like the veins in 
 a petrified body? Was she tired or drunk with 
 human tears and laughter and lusts, and with having 
 touched all mortal things one by one to see them 
 blossom and to see them perish? Who was she, 
 then? Had she struck upon the cities like a curse? 
 Had her kiss for ever closed all lips that sang? 
 Had she stopped the throb of tyrannous souls, 
 and poisoned youths with the sweat of her body 
 that was salt like the foam of the sea? Who was 
 she; who was she? What was the past that made 
 her so pale, so ardent, and so perilous? Had she 
 already told all her secrets and given away all her 
 gifts, or could she still accomplish some new work 
 that would bring wonder to this new lover, to whom 
 life, desire, and victory, all three, meant one only 
 thing? All this and still more, still more was offered 
 to his dream by the thin veins on her temples, the 
 undulation of her cheeks, the power of her body, 
 the bluish-greenish shadow as of the sea that was the 
 element in which her face lived as the eye lives in 
 its own moisture. 
 
 "All evil and all good, that which I know and 
 that which I ignore, that which you know and that 
 which you ignore, all was reserved for the fulness 
 of our night." Life and dream had become one 
 only thing. Thoughts and senses were as wines 
 poured out in one same cup. Their garments and 
 their bare faces, their hopes and the sight of their 
 eyes were like the plants of that garden, like the air,
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 141 
 
 the stars, and the silence. The hidden harmony of 
 Nature became apparent, by which she has mixed 
 together and dissimulated all her differences and 
 diversities. 
 
 It was one of those sublime moments that have no 
 return. Before even his soul was conscious of it, 
 his hands went out to her in their desire, touched 
 her body, drew it towards him, found pleasure in 
 feeling that it was cold and sweet. 
 
 When she felt his strong hands on her bare arm, 
 the woman threw her head back as if about to 'fall. 
 Under her dying eyelids, between her dying lips, the 
 white of her eyes and the white of her teeth glittered 
 like things that glitter for the last time. Then 
 quickly she raised her head and revived ; her mouth 
 sought the mouth that was seeking it They stamped 
 themselves on each other. No seal was ever deeper. 
 Love, like the shrub above them, covered both those 
 deluded ones. 
 
 They separated ; they gazed at each other without 
 seeing. They could see nothing. They were blind. 
 They could hear a terrible roll as if the quiver 
 of bronze bells had re-entered their very forehead. 
 Nevertheless they heard the dull thud of a pome- 
 granate that had fallen on the grass from a branch 
 they had shaken in their violent clasp. They shook 
 themselves as if to throw off a mantle that was 
 burdening them. They saw each other and became 
 lucid again. They heard the voices of their friends 
 who were scattered about the garden and a distant 
 indistinct clamour from the canals where perhaps the 
 antique pageants were repassing. 
 
 " Well, " asked the young man, eagerly, scorched
 
 142 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 to the marrow by that kiss that had been full of flesh 
 and soul. 
 
 The woman bent down to the grass to pick up the 
 pomegranate. It was quite ripe and broken by its 
 fall; its blood-like juice was flowing; it moistened 
 her parched hand and stained her light dress. With 
 the remembrance of the laden boat, the pale island, 
 and the meadow of asphodel, the words of the Life- 
 giver came back to her loving spirit. " This is my 
 body. . . . Take and eat." 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 She pressed the fruit in her hand with an instinc- 
 tive movement, as if to crush it. The juice trickled 
 in a streak over her wrist. Then her whole body 
 contracted and vibrated as if round a knot of fire, 
 craving for subjection. Again the icy river sub- 
 merged her, passing over her, chilling her from the 
 roots of her hair to the points of her fingers without 
 extinguishing that knot of fire. 
 
 " How? Tell me ! " the young man urged, almost 
 roughly, as he felt his madness rising again and the 
 odour of the Orgy returning from afar. 
 
 " Leave when the others leave, then come back. I 
 will wait for you at the gate of the Gradenigo Garden." 
 
 The wretched carnal trembling shook her. She 
 had become the prey of an invincible power. He 
 saw her again for the space of a flash as he had 
 pictured her before, outstretched, moist, and throb- 
 bing like a Maenad after the dance. Again they 
 gazed upon each other, but they could not bear the 
 suffering brought by the fierce eyes of their desire. 
 They parted.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 143 
 
 She went away towards the voices of the poets 
 who had exalted the idealism of her power. 
 
 Lost! lost! Henceforth she was lost! She was 
 still living, yet overthrown, humiliated, wounded as 
 if she had been pitilessly trodden under foot ; she 
 was still living, and the dawn was rising, and the 
 days were beginning again, and the fresh tide was 
 flowing again into the City Beautiful, and Donatella 
 was still pure on her pillows. It was already melting 
 into infinite distance, although it was still so near, 
 that hour in which she had waited for her lover at 
 the gate, had heard his steps in the almost funereal 
 silence of the deserted sidepath, had felt her knees 
 give way as under a blow, and the terrible roll as of 
 bronze bells fill her head. That hour was already 
 very far, yet in all her body, together with the tremu- 
 lousness that pleasure had left there, the sensations of 
 that time of waiting persisted with strange intensity ; 
 the chill of the railing against which she had laid 
 her brow, the acrid odour that rose from the grass 
 as from a retting-tank, the warm moist tongue of 
 Myrta's greyhounds that had noiselessly come and 
 licked her hands. 
 
 " Good-bye, good-bye ! " 
 
 She was lost. He had risen from her bed as from 
 the couch of a courtesan, almost a stranger to her, 
 almost impatient, attracted by the freshness of dawn, 
 by the freedom of morning. 
 
 " Good-bye ! " 
 
 From her window she caught sight of him on the 
 shore, drinking in a wide breath of vivid air ; then
 
 144 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 in the great calm she heard his firm, clear voice 
 calling the gondolier: 
 
 " Zorzi ! " 
 
 The man was sleeping in the bottom of his gondola 
 and his human sleep was like the sleep of the curved 
 boat that obeyed him. As Stelio touched him with 
 his foot, he awoke with a start, jumped to the stern, 
 seized his oar. The man and the boat woke up at 
 the same time, in perfect harmony with each other, 
 like a single body, ready to glide on the water. 
 
 " Your servant, master," said Zorzi, with a good- 
 natured smile, glancing at the sky that was growing 
 lighter. " Do you sit down, and I will row." 
 
 Opposite the palace some one threw open the great 
 door leading to some works. It was a stone-cutting 
 establishment, where steps were being cut out of 
 the stone of Val di Sole. 
 
 "To ascend," thought Stelio, and his superstitious 
 heart gladdened at the good omen. The name of 
 the quarry, too (the Valley of the Sun), seemed 
 radiant on the door-plate. The image of a staircase 
 signified his own ascension. He had already seen 
 it in the abandoned garden on the coat of arms of 
 the Gradenigo. " Higher, ever higher ! " Joy was 
 again bubbling up from the depths. The morning 
 seemed to stimulate all the works of man. 
 
 "And Perdita? And Ariadne?" He saw them 
 again at the top of the marble staircase in the light 
 of the smoking torches, thrown so close to each 
 other by the throng that they had blended in one 
 same whiteness,' the two temptresses, both emerg- 
 ing from the crowd as from the clasp of a monster. 
 " And la Tanagra?" The Syracusan with the long
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 145 
 
 goat-like eyes then appeared, in a restful pose, knitted 
 to her mother earth, as the figure of a bas-relief 
 is attached to the marble in which it is carved. 
 "The Dionysian Trinity!" He pictured them to 
 himself as freed from every passion, like the crea- 
 tures of Art. The surface of his soul was being 
 covered with splendid, rapid images, like a sea 
 scattered over with swelling sails. He had ceased 
 to suffer. The increasing daylight was spreading 
 a sharp sense of newness over his whole sub- 
 stance. The heat of the night's fever was entirely 
 dispersing in the breeze; its fumes were being dis- 
 sipated. What was happening all around, happened 
 in himself too. He was being born anew with the 
 morning. 
 
 " There is no need for me to light you any more 
 now ! " murmured the oarsman, putting out the gon- 
 dola lantern. 
 
 " By San Giovanni Decollate, to the Grand Canal," 
 cried Stelio, sitting down. 
 
 And while the dentellated prow turned into the 
 Canal of San Giacomo dall' Orio, he turned to look at 
 the palace, which was leaden in the shadow. An illu- 
 minated window suddenly grew dark like an eye that 
 is blinded. " Good-bye, good-bye." His heart gave 
 a leap, pleasure waved back into his veins, images of 
 pain and death passed over all the others. The wo- 
 man no longer young had remained up there alone, 
 with the expression of a dying thing on her face; 
 the virgin was preparing to go back to the place of 
 her torment. He knew not how to pity, he could 
 only promise. From the abundance of his strength, 
 he drew the illusion of being able, for his greater joy,
 
 146 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 to change those two destinies. He ceased to suffer. 
 All uneasiness yielded before the simple pleasure of 
 the eyes offered him by the sights of the morning. 
 The leaves peeping over the garden walls, behind 
 which the twitter of the sparrows was already awaken- 
 ing, hid from him the pallor of Perdita ; the sinuous 
 lips of the singer were lost in the water's undulation. 
 That which was happening around, happened to him 
 too. The arch and the echo of the bridges, the 
 swimming seaweeds, the moan of the pigeons, were 
 like his breathing, his confidence, his hunger. 
 
 " Stop in front of the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi," 
 he ordered the boatman. 
 
 As he passed by a garden wall, he tore away a few 
 frail, flowering plants from the interstices of the bricks 
 that had the rich, dark colour of clotted blood. The 
 flowers were violet, of extreme delicacy, almost im- 
 palpable. He thought of the myrtles that grow along 
 the Gulf of JEgina, hardy and erect, like bronze 
 bushes. He thought of the little dark cypresses that 
 crown the stony tops of the Tuscan Hills, of the high 
 laurels that protect the statues in the Roman villas. 
 His thoughts increased the value of the autumnal 
 flowers that were too slight an offering for Him who 
 had known how to give his life the great victory He 
 had promised it. 
 
 " Go to shore." 
 
 The Canal was deserted; it was like an ancient 
 river, full of poetry and silence. The green sky was 
 mirrored in it with its last dying stars. At the first 
 glance the palace had an aerial appearance as of a 
 painted cloud laid on the water; the shade in which 
 it was still wrapped had about it something of the
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 147 
 
 quality of velvet, the beauty of something rich and 
 soft. And in the same manner that the pattern 
 slowly discloses itself in thick velvet, slowly the lines 
 of the architecture became visible in the three Corin- 
 thian orders that rose with their rhythm ot grace and 
 strength, to the summit where the emblems of noble 
 estate, the eagles, the horses, and the pitchers, were 
 entwined with the roses of the Loredan. NON 
 NOBIS, DOMINE. NON NOBIS. 
 
 It was there that the great ailing heart was beat- 
 ing. The image of the barbaric creator reappeared, 
 with its blue eyes shining under the vast brow, its 
 lips closing above the robust chin that was armed 
 with sensuality, pride, and disdain. Was he asleep? 
 Could he sleep, or did he lie sleepless with his glory? 
 The young man recalled strange things that were 
 told of him. Was it true that he could not sleep, 
 except on his wife's heart, closely held by her, and 
 that even in his old age there persisted in him this 
 need of a loving contact? He recalled a story of 
 Lady Myrta's, who, when she was in Palermo, had 
 visited the Villa d'Angri, where the cupboards in the 
 room inhabited by the old man had remained im- 
 pregnated with so violent an essence of roses that it 
 still turned her faint. He saw the small, tired body 
 adorned with gems, wrapped in sumptuous sheets, 
 perfumed like a corpse prepared for the funeral pyre. 
 And was it not Venice that had given him, as of old 
 it had given Albert Diirer, a taste for things sumpt- 
 uous and voluptuous? It was in the silence of the 
 canals that he had heard the passing of the most 
 ardent breath of his music, the deadly passion of 
 Tristan and Isolde.
 
 148 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Now the great ailing heart was throbbing there, 
 and there its formidable impulse was dying out. The 
 patrician palace with the eagles and horses and 
 pitchers and roses was shut up and as dumb as a 
 great sepulchre. The sky above the marbles was 
 reddening at the breath of dawn. 
 
 " Hail to the victorious one ! " And Stelio threw 
 the flowers down before the door. 
 
 "Goon! Goon!" 
 
 The oarsman bent over the oars, spurred by that 
 sudden impatience. The slight boat skipped over 
 the water. The canal was all alight on one side. 
 A tawny sail passed noiselessly. The sea, the bright 
 waves, the laugh of the sea-birds, the wind out in the 
 open, rose up before his desire. 
 
 " Row, Zorzi ! To the Veneta Marina by the 
 Canal dell' Olio," cried the young man. 
 
 The canal seemed too small for his soul to breathe 
 in. Victory was as necessary to him now as air. He 
 wanted to test the well-tempered quality of his nature, 
 after the night's delirium, in the light of the morning, 
 and in the sharpness of the sea. He was not sleepy ; 
 there was a circle of freshness round his eyes as if he 
 had bathed them with dew. He felt no need of rest, 
 only a horror of his hotel bed as of a resting-place 
 too vile for him. " The deck of a vessel, the smell 
 of salt and pitch, the throb of a red sail . . ." 
 
 " Row, Zorzi ! " 
 
 The gondolier rowed with increased vigour; the 
 rowlock now and then creaked under his effort. 
 The Fondaco dei Turchi melted away like worn and 
 marvellously discoloured ivory, like the surviving 
 portico of a ruined mosque. The palace of the
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 149 
 
 Cornaro and the palace of the Pesaro passed them, 
 like two opaque giants blackened by time as by the 
 smoke of a conflagration. The Ca'd'Oro passed them 
 like a divine play of stone and air ; then the Rialto 
 showed its ample back already noisy with popular 
 life, laden with its encumbered shops, filled with the 
 odour of fish and vegetables, like an enormous cor- 
 nucopia pouring on the shore all round it an abun- 
 dance of the fruits of the earth and sea with which 
 to feed the dominant city. 
 
 " I am hungry, I am hungry, Zorzi," said Stelio, 
 laughing. 
 
 "A good sign when the night makes you hungry; 
 only the old are made sleepy by it," said Zorzi. 
 
 " Go to shore ! " 
 
 At a stall he bought some of the grapes of the 
 Vignole, and some of the figs of Malamocco, heaped 
 on a plate of vine-leaves. 
 
 " Row ! " 
 
 The gondola veered under the warehouse of the 
 Tedeschi, slipping along the dark, narrow canals 
 towards the Rio de Palazzo. The bells of San 
 Giovanni Crisostomo, of San Giovanni Elemosinario, 
 of San Cassiano, of Santa Maria dei Miracoli, of Santa 
 Maria Formosa, and of San Lio were joyously ringing 
 in the dawn. The noise of the market, with its odours 
 of fishery, of green stuff and of wine, was drowned in 
 the salutation of the bronzes. The strip of water under 
 the strip of sky, between the still sleeping walls of brick 
 and marble, became ever more resplendent before the 
 metal of the prow, as if the race were lighting it up, 
 and that increase of light gave Stelio the illusion 
 of a flaming swiftness. He thought of a boat that is
 
 ISO THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 being launched, raising sparks as it slips into the sea : 
 the waves fume all round, the crowd shouts and 
 applauds. 
 
 " To the Ponte della Paglia ! " 
 
 A thought as spontaneous as an instinct was lead- 
 ing him to the glorious place where it seemed that 
 there must still remain some trace of his own lyrical 
 animations, and some echoes of the great Bacchic 
 Chorus. " Viva il forte ! " The gondola grazed 
 the powerful flank of the ducal palace, standing com- 
 pact like a single mass worked by chisels that had 
 been as apt at rinding melodies there as the bows of 
 musical instruments. He embraced that mass with 
 the whole of his newly arisen soul ; there, once more, 
 he heard the sound of his own voice and the crash of 
 applause, saw the great, many-eyed Chimera, its bust 
 covered with resplendent scales, its length blackening 
 under enormous gilded scrolls, and distinctly saw 
 himself oscillating above the multitude like a hollow, 
 sonorous body inhabited by some mysterious will. 
 He was saying the words : " To create with joy ! It 
 is the attribute of Divinity ! It is impossible to 
 imagine at the summit of our spirit a more triumph- 
 ant act. The very words which express it have some- 
 thing of the splendour of dawn. . . ." He went on 
 repeating to himself, to the air, to the water, to the 
 stones, to the ancient city, to the young dawn : " To 
 create with joy, to create with joy." When the prow 
 passed under the bridge, he absorbed in the wider 
 breath he drew, together with all his own hope and 
 courage, all the beauty and all the strength of his ante- 
 rior life. 
 
 " Find me a boat, Zorzi, a boat that will go out to
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 151 
 
 sea." He seemed to need still more breathing space, 
 to need the wind, the sea salt, the foam, the swollen 
 sail, the bowsprit pointed towards an immense ho- 
 rizon. 
 
 " To the Veneta Marina ! Find me a fishing boat. 
 Some braghozzo from Chioggia." 
 
 He caught sight of a great red and black sail that 
 had only just been hoisted, and was flapping as it 
 caught the wind, haughty as an old republican ban- 
 ner, bearing the Lion and the Book. 
 
 " There it is ! there it is ! We must overtake it, 
 Zorzi." 
 
 Impatiently he waved his hand to the boat, signing 
 to her to stop. 
 
 " Shout out to the boat that they must wait for 
 me! " 
 
 The man at the oar, heated and dripping, threw a 
 cry of recall to the man at the sail. The gondola flew 
 like a canoe in a regatta to the panting of the gon- 
 dolier's mighty breast. 
 
 " Bravo, Zorzi ! " 
 
 But Stelio was panting too, as if he were about to 
 overtake his fortune, or some happy aim, or the cer- 
 tainty of empire. 
 
 " We have run in and won the flag," said the oars- 
 man, rubbing his heated hands with a frank laugh 
 that seemed to refresh him. " What folly ! " 
 
 The gesture, the tone, the popular wit, the aston- 
 ished faces of the fisherman leaning over the parapet, 
 the reflection of the sail that made the water blood- 
 like, the cordial odour of bread that came from a 
 neighbouring bakehouse, the odour of boiling tar 
 from a neighbouring dockyard, the noise of the
 
 152 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 arsenal work-people going to their warlike labour, all 
 the strong emanation of that shore where one could 
 still smell the old rotten galleys of the Serene Re- 
 public and hear the resounding under the hammer of 
 the Italian iron-clads, all those rough and healthy 
 things called up an impulse of gladness that burst 
 forth in a laugh from the young man's heart. He and 
 the oarsman laughed together under the tarred, 
 patched flank of the fishing boat, that had the living 
 aspect of a good patient beast of burden, its skin 
 harsh with wrinkles, excrescences, and scars. 
 
 "What is it you want?" asked the elder of the 
 fishermen, bending towards the sonorous laughter 
 his bearded and weather-beaten face in which the 
 only light things were a few grey hairs, and the grey 
 eyes under the eyelids turned up by the salt winds. 
 " What can I do for you, master? " 
 
 The mainsail was flapping and hissing like a banner- 
 
 "The master would like to come on board," 
 answered Zorzi. 
 
 The mast creaked like a living thing from head to 
 foot. 
 
 " Let him come up, then. Is that all you wish?" 
 said the old man, simply, and he turned to take the 
 stepladder. 
 
 He hooked it along the stern. It was made of a 
 few worn pegs, and a single double knotted rope that 
 was also worn. But that too, like every detail of the 
 rough boat, seemed to Stelio a singularly living 
 thing. On putting his foot upon it, his thin glossy 
 shoes embarrassed him. The large hard hand of the 
 sailor, marked with blue emblems, helped him up, 
 pulled him on board with a wrench.
 
 THE EPIPHANY OF THE FLAME 153 
 
 " The grapes and the figs, Zorzi ! " 
 
 The oarsman from the gondola handed him the 
 plate of vine-leaves. 
 
 " May it go into so much new blood for you ! " 
 
 "And the bread! " 
 
 " We have got hot bread," said a sailor, lifting up 
 his fine, fair, round form, " just fresh from the oven." 
 
 Hunger certainly would give it a delicious flavour, 
 would find all the goodness of the grain gathered 
 there. 
 
 " Your servant, master, and fair wind to you," cried 
 the oarsman, saluting. 
 
 " Pull ! " 
 
 The Latin sail with the Lion and the Book swelled 
 crimson. The boat made for the open, turning its 
 prow towards San Servolo. The shore seemed to 
 arch itself as if to push it off. The veins of water in 
 the ship's track made an opaline whirlpool as they 
 mingled, one rosy, one blue-green, then they changed ; 
 all the colours alternated as if the wave at the prow 
 were a fluid rainbow. 
 
 " Steer to the right ! " 
 
 The boat veered with all its might. A miracle 
 caught it; the first rays of the sun pierced the 
 throbbing sail and flashed on the angels above the 
 towers of San Marco and of San Giorgio Maggiore. 
 They kindled the sphere of the Fortuna ; their light- 
 ning crowned the five mitres of the Basilica. The 
 Sea-City was queen on the water, and all her veils were 
 rent. 
 
 " Glory to the miracle ! " A superhuman feeling 
 of power and freedom swelled the heart of the young 
 man as the wind swelled the sail that was being
 
 154 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 transfigured for him. He stood in the crimson 
 splendour of that sail as in the splendour of his own 
 blood. It seemed to him that the mystery of so 
 much beauty demanded of him the triumphal act. 
 The consciousness came to him that he was ready 
 for its accomplishment. " To create with joy ! " 
 And the world was his 1
 
 II 
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE
 
 II 
 
 " IN TIME ! " La Foscarina had paused for a long 
 time in one of the rooms of the Academia before the 
 old woman of Francesco Torbido, that wrinkled, 
 toothless, flabby, yellowish old woman, incapable of 
 either weeping or smiling any longer, that kind of 
 human ruin far worse than putrefaction, that kind 
 of earthly parca holding between her fingers in place 
 of spindle, thread, or scissors the placard with the 
 warning. 
 
 " In time ! " she repeated to the open air, interrupt- 
 ing the silence full of thoughts during which, little 
 by little, she had felt her heart grow heavy and 
 descend to its depths like a stone in dull water. 
 " Stelio, do you know the shut-up house in the Calle 
 Gambara?" 
 
 "No, which?" 
 
 " The house of the Countess of Glanegg." 
 
 " No, I don't know it. " 
 
 " Don't you know the story of the beautiful Aus- 
 trian?" 
 
 ." No, Fosca, tell it me." 
 
 " Shall we go as far as the Calle Gambara ? it is only 
 a few steps." 
 
 " Let us go."
 
 158 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Side by side, they went towards the shut-up house. 
 Stelio hung back a little to watch the actress, to see 
 her walking in the dead air. His warm glance em- 
 braced her whole person, the line of the shoulders 
 falling with so noble a grace, the free flexible waist 
 on the powerful limbs, the knees that moved slightly 
 among the folds of her gown, and the pale, passionate 
 face, the mouth full of thirst and eloquence, the fore- 
 head that was as beautiful as a beautiful manly brow, 
 the eyes that lengthened out from among the eye- 
 lashes, hazy as if a tear were continually coming up 
 to them and melting there unshed : the whole of the 
 passionate face full of light and shadow, of love and 
 sorrow: the feverish strength, the trembling life. 
 
 " I love you, I love you ! You alone please me ; 
 everything in you pleases me," he said suddenly, 
 quite low, close to her cheek, almost pressing against 
 her as he fell in with her pace, putting his arm under 
 her arm, unable to bear the thought of her being 
 seized by her torment, of her suffering from the fear- 
 ful admonishment. 
 
 She started, stopped, dropped her eyes, turned 
 white. 
 
 " Sweet friend," she said in so low a voice that 
 the words seem modulated less by her lips than by 
 her soul's smile. 
 
 All her trouble was flowing away, was being 
 changed into a wave of tenderness that poured its 
 abundance over her friend. Her infinite gratitude 
 gave her an anxious need of finding some great gift 
 for him. 
 
 "What can I do, what can I do for you? Tell 
 
 me: 
 
 i
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 159 
 
 She thought of some wonderful test, some sudden 
 strange testimony of love. "Let me serve, let me 
 serve ! " She longed to possess the world that she 
 might offer it to him. 
 
 " What is it that you wish? Tell me, what can I 
 do for you ? " 
 
 " Love me ! Love me ! " 
 
 " My love is sad, my poor friend." 
 
 " It is perfect ; it fills up my life." 
 
 " But you are young." 
 
 " I love you ! " 
 
 " You should possess that which is strong like 
 yourself." 
 
 " Every day you exalt my hope and my strength. 
 The tide of my blood seems to swell when I am near 
 you and your silence. At such times, things are 
 conceived in me which you will marvel at in time. 
 You are necessary to me." 
 
 " Do not say so ! " 
 
 " Each day you bring me the assurance that every 
 promise ever made to me will be kept." 
 
 " Yes, you will go on to the end of your own beau- 
 tiful destiny. I have no fear for you. You are safe. 
 No danger can frighten you. No obstacle can ever 
 come in your way. Oh, to .love without fearing! 
 Whoever loves, fears. I do not fear for you. 
 You seem to me invincible. For this too, I thank 
 you." 
 
 She was showing him her profound faith which, like 
 her passion, was lucid and unlimited. For a long 
 time, even in the ardour of her own struggles and the 
 vicissitudes of her wandering lot, she had kept her eyes 
 intently fixed on his young, victorious life as on an
 
 160 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 ideal form born of the purification of her own desire. 
 More than once, in the midst of the sadness of her 
 vain loves and the nobility of her self-imposed pro- 
 hibition, she had thought: " Ah, if when the end has 
 come of all my courage that the storm has hardened, 
 if at the end of all the clear strong things that sorrow 
 and revolt have laid bare in the depths of my soul, if 
 with all that is best in me I could one day shape the 
 wings for your last, highest flight ! " More than once 
 her melancholy had known the intoxication of an 
 almost heroic presentiment. At such times, she had 
 subjected her soul to effort and constraint, had raised 
 it to the highest moral beauty she knew, had led it 
 towards actions that were pure and sorrowful, only 
 for the sake of deserving that which she hoped and 
 feared, only to think herself worthy of offering her 
 servitude to him who was so impatient of conquest. 
 
 And now a sudden violent shock of Fate had 
 thrown her against him with all the weight of her 
 trembling body like a woman full of desire. She 
 had united herself to him with the sharpest of her 
 blood, she had watched him on the same pillow, 
 sleeping the heavy sleep of love's exhaustion, she had 
 known at his side sudden awakenings agitated by cruel 
 forebodings, had known the impossibility of closing 
 her tired eyes again, lest he should gaze on her while 
 she slept, lest seeking in her face the lines of the 
 years that had passed he should be disgusted by them 
 and pant after some fresh, young, unconscious life. 
 
 " Nothing is worth what you give me," said Stelio, 
 pressing her arm, his fingers seeking the bare wrist 
 under her glove, urged by an uneasy necessity of 
 feeling the pulse of that devoted life and the beating
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 161 
 
 of that faithful heart in the deserted places through 
 which they walked, under the squalid smoke that sur- 
 rounded them and deadened the noise of their steps. 
 " Nothing is worth this certainty of never again being 
 alone until death." 
 
 " Ah, then you too feel it, you too know that this 
 is for ever!" she cried with an impulse of joy as she 
 saw the triumph of her love. " For ever ! Whatever 
 may happen, wherever your fate may lead you, 
 wherever you may want me to serve you, Stelio, be 
 it near you or from afar. . . ." 
 
 A confused monotony of sound was spreading 
 through the air. She recognised it. It was the 
 chorus of sparrows gathered together on the great 
 dying tree in the garden of the Countess Glanegg. 
 The words stopped on her lips ; she made an instinc- 
 tive movement, as if to turn back, as if to draw her 
 friend away in some other direction. 
 
 "Where are we going? " he asked, shaken by his 
 companion's brusque movement and by the un- 
 expected interruption that was like the end of some 
 music or enchantment. 
 
 She stopped. She smiled her slight concealing 
 smile. " IN TIME." " I tried to escape," she said, 
 " but I cannot, I see." 
 
 As she stood there, she was like some pale flame. 
 
 " I had forgotten that I was taking you to the 
 closed house, Stelio." 
 
 She stood there in the ashen daylight, nerveless 
 like one lost in a desert. 
 
 " I thought it was somewhere else we were going. 
 But here we are. In time ! " 
 
 She stood before him now as on that unforgettable
 
 162 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 night, when she had implored him, " Do not hurt 
 me ! " She stood there clothed in her sweet tender 
 soul, that was so easy to slay, so easy to destroy and 
 offer up like a bloodless sacrifice. 
 
 " Let us go ; let us go ! " he said, trying to draw 
 her away. "Let us go elsewhere." 
 
 " One cannot." 
 
 " Let us go home, let us go home and light a fire, 
 the first October fire. Let me spend the evening 
 with you, Foscarina. It is going to rain before long. 
 It would be so sweet to linger in your room, to talk 
 or be silent with our hands in each other's. . . . 
 Come, let us go." 
 
 It would have pleased him to take her in his arms, 
 to nurse her, comfort her, to feel her weeping and 
 to drink in her tears. The very sound of his own 
 caressing words increased his tenderness. Then, 
 passionately, of all her loving person he loved the 
 delicate lines that went from her eyes to her temples, 
 and the little dark veins that made violets of her eye- 
 lids, and the undulation of her cheek, and the weary 
 chin, and all that in her seemed touched by the 
 disease of Autumn and all that was shadow on her 
 passionate face. 
 
 " Foscarina, Foscarina ! " 
 
 Whenever he called her by her real name, his 
 heart would beat more rapidly, as if something more 
 profoundly human were entering into his love, as if 
 all of a sudden their whole past were being reknit 
 to the figure isolated by his dream, as if innumerable 
 threads were reconnecting all its fibres to implacable 
 life. 
 
 " Come, let us go ! "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 163 
 
 " But why, since the house is there. Let us pass 
 by the Calle Gambara. Don't you want to know 
 the story of the Countess Glanegg? Look, it is like 
 a convent! " 
 
 The narrow street was lonely; like a hermitage 
 path it was greyish, damp, and strewn with putrid 
 leaves. The north-east wind had brought a slow 
 soft mist with it that deadened every noise. The 
 monotonous twitter of the sparrows sounded now and 
 again like the creaking of iron or wood. 
 
 " Behind those walls, a desolate soul is surviving 
 the beauty of its own body," said la Foscarina, 
 in a level voice. " Look, the windows are closed, the 
 shutters are nailed, the doors are sealed. Only one 
 is left open for the servants to pass in and out of, 
 and through it the dead woman's food is brought 
 to her as in an Egyptian tomb. It is an extinguished 
 body that those servants feed and wait upon." 
 
 The almost naked tops of the trees that overtopped 
 the cloistered enclosure seemed smoking, and the 
 sparrows, more numerous on the branches than the 
 diseased leaves, twittered and twittered endlessly. 
 
 " Guess what her name is. It is as rare and beau- 
 tiful a name as if you had discovered it yourself." 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " Radiana. Radiana is the name of the prisoner." 
 
 " But whose prisoner? " 
 
 " The prisoner of Time, Stelio. Time watches at 
 her doors, as in the old prints, with his hour-glass 
 and his scythe. . . ." 
 
 " Is it an allegory? " 
 
 A child passed whistling. When he saw the two 
 gazing at the closed windows, he also stopped to
 
 164 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 look with wide, wondering, curious eyes. They 
 were silent. The constant twitter of the sparrows 
 could not overpower the silence of the walls and the 
 trees and the sky: its monotony sounded in their 
 ears like the roar in a sea-shell, and through it they 
 could hear the silence of surrounding things and 
 a few distant voices. The hoarse hoot of a siren 
 prolonged itself in the misty distance, becoming, 
 little by little, as soft as a flute note. It ceased. 
 The little boy grew tired of his gazing: nothing visi- 
 ble was happening; the windows did not open; all 
 remained motionless. He went off at a run. 
 
 They heard the flight of his little naked feet patter- 
 ing on the damp stones and the rotten leaves. 
 
 "Well?" asked Stelio, "and what about Radiana? 
 You have not told me yet why she has shut herself up. 
 Tell me ! I have been thinking of Soranza Soranzo." 
 
 "She is the Countess Glanegg, a lady of the high- 
 est Viennese nobility, and perhaps the most beauti- 
 ful creature that I have ever met. Franz Lenbach 
 has painted her in the armour of a Valkyrie, wearing 
 the four-winged helmet. Do you know Franz Len- 
 bach? Have you ever been to his studio in the 
 Palazzo Borghese?" 
 
 " No, never." 
 
 "You must go there one day, and you must ask 
 him to show you that portrait. You will never 
 again forget the face of Radiana. You will see it 
 unchanged as I now see it through those walls. She 
 has chosen to remain such as she was in the eyes 
 of those who once saw her in her splendour. Once 
 on some too bright a morning when she noticed that 
 the time of withering had come for her too, she
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 165 
 
 resolved to take leave of the world in such a way 
 that man should not stand by, watching the decay 
 and collapse of her famous beauty. Perhaps it was 
 her sympathy with things that fall to pieces and go 
 to ruin which kept her in Venice. On the occasion 
 of her leave-taking she gave a magnificent entertain- 
 ment at which she appeared, still sovereignly beauti- 
 ful. Then, with her servants, she retired for ever 
 in this house which you see, in this walled garden, 
 to await the end. She has become a legendary 
 figure. It is said that no mirror is allowed in her 
 house and that she has forgotten her own face. Her 
 most devoted friends and her nearest relatives are 
 not allowed to see her. How does she live? In the 
 company of what thoughts? What is the art that 
 helps her while away the time of waiting? Is her soul 
 in a state of grace ? " 
 
 Every pause in the veiled voice that questioned 
 the mystery was filled with a melancholy so dense as 
 to seem almost tangible ; it seemed to be cadenced 
 by the sobbing rhythm of water that is being poured 
 into an urn. 
 
 " Does she pray? Does she contemplate? Does 
 she weep? Perhaps she has become inert and no 
 longer suffers, as an apple does not suffer when it 
 shrivels up in the bottom of an old cupboard." 
 
 The woman stopped. Her lips curved down- 
 wards as if their words had withered them. 
 
 " What if she were suddenly to look out of that 
 window?" said Stelio, his ear catching something 
 like a real sensation, like the grinding of hinges. 
 
 Both examined the interstices of the nailed 
 shutters.
 
 166 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 "She might be sitting there looking at us," he 
 added in a hushed voice. 
 
 The shudder of the one communicated itself to the 
 other. 
 
 They were leaning against the opposite wall, un- 
 willing to move a step. The surrounding inertia was 
 creeping over them ; the damp, greyish mist grew 
 thicker as it swathed them ; the confused monotony 
 of the birds' twitter stunned them like certain drugs 
 that stun fever. The sirens screeched in the dis- 
 tance. The screeches, dwindling little by little till 
 they became as gentle as flute notes in the limp air, 
 seemed to linger like the discoloured leaves that were 
 leaving their branches one by one without a moan. 
 How long it took for the falling leaf to drop to the 
 earth ! All was mist ; all was slow heaviness, deser- 
 tion, waste, ashes. 
 
 " It is inevitable ! I must die, dear friend ; I must 
 die," the woman said in a heart-rending voice after a 
 long silence, raising her face from the cushion where 
 she had been pressing it in order to master the con- 
 vulsion of pain and pleasure that his sudden, furious 
 caresses had given her. 
 
 She saw her friend sitting apart from her on the 
 other divan near the balcony, in the attitude of one 
 about to go to sleep, his eyes half shut, and his head, 
 which was thrown back, tinged with gold by the light 
 of evening. She saw the red mark, like a small 
 wound, just under his lip, and the disordered hair on 
 his forehead. She felt that those were the things on 
 which her desire fed and rekindled itself. She felt
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 167 
 
 that her eyelids hurt her pupils the more she looked, 
 that her gaze burnt her eyelashes ; that the incurable 
 evil entered through her pupils, spreading over all 
 her withered body. Lost, lost, henceforth she was 
 lost without remedy. 
 
 " Die ? " her friend said weakly, without opening his 
 eyes, without moving, as if speaking from the depths 
 of his drowsiness and his melancholy. 
 
 She noticed that the little open wound moved 
 under his lip when he spoke. 
 
 " Before you hate me." 
 
 He opened his eyes, raised himself up, held out his 
 hand towards her as if to prevent her from saying 
 any more. 
 
 " Ah, why do you torment yourself? " 
 
 She was almost livid ; her loosened hair fell in 
 streaks over her face ; she seemed consumed by a 
 poison that corroded her, bent as if her soul had 
 broken through its flesh, terrible and miserable. 
 
 " What are you doing with me ; what are we doing 
 with each other ?" the woman said in her anguish. 
 
 They had struggled that day: the breath of the 
 one mingling with the other's breath, one heart 
 against the other heart ; their union had been like a 
 scuffle ; they had felt the taste of blood in the mois- 
 ture of their mouths. All at once they had yielded 
 to a sudden rush of desire as to a blind necessity of 
 destroying each other. He had shaken her life as 
 if to tear it up by its most hidden roots. They 
 had felt a sharpness of teeth hiding in their cruel 
 kisses. 
 
 " I love you ! * 
 
 " Not as I would wish ; this is not what I want**
 
 1 68 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 "You excite me. Suddenly, the fury seizes 
 me. . . ." 
 
 " It is like hatred." 
 
 " No, no ; don't say that." 
 
 " You shake me and rend me as if you wanted to 
 make an end of me." 
 
 " You blind me. After that I know nothing." 
 
 " What is it that agitates you? What do you see 
 in me?" 
 
 " I don't know. I don't know what it is." 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 " Don't torment yourself. I love you ! This is 
 the love. . . ." 
 
 "That condemns me! I must die of it. Give 
 me once more the name you used to give me." 
 
 " You are mine ! I have you now and will not 
 lose you." 
 
 " But you must lose me." 
 
 "But why? I cannot understand you. What is 
 this madness of yours? Does my desire offend you? 
 But you, do you perhaps not desire me too? Are 
 you not seized by the same fury of possessing me 
 and of being possessed? Your teeth were chattering 
 before I even touched you. . . ." 
 
 His intolerance was burning into her more deeply, 
 was poisoning her wound. She covered her face with 
 her hands. Her heart had become rigid and was 
 beating in her breast like a hammer, and the hard 
 blows of the hammer were reverberated in her head. 
 
 " Look ! " 
 
 He touched his lip where it hurt him, pressed 
 the small wound, held out to the woman his finger 
 tinged with the drop of blood that had oozed from it.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 169 
 
 She rose to her feet quickly, writhing as if he had 
 prodded her with a red-hot iron. She opened her 
 eyes wide upon him as if to devour him with her 
 gaze, her nostrils quivered, a fearful force heaved 
 in her, her whole body, in vibrating, felt itself naked 
 under her dress as if the folds no longer adhered to 
 it. Her face, that had looked up from the hollow 
 of her hands as from a blind mask, burnt darkly 
 like a fire that has no rays. She was most beautiful, 
 most terrible, and most miserable. 
 
 " Ah, Perdita, Perdita ! " 
 
 Never, never, never will that man forget that step 
 which Lust moved towards him, the way in which it 
 drew near him, the swift dumb wave that overthrew it- 
 self on his breast, that wrapped him round, that drank 
 him in, that gave him for a moment the fear and 
 the joy of suffering a divine violence, of dissolving 
 in a kind of warm, deadly moisture, as if the whole 
 of the woman's body had suddenly become one 
 single aspiring mouth that drew him in and by 
 which he was entirely absorbed. 
 
 He closed his eyes, forgetting the world and his 
 glory. A dar 1 : sacred depth opened in him like a 
 temple. His spirit became motionless and opaque, 
 but all his senses aspired after the transcending of 
 their human limits, aspired to the joy that is beyond 
 the human impediment, became sublime, capable of 
 penetrating the remotest mysteries, of discovering 
 the most recondite secrets, of drawing one pleasure 
 from another like one harmony from another har- 
 mony, became marvellous instruments, infinite vir- 
 tues, realities sure as death. All was vanishing like 
 a mist, the energies and the aspirations of the
 
 I/O THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 universe seemed converging in that mere union of 
 sexes ; it was consecrated by heaven, made religious 
 by the shadow of the curtains, accompanied by the 
 roar of death. 
 
 He opened his eyes. He saw the room, that had 
 grown dark ; through the open balcony he saw the 
 distant sky, the trees, the cupolas, the towers, the 
 extremity of the lagoon with the face of the twi- 
 light bending over it, and the Euganean Hills, that 
 were quiet and blue like the folded wings of earth 
 resting in the evening. He saw the forms of silence 
 and the silent form of the woman adhering to him like 
 the bark to the trunk of the tree. 
 
 The woman was lying with all her weight upon him, 
 holding and covering him in her embrace, her fore- 
 head pressed against his shoulder, her face suffocat- 
 ingly hidden ; she was clasping him with a hold that 
 did not loosen, that was indissoluble, like the grip of 
 a corpse's stiffened arms round a living person. It 
 seemed as if she could never loosen that clasp, as if 
 she could never again be detached from him except by 
 the cutting off of her arms. He felt, in that encircling 
 clasp, the solidity and the tenacity of the bones, 
 while on his bosom and along his legs he felt the 
 soddenness of the body that trembled upon him now 
 and then with a quiver as of water running over 
 gravel. Indefinite things passed in that tremble of 
 water, numberless continual things that rose from the 
 depths and descended from afar ; ever thicker, more 
 impure, they passed and passed like a turbid stream 
 of life. He acknowledged once more that his sharp 
 desire was nourished by that very impurity, by that 
 unknown encumbrance, by those traces of lost loves,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 171 
 
 by all that bodily sadness and unspeakable despair. 
 He owned once more that it was the phantoms of 
 other gestures which spurred his gesture of longing 
 for the wandering woman. It was because of her 
 that he was suffering now and because of himself; 
 and he felt her suffer, and he felt that she was his the 
 same as fuel belongs to the fire that consumes it. 
 And again he heard the words that had come unex- 
 pectedly after their fury had passed : " It is inevi- 
 table: I must die." 
 
 He turned his eyes to the open again, saw the 
 gardens darkening, the houses being lit up, a star 
 springing from the sky's mourning, the glitter of a 
 long pale sword at the bottom of the lagoon, the 
 mountains melting into the fragments of night, the 
 distance stretching out towards regions rich with 
 unknown possessions. There were actions to be 
 accomplished in the world, conquests to be followed 
 up, dreams to exalt, destinies to enforce, enigmas 
 to attempt, laurels to be gathered. There were 
 paths down there, mysterious meetings that could 
 not be foreseen. Some veiled joy might be pass- 
 ing somewhere, with nobody to meet or recognise 
 it. Was there not perhaps an equal, a brother, 
 living somewhere in the world at that hour, or a 
 distant enemy on whose brow the lightning-like 
 inspiration from which the eternal work is born was 
 about to descend after a day of troubled expecta- 
 tion. Some one, perhaps, at that hour had finished 
 some great work, or had found at last some heroic 
 reason of living; but he, he lay there in the prison 
 of his body under the weight of the desperate 
 woman. Her magnificent fate, full of sorrow and of
 
 172 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 power, had come to break against him as against a 
 rock. What was Donatella Arvale doing? What 
 was she thinking of in the evening hour on her 
 Tuscan hill in her solitary house, near her demented 
 father? Was she tempering her will for some con- 
 templated struggle? Was she sounding her secret? 
 Was she pure? 
 
 He became inert under the woman's clasp, his 
 arms hindered by the rigid circle. Repulsion filled 
 his being. A melancholy as strong as pain thick- 
 ened round his heart; and the silence seemed 
 expecting a cry. The veins throbbed painfully in 
 his limbs, that had grown torpid under her weight. 
 Little by little the clasp gave way as if life were 
 failing it. The heart-rending words came back to 
 his soul. A funereal image appeared, assailing him 
 with a sudden frightened uneasiness. And neverthe- 
 less he did not move nor speak nor attempt to dis- 
 sipate the cloud of anguish that had gathered over 
 them both. He remained motionless. He lost the 
 knowledge of places and the measure of time. He 
 saw himself and the woman in the midst of an infi- 
 nite plain, where half-scorched, scattered grasses grew 
 under a white sky. They were waiting, waiting for 
 a voice to call them, for a voice that should raise 
 them up. ... A confused dream was born in his 
 torpor, fluctuated, changed, turned sad in the night- 
 mare. Breathlessly he seemed to be climbing a 
 steep hillside with his companion; and her more 
 than human breathlessness increased his own. . . . 
 
 He started, re-opening his eyes at the clang of a 
 bell. It was the bell of San Simeone Profeta, and 
 it was so near that it seemed to be ringing in the
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 173 
 
 very room. The metallic sound pierced like a 
 rapier. 
 
 "Had you, too, gone to sleep?" he asked the 
 woman, finding her unresisting like one already dead. 
 
 And he raised one hand, passed it lightly over her 
 hair, stroking her cheeks and chin. 
 
 She burst into sobs, as if that hand were breaking 
 her heart. And she lay sobbing on his breast with- 
 out dying there. 
 
 " I have a heart, Stelio," said the woman, looking 
 him in the eyes with a painful effort that made her 
 lips tremble as if she had overcome fierce shyness in 
 order to say those words. " I suffer from a heart 
 that is alive in me, ah, Stelio, alive and eager and 
 full of anguish as you will never know. . . ." 
 
 She smiled her thin, concealing smile, hesitated, 
 held out her hand towards a bunch of violets, took 
 it up and raised it to her nostrils ; her eyelids 
 dropped ; her forehead was bare between her hair 
 and the flowers, marvellously beautiful and sad. 
 
 " Sometimes you wound it," she said in a low 
 voice, her breath lost in the violets. " You are cruel 
 to it sometimes. . . ." 
 
 It seemed as if the humble, sweet-smelling flowers 
 were helping her to confess her grief, veiling still 
 further her timid reproach to her friend. She was 
 silent; he bowed his head. They could hear the 
 crackling of the wood on the fire-dogs ; they could 
 hear the even beat of the rain in the mourning 
 garden. 
 
 " A great thirst for kindness ; ah, you will never
 
 1/4 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 know what a thirst it is ! ... For that kindness, 
 dear sweet friend, that deep true kindness, knowing 
 not how to speak, but understanding, knowing how 
 to give all in a single look, in a little movement, 
 strong and sure, always rising up between us and life 
 that stains and seduces us ... Do you know it? " 
 
 Her voice, alternately firm and vacillating, was so 
 warm with inner light, so filled with the revelation 
 of a soul, that the young man felt it passing through 
 his blood, less like a sound than a spiritual essence. 
 
 " In you, in you, I know it." 
 
 He took her hands that were in her lap holding 
 the violets, and, bending over them, submissively 
 kissed them both. Then he remained at her feet in 
 the same attitude of submission. The delicate per- 
 fume made his own tenderness more delicate. The 
 rain and the fire spoke in the pause. 
 
 "Do you think I am sure of you? "the woman 
 asked in a clear voice. 
 
 " Have you not watched me sleeping on your 
 heart? "he answered, his tone all at once changed 
 by a new emotion, because he had seen in that 
 question the bare soul rise up and stand before 
 him, had felt his secret need of believing and con- 
 fiding discovered. 
 
 "Yes, but what is that? The sleep of youth is 
 calm on any pillow. You are young. . . ." 
 
 " I love you and believe in you. I have given 
 myself up entirely. You are my companion and 
 your hand is strong." 
 
 He had seen the well-known anguish disturb the 
 lines of the dear face, and his voice had trembled 
 with love.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 175 
 
 " Kindness ! " said the woman, with a light move- 
 ment, caressing the hair on his temples. " You know 
 how to be kind ; the necessity is in you, dear friend, of 
 comforting. But a fault has been committed, and it 
 must be atoned for. Once I thought that I could 
 do the highest and the most humble things for you, 
 and now it seems to me there is only one thing I can 
 do, to go away, disappear, leave you free with your 
 fate." 
 
 He interrupted her, lifting himself up and taking 
 the dear face in his hands. 
 
 " This thing I can do, which even love could not," 
 she said in her low voice, turning pale and looking 
 at him as she had never done before. 
 
 He felt himself to be holding his soul in the hollow 
 of his hand, the image of a living spring infinitely 
 precious and beautiful. 
 
 " Foscarina, Foscarina, my soul, my life ! Yes, 
 yes, more than love, I know that you can give me 
 more than love; and nothing is worth to me that 
 which you can give, and no other offer could comfort 
 me for not having you at my side on the way. 
 Believe, believe ! I have repeated this to you so 
 many times, don't you remember? also when you 
 were not entirely mine, even when the prohibition 
 still kept us apart. . . ." 
 
 Holding her closely in that same position, he 
 bent over her and kissed her passionately on the 
 lips. 
 
 She shivered in all her bones ; the cold stream was 
 passing over her, freezing her. 
 
 " No, no more," she begged, turning white. 
 
 She moved her friend away from her, unable to
 
 176 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 restrain the panting in her breast. As in a dream, 
 she bent down to pick up the violets that had 
 fallen. 
 
 " The prohibition ! " she said, after an interval 01 
 silence. 
 
 A dull roar came from a log that was struggling 
 with the bite of the flame ; the rain was pouring on the 
 trees and stones. Now and then the sound imitated 
 the agitation of the sea, conjuring up hostile places, 
 inhospitable distances, beings that wandered under 
 inclement skies. 
 
 "Why have we violated it?" 
 
