“How strange … How horrible…”

“What? What did you say? Do you want us to stay?”

“No, certainly not for my sake, but for yours. I am frightened at so easy a separation after so easy a reunion.”

“Come, my dear Karol, you are wandering,” said Salvator, forcing a laugh. “I understand your suspicions and accusations which are somewhat rash … and harsh! You imagine that I have just come from an intoxicating tête-à-tête and that content with a pleasant and easy adventure I am preparing to leave without formal leavetaking, without regrets, in short, without love … Thank you for such generous thoughts…”

“Salvator, I said nothing like that; you are making me speak so as to pick a quarrel with me.”

“No, no. Let us not quarrel This is not the time. Let’s sleep. Good night” And as he reached his bed and flung himself on it, slightly ill tempered, Salvator muttered: “You do jump to conclusions, don’t you? How charitable you virtuous people are! Ah! It is really very amusing.”

But his laughter was not exactly hearty. He felt that he was guilty and that if Madame Floriani had wished to be as foolish as he, Karol’s accusation would have hit the mark only too well.

10.

Karol was extraordinarily sensitive. Temperaments which are delicate and intense possess a kind of divination which often deceives them because it goes beyond the truth, but never falls short of it and which consequently seems magical when it hits the target.

“My friend,” he said to Salvator, trying to settle down quietly on his pillow, which was not easy because he was trembling like a man stricken with fever, “you are cruel. Yet God knows that I have suffered greatly on your account for the last three hours and that one suffers in proportion to the affection one has for people. I cannot endure the idea that you have committed a fault It is more cruel to me, it causes me more shame and regret than if I had committed it myself.”

“I don’t believe anything of the sort,” retorted Salvator coldly. “If you had a slightly improper thought you would blow out your brains. Consequently you are implacable when others think that way.”

“So I am not mistaken,” said Karol. “You have made that unhappy creature commit another indiscretion.”

“I am a blackguard, a villain, anything you say,” cried Salvator, sitting up in his bed and opening his curtains to see Karol as he spoke to him, “but that woman is an angel, I tell you, and so much the worse for you if you haven’t sufficient heart and mind to understand her.”

This was the first time that Salvator had uttered a harsh, insulting word to his friend. He was over-excited by the emotions of the evening and he could not endure this undeserved blame.

He had no sooner given vent to his resentment then he regretted it bitterly; for he saw Karol’s expressive face grow pale, change terribly and betray great pain.

“Listen, Karol,” said he, kicking the wall hard so as to make his bed move nearer to his friend’s, “don’t be angry, don’t be distressed. It is bad enough for me to have done so earlier this evening to a being whom I love almost as much as you, if that is possible. Pity me, scold me, I don’t mind, I deserve it; but don’t accuse this excellent and admirable woman. I shall tell you everything.”

And Salvator, unable to resist the silent domination of his friend, related to him most truthfully, in every slightest detail, all that had taken place between their hostess and him.

Karol listened to him with great inner emotion, a fact of which Salvator, carried away by his own confession, did not take sufficient notice. This description of the noble instincts and the reckless life of Madame Floriani was the final blow, and his imagination was deeply impressed by it He could picture her in the arms of the wretched Tealdo Soavi, then as the companion of a common actor, accommodating through kindness, degraded through nobility of soul And now he could see her insulted by the blind desires of this same good Salvator who, according to his own admission, would have been ready to make love to the maidservant at the inn at Iseo, if he had spent the night on the other side of the lake. Finally he pictured her in her bedroom, in the midst of her sleeping children. He saw her throughout as great by nature and degraded by life. He felt himself growing deathly cold and burning hot, leaping towards her and swooning at her approach. When Salvator had finished speaking, a cold sweat bathed Karol’s brow.

Why should the shrewd reader be surprised? Surely he has guessed already that Prince de Roswald had fallen madly in love, at first sight and for life, with Lucrezia Floriani!

I promised or rather threatened not to give the reader the pleasure of the smallest surprise throughout the whole of this book. It would have been fairly simple to conceal our hero’s sufferings before the explosion of an emotion increasingly unlikely and difficult to foresee. But the reader is not as simple as is believed and knowing the human heart just as well as those who write about it, knowing full well from his own experience that those loves which are reputed to be impossible are the very ones which burst forth with the greatest violence, he would not have been deceived by the would-be cunning of the novelist What would be the purpose then of trying the reader’s patience by skilful manoeuvres and false circumventions? He reads so many novels that he knows all the tricks of the trade and as far as I am concerned, I have resolved not to trifle with him, even if he should regard me as a simpleton and take it ill.

Why should this woman who was no longer very young nor very beautiful, whose character was the exact opposite of Karol’s, whose indiscreet behaviour, unrestrained passions, tenderness of heart and boldness of mind seemed a violent protest against all the principles of society and established religion, why, in short, had the actress Floriani without wishing or even thinking of it succeeded in casting such a spell over Prince de Roswald? How did this man, so handsome, chaste, poetic, so fervent and refined in all his thoughts, affections and behaviour, fall suddenly and almost without a struggle under the sway of a woman worn out by so much emotional stress, disillusioned by so many things, sceptical and rebellious with regard to everything which he most respected, faithful to the point of fanaticism to ideas which he had always denied and would always deny in the future? This, I need scarcely say, is one of the most inexplicable problems in logic, but it is that part of my novel which is truest to life, since the lives of all poor human hearts offer each one of us a page, if not a whole volume, of this fatal experience.

Isn’t it possible that in the midst of her paradoxes Madame Floriani had laid her finger on the very heart of the truth when, as she spoke to Salvator Albani about love, she had said that generous or tender souls are condemned to love only those whom they pity and fear?

People have long said that love attracts the most opposite elements, and when Salvator reported to his young friend the slightly confused, wild but enthusiastic and possibly sublime theories of Lucrezia, it is certain that Karol felt that he had fallen beneath the law of this appalling fatality. The dread and horror which he felt were so violent and, at the same time, the fascination of which his presentiment had vaguely warned him waged such battles in his poor soul that he had not the strength to make the slightest remark to his friend.

“So we shall leave in an hour,” he said, at last “You can rest for an hour, Salvator. I do not feel sleepy. I shall wake you when it is daylight.”

Salvator, yielding to the urges of youth, fell soundly asleep, relieved no doubt to have opened his heart and given utterance to his emotions. He was not ashamed that he had made what a roué would have called a blunder with regard to Lucrezia. He was sincerely sorry for it, but knowing she was good and true, he counted on her forgiveness and did not make the rash vow never to attempt a similar move with other women.

Karol did not fall asleep. He became feverish and because he felt ill he tried to tell himself that the moral perturbance which he had just undergone was merely a symptom of physical illness.