And what about him?”

“He loves all these things in relation to the being he loves, but none of them for themselves. If the object of his love is dead or absent, nothing exists for him any longer. Despair and boredom overwhelm him and his soul hasn’t sufficient strength to start life once more for the sake of a new love.”

“That is indeed beautiful,” said Madame Floriani, overcome with genuine admiration. “If I had come across such a soul when I fell in love for the first time, I should have had but one love in my life.”

“You frighten me, Lucrezia. Are you going to fall in love with my little prince?”

“I don’t like princes,” she answered simply. “I could only fall in love with paupers. In any case, your little prince could well be my son.”

“You are mad! You are thirty and he is twenty-four.”

“Ah! I would have thought he was only sixteen or eighteen. He looks like an adolescent And as for myself, I feel so old and staid that I think I am fifty.”

“It makes no difference. I am not easy in my mind. I must take the prince away to-morrow.”

“You may put your mind entirely at rest, Salvator. I shall never love again. See,” she said, taking his hand and putting it on her heart, “Henceforth a stone lies here. But I am wrong,” she went on and placed Salvator’s hand on her forehead. “Love of one’s children and charity still dwell in one’s heart; but the main abode of love is here, in the head, and my head is turned to stone. I know that love is said to be seated in the senses, but this is not true of intelligent women. With them it follows a progressive course: first it takes possession of the brain and knocks at the doors of the imagination. Without this golden key it could not enter. Having triumphed thus far, it descends into the emotions, it steals into all our faculties and we then love the man who dominates us like a God, a child, a brother, a husband – like everything that a woman can love. It stimulates and subjugates all our vital forces, and the senses duly play their own important part But the woman who can know pleasure without rapture is an animal, and I tell you now that rapture, – ecstasy – is dead inside me. I have had too many disappointments, I have too much experience, and above all, I am too tired. You know how I suddenly became sick of the theatre, through lassitude, although I was physically perfectly well My imagination was satiated, exhausted. I could no longer find a single role in the world’s repertoire which seemed genuine and when I tried to make one myself to my own liking I realised after one single performance that I had failed to convey my feelings in my words. I did not play this role well, because it wasn’t good, and I was not deluded when the public tried to deceive me by applauding. Well, I have reached the same point in the matter of love. The music of illusion has died for me too soon.

“Love is a prism,” she went on. “It is a sun which we wear on our brows and through which our interior being is illumined. When once it is extinguished, everything sinks back into night Now I see life and men just as they are. Now I can only love through charity, which is what I did for my last lover, Vandoni. I had no more ecstasy, I was grateful for his affection; touched by his suffering, I devoted myself to him. I was not happy, I did not even experience excitement It was a perpetual sacrifice, senseless and unnatural Suddenly the whole situation horrified me, I felt myself degraded.