 Stelio's eyes were intent on the mobile splendour 
 of the hearth ; in his flat, open hands the marvellous 
 sensation was being continued, the vestige of the 
 miracle still dwelt there, the trace of that human 
 countenance across the miserable pallor of which a 
 wave of sublime beauty had passed. 
 
 "Why?" repeated the woman, sorrowfully. "Ah, 
 confess, confess that you, too, before the blind fury 
 took us and carried us both away that night, you too 
 felt that all was about to be lost and devastated, you, 
 too, felt that we could not yield if we wanted to save 
 the good that was born of us, to save that strong, 
 inebriating thing that to me had seemed the only 
 valuable one of my life. Confess, Stelio ; tell me the 
 truth. I can almost remind you of the moment when 
 the better voice spoke to you. Was it not on the 
 water as we went towards my house, having Donatella 
 with us?" 
 
 She had hesitated a moment before pronouncing 
 that name, and afterwards she had felt an almost 
 physical bitterness descending from her lips, as if
 
 177 
 
 its syllables had become poison to her. In her 
 suffering she waited for her friend's answer. 
 
 " I can no longer look back, Fosca," he answered. 
 " Nor would I. I have lost no good thing that was 
 mine. I like your soul to have a mouth that is heavy, 
 and it pleases me to feel that your blood flies from 
 your face when I touch you, and you know by that 
 touch that I desire you. . . ." 
 
 " Be silent, be silent ! " she implored. " Do not 
 unnerve me always. Let me speak of my trouble 
 to you. Why will you not help me?" 
 
 She drew back a little among her cushions, shrink- 
 ing as if his had been an act of brutal violence and, 
 in order not to look at her lover, looking fixedly 
 into the fire. 
 
 " More than once I have seen something in your 
 eyes which has filled me with horror," she at last 
 managed to say, with an effort that made her voice 
 hoarse. 
 
 He started, but dared not contradict her. 
 
 " With horror," she repeated, more clearly, im- 
 placable towards herself, having conquered her fear 
 and taken hold of her courage. 
 
 Both of them, with naked throbbing hearts, now 
 stood before the truth. 
 
 " Without weakness," the woman spoke on. 
 
 " The first time, it was that night, out there in the 
 garden. ... I know what it all was that you were 
 seeing in me. All the mud over which I have walked, 
 all the infamy I have trodden under foot, all the im- 
 purity which has filled me with repugnance. . . . Ah, 
 you could not have confessed the visions that were 
 kindling your fever ! Your eyes were cruel, and
 
 i;8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 your mouth was convulsed. When you felt that you 
 were wounding me you took pity. . . . But since, but 
 since . . ." 
 
 A blush had covered her, her voice had become 
 impetuous and her eyes shone. 
 
 " To have nourished for years, with all that was 
 best in me, a feeling of unlimited devotion and ad- 
 miration ; to have received when near you and from 
 afar, in joy and in sadness, every consolation offered 
 to mankind by your poetry with an act of the purest 
 gratitude: and to have anxiously awaited other, 
 ever greater and more consoling gifts; to have be- 
 lieved in the great strength of your genius from its 
 very dawn and never to have detached my eyes from 
 your ascension ; and to have accompanied it with a 
 wish that for years has been like my morning and 
 evening prayer; to have silently, fervently gone on 
 with the continual effort of imparting some beauty 
 and some harmony to my spirit, that it might be less 
 unworthy of approaching yours ; on the stage before 
 an ardent audience, to have so many times pro- 
 nounced some immortal words, thinking of those 
 which perhaps one day you would elect to give to 
 the crowd through my lips; to have worked un- 
 ceasingly; to have always sought after simpler and 
 more intense art; to have aspired to perfection 
 continually for fear of not pleasing you, of appear- 
 ing too unequal to your dream; to have loved my 
 fitful glory only because it might one day have 
 served your own ; to have hastened on the newest of 
 your revelations with unshakable faith, that I might 
 offer myself to you as an instrument of victory before 
 the hour of my own decay, and to have defended this
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 179 
 
 idealism in my hidden soul against all and every- 
 thing, against all and against myself: yes, more 
 harshly, more bravely against my own self; to have 
 made of you my melancholy, my unyielding hope, 
 my heroic test, the symbol of all things good, strong, 
 free, ah, Stelio, Stelio . . ." 
 
 She stopped a moment, suffocated by that memory 
 as by a new shame . 
 
 "... and to have reached that dawn, to have 
 seen you leaving my house in that way, in that hor- 
 rible dawn." 
 
 She turned even whiter, all the blood leaving her 
 face. 
 
 " Do you remember? " 
 
 " I was happy, happy, happy," he cried out 
 to her in a choked voice, convulsed to the very 
 depths. 
 
 "No, no; don't you remember? You rose from 
 my bed as from the bed of a courtesan, replete, after 
 a few hours' violent pleasure. . . ." 
 
 "You are wrong; you deceive yourself! " 
 
 " Confess, tell me the truth ; only through truth 
 can we yet hope to save ourselves." 
 
 " I was happy. My whole heart was open ; I was 
 dreaming and hoping. I felt myself rising to new 
 life. . . ." 
 
 "Yes, yes; happy because you were breathing 
 freely again, because you* found yourself still young 
 in the wind and the daylight. Ah, you had mingled 
 too many acrid things with your caresses, and there 
 was too much poison in your pleasure. What did 
 you see in her who had known agony in her renunci- 
 ation so many times, and you know it, yes, agony,
 
 i8o THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 rather than break through the prohibition necessary 
 to the life of the dream that she was dragging with 
 her in her endless wandering. Tell me, what was it 
 you saw in me if not a corrupt creature, a body full 
 of lust and remains of adventurous passions, a wan- 
 dering actress who, on her bed, as on the stage, 
 belongs to all and to none . . ." 
 
 " Foscarina ! Foscarina ! " 
 
 He threw himself upon her, overcome by her words, 
 and closed her lips with his trembling hand. 
 
 "No, no; don't speak like that. Be silent! You 
 are mad; you are mad. . . ." 
 
 "The horror of it ! " she murmured, falling back on 
 her cushions as if about to lose consciousness, wearied 
 by the effort, wan under the flood of bitterness that 
 had gurgled up from her heart's depths. 
 
 But her eyes remained open and dilated, motion- 
 less like two crystals, hard as if they had no lashes, 
 fixed upon him. They prevented him from speak- 
 ing, from denying or diminishing the truth they had 
 discovered. After a few seconds he found them 
 becoming intolerable. He closed them with his 
 fingers, as one closes those of the dead. She saw 
 the gesture, which was one of infinite melancholy; 
 felt those fingers touching her lids as only love and 
 pity can touch. The bitterness disappeared; the 
 harsh knot melted away ; her lashes moistened. She 
 held out her arms, twined them round his neck, and 
 supporting herself by them, raised herself slightly. 
 She seemed 'to be drawing herself together within 
 herself, to have become light and weak once more 
 and full of silent prayer. 
 
 " So I must go away," she sighed, her voice mois
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 181 
 
 tened by her heart's weeping. " Is there no help for 
 it? Is there no forgiveness? " 
 
 " I love you," said her lover. 
 
 She freed one arm and held out her open hand to 
 the fire, as if for an exorcism. Then she locked the 
 young man again in a close embrace. 
 
 " Yes, yet for a little while, yet for a little while ! 
 Let me stay with you a little more ! Then I will go 
 away, I will go away, and die somewhere far away 
 on a stone under some tree. Let me stay with you 
 a little longer." 
 
 " I love you," said her lover. 
 
 It seemed as if the blind undaunted forces of life 
 were whirling over their heads and above their 
 embrace. Because they felt them and were terrified 
 by them, they held each other more closely ; and from 
 the clasp of their two bodies, a good and an evil that 
 were heart-rqfnding, confused and intermingled and 
 no longer separable, were born for their souls. In the 
 silence, the voices of the elements spoke their obscure 
 language, which was like an uncomprehended answer 
 to their mute questioning. The fire and the rain, 
 near them and afar, conversed, answered, narrated. 
 Little by little these things attracted the Spirit of the 
 Life-giver, drew it away, mastered it, dragged it into 
 the world of innumerable myths that was born of 
 their eternity. With a sensation that was deep and 
 real he heard the resonance of the two melodies 
 expressing the injimate essence of the two elementary 
 wills : the two marvellous melodies that he had found 
 and was going to weave into the symphonic web of 
 his new tragedy. The stabs of pain and the vi- 
 brations of anxiety suddenly ceased as if for a happy
 
 1 82 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 truce, for an interval of enchantment in the mist. 
 The woman's arms, too, were loosened as if obey- 
 ing some mysterious liberating command. 
 
 " There is no help for it," she said to herself, as 
 if she were repeating the words of a condemnation 
 actually heard by her in the same way as Stelio had 
 heard the great melodies. 
 
 She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand 
 and her elbow on her knee; and she remained in 
 ihat attitude staring fixedly into the fire with a frown 
 between her brows. 
 
 As he looked at her, he returned to his uneasiness. 
 The truce had passed too quickly, but in it his spirit 
 had been turned towards his work, and a tumult that 
 was like impatience had stayed behind with him. That 
 uneasiness now seemed useless to him, the woman's 
 anguish seemed importunate, since he loved her and 
 desired her, and his caresses were ardent, and both 
 were free, and the place of their dwelling was favour- 
 able to their dreams and their pleasures. He longed 
 to find a sudden means of snapping the iron band 
 that held her, of lifting her sad mists, of leading his 
 friend back to joy. He asked of his own spirit of 
 grace some delicate invention to mellow the afflicted 
 one and win her back to a smile. But he no longer 
 possessed the spontaneous melancholy, the trembling 
 pity that had given his fingers so soft a touch when 
 he closed the despairing eyes. His instinct sug- 
 gested nothing more than a sensual act, the caress 
 that deadens the soul, the kiss that drowns thought. 
 
 He hesitated, looked at her. She was sitting in the 
 same bent attitude, her chin leaning on her hand, her 
 forehead puckered. The fire lit up her face and hair
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 183 
 
 in its glad leaping; the brow was as beautiful as a fine 
 manly brow; there was something wild in the natural 
 fold and the tawny lights of the thick locks where they 
 waved back from the temples, something fierce and 
 rough, that reminded one of the wing of a bird of prey. 
 
 " What are you looking at?" she said, feeling his 
 attention. "Are you discovering a white hair?" 
 
 He went down on his knees before her, flexible and 
 caressing. 
 
 " You are beautiful in my eyes. In you I always 
 find something that pleases me, Foscarina. I was 
 watching the strange wave of your hair just here; it 
 is not made by a comb, but by the storm." 
 
 He insinuated his sensual hands through her thick 
 locks. She closed her eyes, seized by the usual chill, 
 dominated by the terrible power; was his like a thing 
 that can be held in the hand, like a ring on a finger, 
 like a glove, like a garment, like a word that can be 
 spoken or not, like a wine that can be drunk or spilt 
 on the ground. 
 
 " You are beautiful as I see you. When you shut 
 your eyes thus, I feel that you are mine to your last, 
 last depths, lost in me, like the soul is confused with 
 the body. One only life, mine and yours. . . . Ah, 
 I cannot tell you. . . . The whole of your face turns 
 pale within me. ... I feel the love that is in your 
 veins and in your very hair rising, rising. I see it 
 overflow from under your eyelids. . . . When your 
 eyelids beat, it seems that they must throb like my 
 blood, and that the shadow of your eyelashes must 
 reach to the innermost part of my heart." 
 
 She listened in the darkness where the red vibra- 
 tion of the flame reached her through the living
 
 1 84 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 tissue. And now and then it seemed that his voice 
 came from far away and was not speaking to her, but 
 to another ; that she was listening surreptitiously to 
 a lover's outpouring, that she was torn by jealousy, 
 stricken by the flashes of a desire to kill, invaded by 
 a spirit of vengeance that thirsted for blood, and that 
 nevertheless her body remained motionless and that 
 her hands were hanging beside her, full of heavy 
 torpor, harmless and powerless. 
 
 " You are my joy, and you are my awakening. 
 There is an awakening power in you of which you 
 yourself are unconscious. The simplest of your acts 
 is enough to reveal some truth to me that I ignored, 
 and love is like the intellect, shining in the measure 
 of the truths which it discovers. Why, why do you 
 regret? Nothing is destroyed ; nothing is lost. We 
 were meant to unite our two selves, just as we have 
 joined them, so that together we might rise towards 
 joy. It was necessary that I should be free and 
 happy in the truth of your entire love in order to 
 create the work of beauty that is expected by so 
 many. I have need of your faith; I have need of 
 passing through joy and of creating. . . . Your mere 
 presence is enough to fructify my spirit incalculably. 
 A moment ago, when you were holding me in your 
 embrace, I suddenly felt a torrent of music, a river 
 of melody passing through the silence. . . ." 
 
 To whom was he speaking? Of whom was he 
 asking joy? Was not his musical necessity stretch- 
 ing out towards her who sang and transfigured the 
 universe with her song? Of whom, if not of fresh 
 youth, intact virginity, could he ask joy and creation? 
 While she was holding him in her arms, the other
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 185 
 
 woman had been singing within him. And now, 
 now, to whom was he speaking, if not to her? Only 
 the other could give him that which was necessary 
 to his art and his life. The virgin was a new force, 
 a closed beauty, a weapon not yet used, sharp and 
 magnificent, bringing the intoxication of war. A 
 sorrow mixed with anger tormented the woman 
 in that vibrating broken darkness which she could 
 not leave. She was suffering as if lying in a night- 
 mare. It seemed to her that she was rolling to the 
 deep with her indestructible encumbrance, with 
 her past life and her years of misery and triumph, 
 with her faded face and her thousand masks, with 
 her despairing soul and the thousand souls that had 
 inhabited her mortal shape. The passion that was 
 to have saved her was pushing her irreparably to- 
 wards ruin and death. In order to reach her and to 
 reach his joy through her, the desire of the man she 
 loved was obliged to force itself through the con- 
 fused encumbrance, made up, as he believed, of innu- 
 merable, unknown loves; it would contaminate and 
 corrupt itself there, become sharp and cruel; lastly, 
 from sharpness it would pass to disgust, perhaps to 
 hatred and contempt. The shadow of other men 
 must ever lurk above his own caress, and that shadow 
 must ever kindle the instinct of brutal ferocity that 
 was hidden in the depths of his powerful sensuality. 
 Ah, what had she done? She had armed a furious 
 devastator and had put him there between herself 
 and her friend. Henceforth there was no escape for 
 her. She herself on that night of conflagration had 
 brought him the fresh, beautiful prey on whom he 
 had cast one of those looks that are an election
 
 1 86 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and a promise. To whom was he speaking now, if 
 not to her? Of whom was he asking joy? 
 
 " Don't be sad ; don't be sad ! " 
 
 She now heard the words confusedly, more faintly 
 from minute to minute, as if her soul were sinking 
 and the voice remaining on high, but she felt his im- 
 patient hands caressing her, tempting her. And in 
 the blood-like darkness that was like the darkness 
 whence folly and delirium spring, from her marrow, 
 from her veins, from all her troubled flesh, a savage 
 rebellion rose suddenly. 
 
 " Shall I take you to her; shall I call her to you? " 
 she cried, beside herself, opening her eyes wide on 
 his surprise, seizing him by the wrists and shak- 
 ing him with convulsed strength. " Go, go ; she is 
 waiting for you. Why do you stay here? Go, run; 
 she is waiting for you." 
 
 She got up, raised him as she did so, and tried to 
 push him towards the door. She was unrecognis- 
 able, transfigured by her violence into a threatening, 
 dangerous creature. The strength of her hands 
 was incredible, like the energy of harm that had 
 developed itself in all her limbs. 
 
 "Who, who is waiting for me? What are you 
 saying? Come back to yourself, Foscarina." 
 
 He was stammering as he called her; he trembled 
 with misgiving; he seemed to see the face of folly 
 outlined in those convulsed features. She was like 
 one demented and did not hear him. 
 
 " Foscarina ! " 
 
 He called her with all his soul, white with terror, 
 as if to stop with his cry the reason that was about to 
 leave her.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 187 
 
 She gave a great shudder, unclenched her hands, 
 and looked round in a dazed way, as if she were 
 awaking and did not remember. She was panting. 
 
 " Come, sit down." 
 
 He drew her back to the cushions, settled her there 
 gently. She let herself be soothed, tended by his 
 pained tenderness. She seemed to awake after 
 having lost consciousness and to remember nothing. 
 She moaned. 
 
 "Who has beaten me?" 
 
 She felt her sore arms, touched her cheeks near 
 the joint of the jaws that hurt her. She began to 
 shiver with cold. 
 
 " Stretch yourself out ; lay your head here. ..." 
 
 He made her lie down and rest her head, covered 
 her feet with a cushion, softly, very gently, bending 
 over her, as over a dear invalid, giving up to her all 
 his heart that was beating, beating, still terrified. 
 
 " Yes, yes," she repeated, at his every movement, 
 as if to prolong the sweetness of his care of her. 
 
 "Are you cold?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Shall I cover you up? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 He looked for something to cover her, found a 
 piece of old velvet on a table. He covered her with 
 that. She smiled up at him slightly. 
 
 " Are you comfortable like this? " 
 
 She only just signed to him with her eyelids that 
 were closing. He picked up the violets, that were 
 languid and warm. Then he placed the bunch on 
 the cushion where her head was resting. 
 
 "So?"
 
 1 88 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Her lashes moved still more slightly. He kissed 
 her on the forehead, in the midst of the perfume ; 
 then he turned to stir up the fire, added more wood, 
 raised a great blaze. 
 
 " Does the heat reach you? Are you getting 
 warm? " he asked in a low voice. 
 
 He drew near and bent over the poor creature. 
 She had gone to sleep ; the contractions of her face 
 were smoothing out, and the lines of her mouth had 
 recomposed themselves in the regular rhythm of 
 sleep. A calm similar to that of death was diffused 
 over her pallor. " Sleep, sleep." He was so full of 
 love and pity that he would have liked to transfuse 
 an infinite virtue of consolation and forgetfulness into 
 that sleep. " Sleep on ; sleep on ! " 
 
 He remained there, standing on the carpet, to 
 watch her. For a few seconds he measured her 
 breathing. Those lips had said, " One thing I can 
 do which even Love cannot do ! " Those lips had 
 cried out, " Shall I take you to her? Shall I call 
 her to you?" He neither judged nor resolved, let- 
 ting his thoughts disperse. Once again, he felt the 
 blind, undaunted forces of life whirling above his 
 head, and once again above that sleep he felt his 
 terrible desire of life. " The bow is called Bios, and 
 its work is Death." 
 
 In the silence, the fire and the water spoke. The 
 voice of the elements, the woman sleeping in her sor- 
 row, the nearness of fate, the immensity of the future, 
 memory and presentiment, all those signs created a 
 state of musical mystery in his spirit in which his un- 
 expressed work rose up and received light. He 
 heard his melodies developing indefinitely; he heard
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 189 
 
 a person in the fable saying: "It alone quenches 
 our thirst ; and all the thirst that is in us reaches out 
 greedily towards its freshness. If it were not for it, 
 no one of us could live here; we should all die of 
 thirst." He saw a landscape, furrowed by the white 
 dried-up bed of an ancient river, scattered over with 
 lighted bonfires in the extraordinarily calm pure 
 evening. He saw a funereal glimmer of gold, a tomb 
 full of corpses all covered with gold, the body of 
 Cassandra crowned among the sepulchral urns. A 
 voice was saying : " How soft her ashes are ! They 
 run through the fingers like sea-sand." A voice was 
 saying: "She speaks of a shadow that passes over 
 things and of a wet sponge that wipes out all traces." 
 At this, night came ; the stars twinkled, the myrtles 
 filled the air with odour, and a voice was saying: 
 " Ah, the statue of Niobe ! Before dying, Antigone 
 sees a stone statue from which issues a spring of 
 eternal tears." The error of time had disappeared, 
 the distance of centuries was abolished. The ancient 
 tragic soul was present in the new soul. The poet's 
 words and the poet's music were recomposing the 
 ideal unity of life. 
 
 One afternoon in November he returned on the 
 steamer from the Lido, accompanied by Daniele 
 Glauro. They had left the stormy Adriatic behind 
 them, and with it the roar of the green and white 
 waves on the desert beach, the trees of San Niccolo 
 despoiled by the rapacious wind, clouds of dead 
 leaves, heroic phantoms of leave-takings and arrivals, 
 the memory of the archers competing for the scarlet,
 
 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and of Lord Byron galloping, devoured by the 
 anxiety of surpassing his own destiny. 
 
 " I too, to-day, would have given a kingdom for a 
 horse," said Stelio, deriding himself in his irritation at 
 the mediocrity of life " There was neither a cross- 
 bow nor a horse at San Niccolo, not even the courage 
 of the oarsman ! Perge audacter. . . . Here we are, 
 on this ignoble gray carcass that smokes and grum- 
 bles like a kettle. Look at Venice dancing down 
 there ! " 
 
 The anger of the sea was spreading over the lagoon. 
 The waters were agitated by a strong tremor, and it 
 seemed that the agitation communicated itself to the 
 foundations of the city, that the palaces and cupolas 
 heaved like boats on the water. Seaweeds floated, 
 torn up from their depths, showing all their whitish 
 roots. Flocks of sea-gulls gyrated in the wind and 
 at times their strange laughter could be heard hang- 
 ing above the innumerable crests of the storm. 
 
 " Wagner ! " said Daniele Glauro, in a low voice 
 and with sudden emotion, pointing out an old man 
 who was leaning against the parapet at the prow. 
 " There with Donna Cosima and Franz Liszt. Do 
 you see him? " 
 
 The heart of Stelio Effrena beat louder ; for him 
 too all surrounding figures disappeared ; the bitter 
 tedium ceased with the oppression of his inertia, and 
 there remained only the sense of superhuman power 
 conjured up by that name; the only reality above 
 all those indistinct husks was the ideal world brought 
 to light by that name round the little old man who 
 was bending towards the tumult of the waters. 
 
 Victorious genius, fidelity of love, unchangeable
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 191 
 
 friendship, all the supreme apparitions of an heroic 
 nature were once more gathered together under 
 the tempest, silently. One same dazzling whiteness 
 crowned the three persons standing near one another ; 
 their hair over their sad thoughts was extraordinarily 
 white. An uneasy sadness stood revealed in their 
 faces and attitudes as if one same obscure presenti- 
 ment lay heavy on their communicating souls. The 
 woman's white face had a beautiful robust mouth, 
 made up of firm clear lines that betrayed a tenacious 
 soul ; and her light steely eyes were continually 
 fixed on him who had chosen her for the companion 
 of his great warfare, continually adoring and vigi- 
 lant on him who, having conquered all deadly things, 
 yet would not be able to conquer that other death 
 which so constantly menaced him. That feminine 
 gaze full of fear and of protection thus opposed itself 
 to the invisible eyes of the other Woman, and gath- 
 ered a' vague funereal shadow round the protected 
 one. 
 
 " He seems to be suffering," said Daniele Glauro. 
 " Don't you see? He looks as if about to collapse. 
 Shall we draw nearer to him? " 
 
 Stelio Effrena gazed with inexpressible emotion at 
 the white hairs tossed about by the harsh wind on 
 the aged neck under the wide brim of the soft felt 
 and at the almost livid ear with its swollen lobe; 
 that body, borne up during its warfare by so fierce 
 an instinct of predominance now had the appear- 
 ance of a rag that the gale could sweep away and 
 destroy. 
 
 "Ah, Daniele, what could we do for him?" he 
 asked his friend, seized by a religious need of mani-
 
 192 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Testing by some outward sign his reverence and pity 
 for that great oppressed heart. 
 
 "What could we do?" repeated his friend, to 
 whom that fervent desire of offering something of 
 himself to the hero suffering from human fate had 
 instantly communicated itself. 
 
 They were one soul in that act of fervour and 
 gratitude, in the sudden elevation of their deep 
 nobility; but could they give nothing except that 
 which they gave. Nothing could stop the secret 
 workings of his malady; and both grew more sor- 
 rowful as they gazed at the white hair, the frail half- 
 living thing blown about on the old man's neck by 
 the vehement breath that came from the open and 
 brought to the shuddering lagoon the roar and the 
 foam of the sea. 
 
 " Ah, proud sea, you must carry me still ! The 
 salvation which I seek I shall never find on earth. I 
 will remain faithful to you, O waves of the great 
 sea. . . ." The impetuous harmonies of the Flying 
 Dutchman, with the despairing recall that pierces 
 through them at intervals, awoke in Stelio Effrena's 
 memory, and in the wind he seemed to hear the wild 
 song of the crew again on the ship with the blood- 
 like sails : " lohohe" ! lohohe ! Come to shore, O 
 swarthy captain : seven years have passed. . . ." And 
 his imagination recomposed the figure of Richard 
 Wagner as a young man, the recluse lost in the liv- 
 ing horror of Paris, poor and undaunted, devoured 
 by a marvellous fever, intent on his star, resolved on 
 forcing the world to recognise it too. In the myth 
 of the pale seaman, the exile had found an image 
 of his own panting race, his furious struggle, his
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 193 
 
 supreme hope. " But one day the pale man may be 
 delivered if only he find in his wandering a woman 
 who will be faithful to him unto death." 
 
 That woman was there, by the side of the hero, 
 like an ever vigilant custodian. She, too, like Senta, 
 knew the sovereign law of fidelity, and death was 
 about to dissolve the sacred vow. 
 
 "Do you think that, immersed in the poetry of 
 myths, he has dreamed of some extraordinary manner 
 of passing away and is now praying each day to Nature 
 to conform his end to his dream?" asked Daniele 
 Glauro, dwelling on the mysterious will that enticed 
 the eagle into mistaking the brow of ^schylus for a 
 rock and brought Petrarch to expire alone over the 
 pages of a book. " What would be a worthy end ? " 
 
 " A new melody of unknown power that was only 
 indistinct when it appeared to him in his first youth, 
 and that he was then unable to fix, will cleave his 
 soul in two, like a terrible sword." 
 
 " True," said Daniele Glauro. 
 
 The clouds were battling through space in phalanxes, 
 overcoming each other, driven by the great wind ; 
 the cupolas and the towers swaying in the back- 
 ground also seemed deformed ; the shadows of the 
 city and the shadows of the sky, equally vast and 
 mobile on the swollen waters, changed and merged 
 into each other, as if made of substances equally near 
 dissolution. 
 
 " Look at the Magyar, Daniele ; his is certainly a 
 generous spirit; he has served the hero with unlimited 
 faith and devotion. And this servitude, more than 
 his art, consecrates him to glory. But see, how from 
 his strong, sincere feeling, he draws an almost his-
 
 194 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 trionic performance, such as he would draw from the 
 continual need of imposing on his spectators, to de- 
 lude them, a magnificent image of himself." 
 
 The abb6 half raised his thin, bony body that 
 seemed clasped by a coat of mail. Holding himself 
 thus erect, he uncovered his head to pray, offering 
 his silent prayer to the God of Tempests. The wind 
 ruffled his long thick hair, the great leonine mane 
 whence so many flashes and quivers had started to 
 move women and crowds. His magnetic eyes were 
 raised to the sky, while the muttered words that 
 sketched themselves on his long thin lips spread 
 a mystic air over his face harsh with lines and 
 enormous warts. 
 
 "What matters?" said Daniele Glauro. "He 
 possesses the divine faculty of fervour and a taste for 
 overpowering strength and dominating passion. Has 
 not his art aspired towards Prometheus, Orpheus, 
 Dante, Tasso ? He was attracted by Richard Wagner 
 as by the great energies of nature ; perhaps he heard 
 in him that which he tried to express in his own 
 symphonic poem ' What is heard on the Mountain- 
 side.' " 
 
 " True," said Stelio Effrena. 
 
 Both started, however, on seeing the old bent man 
 turn suddenly with the gesture of one about to be 
 drowned in darkness, and clutch convulsively at his 
 companion, who gave a cry. They ran to him. All 
 those who were on the boat, struck by the cry of 
 anguish, rushed and crowded about him. A look 
 from the woman however was enough, none dared 
 approach the seemingly lifeless body. She herself 
 supported him, laid him on the bench, felt his pulse,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 195 
 
 bent over his heart listening. Her love and sorrow 
 drew an inviolable circle round the motionless man. 
 All drew back, silent, anxious, watching the livid face 
 for signs of returning consciousness. 
 
 The face was still, abandoned on the woman's 
 knees. Two deep furrows descended along the 
 cheeks to the half-closed mouth, deepening near the 
 imperious nostrils. Squalls of wind stirred the rare 
 and very fine hair on the full brow, and the white 
 collar of beard under the square chin where the ro- 
 bustness of the jawbone was apparent in spite of the 
 soft wrinkles. A clammy sweat was dropping from 
 his temples, and a slight tremor agitated one of the 
 hanging feet. Every little sign in that pale face was 
 impressed on the minds of the two young men 
 for ever. 
 
 How long did his suffering last? Alternating 
 shadows continued on the dark, seething water, in- 
 terrupted now and then by great zones of sun-rays 
 that seemed to cross the air and sink into the sea 
 with the weight of arrows. They could hear the 
 cadenced noise of the engine, the derisive laugh of 
 the sea-gulls, and already the dull howl coming from 
 the Grand Canal, the vast moan of the stricken city. 
 
 " Let us carry him," said Stelio, in his friend's ear, 
 intoxicated with the sadness of things and the so- 
 lemnity of his visions. 
 
 The motionless face was barely giving signs of 
 returning to life. 
 
 " Yes, let us offer ourselves," said Daniele Glauro, 
 turning pale. 
 
 They looked towards the woman with the face of 
 snow, and held out their arms.
 
 196 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 How long did that terrible removal last? The 
 space from the boat to the shore was brief indeed, 
 but they seemed to have gone a long way in those 
 few steps. The water clamoured against the posts of 
 the landing-pier, the howl broke from the Canal as 
 if it came from the windings of a cavern, the bells of 
 San Marco were ringing for vespers ; but the confused 
 noises had lost all immediate reality ; they seemed 
 indefinitely profound and remote, like a lament. of 
 the Ocean. 
 
 They carried the weight of the Hero on their arms ; 
 they bore the stunned body of him who had spread 
 the power of his oceanic soul over the world, the 
 perishable form of the Revealer who had laid the es- 
 sences of the Universe, in infinite song, before men's 
 worship. With an ineffable shiver of fear and joy, 
 like the man who should see a river dashing itself 
 over a rock, a volcano bursting open, a conflagration 
 burning a forest, a dazzling meteor obscuring the 
 starry heavens like man in the presence of a natural 
 force that should have suddenly and irresistibly mani- 
 fested itself, Stelio Effrena felt under the hand that 
 was passed below the shoulder and sustained the 
 bust, he stopped a moment to grasp his strength, 
 which was escaping him, and gazed at the white head 
 against his breast, he felt in his hand the renewed 
 beating of the sacred heart. 
 
 "You were strong, Daniele, you who cannot break 
 a stick! That old barbarian body was heavy; it 
 seemed built over a bronze framework of bones ; solid, 
 well-built, meant to remain standing on a shaking
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 197 
 
 deck, the structure of a man meant for the sea. 
 But where did your strength come from, Daniele? 
 I was afraid for you. You did not even stagger ! 
 We have carried a hero in our arms. We must mark 
 this day and celebrate it. His eyes opened before 
 mine ; his heart beat once more under my own hand. 
 We were worthy of carrying him, Daniele, because 
 of our fervour." 
 
 " You are worthy not only of carrying him, but 
 of picking up and preserving some of the most beau- 
 tiful promises offered by his art to those who still 
 hope." 
 
 " Ah ! if only I am not overmastered by my own 
 abundance, and if I succeed in conquering the anx- 
 iety that suffocates me, Daniele ! . . . " 
 
 On, on went the two friends, side by side, intoxi- 
 cated and full of confidences, as if their friendship 
 had suddenly become something higher, increased by 
 some ideal treasure ; on, on they went in the wind, 
 in the noise, in the evening's emotion, followed by the 
 fury of the sea. 
 
 " It seems as if the Adriatic had overthrown the 
 Murazzi this evening, and were about to scorn the 
 prohibition of the Senate," said Daniele Glauro, stop- 
 ping before the wave that was flowing over the 
 Piazza and was threatening the Procuratie. " We 
 must go back." 
 
 " No, let us take the ferry across. Here is a skiff. 
 Look at San Marco on the water ! " 
 
 The boatman was ferrying them to the Torre dell' 
 Orologio. The Piazza was inundated, like a lake in 
 a cloister of porticoes, reflecting the sky left uncov- 
 ered by the flight of the clouds that were coloured
 
 198 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 by the green and yellow of the twilight. The golden 
 Basilica, more living, as if revivified like a parched 
 forest, by contact with the water, was resplendent 
 with wings and halos in the waning light; and the 
 crosses of its mitres could be seen at the bottom of 
 the dark mirror, like the spires of another submerged 
 Basilica. 
 
 " EN VERUS FORTIS QUI FREGIT VINCULA MORTIS," 
 read Stelio Effrena, on the curve of an arch, under 
 the mosaic of the Resurrection. " Do you know 
 that Richard Wagner had his first conversation with 
 death in Venice twenty years ago now, at the time 
 of Tristan? Consumed by a desperate passion, he 
 came to Venice to die here in silence, and composed 
 instead that raving second act which is a hymn to 
 eternal night. His fate has again led him to the 
 lagoon. It seems decreed that he is to end here, 
 like Claudio Monteverde. Is it not indeed a musical 
 desire immense and indefinable, this desire of which 
 Venice is full? Here, every sound transforms itself 
 into expressive voices. Listen ! " 
 
 The city of stone and water had become sonorous 
 like a great organ. The hiss and the howl changed 
 into a kind of choral imploration growing and waning 
 with a rhythmic swell. 
 
 " Does not your ear seize the line of a melody in 
 this chorus of moans? Listen ! " 
 
 They had landed from the skiff and were walking 
 onwards in the narrow streets, crossing the little 
 bridges, lingering by the canal footpaths, penetrating 
 into the city at random ; but even in the excitement 
 of his speed, Stelio directed his way almost by in- 
 stinct towards a distant house that now and then as
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCF 199 
 
 in a lightning flash appeared to him animated by a 
 deep expectation. 
 
 " Listen ! I can distinguish a melodic theme that 
 rises and falls without the power to develop itself. . . ." 
 
 Stelio stopped, listening with so acute an intensity 
 of attention that his friend was surprised as if he were 
 assisting at his imminent transversion into the natural 
 phenomenon he was observing, as if he were annul- 
 ling himself little by little into a vaster and more 
 powerful will that was making him similar to itself. 
 
 " Have you heard? " 
 
 " It is not given me to hear what you hear," 
 answered the barren ascete to the genius. " I will 
 wait until you can repeat the words that Nature has 
 spoken to you." 
 
 Both trembled in the intimacy of their hearts, one 
 most lucid, the other unconscious. 
 
 "I don't know," he said; "I don't know any 
 more. ... It seemed to me. . . ." 
 
 The message he had received in a passing state of 
 unconsciousness was now slipping from his percep- 
 tion. The workings of his spirit began anew; his 
 will reawakened, agitated by anxious aspirations. 
 
 " Ah, to be able to restore to melody its natural 
 simplicity, its ingenuous perfection, its divine inno- 
 cence ; to draw it out all throbbing with life from its 
 eternal sources, from the very mystery of Nature, 
 from the very soul of universal things ! Have you 
 considered the myth referring to the early childhood 
 of Cassandra? One night she was left in the temple 
 of Apollo, and was found in the morning lying on the 
 marble, held in the coils of a snake that was licking 
 her ears. From that time she understood all the
 
 200 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 voices scattered in the air; she knew all the melodies 
 of the world. The power of the seer was but a mus- 
 ical power. A part of that Apollian virtue entered 
 into the poets who co-operated in the creation of the 
 tragic chorus. One of those poets could boast of 
 knowing all the different voices of birds, and another 
 of being able to converse with the winds, and another 
 of fully understanding the language of the sea. More 
 than once I have dreamt that I was lying on that 
 marble in the coils of that serpent. . . . That myth 
 would have to renew itself, Daniele, before we could 
 create the new art." 
 
 At every step, his speech grew more fervid; at 
 every step he gave himself up further to the tide of 
 his thoughts, still feeling however that an obscure 
 part of himself was remaining in communion with 
 the sonorous air. 
 
 " Have you ever thought what the music might be 
 of that kind of pastoral ode sung by the Chorus in 
 CEdipos Tyrannos when Jocaste flies away horrified, 
 and the son of Laius is still under the illusion of a 
 last hope? Do you remember that? ' O Citheron, 
 let Olympus bear witness before another full moon 
 comes round again.' For a moment the image of 
 the mountains interrupts the horror of the drama, 
 the rural serenity brings a pause in the human terror. 
 Do you remember it? Try to represent the strophes 
 to yourself as if they were a frame within the lines 
 of which a series of corporal movements are devel- 
 oped, an expressive dance-figure animated by the 
 perfect life of melody. You would have the spirit of 
 Earth conjured up before you in the essential plan of 
 things ; the comforting apparition of the great com-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 201 
 
 mon Mother at the misfortune of her stricken, trem- 
 bling children, a celebration, in short, of all that is 
 divine and eternal above mankind which is dragged 
 to madness and death by cruel Destiny. Now try 
 by intuition to feel how much that song has helped 
 me in my tragedy to find the means of the highest 
 and simplest expression." 
 
 " You intend to re-establish the Chorus on the 
 stage? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! I shall not revive an antique form ; I 
 shall invent a new form, obeying my instinct and the 
 genius of my race only, as the Greeks did when they 
 created their drama, that marvellous inimitable edifice 
 of beauty. For a long time the three arts of music, 
 poetry, and dancing have separated from each other; 
 the first two have followed their development toward 
 greater power of expression ; the third is in its decad- 
 ence ; therefore I think that it is no longer possible to 
 fuse them into a single rhythmical structure without 
 taking from one or other of them its own already 
 acquired dominant character. If made to concur 
 towards a common and total effect, they must re- 
 nounce their supreme and particular effect and re- 
 main, in a word, diminished. Among the substances 
 most capable of receiving rhythm, language is the 
 foundation of every work of Art tending to perfection. 
 Do you believe that language is given its full value in 
 the Wagnerian drama? And does it not seem to you 
 that the musical conception loses some of its prim- 
 itive purity by often being made to depend on 
 performances extraneous to the genius of music? 
 Richard Wagner certainly has a sense of this weak- 
 ness and confesses it when he goes up to some friend
 
 202 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 in Bayreuth and covers his eyes with his hand, that 
 he may give himself up entirely to the pure virtue of 
 the symphony and be therefore rapt by the greater 
 joy into a deeper vision." 
 
 " All this which you are exposing is new to me," 
 said Daniele Glauro ; " yet it gives me a joy like that 
 which we feel when we learn things that have been 
 long foreseen and felt by presentiment. You will 
 therefore superpose the three rhythmic arts, but will 
 present them in single manifestations linked by a 
 sovereign idea and elevated to the supreme degree 
 by their own significant energy?" 
 
 " Ah, Daniele ! How can I give you an idea of 
 the work that is living in me?" exclaimed Stelio 
 Effrena. " The words with which you would attempt 
 to formulate my meaning are hard and mechanical. . . . 
 No, no. . . . How shall I communicate to you the life 
 and the infinitely fluid mystery that are within me?" 
 
 They were at the foot of the Rialto steps ; Stelio 
 ran up rapidly and stopped against the balustrade at 
 the top of the arch waiting for his friend. The wind 
 went over him like an army of flags, the ends of 
 which were striking his face; the Canal beneath 
 him, lost in the shade of the palaces, bent like 
 a river running towards some cataract roaring afar; 
 one region of sky above him was clear in the midst 
 of the agglomerated clouds, vivid and crystalline 
 like the serenity that spreads itself above glaciers. 
 
 "It is impossible to stay here," said Daniele 
 Glauro, supporting himself against a shop door; " the 
 wind will carry us away." 
 
 " Go down ; I will overtake you. Only a moment," 
 the master cried to him, leaning on the balustrade,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 203 
 
 covering his eyes with his hand concentrating all his 
 soul into the effort of listening. 
 
 Formidable indeed was the voice of the gale in 
 that gathering of centuries now turned to stone ; it 
 alone dominated the solitude as in the time when 
 the marbles still slept in the bosom of the mountains, 
 and wild grasses grew round the birds' nests in the 
 muddy lagoon islands, long before the Doge was in- 
 stalled in the Rialto, long before the patriarchs had 
 led the fugitives to their great destiny. Human 
 life had disappeared ; there was nothing under the 
 heavens except an immense sepulchre in the hollows 
 of which that one voice re-echoed, and that voice 
 alone. Its unaccompanied song, its lamentation that 
 had no hope, commemorated the multitudes that had 
 become ashes, the dispersed pageants, the fallen 
 greatness, the numberless days of birth and death, 
 the things of a time without name or form. All the 
 melancholy of the world passed with that wind over 
 the outstretched soul. 
 
 " Ah, I have grasped you," cried out the joy of the 
 triumphant artist. 
 
 The entire line of the melody had been revealed 
 to him, was henceforth his, was immortal in his 
 spirit and in the world. No living thing seemed 
 more living to him than that one. His own life 
 yielded to the unlimited energy of that sonorous 
 idea, yielded to the generating force of that germ 
 capable of infinite developments. He imagined it 
 as steeped in the symphonic sea and unfolding it- 
 self through a thousand aspects until it reached its 
 perfection. 
 
 " Daniele, Daniele, I have found it."
 
 204 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 He raised his eyes, saw the first stars in the 
 adamantine sky and intuitively felt the great silence 
 in which they throbbed. Images of skies rounded 
 over far-off countries crossed his spirit; agitations 
 of sands, trees, water and dust on windy days ; the 
 Libyan Desert, the olive field on the Bay of Salona, 
 the Nile close to Memphis, the parched Argolides. 
 Other images overtook these. He feared lest he 
 should lose what he had found. With an effort he 
 closed his memory as he would have clenched his 
 hand to hold something. Close to a pillar he noticed 
 the shadow of a man and a glimmer at the end of a 
 long pole, and the slight explosion of a flame that 
 is being lit in a lantern. With anxious rapidity he 
 marked the notes of the theme in the lamplight on a 
 page of his notebook, fixing in the five lines the mes- 
 sage of the elements. 
 
 " What a day of marvels ! " said Daniele Glauro, 
 watching him come down the steps as light and 
 nimble as if he had robbed the air also of its elastic 
 properties. " May Nature always cherish you, my 
 brother!" 
 
 " Come, come ! " said Stelio, taking him by the 
 arm and drawing him after him with the gladness of 
 a child. " I want to run." 
 
 He was drawing him through the narrow streets 
 towards San Giovanni Elemosinario. He was re- 
 peating to himself the names of the three churches 
 he would meet on his way before reaching the dis- 
 tant house that from time to time had appeared to 
 him as in a lightning-flash animated by a deep 
 expectation. 
 
 " It is quite true, Daniele, what you told me one
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 205 
 
 day; the voice of things is essentially different from 
 their sound," he said, stopping at the beginning of 
 the Ruga Vecchia close to the belfry, because he 
 noticed that his haste was tiring his friend. " The 
 sound of a wind simulates in turns the moans of a 
 terrified multitude, the howling of wild beasts, the 
 crash of cataracts, the quiver of unfurled banners, 
 mockery, menace, despair. The voice of the wind 
 is the synthesis of all these sounds ; it is the voice 
 that sings and tells the terrible travail of time, the 
 cruelty of human destiny, the warfare eternally 
 waged for a deception that is eternally renewed." 
 
 " And have you never thought that the essence of 
 music is not in the sounds themselves?" asked the 
 mystic doctor. " That essence dwells in the silence 
 that precedes sound and in the silence that follows 
 it. Rhythm appears and lives in these intervals of 
 silence. Every sound wakens in the silence that goes 
 before and that follows it, a voice which can only 
 be heard by one spirit. Rhythm is the heart of 
 music, but its throbs are inaudible except during the 
 pauses of sound." 
 
 The law, metaphysical in its nature, thus announced 
 by the contemplator, confirmed Stelio in his belief in 
 the justness of his own intuition. 
 
 " Imagine," he said, " the interval between two 
 scenic symphonies in which all the motifs unite to 
 express the inner essence of the characters that are 
 struggling in the drama and to reveal the inner depths 
 of the action, as, for instance, in Beethoven's great 
 prelude in ' Leonora ' or in ' Coriotanus.' That musi- 
 cal silence throbbing with the heart-beats of rhythm 
 is like the mysterious living atmosphere where alone
 
 206 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 words of pure poetry can appear. The personages 
 thus seem to emerge from the symphonic ocean as if 
 from the truth itself of the hidden being that oper- 
 ates within them; and their spoken language will 
 have an extraordinary resonance in that rhythmic 
 silence, will touch the extreme limit of verbal power, 
 because it will be animated by a continual aspiration 
 to song that cannot be appeased except by the mel- 
 ody that shall again rise from the orchestra at the end 
 of the tragic episode. Do you understand? " 
 
 " You mean that you place the episode between 
 two symphonies, that prepare and complete it, be- 
 cause music is the beginning and the end of human 
 speech." 
 
 " I thus draw the personages of the drama nearer 
 to the spectator. Do you remember the figure used 
 by Schiller in the ode he composed in honour of 
 Goethe's translation of Mahomet,' to signify that only 
 an ideal world can have its life on the stage? The 
 Chariot of Thespis, like the boat of Acheron, is so 
 frail that it can only carry shades or human images. 
 On the ordinary stage those images are so distant that 
 any contact with them seems as impossible as contact 
 with mental phantoms. They are distant and strange, 
 but by making them appear in the rhythmic silence, 
 by making music accompany them to the threshold 
 of the visible world, I draw them marvellously near 
 to the spectator, because I illumine the most secret 
 depths of the will that produces them. You under- 
 stand, their intimate essence is there uncovered and 
 placed in immediate communion with the soul of the 
 crowd. And that crowd, under the ideas signified by 
 voice and gesture, feels the depths of the musical
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 207 
 
 motives that correspond to them in the symphonies. 
 I show, in a word, the images painted on the veil and 
 that which happens beyond the veil. You under- 
 stand ! And by means of music, of dancing, and of 
 lyric poetry, I create round my heroes an ideal at- 
 mosphere in which the whole life of Nature vibrates, 
 so that in each of their actions not only the powers 
 of their preordained destinies seem to converge, but 
 also the obscurest influences of surrounding things, 
 of the elementary souls living in the great tragic cir- 
 cle. As the creations of ^Eschylus bear in themselves 
 something of the natural myths from which they 
 sprang, I would that my creations could be felt 
 throbbing in the torrent of savage forces, suffering 
 from contact with the earth, drawn into communion 
 with air, fire, water, with the mountains and with the 
 clouds, in their pathetic struggle against a fate that 
 must be conquered. I would that Nature could be 
 round them as our oldest forefathers saw her: the 
 passionate actress in an immortal drama." 
 
 They were entering the Campo di San Cassiano, 
 that stretched out deserted on the banks of its livid 
 stream ; steps and voices echoed there as in a rocky 
 amphitheatre, clear above the roar that came from 
 the Grand Canal as from a great river. A purplish 
 shadow rose from the fever-breathing water and 
 spread in the air like a poisonous exhalation. Death 
 seemed to have filled that place from all time. At a 
 high window a shutter beat in the wind against the 
 wall, grinding on its hinges like a sign of abandon- 
 ment and ruin. Yet all those appearances worked 
 extraordinary transformations in the spirit of the 
 Life-giver. Once more he saw a wild, lonely spot
 
 2o8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 by the tombs at Mycenae in the hollow between the 
 lower peak of Mount Euboea and the inaccessible 
 flank of the citadel. Myrtles grew vigorously be- 
 tween the harsh boulders and the Cyclopic ruins. 
 The waters of the Fount of Perseia, springing from 
 among the rocks, fell into a cavity like a shell, whence 
 it ran out and was lost in the valley of stone. At its 
 edge at the foot of a shrub lay the body of the Victim 
 stretched out rigid, spotless. In the deadly silence 
 he could hear the rush of the water and the inter- 
 mittent breath of the wind on the nodding myrtles. 
 
 " It was in an august place," he said, " that I first 
 had the vision of my new work : at Mycenae, at the 
 gate of the lions, while re-reading the ' Oresteia.' . . . 
 Land of Fire, land of thirst and delirium, birthplace 
 of Clytemnestra and the Hydra, soil made sterile for 
 ever by the horror of the most tragic destiny that 
 has ever overwhelmed a human race. . . . Have you 
 ever thought of that barbaric explorer who, after 
 having passed the greater part of his life among his 
 drugs behind a counter, began digging in the ruins 
 of Mycenae among the graves of the Atridae, and one 
 day (the sixth anniversary took place not long ago) 
 saw the greatest and the strangest vision that has ever 
 presented itself to mortal eyes ? Have you ever con- 
 sidered the fat Schliemann in the act of discovering 
 the most dazzling treasure ever accumulated by death 
 in the obscurities of the earth for hundreds and thou- 
 sands of years? Have you ever thought that the ter- 
 rible, superhuman spectacle might have appeared to 
 another, to some youthful, fervent spirit ; to a poet, a 
 Life-giver, to you, to me, perhaps ? The frenzy of it, 
 the fever, the madness. . . . Imagine ! "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 209 
 
 He was flaming, vibrating, all at once carried away 
 by his fiction as by a storm. His seeing eyes shone 
 with the gleam of the funereal treasures. His crea- 
 tive force was flowing to his spirit like blood to the 
 heart. He was the actor in his own drama. His 
 accents, his gesture, signified transcendent passion 
 and beauty, overstepped the power of the spoken 
 word, the limit of the letter. The fraternal spirit of 
 his companion hung upon his lips, trembling before 
 the sudden splendour that was realising his divinations. 
 
 " Imagine ! Imagine that the earth you are dig- 
 ging in is evil ; it must still give out the exhalations 
 of monstrous deeds. The curse that weighed on the 
 Atridae was so deadly that there must have remained 
 some vestige of it still to be dreaded in the dust that 
 was trodden by them. You are stricken by witchcraft, 
 the dead whom you seek and cannot succeed in find- 
 ing have come to life in you again and breathe 
 within you with the tremendous breath that yEschylus 
 infused into them, vast and bloodthirsty as they ap- 
 peared in the ' Oresteia,' thrust through ceaselessly 
 with the sword and brand of their destiny. Hence 
 all the ideal life with which you have nourished your- 
 self must have assumed in you the form and the im- 
 press of reality. And you go on obstinately in this 
 land of thirst, at the foot of this naked mountain, 
 drawn into the fascination of the dead city, digging, 
 digging in the earth, with those frightful phantoms 
 always before your eyes, in the thirsting dust. At 
 every stroke of the spade you must tremble through 
 all your bones, longing to see really the face of one 
 of the Atridae, still untouched, with the signs yet vis- 
 ible of the violence he endured, the cruel death. And
 
 2IO 
 
 it appears, the gold, the gold, the bodies, great heaps 
 of gold, the bodies all covered with gold. . . ." 
 
 The Atridae princes were there extended on the 
 stone, a prodigy called up in the darkness of the 
 alley. Both the listener and he who had evoked 
 them shuddered with the same shudder in the same 
 flash. 
 
 " A succession of tombs ; fifteen intact bodies, one 
 beside the other, on a bed of gold, with faces covered 
 with masks of gold, with foreheads crowned with 
 gold, with breasts bound with gold ; and over all, 
 on their bodies, at their sides, at their feet, over all 
 a profusion of golden things, innumerable as the 
 leaves fallen from a fabulous forest. . . . Do you 
 see? Do you see?" 
 
 The anxiety of rendering all that gold so that it 
 should be palpable, of changing his hallucinating 
 vision into a sensible reality, suffocated him. 
 
 "I see, I see!" 
 
 " For a moment, the soul of that man has leaped 
 back hundreds and thousands of years, breathed the 
 terrible legend, trembled in the horror of that ancient 
 massacre. For a moment his soul has traced that 
 ancient and violent life. They were there, the slain 
 ones : Agamemnon, Eurymedon, Cassandra, and the 
 royal escort lay under his eyes for a moment, motion- 
 less. And then exhaled like vapour do you see 
 like melting foam, like dust that is scattered, 
 like I know not what inexpressibly faint and fugitive 
 thing, all vanish into their silence, swallowed up by 
 the same fatal silence that was about their radiant 
 immobility. A handful of dust and a heap of 
 gold. . . ."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 211 
 
 The miracle of Life and Death was there on the 
 stones of the deserted alley as on the stones of the 
 sepulchres. Inexpressibly moved, trembling, Daniele 
 Glauro seized the hands of his friend. And in his 
 faithful eyes the Life-giver saw the dumb flame of 
 enthusiasm consecrated to the masterpiece. 
 
 They stopped by a doorway against the dark wall. 
 There was a mysterious sense of distance in them 
 both, as if their spirits were lost in the depths of 
 time ; and behind that door, antique people lived 
 enslaved by a motionless Destiny. From the house 
 one could hear a cradle that was being rocked to the 
 rhythm of a low sing-song ; a mother was conciliating 
 the sleep of her child with a melody handed down 
 from her ancestors ; her protecting voice covered the 
 menacing roar of the elements. The stars burned 
 above the narrow strip of sky. Further down against 
 the walls and the sand-banks the sea was lowing. 
 Elsewhere the heart of a hero was suffering as if 
 waiting for death, and near them the cradle rocked 
 on, and the voice of the mother calling down happi- 
 ness on the infant's wail. 
 
 " Life ! " said Stelio Effrena, resuming his walk and 
 dragging his friend after him. " Here, in one instant, 
 all that trembles, weeps, hopes, yearns, and raves in 
 the immensity of life, gathers itself up in one spirit, 
 condensed there with so rapid a sublimation that it 
 seems as if one should be able to manifest it all in a 
 single word. What word? What word? Do you 
 know it? Who shall ever say it? " 
 
 He was once more beginning to suffer from his 
 anxiety and discontent that wanted to embrace all 
 and express all.
 
 212 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " Have you ever seen the entire universe in a few 
 seconds, standing out before you like a human head? 
 I have, a thousand times. Ah, to be able to cut it 
 off, like him who cut off the head of Medusa, at one 
 blow, and hold it up from a scaffolding high above 
 the crowd that it might never forget it again. Have 
 you never thought that a great tragedy might resem- 
 ble the attitude of Perseus? I tell you that I should 
 like to take the bronze of Benvenuto away from the 
 Loggia of Orcagna and carry it away for the vestibule 
 of the new theatre as an admonishment. But who 
 shall give a poet the sword of Hermes and the mirror 
 of Athena?" 
 
 Daniele Glauro was silent. He who had received 
 from Nature the gift of enjoying beauty, though not 
 of creating it, well divined the torment of Stelio's 
 fraternal spirit. Silently he walked beside his brother, 
 bending his vast thoughtful brow, that seemed swol- 
 len by the presence of an unborn world. 
 
 " Perseus ! " added the Life-giver, after a pause 
 that had been full of the flashes of his inventions. 
 " In the hollow, under the citadel of Mycenae, there is 
 a fountain called Perseia: the only living thing in 
 that place where all is burnt up and dead. Men are 
 attracted to it as to a spring of life in that land 
 where the sorrowful whiteness of the dried up rivers 
 can be seen late into the twilight. Every human 
 thirst stretches out voraciously to its freshness. 
 Through the whole of my work the murmur of 
 that stream will be heard : the water, the melody of 
 water. ... I have found it ! In it, in the pure ele- 
 ment, the pure Act which is the aim of the new 
 tragedy shall be accomplished. The Virgin destined
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 213 
 
 like Antigone to die ' deprived of nuptials ' shall fall 
 asleep on its clear icy waters. Do you understand? 
 The pure Act marks the defeat of ancient Fate. The 
 new soul suddenly bursts the iron band that clasped 
 it with a determination born of madness, of a lucid 
 delirium that is like ecstasy, that is like a deeper 
 vision of nature. The last ode in the orchestra tells 
 the salvation and the freedom of man obtained by 
 means of pain and sacrifice. The monstrous Fate is 
 conquered there by the tombs into which the race of 
 Atreus descended, before the very bodies of the vic- 
 tims. Do you understand? He who has freed him- 
 self by means of the pure Act, the brother who kills 
 the sister to save her soul from the horror that 
 was about to seize her, has truly seen the face of 
 Agamemnon ! " 
 
 The fascination of the funereal gold was again tak- 
 ing hold of him ; the evidence of his internal vision 
 gave him an hallucinated appearance. 
 
 " One of the bodies exceeds all the others in stature 
 and in majesty : wearing a large crown of gold, with 
 cuirass, girdle, and shoulder-plates of gold surrounded 
 with swords, spears, daggers, cups, covered with in- 
 numerable discs of gold scattered over his body like 
 petals, more venerable than a demi-god. He bends 
 over him while he melts away in the light and raises 
 the heavy mask. . . . Ah, does he not indeed see the 
 face of Agamemnon? Is not this perhaps the King 
 of Kings? His mouth is open; his eyelids are open. . . . 
 Do you remember? Do you remember Homer? 'As 
 I lay dying I lifted my hands towards my sword ; but 
 the woman with the dog's eyes went her way and 
 would not close my eyelids and my mouth, as I de-
 
 214 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 scended to the abode of Hades.' Do you remem- 
 ber? Well, the mouth of the corpse is open, the eyes 
 are open. . . . He has a large forehead bound with 
 a round leaf of gold ; his nose is long and straight ; his 
 chin oval. . . ." 
 
 The dreamer stopped a moment, his eyes fixed and 
 dilated. It was he who was seeing ; the vision was 
 his. All about him disappeared, and his fiction 
 remained the only reality. Daniele Glauro shuddered, 
 for he too had seen through those eyes. 
 
 "Ah, even to the white spot on the shoulder; he 
 has raised the armour. . . . The spot, the spot ! 
 The hereditary sign of the race of Pelops ' of the 
 ivory shoulders ! ' Is he not the King of Kings? " 
 
 The rapid, interrupted words of the visionary 
 seemed a succession of flashes by which he was him- 
 self dazzled. He himself was astonished by that 
 sudden apparition, by that sudden discovery, that 
 illumined in the darkness of his spirit, manifested 
 itself and became almost tangible. How could he 
 have discovered that spot on the shoulder of Aga- 
 memnon? From what abyss of his memory had that 
 detail arisen, so strange and yet precise and decisive 
 as the description necessary for the recognition of a 
 body dead since yesterday? 
 
 "You were there," said Daniele Glauro, in his 
 exaltation. " You yourself have raised the armour 
 and the mask. ... If you have really seen what 
 you say, you are no longer a man. . . ." 
 " I have seen ! I have seen ! " 
 Once more he was being transformed into the 
 actor of his own drama and with a violent palpi- 
 tation was hearing from the mouth of a living person
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 215 
 
 the words of his companion, those same words that 
 were to be pronounced in the episode. " If you 
 have really seen what you say, you are no longer a 
 man." From that moment the explorer of tombs 
 took on the aspect of a great hero fighting against 
 the ancient fate that had arisen from the ashes them- 
 selves of the Atridae to contaminate and overcome 
 him. 
 
 " It is not with impunity," he said, " that a man 
 uncovers tombs and gazes on the face of the dead ; 
 and of what dead ! He is living alone with his sister, 
 with the sweetest creature that has ever breathed the 
 air of this earth, alone with her in the house full 
 of light and silence, as in a prayer, a consecration. 
 . . . Now imagine one who should unconsciously 
 drink poison, a philtre, something impure, that 
 should corrupt his blood, that should contaminate 
 his thoughts: thus, suddenly, while his soul is in 
 peace. . . . Imagine this terrible evil, this vengeance 
 of the dead ! He is suddenly invaded by incestuous 
 passion; he becomes the trembling and miserable 
 prey of a monster, righting a desperate hidden fight, 
 without truce, without escape, day and night, at every 
 hour, at every moment, the more atrocious the more 
 the unconscious pity of the poor creature stoops to 
 his evil. . . . How can he be liberated? From the 
 moment in which the tragedy has its beginning, from 
 the moment in which the innocent companion begins 
 to speak, she appears destined to die. And all that 
 is said and accomplished in the episodes, and all that 
 is expressed by song and by the dance and by the 
 interludes, all serves to lead her slowly and inexor- 
 ably towards death. She is the equal of Antigone.
 
 216 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 In the brief tragic hour she passes accompanied by 
 the light of hope and by the shadow of presentiment, 
 she passes accompanied by song and weeping, by the 
 great love that offers joy, by the furious love that 
 gives birth to mourning, and never stops except to 
 fall asleep on the clear icy water of the fountain that 
 called her uninterruptedly with its solitary moan. 
 As soon as he has killed her, her brother receives 
 from her through death, the gift of his redemption. 
 ' Every stain is gone from my soul,' he cries ; * I 
 have become pure, quite pure. All the sanctity of 
 my first love has returned to my mind like a torrent 
 of light. ... If she were to rise up now, she could 
 walk over my soul as over immaculate snow. ... If 
 she were to return to life again, all my thoughts for her 
 would be like lilies, like lilies. . . . Now she is perfect, 
 now she can be adored like a divine being. ... In 
 the deepest of my sepulchres I will lay her at rest, 
 and I will set about her all my treasures. . . .' 
 Thus the act of death, that he has been dragged into 
 by his lucid delirium, becomes a purifying act of 
 liberation and marks the defeat of an ancient fate. The 
 ode emerging from the symphonic ocean sings of the 
 victory of man, irradiates the darkness of the catas- 
 trophe with an unusual light, raises on the summit of 
 music the first word of the renewed drama." 
 
 " The gesture of Perseus," exclaimed Daniele 
 Glauro, in his exaltation. " At the end of the tragedy 
 you cut off the head of the Moira and show it to the 
 crowd, ever young and ever new, that brings the 
 spectacle to a close with great cries." 
 
 Both saw in their dream the marble theatre on the 
 Janiculum, the multitude dominated by its idea of
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 217 
 
 truth and of beauty, the great starry night stretching 
 over Rome ; they saw the frenzied crowd carrying in 
 their rude hearts, as they descended the hill, the con- 
 fused revelation of poetry; they heard the clamour 
 of the immortal city prolonging itself in the shadow. 
 
 " And now good-bye, Daniele," said the master, 
 again seized by haste, as if some one were waiting for 
 him or calling him. 
 
 The eyes of the tragic muse gazed immovable in 
 the background of his dream, sightless, petrified in 
 the divine blindness of statues. 
 
 " Where are you going?" 
 
 " To the Palazzo Capello." 
 
 " Does la Foscarina know the thread of your work ? " 
 
 " Vaguely ! " 
 
 " And what shall be her figure? " 
 
 " She shall be blind, having already passed into 
 another world, already half alive in something beyond 
 life. She shall see that which others do not see. She 
 shall have one foot in the shadow, and her forehead 
 in eternal truth. The contrasts of the tragic hour shall 
 reverberate in her inner darkness, multiplying them- 
 selves in it like thunder in the deep circles of solitary 
 rocks. Like Tiresias, she shall understand all things 
 permitted and forbidden, earthly and terrestrial, and 
 she shall know 'how hard knowing is when knowing 
 is useless.' Ah, I will put marvellous words in her 
 mouth and silences that shall give birth to things of 
 infinite beauty. . . ." 
 
 " Her power on the stage, whether she is silent or 
 whether she speaks, is more than human. She wakens 
 in our hearts the most hidden evils and the most se- 
 cret hopes ; and through her enchantment our past
 
 218 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 becomes present, and through the virtue of her as- 
 pects we recognise ourselves in the sorrows under- 
 gone by other creatures in all time, as if the soul 
 revealed to us by her were our own soul." 
 
 They paused on the Ponte Savio. Stelio was silent 
 under a flood of love and melancholy that suddenly 
 invaded him. He was hearing the sad voice again : 
 " To have loved my passing glory only that one day 
 it might serve yours." He was hearing his own voice 
 again : " I love you and believe in you ; I give my- 
 self up entirely. You are my companion. Your 
 hand is safe." The power and security of that alliance 
 were swelling his pride, yet, for all that, deep in the 
 depths of his heart there still trembled an undefined 
 aspiration and a presentiment that grew denser at 
 times and became as heavy as anguish. 
 
 " I am sorry to leave you to-night, Stelio," con- 
 fessed the kind brother, he too falling under a veil of 
 melancholy. "Whenever I am near you I seem to 
 feel myself breathing more freely and living a quicker 
 life." 
 
 Stelio was silent. The wind seemed to have grown 
 fainter, the intermittent gusts tore away the acacia 
 leaves and wrapped them round. The brown church 
 and the square tower of naked brick prayed to the 
 stars in silence. 
 
 " Do you know the green column that is in San 
 Giacomo dall' Orio?" added Daniele, meaning to 
 keep his friend a few moments longer, because he 
 dreaded the farewell. " What a sublime substance it 
 is ! it seems the fossilised condensation of an immense, 
 growing forest; as it follows its innumerable veins, 
 the eye travels in a dream into silvern mysteries.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 219 
 
 When I gaze at it I seem to be visiting Sila and 
 Ercinna." 
 
 Stelio knew it. Perdita had one day remained lean- 
 ing against the great precious stem for a long time, 
 contemplating the magic golden frieze that curves 
 out obscuring it above the canvas of Bassano. 
 
 "To be ever dreaming, dreaming!" he sighed, 
 feeling a return of the bitter impatience which had 
 suggested words of scorn to him on the boat that 
 brought him from the Lido. " To live on relics ! 
 Think of Dandolo, who overthrew that column and 
 an empire at the same time, and who chose to remain 
 doge when he might have been emperor. He lived 
 more than you do, perhaps, who wander through 
 forests when you examine the marble he brought 
 home as booty. Good-bye, Daniele." 
 
 " Do not diminish your lot." 
 
 " I wish I could force it." 
 
 " Thought is your weapon." 
 
 " Often my ambition burns up my thought." 
 
 "You can create; what more do you seek?" 
 
 " In other times I too might have conquered an 
 archipelago." 
 
 " What does it matter to you? A melody is worth 
 a province. Would you not give up a principality 
 for a new image ? " 
 
 " I would that J could live the whole of life and not 
 be only a brain." 
 
 " A brain contains the world." 
 
 " Ah, you cannot understand ! You are the ascetic ; 
 you have overcome desire." 
 
 " And you will overcome it, too." 
 
 " I don't know whether I would."
 
 220 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " I am certain of it." 
 
 " Good-bye, Daniele. You are the one who bears 
 witness to me. No other is as dear to me as you are." 
 
 Their hands met in a firm clasp. 
 
 " I shall stop for news at the Palazzo Vendramin," 
 said the kind brother. His words brought to his 
 mind once more the great, ailing heart, the weight of 
 the hero on their arms, the terrible removal. 
 
 " He has conquered ; he can die," said Stelio 
 Effrena. 
 
 He entered la Foscarina's house like a spirit. His 
 intellectual excitement was changing the aspect of 
 things. The hall, illuminated by a galley lamp, 
 seemed immense. A felse upon the pavement near 
 the door disturbed him as if he had met a coffin. 
 
 "Ah, Stelio ! " cried the actress, jumping up with 
 a start when she saw him appear, and moving quickly 
 towards him, impetuous with all the spring of her 
 desire that expectation had restrained. " At last ! " 
 
 She stopped an instant before him without touch- 
 ing him. The impulse she had controlled vibrated 
 visibly in her body from top to toe; it seemed to 
 beat in her throat in a short gasp. She was as the 
 wind is when it falls. 
 
 "Who has taken you from me? " she thought, her 
 heart filled with doubt; all at once she had felt some- 
 thing in the loved one that made him intangible to 
 her, she had caught something in his eyes that was 
 estranged and distant. 
 
 But she had been most beautiful in his eyes as she 
 came forth from the shade, animated with a violence
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 221 
 
 not dissimilar to that of the storm that was agitating 
 the lagoons. The cry, the gesture, the start, the sud- 
 den stop, the vibration of her muscles under her gar- 
 ments, the light in her face extinguished like a flame 
 that becomes ashes, the intensity of her look that was 
 like a gleam of battle, the breath which parted her 
 lips like the heat that breaks open the lips of earth, 
 all these aspects of the real person showed a power 
 of pathetic life only comparable to the ferment of 
 natural energies, to the action of cosmic forces. The 
 artist recognised in her the Dionysian creature, the 
 living material capable of receiving the impress of 
 the rhythm of art, of being fashioned according to the 
 laws of poetry. And because she was in his eyes as 
 various as the waves of the sea, the blind mask he 
 would put on her face seemed inert, narrow the tragic 
 fable through which she was to pass sorrowing, too 
 limited the order of sentiment from which she was to 
 draw her expressions, almost subterranean the soul 
 she must reveal. " Ah ! all that trembles, weeps, 
 hopes, yearns, raves in the immensity of life ! " His 
 mental fancies were seized with a sort of panic, with 
 a sudden, dissolving terror. What could that single 
 work be in the immensity of life? ^Eschylus had 
 composed more than a hundred tragedies, Sophocles 
 still more ; they had formed a world with colossal 
 fragments raised in their titanic arms. Their work 
 was as vast as a cosmogony. The ALschylian figures 
 seemed to be still warm with ethereal fire, shining 
 with sidereal light, damp from the fertilising cloud. 
 The statue of CEdipus seemed to be carved out of the 
 same mass as the solar myth ; that of Prometheus 
 made with the same primitive tool with which the
 
 222 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 shepherd Arya had produced fire upon the Asiatic 
 heights. The spirit of the Earth worked in the 
 creators. 
 
 " Hide me, hide me ! and do not ask me anything, 
 and let me be silent," he implored, not knowing how 
 to dissimulate his excitement, and failing to control 
 the tumult of his distracted thoughts. 
 
 The heart of the woman throbbed with fear in its 
 ignorance. 
 
 " Why? What have you done ? " 
 
 " I am suffering." 
 
 "From what?" 
 
 " From anxiety, anxiety, from that malady of mine 
 which you know." 
 
 She took him in her arms. He felt that she had 
 trembled with doubt. 
 
 " Mine, still mine? " she asked in a suffocated voice, 
 with her lips upon his shoulder. 
 
 " Yes, yours always." 
 
 It was a horrible tremor which shook the woman 
 every time she saw him go away, every time she saw 
 him come back. When he left her, was he going to 
 the unknown wife ; when he returned, had he come to 
 take his last leave of her? 
 
 She strained him in her arms, with the love of a 
 mistress, a sister, a mother, with all human love. 
 
 " What can I do for you, what can I do for you ? 
 Tell me ! " 
 
 She was continually tormented by the need of 
 offering, of serving, of obeying a command which 
 should drive her towards danger and the struggle to 
 obtain some good which she should bring him on 
 returning to him.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 223 
 
 " What can I give you ? " 
 
 He smiled slightly, overtaken by weariness. 
 
 " What is it you want? Ah, I know." 
 
 He smiled, letting himself be soothed by that 
 voice, by those adoring hands. 
 
 " Everything, is it not true ? You want every- 
 thing?" 
 
 He smiled sadly, like a sick child told by a play- 
 mate of beautiful games. 
 
 " Ah, if I could. But nobody in the world will 
 
 ever be able to give you anything of any value, sweet 
 
 friend. Only your poetry and your music can demand 
 
 everything. Do you recollect your Ode beginning, 
 
 ' I was Pan ' ? " 
 
 He bent over the faithful heart a brow that was 
 being illumined by beautiful things. 
 
 " I was Pan ! " 
 
 The splendour of the lyrical moment went through 
 his spirit together with the delirium of the Ode. 
 
 " Have you seen your sea to-day? Did you see 
 the storm ? " 
 
 He shook his head without answering. 
 
 "Was it a great storm? You told me one day 
 that you have many sailors among your ancestors. 
 Have you thought of your house on the sand-hills? 
 Are you homesick for the sands? Do you want to 
 go back down there? You have done a great deal 
 of work down there, and strong work. That house 
 is blessed. Your mother was there whilst you were 
 at work. You could hear her walk gently in the 
 neighbouring rooms. . . . Did she stop to listen 
 sometimes?" 
 
 He clasped her in silence. The voice was pene-
 
 224 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 trating him deeply and seemed to refresh his pent-up 
 soul. 
 
 " And was your sister with you, too? You told me 
 her name one day. I have not forgotten it. Her name 
 is Sophia. I know she is like you. I should like to 
 hear her speak once, or to see her pass down the 
 road. . . . One day you praised her hands to me. 
 They are beautiful, are they not? You told me one 
 day that when she is sorrowful they hurt her ' as if 
 they were the very roots of her soul.' That was what 
 you told me, ' the very roots of her soul.' " 
 
 He was listening to her almost in a state of beati- 
 tude. In what way had she discovered the secret of 
 that balsam? From what hidden spring was she 
 drawing the melodious fluidity of those memories? 
 
 " Sophia will never know the good she has done to 
 the poor pilgrim. I know little about her, but I know 
 that she is like you in the face, and I have pictured 
 her to myself. . . . Even now I can see her. . . . 
 In distant countries, far, far away in the midst of a 
 strange, hard population, she has appeared to me 
 more than once when I was feeling lost; she has 
 come to keep me company. She would appear sud- 
 denly without my calling or expecting her. . . . 
 Once at Mu'rren, which I had reached after a long 
 tiring journey I had undertaken in order to see a 
 poor sick friend who afterwards died. ... It was 
 at dawn ; the mounains had that cold delicate colour 
 of beryl that is only seen among glaciers, the colour 
 of those things that will for ever remain distant and 
 intact and, oh, so enviable, so enviable ! Why did 
 she come? We waited together. The sun touched 
 the peaks of the hills. Then a dazzling rainbow
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 225 
 
 ran along their edges, lasted a few seconds, and 
 disappeared. . . ." 
 
 He listened to her almost in a state of beatitude. 
 Was not all the beauty and all the truth that he 
 would have expressed contained in one of the stones 
 or flowers of those mountains? The most tragic 
 struggle of human passions was not worth the ap- 
 parition of that rainbow on the eternal snows. 
 
 " And another time? " he asked softly. 
 
 For the pause had prolonged itself and he feared 
 she would not continue. 
 
 She smiled, then grew sad. 
 
 "Another time, it was at Alexandria, in Egypt, one 
 confused day of horror as if after a shipwreck. . . . 
 The city had all the appearance of putrefaction. . . . 
 I remember : a street full of muddy water, a whitish 
 skeleton-like horse that was splashing in it, its mane 
 and tail looking as if tinted with ochre ; the turrets of 
 an Arab cemetery ; the distant glitter of the marsh of 
 Mareotis. . . . Disgust, ruin ! " 
 
 " Oh, dear soul, never again, never again shall you 
 be desperate and alone," he said in his heart, swollen 
 with paternal kindness towards the nomad woman who 
 was calling up the sadness of her continual wandering. 
 
 His spirit which had stretched out so violently 
 towards the future now seemed with a slight shudder 
 to draw back into the past the power of that voice 
 which was being made present. He felt himself in a 
 state of concentration sweet and full of images like 
 that which is generated by the telling of stories round 
 the hearth in winter. Like once before under the 
 windows of the cloistered Radiana, he felt himself 
 seized by the fascination of time.
 
 226 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " And another time? " 
 
 She smiled, then grew sad. 
 
 " Another time it was in Vienna, in a museum. . . . 
 A great deserted hall, the cracking of rain on the 
 glass of the windows, numberless precious shrines in 
 crystal cases, the signs of death everywhere, of exiled 
 things no longer prayed to, no longer worshipped. 
 . . . Together we bent over a case containing a 
 collection of holy arms with their metal hands fixed 
 in a changeless gesture. . . . Martyrs' hands studded 
 with agates, amethysts, topazes, garnets, and sickly 
 turquoises. . . . Through certain apertures, splinters 
 of bone could be seen in the interior. There was one 
 that held a golden lily, another a miniature city, a 
 third a column. One was finer than the others. It 
 had a ring on each finger, and it held a small vase 
 full of ointment: it contained the relics of Mary 
 Magdalen. . . . Exiled things, become profane and 
 no longer prayed to, no longer worshipped. ... Is 
 Sophia devout ? Has she preserved the habit of 
 prayer? " 
 
 He did not answer. It seemed to him that he 
 should not speak, that he should give no visible sign 
 of his own existence in the enchantment of that 
 distant life. 
 
 " Sometimes she would come into your room while 
 you were working and lay a blade of grass on the 
 page you had commenced." 
 
 The enchantress shuddered inwardly: an image 
 that was wrapped in veils revealed itself all of a sud- 
 den, suggesting other words which remained unut- 
 tered. " Do you know that I began loving the 
 creature who sings, her whom you cannot have for-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 227 
 
 gotten, do you know that I began to love her, think- 
 ing of your sister? In order to pour into a pure 
 soul the tenderness which my heart would have 
 given to your sister from whom I was separated by 
 so many cruel things ! Do you know it ? " The 
 words were living, but they remained unuttered ; yet 
 the voice trembled at their dumb presence. 
 
 " Then you would allow yourself a few moments' 
 rest; you would go to the window and with her beside 
 you would look out to the sea. A ploughman urged 
 his young oxen yoked to the plough over the sand to 
 teach them the straight furrow; you would watch 
 them with her every day at the same time. When 
 they were fully trained, they came and ploughed the 
 sand no longer, but were taken up to the hill. . . . 
 Who has told me all these things?" 
 
 He himself had told her one day, almost in the 
 same words, but now those memories were being 
 brought back to him like unexpected visions. 
 
 " Then the flocks passed along the seashore : 
 they came from the mountains and went to the 
 plains of the Puglia, from one pasture to another 
 pasture. As they walked, the woolly sheep imitated 
 the motion of the waves, but the sea was nearly always 
 quiet when the flocks passed with their shepherds. 
 All was quiet ; there was a golden silence stretched 
 over the beach. The dogs ran along beside the 
 flock : the shepherds leaned on their staffs, and the 
 tinkle of their collar bells was faint in the vastness. 
 Your eyes would follow their progress as far as the 
 promontory. Then, later, you would go with your 
 sister and follow the marks left by their passage on 
 the damp sand. It was here and there dotted with
 
 228 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 holes and golden like a honeycomb. . . . Who has 
 told me all these things?" 
 
 He listened to her almost in a state of beatitude. 
 His' fever was quenched. There descended upon him 
 a slow peace that was like slumber, 
 
 "Then the sudden squalls would come; the sea 
 would overrun the sand-hills and the low woods, 
 leaving its foam on the juniper and tamarisk trees, 
 on the myrtle and the rosemary. Quantities of sea- 
 weeds and fragments would be thrown on shore. 
 Some boat had shipwrecked somewhere. The sea 
 brought fire-wood for the poor and mourning who 
 knows where ! The beach would be crowded with 
 women and children and old men vying with one 
 another as to who should collect the largest bundle. 
 Then your sister would bring other help : bread, 
 wine, vegetables, linen. The blessing would rise 
 louder than the roar of the waves. You would look 
 on from the window ; and it seemed to you that 
 none of your beautiful images was worth the odour 
 of the new bread. You would leave the half-written 
 page and hasten down to help Sophia. You would 
 speak to the women, the children, and the old 
 men. . . . Who has told me all these things?" 
 
 From the very first Stelio had preferred going 
 to the house of his friend through the gate of the 
 Gradenigo garden and passing among the trees and 
 shrubs that had grown wild again. La Foscarina had 
 obtained leave to unite her own garden with that of 
 the abandoned palace by means of a breach in the 
 partition wall. But soon afterwards, Lady Myrta had
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 229 
 
 come to inhabit the immense, silent rooms that had 
 welcomed as their last guest the son of the Empress 
 Josephine, the viceroy of Italy. The rooms were 
 adorned with old stringless instruments, and the gar- 
 den was peopled by beautiful greyhounds deprived of 
 their prey. 
 
 Nothing seemed to Stelio sadder and sweeter than 
 that walk towards the woman who awaited him, 
 counting the hours that were so slow and yet so swift 
 to fly. The canal path of San Simeone Piccolo 
 turned golden in the afternoon like a bank of fine ala- 
 baster. The reflected sun-rays played with the iron 
 of the prows moored in a row by the landing pier, 
 quivered on the steps of the church, on the columns 
 of the peristyle, animating the warm, disjointed 
 stones. A few rotten gondola cabins lay in the 
 shade of the pavement with their cloths spoiled and 
 discoloured by the rains, like biers worn by the wear 
 and tear of many funerals, grown old on the cemetery 
 road. The suffocating odour of hemp came from a 
 decayed palace now used as a rope factory, through 
 the barred windows choked with greyish down as 
 with accumulated cobwebs. And the garden gate 
 opened at the end of the Campiello della Comare, 
 which was grassy like the churchyard of a country 
 parish ; it opened out between two pillars crowned 
 with mutilated statues, and on the limbs of these the 
 dried ivy branches stood out like veins. Nothing 
 could have seemed to the visitor sweeter or more 
 sad. The chimneys of the humble dwellings round 
 th'e grass plot smoked peacefully towards the green 
 cupola; now and then a flight of pigeons crossed 
 the canal, starting from the sculptures of the Scalzi;
 
 230 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the whistle of a train passing on the lagoon bridge 
 could be heard, and the sing-song of a rope-maker 
 and the roll of an organ and the chanting of the 
 priests. The late summer was deceiving the melan- 
 choly of love. 
 
 "Helion! Sirius! Altair! Donovan! Ali-Nour! 
 Nerissa ! Piuchebella ! " 
 
 Lady Myrta, seated on the bench against the wall 
 clasped by rose-bushes, was calling her dogs. La 
 Foscarina stood near her, dressed in a tawny garment 
 that seemed made of the wonderful roan stuff used in 
 ancient Venice ; the sun wrapped the two women 
 and the roses in one same fair warmth. 
 
 " You are dressed like Donovan to-day," said Lady 
 Myrta to the actress, smiling. " Do you know that 
 Stelio loves Donovan above all the others?" 
 
 A faint blush tinted the face of La Foscarina; her 
 eyes sought the tawny greyhound. 
 
 " The strongest and the most beautiful," she said. 
 
 " I think he wants him," added the old lady, with 
 her indulgent sweetness. 
 
 " What is it he does not want?" 
 
 The old woman felt the veiled melancholy ; she 
 remained silent for a few moments. 
 
 The dogs lay near them, heavy and sad, sleepy and 
 full of dreams, far from their plains, their steppes, and 
 their deserts, crouching on the field of clover where 
 the marrow plants meandered with their hollow, 
 yellow-green fruit. The trees were motionless, as if 
 they had been fused in the same bronze that covered 
 the three graduated cupolas of San Simeone. There 
 was one same aspect of wildness about the garden 
 and the great stone dwelling, darkened by the tena-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 231 
 
 cious smoke of time, streaked with the rust of its irons 
 produced by the rains of an infinite number of au- 
 tumns. And the head of a tall pine resounded with 
 the same twittering which was certainly reaching the 
 ears of Radiana at that moment from her walled 
 garden. 
 
 "Does he give you pain?" the old woman would 
 have liked to ask of the woman in love, because the 
 silence weighed upon her and the fire of that sorrow- 
 ful soul was warming her like the persistent summer. 
 But she dared not. She sighed instead of speaking. 
 Her heart, which was ever young, could still beat at 
 the sight of desperate passion and threatened beauty. 
 " Ah, you are still beautiful, and your mouth still 
 attracts, and the man who loves you can still know 
 the intoxication of your pallor and your eyes," she 
 said, looking at the absorbed actress, towards whom 
 the November roses were stretching out. " But I am 
 a shadow." 
 
 She lowered her eyes, saw her own deformed hands 
 resting on her knees, and marvelled at their being 
 hers, they were so dead and contorted, miserable 
 monsters that could no longer touch anything without 
 exciting repugnance, that henceforth had only the 
 sleepy dogs to caress. She felt the wrinkles on her 
 face, the artificial teeth against her gums, the false 
 hair on her head, the entire ruin of her poor body, 
 that at one time had obeyed the graceful dictates of 
 her delicate spirit; and she marvelled at her own 
 persistence in struggling against the decay of her 
 age, in deceiving herself, in recomposing each morn- 
 ing the laughable illusion of essences, ointments, 
 rouge, and dyes. But was not her youth still present
 
 232 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 in the continual spring of her dream ? Had she not 
 yesterday, only yesterday, caressed a lovable face with 
 perfect ringers, hunted the fox and the stag in the 
 northern counties, danced in a park with her promised 
 bridegroom to an air of John Dowland's. 
 
 " There are no mirrors in the house of the Countess 
 Glanegg ; there are too many in the house of Lady 
 Myrta," thought la Foscarina. " One has hidden her 
 decadence from herself and all others ; the other has 
 seen herself growing older each morning, has counted 
 her wrinkles one by one, has gathered up her dead 
 hairs in her comb, has felt the first shake of her teeth 
 in her pale gums, and has tried to repair the irrepa- 
 rable ruin by artifice. Poor, tender soul that would 
 still live, smiling and fascinating ! One should dis- 
 appear, die, sink below the earth." She noticed the 
 little bunch of violets fastened by a pin to the hem 
 of Lady Myrta's dress. In every season a fresh flower 
 was pinned there, in some fold, hardly visible, as a 
 sign of her daily illusion of spring, of the ever- 
 renewed incantation that she worked on herself by 
 means of memory, music, and poetry, with all the 
 arts of dreams against old age, ill-health, and solitude. 
 " One should live a supreme, flaming hour, and then 
 disappear in the earth before all fascination be lost, 
 before the death of our last grace." 
 
 She felt the beauty of her own eyes, the hunger of 
 her lips, the rough strength of her hair folded back 
 by the tempest, all the power of the rhythms and the 
 impulses that slept in her muscles and in her bones. 
 She seemed to hear her friend's words which had 
 praised her, to see him in the fury of his desire, in the 
 sweetness of languor, in the moment of deepest ob-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 233 
 
 livion. " For a little while longer, still for a little 
 while, I shall please him, I shall seem beautiful to 
 him, I will burn his blood. Still for a little while." 
 With her feet in the grass, with her forehead lifted 
 to the sun, in the odour of the fading roses, in the 
 tawny dress that likened her to the magnificent 
 beast of prey, she burned with passionate expecta- 
 tion, with a sudden flood of life, as if that future 
 which she had given up by her resolution of death 
 were flowing back into the present. " Come, come ! " 
 She called her lover inwardly, half intoxicated, sure 
 of his coming, because she already felt him and had 
 never yet been deceived by her presentiment. " Still 
 for a little while ! " Every moment that passed 
 seemed an iniquitous theft. Motionless as she was, 
 she suffered and desired bewilderingly. The whole 
 garden, penetrated by heat to its very roots, throbbed 
 with her own pulsation. She felt as if she were 
 about to lose consciousness, to fall. 
 
 " Ah ! here is Stelio," exclaimed Lady Myrta, 
 seeing the young man appear among the laurels. 
 
 The woman turned quickly, blushing. The grey- 
 hounds rose, pricking their ears. The meeting of 
 those two brought forth sparks that were like a flash 
 of lightning. Once more, as ever, her lover had felt 
 in the presence of the marvellous creature the divine 
 sensation of being suddenly wrapped in inflamed 
 ether, in a vibrating atmosphere that seemed to 
 isolate him from the ordinary atmosphere and almost 
 ravished him. He had one day associated that mira- 
 cle of love with a physical image, remembering how 
 on one distant evening of his childhood, in crossing a 
 desolate plot of ground, he had suddenly found him-
 
 234 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 self surrounded by will-o'-the-wisps and had uttered 
 a cry. 
 
 "You were awaited here by all that lives in this 
 seclusion," said Lady Myrta, with a smile that covered 
 the emotion which had seized the poor youthful heart 
 in its prison of an old ailing body, at the spectacle of 
 love and desire. " In coming you have obeyed a call." 
 
 " True ! " said the young man, holding the collar 
 of Donovan, who had crept up to him, remembering 
 his caresses. " Indeed, I come from somewhere 
 very far. Where do you think I come from? 
 Guess ! " 
 
 "From the land of Giorgione." 
 
 " No, from the cloister of Santa Apollonia. Do 
 you know the cloister of Santa Apollonia? " 
 
 " Is it your invention of to-day ? " 
 
 "Invention? It is a cloister of stone, a real one, 
 with its well and its little columns." 
 
 " It may be ; but all the things you have once 
 looked at become your inventions, Stelio." 
 
 " Ah, Lady Myrta, I should like to give you that 
 gem. I should like to remove it into your garden. 
 Imagine a small secret cloister, opening on an order 
 of worn columns, coupled like nuns when they 
 pace fasting in the sun, very delicate, neither white 
 nor grey nor black, but of that most mysterious 
 colour ever given to stone by that great master- 
 colourist called Time. And in the midst of these a 
 well, and on the margin furrowed by the rope a bot- 
 tomless pail. The nuns have disappeared, but I think 
 the shades of the Danaides frequent the place. . . ." 
 
 He interrupted himself suddenly on seeing him- 
 self surrounded by the hounds and began imi-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 235 
 
 tating the guttural sounds made by the kennel-man 
 to rally them. The dogs became restless; their 
 melancholy eyes brightened. Two who had been at 
 some distance from the others bounded towards him 
 with long leaps, jumping over the bushes, and stopped 
 before him, wiry, sinuous, with strained nerves. 
 
 " Ali-Nour ! Crissa ! Nerissa ! Clarissa ! Altair ! 
 Helion ! Hardicanute ! Veronese ! Hierro ! " 
 
 He knew them all by name ; and when he called 
 them, they seemed to recognise him for their master. 
 There was the Scotch deer-hound, the native of the 
 highlands, with rough thick coat, rougher and thicker 
 round his jowls and nose and grey as new iron; 
 there was the reddish Irish wolf-hound, the robust 
 destroyer of wolves, whose brown eyes showed the 
 whites on moving; there was the spotted Tartary 
 hound, black and yellow, brought from the vast 
 Asiatic steppes where he guarded the tents at night 
 from leopards and hyenas ; there was the Persian 
 dog, fair and small, his ears covered with long silky 
 hairs, with a bushy tail, his coat paler along the ribs 
 and down his legs, more graceful even than the ante- 
 lopes he had slain ; there was the Spanish galgo who 
 had migrated with the Moors, the magnificent beast 
 held in leash by a pompous dwarf in the picture of 
 Diego Velasquez, trained to course and overthrow 
 in the naked plains of the Mancha, or in the low 
 woods thick with brushwood of Murcia and Ali- 
 cante ; there was the Arabian sloughi, the illustrious 
 plunderer of the desert, with dark tongue and palate, 
 all his sinews visible, his framework of bones show- 
 ing through the fine skin, a noble animal all pride, 
 courage, and elegance, accustomed to sleeping on
 
 236 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 rich carpets and drinking pure milk in pure vessels. 
 And gathered together in a pack they quivered round 
 him who knew how to reawaken in their torpid blood 
 their primitive instincts of pursuit and carnage. 
 
 " Which of you was Gog's best friend ? " he said, 
 looking from one to the other of the beautiful 
 anxious eyes fixed on him. 
 
 "You Hierro? You Altair?" 
 
 His singular accent excited the sensitive animals, 
 who listened with suppressed, intermittent yelps. 
 Each movement of theirs imparted a shining wave 
 to their various coats ; and their long tails, curved at 
 the ends like hooks, wagged lightly from side to side 
 against their muscular haunches. 
 
 " Well, I must tell you what I have kept silent 
 until to-day: Gog, do you hear? who could break 
 the hare at one snap of his jowls, Gog is crippled." 
 
 " Oh, really ! " exclaimed Lady Myrta, regretfully. 
 " How did it happen, Stelio, and how is Magog?" 
 
 " Magog is safe and sound." 
 
 They were a couple of greyhounds given by Lady 
 Myrta to her young friend to take with him to his 
 house on the sea. 
 
 " But how did it happen? " 
 
 " Ah, poor Gog ! He had already killed thirty- 
 seven hares. He possessed all the qualities of great 
 breeding: swiftness, resistance, an incredible quick- 
 ness at turning, and the constant desire of killing his 
 prey, and the classical manner of running straight, 
 and gripping from behind. Have you ever seen 
 greyhounds course, Foscarina?" 
 
 She was so intent that she started at the unexpected 
 sound of her name.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 237 
 
 " Never ! " 
 
 She was hanging on his lips, fascinated by their 
 instinctive expression of cruelty in describing the 
 work of blood. 
 
 " Never ! Then you do not know one of the rarest 
 manifestations of daring, vehemence and grace in the 
 world." 
 
 He drew Donovan towards him, knelt on the 
 ground and began feeling him with his expert hands. 
 
 " There is in nature no machine more precisely 
 and powerfully adapted to its purpose. The muzzle 
 is sharp in order to part the air in running, it is long, 
 in order that the jaws may disable the prey at the 
 first snap. The skull is large between the two ears 
 in order to contain greater courage and skill. The 
 jowls are dry and muscular, the lips short so that 
 they barely cover the teeth." 
 
 With easy assurance, he opened the mouth of the 
 dog, which attempted no resistance. The dazzling 
 teeth appeared, the palate marked with large black 
 waves, the thin rosy tongue. 
 
 " See what teeth ! See how long the eye-teeth 
 are, and a little curve at the points the better to 
 retain his hold. No other kind of dog has a mouth 
 constructed in so perfect a manner for the purpose of 
 biting." 
 
 His hands lingered in the examination, and his 
 admiration for the noble specimen seemed to have 
 no bounds. He had knelt down on the clover, 
 receiving in his face the breath of the animal, which 
 was letting itself be examined with unusual docility, 
 as if it had understood the praise of the expert and 
 were enjoying it.
 
 238 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " The ears are small and placed very high, straight 
 in moments of excitement, but falling flat and adhering 
 to the skull when at rest. They do not prevent the 
 collar from being taken off and put on again without 
 undoing the buckle: so!" 
 
 He took off the collar, which exactly fitted the 
 animal's neck, and put it on again. 
 
 " Then he has a swan's neck, long and flexible, 
 which allows him to grasp his peculiar game at the 
 moment of his greatest swiftness without losing his 
 balance. Ah, I once saw Gog clutch a hare that was 
 jumping across a ditch. . . . Now observe the more 
 important parts : the length and depth of chest made 
 for long runs, the oblique lines of the shoulders pro- 
 portioned to the length of the limbs, the formidable 
 muscular mass in the haunches, the short heels, the 
 backbone saddle-backed between bands of solid 
 muscles. . . . Look ! Helion's backbone stands out 
 plainly: Donovan's is hidden in a furrow. The paws 
 are like those of a cat, with nails that are close, but 
 not too much so, elastic and sure. And what ele- 
 gance there is in the ribs, disposed with the symmetry 
 of a fine ship's keel, and in that line, curving inwards 
 towards the abdomen, which is entirely hidden. All 
 is directed to one aim. The tail thick at its root and 
 thin at the tip look ! almost like that of a rat 
 serves the animal for the purpose of a rudder and is 
 necessary to him in order to be able to turn rapidly 
 when the hare doubles. Let me see, Donovan, if 
 you are perfect also in this." 
 
 He took the tip of the tail, passed it under the 
 leg, drew it back towards his haunch-bone, where it 
 exactly touched the projecting part
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 239 
 
 " Perfect ! I once saw an Arab of the tribe of 
 Arbaa measuring his sloughi in this way. Ali-Nour! 
 Did you tremble when you discovered the flock of 
 gazelles? Think, Foscarina, the slouglii trembles 
 when he discovers his prey, trembles like a willow, 
 and turns two soft beseeching eyes to his master that 
 he may be set free. I do not know why this pleases 
 me, and moves me so much. His desire of killing is 
 terrible in him, his whole body is ready to fly like an 
 arrow, yet he trembles ! Not with fear surely, not 
 with uncertainty, but with desire. Ah, Foscarina, if 
 you were to see a sloughi in those moments you 
 would certainly carry away from him his manner of 
 trembling, and you would know how to make it 
 human, and you would give men yet another quiver 
 with your tragic art. . . . Get up Ali-Nour ! desert 
 torrent of swiftness, do you remember? Now it is 
 only the cold that causes your trembling. . . ." 
 
 Gay and voluble, he let Donovan go, and taking in 
 his two hands the snakelike head of the slayer of 
 gazelles, looked into the depths of his eyes, where 
 lurked the homesickness of silent tropical countries, 
 of tents unfolded after a journey that meteors had 
 deceived, of bonfires lit for the evening meal under 
 the wide stars that seemed to draw their life from the 
 throb of the wind in the palm-tops. " Eyes full of 
 dreams and of melancholy, of courage and faithful- 
 ness. Have you ever thought, Lady Myrta, that the 
 hound of the lovely eyes is precisely the mortal 
 enemy of the lovely-eyed animals like the gazelle 
 and the hare?" 
 
 The woman had entered into that bodily incan- 
 tation of love by which the limits of one's person
 
 240 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 seem to spread and be fused in the air, so that each 
 word or gesture of the loved one excites a quiver 
 sweeter than any caress. The young man had taken 
 in his hands the head of Ali-Nour, but she felt the 
 touch of those hands on her own temples. The 
 young man was searching the eyes of Ali-Nour, but 
 she could feel that glance deep in her own soul, and 
 it seemed that his praise of those eyes flowed to her 
 own eyes. 
 
 She was standing on the grass like the haughty 
 animals he loved, dressed like the one he preferred of 
 all the others, filled like them with a confused memory 
 of a distant origin, and slightly stupefied by the glare 
 of the sun-rays reflected by the wall covered with 
 rose-trees, stupefied and fervent as if in a slight fever. 
 She heard him speaking of things that were alive, of 
 limbs apt for the chase and the capture, of vigour and 
 dexterity, of natural, power and the vigour of blood, 
 and she saw him bending near the earth in the 
 odour of the grass, in the warmth of the sun, pliable 
 and strong, feeling skins and bones, measuring the 
 energy of exposed muscles, enjoying the contact of 
 those generous bodies, almost taking part in that 
 delicate, cruel brutality that it had more than once 
 pleased him to represent in the inventions of his art; 
 and she herself, with her feet in the warm earth under 
 the breath of the sky, in her dress that was similar in 
 colour to the tawny plunderer, felt a strange primitive 
 sense of bestiality rising from the roots of her being, 
 something that was almost the illusion of a slow meta- 
 morphosis in which she was losing a part of her 
 human consciousness and becoming a child of nature, 
 a short-lived, ingenuous force, a savage life.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 241 
 
 Thus was he not touching the obscurest mystery 
 of her being? was he not making her feel the animal 
 profundity from which the unexpected revelations of 
 her tragic genius had sprung forth, shaking and 
 inebriating the multitude like the sights of the sea 
 and the sky, like the dawn or the tempest? When 
 he had told her of the quivering sloughi, had he not 
 divined the natural analogies from which she drew the 
 powers of expression that had set poets and peoples 
 wondering? It was because she had discovered anew 
 the Dionysian sense of nature the naturaliser, the 
 ancient fervour of instinctive and creative energies, 
 the enthusiasm of the manifold god emerging from 
 the ferment of every sap that she appeared so new 
 and so great on the stage. She had sometimes felt 
 in herself something like an imminent approach of 
 the miracle that used of old to swell with divine milk 
 the bosom of the Maenades when they saw the young 
 panthers draw near them craving for food. 
 
 She stood on the grass tawny and agile like the 
 favourite hound, full of the confused memory of a 
 distant origin, living and desirous of living without 
 measure in the brief hour allotted to her. The mist 
 of tears was vain, all the stifling aspirations to good- 
 ness and renunciation fell, and all the ashen melan- 
 cholies of the deserted garden. The presence of the 
 Life-giver seemed to widen space, to change time, 
 to quicken the throb of blood, to multiply the faculty 
 of enjoyment, to create once more the phantom of 
 a magnificent festival. She was there once more as 
 he had wished to shape her, forgetful of fears and 
 wretchedness, cured of her sad evil, a creature of 
 flesh vibrating in the light, in the warmth, in the per-
 
 242 THE FLAME OF LIFE . 
 
 fumes, in the play of appearances, ready to cross the 
 suggested plains and sand-hills and deserts with him 
 in the fury of the chase, to feel the intoxication of 
 that ecstasy, to rejoice at the sight of courage, skill, 
 and bleeding spoils. From second to second as 
 he spoke and moved, he shaped her after his own 
 likeness. 
 
 " Ah, every time I saw the hare breaking in the 
 teeth of the hound, a flash of regret would pass over 
 my joy for those great moist eyes that were being 
 extinguished ! Larger than yours, Ali-Nour, and 
 larger than yours, Donovan, resplendent like pools 
 on a summer evening, with the same circle of wil- 
 lows dipping into them and the same heaven mir- 
 rored and changing in them. Have you ever seen a 
 hare in the early morning, emerge from a freshly 
 ploughed furrow, run for a while on the silver hoar- 
 frost, then stop in the silence, sit down on its hind- 
 legs, prick up its ears, and watch the horizon? Its 
 look seems to pacify the universe. The motionless 
 hare searching the smoking field in a moment of 
 respite from its perpetual anxiety ! One could not 
 imagine a more certain sign of perfect surrounding 
 peace. In those moments, it is a sacred animal that 
 we should adore. . . ." 
 
 'Lady Myrta broke into the youthful laugh that 
 revealed the 'whole range of her gilded elephantine 
 teeth and shook the tortoise-like wrinkles under her 
 chin. 
 
 " Kind Stelio," she exclaimed, laughing, " first to 
 adore, then tear in pieces: is that your way?" 
 
 La Foscarina looked at her in some surprise, for 
 she had forgotten her; and sitting there on the stone
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 243 
 
 seat, yellow with mosses, with her contorted hands, 
 with that glitter of gold and ivory between her thin 
 lips, with those small blue eyes under limp eyelids, 
 with that harsh voice and that queer laugh, she sug- 
 gested the image of one of those old web-footed 
 fairies that wander through the woods followed by an 
 obedient toad. The words did not penetrate the 
 oblivion in which she had lost herself, nevertheless 
 they disturbed her as a shriek. 
 
 " It is not my fault," said Stelio, " if greyhounds 
 are made to kill hares and not to slumber in a walled 
 garden on the waters of a dead canal." 
 
 Again he began imitating the guttural sounds 
 of the kennel-man. 
 
 " Crissa ! Nerissa ! Altair ! Sirius ! Piuchebella ! 
 Helion ! " 
 
 The excited dogs grew agitated : their eyes lit up ; 
 the dry muscles started under the tawny, black, 
 white, leaden, spotted, and mingled coats ; the long 
 haunches curved like bows ready to unbend and to 
 hurl into space the carcasses drier and more slender 
 than a bundle of arrows. 
 
 " There, there, Donovan, there ! " 
 
 He was pointing to something half grey, half red- 
 dish, in the grass at the bottom of the garden, that 
 had the appearance of a hare crouching with its 
 ears laid flat. The imperious voice deceived the 
 hesitating hounds, and the thin powerful bodies were 
 beautiful to see in the sunlight, shining like living 
 silk, quivering and vibrating at the stimulus of the 
 human voice like the lightest flags in a pavice, an- 
 swering to the breeze. 
 
 " There, Donovan ! "
 
 244 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 And the great tawny dog looked him in the eyes, 
 gave a formidable leap, dashed towards the fancied 
 prey with all the vehemence of his reawakened in- 
 stinct. He had reached it in an instant, then stopped, 
 disappointed, bending on his hind-legs, his neck 
 thrust forward ; then he leaped again, began playing 
 with the pack that had followed him in great dis- 
 order, began fighting Altair, left off, and, his pointed 
 muzzle erect, followed, barking, a flock of sparrows 
 that had flown away from the pine top with a gay 
 rustle in the blue. 
 
 " A marrow, a marrow," cried the deceiver, between 
 his peals of laughter, " not even a rabbit. Poor 
 Donovan ! A bite in a pumpkin. Ah, poor Donovan, 
 what a humiliation ! Take care, Lady Myrta, lest he 
 drown himself in the canal to hide his shame. . . ." 
 
 Seized by the contagion of his gaiety, la Foscarina 
 laughed with him. Her roan dress and the coats of 
 the hounds shone in the slanting sun on the green 
 of the clover. The whiteness of her teeth and the 
 pealing laughter filled her mouth with renewed 
 youth. The tedium of the ancient garden seemed 
 torn asunder like the cobwebs that are brushed away 
 when a violent hand opens a window that has been 
 long closed. 
 
 "Would you like to have Donovan?" said Lady 
 Myrta, with a malicious grace in her soul that lost 
 itself among her wrinkles like a stream in a flooded 
 land. " I know, I know your arts. . . ." 
 
 Stelio ceased laughing, blushing like a child. 
 
 A wave of tenderness swelled the bosom of la 
 Foscarina as she noticed the childish blush. Her 
 whole being sparkled with love; and a mad desire
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 245 
 
 to fold her lover in her arms quivered in her pulses 
 and on her lips. 
 
 "Would you like to have him?" Lady Myrta 
 asked again, happy at being able to give, and grate- 
 ful to him who had received the gift with so much 
 fresh, vivid pleasure. " Donovan is yours! " 
 
 Before thanking her, his eyes sought the grey- 
 hound almost anxiously, he saw him again as he was, 
 strong, splendid, most beautiful, with the stamp of 
 style on his limbs as if Pisanello had designed him 
 for 'the reverse of a medal. 
 
 "But Gog, what has become of Gog? You have 
 not said another word about him," said the giver. 
 " Ah, how easily an invalid goes out of our minds ! " 
 
 Stelio was watching la Foscarina, who had turned 
 towards the group of hounds, walking on the grass 
 with a quick undulation which was like the step 
 called precisely by the old Venetians the greyhound 
 step. The roan dress, gilded by the declining sun, 
 seemed burning on her flexible figure. And it was 
 easy to see that she was going towards the animal of 
 her own colour, to which she likened herself strangely 
 by her deep mimetic instinct, almost to the point of 
 being transfigured. 
 
 " It was after a run," said Stelio. " I was in the 
 habit of having a hare coursed along the sand-hills 
 by the seashore nearly every day. The peasants 
 often brought me live ones from my own grounds, 
 dark, robust ones ready to defend themselves, most 
 cunning, capable of scratching and biting. Ah, Lady 
 Myrta, there is no ground for a run finer than my 
 free seashore. You know the great plateaus of Lan- 
 cashire, the dry Yorkshire soil, the hard plains of
 
 246 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Altcar, the low Scotch moors, the sands of southern 
 England; but a gallop along my sand-hills, more 
 golden and more luminous than the autumn clouds, 
 beyond the low juniper and tamarisk clusters, beyond 
 the small, limpid mouths of the streams, beyond the 
 little salt pools, along a sea which is greener than a 
 meadow, within sight of the blue and snowy moun- 
 tains, would obscure your fairest memories, Lady 
 Myrta." 
 
 " Italy ! Italy ! " smiled the indulgent old fairy. 
 " The flower of the world." 
 
 " It was along that shore that I would let the hare 
 loose. I trained a man to unleash the dogs at the 
 right moment, and I would follow the chase on 
 horseback. . . . Certainly Magog is an excellent 
 courser, but I had never seen a more ready or more 
 ardent slayer than Gog. . . ." 
 
 " He came from the Newmarket kennels," said the 
 giver, proudly. 
 
 " One day I was returning home along the sea- 
 shore. The chase had been brief. . . . Gog had over- 
 taken the hare at the end of two or three miles. I 
 was coming home at a slow gallop, skirting the calm 
 water. Gog was galloping beside me, keeping up 
 with Cambyses, jumping up now and then towards 
 the game that hung from my saddle, and barking. 
 Suddenly, on seeing a dead carcass before him, my 
 horse started to one side, and his hoof wounded the 
 dog, who began howling, holding up his left foreleg, 
 which seemed broken at the fetlock. I reined in the 
 frightened horse with some difficulty, and went back. 
 But as Cambyses saw the carcass again, he shied and 
 bolted. Then it became a furious race along the
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 247 
 
 downs. With what emotion I cannot tell you, I heard 
 in a few minutes the hard breathing of Gog behind 
 the horse. He had followed me, you understand? 
 In spite of his broken leg, moved by the generosity 
 of his blood, forgetting his pain, he followed me, over- 
 took me, passed me ! My eyes met his sweet, beau- 
 tiful eyes, and while I strove to regain my mastery 
 over the frightened horse, my heart broke each time 
 I saw his poor wounded leg graze the ground. I 
 worshipped him at that moment, I worshipped him. 
 Do you think me capable of tears?" 
 
 "Yes," said Lady Myrta, "even of tears." 
 
 "Well, when my sister Sophia began dressing the 
 wound with her thin hands on which the tears were 
 dropping, I too, I think " 
 
 La Foscarina stood beside Donovan, holding him 
 by the collar, pale again, more attenuated, as if the 
 chill of evening were already beginning to penetrate 
 her ; the shadow of the bronze cupola was lengthening 
 on the grass, on the hornbeams, on the laurels; a 
 violet moisture in which the last atoms of the sun's 
 gold were swimming spread itself among the stems 
 and branches that were quivering in the wind. And 
 once more their ears caught the twittering in the 
 pine tops full of empty cones. 
 
 " See, we are yours," seemed the words of the 
 woman, while the greyhound, seized by the first 
 shivers, pressed against her knees. . " We are yours 
 for ever ; we are here to serve you." 
 
 " Nothing in the world disquiets and kindles me 
 so much as these sudden visions of the virtue of 
 blood," said the young man, roused by the memory 
 of that hour of emotion.
 
 248 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 They heard the prolonged whistle of a train that 
 was crossing the bridge over the lagoon. A breath 
 of wind stripped off all the petals of a large white 
 rose, so that only a bud remained on the top of the 
 stalk. The chilly dogs drew near one another, gather- 
 ing together one against the other. Their slender 
 bones shivered under the thin skin, and the melan- 
 choly eyes shone in the long heads flat as the heads 
 of reptiles. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you, Stelio, of the way in which a 
 lady belonging to the best blood of France died at a 
 hunting party where I was present?" Lady Myrta 
 asked him. The tragic image and the pitiful remem- 
 brance had been reawakened in her by the expres- 
 sion she had caught on the pale face of la Foscarina. 
 
 " No, never; who was she? " 
 
 " Jeanne d'Elbeuf. Through her own imprudence 
 or inexperience, or that of the man who rode beside 
 her, she was shot, nobody ever knew by whom, to- 
 gether with the hare, which passed between the legs 
 of the horse. She was seen to fall. We all hastened 
 to her, and found her on the grass, steeped in blood, 
 by the side of the convulsed hare. In the silence and 
 dismay, while we all stood there as if turned to stone, 
 while not one of us had yet dared to speak or move, 
 the poor creature raised one hand just a little, point- 
 ing to the wounded, suffering animal, and said (never 
 shall I forget her voice), " Tuez-le, tuez-le, mes amis. 
 - . . fa fait si mat ! " 1 Then died at once. 
 
 Heart-rending indeed was the sweetness of the late 
 November that smiled like an invalid who believes 
 himself to be convalescent and feels an unusual 
 
 1 " Kill it, kill it, my friends, it hurts so I "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 249 
 
 happiness and knows not that his agony is at 
 hand ! 
 
 "What is the matter with you to-day, Fosca? 
 What has happened? Why are you so reserved 
 with me? Tell me! Speak to me! " 
 
 Stelio had strolled into San Marco by chance and 
 had seen her there, leaning against the door of the 
 chapel that leads to the Baptistery. She was alone, 
 motionless, her face devoured by fever and shadow, 
 her eyes full of terror fixed on the terrible figures 
 flaming in the yellow fire of the mosaics. A choir 
 was practising behind the door; the chant, inter- 
 rupted every now and then, began again with the 
 same cadence. 
 
 " Leave me alone, I beg of you, I beg of you ! I 
 must be alone. I implore you ! " 
 
 The sound of her words betrayed the dryness of 
 her convulsed mouth. She turned as if to fly. He 
 held her back. 
 
 " But tell me ! Say one word at least that I may 
 understand." 
 
 Again she moved as if to draw herself away, and 
 her movement expressed an unspeakable suffering. 
 She had the appearance of a creature lacerated by 
 torture, wrenched by an executioner. She seemed 
 more wretched than a body tied to the rack, tormented 
 by red-hot pincers. 
 
 " I implore you. If you are sorry for me, there 
 is only one thing you can do for me now; let 
 me go. . . ." 
 
 She spoke very low, and the torture of her shaken 
 soul was so evident that her not crying out, and her 
 throat's not giving way to breathless screams, seemed 
 inhuman.
 
 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " But one word, at least one, that I may under- 
 stand." 
 
 A flash of fury passed over the perturbed face. 
 
 " No ! I want to be let alone." 
 
 The voice was as hard as the look. She turned, 
 taking a few steps like one overtaken by dizziness 
 hastening to some support. 
 
 " Foscarina ! " 
 
 But he dared not hold her back. He saw the 
 desperate woman walk into the zone of sunlight that 
 had invaded the basilica with the rush of a torrent 
 through the door that an unknown hand had opened. 
 The deep golden cave with its apostles, with its 
 martyrs, with its sacred beasts, sparkled behind her 
 as if the thousand torches of the day were pouring 
 into it. The chant stopped, then began again. 
 
 " I am drowning in my sadness. . . . The impulse 
 to rebel against my fate, to go away aimlessly, to 
 search. . . . Who will save my hope? From whom 
 will light come to me? . . . To sing, to sing! But 
 I would sing a hymn of life at last. . . . Could you 
 tell me where the Lord of the Flame is just now?" 
 The words of Donatella Arvale's letter were branded 
 on her eyes and branded on her soul with all the 
 peculiarities of the handwriting, with all the diversity 
 of signs as living as the hand that had penned them, 
 as throbbing as the impatient pulse. She could see 
 them engraved in the stones, outlined in the clouds, 
 reflected in the waters, indelible and inevitable, like 
 decrees of Fate. 
 
 " Where can I go? Where can I go? " The sweet- 
 ness of things, the warmth of the golden marbles, the 
 fragrance of the quiet air, the languor of human
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 251 
 
 leisure, reached her through her agitation and de- 
 spair. She looked at a woman of the people wrapped 
 in her brown cloak and seated on the steps of the 
 basilica, a woman who was neither old nor young, 
 neither beautiful nor plain, who sat enjoying the sun- 
 shine, eating a large piece of bread, biting pieces out 
 of it with her teeth and then chewing them slowly, 
 her eyes half shut as she savoured her contentment 
 while her fair lashes shone upon her cheeks. " Ah, 
 if I could change myself into you, take on your des- 
 tiny, be content with bread and sunshine and think 
 no more and suffer no more." The poor woman's 
 repose seemed infinite bliss to her. 
 
 She turned with a start, fearing, hoping, that her 
 lover had followed her. She did not see him. She 
 would have fled if she had seen him ; but her heart 
 failed her as if he had sent her to her death without 
 calling her back. " All is over." She was losing all 
 sense of measure and certainty. The thoughts that 
 passed in her were broken and confusedly dragged 
 on by anguish, like plants and stones by the fury of 
 an overflowing river. In all the aspects of surround- 
 ing things, her bewildered eyes saw a confirmation 
 of her sentence or the obscure menace of new evils, 
 or a figuring of her state, or the signifying of occult 
 truths about to work cruelly on her existence. At 
 the corner of San Marco, near the Porta della Carta, 
 she felt the four porphyry kings clasping each other 
 as for a compact while their tough fists grasp the hilt 
 finishing in a hawk's beak, live as if they had been 
 made of dark blood. The numberless veins of the 
 various marbles with which the side of the temple is 
 encrusted, those indistinct threads of different colours,
 
 252 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 those intertwined labyrinths and meanders, seemed to 
 make her own interior diversity visible, and the very 
 confusion of her thoughts. In turn, she felt all things 
 estranged, remote, unexisting, and then familiar, ap- 
 proaching her and participating in her intimate life. 
 In turn she seemed to find herself in unknown places 
 and among forms belonging to her as if her own 
 substance had given them their material life. Like 
 those who are dying, she was at intervals illumined 
 by images of her distant childhood, by memories of 
 far-away events, by the distinct and rapid apparition 
 of a face, a gesture, a room, a whole neighbourhood. 
 And above all these phantoms, in a background of 
 shadow the eyes of her mother seemed gazing on 
 her, kind and firm, no larger than human eyes while 
 in life, yet infinite as an horizon towards which she 
 was being called. " Shall I come to you ? Are 
 you really calling me for the last time?" 
 
 She had entered the Porta della Carta and had 
 crossed the lobby. The intoxication of pain was 
 leading her back to the place where on a night of 
 glory the three Destinies had met. She sought 
 the well which had been their meeting-place. The 
 whole life of those few instants rose up again round 
 its bronze rim with the evidence and the outline of 
 reality. There she had said as she turned, smiling, to 
 her companion, " Donatella, here is the Lord of the 
 Flame." The immense cry of the multitude had 
 covered her voice and a thousand fiery pigeons had 
 lit up the sky above their heads. 
 
 She drew nearer to the well. Every detail of it 
 impressed itself on her spirit as she stood consider- 
 ing it, clothing itself with a strange power of fateful
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 253 
 
 life; the furrows left by the ropes in the metal, the 
 green oxide that streaked the stone at its base, the 
 breasts of the cariatides worn out by the knees of 
 the women who had at one time pressed upon them 
 in the effort of drawing water, and that deep inner 
 mirror no longer disturbed by the shock of descend- 
 ing pails, that narrow subterranean circle that reflected 
 the sky. She bent over the edge, saw her own face, 
 saw her terror and her ruin, saw the immovable 
 Medusa which she carried in the centre of her soul. 
 Unconsciously she was repeating the act of him 
 whom she loved. And she saw his face, too, and the 
 face of Donatella, such as she had seen them shining 
 for an instant on that night, one close to the other, 
 lit up by the flashes from the sky as if they had been 
 bending over a furnace or a crater. " Love, love 
 each other ! I will go away. I will disappear. 
 Good-bye." Her eyelids dropped over the thought 
 of death. In that darkness the kind firm eyes re- 
 appeared, infinite as an horizon of peace. " You 
 who are in peace and who wait for me, you who 
 lived and died of passion." She straightened her- 
 self. An extraordinary silence filled the deserted 
 courtyard. The wealth of the high carved walls 
 rested half in the shadow, half in the light ; the five 
 mitres of the basilica surpassed the columned cloister 
 as light as the snowy clouds that made the sky 
 seem more blue, the same as the jessamine flower 
 causes the leaf to seem more green. Again through 
 her torment she was touched by the sweetness of 
 things. " Life might still be sweet." 
 
 She came out by the Molo, stepped into a gondola, 
 had herself rowed to the Giudecca. The harbour,
 
 254 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the Salute, the Riva degli Schiavoni, all the stone and 
 all the water, were a miracle of gold and opal. She 
 looked anxiously towards the Piazzetta lest a figure 
 should be appearing there. The image of dead sum- 
 mer dressed in gold and shut in a coffin of opalescent 
 glass flashed on her memory. She imagined her 
 own self submerged in the lagoon and laid out on 
 a bed of seaweed, but the memory of the promise 
 made on that water and kept in the night's delirium, 
 pierced her heart like a knife, threw her once more 
 into a horrible convulsion. "Never more, then? 
 Never more?" All her senses remembered all his 
 caresses. The lips, the hands, the strength, the fire 
 of the young man, passed into her blood as if they 
 had melted in her. The poison burnt into her 
 to her furthest fibres. With him she had found at 
 the extreme limit of pleasure a spasm that was not 
 death and yet was beyond life. " And now never 
 more? never more?" 
 
 She was in the Rio della Croce. The foliage grew 
 above a red wall. The gondola stopped at a closed 
 door. She landed, took out a small key, opened the 
 door, and went into the garden. 
 
 It was her refuge, the secret place of her solitude, 
 preserved by her faithful melancholies as by silent cus- 
 todians. All came forward to meet her, the old ones 
 and the new ones, surrounded her, accompanied her. 
 
 With its long trellises, with its cypresses, with its 
 fruit-trees, with its edges of lavender, its oleanders, 
 its carnations, its rose-bushes crimson and crocus 
 coloured, marvellously soft and tired in the colours 
 of its dissolution, that garden seemed lost in the 
 extreme lagoon, on one of those islands forgotten by
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 255 
 
 man, Mazzorbo, Torcello, San Francesco Deserto. 
 The sun embraced it and penetrated it on every side 
 so that the shadows were so slight as to be hardly 
 visible ; so great was the stillness of the air that the 
 dry vine leaves stayed on their tendrils. None of 
 the leaves fell ; though all were dead. 
 
 "Never more?" She walked under the trellises, 
 went towards the water, stopped on the grassy 
 mound, felt tired, sat down on a stone, held her 
 temples tightly between her hands, made an effort 
 to concentrate herself, to recover her dominion over 
 herself, to consider, to deliberate. " He is still here; 
 he is near me. I can see him again. Perhaps I 
 shall find him before long at the threshold of my 
 door. He will take me in his arms, will kiss my 
 eyes and lips, will tell me again that he loves me, 
 that everything in me pleases him. He does not 
 know, does not understand. Nothing irreparable has 
 happened. What, then, is the fact that has convulsed 
 and broken me? I have received a letter from a 
 woman who is far away, a prisoner in a lonely villa 
 with her demented father, who complains of her lot 
 and longs to change it. This is the fact. There is 
 no more. This is the letter." She looked for it and 
 opened it to reread it. Her fingers trembled. She 
 felt the perfume of Donatella as if she had had her 
 by her side there on that stone. 
 
 "Is she beautiful? Truly? What is she like?" 
 The lines of the image were confused at first. She 
 tried to seize them, and they vanished. One detail 
 before any of the others fixed itself, becoming pre- 
 cise and evident, the large heavy hand. " Did he 
 see it that night? He is extremely sensitive to the
 
 256 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 beauty of hands. He always looks at them when he 
 meets a woman. Does he not love Sophia's hands? " 
 She gave herself up for a few seconds to childish 
 considerations such as those, then smiled at them 
 bitterly. And suddenly the image completed itself, 
 grew living, shone with strength and youth, overcame 
 her, dazzled her. " She is beautiful ; and hers is the 
 beauty which he would have her possess." 
 
 She stayed on transfixed, surrounded by the silent 
 splendour of the waters, with the letter on her knees, 
 nailed there by the inflexible truth. And involuntary 
 thoughts of destruction flashed above that inert dis- 
 couragement : the face of Donatella was burnt in a 
 fire, her body deformed by a fall, her voice quenched 
 by an illness. Horror at herself filled her, and then 
 pity for herself and for the other woman. "Has 
 she not also the right of living ? Let her live, let 
 her love, let her have her joy." She imagined some 
 magnificent adventure for her, some happy love, the 
 love of a bridegroom, prosperity, luxury, pleasure. 
 " Is there only this one man on earth whom she can 
 love ? To-morrow could she not meet the man who 
 is to take her heart? Could not her fate suddenly 
 turn her elsewhere, draw her far away, lead her towards 
 an unknown path, separate her from us for ever? Is 
 it perhaps necessary that she should be loved by the 
 man whom I love ? They may perhaps never meet 
 again." Thus she tried to escape her own presenti- 
 ment, but a contrary spirit was telling her: "They 
 have met once ; they will seek each other ; they will 
 meet again. Hers is not the obscure soul that can 
 be lost in a crowd or along a side-path. She carries 
 a gift in herself resplendent as a star and that will
 
 257 
 
 always make her easy to recognise from afar: her 
 song. The miracle of her voice will be her signal. 
 She will certainly avail herself of this power in the 
 world ; she too will pass among men leaving wonder 
 behind her. She will have glory as she has beauty, 
 two signal lights to which he will easily go. They 
 have met once ; they will meet again." 
 
 The woman cowered down under her pain as if 
 under a yoke ; the threads of grass at her feet seemed 
 to withhold the rays they received, and to breathe 
 in a green light which was coloured by their quiet 
 transparency. She felt the tears rise to her eyes, 
 gazed through that veil at the lagoon which trembled 
 with the trembling of her tears. A fair pearly light 
 was on the waters. The islands of the Follia, San 
 Clemente and San Servilio were wrapped in pale 
 mist. And now and then there came from their dis- 
 tance faint cries, as of shipwrecked men lost in the 
 calm, answered now by the shriek of a siren, now by 
 the hoarse cry of the scattered sea-birds. The silence 
 would become terrible, then it would soften again. 
 She recovered her deep goodness, recovered her ten- 
 derness for the beautiful creature with whom she had 
 deluded her desire of loving Sophia, the kind sister. 
 She thought over the hours spent in the lonely villa 
 on the hill of Settignano, where Lorenzo Arvale cre- 
 ated his statues in the fulness of his strength and 
 fervour, unconscious of the thunderbolt that was 
 about to strike him. She lived in that time once 
 more, saw those places again, she was sitting to the 
 famous artist who was portraying her in his clay. 
 Donatella would sing some antique song, and the 
 spirit of the song would animate both the model and
 
 25 8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the effigy, and her thoughts and the pure voice 
 and the mystery of art almost composed an appear- 
 ance of divine life in the great studio open to the 
 daylight on all sides, whence Florence and its river 
 could be seen in the spring valley. 
 
 What if not the reflection of Sophia had attracted 
 her towards the girl who had been deprived of a 
 mother's caresses from the time of her birth? She 
 called her up to her memory as she had seen her 
 standing grave and firm at her father's side, the com- 
 forter of his great work, the guardian of his sacred 
 flame and also of a secret determination of her own 
 that was being preserved like a sword in its sheath, 
 bright and sharp. 
 
 " She is sure of herself and mistress of her own 
 strength. When she shall feel herself free to do it, 
 she will reveal herself as one made for dominion. 
 She is made to subject men, to excite their curiosity 
 and their dreams. Her instinct, bold and prudent 
 as experience, is leading her already. . . . And she 
 remembered her attitude towards the young man on 
 that night, her almost disdainful silence, her short, 
 dry words, and the way in which she had risen from 
 the table, left the supper-room, and disappeared for 
 ever, leaving her image framed in the circle of an 
 unforgettable melody. " Ah, she knows the art of 
 disquieting the soul of one who dreams. He cannot 
 certainly have forgotten her. On the contrary, he 
 certainly awaits the hour in which it shall be given 
 him to meet her again as impatiently as she who has 
 asked me where he is." 
 
 She took up the letter and began glancing through 
 it, but her memory was swifter than her sight. The
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 259 
 
 enigmatic question, half veiled, was at the bottom of 
 the page like a postscript. On seeing the handwrit- 
 ing again, she went through the same tearing of her- 
 self asunder as on first reading it; and again all 
 became upheaval in her heart as if the danger were 
 imminent, as if her passion and her hope were already 
 irreparably lost. "What is she going to do? What 
 is her thought? Did she expect that he would seek 
 her out without delay, and, disappointed in her ex- 
 pectation, does she now think of tempting him? 
 What is she going to do?" She struggled against 
 that uncertainty, as against a spiked door beyond 
 which the light of her life should lie waiting to be 
 reconquered. " Shall I answer? And if I answered 
 in a way that would make her understand the truth, 
 could my love lay a prohibition on hers? " A move- 
 ment of repugnance, modesty, and pride uplifted her 
 soul. " She shall never, never know of my wound 
 from me; never, even if she should question me." 
 And she grasped all the horror of an open rivalry 
 between the ageing mistress and the maiden strong 
 with the strength of her intact youth. She saw the 
 cruelty and humiliation of the unequal struggle. 
 " But if it were not this one," an opposing spirit 
 urged, "would it not be another? Do you think 
 you can keep a man of his nature to your melancholy 
 passion? There is only one condition on which you 
 should have loved him and offered him your love, 
 faithful until death, and that was the prohibition 
 which you have broken." 
 
 " True, true," she murmured, as if she were an- 
 swering a distinct voice, a clear judgment pro- 
 nounced in the silence by invisible destiny.
 
 260 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " There is only one condition on which he will now 
 be able to accept and recognise your love, the con- 
 dition that you leave him free, that you renounce 
 possession, that you give up all, always, asking for 
 nothing, always; the condition of being yourself 
 heroic. Do you understand?" 
 
 " True, true," she repeated, raising her forehead, 
 all her moral beauty now flashing again on the heights 
 of her soul. 
 
 But the poison bit her. Once more all her senses 
 remembered all his caresses, the lips and hands, 
 the strength and fire of the young man passed into 
 her blood as if they were melting there. And she 
 stayed on, motionless in her malady, dumb in her 
 fever, consumed in her soul and in her flesh, like 
 those red-spotted vine leaves that seemed to burn 
 round the rims like waste paper thrown on the 
 embers. 
 
 A distant, changeless song began vibrating on the 
 air, trembling in the immense stupor: a song of 
 women's voices, that seemed to come from broken 
 bosoms, somewhat similar to the sounds awakened 
 from the snapped wires of old spinets at a sudden 
 touch on the worn keys, faint yet shrill, with a bright, 
 vulgar rhythm that was sadder in that light and still- 
 ness than the saddest things of life. 
 
 " Who is singing? " 
 
 With obscure emotion she rose, drew near the 
 shore, strained her ear to listen. 
 
 " The mad women of San Clemente ! " 
 
 From the island of La Follia, from the light, deso- 
 late hospital, from the barred windows of the terrible 
 prison, came the bright yet lugubrious chorus. It
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 261 
 
 trembled, hesitated in the ecstatic immensity, became 
 almost childlike, grew fainter, seemed about to die 
 away; then rose up strengthened, shrieked, became 
 almost piercing; then stopped as if all the vocal 
 chords had snapped together; rose once more like 
 a tortured cry, like a call from lost, shipwrecked 
 beings who have seen a ship pass on the horizon, 
 like a clamour of dying creatures; then it dwindled, 
 stopped, did not rise again. 
 
 Heart-rending indeed was the sweetness of the 
 late November ! It smiled like an invalid over an 
 interruption in his pain, who knows that it is the last, 
 and savours of life, which is revealing its delicacies 
 to him with an act full of new grace while on the 
 point of forsaking him, daily slumber resembles 
 that of a child going to sleep on the knees of 
 death. 
 
 " Look at the Euganean hills down there, Fosca- 
 rina ; if the wind rises they will go wandering through 
 the air like veils, they will pass over our heads. I 
 have never seen them so transparent. . . . One day 
 I should like to go with you to Arqua; the villages 
 down there are as rosy as the shells which one finds 
 in the earth in myriads. When we arrive, the first 
 drops of a fine sun shower will be robbing the peach 
 blossoms of a few petals. We will stop under one of 
 the arches of the Palladio to keep dry. Then we 
 will look for the Fountain of Petrarch without asking 
 our way. We will take his Rhymes with us in Mis- 
 sirini's small type, the little book you keep by 
 your bedside and can no longer close now because
 
 262 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 it is swollen with leaves like a doll's herbarium. . . . 
 Would you like to go to Arqua some spring day? " 
 
 She did not answer him, watching only the lips 
 that said these delicate things and hopelessly enjoy- 
 ing the sound and their motion and nothing else, 
 in a passing manner. She found the same distant 
 spell in those images of Spring as in a stanza of 
 Petrarch's, but she could place a marker near the 
 one and find it again, while the others were lost with 
 the hour. She wanted to answer, " I shall not drink 
 at that fountain," but remained silent that she might 
 not disturb the caress. " Oh, yes, give me illusions, 
 illusions ! You must play your own game ; you must 
 do with me what you will." 
 
 " Here we are at San Giorgio in Alga ; we shall be 
 at Fusina before long." 
 
 The little walled island passed them with its marble 
 Madonna perpetually reflecting herself in the water 
 like a nymph. 
 
 " Why are you so sweet? I have never felt you 
 like this before. One is out of one's depth with you 
 to-day. I cannot tell you what a feeling of infinite 
 melody is in your presence to-day. You are here by 
 my side, I can take your hand ; and yet you are also 
 diffused in the horizon, you are that horizon itself, 
 with the waters, with the islands, with the hills that 1 
 would climb. When I was speaking to you a little 
 while ago, it seemed that each syllable was creating 
 in you ever widening circles, like the ones round that 
 leaf there which has just fallen from that golden 
 tree. ... It is true? Tell me it is true. Oh, look 
 at me ! " 
 
 He felt himself surrounded by the woman's iove
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 263 
 
 by light and air; he breathed in that soul as in an 
 ekment, receiving an ineffable fulness of life, as if a 
 single stream of mysterious things were flowing from 
 her and from the depths of the day, and pouring itself 
 into his overflowing heart. The desire of returning 
 the happiness which was given him raised him to an 
 almost religious degree of gratitude, suggesting words 
 of thanks and of praise which he would have uttered 
 had he been bending over her in the shadow. But the 
 splendour of sky and water had become so great all 
 around them that he could only be silent as she was 
 silent. It was a moment of marvellous communion 
 in the light for both ; it was a journey brief and yet 
 immense during which both compassed the dizzy 
 distances they had within them. 
 
 The boat touched the shore of Fusina. They 
 gazed at each other with dazzled eyes ; and when 
 their feet touched the ground, when they saw that 
 squalid bank where the grass grew faded and rare, a 
 kind feeling of loss came upon them that was like a 
 disappointment, and both moved unwillingly, feeling 
 in those first steps that weight of their bodies which 
 had seemed to have become lighter during the drive. 
 
 " Does he love me, then? " 
 
 Suffering and hope revived in the woman's heart. 
 She did not believe the ecstasy of her beloved to 
 be other than sincere; she knew that his words 
 responded to an inward flame. She knew how en- 
 tirely he abandoned himself to every passing wave 
 that touched his sensibility, how incapable he was of 
 dissimulation or falsehood. She had more than once 
 heard him utter cruel truths with the same feline and 
 flexible grace as that possessed by those men who
 
 264 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 are given to fascinating. She well knew the direct 
 limpid gaze that sometimes became icy or cutting, 
 that was never otherwise than straight ; yet she also 
 knew the marvellous swiftness and diversity of thought 
 and feeling that made his an unseizable spirit. In 
 him there was ever something voluble, fluctuating 
 and powerful that suggested the double and diverse 
 image of flame and of water; and she had hoped to 
 fix him, hold him, possess him. In him there was 
 ever an unlimited ardour of life as if every second 
 seemed the supreme one to him, and he were about 
 to take his leave of the joy and pain of existence, like 
 from the caresses and the tears of a love-parting. 
 And she would have attracted that insatiable avidity 
 to herself as to its only nourishment! 
 
 What was she to him, if not an aspect of that 
 " life of the thousand and thousand faces " towards 
 which his desire, according to one of the images of 
 his own poetry, continually shook all its thyrsi? 
 She was a cause of visions and inventions to him, 
 like the hills and the woods and the rain. He drank 
 in mystery and beauty from her as he did from all 
 the forms of the universe. Even now he was already 
 apart from her, already intent on some new quest; 
 his mobile ingenuous eyes were already looking 
 round for the miracle to wonder at and adore. 
 
 She glanced at him and he did not turn his face 
 towards her, intent on observing the damp misty 
 country they were slowly driving through. She sat 
 there beside him, deprived of all strength, no longer 
 capable of living in herself and for herself, of breath- 
 ing with her own breath, of following a thought that 
 should be outside her love, hesitating even in her
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 265 
 
 enjoyment of natural things that were not pointed 
 out by him, needing to wait until he should com- 
 municate his sensations and his dreams to her before 
 inclining her aching heart towards that landscape. 
 
 Her life seemed to be dissolving and condensing 
 itself at intervals. When the intensity of a second 
 had passed, she would wait for the next one, and 
 between one and the other she would have no per- 
 ception except that time was flying and the lamp 
 was burning itself out. 
 
 " My friend, my friend," said Stelio, suddenly 
 turning and taking one of her hands with an emotion 
 that had risen to his throat little by little and was 
 suffocating him, " why have we come to these places? 
 They seem so sweet, and they are full of terror." 
 
 He was looking at her fixedly with the look that 
 from time to time would suddenly appear in his eyes 
 like a tear, a look that would touch the very secret 
 of another's existence and descend to the uttermost 
 depths of unconsciousness, deep as that of an old 
 man, deep as that of a child, and she trembled under 
 it as if her soul had been one of the tears of his 
 eyes. 
 
 "You are suffering?" he asked with a pity full of 
 anguish that turned the woman pale. " You feel this 
 terror?" 
 
 She looked round with the anxiety of one pursued. 
 She seemed to see a thousand harmful phantoms 
 rising from the fields. 
 
 " Those statues," said Stelio, with an expression in 
 his voice that turned them in her eyes into witnesses 
 of her own decay. 
 
 And the landscape spread silently around them as
 
 266 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 if all its inhabitants had deserted it for centuries or 
 were all sleeping in new graves dug only yesterday. 
 
 "Shall we go back? The boat is still there." 
 
 She did not seem to hear. 
 
 " Answer me, Foscarina ! " 
 
 " Let us go on ; let us go on," she answered. " Fate 
 cannot change wherever we go." 
 
 Her body followed the motion, the slow rolling of 
 the wheels, and she feared to interrupt it, recoiling 
 from the slightest effort, the smallest fatigue, full of a 
 heavy inertness. Her face was like the delicate veil 
 of ashes that covers live coal, hiding its consumption. 
 
 " Dear, dear soul ! " said her beloved, bending 
 towards her and touching her pale cheek with his lips. 
 " Hold on to me. Give yourself up to me. Be sure 
 of me. I will not fail you, and you will not fail me. 
 We shall find, we must find, the secret truth on which 
 our love may rest for ever, unchanged. Do not shut 
 yourself up from me. Do not suffer alone. Do not 
 try to hide your torment from me ! When your 
 heart swells with pain, speak to me. Let me hope 
 that I could comfort you. Let nothing be kept 
 silent between us, and let nothing be hidden. I 
 venture to remind you of a condition that you your- 
 self have made. Speak to me, and I will always answer 
 you truthfully. Suffer me to help you, since so much 
 good comes to me from you. Tell me that you are 
 not afraid of suffering. I believe that your soul is ca- 
 pable of bearing all the pain of the world. Do notjet 
 me lose my faith in this, the strength of your passion, 
 by which you have seemed divine to me more than 
 once. Tell me you are not afraid of suffering. . . . 
 I don't know, perhaps I am mistaken. . . . But I
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 267 
 
 have felt a shadow in you, a desperate determination 
 as it were to go away, to draw yourself back, to find 
 some end. . . . Why? Why? And a moment ago, 
 looking at all this terrible desolation which is smil- 
 ing at us, a great fear suddenly gripped my heart: 
 I thought that perhaps even your love could change 
 like all else, pass away into dissolution. ' You will 
 lose me.' Ah, those words are yours, Foscarina. It 
 is from your lips they fell." 
 
 She did not answer, and for the first time since she 
 loved him his words to her seemed vain, useless 
 sounds moving in the air quite powerless. For the 
 first time he himself seemed a weak anxious creature, 
 governed by unbreakable laws. She pitied him as 
 much as herself. He was laying on her the con- 
 dition of being heroic, a compact of pain and violence. 
 While attempting to comfort and uplift her, he was 
 predicting a difficult test, preparing her for torture. 
 But of what use was courage, of what use was effort, 
 what were all miserable human agitations worth ; and 
 why did they ever think of the future, of the uncertain 
 to-morrow? The past alone reigned around them, 
 and they were as nothing, and everything was as 
 nothing. " We are dying; you and I are two dying 
 creatures ; let us then dream and then die." 
 
 " Be silent ! " she said faintly, as if they were pass- 
 ing through a churchyard ; and a thin slight smile 
 appeared on the edge of her lips like the smile that 
 was floating over the landscape, and it stopped there 
 motionless as on the lips of a portrait. 
 
 The wheels rolled on and on in the white road 
 along the banks of the Brenta. The river, magnified 
 and glorified in the sonnets of gallant abb6s at the
 
 268 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 time when barges full of music and pleasure slipped 
 down its current, now had the humble aspect of a 
 canal, where the blue-green ducks splashed about in 
 flocks. In the low well-watered plain, the fields were 
 smoking, the trees rose naked, the leaves rotted in 
 the moisture of the earthy mounds, the slow golden 
 vapour floated over an immense vegetable decom- 
 position that seemed to touch even the walls, the 
 stones, the houses, and destroy them like the leaves. 
 From the Foscara to the Barbariga, the patrician 
 villas, where a life of pale veins, delicately poisoned 
 by cosmetics and perfumes, had flickered out in 
 languid games round a beauty spot or a little dog, 
 were falling into ruins, silent and forsaken. Some 
 had the appearance of a human ruin, with their 
 empty apertures that seemed eyeless sockets and 
 toothless mouths ; others at first sight seemed on the 
 point of crumbling to bits and falling into powder 
 like the hair of dead women when tombs are un- 
 covered, like moth-eaten garments when cupboards 
 are opened that have been too long closed ; their 
 boundary walls were knocked down, their columns 
 broken, their gates contorted, their gardens overrun 
 with weeds, but here and there, near and far, all over 
 in the fruit orchards, in the vineyards, among the 
 silvery cabbages, among the vegetables, among the 
 pastures, on the heaps of manure and refuse from 
 the wine-press under the hay-ricks, on the threshold 
 of hovels and all along the river-side, rose the surviv- 
 ing statues. They were numberless like a dispersed 
 people. Some still white, some grey or yellow with 
 lichens or greenish with mosses, or spotted ; in all at- 
 titudes, with all gestures, Goddesses, Heroes, Nymphs,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 269 
 
 Seasons, Hours, with their bow, with their arrows, 
 their garlands, their cornucopias, their torches, with 
 all the emblems of their riches, power, and pleasure, 
 exiled from fountains, grottoes, labyrinths, harbours, 
 porticoes ; friends of the evergreen box and myrtle, 
 protectors of passing loves, witnesses of eternal vows, 
 figures of a dream far older than the hands that had 
 formed them and the eyes that had seen them in the 
 ravaged gardens. And in the soft late summer sun 
 their shadows, lengthening little by little over the 
 landscape, were like the shadows of the irrevocable 
 past, of all that which loves no longer, laughs and 
 weeps no longer, will never live, will never return 
 again. And the silent words on their lips of stone 
 were the same as the words spoken by the im- 
 movable smile on the lips of the worn-out woman, 
 NOTHING ! 
 
 They became acquainted with other fears that day, 
 other shadows. 
 
 Henceforth the tragic sense of life filled them both, 
 and they strove in vain to overcome the physical 
 sadness which made their spirits become every mo- 
 ment clearer and more disquieted. They held each 
 other's hands as if they had been walking in the dark, 
 or through perilous places. Their words were rare; 
 but now and then they would look into each other's 
 eyes, and the glance of the one would pour a con- 
 fused wave into the other, which was only the over- 
 flowing of their love and horror; and it did not ease 
 their hearts. 
 
 " Shall we go on?"
 
 2/0 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " Yes, let us go on." 
 
 They were holding each other's hands tightly as il 
 making some strange experiment, as if they were 
 determined to find out what depths could be reached 
 by the forces of their mingled melancholy. At the 
 Dolo their footsteps crackled on the chestnut leaves 
 which strewed the way; and the great trees that 
 were changing colour flamed upon their heads like 
 crimson hangings on fire. Further off, the Villa 
 Barbariga appeared, lonely, desolate, reddish in its 
 bare garden, bearing traces of old paintings in the 
 fissures of its frontage that were like remains of 
 rouge in the wrinkles of an old woman. And at 
 every glance the distances of the landscape became 
 dimmer and more blue, like things that are being 
 slowly submerged. 
 
 " Here is Stra." 
 
 They went down to the villa of the Pisani ; they 
 entered ; they visited the deserted apartments accom- 
 panied by the caretaker. They heard the sound of 
 their steps on the marble that mirrored them, the 
 echo in the ornamented arches, the groan of the doors 
 as they were opened and shut, the tedious voice 
 awakening the memories of the place. The rooms 
 were vast, hung with faded stuffs, furnished in the 
 style of the first Empire, bearing the Napoleonic 
 emblems. In one of the rooms the walls were cov- 
 ered with the portraits of the Pisani, procurators of 
 San Marco ; in another, with marble medallions of all 
 the doges ; in another, with a series of flowers painted 
 in water-colour and mounted in delicate frames, pale 
 as the dried flowers that are put under glass in 
 memory of a love or a death.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 271 
 
 In another la Foscarina said as she entered : 
 
 " With time! Here too." 
 
 There, on a bracket, was a translation into marble 
 of the figure of Francesco Torbido, made more horri- 
 ble by the subtle study of the sculptor to bring out 
 with his chisel, one by one, the wrinkles, the veins, 
 the hollows. And at the doors of the room there 
 seemed to appear the phantoms of the crowned 
 women who had concealed their decay and their 
 misery in that spacious dwelling that was like a 
 palace and like a monastery. 
 
 "Maria Luisa of Parma, in 1817," continued the 
 tedious voice. 
 
 And Stelio : 
 
 " Ah, the Queen of Spain, the wife of Charles IV., 
 the mistress of Manuel Godo'f ! This one attracts me 
 above all the others. She passed by this place at the 
 time of their exile. Do you know whether she stayed 
 here, with the King and the favourite?" 
 
 The custodian only knew the name and date. 
 
 "Why does she attract you?" asked la Foscarina. 
 " I know nothing about her." 
 
 " Her end, the last years of her life as an exile after 
 so much passion and so many struggles are unusually 
 full of poetry." 
 
 And he described to her the violent, tenacious 
 figure, the weak, credulous King, the handsome 
 adventurer who had enjoyed the favours of the 
 Queen, and had been dragged through the streets 
 by a furious crowd, the agitation of the three lives 
 bound up by fate and driven like twigs in a whirl- 
 wind before the will of Napoleon, the tumult at 
 Aranjuez, the abdication, the exile.
 
 272 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " GodoY then, the Prince of Peace, as the King 
 had called him, faithfully followed the sovereigns 
 into exile ; was faithful to his royal mistress and she 
 to him. And they lived together under the same 
 roof always, and Charles never suspected the virtue 
 of Maria Luisa, and lavished his kindness on both 
 lovers until death. Imagine their residence in this 
 place ; imagine here such a love having come safely 
 out of so terrible a hurricane. All was snapped, 
 overthrown; all had crumbled to dust under the 
 might of the destroyer. Bonaparte had passed that 
 way and had not suffocated that love, already grey, 
 under the ruins he left behind ! The fidelity of 
 these two violent ones touches me as much as the 
 credulity of the gentle King. They grew old in this 
 manner. Think ! The Queen died first, then the 
 King ; and the favourite, who was younger than they, 
 lived some few years more, a wanderer. . . ." 
 
 " This is the Emperor's room," said the custodian, 
 solemnly, throwing open a door. The great shade 
 seemed to be omnipresent; the sign of his power 
 dominated from above all the pale relics collected 
 there. But in the yellow room it occupied the vast 
 bed and stretched itself out under the canopy, be- 
 tween the four posts surmounted by gilded flames. 
 The formidable sigla between the crown of laurels 
 shone upon the bolster; and that kind of funereal 
 couch was prolonged in the dim mirror that hung 
 between the two Victories supporting the candelabra. 
 
 " Did the Emperor sleep in this bed? " asked the 
 young man of the custodian who was showing him, 
 on the wall, the effigy of the condottiere mantled 
 with ermine, and wreathed with laurel as he ap-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 273 
 
 peared at the coronation blessed by Pius VII. " Is 
 it certain?" 
 
 He was astonished at not having felt the emotion 
 produced on ambitious hearts by the traces of heroes, 
 the deep throb which he well knew. Perhaps his 
 spirit was stunned by the odour of the shut-up 
 place, the stuffiness of old materials and mattresses, 
 the dulness of the silence where the great name 
 found no echo, whilst the buzzing of a moth per- 
 sisted so distinctly that he thought he had it in 
 his ear. 
 
 He raised the hem of the yellow coverlet and let 
 it fall as quickly as if the pillow beneath it had been 
 full of worms. 
 
 " Let us go ; let us go out," begged la Foscarina, 
 who had been looking through the windows at the 
 park, where the tawny bands of the slanting sun 
 alternated with half blue, half green zones of shadow. 
 " One cannot breathe here." 
 
 The air was like that of a crypt. 
 " Now we pass into the room of Maximilian of 
 Austria," continued the tedious voice, " who caused 
 his bed to be put in the dressing-room of Amalia 
 Beauharnais." 
 
 They crossed the room in a glare of crimson. The 
 sun was beating on a crimson sofa, making rainbows 
 in a frail chandelier with crystal drops that hung from 
 the ceiling, kindling the perpendicular red lines on 
 the wall. Stelio paused on the threshold, calling to 
 life, as he looked back into the blood-like resplen- 
 dence, the pensive figure of the young blue-eyed 
 archduke, the fair flower of Hapsburg, fallen on bar- 
 baric ground one summer morning.
 
 274 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " Let us go," again cried la Foscarina, as she saw 
 he was again delaying. 
 
 She was hurrying away across the immense hall 
 which Tiepolo had decorated ; behind her, the bronze 
 gate made in shutting a clear sound like the tinkling 
 of a bell that spread itself through the emptiness 
 in long vibrations. She was hurrying away in dis- 
 tress, as if all were about to crash down upon her, 
 and the light were about to fail, and she feared to 
 find herself alone in the dark with those phantoms of 
 misery and death. As he passed through the air set 
 in motion by her flight, between those walls full of 
 relics, behind the famous actress who had simulated 
 the fury of deadly passions, the desperate efforts of 
 will and desire, the violent shock of proud destinies 
 on every stage in the world, Stelio Effrena lost the 
 heat of his veins as if he were moving in a frozen 
 wind ; he felt his heart grow icy, his courage fainter; 
 his reason for living lost all strength, his bonds with 
 beings and things loosened ; and the magnificent illu- 
 sions which he had given his soul that it might 
 surpass itself and his destiny trembled and disap- 
 peared. 
 
 " Are we alive still ? " he said, when they found 
 themselves in the open, in the park, far from the 
 grim odour. 
 
 And he took the woman by the hands, shook her 
 slightly, looked into the depths of her eyes, tried to 
 smile ; then he led her towards the sunshine on the 
 grass of the meadow. 
 
 " How warm it is! Do you feel? How good the 
 grass is ! " 
 
 He half closed his eyes, so that he might feel the
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 275 
 
 rays upon his eyelids, once more suddenly seized by 
 the joy of life. She imitated him, soothed by her 
 friend's enjoyment, looking from under her eyelids 
 at his fresh, sensual mouth. They remained thus 
 for some time hand in hand, with their feet in the 
 grass under the sun's caresses, feeling the blood in 
 their veins throbbing in the silence as the streams 
 become more rapid when the frost breaks up in 
 spring. Her thoughts went back to the Euganean 
 hills, to the villages rosy as fossil shells, to the first 
 drops of rain falling upon young leaves, to the foun- 
 tain of Petrarch, to all pleasant things. 
 
 " Life could still be sweet," she sighed, and her 
 voice was the miracle of hope being born anew. 
 
 The heart of her beloved became like a fruit sud- 
 denly ripened and melted by a miraculous ray of 
 warmth. Joy and goodness spread through his spirit 
 and his flesh. Once again he enjoyed the moment 
 like one about to depart. Love was exalted above 
 destiny. 
 
 " Do you love me ? Tell me." 
 
 The woman did not reply; but her eyes opened 
 wide, and all the vastness of the universe was in the 
 circle of her pupils. Never was immense love more 
 powerfully signified by any earthly creature. 
 
 " Life is sweet, sweet with you, for you, yesterday 
 as to-morrow ! " 
 
 He seemed intoxicated with her, with the sun, the 
 grass, the divine sky, as with things never seen be- 
 fore, never possessed. The prisoner going out at 
 dawn from the suffocating prison, the convalescent 
 who sees the sea for the first time after having seen 
 death, are less intoxicated than he was.
 
 276 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " Do you wish to go? Shall we leave melancholy 
 behind us? Shall we go away to countries where 
 there is no autumn?" 
 
 " The autumn is in myself, and I must carry it 
 with me wherever I go," she thought, but she smiled 
 her slight, concealing smile. " It is I, I who will go 
 away ; I will disappear ; I will go and die far away, 
 my love, my love ! " 
 
 She had not succeeded during that pause in over- 
 coming her sadness, nor in renewing her hope, yet 
 her sorrow had softened, had lost all acrimony, all 
 rancour. 
 
 " Shall we go away ? " 
 
 " To go away, to be always going away, aimlessly 
 through the world, to go far away ! " thought the 
 wandering woman. " Never to rest, never to be at 
 peace ! The anxiety of the journey is not over, and, 
 see, the truce has expired. You wish to comfort me, 
 dear friend, and in order to comfort me you are pro- 
 posing that we should go far away again, when I re- 
 turned home only yesterday ! " 
 
 Suddenly her eyes became like springs of living 
 water. 
 
 " Leave me to my home a little longer. And you, 
 remain if you can. After, you will be free, you will 
 be happy. . . . You have so much time before you I 
 You are young. You will have what is due to you. 
 They who expect you will not lose you." 
 
 Her eyes wore two crystal masks, which glittered 
 in the sun in her feverish face. 
 
 " Ah, always the same shadow ! " exclaimed Stelio, 
 complainingly, with an impatience which he could 
 not control. " But what are you thinking of ? What
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 277 
 
 do you fear? Why do you not tell me what is 
 troubling you? Let us talk, then. Who is it that 
 expects me ? " 
 
 She trembled with apprehension at that question, 
 which appeared new and unforeseen, although her 
 last words were repeated in it. She trembled at find- 
 ing herself so near danger; a precipice seemed to 
 have opened under her feet as they walked on the 
 beautiful grass. 
 
 " Who is it that expects me?" 
 
 Suddenly, at the end of the day, in that strange 
 place, on that beautiful meadow, after so many ap- 
 paritions of spectres, sanguinary and bloodless, there 
 rose up a wilful form alive with desire which filled 
 her with even greater terror. Suddenly, at one stroke, 
 above all those figures of the past there rose a figure 
 which was the future ; and the semblance of life was 
 transformed anew, and the benefit of that brief pause 
 was lost already, and the good grass under her feet 
 was henceforth valueless. 
 
 " Yes, let us talk, if you wish it. ... Not now. . . ." 
 
 Her throat contracted so that her voice could 
 hardly pass through it, and she held her face a little 
 raised that her eyelids might keep her tears from 
 falling. 
 
 " Don't be sad ! Don't be sad ! " begged the young 
 man, his soul suspended on her lids like those tears 
 that would not fall. " You have my heart in your 
 hands. I will not fail you. Do not torment yourself. 
 I am yours." 
 
 Donatella was there for him too tall, with her 
 curved figure, with the agile, robust body of a wing- 
 less victory, fully armed with her virginity, attractive
 
 278 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and hostile, ready to struggle and to give herself. 
 But his soul hung on the eyelids of this other woman, 
 like the tears that veiled those pupils in which he 
 had seen the immensity of love. 
 
 " Foscarina ! " 
 
 The hot drops fell at last, but she did not let them 
 flow down her cheeks. With one of those gestures 
 that often sprang from her sorrow with the unex- 
 pected grace of a wing that is being set free, she 
 stopped them, moistened her fingers with them, and 
 spread them over her temples without drying them. 
 And while she thus left her tears upon herself she 
 tried to smile. 
 
 " Forgive me, Stelio, if I am so weak." 
 
 Then, desperately, he loved the delicate marks that 
 went from the corners of her eyes to her moistened 
 temples and the small dark veins that made her eye- 
 lids like violets and the undulation of her cheeks 
 and the worn chin and all that seemed touched by 
 the malady of autumn, all the shadow of that im- 
 passioned face. 
 
 " Ah, dear fingers ! Beautiful as the fingers of 
 Sophia ! Let me kiss them as they are, still wet ! " 
 
 He was drawing her over the meadow in his caress 
 to a belt of golden green. Lightly, holding his arm 
 under hers, he kissed her finger-tips one by one. 
 They were more delicate than the unopened buds 
 of flowers. She was quivering. He could feel hef 
 shudder at each touch of his lips. 
 
 " They are salt ! " 
 
 "Come, Stelio, some one will see us." 
 
 " There is nobody here." 
 
 " Down there in the greenhouses."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 279 
 
 " There is not a sound, listen ! " 
 
 " How strange the silence is ! It is ecstasy I" 
 
 " One could hear the falling of a leaf." 
 
 "And that keeper?" 
 
 " He must have gone to meet some other visitor." 
 
 "Who would come here? " 
 
 " I know that the other day Richard Wagner came 
 with Daniela von Biilow." 
 
 " Ah, the niece of Countess Agoult and of Daniel 
 Stern." 
 
 " With which of these phantoms did the great ail- 
 ing heart converse? " 
 
 "Who knows?" 
 
 " Only perhaps with himself." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 " Look at the glass of the conservatories, how it 
 shines. It is irradiated. Time, rain, and sunshine 
 have so painted it. Does it not seem to reflect a 
 distant twilight? Have you ever stopped on the 
 Fondamenta Pesaro and looked up at the beautiful 
 petafore window of the evangelists? If you raised 
 your eyes you could see the windows of the palace 
 marvellously painted by atmospheric vicissitudes." 
 
 " Do you then know all the secrets of Venice? " 
 
 " Not all yet." 
 
 " How warm it is here ! See how large those 
 cedars are." 
 
 " There is a swallow's nest there hanging on that 
 beam. The swallows have gone away late this 
 year." 
 
 " Will you really take me in spring to the Euganean 
 hills?" 
 
 " Yes, Fosca, I should like to."
 
 280 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " How far away spring is ! " 
 
 " Life can still be sweet." 
 
 " We are dreaming." 
 
 " Orpheus with his lyre, all dressed in lichens." 
 
 " Ah, what a pathway of dreams ! Nobody passes 
 us. Grass, grass everywhere. There is not a foot- 
 step." 
 
 " Deucalion with his stones, Ganymede with the 
 eagle, Diana with the stag, the whole of mythology." 
 
 " How many statues ! But these at least are not 
 in exile; the old hornbeams still enclose them." 
 
 " Here Maria Luisa used to stroll between the 
 King and the Favourite. She would stop at inter- 
 vals, to listen to the click of the shears that were 
 cutting the hornbeams into arches. She would let 
 drop her pocket handkerchief, perfumed with jessa- 
 mine, and Manuel Godo'i would pick it up with a still 
 graceful movement, dissimulating the pain in his hip 
 when he bent down, that had stayed with him as a 
 memento of the tortures suffered in the streets of 
 Aranjuez at the hands of the mob. As the sun was 
 warm and the snuff excellent in its enamelled box, the 
 uncrowned king would say with a smile : * Ah, dear 
 Bonaparte is certainly not so well off at St. Helena.' 
 But the demon of power, of struggle and of passion, 
 would reawaken in the heart of the Queen. . . . Look 
 at the red roses." 
 
 " They are flaming. They seem to have a live 
 coal at the heart. They are flaming really." 
 
 " The sun is becoming crimson. This is the hour 
 of the Chioggia sails on the lagoon." 
 
 " Pick me a rose I " 
 ' Here it is 1"
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 281 
 
 " Oh, its leaves are falling ! " 
 
 " Here is another ! " 
 
 " Its leaves are falling too." 
 
 " They are all at death's door. Here, perhaps this 
 one is not." 
 
 " Do not pick it." 
 
 " Look ! they become more and more red. Boni- 
 fazio's velvet. . . . Do you remember? It is the 
 same strength." 
 
 " The inner flower of the flame." 
 
 " What a memory ! " 
 
 " Hark ! the doors of the conservatory are being 
 shut." 
 
 " It is time to turn back." 
 
 " The air is already getting cooler." 
 
 "Are you cold?" 
 
 " No, not yet." 
 
 " Have you left your cloak in the carriage? ** 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " We will wait at the Dolo, for the passage of the 
 train. We will return to Venice by train." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " There is plenty of time still." 
 
 "What is this? Look!" 
 
 " I don't know." 
 
 " What a bitter smell ! A shrubbery of box and 
 hornbeams. . . ." 
 
 " Ah, it must be the labyrinth." 
 
 A rusty iron gate shut it in between two pillars 
 
 that bore two Cupids riding stone dolphins. Nothing 
 
 was visible on the other side of the gate, except 
 
 the beginning of the path and a kind of hard intri- 
 
 cate thicket, dense and mysterious. A tower rose
 
 282 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 from the centre of the maze, and the statue of a 
 warrior stood as if reconnoitring at the top of the 
 tower. 
 
 "Have you ever been in a labyrinth?" Stelio 
 inquired of his friend. 
 
 " No, never," she answered. 
 
 They paused a moment to watch the deceiving 
 game composed by some ingenious gardener for the 
 delight of the ladies and their gallants in the days of 
 hoops and patches, but neglect and age had turned it 
 wild and desolate, had taken from it all prettiness 
 and regularity, had changed it into an enclosed 
 wood brown and yellowish, full of inextricable mazes 
 where the slanting rays of the sunset shone so red 
 that some of the bushes here and there were like 
 burning, smokeless bonfires. 
 
 " It is open)" said Stelio, feeling the gate yield 
 when he leaned against it. " Do you see?" 
 
 He pushed the rusty iron that creaked on the 
 loose hinges, then took one step forward, crossing 
 the threshold. 
 
 " What are you doing? " said his companion, with 
 instinctive fear, stretching out her hand to hold him 
 back. 
 
 " Shall we not go in?" 
 
 She stood perplexed. But the labyrinth at- 
 tracted them with its mystery, illumined by its deep 
 flame. 
 
 " What if we lose ourselves?" 
 
 "Don't you see? It is quite small. We shall 
 easily find the way out." 
 
 " What if we don't find it?" 
 
 He laughed at her childish fear.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 283 
 
 "We shall stay in it, wandering round for ever." 
 
 " There is nobody in the neighbourhood. No, no, 
 let us go away." 
 
 She tried to draw him back. He defended him- 
 self, going backwards towards the path. Suddenly 
 he disappeared, laughing. 
 
 " Stelio, Stelio ! " 
 
 She no longer saw him, but she could hear his 
 laugh pealing in the wild maze. 
 
 " Come back, come back ! " 
 
 " Come and find me." 
 
 " Stelio, come back ! You will lose yourself." 
 
 " I shall find Ariadne." 
 
 She felt her heart leap at that name, then con- 
 tract, suffering confusedly. Had he not called Dona- 
 tella by that name on that first evening? Had he 
 not called her Ariadne, there on the water, while 
 sitting at her knee? She even remembered the 
 words : " Ariadne possesses a divine gift by which 
 her power transcends all limits." She remembered 
 his accent, his attitude, his look. 
 
 Tumultuous anguish convulsed her, dimmed her 
 reason, prevented her from considering the chance 
 spontaneity of the present occasion, from recognis- 
 ing her friend's unconsciousness. The terror that 
 lay hidden at the bottom of her desperate love 
 rebelled, mastered her, blinded her miserably. The 
 little vain accident took on an appearance of cruelty 
 and disdain. She could still hear that laugh pealing 
 in the wild maze. 
 
 " Stelio ! " 
 
 She cried out to him as if she had seen him in the 
 act of being embraced by the other woman, as if she
 
 284 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 had seen him in a frenzied hallucination, torn from 
 her arms for ever. 
 
 " Stelio ! " 
 
 " Look for me," he answered laughing, invisible. 
 
 She darted into the labyrinth to find him and went 
 straight towards his voice and laugh, carried away 
 by her impulse. But the path deviated. A blind box 
 wall rose up before her, impenetrable, and stopped 
 her. She followed the crooked, deceiving path, and 
 one turning succeeded the other and all were alike, 
 and the circle seemed to have no end. 
 
 " Look for me ! " the voice repeated from afar 
 across the living hedges. 
 
 " Where are you? Where are you? Do you see 
 me?" 
 
 She looked here and there for some thinner place 
 in the hedge through which she could see. All she 
 could perceive was the thick tissue of the branches 
 and the redness of evening that kindled them on 
 one side, while the shadows drowned them on the 
 other. The box bushes and the hornbeams mingled, 
 the evergreen leaves grew in confusion together with 
 the dying ones, the darker with the paler, in a 
 contrast of vigour and languor, with an ambiguity 
 that increased the bewilderment of the panting 
 woman. 
 
 " I am losing myself. Come and meet me ! " 
 
 Again his youthful laughter pealed in the thicket. 
 
 " Ariadne, Ariadne, the thread ! " 
 
 The sound now came from the opposite side, 
 wounding her in the spine like a blow. 
 
 " Ariadne ! " 
 
 She turned, ran, wandered, tried to penetrate the
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 285 
 
 hedge, to make an opening in the foliage, broke away 
 a branch. 
 
 She saw nothing, except the regular ever-renewed 
 maze. At last she heard a step, so near her that she 
 thought it was behind her and started. But she was 
 mistaken. Again she explored the leafy prison, 
 whence there was no return, that was closing round 
 her ; listened, waited ; she heard her own panting and 
 the throb of her own pulses. The silence had become 
 vast. She gazed at the sky, curving immense and 
 pure over the two leafy walls that imprisoned her. It 
 seemed as if there were nothing in the world beyond 
 that narrowness and that immensity. And she could 
 not succeed in separating in her thoughts the reality 
 of the place from the image of her soul's torture, the 
 natural aspect of things from that kind of living 
 allegory created by her own anguish. 
 
 " Stelio ! Where are you ? " 
 
 No answer came. She listened. She waited in 
 vain. The seconds seemed hours. 
 
 " Where are you ? I am frightened." 
 
 No answer came. Where had he gone? Had he 
 perhaps found the way out; had he left her there 
 alone? Was he going to continue his cruel game? 
 
 A furious longing to shriek, to sob, to throw her- 
 self on the ground, to struggle there and hurt herself 
 and die, seized the maddened woman. She again 
 raised her eyes towards the silent sky. The summit 
 of the great hedges were reddening like burnt vine 
 branches that have ceased to flare up and are about 
 to become ashes. 
 
 " I can see you," suddenly said the laughing voice, 
 in the low shadows, quite close to her.
 
 286 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She started violently, bent down in the shadow. 
 
 " Where are you ? " 
 
 He laughed among the leaves without showing him- 
 self, like a faun in ambush. The game excited him 
 and warmed his limbs that were stretching themselves 
 in his exercise of dexterity ; and the wild mystery, the 
 contact with the earth, the odour of autumn, the singu- 
 larity of the unforeseen adventure, the woman's be- 
 wilderment, the very presence of the stone deities, 
 poured into his physical pleasure an illusion of 
 antique poetry. 
 
 "Where are you? Oh, do not joke any more. 
 Do not laugh so. It is enough now." 
 
 He had crept into the bush on his hands and 
 knees, his head uncovered. Under his knees he felt 
 the decaying leaves, the soft moss. And as he 
 breathed and throbbed in the branches, letting that 
 pleasure absorb all his senses, the communion of 
 his own life with the life of the trees became closer, 
 and the spell of his imagination renewed in that 
 gathering of uncertain ways the industry of the first 
 maker of wings, the myth of the monster which was 
 born of Pasiphae and the Bull, the Attic fable of 
 Theseus in Crete. The whole of that world became 
 real to him, he was being transfigured on that purple 
 evening in autumn according to the instincts of his 
 blood and the memories of his intellect, into one of 
 those amphibious forms, half beast, half divinity, 
 into one of those silvern genii whose throat is swollen 
 with the same glands that hang suspended from the 
 neck of the goat. A laughing voluptuousness sug- 
 gested strange attitudes and gestures to him, surprising 
 and whimsical, figured to him the joy of a chase, of a
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 287 
 
 rapid union on the moss or against the uncultured 
 box. Then he desired a creature that should be like 
 him, a fresh bosom to which he might communicate 
 his laughter, two swift legs, two arms ready for a 
 struggle, a prey to conquer, a virginity to force, a 
 violence to accomplish. The curved form of Dona- 
 tella reappeared to him. 
 
 " Enough ! I can go on no longer, Stelio. I 
 shall let myself fall to the ground." 
 
 La Foscarina gave a scream on feeling the hem of 
 her dress pulled by a hand that had passed through 
 the bush. She bent down and perceived in the 
 shadow among the branches the face of a laughing 
 faun. That laugh flashed on her soul without moving 
 it, without breaking the horrible suffering that had 
 closed round her. On the contrary she suffered all 
 the more acutely from the contrast between his 
 merriment and her sadness, between that joy which 
 was ever new and her perpetual anxiety, between that 
 easy oblivion and the weight of her encumbrance. 
 She saw her error more clearly and she saw the 
 cruelty of life that was placing the image of the other 
 woman there where she herself was suffering. As 
 she bent down, as she saw his youthful face, she saw 
 with the same clearness the face of the singer who 
 was bending down with her imitating her gesture as 
 the shadow repeats a gesture on an illuminated wall. 
 All grew confused in her spirit and her thoughts were 
 unable to place an interval between that image and 
 reality. The other woman placed herself upon her, 
 oppressing her, suppressing her. 
 
 " Leave me ! Leave me ! It is not me you are 
 seeking. . . /'
 
 288 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 The voice was so changed that Stelio stopped his 
 laugh and his game, drew back his arm, rose up 
 straight. She saw him no more, the impenetrable 
 leafy wall was between them. 
 
 " Lead me away from this. I can hold up no 
 longer; my strength is spent. ... I am suffering!" 
 
 He could find no words with which to soothe her 
 and comfort her. The simultaneous coincidence of 
 his recent desire and her sudden divination had struck 
 home. 
 
 " Wait, wait a moment ! I will try to find the way 
 out. I will call some one. . . ." 
 
 " Are you going away? " 
 
 " Don't be afraid ! Don't be afraid ! There is no 
 danger." 
 
 And while he spoke thus to reassure her he was 
 feeling the inanity of his words the discord between 
 that laughable adventure and the obscure emotion 
 arising from a far different cause. And now he too 
 felt the strange ambiguity by which the small event 
 was appearing in two confused aspects : a suppressed 
 desire of laughter persisting under his solicitude so 
 that his suffering was new to him, like certain agitations 
 born of extravagant dreams. 
 
 " Don't go away," she begged, a prey to her hallu- 
 cination. " Perhaps we shall meet there at the next 
 turning. Let us try. Take me by the hands." 
 
 Through one of the open spaces he took her hands 
 and found them so cold that he started as he touched 
 them. 
 
 " Foscarina, what is the matter? Do you really 
 feel unwell? Wait! I will try to break through the 
 hedge."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 289 
 
 He tried to force through the thicket, snapped 
 some of its branches but its robustness resisted his 
 efforts. He wounded his hands in vain. 
 
 " It is not possible." 
 
 " Cry out. Call some one." 
 
 He called out in the silence. The summit of the 
 high hedges had lost its colour, but in the sky above 
 them a red light was spreading that was like the 
 reflection of woods on fire on the horizon. A flock 
 of wild ducks passed, arranged in a black triangle, 
 stretching out their long necks. 
 
 " Let me go ! I shall easily find the tower. And 
 from the tower I can call. Some one will hear my 
 cries." 
 
 "No, no!" 
 
 She heard him go away from her, followed the 
 sound of his steps, was once more engaged in the 
 maze, once more found herself alone and lost. She 
 stopped, waited, listened. She looked at the sky, 
 saw the triangular flock disappear in the distance. 
 She lost the sense of time, the seconds seemed hours. 
 
 " Stelio ! Stelio ! " 
 
 She was no longer capable of an effort to dominate 
 the disorder of her exasperated nerves. She felt the 
 extreme access of her mania coming on as one would 
 feel a hurricane that is drawing near. 
 
 " Stelio ! " 
 
 He heard the voice full of anguish and hastened 
 his search along the winding paths that now drew 
 him near to the tower and now drew him away from 
 it. His laugh had frozen in his heart. His whole 
 soul trembled to the roots, every time his name 
 reached him, pronounced by that invisible agony.
 
 290 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 And the gradual lessening of the light brought up 
 to his imagination the thought of blood that is flow- 
 ing away, of life that is slowly fading. 
 
 " Here I am ! Here I am ! " 
 
 One of the paths brought him at last to the open 
 space where the tower was built. He ran furiously 
 up the winding staircase, felt a dizziness overtake him 
 when he reached the top, closed his eyes holding 
 on to the banisters, opened them again, saw a long 
 zone of fire on the horizon, the disc of the rayless 
 moon, the plain that was like a grey marsh, the laby- 
 rinth beneath him black with box bushes and spotted 
 with hornbeam, quite narrow in its interminable folds, 
 looking like a dismantled edifice invaded by wild 
 vines, like a ruin and a wood, lugubrious and wild. 
 
 " Stop ! Stop ! Do not run like that. Some one 
 has heard me. A man is coming. I can see him 
 coming. Wait! Stop!" 
 
 He saw the woman running round like a mad thing 
 along the blind uncertain paths, like a creature con- 
 demned to some vain torment, to some useless but 
 eternal agitation, like a sister of the mythical 
 martyrs. 
 
 " Stop ! " 
 
 It seemed that she did not hear him, or that she 
 could not stop her fatal agitation, and that he was 
 tied down and could not rescue her, but was to re- 
 main a witness of that terrible chastisement. 
 
 " Here he is ! " 
 
 One of the keepers had heard their cries, had 
 drawn near, was coming through the gate. Stelio 
 met him at the foot of the tower. Together they 
 went out to seek the lost woman. The man knew
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 291 
 
 the secret of the labyrinth. Stelio prevented his 
 chatter and his display of wit by surprising him with 
 his generosity. 
 
 "Has she lost consciousness? Has she fallen?" 
 The shadow and silence were very sinister and filled 
 him with dismay. When he called her she did not 
 answer. Her steps could not be heard. Night had 
 already descended over the place under a damp veil 
 of mist that was slowly dropping from the purple 
 sky. " Shall I find her stretched out, fainting, on the 
 ground?" 
 
 He started on suddenly seeing a mysterious figure 
 appear at a turning with a pale face that attracted all 
 the twilight and shone like a pearl with large fixed 
 eyes and tight stiff lips. They turned back towards 
 the Dolo, taking the same way along the Brenta. 
 She never spoke, never opened her mouth, never 
 answered, as if she could not unclose her teeth, 
 stretched out in the bottom of the carriage wrapped 
 in her mantle up to her chin, shaken now and then 
 by strong shudders, suffused with a livid pallor like 
 that of malarial fever. Her friend tried to take her 
 fingers and hold them in his own to warm them, but 
 in vain: they were inert and seemed lifeless. And 
 as they went the statues passed and passed on beside 
 them. 
 
 The river flowed darkly between its banks under 
 the violet and silver sky where the full moon was 
 rising. A black boat was coming down stream, 
 towed by two grey horses that trod the grass on the 
 tow-path with a dull thud of heavy hoofs, led by a 
 man who whistled peacefully, and the funnel smoked 
 on the deck like a chimney-pot on the roof of a hovel,
 
 292 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and the yellow light of a lantern flared in the hold 
 and the odour of an evening meal spread through 
 the air and here and there, as they went through the 
 irrigated landscape, the statues passed and passed 
 Beside them. 
 
 It was like a Stygian plain, like a vision of 
 Hades : a land of shadows, mist, and water. All 
 things grew misty and vanished like spirits. The 
 moon enchanted and attracted the plain as it en- 
 chants and attracts the sea, drinking in the vapours 
 of earth from the horizon with insatiable, silent greed. 
 Solitary pools shone everywhere, small silvery canals 
 between rows of inclined willows could be seen glit- 
 tering at indefinite distances. Earth seemed to be 
 losing its solidity little by little, seemed to dissolve; 
 the sky seemed to watch its own melancholy reflected 
 on it in innumerable quiet mirrors. And here and 
 there along the discoloured shore, like the shadows 
 of a destroyed population, those statues passed and 
 passed beside them. 
 
 " Do you often think of Donatella Arvale, Stelio?" 
 la Foscarina asked suddenly, after a long interval in 
 which both had heard nothing but the cadence of 
 their own steps along the canal footpath of the 
 Vetrai illumined by the manifold light of the frail 
 things that filled the windows of the neighbouring 
 shops. 
 
 Her voice was like a glass that is cracking. Stelio 
 stopped suddenly in the attitude of one who suddenly 
 finds himself before an unforeseen difficulty. His 
 spirit had been wandering freely over the red and
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 293 
 
 green island of Murano, begemmed with flowers 
 in her present disconsolate poverty, in which she 
 seemed to have lost even the memory of the joy- 
 ous times in which poets had sung her praises as 
 " a place fit for nymphs and demigods." He had 
 been thinking of the illustrious gardens where Andrea 
 Navagero, Bembo, Aretino, Aldo, in their learned 
 assembly rivalled each other in the elegance of their 
 platonic dialogues, lauri sub umbra. He had been 
 thinking of convents luxurious as gynaecus inhabited 
 by nuns dressed in white camelot and laces, their 
 brows adorned with curls, their breasts uncovered 
 after the manner of the more honoured courtesans, 
 given to secret loves, much sought after by licentious 
 patricians, the possessors of sweet names such as 
 Ancilla Soranzo, Cipriana Morosini, Zanetta Balbi, 
 Beatrice Falier, Eugenia Muschiera, pious teachers 
 of pleasures. His fluctuating dream had been accom- 
 panied by an aria which he had heard in the museum 
 slowly moaning in sonorous drops from a small me- 
 tallic instrument set in movement by the turn of a 
 key hidden under a garden of glass where two lovers 
 adorned with glass beads danced round a little foun- 
 tain of white agate. It was an indistinct melody, a 
 forgotten dance tune; most of its notes were silent 
 through dust and damage, yet so expressive that he 
 had been unable to drive it away from his ears. And 
 since, all around him had had the remote frailty and 
 melancholy of those little figures dancing to sounds 
 slower than falling drops. The faint soul of Murano 
 has chattered in that old pastime. 
 
 At the sudden question the aria had stopped, the 
 . figures had dispersed, the spell of far-away life had
 
 294 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 vanished. His wandering spirit was called back and 
 contracted unwillingly. By his side Stelio felt the 
 beating of a living heart that he must inevitably wound. 
 He turned to look at his friend. She was walking, al- 
 most calm, with no trace of agitation, along the canal 
 between the green of the sickly water and the irides- 
 cence of the delicate vases. The only thing about 
 her that trembled slightly was her attenuated chin 
 just showing between the sable collar and the border 
 of her veil. 
 
 " Yes, sometimes," he answered, after a moment's 
 hesitation, incapable of falsehood, and feeling the 
 necessity of raising their love above ordinary ex- 
 actions and deceptions in order that it might remain 
 a cause of strength to him and not of weakness, a 
 free compact and not a burdensome tie. 
 
 The woman went on steadily, but she had entirely 
 lost the sensation of her various limbs in the terrible 
 beating of her heart that ran from neck to heels 
 as on a single cord. She saw nothing; all she felt 
 was the fascinating presence of the water by her 
 side. 
 
 " Her voice cannot be forgotten," he said after a 
 pause, gathering up his courage. " Its power is ex- 
 traordinary. From the very first evening, I thought 
 that she might be made a marvellous instrument of 
 my work. I wish she would consent to sing the lyric 
 parts of my tragedy, the odes that arise from the 
 symphonies and resolve themselves into dance-figures 
 at the end between one episode and the other. La 
 Tanagra has consented to dance. I rely on your 
 kind intervention, my friend, in order to obtain the 
 consent of Donatella Arvale. The Dionysian Trinity
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 295 
 
 would thus be reconstructed in a perfect manner on 
 the new stage, for man's greater joy. . . ." 
 
 He noticed as he spoke that his words did not 
 ring true, that his unconcerned manner contrasted 
 too sharply with the deadly shadow on the veiled 
 face of his mistress. Against his will he had exag- 
 gerated his frankness in considering the singer merely 
 as an artistic instrument, as a purely ideal force to 
 be attracted into the circle of his magnificent enter- 
 prise. Unwillingly disturbed by the suffering that 
 walked beside him, he had stooped ever so slightly 
 towards dissimulation. Certainly what he had said 
 was the truth, but his mistress had asked him for 
 another truth. He interrupted himself brusquely, 
 unable to tolerate the sound of his own words. He 
 felt that art in that hour had no resonance whatever 
 between him and the actress, no living value. They 
 were dominated by another more imperious, more 
 turbid force. The world which intellects create 
 seemed inert like the old stones they were treading. 
 The only truthful and formidable power was the 
 poison running in their human blood. The will of 
 the one was saying : " I love you, and I want you 
 all, body and soul, for my own." The will of the 
 other was saying : " You shall love me and you shall 
 serve me, but I can renounce nothing in life that 
 excites my desire." The struggle was unequal and 
 atrocious. 
 
 As the woman was silent, involuntarily quickening 
 her pace, he faced the other truth. 
 
 " I quite understand that this is not what you 
 wanted to know. . . ." 
 
 " Yes, it was not that ! Well ? "
 
 296 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She turned to him with a kind of spasmodic vio- 
 lence that reminded him of her fury one distant 
 evening and of the mad cry : " Go ! Run ! She is 
 waiting for you ! " On that tranquil path between 
 the lazy water and the frail crystals, in the quiet 
 little island, the face of danger flashed before him. 
 
 But an importunate stranger crossed the path, 
 offering to lead them to the neighbouring furnace. 
 
 " Let us go in ! Let us go in ! " said the woman, 
 following the man and penetrating into the passage 
 as in a refuge to avoid the shame of the open street, 
 the profane daylight shining on her ruin. 
 
 The place was damp, spotted with sea-salt, smell- 
 ing of salt like a cave. They passed through a 
 courtyard full of firewood, passed through a de- 
 crepit door, reached the furnace, found themselves 
 wrapped round with its fiery breath, before a great 
 incandescent altar that imparted a painful tingling to 
 their eyes as if the lashes had suddenly caught fire. 
 
 " To disappear, to be swallowed up, to leave no 
 trace ! " roared the woman's heart, intoxicated with a 
 desire of destruction. " That fire could devour me 
 in an instant like a dried stick, like a bundle of straw." 
 And she drew near to the open mouths, whence she 
 could watch the fluent flames, more splendid than a 
 summer noon, surrounding the earthenware vases in 
 which the formless mineral was being melted ; the 
 workmen disposed all round were waiting to approach 
 with an iron tube to shape it with a breath of their 
 lips and the instruments of their art. 
 
 "Oh, Virtue of the Flame!" thought the Life- 
 giver, beguiled from his anxiety by the miraculous 
 beauty of the element that had become familiar to
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 297 
 
 him as a brother from the day in which he had felt 
 the revealing melody. " Ah, that I might give to the 
 life of the creatures who love me the perfection of the 
 forms to which I aspire ! That I might fuse all their 
 weaknesses in some white heat, and make of it an 
 obedient matter in which to impress the command- 
 ments of my will, which is heroic, and the images of 
 my poetry, which is pure. Why, why, my friend, will 
 you not be the divine, mobile statue of my spirit, the 
 work of faith and of sorrow by which our lives might 
 surpass our art itself? Why are we on the point of 
 resembling those small lovers who curse and lament? 
 I had truly thought that you could have given me 
 more than love when I heard from your lips those 
 admirable words : ' One thing I can do, which even 
 love cannot do.' You must ever be able to accom- 
 plish those things which love can, and those things 
 which love cannot do in order to equal my insatiable 
 nature." 
 
 Meanwhile, the work of the furnace was proceeding 
 fervently. At the end of the blowing irons, the molten 
 glass swelled, twisted, became silvery as a little cloud, 
 shone like the moon, crackled, divided into a thou- 
 sand infinitely fine fragments, glittering, slighter than 
 the threads which we see in the forest at dawn 
 stretching from branch to branch. The workmen' 
 were shaping harmonious vases, each as he operated 
 obeying a rhythm of his own, generated by the quality 
 of the matter and by the habit of movements most apt 
 to dominate it. The apprentices would place a small 
 pear-shaped mass of burning paste on the spot 
 pointed out by the master, and the mass would 
 lengthen out, twist, transform itself into a handle, a
 
 298 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 rim, a spout, a foot, or a stem. The red heat would 
 slowly die out under the instruments, and the half- 
 formed chalice would again be exposed to the flame, 
 and be drawn from it docile, ductile, sensitive to the 
 slightest touches that adorned and refined it, con- 
 forming it to the model handed down by their fathers, 
 or to the free invention of the new creator. The 
 human gestures round those elegant creatures of fire, 
 breath and iron, were extraordinarily nimble and 
 light, like the gestures of a silent dance. The figure 
 of la Tanagra appeared to the Life-giver like a sala- 
 mander in the perpetual undulation of the flame. 
 And the powerful melody was sung to him by the 
 voice of Donatella. 
 
 " To-day, again, I myself have given her to you as 
 a companion," la Foscarina was thinking. " I my- 
 self have called her up between us, have recalled her 
 while your thoughts were perhaps elsewhere, have sud- 
 denly left her before you, as in that night's delirium." 
 
 It was true, it was true ! From the instant in 
 which the name of the singer had echoed against the 
 armour of the man-of-war, pronounced for the first 
 time by her friend in the shadow made by the flank 
 of the armed giant on the twilight waters from that 
 instant she had unconsciously exalted the new image 
 in his spirit, had fed it with her very jealousy, with 
 her very fear, had strengthened and magnified it 
 daily, had at last illumined it with certainty. More 
 than once she had repeated to him who had perhaps 
 forgotten : " She is waiting for you ! " More than 
 once she had presented that distant mysterious ex- 
 pectancy to his perhaps careless imagination. As in 
 that Dionysian night when the conflagration of Venice
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 299 
 
 had lit up the two young faces with one same re- 
 flection, it was now her passion that kindled them, 
 and they only burned because she chose that she 
 should burn. " Certainly," she was thinking, " he now 
 possesses that image and is possessed by it. My very 
 anguish excites his desire. It gives him joy to love 
 her under the eyes of my despair. . . ." And her 
 torture was nameless, and because it was her own love 
 that had fed the love that was killing her, she felt her 
 own ardour encircling it like a necessary atmosphere, 
 without which perhaps it could not have lived. 
 
 " As soon as it is formed the vase is put in the 
 furnace room to be tempered," one of the master 
 glaziers answered Stelio, who had questioned him. 
 " It would break into a thousand fragments, if it were 
 all at once exposed to the air." 
 
 They could see the shining vases, still the slaves of 
 the flame, still under its dominion, gathered together 
 in a receptacle that prolonged the furnace where they 
 had been fused. 
 
 " They have already been there for ten hours," said 
 the glazier, pointing to his graceful family. Later the 
 delicate, beautiful creatures would abandon their father 
 and be separated from him for ever, would grow cold 
 and become icy gems, would live their own new life 
 in the world, would subject themselves to voluptuous 
 men, would go out to meet danger, would follow the 
 variations of light, holding the cut flower or the 
 intoxicating wine. 
 
 "Is it our great Foscarina?" the small, red-eyed 
 man asked of Stelio in a low voice. 
 
 He had recognised her, when, suffocating, she had 
 raised her veil.
 
 300 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Trembling with ingenuous emotion, the master gla- 
 zier took one step towards her and bowed humbly. 
 
 " One evening, mistress, you have made me trem- 
 ble and cry like a child. Will you allow me, in mem- 
 ory of that evening, which I can never forget as long 
 as I live, to offer you a little work made by the hands 
 of the poor Seguso? " 
 
 " A Seguso," exclaimed Stelio Effrena, bending 
 quickly towards the little man to look him in the face 
 " of the great family of glaziers, a pure one of the 
 genuine race?" 
 
 " At your service, master." 
 
 " A prince, then? " 
 
 " Yes. A harlequin shamming as prince." 
 
 "You know all the secrets, then?" 
 
 The man of Murano made a mysterious gesture 
 that conjured up all the deep ancestral knowledge 
 of which he had declared himself the last heir. 
 
 The other glaziers smiled round the furnace, inter- 
 rupting their work while the glass at the end of 
 their irons changed colour. 
 
 " Then, mistress, you will deign to accept? " 
 
 He seemed to have stepped from a panel of 
 Bartolomeo Vivarini, to be the brother of one of the 
 faithful ones kneeling under the mantle of the Virgin 
 in Santa Maria Formosa : thin, bent, dried up, as if 
 refined by fire, frail as if his skin covered a frame- 
 work of glass, with thin grey hanging curls, a thin 
 rigid nose, sharp chin, two thin lips from the corners 
 of which there started the wrinkles of wit and 
 attention, two flexible prudent hands, reddened by 
 scars where they had been burnt, expressive of 
 dexterity and precision, accustomed to gestures
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 301 
 
 leading beautiful lines in sensitive matter, true in- 
 struments of delicate art made perfect in the last heir 
 by the uninterrupted practice of so many laborious 
 generations. 
 
 " Yes, you are a Seguso," said Stelio Effrena, who 
 had examined all this, " the proof of your nobility is 
 in your hands." 
 
 The glazier gazed at them smiling, stretching them 
 out flat. 
 
 " You should bequeathe them in your will to the 
 museum of Murano, together with your blowing- 
 pipe." 
 
 " Yes, indeed, for them to be preserved like the 
 heart of Canova and the morello cherries of 
 Padova. " 
 
 The frank laugh of the workmen ran round the 
 forge and the unformed vases trembled at the end of 
 the irons, half rosy and bluish like clusters of hydran- 
 gea about to change colour. 
 
 " But the decisive proof will be in your glass. 
 Let us see ! " 
 
 La Foscarina had not spoken, fearing the unsteadi- 
 ness of her voice; but all her graceful sweetness 
 suddenly reappearing above the edge of her sadness 
 had accepted the gift and compensated the giver. 
 
 " Let us see, Seguso." 
 
 The little man scratched his perspiring temple with 
 an air of perplexity, divining the expert. 
 
 " Perhaps I can guess," added Stelio Effrena, draw- 
 ing near the crucible chamber and throwing a glance 
 of election on the vases gathered there. " If it be 
 that one. . . ." 
 
 Behold with his presence he had brought an
 
 302 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 unusual animation in the midst of a daily labour, 
 the bright ardour of the game that he perpetually 
 unfolded through life. All those simple souls, after 
 having smiled, passionately awaited the test, awaited 
 his choice with the curious anxiety with which one 
 awaits the result of a bet, soliciting a comparison 
 between the subtlety of the master and that of the 
 judge. And the young unknown man who moved in 
 their laboratory as in a familiar place, equalling him- 
 self to the men and the things around him with such 
 rapid and spontaneous sympathy, was no longer a 
 stranger to them. 
 
 " If it be that one. . . ." 
 
 La Foscarina was attracted by the game and 
 almost forced to unbend, suddenly emptied of all 
 bitterness and rancour before her friend's happiness. 
 There too and without effort he had kindled a 
 fugitive moment with beauty and passion, communi- 
 cated to his companions the fervour of his vitality, 
 raised the spirits he had met to a superior sphere, 
 reawakened in those degenerate artisans the ancient 
 pride in their art. In few moments the harmony of 
 a pure line had become the centre of their world. 
 And the Life-giver was bending over the grouped 
 vases as if the fortune of the little hesitating glazier 
 depended on his choice. 
 
 " Yes, it is quite true. You alone know how to 
 live," she was telling him tenderly. " It is necessary 
 that you should have all. I shall rest content with 
 seeing you live, with seeing your pleasure. And do 
 with me what you will." 
 
 She smiled as she annihilated herself. She 
 belonged to him, like a thing that can be held in a
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 303 
 
 clenched hand, like the ring on a finger, like a 
 garment, like a word that can be spoken or held back, 
 like a wine that can be drunk or spilt on the ground. 
 
 " Well, Seguso ? " exclaimed Stelio Effrena, grow- 
 ing impatient at his prolonged hesitation. 
 
 The man looked him in the face, then growing 
 bolder, trusted to his inborn instinct. Five vases, 
 among many others, had come from his own hands. 
 One could distinguish them, as if they had belonged 
 to a different species ; but which of the five was the 
 most beautiful? 
 
 The workmen had their faces turned to him while 
 they exposed the vases fixed on their pipes to the 
 flames lest they should grow cold. And the flames, 
 clear as the flame from the crisp laurel leaf, swayed 
 in the furnace, seeming to keep those men chained 
 there with the irons of their art. 
 
 " Yes, yes," cried Stelio Effrena, as he saw the 
 master glazier pick out the chosen vase with infinite 
 care. " Blood cannot speak false, the gift is worthy 
 of the Dogaressa Foscarina, Seguso." 
 
 The Muranese holding the stem of the chalice 
 between his finger and thumb stood smiling before 
 the woman, illumined by the warm praise. His sharp 
 sagacious look put one in mind of the little golden 
 fox on the cock's tail in the blazon of Murano ; the 
 eyelids, reddened by the violent glare of his furnace, 
 twinkled over the eyes that were turned to the frail 
 work still glittering in his hand before going away, 
 and his almost caressing fingers and his whole attitude 
 revealed the hereditary faculty of feeling the difficult 
 beauty of simple lines and extremely delicate colour- 
 ings. The chalice held by the bent man who had
 
 304 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 created it was like one of those miraculous flowers 
 that blossom on thin contorted shrubs. 
 
 It was indeed beautiful, mysterious as natural things 
 are mysterious, holding the life of a human breath 
 in its hollow, its transparency emulating skies and 
 waters, similar in its purple rim to a seaweed wander- 
 ing on the ocean ; pure, simple, with no other orna- 
 ment but that rim, no other limbs but its foot, its stem 
 and its lip ; and no man could have told why it was 
 so beautiful, not with one word nor with a thousand. 
 And its value was either none or incalculable, accord- 
 ing to the quality of the eye that gazed upon it. 
 
 " It will break," said Stelio. 
 
 La Foscarina had chosen to take her gift with her 
 without having it wrapped up, like one carries a 
 flower. 
 
 " I will take my glove off." 
 
 She stood the goblet on the edge of the well that 
 rose in the centre of the green. The rust of the 
 weather-cock, the worn facade of the basilica with 
 its Byzantine remains, the red brick of the belfry, 
 the gold of the hayrick beyond the wall and the 
 bronze colour of the high laurels and the faces of the 
 women threading glass beads on the doorsteps, and 
 the grass and the clouds and all the surrounding ap- 
 pearances there varied the sensibility of the luminous 
 glass. All colours melted into its own colour. And 
 it seemed to be living a manifold life in its frailty, like 
 an animated rainbow in which the universe mirrors 
 itself. 
 
 " Imagine the sum of experience which has gone to 
 the production of this beautiful thing," said Stelio, 
 in his wonder. " All the generations of the Seguso
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 305 
 
 contributed across the centuries with their breath 
 and touch to the birth of this creature, in the happy 
 instant in which that little unconscious glazier was 
 enabled to follow the remote impulse and transmit it 
 with precision to inert matter. The fire was equal, 
 the paste was rich, the air was tempered ; all things 
 were favourable. The miracle took place." 
 
 La Foscarina held the stem of the chalice between 
 her naked ringers. 
 
 " If it were to break, we should raise up a mauso- 
 leum to it as Nero did to the shades of his broken 
 cup. Oh, the love of things. Another despot, 
 Xerxes, has preceded you, my friend, in adorning a 
 beautiful tree with necklaces." 
 
 There was on her lips below the edge of her veil a 
 barely visible but continual smile ; and he knew that 
 smile through having suffered from it on the banks of 
 the Brenta, in the fields haunted by the statues. 
 
 " Gardens, gardens ; gardens everywhere. Once 
 they were the most beautiful in the world, earthly 
 paradises as Andrea Calmo calls them, dedicated to 
 love, music, and poetry. Perhaps one of those old 
 laurels has heard Aldo Manuzio conversing in Greek 
 with the Navagero or Madonna Gasparina sighing 
 in the footsteps of the Conte di Collalto. . . ." 
 
 They were going along a road that was shut in 
 by the walls of desolate gardens. At the summit of 
 the walls, in the interstices of the blood-red bricks, 
 strange grasses trembled, long and stiff as fingers. 
 The bronze-like laurels were gilded at the tips by the 
 declining sun. The air seemed filled with a kind of 
 glittering gold-dust. 
 
 " How sweet and terrible was the fate of Gaspara
 
 306 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Stampa! Do you know her rhymes? I saw then 
 one day on your table. What a mixture of ice and 
 fire ! Now and then her deadly passion, across the 
 petrarchism of Cardinal Bembo, gives out some fine 
 cry. I know a magnificent verse of hers : 
 " ' Vivere ardendo e non sentire il male ! ' " 1 
 
 " Do you remember, Stelio," said la Foscarina, with 
 that inextinguishable smile that gave her the appear- 
 ance of one walking in her sleep, "do you remember 
 the sonnet that begins : 
 
 " * Signore, io so che in me non son piii viva, 
 
 E veggo omai ch' ancor in voi son morta '?..." a 
 
 " I don't remember, Fosca." 
 
 " Do you remember your own beautiful image of 
 dead summer? Summer was lying in the funeral 
 boat dressed in gold like a dogaressa and the proces- 
 sion was leading her to the island of Murano where 
 a Lord of Fire was to enclose her in a veil of opales- 
 cent glass so that when submerged in the lagoon she 
 could at least watch the sea-weed's undulations. . . . 
 Do you remember?" 
 
 " It was an evening in September." 
 
 " The last of September, the evening of the Alle- 
 gory. There was a great light on the water. . . . 
 You were a little excited : you talked on and on. . . . 
 How many things you said ! You had just come 
 from solitude and you were full to overflowing. You 
 poured a stream of poetry over your friend. There 
 passed a boat laden with pomegranates. I was called 
 Perdita then. . . . Do you remember?" 
 
 1 " To live consumed by fire and not to feel the pain I " 
 8 " My lord, I know that I live no more in me, 
 And I see henceforth that in you too I die."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 307 
 
 She herself, as she walked, felt the extreme elas- 
 ticity of her step, felt that something was disappearing 
 in her as if her body were about to change into an 
 empty chrysalis. The sensations of her own physical 
 person seemed to depend on the glass she was carry- 
 ing, seemed only to exist in the anxiety caused by 
 its frailty and the fear of letting it fall, while her bare 
 hand little by little became colder, and her veins 
 changed to the colour of the violet edge running 
 round the lip of the goblet. 
 
 " My name was still Perdita. . . . Have you in mind, 
 Stelio, another sonnet of Gaspara's that begins : 
 
 " ' lo vorrei pur che Amor dicesse come 
 Debbo seguirlo ' ? . . . 1 
 
 And the madrigal that begins: 
 
 " ' Se tu credi piacere al mio signore' ? . . . W1 
 
 " I did not know you to be so familiar with the 
 poor Anassilla, my friend." 
 
 " Ah, I will tell you. ... I was barely fourteen 
 years old when I acted in an old romantic tragedy 
 called Gaspara Stampa. I was doing the leading 
 part. ... It was at Dolo where we passed the other 
 day on our way to Stra. It was in a small country 
 theatre in a kind of tent. ... It was a year before 
 my mother died. ... I remember quite well. ... I 
 can remember certain things as if they had happened 
 yesterday, and twenty years have passed. I can re- 
 member the sound of my voice, which was weak then, 
 when I forced it in the tirades because some one in 
 
 1 " I would that Love would also say 
 
 How I should follow him." 
 * " If you think to please my lord."
 
 308 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the wings was whispering to me to speak louder, still 
 louder. . . . Gaspara was in despair, sorrowed, raved 
 for her cruel Count. . . . There were so many things 
 that I did not know, that my small, profaned soul did 
 not understand, and I know not what instinct of sor- 
 row led me to find the accent and the cries that were 
 to shake the miserable crowd from which we expected 
 our daily bread. Ten starving people tortured me, 
 like an instrument of gain ; brutal necessity was cut- 
 ting and tearing away from me all the dream flowers 
 born of my trembling precocity. It was a time of 
 weeping and suffocation, of dismays, of uneasy fatigue, 
 of reserved horror. Those who made my martyrdom 
 did not know what they were doing, poor things, 
 blunted by poverty and weariness. God forgive 
 them and let them rest. Only my mother who, she 
 also, Stelio, 
 
 " ' Per amar molto ed esser poco amata 
 Visse e morl infelice,' l 
 
 only my mother took pity on me and suffered from 
 the same torment as myself and knew how to hold 
 me in her arms, how to calm my horrible trembling, 
 how to weep with me and comfort me. My blessed, 
 blessed one ! " 
 
 Her voice changed. The eyes of her mother once 
 more opened within her, kind and firm and infinite as 
 an horizon of peace. " You must tell me, you must 
 tell me what I should do. Guide me, teach me, you 
 who know." Her soul felt the clasp of those arms and 
 from the distance of years the pain flowed back to 
 her in all its fulness, but not harsh, having turned 
 
 1 " For having loved too well and been too little loved, 
 Sorrowing lived and died "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 309 
 
 almost sweet. The memory of her struggle and of 
 her sufferings seemed to moisten her soul with a 
 warm flood, upraise and comfort it. On what anvils 
 had the iron of her will not been forged, in what 
 waters had it not been tempered? The test had 
 indeed been hard for her and the victory difficult, 
 bought at the price of labour and perseverance, bought 
 from brute forces that had been hostile. She had 
 witnessed the darkest poverties and sombre ruin, she 
 had known heroic efforts, pity, horror, and the thresh- 
 old of death. 
 
 " I know what hunger is, Stelio, and what the 
 approach of night is when a refuge is uncertain," she 
 said softly, stopping between the two walls. And 
 she raised her veil towards her forehead, looking into 
 her friend's face with her free eyes. 
 
 He grew pale under those eyes, so sudden was his 
 emotion, so great his dismay at the appearance of 
 that unexpected attitude. He found himself con- 
 fused as in the incoherence of a dream, incapable of 
 connecting that extraordinary apparition with the 
 recent traces of life, incapable of putting the meaning 
 of those words on that same woman who was smiling 
 to him, still holding the delicate glass in her naked 
 fingers. Yet he had heard what she had said, and 
 she was there before him in her great sable cape 
 with the softness still about her of the beautiful eyes 
 that lengthened out under the eyelashes misty as if a 
 tear continually rose into them, and melted unshed, 
 there before him in the solitary path between the two 
 walls. 
 
 " And there are other things that I have known." 
 
 It did her good to speak in this way. His humility
 
 310 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 seemed to give her heart strength like the most dar- 
 ing act of pride. She had never felt the conscious- 
 ness of her dominion and her worldly glory exalt her 
 before the man she loved, but now the memory of 
 her obscure martyrdom, of her poverty and hunger, 
 created in her a feeling of true superiority over him 
 whom she believed invincible. As along the banks 
 of the Brenta his words had seemed vain for the 
 first time, thus for the first time she felt herself in her 
 experience of life stronger than him whom all good 
 fortune had protected from his cradle and who had 
 not suffered except from the fury of his desires and 
 the anxieties of his ambition. She imagined him 
 grappling with necessity, forced to labour like the 
 slave, oppressed by material narrownesses, subject to 
 vile discomforts. Would he have found the energy 
 to resist, the patience to endure? Under the sharp 
 pinch of necessity, she pictured him weak and lost, 
 humbled and broken. " Ah, all bright superb things 
 are for you as long as you live, as long as you live." 
 She could not bear the sadness of that image and 
 rejected it with an almost maternal impulse of defence 
 and protection. And by an involuntary movement she 
 laid one hand on his shoulder, drew it back when he 
 noticed, then placed it there again. She smiled like 
 one who knows what he should never know, like 
 one who has won victory over things that he could 
 never have conquered. She heard within herself the 
 words heavy with the terrible promise: "Tell me 
 you are not afraid of suffering. . . I believe your 
 soul to be capable of bearing all the sorrow of the 
 world." Her eyelids, that were like violets, dropped 
 over her secret pride, but an infinitely subtle, com-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 311 
 
 plex beauty appeared in the lines of her face, a beauty 
 that was shed by a new concordance of inner forces, 
 by a mysterious direction of her reawakened will ; in 
 the shadow that descended from the folds of her 
 veil gathered up round her eyelashes an inimitable 
 life animated her pallor. 
 
 " I am not afraid of suffering," she said, answering 
 him who had spoken on the bank of the distant river. 
 And lifting her hand from his shoulder, she stroked 
 her friend's cheek and then he understood that she 
 had answered his distant words. 
 
 He was silent, intoxicated as if she had given him 
 to drink the very essence of her heart pressed out 
 into that goblet. Of all the natural forms that sur- 
 rounded them, in the diffused light, none seemed to 
 him to equal the beauty and mystery of that human 
 face, showing as it did beyond its features glimpses of 
 a sacred depth where doubtless some great thing had 
 been accomplished in silence. Quivering, he waited 
 for her to continue. 
 
 They walked on side by side between the two 
 walls. The path was a narrow one, dull and soft un- 
 der foot, but the refulgent clouds hung above it. 
 They reached the cross roads where a wretched hovel 
 stood half ruined. La Foscarina stopped to look at 
 it, the gnarled, unhinged windows were held open by 
 a cane fixed across them. The low sun as it pene- 
 trated there beat on the smoky walls, revealed the 
 accessories : a table, a bench, a cradle. 
 
 " Do you remember, Stelio," she said, " that inn 
 where we went in at Dolo, to wait for the train 
 Vampa's inn? A huge fire was burning in the grate, 
 the crockery shone on the walls, the slices of polenta
 
 312 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 were toasting on the gridiron. Twenty years ago, 
 they were just the same the same fire, the same 
 crockery, the same polenta. My mother and I used 
 to go in after the performance ; we used to sit down 
 on a bench in front of a table. I had wept in the 
 theatre, I had shrieked, raved and died of poison, or 
 by the sword. The sound of the verses would still 
 remain in my ears, like a voice that was not my own, 
 and a strange will persisted in my soul which I could 
 not drive away, like a figure trying to perform those 
 steps and those gestures over again despite my inert- 
 ness. . . . The counterfeit of life remained in the 
 muscles of my face, and some evenings they could 
 not rest. The mask, the sense of the living mask 
 that was already growing. . . . My eyes would re- 
 main staring. A steady chill continued at the roots 
 of my hair. ... I could not succeed in recovering 
 full consciousness of myself and of what was going on 
 around me. . . . 
 
 " The odours that came from the kitchen nauseated 
 me ; the food that was on the dishes seemed to me 
 too coarse, heavy as stones, impossible to swallow. 
 My repugnance rose from something unspeakably 
 delicate and precious, which I felt at the depths of 
 my weariness, from a confused nobility which I felt 
 beneath my humiliation. ... I cannot tell. ... It 
 was perhaps the obscure presence of that force which 
 developed itself in me afterwards, of that election, 
 of that difference from others by which Nature has 
 marked me out. . . . Sometimes the feeling of that 
 diversity became so great that it almost estranged 
 me from my mother may God forgive me ! that 
 almost separated me from her. ... A great soli-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 313 
 
 tude was making its way within me ; nothing that 
 was around me seemed to touch me. ... I used to 
 be alone with my fate. My mother, who was be- 
 side me, was retreating into infinite distance. Ah ! 
 she was near death at the time, and was being pre- 
 pared for the parting, and perhaps these were the 
 signs. She would urge me to eat with the words 
 she only could say. I used to answer : ' Wait ! wait.' 
 I could only drink, I had a great thirst for fresh water. 
 Sometimes when I was still more tired and trembling 
 I would go on smiling a long, long smile. And even 
 my blessed one, with her deep heart, could not under- 
 stand whence came my smile. . . . 
 
 " Incomparable hours, in which it seemed as if the 
 bodily prison were being broken by the soul that 
 went wandering to the further limits of life ! What 
 must your youth have been, Stelio? Who can 
 imagine it? We have all felt the weight of the 
 sleep that falls on our flesh, all of a sudden, swift 
 and heavy like a blow from a hammer after toil or 
 ecstasy, and seems to annihilate us. But the power 
 of dreams, too, during our watching, sometimes takes 
 hold of us with that same violence ; it grasps us, and 
 we are powerless to resist it, and it seems as if the 
 whole tissue of our existence were being destroyed, 
 as if our hopes were weaving another, brighter and 
 more strange, with those same threads. . . . Ah, there 
 come back to my memory some of the beautiful 
 words you said in Venice that evening, when you 
 pictured her marvellous hands intent on ordaining her 
 own lights and shadows in an uninterrupted work of 
 beauty. You alone can describe the unutterable. . . . 
 
 " On that bench there in front of the rough table,
 
 314 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 in Vampa's inn at Dolo, where Fate led me with you 
 again the other day, I had the most extraordinary 
 visions that dreams have ever awakened in my soul. 
 I saw that which cannot be forgotten ; I saw the real 
 forms that surrounded me clothe themselves with the 
 figures that were growing from my intellect and my 
 instinct. Under my fixed eyes, burnt by the smoky 
 red naphtha lights of the temporary stage, the world of 
 my expressions began to take shape. The first lines 
 of my art developed themselves in that condition of an- 
 guish and weariness, of fever and repugnance, in which 
 my sensibility became in a manner almost plastic, 
 like the incandescent material we saw the glass work- 
 ers holding at the end of their tubes. There was in it 
 a natural aspiration to receive form and breath, to fill 
 the hollow of a mould. On certain evenings, on that 
 wall covered with copper saucepans, I could see my- 
 self as in a mirror, in an attitude of pain or rage, 
 with a face that I did not recognise; and my eye- 
 lids would beat rapidly to escape that hallucination 
 and to break the fixity of my look. My mother 
 would say again and again : ' Eat, my child, eat this 
 at least.' But what were bread, wine, meat, fruits, 
 all those heavy things bought with hard toil, com- 
 pared to what I had within me? I used to repeat: 
 ' Wait ! ' and when we rose to go I used to take a 
 piece of bread with me. I liked to eat it next morn- 
 ing in the country, under a tree or on the banks of the 
 Brenta, sitting on a stone or on the grass. . . . Oh, 
 those statues ! " 
 
 La Foscarina stopped once more at the end of an- 
 other path between two walls, that led to a deserted 
 field, to the Campo-di-San-Bernardo, where the old
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 315 
 
 monastery stood. The steeple of Santa-Maria-degli- 
 Angeli rose beyond it, and a glorious cloud hung 
 over it like a rose upon its stem ; and the grass was 
 as soft, as green, as placid as in the park of the Pisani 
 at Stra. 
 
 " Those statues ! " repeated the actress, with an 
 intent look as if they stood there in front of her in 
 great numbers, hindering her on her way. " They did 
 not recognise me the other day, but I recognised 
 them, Stelio. " 
 
 The distant hours, the wet misty landscape, the 
 leafless trees, the villas falling to ruin, the silent river, 
 the relics of queens and empresses, the crystal masks 
 on the feverish faces, the wild labyrinth, the vain pur- 
 suit, the terror, and the agony, the splendid, terrible 
 pallor, the frozen body on the cushions of the car- 
 riage, the lifeless hands, all that sadness was suddenly 
 illumined by a new light in the spirit of her beloved. 
 And he looked at the marvellous creature, panting 
 with surprise and dismay, as if he were seeing her for 
 the first time, and her features, her step, her voice, 
 her garments held manifold and extraordinary signi- 
 ficances that were as inaccessible to him in their num- 
 ber and rapidity as flashes of lightning. 
 
 There she was, a creature of perishable flesh, sub- 
 ject to the sad laws of time ; yet a vast mass of real 
 and ideal life weighed upon her, widened round her, 
 throbbed with the very rhythm of her breath. The 
 wandering, despairing woman had touched the limits 
 of human experience : she knew that which he would 
 never know. He, the man of joy, felt the attraction 
 of so much accumulated sorrow, of so much humility 
 and so much pride, of so great a war and so great a
 
 316 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 victory. Willingly he would have lived that life him- 
 self. He envied her her fate. Astonished, he watched 
 the veins on the back of that bare hand, delicate and 
 blue as though the skin did not cover them, and the 
 small nails that glittered round the stem of the goblet. 
 He thought of a drop of that blood circulating through 
 her substance, limited by common outlines, and yet 
 as immeasurable as the Universe. It seemed to him 
 that there was only one temple in the world, and that 
 temple was the human body. An anxious longing 
 possessed him to stop the woman, to stand before 
 her and examine her attentively, to discover all her 
 aspects, to question her endlessly. 
 
 Strange questions rose up in his spirit. " Did 
 you pass along the main roads when you were a 
 young girl on the cart loaded with scenery, lying on 
 a bundle of leaves, followed by a group of strolling 
 players? Did you pass through the vineyards, and 
 did some villager offer you a basket of grapes? Had 
 the man who possessed you for the first time the 
 figure of a satyr and did you hear the wind roaring on 
 the plain in your terror, sweeping away that part of 
 you which you will seek for ever but never find again? 
 How many tears you must have drunk on the day I 
 heard you, for the voice of Antigone to sound so pure 
 in you ? Did you win the nations one after another 
 as battles are won to conquer an empire ? Do you 
 recognise them by their different odours as one rec- 
 ognises wild beasts? One nation rebelled, resisted 
 you, and in subjecting it you loved it more than those 
 which had worshipped you at your first appearance. 
 Another, on the other side of the ocean, to which you 
 revealed a new unknown manner of feeling, cannot
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 317 
 
 forget you, and continually sends you messages for 
 you to return. What sudden beauties shall I see aris- 
 ing from your love and your sorrow? " 
 
 She appeared to him on the solitary meadow in the 
 forgotten island, under the clear wintry sky, as she 
 had appeared to him in the far-off Dionysian night in 
 the midst of the praises of the poets who had sat at 
 the supper table. The same power of imparting life, 
 the same power of revelation, emanated from the 
 woman who had said as she lifted her veil, " I know 
 what hunger is. . . ." 
 
 " It was in the month of March, I remember, " con- 
 tinued la Foscarina, softly, " I was going out in the 
 meadows early, with my bread. I was walking at 
 random. The statues were my destination. I went 
 from one to the other and stopped before each, as if 
 visiting them. Some seemed to me lovely and I 
 would try to imitate their gestures, but as if by in- 
 stinct, I remained longer with the mutilated ones, to 
 comfort them. In the evening, on the stage during 
 the performance I would remember some of them, 
 with such a deep feeling of their distance and of their 
 solitude in the quiet country under the stars, that it 
 seemed to me as if I could not speak any more. The 
 crowd would lose patience at these too prolonged 
 pauses. At certain times when I had to wait for my 
 interlocutor's first tirade to be finished, I would stand 
 in the attitude of some one of them which was familiar 
 to me, and remain motionless as if I too had been of 
 stone. I was already beginning to shape my own 
 self. . . ." 
 
 She smiled. The grace of her melancholy sur- 
 passed the grace of the declining day.
 
 3i8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 " I tenderly loved one that had lost the arms it 
 had once used to hold a basket of fruit on its head. 
 But the hands were fastened to the basket and moved 
 my pity. It rose on its pedestal in a field of flax ; a 
 small canal stagnated close by, and in it the sky's re- 
 flection continued the blue of the flowers. If I shut 
 my eyes I can still see the stony face and the sun 
 that coloured itself in passing through the stalks of 
 the flax, as through a green glass. Always, ever 
 since that time, on the stage, in the most heated 
 moments of my art, there rise visions of some land- 
 scape to my memory, especially when by the mere 
 force of silence I succeed in communicating a great 
 quiver to the crowd that is listening. . . ." 
 
 She had flushed a little at the cheekbones, and, as 
 the oblique sun wrapped her round, drawing sparks 
 from her sables and from the goblet, her animation 
 seemed an increase of light. 
 
 " What a spring that was ! In one of my wander- 
 ings I saw a great river for the first time. It appeared 
 all of a sudden, swollen, flowing rapidly between wild 
 banks in a plain burning like stubble under the level 
 rays of the sun, that grazed its outskirts like a red 
 wheel. I felt then how much divinity there is in a 
 great river flowing through the earth. It was the 
 Adige, coming down from Verona, from the city of 
 Juliet. . . ." 
 
 An ambiguous emotion was taking hold of her as 
 she recalled the poetry and poverty of her youth. 
 She was driven to continue by a kind of fascination, 
 nevertheless she did not know how she had arrived 
 at these confessions, when she had meant to speak to 
 her friend of another young life which was not past,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 319 
 
 but present. By what deception of love had she 
 been brought from the sudden tension of her will, 
 from her resolute decision of facing the painful truth, 
 from the gathering up of her mislaid energy to linger 
 in the memory of by-gone days, and to cover with 
 her own lost virgin self that other one which was so 
 different? 
 
 " We entered Verona one evening in the month of 
 May through the gate of the Palio. Anxiety suffo- 
 cated me. I held the copy-book, where I had copied 
 out the part of Juliet with my own hand, tightly 
 against my heart, and constantly repeated to myself 
 the words of my first entrance : ' How now ! Who 
 calls? I am here. What is your will?' A strange 
 coincidence had excited my imagination : I was four- 
 teen years old on that very day, the age of Juliet ! 
 The gossip of the Nurse buzzed in my ears ; little by 
 little my destiny seemed to be getting mixed up with 
 the destiny of the Veronese maiden. At the corner 
 of every street I thought I saw a crowd coming 
 towards me and accompanying a coffin covered with 
 white roses. As soon as I saw the Arche degli 
 Scaligeri, closed with iron nails, I cried out to my 
 mother, ' Here is the tomb of Juliet.' And I be- 
 gan to weep bitterly with a desperate desire of love 
 and death. ' Oh, you, too early seen unknown, and 
 known too late.' " 
 
 Her voice, as it repeated the immortal words, pene- 
 trated the heart of her lover like a heart-rending 
 melody. She paused a moment and repeated, 
 
 " Too late." 
 
 They were the very words uttered by her beloved, 
 which she herself had repeated in the garden where
 
 320 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the hidden stars of the jessamine blossoms had given 
 forth their sharp perfume and the fruit had smelt as 
 it does in the island gardens, when both had been 
 about to yield to their cruel desire : " It is late, 
 too late ! " The ageing woman on the good grass 
 now stood before the old image of herself, of her own 
 virginity, panting in the garb of Juliet before her 
 love's first dream. Having attained the limit of her 
 experience, had she not preserved that dream intact 
 over men and time ? but to what end ? Here she 
 was, bringing up her dead, distant youth only to tread 
 it under foot as she led her lover to that other woman 
 who was alive and expectant. 
 
 With the smile of her inimitable suffering she said : 
 " I have been Juliet." 
 
 The air around them was so calm that the smoke 
 from the furnace chimneys tarried there, contaminat- 
 ing it. Gold quivered everywhere. The cloud on 
 the belfry of the Angeli was growing crimson round 
 the edges. The water was invisible, but its sweetness 
 was passing over the face of things. 
 
 " One Sunday in May, in the immense arena in the 
 ancient amphitheatre under the open sky, I have 
 been Juliet before a popular multitude that had 
 breathed in the legend of love and death. No quiver 
 from the most vibrating audiences, no applause, no 
 triumph has ever meant the same to me as the ful- 
 ness and the intoxication of that great hour. Truly, 
 when I heard Romeo saying, ' Ah, she doth teach the 
 torches to burn bright ! ' truly my whole being 
 kindled; I became a flame. I had bought a great 
 bunch of roses with my little savings, in the Piazza 
 delle Erbe, under the fountain of Madonna Verona.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 321 
 
 The roses were my only ornament. I mingled them 
 with my words, with my gestures, with each attitude of 
 mine. I let one fall at the feet of Romeo when we 
 first met; I strewed the leaves of another on his 
 head from the balcony ; and I covered his body with 
 the whole of them in the tomb. The air, the light, and 
 their perfume ravished me. Words slipped from me 
 with strange ease, almost involuntarily as in delirium, 
 and together with them I could hear the continual 
 accompaniment made by the dizzy throb of my veins; 
 I could see the deep amphitheatre, half in sunshine, 
 half in shadow, and in the illuminated part a glitter as 
 of thousands and thousands of eyes. The day was a 
 quiet one like to-day. There was not a breath to 
 ruffle the folds of my dress or the hair that fluttered 
 on my bare neck. The sky was very far, yet now 
 and then it seemed as if my weakest words must 
 sound in its farthest distances, like a clap of thunder, 
 or that its blue was becoming so deep that I was 
 coloured by it as by a sea water that was drowning 
 me. And at intervals, my eyes would travel to the 
 long grasses growing at the summit of the walls, and 
 there seemed to come to me from them I know not 
 what encouragement to what I was saying and doing ; 
 and when I saw them sway at the first breath of wind 
 that was rising from the hills, I felt my animation 
 increase and with it the strength of my voice. How 
 I spoke of the lark and the nightingale ! I had heard 
 them both in the country a thousand times. I knew 
 all their melodies of the wood, the field, and the sky ; 
 I had them wild and living in my ears. Each word 
 before leaving my lips seemed to have passed through 
 all the warmth of my blood. There was no fibre in
 
 322 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 me which did not give forth an harmonious sound. 
 Ah, grace ! the state of grace ! Each time it is given 
 me to touch the summit of my art I recover that un- 
 speakable abandonment. I was Juliet. ' It is day, it is 
 day ! ' I cried out in my terror. The wind was in 
 my hair. I could feel the extraordinary silence on 
 which my lamentation fell. The crowd seemed to 
 have disappeared below ground. It sat silent on the 
 curved steps that were now in shadow. Above it 
 the top of the wall was still red. I was telling of the 
 terror of day, but I already truly felt ' the mask of 
 night' on my face. Romeo had descended. We 
 were already both dead, both had already entered 
 into darkness. Do you remember? ' Now that you 
 are there, you appear like a corpse at the bottom of a 
 sepulchre. Either my eyes deceive me or you are 
 very pale.' I was icy cold as I said these things. 
 My eyes sought the glimmer of light at the top of the 
 wall. It had gone out. The people were clamour- 
 ing in the arena, demanding the death scene ; they 
 would no longer listen to the mother or the nurse or 
 the monk. The quiver of its impatience intolerably 
 quickened the throbbing of my own heart. The 
 tragedy was hurrying on. I still have the memory of 
 a great sky white as pearls, and of a noise as of the 
 sea that quieted down when I appeared, and of the 
 smell of pitch that came from the torches, and of 
 the roses that covered me being faded by my fever, 
 and of a distant sound of bells that brought the sky 
 nearer to us, and of that sky that was losing its light 
 little by little as I was losing my life, and of a star, 
 the first star, that trembled in my eyes with my tears. 
 . . . When I fell lifeless on the body of Romeo, the
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 323 
 
 howl of the crowd in the shadow was so violent that I 
 was frightened. Some one raised me up and dragged 
 me towards that howl. Some one brought the torch 
 close to my tear-stained face ; it crackled hard and 
 smelt of pitch and was red and black, smoke and 
 flame. That too, like the star, I shall never forget. 
 And my face must certainly have been the colour 
 of death. . . . Thus, Stelio, one night in May, Juliet 
 came to life again and was shown to the people of 
 Verona." 
 
 She stopped once more, closing her eyes as if she 
 had suddenly turned dizzy, but her sorrowful lips still 
 smiled at her friend. 
 
 "Then? The need of moving, of going anywhere, 
 of passing through space, of breathing in the wind. . . . 
 My mother followed me in silence. We crossed a 
 bridge, walked along the Adige, then crossed another 
 bridge, entered a small street, lost ourselves in the 
 dark alleys, found a square with a church in it, and 
 so on, on, ever on. My mother asked me now and 
 then, 'Where are we going?' I wanted to find a 
 Franciscan convent where the tomb of Juliet was 
 hidden, since to my great sorrow they had not buried 
 her in one of those beautiful tombs closed in by fine 
 gates. But I did not want to say it, and I could not 
 have spoken. To open my mouth, to utter a single 
 word was as impossible to me as to detach a star 
 from the sky. My voice had lost itself with the last 
 syllable of the dying Juliet. My lips had remained 
 sealed by a silence necessary as death. And all my 
 body seemed half alive, now icy, now burning, and 
 now I don't know, as if only the joints of my bones 
 were burning and all the rest were icy. ' Where are
 
 324 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 we going?' that kind anguish asked of me once more. 
 Ah, the last word of Juliet answered within me. We 
 were again near the water on the Adige, at the head 
 of a bridge. I think I began to run, because shortly 
 afterwards I felt myself seized by my mother's arms 
 and I remained there crushed against the parapet, 
 suffocated by my sobs. 'Let us throw ourselves 
 down ! let us throw ourselves down ! ' I would have 
 said, but I could not. The river was carrying in 
 it the night with all its stars, and I felt that that desire 
 of annihilation was not in me alone. . . . Ah, blessed 
 one ! " 
 
 She turned very pale, her whole soul feeling once 
 more the clasp of those arms, the kiss of those lips, the 
 tears of that tenderness, the depth of that suffering. 
 But she glanced at her friend and suddenly a quick 
 flood of blood spread over her cheeks and rose as 
 far as her brow, as if brought there by a feeling of 
 secret modesty. 
 
 " What am I telling you ? Why am I speaking to 
 you of all these things? One talks on and on with- 
 out knowing why." 
 
 She lowered her eyes in her confusion. At the 
 memory of the mysterious terror that had preceded 
 her womanhood, at the memory of her mother's 
 grieved love, the original instinct of her sex stirred 
 in her barren bosom. Her feminine avidity, that re- 
 belled against the heroic design of total abnegation, 
 experienced a strange emotion, became willing to be 
 deluded. From the very roots of her substance there 
 arose an unformed aspiration that she dared not con- 
 template. The possibility of a divine compensation 
 flashed on the sadness of the inevitable renunciation.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 325 
 
 She felt the shaking of her heart, but she was like 
 one who dares not look up to an unknown face for 
 fear of reading there a sentence of life or death. 
 She was afraid of suddenly seeing that thing dissolve 
 which was not hope and yet was similar to hope, 
 born of her soul as well as of body in so unexpected 
 a manner. She became impatient of the great light 
 that kindled the sky, of the places they were passing, 
 of the steps she was taking, of the very presence of 
 her friend. She thought of the half-waking softness, 
 the lingering slumber of dawn when a veiled design 
 lightly guides a happy dream. She longed for soli- 
 tude, for quiet, for her distant secluded room, for the 
 shadow of heavy curtains. Suddenly, with an impet- 
 uous anxiety that rose from that impatience as if she 
 wanted to fix by a mental act a phantom that was 
 about to melt away, she formed some words, and they 
 reached as far as her lips, but did not move them : 
 " A child, from you ! " 
 
 She turned to her friend and all trembling looked 
 him in the eyes. Her secret thought swayed in her 
 eyes, like a thing that was both prayer and despair. 
 She seemed to be anxiously seeking in him some un- 
 revealed mark, some unknown aspect, almost another 
 man. She called him gently, 
 
 " Stelio ! " 
 
 And her voice was so changed that the young man 
 started inwardly and turned as if to help her. 
 
 " My friend, my friend ! " 
 
 Fearful and surprised he watched the wide waves 
 of life that were passing through her, the extraordi- 
 nary expressions, the alternate lights and shadows, 
 and he dared not speak and dared not interrupt
 
 326 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the occult workings that were agitating the powers of 
 that great, miserable soul; he could only feel con 
 fusedly beneath her words the beauty and the sad- 
 ness of unexpressed things ; and while he was certain 
 that some difficult good was about to rise from so 
 great a fever, yet he knew not the aim to which that 
 love would be led by its necessity of becoming per- 
 fect or perishing. His spirit hung in an expectation 
 that was full of wonder, feeling itself live with so 
 much fervour in those forgotten places, on the lowly 
 grass, along the silent path. He had never ex- 
 perienced a deeper feeling of the incalculable strength 
 of which the human heart is capable. And it seemed 
 to him as he listened to the throb of his own heart, 
 as he divined the violence of the other's throbbing, 
 that he could hear the strokes of the hammer beating 
 on the hard anvil where human destiny is forged. 
 
 " Tell me more," he said. " Let me get still 
 nearer to you, dear soul. No moment since I have 
 loved you has been worth the road along which we 
 have gone together to-day." 
 
 She was moving on with bent head, rapt in the illu- 
 sion " Could it be? " She felt her barrenness about 
 her like an iron belt. She considered the inexorable 
 obstinacy of the maladies rooted in brute flesh. But 
 the power of her passion, and of her desire, strength- 
 ened by an idea of justice, appeared to her in the act 
 of accomplishing a miracle. And all that was super- 
 stitious in her nature rose to blind her lucidity and 
 flatter a rising hope. "Have I ever loved before 
 now? Have I not waited for years for this great love 
 that is to save or destroy me ? From which of all those 
 who have increased my wretchedness would I have
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 327 
 
 desired a child ? Is it not just that a new life should 
 come forth from my life, now that I have made the 
 entire gift of myself to my master? Have I not 
 brought him my girlhood's dream intact, the dream 
 of Juliet? Has not all my life been abolished, from 
 that spring evening to one autumn night? " She 
 saw the whole universe transfigured by her illusion. 
 The memory of her mother gave her a sublime image 
 of maternal love ; the kind, firm eyes opened within 
 her again and she prayed to them. " Oh, tell me 
 that I too shall be for a creature of my flesh and of 
 my soul what you have been for me. Give me that 
 assurance, you who know." Her past solitude 
 seemed terrifying. All she could see in the future 
 was death or that one hope of salvation. She thought 
 she could have borne every test in order to deserve it, 
 looked upon it as a grace to be implored, felt herself 
 invaded by a religious ardour of sacrifice. It seemed 
 as if the feverish throb of her distant youth which she 
 had called up were being renewed in her emotion, and 
 that she were being once more impelled on her way 
 under the sky by an almost mystic force. 
 
 She was going towards the figure of Donatella Ar- 
 vale, outlined on the inflamed horizon at the end of a 
 road that opened on the water. And her first sudden 
 question re-echoed within her: " Do you often think 
 of Donatella Arvale, Stelio?" 
 
 A short road led to the Fondamenta degli Angeli, 
 to the canal encumbered with fishing-boats, whence 
 the great lagoon was visible, calm and radiant. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " How beautiful the light is ! It is like that evening 
 when my name was still Perdita, Stelio."
 
 328 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She was touching a note that she had already 
 touched in a prelude that had been interrupted. 
 
 " It was the last evening in September," she added ; 
 " do you remember? " 
 
 She had lifted up her heart so high that it seemed 
 at times as if it failed her, as if the strength of her 
 feeling was no longer in her power, but could escape 
 her from one moment to another, and leave her a 
 prey to those troubled furies, to the sudden impulse 
 to which she had already yielded more than once. 
 She intended that her voice should not tremble in 
 uttering the name that must needs rise in the silence 
 between her friend and herself. 
 
 " Do you remember the man-of-war anchored in 
 front of the gardens ? a salute greeted the flag as it 
 slipped down the mast. The gondola grazed the 
 ironclad as it passed." 
 
 She gave herself a moment's pause. An inimitable 
 life animated her pallor. 
 
 " Then in its shadow you uttered the name of 
 Donatella." 
 
 She made a fresh effort, like a person swimming 
 and submerged by a new wave shaking his head above 
 the foam. 
 
 " She began to be yours." 
 
 She felt herself stiffening from head to foot, as if 
 under the effect of a poisoned prick. Her eyes were 
 staring fixedly at the dazzling waters. 
 
 " She must be yours," she said, with the hardness 
 of necessity in her voice, as if to resist with a second 
 shock the terrible things that were struggling to rise 
 from the depth of her fire. 
 
 Seized by violent anguish, incapable of speaking,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 329 
 
 of interrupting with a vain word the lightning-like ap- 
 paritions of her tragic soul, Stelio Effrena stopped, 
 and laid his hand on his companion's arm to make 
 her stop also. 
 
 " Is it not true? " she asked him with almost quiet 
 sweetness, as if her contraction had relaxed sud- 
 denly and her passion had accepted the yoke laid 
 upon it by her will. " Speak to me. I am not afraid 
 of suffering. Let us sit down here. I am a little 
 tired." 
 
 They rested against a low wall in view of the 
 waters. The calm of the winter solstice on the la- 
 goon was so pure that the shape of the clouds and 
 of the objects along the shore seemed given a kind of 
 ideal quality in their reflection there, as if they were 
 being imitated by art. Near and distant things, the 
 red palace of the Da Mula on the canal, and farther 
 the fort of Tessara, had the same distinctness, the 
 black boats with their folded sails, with their nets hung 
 along the masts, seemed to gather in their hulls the 
 feeling of infinite repose that came from the horizon. 
 Human pain seemed powerless to move any of those 
 lines, and all seemed to teach silence, giving man a 
 promise of peace in time. 
 
 " What can I tell you ? " said the young man, in a 
 suffocated voice, almost as if he had been speaking to 
 himself, instead of to the woman, unable to overcome 
 the agitation made up of the certainty of his present 
 love and the consciousness of his desire, which was 
 inexorable as destiny. " Perhaps what you have im- 
 agined is true, perhaps it is only a thought of your 
 own mind. There is to-day only one certain thing 
 which I know : that I love you, and that I recognise
 
 330 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 in you all which is noble. I also know another thing : 
 that I have a work to accomplish and a life to live ac- 
 cording to the disposition of nature. You, too, must 
 remember. On that evening in September I spoke 
 to you at great length of my life and of the genii that 
 lead it to its aim. You know that I can give up 
 nothing. . . ." 
 
 He trembled as if he were holding a sharpened 
 weapon in his hands, and in moving it could not 
 avoid hurting the unarmed. 
 
 " Nothing ; and especially I cannot give up your 
 love, which every day exalts my strength and my 
 hope. But have you not promised me more than 
 love? Are you not capable, for me also, of those 
 things which love cannot do? Do you not wish to be 
 a constant, quickening breath for my life and my 
 work? " 
 
 She was listening, motionless, without so much as 
 the throb of an eyelid. Like an invalid, in whom the 
 action of voluntary motion is suddenly suspended, and 
 who assists, like a spirit in a statue, at a sight full of 
 horror. 
 
 " It is true," he went on, after an anxious pause, 
 recovering his courage, dominating his compassion, 
 feeling that on his sincerity of that moment the fate 
 depended of that free alliance by which he intended 
 to be upraised and not lowered, " It is true ; when 
 I saw you come down that staircase on that night ac- 
 companied by her who had sung, I believed that 
 some secret thought was guiding you not to come 
 alone towards me. . . ." 
 
 She felt a subtle chill run along the roots of her 
 hair and her eye grow dim, although they remained
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 331 
 
 quite dry. Her fingers trembled round the stem of 
 the goblet, while the colours of sky and water tinted 
 the glass that trembled in the sorrowful hand. 
 
 " I believed that you yourself had chosen her. . . . 
 You had the appearance of one who knows and fore- 
 sees. ... I was moved by it." 
 
 She measured by her frightful torture how sweet 
 his falsehood would have been. She longed for him 
 to lie, or be silent. She measured the space that 
 divided her from the canal, from the water that 
 swallows and deadens. 
 
 " There was in her something hostile, as if she 
 were against me. . . . She remained obscure to me, 
 impenetrable. . . . You remember the way she dis- 
 appeared ; her image grew pale, and it was only the 
 desire of her song that remained. You who led her 
 to me have more than once revived her image. You 
 have seen her shadow where it was not." 
 
 She saw the face of death. No other thrust had 
 pierced farther, had wounded her more deeply. 
 " With my own hand ! With my own hand ! " And 
 she heard once more the cry that had been her ruin : 
 " She awaits you ! " And from second to second 
 her knees seemed to give way still more, her worn- 
 out body seemed nearer to obeying the furious im- 
 pulse that was pushing her towards the water. But 
 there remained one lucid point in her, and she con- 
 sidered that that was neither the place nor the time. 
 The sand banks left dry by the low tide were be- 
 ginning to blacken on the lagoon. All of a sudden, 
 the inner storm seemed to lose itself behind a mere 
 appearance. She believed herself to be non-existent, 
 marvelled at seeing the glass shining in her hand,
 
 332 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 lost all sense of her own body. All that was happen- 
 ing was imaginary. Her name was Perdita. The 
 dead summer lay in the depths of the lagoon. Words 
 were only words. 
 
 "Could I love her?" 
 
 One breath more and darkness would have come. 
 As the flame of a candle bends under the wind as if 
 about to separate from the wick, yet still adheres to 
 it by a slight azure fragment, almost by a pale spark, 
 yet will soon kindle and straighten itself again at the 
 ceasing of the wind, the wretched woman's reason 
 came near to being extinguished. The breath of 
 madness passed over her. Terror whitened and 
 convulsed her face. 
 
 He did not look at her, but stared fixedly at the 
 stones. 
 
 " Were I to meet her again, should I long to turn 
 her destiny towards me ? " 
 
 He could see her youthful person again with its 
 curved, powerful figure arising from the sonorous 
 forest among the alternate motions of the violin bows 
 that seemed to draw their occult note from the 
 hidden music that was in her. 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 Again he saw the Hermes-like face, almost ada- 
 mantine in its hardness, filled with some most secret 
 thought, and the frown that made it hostile. 
 
 " And of what avail would that be ? Of what avail 
 would all the vicissitudes and all the necessities of 
 life be against the faith which binds us? Could 
 we two ever resemble meaner lovers who spend 
 their days struggling to overcome each other, weep- 
 ing and cursing? "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 333 
 
 She ground her teeth ; the wild instinct to defend 
 herself, and to hurt as in a desperate struggle over- 
 powered her. The flash of a murderous desire darted 
 on the fluctuations of her thought. 
 
 " No, you shall not have her " 
 
 And the cruelty of her master seemed monstrous 
 to her. She seemed to be bleeding under the meas- 
 ured and repeated blows like the man she had once 
 seen on the white road in a mining town. The hor- 
 rible scene returned to her memory : the man pros- 
 trated by a blow from a mace rising and trying to 
 throw himself against his enemy, and the mace that 
 was hurled at him again, the blows aimed one after 
 another by a firm, calm hand, their dull thud on the 
 man's head, the obstinate rising, the tenaciousness of 
 life, the flesh of his face reduced to a kind of red pulp. 
 The images of the frightful memory mingled with the 
 reality of her torture in her mental incoherence. 
 She rose as if moved by a spring, impelled by the 
 savage force that had invaded her veins. The glass 
 broke in her convulsed hand, wounded her, fell at her 
 feet in atoms. 
 
 The man started. Her motionless silence had de- 
 ceived him, and now he looked at her and saw her; 
 and again he saw, as on that evening when the fire- 
 brands had crackled, the features of folly outline 
 themselves on her disordered face. He stammered 
 as if in pain, but impatience was boiling beneath his 
 dismay. 
 
 " Ah," said the woman, overcoming her tremor 
 with a bitterness that contorted her mouth, " how 
 strong I am ! Another time your wounds should not 
 be so slow, since I resist so little, my friend."
 
 334 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She noticed that the blood was dripping from 
 her fingers; she wrapped them in her handker- 
 chief; crimson stains spotted it. She glanced at 
 the fragments of glass scattered shining on the 
 ground. 
 
 " The goblet is broken. You had praised it 
 too much. Shall we raise a mausoleum for it 
 here?" 
 
 She was very bitter, almost mocking, her lips con- 
 tracted by a sharp laugh that had no resonance. He 
 was silent, disappointed, full of rancour at having 
 seen the destruction of so beautiful an effort as that 
 perfect vase. 
 
 " Let us imitate Nero, having already imitated 
 Xerxes." 
 
 She felt even more acutely than her friend the 
 harshness of her sarcasm, the dissonance of her voice, 
 the malignity of that laugh that was like a spasm of 
 her muscles. But she was unable to recover her 
 hold over her soul, and she saw it slipping away from 
 her will, irreparably, like the sailors on a ship from 
 whose grasp the handle has slipped and who remain 
 inert before the crane that turns fearfully backwards, 
 unfolding, unreeling chains and cables. She felt an 
 acrid, irresistible need of scorning, scattering, tread- 
 ing under foot as if invaded by some malignant 
 demon. Every trace of goodness and tenderness had 
 disappeared, and every hope and every illusion. She 
 could discern in the man's glance the same shadow 
 that passed over her own. 
 
 " Do I annoy you ? Would you like to return to 
 Venice alone? Would you like to leave dead sum- 
 mer behind you? The tide is getting low, but there
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 335 
 
 is still enough water for one who has no intention of 
 returning to the surface. Would you like me to try? 
 Could I be more docile?" 
 
 She was saying these insensate things with a hiss in 
 her voice ; she had become almost livid, as if all at 
 once consumed by some corroding poison. And he 
 remembered having seen that very same mask on her 
 face one distant day of pleasure, fury, and sadness. 
 His heart contracted and then relaxed. 
 
 "Ah, if I have hurt you, forgive me," he said, try- 
 ing to take one of her hands so as to quiet her with 
 an act of gentleness. 
 
 " But had we not started together towards this 
 point? Was it not you . . ." 
 
 She interrupted him, impatient at the gentleness 
 of his usual balsam. 
 
 " Hurt me? And what does it matter? Have no 
 pity, have no pity. Do not weep over the beautiful 
 eyes of the wounded hare. . . ." 
 
 She was walking along the footpath by the side 
 of -the purplish canal, passing in front of doorsteps 
 where the women still sat in' the waning light with 
 their baskets full of glass beads on their knees. The 
 words broke between her teeth. The contraction of 
 her lips changed into a frenzied convulsion of laughter 
 that sounded like a peal of heart-rending sobs. Her 
 companion shuddered, spoke to her under his breath 
 in his dismay, followed by the curious gaze of those 
 who looked on. 
 
 " Be calm ! Be calm ! Oh, Foscarina, I beg of 
 you ! Do not behave like this, I beg of you. Soon 
 we will have reached the shore. We shall soon be 
 home again. ... I will tell you. , . . Then you
 
 336 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 will understand. . . . We are in the street now. . . , 
 Are you listening to me? " 
 
 She had discerned a woman enceinte standing on 
 one of the doorsteps. She was a big woman, and 
 filled up the space between the door-posts ; she was 
 eating a piece of bread with a far-off, dreamy look. 
 
 "Are you listening? Foscarina, I beg of you. 
 Take courage ; lean on me." 
 
 He feared she would fall in her horrible convulsion, 
 and held himself ready to support her. But she only 
 quickened her pace, unable to answer, suffocating 
 her peals of laughter with her bound-up hand. She 
 seemed to feel the skin of her face cracking in her 
 spasm. 
 
 "What is the matter? What is it you see? 
 
 Never will that man forget the change in those eyes. 
 They stared sightless with a deadly stillness, in spite 
 of the implacable heaving as if their lids had been cut 
 off; and yet they saw, they saw something which was 
 not there ; they were full of an unknown vision, occu- 
 pied by a monstrous image that perhaps generated 
 that laughter full of anguish and madness. 
 
 " Would you like to stop ? Would you like a little 
 water? " 
 
 They had come out again on the Fondamenta dei 
 Vetrai, where the shops were now shut, where their 
 steps re-echoed, where the bursts of atrocious merri- 
 ment seemed to prolong themselves as if under a 
 portico. How long was it since they had passed 
 along that dead canal? How much of their life had 
 passed away meanwhile? How much shactow had 
 they left behind them? 
 
 In the gondola, wrapped in her mantle, paler than
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 337 
 
 she had been on the way to the Dolo, the woman 
 tried to control her spasms, holding her jaws with 
 both hands, but from time to time the malignant laugh 
 would escape, hissing in the sleepy silence, breaking 
 through the rhythm of the two oars ; she would press 
 her hands to her mouth more firmly, as if she were 
 trying to suffocate herself. Between her veil raised 
 above the eyebrows and the blood-stained handker- 
 chief, her eyes remained open and staring on the 
 immensity of the twilight. 
 
 The lagoon and the darkness swallowed up all 
 forms and all colours ; only the groups of posts, like a 
 procession of monks on a pathway full of ashes, 
 interrupted the grey monotony. Venice in the back- 
 ground was smoking like the remains of a vast 
 pillage. 
 
 When the roll of the bells reached them her soul 
 remembered, her tears fell, the horror was conquered. 
 
 The woman took her hands from her face, bent a 
 little towards her friend's shoulder, recovered her 
 voice to say. . . . 
 
 " Forgive me ! " 
 
 She humbled herself, ashamed ; each act of hers 
 from that day silently begged for pardon and 
 oblivion. 
 
 A new grace seemed born in her. She became 
 lighter, she talked in a lower voice. She would move 
 delicately about the room dressed in quiet stuffs, veil- 
 ing with the shadow of her lashes her beautiful eyes, 
 that dared not look on her friend. The fear of 
 oppressing him, of being irksome to him, gave wings
 
 338 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 to her instinct. Her ever waking sensibility watched 
 and listened round the inaccessible door of his 
 thoughts. She reached the point at certain hours of 
 feeling the rhythm of that other life beating under 
 her own pulse. 
 
 Her soul, intent on creating a new feeling that 
 should be capable of conquering the violence of in- 
 stinct, revealed in her face with resplendent signs the 
 difficulty of her secret task. Her supreme art had 
 never before found expressions so singular; never 
 had significances so obscure come to life in the 
 shadow of her features. Looking at her one day, her 
 friend spoke of the infinite power accumulated in the 
 shadow produced by the helmet on the face of II 
 Pensieroso. 
 
 " Michael Angelo," he said, " has concentrated all 
 the effort of human meditation in a small hollow of 
 his marble. As the stream fills the hollowed palm, 
 so the eternal mystery by which we are surrounded 
 fills the small space opened by the Titan's chisel in 
 the material that had come from the mountain, and 
 it has remained there and grown denser with the 
 centuries. I only know the changing shadow of 
 your own face, Fosca, that sometimes rivals it in 
 intensity, and even at times surpasses it." 
 
 She stretched herself out towards the Life-giver, 
 yearning for poetry and knowledge. She became to 
 him the ideal figure of her who listens and under- 
 stands. The wild, powerful fold of her hair imitated 
 the impatience of wings round her pure forehead. 
 A beautiful phrase would suddenly draw the tears 
 from her eyes as if it had been a drop which falls 
 into a vessel that is full and causes it to overflow.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 339 
 
 She read out to him pages from the sovereign 
 poets. The august shape of the Book seemed mag- 
 nified by her attitude in holding it, by her gesture in 
 turning the pages, by the religious gravity of her 
 attention, by the harmony of the lips that changed the 
 printed signs into vocal numbers. In reading the 
 poetry of Dante she became as noble and severe as 
 the sibyls in the dome of the Sixtine Chapel, bear- 
 ing the weight of the sacred volumes with all the 
 heroism of their bodies agitated by the breath of 
 prophecy. The lines of her attitude, down to the 
 slightest folds of her garment, together with her 
 modulations, revealed the divine text. 
 
 When the last syllable had fallen she saw her 
 friend rise impetuously, trembling with fever, wander- 
 ing about the room, agitated by the god, panting in 
 the anxiety imparted to him by the confused tumult 
 of his creative force. She saw him coming towards 
 her with radiant eyes transfigured by a sudden beati- 
 tude, illumined by an inner flame, as if a sovereign 
 hope had all of a sudden been kindled iivhim, or an 
 immortal truth revealed. With a shudder that abol- 
 ished in the blood the memory of every caress, she 
 saw him come to her and bend over her knees, over- 
 thrown by the terrible shock of the world he was 
 carrying in himself, by the upheaval that accom- 
 panied some hidden metamorphosis. She knew pain 
 and pleasure ; not knowing whether his were pleasure 
 or pain, she was filled with piety, fear, and reverence 
 in feeling that voluptuous body labouring thus in the 
 genesis of the idea. She was silent, she waited, she 
 adored the unknown thoughts in the head that rested 
 on her knees.
 
 340 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 But she understood his great striving better when, 
 one day after she had read to him, he spoke to her 
 of the Exile. 
 
 " Imagine, Fosca, if you can without bewilderment, 
 the fire and rush of the vast soul, in uniting itself to 
 the elementary energies in order to conceive its 
 world. Imagine an Alighieri on the road to exile, 
 already possessed by his vision, an implacable pil- 
 grim driven from land to land by his passion and 
 his misery, from refuge to refuge, across fields, across 
 mountains, along rivers, along seas, in every season, 
 suffocated by the sweetness of spring, stricken by the 
 harshness of winter, ever alert, attentive, his vora- 
 cious eyes ever open, anxious with the inner travail 
 that was forming the gigantic work. Imagine the 
 fulness of that soul in the contrast between common 
 necessities and the flaming apparitions that suddenly 
 came to meet him at a turning of the road, on some 
 river bank, in a rocky cave, on the slope of a hill, in 
 the thick of a forest, in a meadow bright with the 
 song of the lark. Manifold life poured into his 
 spirit by means of his senses, transfiguring the 
 abstract ideas that filled him into living images. 
 Wherever he went unexpected sources of poetry 
 flowed from his sorrowful step. The voice, the 
 appearance, and the essence of the elements entered 
 into his occult labour and increased it with sounds, 
 with lines, with colours, with movements, with innu- 
 merable mysteries. Fire, air, earth, and water worked 
 in collaboration at the sacred poem, pervaded the 
 sum of its doctrine, warmed it, modified and watered 
 it, covered it with leaves and flowers. . . . Open this 
 Christian book and imagine the statue of a Greek
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 341 
 
 god on the other side. Do you not see shadow or 
 light break from the one as from the other, the flash 
 or the wind of the sky? " 
 
 Then she began to feel that her own life was 
 drifting into the all-absorbing work, that her own 
 soul was entering drop by drop into the person of the 
 drama, that her aspects, her attitudes, her gestures, 
 and her accents were contributing to the formation 
 of the figure of the heroine " living beyond life." 
 She became the prey of those voracious eyes which 
 she sometimes found fixed upon her with intolerable 
 violence. She became acquainted with another man- 
 ner of being possessed. It seemed to her that she 
 was dissolving into her elements in the fire of that 
 intellect, only to be afterwards more perfectly re- 
 composed according to the necessities of a heroism 
 that was to dominate destiny. Her secret task 
 being in harmony with the virtue of the life which 
 was being created, she was attracted by the desire 
 of producing no discord between herself and the 
 image which was to be like her. Art seconded the 
 apparition of the new feeling she had prepared. 
 
 Nevertheless, she suffered from the image that 
 threw its shadow on the reality of renunciation and 
 sorrow. A strange ambiguity was born of the 
 resemblance between the image and her own being. 
 Sometimes it seemed to her that her hidden effort 
 was preparing her for her success on the stage, and 
 not for the conquest of her conscience over the 
 darkness of instinct. It seemed to her sometimes 
 that she was losing her human sincerity, and was 
 only in the state of fictitious concentration in which 
 she was wont to put herself while studying the
 
 342 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 character of the tragic part she was to incarnate. 
 Thus she became acquainted with another torment. 
 She shut and contracted her soul under his pene- 
 trating glance as if to prevent his piercing her and 
 robbing her of her secret life. She grew to be terri- 
 fied of the Seer. " He will read in my soul the 
 silent words which he will put on the lips of his crea- 
 tion, and I shall only pronounce them on the stage 
 under the mask." She felt her spontaneity being 
 arrested. She underwent strange bewilderments and 
 discouragements, whence she would rise at times with 
 an impetuous need of breaking that spell, of making 
 herself different, of separating herself from that image 
 which was to be like her, of marring those lines of 
 beauty that imprisoned her and forced her to a deter- 
 mined sacrifice. Was there not also a virgin thirst- 
 ing with love and yearning for joy in the tragedy, a 
 virgin in whom a great spirit recognised the living 
 apparition of his lightest dream, the Victory so often 
 invoked that was to crown his life? And was there 
 not also a loving woman no longer young, whose one 
 foot was already in the shadow, and who had but a 
 short step to take in order to disappear? More than 
 once she was tempted to contradict that resignation 
 by some violent act. 
 
 Then she would tremble at the possibility of once 
 more falling into the horror, of being once more 
 seized by the horrible fury, grasped by the insidi- 
 ous beast that was not killed yet, but was liv- 
 ing and watching in the dark for the right moment 
 to spring upon her. Like a penitent, she increased 
 her fervour because of the danger, hardened her dis- 
 cipline, sharpened her vigilance; she repeated with
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 343 
 
 a kind of intoxication the act of supreme abandon- 
 ment that had risen from the depths of her misery 
 before the purifying fire. ..." You must have all ; 
 I shall rest content with seeing you live, with seeing 
 your joy. And do with me what you will." 
 
 Then he loved her for the unexpected visions she 
 brought him, for the mysterious sense of inner events 
 that she communicated to him by her vicissitudes 
 of expression. It astonished him to find that the 
 lines of a face, the movements of a human body 
 could so powerfully touch and fertilise the intellect. 
 He shuddered and turned pale one day on seeing 
 her enter the room with her silent step, her face 
 fixed in an extraordinarily calm sorrow, as if she were 
 coming from the depths of wisdom whence all human 
 agitations seem a play of the wind in the dust of 
 an endless road. 
 
 " Ah, I have created you, I have created you ! " he 
 cried, deluded by the intensity of the hallucination, 
 thinking he saw his heroine herself standing on 
 a threshold of the distant room occupied by the 
 treasures taken from the tombs of the Atrides. 
 " Stop a moment ! Do not move your eyelids 1 
 Keep your eyes motionless like two stones ! You 
 are blind. And you see all that others do not see. 
 And nothing can be hidden from you. And here in 
 this room the man you love has revealed his love to 
 another, who is still trembling at the revelation. And 
 they are still here, and their hands have not long been 
 parted, and their love is in the air. And the room is 
 full of funeral treasures, and on two tables are dis- 
 posed the riches that covered the bodies of Agamem- 
 non and Cassandra. There are the chests full of
 
 344 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 necklaces, and here are the vases full of ashes, and 
 the balcony is open looking out to the plain of Argos 
 and the distant mountains. And it is sunset, and all 
 this terrible gold gleams In the shadow. Do you 
 understand? You are there on the threshold, led by 
 the Nurse. You are blind, and nothing is unknown 
 to you. Stop a moment ! " 
 
 He was speaking in the sudden fever of invention. 
 The scene appeared and disappeared before him, 
 submerged in a torrent of poetry. 
 
 " What will you do ? What will you say ? " 
 
 The actress felt a chill in the roots of her hair. 
 Her soul vibrated with sonorous strength to the 
 limits of her body. She became blind and pro- 
 phetic. The cloud of tragedy descended and stopped 
 above her head. 
 
 "What will you say? You will call them. You 
 will call one and the other by name in the silence full 
 of great royal spoils." 
 
 The actress could hear the throb of her blood, her 
 voice was to resound in the silence of thousands of 
 years from the distances of time. It was to reawaken 
 the ancient sorrow of men and heroes. 
 
 " You will take their hands and you will feel their 
 two lives stretching towards each other with all their 
 strength and gaze fixedly at each other across your 
 motionless sorrow, as if it were a crystal about to 
 break." 
 
 The blindness of immortal statues was in her eyes. 
 She saw herself sculptured in the great silence, and 
 felt the quiver of the dumb crowd, seized at the heart 
 by the sublime power of the attitude. 
 
 "And then, and then?"
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 345 
 
 The Life-giver rushed towards her as if he would 
 * ave struck her to draw sparks from her. 
 
 " You must call Cassandra from her sleep, you 
 must feel her ashes live once more in your hands, 
 she must be present in your vision. Will you do it? 
 Do you understand? Your living soul must touch 
 the ancient soul and mingle with it into one only 
 soul and one only misfortune, so that the error of 
 time seems destroyed and that unity of life to which 
 I tend by the effort of my art be made manifest. 
 Cassandra is in you and you are in her. Have you 
 not loved her? Do you not also love the daughter 
 of Priam? Who that has once heard it will ever for- 
 get, who will ever forget the sound of your voice and 
 the convulsion of your lips at the first cry of the 
 prophetic fury. . . . ' O Earth ! O Apollo ! ' I can 
 see you again, deaf and dumb on your car, with 
 that aspect on your face of a wild beast newly cap- 
 tured. Ah, but among so many terrible cries there 
 were some infinitely soft, sad tones. The old men 
 compared you to ' the tawny nightingale.' How are 
 they? How are they? the words when you re- 
 member your beautiful river? And when the old 
 men question you concerning the love of the god, do 
 you not remember them? " 
 
 The tragic actress throbbed as if the breath of the 
 god were again invading her. She had become an 
 ardent ductile matter subject to all the animations of 
 the poet. 
 
 " Do you not remember them?" 
 
 " O espousals, espousals of Paris fatal to the dear 
 ones ! O you, paternal waters of Scamandros, then 
 on your shores my youth fed upon you ! "
 
 346 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 "Ah, divine one! Your melody does not let one 
 forget the syllables of ^Eschylus. I remember. The 
 soul of the crowd, gripped by the ' lamentation of 
 discordant sounds,' unbent and was blessed by that 
 melodious sigh, and each of us received the vision of 
 her distant years and her innocent bliss. You can 
 say, ' I have been Cassandra.' In speaking of her 
 you will remember an anterior life. . . . Her mask of 
 gold shall be in your hands. . . ." 
 
 He seized her hands, unconsciously torturing them. 
 She felt no pain. Both were intent on the sparks 
 generated by their mingled forces ; one same electric 
 vibration ran along their nerves. 
 
 " You are there, close to the spoil of the enslaved 
 princess, and you are feeling her mask. . . . What 
 will you say? " 
 
 They seemed in the pause to be waiting for the 
 flash to illumine them. The eyes of the actress 
 became once more motionless; their blindness filled 
 them once more. Her whole face became as marble. 
 Instinctively the Life-giver left her hands free, and 
 they sketched the gesture of feeling for the sepulchral 
 gold. In a voice that created the tangible form she 
 said : 
 
 " How large her mouth is !" 
 
 He throbbed with almost fearful suspense. 
 
 "You see her, then?" 
 
 She remained silent with her intent, sightless 
 eyes. 
 
 " I too can see her. It is large, the horrible effort 
 of divination had dilated it ; she cried out, cursed, and 
 lamented ceaselessly. Can you imagine her mouth in 
 silence? "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 34; 
 
 Slowly, still in the same attitude, almost in ecstasy, 
 she said : 
 
 " How wonderful is her silence !" 
 
 She seemed to be repeating words suggested to 
 her by some mysterious genii ; while it seemed to the 
 poet as he heard them that he himself had been 
 about to utter them. A deep tremor shook him as 
 if he had been assisting at a miracle. 
 
 "And her eyes?" he asked, trembling. "What 
 colour do you think her eyes were? " 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 The marble lines of her face changed as if a slight 
 wave of suffering had passed there. A furrow carved 
 itself between her eyebrows. 
 
 " Black, perhaps," he added softly. 
 
 She spoke. 
 
 " They were not black, but they seemed so because 
 in the prophetic ardour the pupils were so dilated 
 that they swallowed up the iris. . . ." 
 
 She stopped as if her breath were about to fail her. 
 A thin veil of moisture was spreading over her fore- 
 head. Stelio gazed at her, silent and very pale ; and 
 the interval was filled by the deep throbs of his 
 heart. 
 
 " In the pauses," continued the revealer, with pain- 
 ful slowness, when she had wiped the foam from her 
 livid lips, " her eyes were sweet and sad as two 
 violets." 
 
 She stopped again, breathless, with the appearance 
 of one who dreams and suffers in the dream. Her 
 mouth seemed parched, her temples were wet. 
 
 " Thus they must have been before they were closed 
 for ever."
 
 348 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Henceforth he was entirely carried away by the 
 lyric whirlwind ; he breathed only in the inflamed 
 ether of his poetry. The musical sentiment that 
 had generated the drama determined itself in the 
 forms of the Prelude he was composing. On the 
 sonorous fulcrum the tragedy found its perfect bal- 
 ance between the two forces that were to animate it, 
 the power of the stage and the power of the orchestra. 
 A motive of extraordinary vigour marked in the sym- 
 phonic ocean the apparition of the ancient Fate. 
 
 " You will perform the Agamemnon in the new 
 theatre, the Antigone, and lastly the Victory of Man. 
 My tragedy is a battle : it celebrates the renovation 
 of the Drama, with the discomfiture of the monstrous 
 will that dragged down the races of Labdacus and 
 Atreus. It opens with the moan of an ancient victim, 
 and closes with a cry of light." 
 
 Revived by the melody, the Moyra lived before 
 him again in visible shape such as she appeared be- 
 fore the wild eyes of the Coefore, by the mound of 
 the slaughtered king. 
 
 " Do you remember," he said to the actress, in 
 order to signify that violent presence, " do you re- 
 member the decapitation of Marcus Crassus in Plu- 
 tarch's narration ? One day I proposed drawing from 
 it an episode for the stage. Under the royal tent 
 the Armenian, Artavasdes, is entertaining Orodes, the 
 king of the Parthians, at a great banquet, and the cap- 
 tains sit drinking round the table; and the spirit of 
 Dionysius invades those barbarians, who are not in- 
 sensible to the power of rhythm, because a performer 
 of tragedies, called Jason Trallianus, is singing the 
 adventures of Agave in the Bacchantes of Euripides.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 349 
 
 They have not yet risen from the table when Sillaces 
 enters, bearing the head of Crassus, and having 
 saluted the king, throws it bleeding in their midst. 
 A great cry of joy arises from the Parthians. Then 
 Jason gives the garments of Pentheus to one of the 
 chorus, while he, seizing the head of Crassus, and 
 full of the Dionysian fury, sings these verses : 
 
 " ' Portiamo dai monti 
 
 alle case un' edera tagliata di recente 
 insigne preda. . . .' 1 
 
 " And the chorus leaps with joy, and as Agave tells 
 them how she had caught that lion cub without a 
 net, the chorus asks, Who had wounded him first, 
 and Agave answers, 
 
 " ' Mio h il vanto. . . .' * 
 
 " But Pomaxcethres, who had been still supping, 
 starts to his feet and tears the head from the hands of 
 the furious actor, crying out that it is he, rather than 
 Jason, who should say those words, because he is the 
 slayer of the Roman. Do you feel the portentous 
 beauty of the scene? the fierce face of life suddenly 
 flashes by the side of the waxen mask of metal, the 
 odour of human blood excites the rhythmic fury of 
 the chorus, a death-bringing arm tears asunder the 
 veils of the tragic fiction. This unusual, astonishing 
 epilogue closing the expedition of Crassus fills me 
 with enthusiasm. Well, the eruption of the ancient 
 Moyra in my modern tragedy is like the sudden ar- 
 rival of Sillaces at the banquet of the Armenian. At 
 
 1 " Let us take home from the hills the 
 
 newly cut ivy as an illustrious 
 
 spoil. . . ." 
 a " Mine is the boast. . . ."
 
 350 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 the beginning, on the loggia that guards the Cyclopic 
 walls and the gate of the lions, the virgin has in her 
 hands the book of the Tragedians, and is reading the 
 lamentation of Antigone. The fatal divinity is en- 
 closed in the book, dominating the images of pain and 
 crime. But those images are called up by the living 
 words ; and close to the pure peplum of the Theban 
 martyr glows the insidious crimson stretched out by 
 Clytemnestra, and the Heroes of the Orestidae seem 
 to recommence a new life while a man explores their 
 tombs in the Agora. They seem to move at the 
 back of the stage like shadows, impelled by obscure 
 agitation; they seem to bend down listening to the 
 dialogues, to poison the air with their breath. Sud- 
 denly a cry is heard announcing the great event. 
 Here comes the man who has uncovered the tombs 
 and has seen the face of the Atridae. Here he comes 
 irradiated by the wonders of death and of that gold. 
 He stands there, like one delirious. Their souls are 
 trembling. Is the fable rising from the soil to delude 
 men once more? Their souls are anxious and trem- 
 bling. Suddenly the power of the curse and ruin 
 rushes upon them and seizes them to drag them 
 towards infamous crimes ; the desperate struggle 
 begins. The tragedy no longer wears its motionless 
 mask, but shows its naked face ; and the book that 
 the unconscious virgin was reading can no longer be 
 re-opened without a shudder, because their souls have 
 felt that that distant horror has become living and 
 present, and that they are breathing and raving in 
 it, as in an inevitable reality. The Past is in action. 
 The illusion of Time has fallen. Life is one." 
 The very greatness of his conception filled him
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 351 
 
 with dismay. At times he would look anxiously 
 about him, examine the horizon, question dumb 
 things as if he were calling for help or hoping for a 
 message. He would lie in silence for a long time, his 
 eyes shut, waiting. 
 
 " I must raise this enormous mass at one stroke 
 before the eyes of the multitude. In this, you see, 
 lies the difficulty of my prelude. This first effort is 
 the greatest that my work will demand of me. At 
 the same time I must call my world forth from 
 nothing and place the manifold soul in the musical 
 state most apt to receive the unusual revelation. 
 The orchestra must produce this miracle. ' Art, like 
 magic, is practical metaphysics,' Daniele Glauro 
 says. And he is right." 
 
 He would sometimes come to the house of his 
 friend panting and agitated as if pursued by Erinnys. 
 She never asked him questions, but her whole person 
 would soothe the unquiet one. 
 
 " I was afraid," he said one day, smiling, " afraid 
 of being suffocated. . . . You believe I am a little 
 mad, do you not? Do you remember that stormy 
 evening when I returned from the Lido? How sweet 
 you were, Fosca ! Not long before on the Bridge of 
 Rialto I had found a Motive. I had translated the 
 words of the element into notes. . . . Do you know 
 what a Motive is? It is a small spring that may give 
 birth to a flock of streams, a small seed that may give 
 birth to a wreath of forests, a small spark that may 
 give birth to an endless chain of conflagrations: a 
 nucleus producing infinite strength. There is no 
 more powerful thing in the world of ideal origins, nor 
 more virtuous organ of generation ; and there is no
 
 352 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 greater joy for an active mind than that which may 
 be given him by the developments of that energy. . . . 
 Joy, yes, but also terror sometimes, my friend." 
 
 He laughed his ingenuous laugh. The manner in 
 which he spoke of these things was a symptom of the 
 extraordinary faculty which likened his spirit to that 
 of the primitive transfigurations of nature. There 
 was a deep analogy between the spontaneous forma- 
 tion of myths and his instinctive necessity of animat- 
 ing all that fell under his senses. 
 
 " A little while ago I had begun developing the 
 Motive of that stormy evening, which I shall call the 
 Wind-bags of yEolus. Here it is. It is this." 
 
 He went to the keyboard and struck a few notes 
 with one hand. 
 
 " No more than this, but you cannot imagine the 
 generating force of these few notes. A storm of 
 music has arisen from them, and I have not been able 
 to master it. ... I have been overcome, suffocated, 
 forced to fly." 
 
 He laughed again, but his soul was swaying like 
 the sea. 
 
 " The Wind-bags of Prince ^Eolus, opened by the 
 companions of Ulysses. Do you remember it? The 
 imprisoned winds break forth and push the ship back. 
 Man trembled with fear." 
 
 But his soul could find no rest, and nothing could 
 free it of its agitated workings. And he kissed the 
 hands of his friend, and walked away from her and 
 wandered about the room, stopping before the in- 
 strument that Donatella had touched in singing 
 Claudio's melody; restlessly he went to the win- 
 dow, saw the leafless garden, the beautiful solitary
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 353 
 
 clouds, the sacred towers. His aspiration went out 
 to the musical creature who was to sing his hymns 
 at the summit of the tragic symphonies. 
 In a low limpid voice the woman said : 
 " If only Donatella were here with us ! " 
 He turned, took a few steps towards her, and looked 
 at her fixedly, silently. She smiled her slight con- 
 cealing smile on seeing him so near to her and yet 
 so far away. She felt that he loved no one at that 
 moment: not her and not Donatella; but that he 
 considered them both as pure instruments of his art, 
 as forces to be used, " bows to be drawn." He was 
 burning in his own poetry, and she was there with her 
 poor wounded heart, with her secret torture and her 
 silent prayer, intent on nothing but the preparation 
 of her sacrifice, ready to pass away beyond love and 
 life as the heroine of the future drama. 
 
 "Ah, what is it that could draw you near me, that 
 could throw you on my faithful heart, quivering with 
 another anguish?" she thought, seeing him estranged 
 and lost in his dream. " A great sorrow perhaps, a 
 sudden blow, a cruel disappointment, an irreparable 
 evil." 
 
 There returned to her memory the verse of Gaspara 
 Stama which he had praised : - 
 
 " Vivere ardendo e non sentire il male ! " 
 
 And she remembered his sudden pallor when she 
 had stopped in the path between the two walls, and 
 had declared her first titles of nobility in the struggle 
 to live. 
 
 " Ah, if only one day you could be brought to feel 
 the value of a devotion such as mine, of a servitude
 
 354 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 such as the one I offer you, if you were truly to need 
 me one day, and, discouraged, you should draw a new 
 faith from me, and weary, you should draw your 
 strength from me ! " 
 
 She was reduced to invoking sorrow to strengthen 
 her hope and while saying to herself " if only one 
 day ! " . . . the sense occupied her, the sense of time 
 that flies, the sense of the flame that is consuming 
 itself, of the body that is fading, of the infinite things 
 that wear out and perish. Henceforth each day must 
 dig its mark in her face, discolour her lips, destroy 
 her hair; henceforth each day was in the service of 
 old age, would hasten the work of destruction in her 
 miserable flesh. " What then? " 
 
 Once more she recognised that it was desire, un- 
 conquerable desire, that forged all the illusions and 
 all the hopes which seemed to help her in accom- 
 plishing " what even love cannot do." 
 
 She recognised that every effort to root it out 
 would be vain, and, discouraged, she saw the artifice 
 into which her soul had been forced by her will drop 
 away in an instant. With secret shame she felt how 
 miserably she resembled at that moment the actress 
 who lays aside her mask on coming away from the 
 stage. In pronouncing those words that had inter- 
 rupted the silence and expressed an unreal regret 
 with the accents of sincerity, had she not been like 
 one reciting a part? But she had suffered, but she 
 had wrung her heart, but she had extracted that 
 sweetness from the bitterness of her blood. What 
 then? 
 
 She recognised that the torturing constraint of 
 those days had not succeeded in creating in her even
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 355 
 
 a symptom of the new feeling by which love was to be 
 made sublime. She was like those gardeners who 
 with their shears have given an artificial shape to 
 tenacious plants which still preserve their powerful 
 trunk and all their roots intact, and outrun the de- 
 sign with rapid expansion, if the work of the shears 
 round their branches be not assiduous. Her effort 
 was therefore as useless as it was painful, since it only 
 had an outward efficacy, leaving her depths un- 
 changed ; on the contrary even increasing there the 
 intensity of her evil by compressing it Her secret 
 task, therefore, was reduced to a constant dissimula- 
 tion. Was it worth while living for this? 
 
 She could not and would not go on living except 
 on condition of at last finding her harmony. But the 
 experience of those days had done nothing beyond 
 making the discord greater between her goodness 
 and her desire, had only succeeded in sharpening 
 her restlessness and her sadness, or in losing itself 
 entirely in the whirl of the creative soul that was at- 
 tracting her to mould her like a plastic substance. 
 She was indeed so far removed from the harmony 
 she sought that she had at one moment felt her 
 spontaneity ceasing and her sincerity clouding itself; 
 a dull ferment of rebellion swelling her heart and a 
 threatened return of the feared madness. 
 
 Was it not the same woman sitting in shadow 
 among the cushions of the divan who had said to 
 her friend one evening in October burnt up by the 
 poison, " It is necessary; I must die "? Was it not 
 the same woman, was it not the same woman who 
 had risen thence when he had prodded her and had 
 sprung upon him as if to devour him?
 
 356 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 If the young man's turbid desire had then caused 
 her to suffer cruelly, she now suffered still more 
 cruelly in observing that his ardour had quieted itself 
 and that a kind of reserve had taken its place in her 
 friend, a kind of reserve that was sometimes im- 
 patient of the gentlest caress. She was ashamed of 
 her regret, seeing that he was possessed by his idea 
 and intent on concentrating all his energies on his men- 
 tal effort alone. But a dark rancour would master 
 her of an evening when he took his leave of her, and 
 blind suspicions at night tormented her sleepless soul. 
 
 She yielded to the nightly evil. Throbbing and 
 feverish in the darkness of a gondola cabin, she 
 wandered along the canal, hesitated before giving 
 the oarsman the name of a distant Rio, tried to turn 
 back, sobbed, suffocated over her wound, felt her 
 pain becoming intolerable, inclined herself towards the 
 lethal fascination of the water, conversed with death, 
 then gave herself up to her misery. She watched 
 the house of her friend. She remained there during 
 long hours in fearful and useless expectation. 
 
 They were her worst agonies those which she en- 
 dured in that melancholy Rio della Panada that ends 
 in a bridge under which the mortuary island of San 
 Michele was visible in the open lagoon. The old 
 Gothic palace at the corner of San Canciano was 
 like a suspended ruin that must all at once crash 
 down upon her and bury her. The black peate went 
 to pieces along the corroded walls, uncovered by the 
 low tide, exhaling the odour of dissolution ; and once 
 she heard the little birds awakening at dawn in the 
 garden of the Poor Clares. 
 
 " To go away ! " The necessity of the act came
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 357 
 
 upon her; suddenly urgent. She had already told her 
 friend on one memorable day : " Now it seems to me 
 that there is only one thing I can do : go away, dis- 
 appear, and leave you free with your fate. This 
 thing I can do which even love could not do." 
 Henceforth delay was no longer possible ; she must 
 break through every hesitation ; she must emerge at 
 last from that kind of fatal immobility of events, in 
 which she had been agitated for so long between life 
 and death, as if she had fallen into the dumb troubled 
 water, close to the sepulchral island, and were strug- 
 gling there in anguish, feeling the soft sand give way 
 beneath her feet, ever believing herself to be swal- 
 lowed up, ever having before her eyes the level 
 stretch of that great calm, and never drowning. . . . 
 Nothing indeed had happened, nothing was hap- 
 pening. Since that October dawn their outward life 
 had continued unchanged. No word had been pro- 
 nounced that might have established an end, that 
 could point to an interruption. It almost seemed as 
 if the sweet promise of the visit to the Euganean hills 
 were about to be kept, as the time for the blossoming 
 of the peach-trees drew nearer. Nevertheless, she 
 felt at that moment the absolute impossibility of going 
 on living as she was then living by the side of her 
 beloved. It was a definite and unquestionable feeling, 
 like the sensation of one who finds himself in a burn- 
 ing house, of one who is stopped on a mountain-side 
 by a chasm, or of one who in the desert has drunk of 
 the last drop from his gourd. There was in her 
 something that was fully accomplished as in the tree 
 that has given forth all its fruit, as in the field where 
 the harvest has been reaped, as in the current that has
 
 358 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 reached the sea. Her inner necessity was as the 
 necessity of natural facts, of tides, seasons, and celes- 
 tial vicissitudes ; she accepted it without examination. 
 
 And her courage revived, her soul grew stronger, 
 her activity reawakened, the virile qualities of the 
 leader rose up in her once more. In a very short 
 time she settled her tour, reassembled her people, 
 fixed the date of her departure. " You must go and 
 work down there among the barbarians beyond the 
 ocean," she told herself harshly. " You must still go 
 on wandering from town to town, from hotel to hotel, 
 from theatre to theatre, and every night you will raise 
 a howl in the crowd that pays you ; you will earn 
 much money, you will come back laden with gold 
 and with wisdom unless it so happens that you remain 
 crushed by chance under a wheel at a crossing of the 
 roads some foggy day. 
 
 " Who knows ! " she added. " From whom have 
 you received the order to go away? From some one 
 who is within you, deep, deep within you, and who 
 sees that which you cannot see, like the blind woman 
 in the tragedy. Who knows whether down there on 
 one of those great peaceful rivers your soul will not 
 find its harmony, and your lips will not learn that 
 smile which they have so often attempted in vain ! 
 Perhaps you will discover a few white hairs and that 
 smile in your mirror at the same time. Go in peace." 
 
 And she began preparing her viaticum for her 
 journey. 
 
 From time to time the breath of the premature 
 season seemed to be passing in the February sky.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 359 
 
 "Don't you feel the spring?" said Stelio to his 
 friend, and his nostrils quivered. 
 
 She threw herself back a little, feeling that her 
 heart was melting, and offered her face to the sky, 
 which was full of scattered vapours like slight feathers. 
 The hoot of a siren prolonged itself in the pale estu- 
 ary, becoming little by little as sweet as a flute-note. 
 It seemed to the woman that something had escaped 
 from her inmost heart and faded away in the distance 
 with that sound like a pain that little by little is 
 changing into a memory. 
 
 She replied : 
 
 " It has arrived at the Tre Porti." 
 
 Once more they wandered at random along the 
 lagoon on the water which was as familiar to their 
 dream as the web to the weaver. 
 
 " Did you say ' to the Tre Porti '? " exclaimed the 
 young man, quickly, as if some spirit were awaking in 
 him. " Precisely there in the neighbourhood of the 
 low beach, when the moon goes down, the sailors take 
 the wind prisoner and bring it in chains to Dardi 
 Seguso. One day I will tell you the story of the 
 Archorgan." 
 
 She smiled at the mysterious way in which he had 
 alluded to the mariners' act. 
 
 " Which story? " she said, yielding to the enchant- 
 ment; " and how does Seguso come into it? Is it the 
 master glazier? " 
 
 " Yes ; but an ancient one, who knew Greek and 
 Latin, music and architecture ; who was admitted to 
 the Academy of the Pellegrini ; who had his gardens 
 in Murano, and was often invited to supper by 
 Vecellio in his house on the Contrada dei Biri ; who
 
 360 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 was the friend of Bernado Capello, of Jacopo Zane 
 and other Petrarchian patricians. It was in the house 
 of Caterino Zeno that he saw the famous organ 
 built for Matthias Corvinus King of the Hunga- 
 rians, and it was there that his fine idea came to 
 him, in the course of a dispute with that Agostino 
 Amadi who had succeeded in picking up for his 
 collection of instruments a real Greek lyre, a great 
 Lesbian heptachord adorned with gold and ivory. . . . 
 Ah, do you imagine that relic of the school of Mity- 
 lene brought to Venice by a galley that in passing 
 through the waters of Santa Maura, caught and 
 dragged the dead body of Sappho as far as Mala- 
 mocco like a bundle of dead grass? But this is 
 another story." 
 
 Once more the wandering woman seemed to 
 recover her youth, and to smile with the surprise of a 
 child who is being shown a picture-book. What 
 marvellous stories, what delightful inventions, had not 
 the Image-maker found for her on the water in the 
 slowness of that hour ! How many enchantments he 
 had composed for her to the rhythm of the oar with 
 those words of his that made everything visible ! 
 How many times, sitting by his side in the light boat, 
 she had tasted of that kind of lucid slumber in which 
 all agitations were interrupted, and only the visions 
 of poetry were allowed to live on ! 
 
 " Tell it me," she begged ; and she would have 
 added, " It will be the last," but refrained because 
 she had as yet concealed her resolution from her 
 friend. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 " Ah, you are as greedy for stories as Sophia."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 361 
 
 At that name, as at the name of spring, she felt her 
 whole heart melting and the cruelty of her lot passing 
 through her soul, and her whole being turning to the 
 things she had lost. 
 
 " Look," he said, pointing to the silent level of the 
 lagoon, creased here and there by the passage of a 
 breeze. " Do not those infinite lines of silence aspire 
 to become music?" 
 
 The islands stood lightly on the afternoon illusion 
 of the estuary as the lightest clouds hung from the 
 sky. The long thin streaks of land seemed as vain 
 as the black gatherings of refuse that sometimes 
 float in zones on the calm waves. In the distance 
 Torcello, Burano, Mazzorbo, San Francesco del De- 
 serto did not seem like real landing-places, but more 
 like submerged regions, the summits of which pierced 
 the level of the water like the protruding parts of 
 vessels that have gone to the bottom. The traces of 
 man were faint indeed in that level solitude, like 
 letters corroded by time in ancient inscriptions. 
 
 " Well, then, the master glazier, hearing the famous 
 organ of Matthias Corvinus praised in the house of 
 Zeno, cried : ' Corpo di Baco ! They shall see what 
 organ I can make with my tube, my liquid Muse 
 of song. I will make the god of organs. Dant 
 sonitum glauc<z per slagna loquacia canncz. . . . 
 The water of the lagoon shall give forth its sound 
 and the posts and the stones shall sing too. Mul- 
 tisonum silentium. . . . They shall see ! Corpo di 
 Diana ! ' All who were present laughed, except 
 Giulia da Ponte, who did not laugh because her teeth 
 were dark. And Sansovino straightway began a 
 dissertation on hydraulic organs. But the boaster
 
 362 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 before taking his leave invited the company to hear 
 his new music on the day of the Sensa and promised 
 that the Doge and his Bucintoro would stop to listen 
 in the middle of the lagoon. That night a rumour 
 spread through Venice that Dardi Seguso had lost 
 his reason. And the Council, which was extremely 
 careful of its glaziers, sent a messenger for news to 
 Murano. The messenger found the artist with his 
 mistress Perdilanza del Mido, who was caressing him 
 anxiously and in dismay because it had seemed to 
 her that he was raving. The master, after having 
 looked at him with flaming eyes, burst into a mighty 
 laugh that reassured him more than any words, and 
 calmly ordered him to refer to the Council that by 
 the day of the Sensa Venice, besides San Marco, the 
 Canalazzo and the Palace of the Doges would possess 
 another wonder; and the day after he applied for 
 leave to take possession of one of the five little 
 islands round Murano like the satellites of a planet, 
 that have disappeared to-day, or are changed into 
 sand-banks. After having explored the waters about 
 Temodia, Trencore, Galbaia, Mortesina, and la Fo- 
 lega, he chose Tremodia as one chooses a bride, and 
 Perdilanza del Mido entered into great affliction. . . . 
 Look, Fosca, we are perhaps passing now upon the 
 memory of Trem6dia. The pipes of the organ are 
 buried in the mud, but they cannot know decay. 
 They were seven thousand. We are passing over 
 the ruins of a singing forest of glass. How delicate 
 the seaweeds are here ! " 
 
 He was bending over the beautiful waters, and she 
 was bending over them too on the other side. The 
 ribbons, the feathers, the velvet, the other delicate
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 363 
 
 substances that made up the head-gear of la Fosca- 
 rina mingled with sober art, her eyes and the blue 
 shadows that encircled them, the very smile with 
 which she made an enchanting grace of her waning 
 beauty, the bunch of jonquils that was fixed in the 
 prow in place of the lantern, the rare imaginings of the 
 Life-giver, the dream-names of the vanished islands, 
 the blue appearing and disappearing in the snowy mist, 
 the faint cries coming now and then from a flock of 
 invisible birds, all the most delicate things seemed 
 conquered by the play of those transient apparitions, 
 by the colour of the salt locks that lived in the 
 vicissitudes of the tide, coiling and turning as if at an 
 alternating caress. Two mingled miracles seemed 
 to colour them. Green as the grain fresh growing in 
 the furrow, tawny as the leaf dying on the young oak, 
 and green and tawny in their innumerable variations 
 as of plants that both live and die, they gave the 
 impression of an ambiguous season reigning exclu- 
 sively in the bed of the lagoon. The light which 
 illumined them through the clear water lost none of 
 its strength ; while its mystery was increased so that 
 there lurked in their languor a memory of their obe- 
 dience to the moon's attraction. 
 
 " Why, then, did Perdilanza enter into great afflic- 
 tion?" asked the woman, still bending on the beau- 
 tiful waters. 
 
 " Because her name had been conquered in the 
 mouth and in the soul of her lover by the name of 
 Tremodia, which he uttered passionately, and because 
 the island was the only place to which she might not 
 follow him. There he had constructed his new works, 
 and he would remain there a great part of the day
 
 364 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 and nearly the whole night, assisted by his workmen, 
 whom he had bound by an oath of silence sworn at 
 the altar. The Council, having given orders that the 
 master should be provided with all that might be 
 needful for his terrible work, condemned him to de- 
 capitation, in case the same work should turn out 
 inferior to his pride. Then Dardi tied a scarlet thread 
 round his bare neck." 
 
 La Foscarina straightened herself to arrange her- 
 self more comfortably. She was in a dream. She 
 was losing herself as in the labyrinth, between the 
 apparitions at the bottom of the lagoon and those of 
 the story, and she was beginning to feel the same 
 anxiety as reality mingled with the phantoms in 
 her spirit. He seemed to be speaking of himself in 
 those strange images, as when in the last hour of the 
 September twilight he had declared to her the myth 
 of the pomegranate ; and the name of the imaginary 
 woman began precisely with the first two syllables 
 of the name he used to give her then ! Did he wish 
 to signify something under the veil of his story? 
 And what then? And why did it please him, in 
 the neighbourhood of the place where she had been 
 seized by that horrible laughter to call up by that 
 phantasy the memory of the broken cup? The en- 
 chantment was broken, oblivion vanished. By trying 
 to understand, she herself fashioned with that dream- 
 matter an instrument of torture. She seemed to for- 
 get that her friend was unconscious of her coming 
 farewell. She looked at him, recognised in his face 
 the intellectual joy that always shone in him like 
 something sharp and adamantine. Instinctively she 
 said to herself, " I am going; do not wound me ! "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 365 
 
 " Zorzi, what is that white thing floating there under 
 that wall? " he asked the boatman behind him. 
 
 They were coasting by Murano. The garden walls 
 appeared and the tops of the laurel shrubs ; the black 
 smoke of the furnaces floated like mourning raiments 
 hanging in the silvery air. 
 
 Then, with sudden horror, the actress saw the dis- 
 tant port where the great throbbing ship was waiting 
 for her, saw the perpetual cloud on the brutal city of 
 the thousand and thousand roads, with its mountains 
 of coal, its forests of masts, its monstrous arms. She 
 heard the thud of sledge-hammers, the creaking of 
 the cranes, the panting of the engines, the vast moan 
 of the iron under the burning darkness. 
 
 " It is a dead dog," said the oarsman. 
 
 A swollen, yellowish carcass was floating under the 
 red brick wall in the cracks of which grasses and 
 flowers trembled that were children of ruin and wind. 
 
 " Row," cried Stelio, full of disgust. 
 
 The woman closed her eyes. The boat leaped un- 
 der the effort of the oars, gliding swiftly on the milky 
 water; the sky had become quite white; an equally 
 diffused splendour reigned on the estuary. Fisher- 
 men's voices came from a barge laden with green 
 stuff. A twittering of sparrows came from San 
 Giacomo di Palude. A siren screeched in the dis- 
 tance. 
 
 "And then the man with the scarlet thread? . . ." 
 la Foscarina asked, anxious to hear the remainder 
 because she wanted to understand. 
 
 " Often he felt his head shaking on his shoulders," 
 Stelio continued, laughing. " He was obliged to blow 
 tubes that were as thick as the trunks of trees, and
 
 366 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 he had to do it with the art of a living mouth, not 
 with the strength of a bellows, and at a single breath, 
 and without interruptions. Imagine ! The lungs of 
 a Cyclops would not have been sufficient. Ah, one 
 day I shall tell the ardour of that life placed between 
 the executioner's axe and the necessity of a miracle, 
 in communion with the elements. He had fire, earth, 
 and water, but air was missing, the motion of air. 
 Meanwhile the Ten sent him a red-haired man to bid 
 him good-day every morning: you know? that red- 
 haired man with his cap on his eyes, who stands em- 
 bracing the column in the Adoration of the Magi by 
 the second Bonifazio. After infinite attempts a 
 good idea came to Dardi. That day he conversed 
 with the Priscianese, under the laurels of the palace, 
 of ^Eolus and his twelve sons and of the landing of 
 the Laertian on the western island. He re-read 
 Homer, Virgil, and Ovid in Aldo's beautiful types. 
 Then he went and sought a wizard who had the 
 fame of being able to cast a spell on the winds 
 in favour of long navigations. ' Mi gavaria bisogno 
 de un venteselo ne tropo forte ne tropo fiapo docile 
 da podermelo manipolar come che vogio mi, un 
 venteselo che me serva per supiar certi veri che go 
 in testa. . . . Lenius aspirans aura secunda venit. . . . 
 M' astu capio, vechio? ' " a 
 
 The story-teller burst into a ringing laugh, because 
 he could see the scene with all its details in a house 
 in the Calle de la Testa at San Zanepolo, where the 
 
 1 " I am in need of a little wind, neither too strong nor too feeble, 
 and quite docile, that I could manage as I please; a little wind with 
 which to blow some glass which I have in my head. . . . Lenius 
 aspirans aura secunda venit. . . . Have you understood me, old man ?"
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 367 
 
 Schiavone lived with his daughter Cornelia Schivo- 
 netta, honorata cortegiana (piezo so pare scudi 2). 1 
 
 " What is the matter with him ? Is he going mad ? " 
 thought the two boatmen, on hearing him speak their 
 dialect, mingled with obscure words. 
 
 La Foscarina tried to second his gaiety, but she 
 was suffering from his youthful laughter as once 
 before in the mazes of the labyrinth. 
 
 " The story is long," he added ; " one day I shall 
 do something with it, but I am keeping it for some 
 idle time. . . . Imagine ! the Schiavone works the 
 spell. Every night Dardi sends his boatman to the 
 Tre Porti to lay the trap for the Little Wind. At 
 last one night not long before dawn, while the moon 
 is setting they surprise it sleeping on a sand-bank in 
 the midst of a flock of tired swallows brought hither 
 by it. ... It is lying there prostrate, sleeping as 
 lightly as a child in the aroma of the sea-salt, almost 
 entirely covered by the numberless forked tails. 
 The rising tide favours its sleep ; the black and white 
 travellers flutter all over it, wearied by their long 
 flight. . . ." 
 
 " How pretty ! " exclaimed the woman at the fresh 
 picture. " Where have you seen it? " 
 
 " And here begins the grace of the fable : they 
 seize it, bind it with willows, take it on board, and 
 sail towards Tremodia. The boat is invaded by the 
 swallows that will not abandon their leader." 
 
 Stelio stopped, because the details of the adven- 
 ture were thronging to his imagination in such num- 
 bers that he did not know which of them to choose. 
 But he listened to a song that was in the air coming 
 
 1 An honourable courtesan (at the house of her father, two crowns).
 
 368 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 from the direction of San Francesco del Deserto. 
 They could discern the slightly inclined belfry of 
 Burano, and behind the island of thread the belfry of 
 Torcello in its solitary splendour. 
 
 "And then," urged his companion. 
 
 " I can say no more, Fosca ; I know too many 
 things. . . . Imagine that Dardi falls in love with 
 his prisoner. ... Its name is Ornitio because it is 
 the leader of migrating birds. A continual twitter of 
 swallows is about Tremodia; the nests hang from 
 the posts and the shafts of the scaffolding that sur- 
 rounds the work ! Sometimes a wing is burnt by 
 the flame of the furnace when Ornitio blows into the 
 iron, making a light luminous column with the in- 
 candescent paste. Ah, but what trouble had to be 
 gone through before it could be tamed and taught 
 its work ! The Lord of the Flame began by talking 
 Latin to it and reciting to it some of Virgil's poetry, 
 thinking to be understood. But the blue-haired 
 Ornitio spoke Greek, of course, with a slightly hissing 
 accent. ... It knew two of Sapho's odes by heart 
 unknown to classical scholars that it had brought one 
 spring day from Mitylene to Chio ; and in breathing 
 through the unequal tubes, it remembered the pipe 
 of Pan . . . One day I will tell you all these things." 
 
 " And what did it live on ? " 
 
 " On pollen and salt. " 
 
 " And who brought it this food?" 
 
 " No one. It was sufficient for it to breathe the 
 pollen and the salt that are diffused in the air." 
 
 " And did it not try to escape? " 
 
 " Always. But Dardi used infinite precautions, like 
 the lover he was. "
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 369 
 
 "And did Ornitio return his love?" 
 
 " Yes, it began to return his love because it liked 
 the scarlet thread that the master always wore round 
 his bare neck. " 
 
 "And Perdilanza?" 
 
 " She languished in her sorrow, forsaken. Some 
 day I will tell you. ... I will go one summer on the 
 seashore of Palestrina to compose this fable for you 
 by the golden sand." 
 
 " But how does it end ? " 
 
 " The miracle takes place ; the arch-organ is built 
 in Tremodia with its seven thousand glass pipes, like 
 one of those congealed forests that Ornitio, inclined 
 to magnify its journeys, declared it had seen in the 
 country of the Iporborrei. And on the day of the 
 Sensa, the Serenissimo, between the Patriarch and the 
 Archbishop of Spalatro goes forth upon the harbour 
 of San Marco in the Bucintoro. Ornitio believes it 
 must be the Cronide returning in triumph, so great is 
 the pomp. The cataracts are let loose round Trem6- 
 dia, and animated by the eternal silence of the lagoon, 
 the gigantic instrument, at the magic touch of the 
 new musician, spreads a wave of harmonies, so vast 
 that it reaches the mainland and travels down the 
 Adriatic. The Bucintoro stops because its forty oars 
 have suddenly dropped along its sides like wounded 
 wings, abandoned on their rowlocks by the bewildered 
 crew. But suddenly the wave breaks, dwindles to a 
 few discordant sounds, hesitates, and melts away. 
 Dardi suddenly feels the instrument growing dumb 
 under his hands as if its soul had failed it, as if 
 some strange force working in its depths had ravaged 
 the prodigious instrument. What has happened?
 
 370 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 All he hears is the great clamour of scorn that passes 
 between the silenced pipes, with the noise of artillery 
 and the tumult of the populace. A canoe leaves the 
 Bucintoro bearing the red-haired man with his block 
 and his axe. The blow aims at the scarlet thread. 
 The head falls, and is thrown on the water, where it 
 floats like the head of Orpheus. ..." 
 
 " What had happened ? " 
 
 " Perdilanza had thrown herself in the cataract ! 
 The water had dragged her into the depths of the 
 organ. The body with all its famous hair thus placed 
 itself across the great delicate instrument stifling its 
 musical heart. . . ." 
 
 "But Ornitio?" 
 
 " Ornitio picks up the bleeding head on the water 
 and flies away towards the sea. The swallows hear 
 of its flight and follow it. In a few seconds a black 
 and white cloud of swallows thickens round the 
 fugitive. All the nests remain empty at this sud- 
 den departure, in Venice and in the islands. The 
 summer has no more flights. September no longer 
 knows the farewells that once made it both sad and 
 joyful. . . ." 
 
 "And Dardi'shead?" 
 
 " Where it can be, no one knows ! " the story-teller 
 concluded, laughing. 
 
 And again he fell to listening to the song that was 
 in the air, in which he was beginning to distinguish a 
 rhythm. 
 
 " Do you hear? " he said. 
 
 And he signed to the oarsmen to stop. The oars 
 rested on the rowlocks. 
 
 The silence was so intense that one could hear
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 371 
 
 both the song in the distance and the dripping of 
 the water from the posts. 
 
 " That is the wood-lark," Zorzi informed them in 
 a subdued voice ; " it still sings, poor thing, to the 
 memory of Saint Francis." 
 
 " Row ! " 
 
 The gondola glided on the milky quiet of the 
 water. 
 
 " Would you like to row on to San Francesco, 
 Fosca? " 
 
 The woman's head was bent in thought. 
 
 " Perhaps there is a hidden meaning in your story," 
 she said after a pause. " Perhaps I have understood." 
 
 " Alas, yes, if there were any similarity between 
 my daring and that of the man of Murano. I think 
 that I too should wear as a warning a scarlet thread 
 round my neck." 
 
 " You will have your great destiny. I have no fear 
 for you." 
 
 His laugh ceased. 
 
 " Yes, my friend, I must win, and you shall help 
 me. Every morning I too receive my threatening 
 visitor, the expectation of those who love me and of 
 those who hate me, of my friends and of my enemies. 
 Expectation should wear the executioner's dress 
 because nothing on earth is more pitiless." 
 
 " But it is the measure of your power." 
 He felt the vulture's beak at his heart. Instinc- 
 tively he drew himself up, seized by a blind impatience 
 that made the slowness of their progress a suffering. 
 Why was he lying idle? At every hour, at every 
 moment, he should be feeling, struggling, increasing 
 and asserting himself against destruction, diminu-
 
 372 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 tion, violation and contagion. At every hour, at 
 every moment, his eyes should be fixed on his aim, all 
 his energies should be made to converge to it with- 
 out fail and without respite. Thus the need of 
 glory seemed ever awakening within him a warlike 
 instinct, the madness of struggle and retaliation. 
 
 " Do you know this maxim of the great Heracli- 
 tus,' ' the name of the bow is BIOS and its work is 
 death ' ? This is a maxim that excites our spirit even 
 before communicating to it its precise meaning. I 
 heard it continually repeated within me while sitting 
 at your table that autumn night at the Epiphany of 
 the Flame. I went through an hour of truly Diony- 
 sian life, an hour of delirium restrained but as terrible 
 as if I were holding in myself the burning mountain 
 where the Thyades howl and writhe. Now and then 
 I actually seemed to hear songs and clamours and the 
 cries of a distant massacre. And it surprised me that 
 I could remain motionless, and the sense of my bodily 
 stillness seemed to increase my deep frenzy, and I 
 could see nothing else but your face, which had sud- 
 denly become most beautiful ; and in your whole per- 
 son I could see the might of all your soul, and behind 
 it I could also see other countries and multitudes. 
 Ah, if I could only tell you how I saw you in the 
 tumult while the marvellous images passed accom- 
 panied by gusts of music ! I spoke to you as if across 
 a battle-field. I threw out a rallying cry that you 
 perhaps heard, not for love only, but for glory, not for 
 one thirst, but for two thirsts, and I knew not which 
 was the most ardent. And the face of my work 
 appeared to me then the same as your face. I saw 
 it! Do you hear? With incredible rapidity my
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 373 
 
 work shaped itself into words and song and gesture 
 and symphony. It was so living that if only I suc- 
 ceeded in breathing a small part of it into the forms I 
 wish to express I could truly inflame the world." 
 
 He spoke, controlling his voice ; and the smothered 
 impulse of his words seemed to have a strange reflec- 
 tion in the calm water, in the white glare that 
 prolonged the even cadence of the two oars. 
 
 " Expression, that is the necessity. The greatest 
 vision has no value unless it be manifested and con- 
 densed in living forms. And I have everything to 
 create. I am not pouring my substance into heredi- 
 tary forms. My whole work is an invention ; I can- 
 not and will not obey other than my own instinct and 
 the genius of my race. And, nevertheless, like Dardi, 
 who saw the famous organ in the house of Caterino 
 Zeno, I too have another work before my spirit, a 
 work accomplished by a formidable creator that 
 stands gigantic in the midst of men." 
 
 The image of the barbaric creator reappeared to 
 him ; the blue eyes shone under the vast forehead ; 
 the lips tightened above the robust chin armed with 
 sensuality and pride and disdain. Then he saw once 
 more the white hair blown about by the sharp wind 
 on the aged neck, under the wide brim of the felt 
 hat and the almost livid ear with the swollen lobe. 
 Then he saw the motionless body lying unconscious 
 on the knees of the woman with the face of snow, 
 and the slight tremor in one of the hanging feet. 
 He thought of his own ineffable quiver of fear and 
 joy when he had suddenly felt that sacred heart 
 beating again beneath his hand. 
 % " Ah ! not before but round my spirit, I should
 
 374 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 say. Sometimes it is like the sea in a tempest, try- 
 ing to drag me down and swallow me. My Temodia 
 is a rock of granite in the open sea, and I am like 
 an artisan intent on building up on it a pure Doric 
 temple, having to defend the order of his columns 
 from the violence of the waves, his spirit incessantly 
 strained that he may never cease through all that 
 noise to hear the secret rhythm which alone must 
 regulate the intervals between his lines and hi? spaces. 
 In this sense, too, my Tragedy is a battle." 
 
 Once more he saw the patrician palace as it had 
 appeared to him in the early October dawn with its 
 eagles, its horses, its pitchers, and its roses, closed 
 and dumb like a great sepulchre, while above it the 
 breath of the day was kindling the sky. 
 
 " In that dawn," he added, " passing through the 
 Canal after the night's delirium, I gathered from a 
 garden wall some violet flowers that grew in the in- 
 terstices of the brick, and I made the gondola stop 
 by the Palazzo Vendramin and threw them before 
 the door. The offering was too small ; I thought of 
 laurels and myrtles and cypresses. But the sponta- 
 neous act served to express my gratitude towards 
 Him who was to impose on my spirit the necessity 
 of being heroic in its liberating and creating effort." 
 
 Bursting into sudden laughter, he turned to the 
 oarsman at the poop : 
 
 " Do you remember, Zorzi, our regatta one morn- 
 ing to reach the braghozzo ? " 
 
 " Indeed I remember ! What a row it was ! My 
 arms are still stiff! And that rascally hunger, master, 
 where do you put it? Every time I see the master of 
 the boat, he asks after the stranger who ate up that
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 375 
 
 loaf of bread with that basket of figs and raisins. He 
 says that he will never forget that day, because he 
 drew the heaviest net of his life. He caught such 
 mackerel as is never to be seen. . . ." 
 
 The oarsman went on chattering until he noticed 
 that his master was no longer listening to him aitd 
 that he was expected to keep quiet, even to hold his 
 breath. 
 
 " Do you hear the song? " said Stelio to his friend, 
 gently taking one of her hands because it distressed 
 him to have awakened a memory which gave her 
 pain. 
 
 Raising her face she said : 
 
 "Where is it? Is it in Heaven? Is it on earth? " 
 
 An endless melody was flowing over the peaceful 
 whiteness. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " How it rises ! " 
 
 She felt a quiver pass through her friend's hand. 
 
 " When Alessandro enters the illuminated room 
 where the virgin has been reading the lamentation of 
 Antigone," he said, gathering from his consciousness 
 some sign of the obscure process which was going on 
 in the depths of his mystery, " he tells how he has 
 come on horseback through the plain of Argos, 
 crossing the Inachus, a river of burnt up flint; the 
 whole country is covered with little wild flowers 
 that are dying, and the song of the larks fills the 
 sky . . . thousands of skylarks, a multitude without 
 number. . . . He tells how one fell all of a sudden 
 at the feet of his horse, heavy as a stone, and re- 
 mained there silent, struck down by its own frenzy, 
 by having sung with too much Joy. He picked it
 
 376 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 up. * Here it is.' You then hold out your hand 
 towards him; you take it and murmur: 'Ah, it is 
 still warm.' . . . While you are speaking the virgin 
 trembles. You can feel her trembling." . . . 
 
 Again the tragic actress felt the chill at the roots 
 of her hair as if the soul of the blind woman were 
 re-entering her own soul. 
 
 " At the end of the Prelude the impetus of the 
 chromatic progressions expresses this growing joy, the 
 anxiety of delight. . . . Listen, listen ! . . . Ah, what 
 a marvel ! This morning, Fosca, only this morning 
 I was at my work. . . . My own melody now develops 
 itself in the heavens. ... Is not grace upon us ? " 
 
 A spirit of life was running through the solitude ; 
 a vehement aspiration filled the silence with emotion. 
 It seemed as if a natural desire of ascension were 
 passing like an awakening, or the announcement of 
 some great return, over the motionless lines, the empty 
 horizon, the flat waters, and the outstretched shores. 
 The woman gave up her whole soul to it as a leaf 
 gives itself up to the whirlwind, ravished to the 
 heights of love and faith. But a feverish impatience 
 to act, a desire of work, a need of hastening the ac- 
 complishment, seized the young man. His capacity 
 for work seemed multiplied. He considered the ful- 
 ness of the hours to come. He saw the concrete 
 aspects of his work, the mass of pages, the volume of 
 scores, the variety of the task, the wealth of the sub- 
 stances capable of receiving rhythm. In the same 
 way he saw the Roman hill, the rising building, the 
 harmony of cut stones, the workmen busy with their 
 masonry, the architect watching them, severe and 
 vigilant, the Vatican standing before the Theatre of
 
 377 
 
 Apollo, and the Holy City beneath it. Smiling, he 
 called up the image of the little man who was sup- 
 porting the work with truly papal magnificence, sa- 
 luting the bloodless, large-nosed figure of the Roman 
 prince who had not degenerated from the traditions 
 of his name, and who, with the gold accumulated in 
 centuries of plunder and nepotism, was building up 
 an harmonious temple for the Renaissance of the 
 Arts that had thrown a ray of beauty on the mighty 
 lives of his fathers. 
 
 " In a week's time, Fosca, if grace assist me, my 
 Prelude will be finished. I should like to try it with 
 an orchestra immediately. I shall perhaps go to 
 Rome for this. Antimo della Bella is more anxious 
 even than I am. I get a letter from him nearly 
 every morning. I think my presence in Rome for 
 a few days is necessary also in order to avoid some 
 error in the construction of the Theatre. Antimo 
 writes concerning the possibility of pulling down the 
 old stone steps leading from the Corsini Garden to 
 the Janiculum. I don't know whether you remember 
 the aspect of the place? The road that will lead 
 to the Theatre passes under the Arch of Septimus, 
 turns along the side of the Palazzo Corsini, crosses 
 the garden, and reaches the foot of the hill. The 
 hill do you remember? is all green, covered with 
 little fields, canes, cypresses, plane-trees, laurels, and 
 holm-oaks ; it has a wooded and sacred look, with 
 its crown of tall Italian pines. There is quite a 
 forest of holm-oaks on its slope watered by subterra- 
 nean streams. All the hill is steeped in a wealth of 
 living waters. The fountain Paulina towers on the 
 left. The Parrasio wood, the ancient seat of the
 
 3/8 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Arcadi, blackens below it. A flight of stone steps 
 in two branches, passing along a succession of wide, 
 overflowing basins, leads to a raised plain from 
 which open two paths flanked by truly Apollo-like 
 laurels, indeed worthy of leading men towards poetry. 
 Who could imagine a more noble entrance? Cen- 
 turies have shrouded it in mystery ; the stone of the 
 steps, of the balustrades, of the basins, of the statues, 
 vies in roughness with the bark of the venerable 
 plane-trees that old age has made hollow. No sound 
 is heard but the song of birds, the splash of the 
 fountains, and the murmur of leaves. Ah ! and I 
 believe that poets and simple souls can even hear the 
 throb of the Hamadryads and the breath of Pan. . . ." 
 
 The aerial chorus was rising, rising untiringly, fill- 
 ing every space with itself like the immense desert, 
 like the infinite light. The impetuous melody created 
 in the sleep of the lagoon, the illusion of a unani- 
 mous anxiety that rose from the waters, from the 
 sands, from the grasses, from the vapours, from all 
 natural things to follow the ascension. All those 
 things which had seemed inert, now seemed to be 
 breathing deeply, to be gifted with a soul that was 
 full of emotion, possessed by a desire of expression. 
 
 " Listen ! Listen ! " 
 
 And the images of life created by the Life-giver, 
 and the ancient names of those immortal energies 
 circulating in the Universe, and the aspirations of 
 mixi to transcend the circle of their daily torment, 
 to appease themselves in the splendour of an Idea, 
 and all wishes, and hopes, and daring, and effort in 
 that place of hope and oblivion, before that humble 
 island where the Spouse of Poverty had left the traces
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 379 
 
 of himself, seemed delivered from the shadow of 
 Death by the mere virtue of that song. 
 
 " Does it not seem like the frenzied joy of an 
 assault? " 
 
 The squalid shores, the crumbling stones, the 
 putrefying roots, the traces of destroyed works, 
 the odours of dissolution, the funereal cypresses, the 
 black crosses, in vain reminded him of the same 
 words that the statues along the river had spoken 
 with their lips of stone. Only that song of victory 
 and liberty, stronger than all other signs, touched 
 the heart of him who was to create with joy. " On ! 
 on ! Higher ! ever higher ! " 
 
 And the heart of Perdita, purified from all coward- 
 ice, ready for every test, seconding the hymn's ascen- 
 sion, betrothed itself to life again. As in the distant 
 hour of that night's delirium the woman repeated : 
 " Let me serve ! Let me serve ! " 
 
 The boat entered a canal closed between two green 
 banks, which reached the line of the eye so precisely 
 that one could see the numberless reeds and point 
 out the new ones by their lighter colour. 
 
 " Laudato si, mi signore, per sora nostra matre terra, 
 la quale ne sustenta et governa 
 et produce diversi fructi con coloriti flori et herba." 
 
 From the fulness of her soul the woman measured 
 the love of the Poor Man of Assisi for all created 
 things. Such was her abundance that she sought for 
 living things to worship everywhere; and her look 
 
 1 " Be praised, my Lord, for our Lady the Mother Earth who feeds 
 and governs us and brings forth divers fruits with coloured flowers 
 and grass."
 
 38o THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 became childlike again, and all those things were 
 reflected in it as in the peace of the water, and some 
 seemed to return from the far past and reappear like 
 unexpected apparitions. 
 
 When the ship touched the shore, she was aston- 
 ished at having arrived already. 
 
 " Would you like to land or would you prefer to go 
 back? " Stelio asked her, pulling himself together. 
 
 She hesitated a moment, because her hand was in 
 his, and the separation would have been a lessening of 
 the sweetness. 
 
 " Yes," she answered, smiling. " Let us walk a 
 little on this grass too." 
 
 They landed on the island of San Francesco. A 
 few young cypress-trees greeted them shyly. No 
 human face appeared. The invisible myriads filled 
 the desert with their praise. The mist was rising, 
 massing into clouds, obscuring the sun. ' 
 
 " How much grass we have walked on, have we 
 not, .Stelio?" 
 
 He said, 
 
 "But now comes the steep boulder to climb." 
 
 She said, 
 
 " Let the boulder come and let the ascent be steep." 
 
 He wondered at the unusual joy in her tone. He 
 looked at her and saw intoxication in her beautiful eyes. 
 
 " Why," said he, " do we feel so free and happy in 
 this lonely island ? " 
 
 " Do you know why? " 
 
 " This is a sad pilgrimage for other people. Those 
 who come to this place leave it with the taste of death 
 in their mouths." 
 
 She said :
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 381 
 
 " We are in a state of grace." 
 
 He said : 
 
 " They who hope most, live most." 
 
 She said : 
 
 " They who love most, hope most" 
 
 The rhythm of the aerial song went on, attracting 
 their ideal essences. 
 
 He said : 
 
 " How beautiful you are ! " 
 
 A sudden blush covered the impassioned face. 
 She paused for a moment, quivering. She half 
 closed her eyes. In a suppressed voice she said : 
 
 " A warm current is passing. Did you not feel a 
 
 rush of warmth on the water from time to time?" 
 
 / 
 
 She drank the air in. 
 
 " There is something like a smell of new-mown hay. 
 Do you notice it? " 
 
 " It is the smell of the banks full of seaweeds that 
 are being uncovered." 
 
 " Look what a beautiful landscape." 
 
 " Le Vignole. And that is the Lido. And that is 
 the island of Sant' Erasmo." 
 
 The sun had cast its veils and was now embracing 
 the estuary. The moisture of the emerging sand- 
 banks suggested the brightness of flowers. The 
 shadows of the small cypress-trees were beginning to 
 lengthen and becoming of a deeper blue. 
 
 " I am sure," she said, " that almond-trees are 
 blossoming in the neighbourhood. Let us go on the 
 dyke." 
 
 She threw her head back with one of those move- 
 ments that were natural to her, that seemed to break 
 a bond or rid her of an impediment.
 
 382 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 "Wait!" 
 
 And drawing out the two pins that fastened her hat, 
 she quickly uncovered her head. She went back to 
 the steps of the landing and threw the shining thing 
 into the gondola. Then she returned to her friend 
 nimbly, running her fingers through the mass of her 
 hair, and the air passed through it and the sun shone 
 on it. She seemed to feel relieved, as if her breathing 
 were easier. 
 
 "Did the wings hurt? " said Stelio, laughing. 
 
 And he looked at the rough furrow, not ploughed 
 by the comb, but by the storm. 
 
 " Yes, the smallest weight worries me. If it did 
 not seem strange, I should always go bareheaded. 
 But when I see the trees, I cannot hold out any more. 
 My hair remembers its wild birth, and longs to 
 breathe in its own way, in the desert at least." 
 
 She spoke frankly and vivaciously, walking on the 
 grass with her quick swinging movement And Stelio 
 remembered the day when, in the Gradenigo garden, 
 she had seemed to him very like the beautiful tawny 
 greyhound. 
 
 " Oh, here is a Capuchin friar ! " 
 
 The friar was coming towards them and greeted 
 them affably. He offered to show the visitors round 
 the monastery, but informed them that the cloister 
 was closed to his companion. 
 
 " Shall I go in?" said Stelio, looking at his com- 
 panion, who was smiling. 
 
 " Yes, go ! " 
 
 "And you will remain alone? " 
 
 " I will remain alone." 
 
 " I will bring you a piece of the sacred pine-tree."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 383 
 
 He followed the Franciscan under the portico where 
 the empty swallows' nests hung from the raftered ceil- 
 ing. Before crossing the threshold he turned once 
 more to say good-bye to his companion. The door 
 closed upon him. 
 
 " O BEATA SOLlftfDO ! 
 O SOLA BEATITUDO ! " 
 
 Then, as a sudden change in one of the stops at 
 once changes all the notes in an organ, all the 
 woman's thoughts were transfigured. The horror of 
 absence, the worst of all evils, stood before her loving 
 soul. Her friend was no longer there : she no longer 
 heard his voice, no longer felt him breathing; she no 
 longer grasped his kind, firm hand. She no longer 
 saw him live, no longer felt the air, the light, the 
 shadows, the whole life of the world, harmonise with 
 his life. *' What if he should not come back, if that 
 door were not to reopen?" It could not be. He 
 would certainly cross that threshold again in a few 
 minutes, and she would receive him again into her 
 eyes and her very being. But it was thus, thus, that 
 he would disappear in a few days ; and first the plain, 
 then the mountain, and then plains and mountains 
 and rivers, and then the strait and the ocean, the 
 infinite spaces that cries and tears cannot overcome, 
 would step between her and that forehead, those 
 eyes, those lips. The image of the brutal city to 
 which she was going, blackened by coal and bristling 
 with weapons, filled the quiet island. The crash of 
 sledge-hammers, the shriek of cranes, the panting of 
 engines, the immense groan of iron, drowned the 
 melody of spring. And in contrast to each of those 
 simple things, to the grass, the sands, the water, the
 
 384 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 seaweed, the soft feather dropping perhaps from the 
 throat of a song-bird, there appeared streets, invaded 
 by the human stream, houses with their thousand de- 
 formed eyes, full of fevers that make sleep unknown, 
 theatres filled with the breath or the stupor of a 
 crowd that has relaxed for an hour the tension of its 
 will and fiercely outstretched in the war of lucre. 
 And she saw her name and her portrait on walls 
 defiled by advertisements, on boards carried about 
 by stupefied porters, on great factory bridges, on the 
 doors of swift vehicles, high and low and everywhere. 
 
 " Here ! look ! The branch of an almond-tree. 
 The almond-tree is blossoming in the convent gar- 
 den, in the second cloister, near the grotto with 
 the sacred pine-tree. And you knew it ! " 
 
 Her friend was hastening to her, joyful as a child, 
 followed by the Capuchin friar, who was holding a 
 little bunch of thyme. 
 
 " Take it ! See what a marvel ! " 
 
 Tremblingly she took the branch, and tears dimmed 
 her eyes. 
 
 " You knew it ! " 
 
 He noticed the sudden brightness between her eye- 
 lashes, something tender and silvery, a shining and 
 trembling moisture which made the white of her 
 eyes like the petals of a flower. Of all her beloved 
 person, he passionately loved the delicate marks that 
 went from the corners of the eyes to the temples, and 
 the small dark veins which made the eyelids like 
 violets, and the undulation of the cheeks, and the 
 weary chin, and all that could not flower again, all 
 the shadows on the impassioned face. 
 
 " Ah, Father," she said with a merry look, re-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 385 
 
 straining her sorrow, " will not Christ's Poor Man 
 weep in heaven for this torn off branch ? " 
 
 The Father smiled with sprightly indulgence. 
 
 " This good gentleman," he answered, " did not 
 give me time to say a word when he saw the tree. 
 He already had the branch in his hand, and all I 
 could say was 'Amen.' But the almond-tree is 
 rich." 
 
 He was placid and affable, with a crown of hair 
 nearly all black still round the tonsure, with a refined, 
 olive face, with two large tawny eyes, shining as clear 
 as topazes. 
 
 " Here is the savoury thyme," he said, offering the 
 herbs. 
 
 They heard a choir of young voices singing a 
 Response. 
 
 " They are the novices ; we have fifteen of them." 
 
 And he accompanied the visitors to the field be- 
 hind the convent. Standing on the bank, at the foot 
 of a cypress-tree that had been destroyed by light- 
 ning, the Franciscan pointed to the fertile islands, 
 praised their fruitfulness, enumerated their kinds of 
 fruit, extolled the most luscious according to the 
 various seasons, pointed out the boats sailing to 
 the Rialto with the new crops. 
 
 " Be praised to Thee, O Master, for our Mother 
 Earth," said the woman with the blossoming branch. 
 
 The friar, sensitive to the tenderness of that feminine 
 voice, was silent. 
 
 Tall cypress-trees surrounded the pious meadow; 
 
 and four of them, the oldest, leafless, sapless, bore 
 
 signs of lightning. Their tops were motionless, the 
 
 only emerging things in that level posture of the 
 
 2 5
 
 386 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 fields and waters that stretched on a line with the 
 horizon. Not even the faintest breeze ruffled the in- 
 finite mirror. The depths full of seaweeds were trans- 
 parent and seemed like bright treasures ; the marsh 
 reeds shone like rods of amber; the freshly un- 
 covered sands had the changing colours of mother- 
 of-pearl ; the very mud imitated the opaline tender- 
 ness of the medusae. A profound enchantment that 
 was like rapture filled the desert with joy. The 
 melody of winged creatures still continued from in- 
 visible places; but it, too, seemed to be quieting 
 down at last into the holy silence. 
 
 " At this time, on the hills of Umbria," said he 
 who had robbed the almond-tree in the cloister, 
 " every olive-tree has at its feet, like a cast-off slough, 
 a bunch of its cut branches ; and it seems tenderer 
 because the bunch hides the roughness of the crooked 
 roots. Saint Francis passes in mid-air healing with 
 his finger the pain of the wounds made by the pruning 
 knife." 
 
 The friar crossed himself and took his leave. 
 
 " Praise be to Jesus Christ ! " 
 
 The guests saw him moving away among the 
 shadows cast by the cypress-trees on the meadow. 
 
 " He is in peace," said the woman. " Does it not 
 seem to you, Stelio? A great peace was on his face 
 and in his voice. Look at his step, too." 
 
 First a ray of sunshine, then a ray of shadow, 
 touched his tonsure and his tunic. 
 
 " He gave me a splinter of the pine-tree," said 
 Stelio. " I will send it to Sophia, who has a great 
 devotion for the Seraphic Saint. Here it is. It no 
 longer smells of resin. Smell it."
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 387 
 
 For Sophia's sake she kissed the relic. The lips 
 of the good sister would be laid on the same place 
 where hers had rested. 
 
 " Send it." 
 
 They walked in silence a while with lowered heads, 
 in the footsteps of the man who was at peace, going 
 towards the quay between the rows of cypress-trees 
 laden with berries. 
 
 " Do you not want to see her again?" la Foscarina 
 asked her friend with a tremor of shyness. 
 
 " Yes, very much." 
 
 " And your mother?" 
 
 " Yes ; my heart goes out to her who daily expects 
 me." 
 
 " And you would not like to go back? " 
 
 " Yes, I will go back, perhaps." 
 
 "When?" 
 
 " I do not know yet, but I long to see my mother 
 and Sophia. I desire it indeed greatly, Foscarina." 
 
 "And why do you not go? What keeps you 
 here?" 
 
 He took the hand that was hanging loosely at 
 her side, and they continued their walk. As the 
 oblique rays of the sun lighted up their right cheeks, 
 they saw their united shadows preceding them at one 
 level on the grass. 
 
 " When you pictured to yourself the hills of Umbria 
 a moment ago," said the woman, " perhaps you were 
 thinking of the hills of your own country. That figure 
 of the pruned olive-trees was not a new one to me. 
 I remember your talking to me one day of the prun- 
 ing. ... In no other labour can the peasant acquire 
 a deeper sense of the dumb life that is in the tree.
 
 388 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 When he stands in front of the apple or pear or peach 
 tree with the pruning knife and scissors that should 
 increase their strength and could at the same time 
 cause their death, the spirit of divination rises in him 
 from all the wisdom acquired in his communings with 
 earth and sky. The tree is then at its most delicate 
 moment, when its sensibility re-awakens, flowing to 
 the buds which are swollen and about to open. Man 
 with his cruel knife must regulate the mysterious 
 movements of the sap. The tree is still intact, 
 ignorant of Hesiod and Virgil, labouring with its 
 blossom and its fruit, and every branch in the air is 
 as much alive as an artery in the arm of the pruner. 
 Which is the one to be lopped off? Will the sap 
 heal the wound? . . . Thus, one day you spoke to 
 me of your orchard. I remember. You told me 
 that all the cuts should be turned to the north that 
 the sun should not see them." 
 
 She was speaking as on that distant November 
 evening when the young man had come to her 
 through the violent wind, panting after having carried 
 the hero. 
 
 He smiled. He let the dear hand lead him. And 
 he drank in the fragrance of the blossoming branch, 
 very like the smell of some bitter milk. 
 
 " It is true," he said. " And Laimo would pre- 
 pare the ointment of Saint Fiacre, mixing it in the 
 mortar, and Sophia would bring him the strong 
 linen to bind the larger wounds, after they had been 
 dressed. . . ." 
 
 He could see the peasant on his knees mixing cow- 
 dung, clay, and barley husks in the stone mortar, 
 according to the rules of antique wisdom.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 389 
 
 " But in ten days," he added, " the whole hill seen 
 from the sea will be like a fresh, rosy cloud. Sophia 
 has written to remind me of it. ... Has she ap- 
 peared to you any more?" 
 
 " She is with us now." 
 
 " She is looking out of the window at the sea, 
 which has become purple, and my mother is with her 
 at the window, and she is saying, ' Who knows if 
 Stelio may not be in that sailing boat waiting at the 
 mouth of the river for the coming of the wind? He 
 promised me he would return unexpectedly by sea, in 
 a brig.' And her heart aches." 
 
 " Ah, why do you disappoint her?" 
 
 " Yes, it is true, Fosca ; I can be away for months 
 and months, and feel that my life is full. But then, 
 an hour comes when nothing in the world seems to 
 me sweeter than those eyes ; and there is a part of 
 myself that remains inconsolable. I have heard the 
 sailors of the Tyrrhenean Sea call the Adriatic the Gulf 
 of Venice. To-night I am thinking that my home is 
 on the Gulf, and that seems to bring it nearer." 
 
 They were at the landing. They turned to look 
 once more at the island of Prayer with its beseeching 
 cypresses. 
 
 " Yonder is the canal of the Tre Porti that leads to 
 the open sea," he said, homesick. He saw himself 
 on the deck of the brig in sight of his tamarisks and 
 myrtle-trees. 
 
 They went on board. They were silent for a long 
 time. Quietly, meanwhile, the melody descended 
 on the archipelago. As the light from the sky pene- 
 trated the waters, so the song from the sky came and 
 rested on the fields. But Burano and Torcello ap-
 
 390 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 peared like two broken galleons against the dazzling 
 west, and the clouds were ranging themselves in 
 phalanxes, down towards the Dolomites. 
 
 " Now that the scheme of the work is finished, all 
 you want is peace for your work," said the woman, 
 softly continuing her persuasion, while her soul trem- 
 bled in her breast. " Have you not always worked 
 best in your own home? In no other place will you 
 be able to appease the anxiety which oppresses you. 
 I know it." 
 
 He said : 
 
 " It is true. When the craving for glory seizes us, 
 we believe that the conquest of art resembles the 
 siege of a stronghold, and that noise and sound ac- 
 company the bravery of the assault But it is only 
 the work which has grown in the austerity of silence 
 that is of any value ; only the work done with slow 
 and indomitable perseverance ; work done in hard, 
 pure solitude. Nothing is of any value but the com- 
 plete surrender of spirit and flesh to the Idea which 
 we long to establish among men as a commanding 
 force for ever." 
 
 " Ah, you know it." 
 
 The woman's eyes filled with tears on hearing his 
 smooth words, in which she felt all the depth of his 
 manly passion, the heroic need of spiritual dominion, 
 the firm determination to surpass himself and to 
 force his destiny. 
 
 " You know it ! " 
 
 And she felt a shudder like that which is caused 
 by cruel sights ; and in the face of that living will 
 everything else seemed vain, and the other tears that 
 had blinded her when he had offered her the bios-
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 391 
 
 soms seemed mean and effeminate compared with 
 those that were now rushing to her eyes, and were 
 alone worthy to be drunk in by her friend. 
 
 " Well, then, go back to your sea, to your own 
 lands, to your house. Re-light your lamp with the 
 oil of your own olives." 
 
 His lips were closed, and there was a furrow 
 between his eyelids. 
 
 " The kind sister will come again to lay a blade of 
 grass on the difficult page." 
 
 He bent his brow which a thought was oppressing. 
 
 " You will rest by talking to Sophia at the window, 
 and perhaps you will see the flocks passing again on 
 their way from the plains to the mountains." 
 
 The sun was nearing the gigantic acropolis of the 
 Dolomites. The immense phalanx of clouds was dis- 
 ordered as if by a battle, shot through by number- 
 less beaming arrows, and bathed in a marvellous 
 blood-like crimson. The waters extended the great 
 battle fought round the impregnable towers. The 
 melody had melted into the shadow of the already 
 distant islands. The whole estuary seemed mantled 
 in gloomy warlike magnificence as if myriads of 
 flags were bending over it, a silence that seemed only 
 waiting for a flourish of imperial trumpets. 
 
 Softly, after a long pause, he said : 
 
 " And if she were to question me about the fate of 
 the virgin who reads the lamentation of Antigone?" 
 
 The woman started. 
 
 " And if she were to question me about the love of 
 the brother who searches the tombs? " 
 
 The phantom filled the woman with fear. 
 
 " And if the page on which she lays the blade of
 
 392 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 grass were the one where the trembling soul tells its 
 desperate hidden fight against the horrible evil?" 
 
 The woman could find no words in her sudden dis- 
 may. Both remained silent, gazing at the sharp 
 peaks of the mountains in the distance, which shone 
 as if they had only just emerged from primordial 
 fire. The sight of that solitary, eternal grandeur 
 brought a sense of strange fatality to their two souls 
 and almost an uncertain terror, which they could 
 neither conquer nor scrutinise. Venice was darkened 
 by the masses of burning porphyries ; she lay on the 
 waters all wrapped in a violet veil ; from it the marble 
 pillars emerged, carved by man to guard the bells 
 that give the signal for customary prayer. But the 
 customary work and prayer of man, the old city 
 tired with having lived too long, its mutilated mar- 
 bles and its worn-out bells, all those things op- 
 pressed by the weight of memories, and all perishable, 
 become lowly in comparison with the tremendous 
 inflamed Alps that lacerated the sky with their thou- 
 sand inflexible points, themselves an enormous, soli- 
 tary city, waiting perhaps for a young nation of 
 Titans. 
 
 Abruptly, after the long silence, Stelio EfFrena 
 asked the woman : 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 She did not answer. 
 
 The bells of San Marco gave the signal for the 
 Angelus, and the powerful roll dilated in long waves 
 over the still crimsoned lagoon which they were leav- 
 ing in the hands of shadow and death. From San 
 Giorgio Maggiore, from San Giorgio dei Greci, from 
 San Giorgio degli Schiavoni, from San Giovanni in
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 393 
 
 Bragora, from San Moise, from the Salute, from the 
 Redentore, and on through the whole domain of the 
 Evangelists, from the far towers of the Madonna dell' 
 Orto, of San Giobbe, of Sant' Andrea, the bronze 
 voices answered, mingled in one great chorus spread- 
 ing on the quiet gathering of stones and waters 
 one great invisible dome of metal which seemed to 
 communicate by its vibrations with the twinkling of 
 the first stars. 
 
 Both shivered when the gondola entered the 
 damp of the dark Rio, passing under the bridge 
 that looked towards the island of San Michele, 
 passing near the black peate putrefying along the 
 corroded walls. From the nearest belfries, from San 
 Lazzaro, from San Canciano, from San Giovanni e 
 Paolo, from Santa Maria dei Miracoli, from Santo 
 Maria del Pianto, other voices answered. And the 
 roll above their heads was so strong that they seemed 
 to feel its vibration in the very roots of their hair 
 like a quiver of their own flesh. 
 
 "Is it you, Daniele?" 
 
 It seemed to Stelio that he had recognised the 
 figure of Daniele Glauro on the Fondamenta Sanudo, 
 near the door of his house. 
 
 " Oh, Stelio, I was waiting for you ! " cried the 
 agitated voice, in the storm of sound. " Richard 
 Wagner is dead." 
 
 The world seemed to have lost value. 
 
 The wandering woman armed herself with her 
 courage and went on preparing her viaticum. From 
 the hero lying on his bier a great inspiration rose to
 
 394 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 all noble hearts. She knew how to receive it and 
 convert it into living thoughts and actions. 
 
 It happened that her friend came upon her while 
 she was collecting her familiar books, the small things 
 that were never parted from her, the pictures that had 
 over her a power of enchantment or of consolation. 
 
 "What are you doing?" he asked. 
 
 " I am preparing to start." 
 
 She saw his face change, but did not hesitate. 
 
 " Where are you going?" 
 
 " Far away. I am crossing the Atlantic." 
 
 He became a shade paler. And at once he doubted ; 
 thought that perhaps she was not speaking the truth; 
 that perhaps she was only sounding him ; that the 
 resolve was not a fixed one, and that she was only 
 expecting to be urged to stay. 
 
 His unexpected disappointment on the shores of 
 Murano had left its traces on his heart. 
 
 " Have you decided on it, then, all of a sudden?" 
 
 She was simple, sure, and ready. 
 
 " Not all of a sudden," she answered. " My idleness 
 has been lasting too long, and I have the burden of 
 all my people upon me. While I wait for the Theatre 
 of Apollo to be opened and for 'The Victory of Man ' 
 to be ready, I shall go and take my leave of the Bar- 
 barians. I will work for the great undertaking. We 
 will need a great deal of gold to build up again the 
 treasures of Mycene ! And everything connected 
 with your work should have the aspect of an unusual 
 magnificence. I do not want the mask of Cassandra 
 to be of some base metal. . . . And what I espe- 
 cially want, is to satisfy your desire : that the people 
 shall have free access to the Theatre for the first
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 395 
 
 three days, and always after that, on one day in the 
 week. This faith helps me to leave you. Time 
 flies. Every one must be at his place, in full posses- 
 sion of all his powers, when the time comes. I will 
 not fail you. I hope you will be satisfied with your 
 friend. I am going to work; and certainly I find 
 it more difficult this once than at other times. But 
 you, but you, my poor child, what a burden you 
 have to bear ! What an effort we are asking of you ! 
 What great things we expect from you ! Ah, you 
 know it! . . ." 
 
 She had begun bravely, in a tone that at times had 
 seemed almost cheerful, trying to appear what she 
 was meant to be above all, a good and faithful in- 
 strument at the service of genius ; a virile, willing 
 companion. But some wave of repressed emotion, 
 escaping, would come into her throat and choke her 
 voice. Her pauses became longer, and her hand 
 became uncertain in its wandering among her books 
 and relics. 
 
 " May all things be ever propitious to your work ! 
 This only matters; all the rest is nothing. Let us 
 keep our hearts on high ! " 
 
 She shook back her head with its two wild wings, 
 and held out her two hands to her friend. He pressed 
 them, pale and serious. In her dear eyes that were 
 like living springs of water he caught a gleam of the 
 same flash of beauty that had dazzled him one night 
 in the room where the logs roared, and he had heard 
 the unfolding of the two splendid melodies. 
 
 " I love you and believe in you," he said ; " I will 
 not fail you, and you will not fail me. Something 
 proceeds from us that will be stronger than life."
 
 396 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 She said : 
 
 " A melancholy." 
 
 The familiar books lay on the table before her 
 with their dogs' ears and marked margins, with some 
 leaves, a flower, a blade of grass between page and 
 page, with their landmarks of the sorrows which 
 had asked and obtained from them consolations of 
 enlightenment or oblivion. All the small beloved 
 objects were scattered before her, strange, various, 
 and nearly all valueless things, a doll's foot, a votive 
 offering in the shape of a silver heart, a small ivory 
 compass, a dialless watch, a little iron lantern, an odd 
 earring, a flint, a key, a seal, other refuse ; but all 
 were consecrated by some memory, animated by 
 some superstitious belief, touched by the ringer of 
 love or death, relics that could only speak to one soul, 
 and that spoke to it of tenderness and cruelty, of war 
 and peace, of hope and dejection. Before her, too, 
 were images suggesting thought, and disposing for 
 reflection, figures to which artists had intrusted a 
 secret confession, mazes of signs in which they had 
 enclosed an enigma, simple lines that imparted peace 
 like a glimpse of the horizon, profound allegories, 
 veiling some truth that, like the sun, could not be 
 gazed on by mortal eyes. 
 
 " Look," she said, to her friend, pointing to an old 
 engraving, " you know it well." 
 
 They both knew it well, yet together they bent 
 down to examine it again, and it seemed to them as 
 new as music which, whenever questioned, gives 
 some different answer. It came from the hand of 
 Albert Diirer. 
 
 The great Angel of Earth with the eagle's wings,
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 397 
 
 the sleepless spirit crowned with patience, sat on the 
 bare stone with his elbow on his knee, his cheek sup- 
 ported on his hand, a book on his other knee, and a 
 compass in his other hand. At his feet, coiled round 
 like a serpent, lay the faithful greyhound, the dog 
 which has hunted side by side with man from the 
 very dawn of time. By his side, almost crouching 
 on the edge of a millstone, like a bird, slept a child, 
 sad already, holding the style and the tablet with 
 which to write down the first word of his science. 
 All round him were scattered the instruments of the 
 works of man, and on his watchful head, near the 
 summit of a wing, the silent sands of time ran through 
 their hourglass ; and in the background there was 
 the sea with its gulfs and its ports and its lighthouses, 
 the calm, unconquerable sea over which, when the 
 sun had set in its rainbow glory, the twilight bat 
 would fly with the revealing word written on its 
 membrane. And those ports and those lighthouses 
 and those cities were the work of the sleepless spirit 
 crowned with patience. He had broken the stone 
 for the towers, cut down the pine-tree for the ships, 
 tempered the iron for every struggle. He himself 
 had laid on Time the instrument that measures it. 
 Seated not to rest, but to meditate on some new work 
 to be accomplished, he fixed on life the powerful eyes 
 shining with the free light of the sun. Silence rose up 
 to him from every surrounding form but one. And 
 that only voice was the voice of the roaring fire in 
 the furnace, under the crucible where sublimated 
 matter would presently generate some new force that 
 would serve to cure some evil, or to teach some 
 law. And this was the answer of the great Angel of
 
 398 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 Earth with the eagle's wings from whose steel-bound 
 flank hung the keys that open and shut, to those who 
 were questioning him : " The sun sets. The light 
 that is born in the heavens dies in the heavens, and 
 each day is ignorant of the light of another day. But 
 the night is one, and its shadow is on every counten- 
 ance, and its blindness is in every eye except on the 
 countenance and in the eyes of him who feeds his fire 
 in order to illumine his strength. I know that the liv- 
 ing are as the dead, the waking as the sleeping, the 
 young as the old, because the change of the one 
 brings forth the other, and each change has pain and 
 joy for equal companions. I know that the harmony 
 of the Universe is made of discords as in the lyre and 
 in the bow. I know that I am and that I am not, 
 and that one alone is the way, high or low. I know 
 the putrid odour and the numberless infections that 
 go hand in hand with human nature. And yet, be- 
 yond my knowledge, I continue the accomplishment 
 of my manifest or secret works. I see some perish 
 while I still last, I see others that seem as if they 
 must last eternally beautiful and exempt from all 
 miseries, no longer mine, although born from my deep- 
 est evils. I see all things changing before fire as 
 fortunes do before gold. Only one thing is constant, 
 and that thing is my courage. I can never sit down, 
 except to rise again." 
 
 The young man passed his arm round his friend's 
 waist; and together, speechless, they went to the 
 window. 
 
 They saw the far, far distant sky, the trees, the 
 cupolas, the towers, the end of the lagoon over which 
 the face of twilight was bending, and the Euganean
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 399 
 
 hills as quiet and blue as if they were the wings of 
 earth folded in the repose of evening. 
 
 They turned, facing each other, looking into the 
 depths of each other's eyes. 
 
 Then they kissed each other, as if sealing an 
 unspoken compact. 
 
 The world seemed to have lost value. 
 
 Stelio Effrena had asked the widow of Richard 
 Wagner for the two young Italians who had carried 
 the unconscious hero from the boat to the shore one 
 November night, and four of their companions, to be 
 granted the honour of carrying the bier from the 
 death-chamber to the boat and from the boat to the 
 carriage. She had granted it. 
 
 It was the sixteenth of February. It was one 
 o'clock in the afternoon. Stelio Effrena, Daniele 
 Glauro, Francesco de Lizo, Baldassare Stampa, Fabio 
 Molza, and Antimo della Bella were waiting in the 
 hall of the palace. The latter had arrived from 
 Rome after having obtained permission to bring 
 with him two artisans engaged in the construction 
 of the Theatre of Apollo, that they might carry 
 at the funeral bunches of laurels gathered on the 
 Janiculum. 
 
 Speechless, without even looking at each other, 
 they waited, each overcome by the beating of his 
 own heart. Nothing was heard except the feeble 
 splash of the water on the steps of the great door 
 where on the candelabra at the doorposts two words 
 were engraved, Domus Pads. 
 
 The boatman, who had been dear to the hero, came
 
 400 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 down and called them. His eyes, in his faithful, 
 manly face, were burnt by tears. 
 
 Stelio Effrena went first ; his companions followed 
 him. When they had ascended the staircase, they 
 entered a low half-dark room, full of a sad odour of 
 flowers and perfume. They waited a few seconds. 
 The other door opened. One by one they entered 
 the adjoining room ; one by one they turned pale. 
 
 The body was there, shut in its crystal coffin, and 
 standing beside it was the woman with the face of 
 snow. The second coffin of burnished metal shone 
 open on the pavement. 
 
 The six bearers stood before the body waiting for 
 the signal. The silence was very great, and none 
 stirred; but an impetuous sorrow had forced itself 
 into their souls like a gust of wind, and was shaking 
 them to their deepest roots. 
 
 All were gazing fixedly at the chosen one of Life 
 and Death ; an infinite smile illumined the face of the 
 prostrate hero a smile as distant and infinite as 
 the rainbow of a glacier, as the gleam of the sea, as 
 the halo of a star. They could not bear to see it, 
 but their hearts, with a wondering fear that made 
 them religious, felt as if they were receiving the reve- 
 lation of a divine secret. 
 
 The woman with the face of snow moved slightly, 
 yet remained in the same attitude, rigid as a monument. 
 
 Then the six companions moved towards the bier, 
 held out their arms, gathered up their strength. 
 Stelio Effrena had his place at the head and Daniele 
 Glauro at the foot, as on that other day. They raised 
 their burden at one effort, at a low command from 
 their leader. A glamour struck their eyes as if a
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 401 
 
 belt of sun had crossed the glass. Baldassare Stampa 
 broke into sobs. One same knot gripped all their 
 throats. The coffin wavered, then was lowered again, 
 entered its metal wrapper as in an armour. 
 
 The six companions remained prostrate all round, 
 hesitating before closing the cover, fascinated by that 
 infinite smile. On hearing a slight rustle, Stelio 
 Effrena looked up. He saw the face of snow bend- 
 ing over the body, like a superhuman apparition of 
 love- and sorrow. That second was like all eternity. 
 The woman disappeared. 
 
 When the coffin was closed, they lifted up its in- 
 creased weight ; they bore it slowly out of the room 
 and down the staircase. Wrapped in a kind of sub- 
 lime anguish, they could see their fraternal faces re- 
 flected in the metal case. 
 
 The funeral boat awaited them at the door. The 
 pall was drawn over the coffin. The six companions 
 waited with bared heads for the family to come down. 
 It came, gathered close together. The widow passed 
 veiled. But the splendour of her countenance was 
 in their memories for ever. 
 
 The procession was brief: the funeral boat went 
 first; the widow followed with her dear ones, then 
 the group of young men. The sky was encumbered 
 with clouds, above the wide pathway of stone and 
 water. The great silence was worthy of Him who 
 had transformed the forces of the Universe for man's 
 worship into infinite song. 
 
 A flock of pigeons, starting from the marbles of 
 the Scalsi, flew with a quivering flash over the bier 
 and across the canal, wreathing the cupola of San 
 Simeone. 
 
 26
 
 402 THE FLAME OF LIFE 
 
 At the landing a silent group of devoted friends 
 was waiting. The large wreaths perfumed the grey 
 air; they could hear the water beating under the 
 curved prows. The six companions lifted the coffin 
 from the boat and carried it on their shoulders to 
 the compartment that was waiting for it in the 
 station. The friends drew near and laid their wreaths 
 on the pall. No word was spoken. 
 
 The two artisans drew near with their bunches of 
 laurels gathered on the Janiculum. 
 
 They were vigorous, powerful men, chosen among 
 the strongest and 'finest, and they seemed to be 
 shaped in the ancient mould of the Roman race. 
 They were quiet and grave, with all the wild liberty 
 of the Agro in their bloodshot eyes. Their strong 
 outlines, narrow forehead, low crisp hair, firm jaws 
 and bull-like neck, recalled the profile of some of 
 the Consuls of old. Their attitude, exempt from any 
 servile obsequiousness, made them worthy of their 
 mission. 
 
 The six companions in turn, equal now in their 
 fervour, strewed branches from the bunches of laurel 
 over the hero's coffin. 
 
 Noble indeed were those Latin laurels, cut from 
 the shrubs of the hill where, in the days of remote 
 antiquity, the eagles descended with their prophe- 
 cies, where in recent though still fabulous times a 
 stream of blood has been shed for the beauty of 
 Italy by the soldiers of the Liberator. They were 
 straight, dark robust branches ; the leaves were 
 hard, strongly veined, with sharp margins, green 
 as the bronze of fountains, rich with the aroma of 
 triumph.
 
 THE EMPIRE OF SILENCE 403 
 
 And they travelled towards the Bavarian hill still 
 slumbering under its frost, while their noble trunks 
 were already budding in the light of Rome to the 
 murmur of hidden springs. 
 
 SETTIGNANO DI DESIDERIO : 
 XIII DI FEBRUARY, MDCCC.
 
 PO LLYANNA 
 
 Eleanor H. Porter 
 
 Author of " Miss Billy," " Miss Billy's Decision," etc. 
 
 1 2 mo, cloth decorative, illustrated, net $1 .25 ; postpaid $1.40 
 
 " ENTER Pollyanna! She is the daintiest, dearest, most 
 irresistible maid you have met in all your journeyings through 
 Bookland. And you forget she is a story girl, for Pollyanna 
 is so real that after your first introduction you will feel the 
 inner circle of your friends has admitted a new member. A 
 brave, winsome, modern American girl, Pollyanna walks into 
 print to take her place in the hearts of all members of the 
 family." 
 
 * 
 
 Of " Miss Bitty " the critics have written as follows: 
 
 " To say of any story that it makes the reader's heart feel warm and 
 happy is to pay it praise of sorts, undoubtedly. Well, that's the very praise 
 one gives ' Miss Billy.' '' Edwin L. Shuman in the Chicago Record-Herald. 
 
 " The story is delightful and as for Billy herself she's all right.' " 
 Philadelphia Press. 
 
 " There is a fine humor in the book, some good revelation of character 
 and plenty of romance of the most unusual order." The Philadelphia 
 Inquirer. 
 
 " There is something altogether fascinating about ' Miss Billy," some 
 inexplicable feminine characteristic that seems to demand the individual 
 attention of the reader from the moment we open the book until we reluc- 
 tantly turn the last page." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " The book is a wholesome story, as fresh in tone as it is graceful in ex- 
 pression, and one may predict for it a wide audience." Philadelphia Pub- 
 lic Ledger. 
 
 " Miss Billy is so carefree, so original and charming, that she lives in the 
 reader's memory long after the book has been laid aside." Boston Globe. 
 
 " You cannot help but love dear ' Billy; ' she is winsome and attractive 
 and you will be only too glad to introduce her to your friends." Brooklyn 
 Eagle.
 
 THE GOLDEN ROAD 
 
 ?iJb ZBy L. M. Montgomery gJTC 
 
 Author of ' ' Anne of Green Gables, " " Anne of Aoonlea, 
 "Chronicles of Aoonlea, " " The Story Girl, " 
 "Kilmeny of the Orchard, " etc. 
 
 I2mo, cloth decorative, with frontispiece in full color, from a 
 painting by George Gibbs. &ct $1 .25 ; postpaid $ 1 .40 
 
 UNDER the guidance of Sara Stanley, that fascinating 
 "weaver of dream stories," the happy, fun-loving group 
 introduced by Miss Montgomery, travel down "the golden 
 road" to the parting of ways in this new story. Old 
 friendships are renewed with the simple folk of Prince 
 Edward Islam 3 with its orchard-embowered homes and 
 fertile meadows and groves of spruce. The adventurings 
 of tb^ King family, as chronicled in a daily newspaper, 
 whic~i is aided and abetted by the heathen Peter, with its 
 headline features of the long-expected romance which enters 
 into the life of pretty Aunt Olivia, the return of a prodigal, 
 which strangely enough causes temporary anguish instead of 
 joy to one childish heart, and what happens to the Awkward 
 Man, will give delighi for many a day to all members of the 
 family, young and old. 
 
 Mist. Montgomery again proves that she is a distinct aqui- 
 sition to American literature and entitled to a place of honor 
 as the writer of stories which "uplift the spirit and drive 
 the pessimist into bankruptcy." 
 
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