Hauntings .............................................................................................................................................................1

Vernon Lee ...............................................................................................................................................1

PREFACE. ...............................................................................................................................................1

Amour Dure: Passages from the Diary of Spiridion Trepka ....................................................................3

PART I. ....................................................................................................................................................3

PART II. .................................................................................................................................................13

Dionea. ...................................................................................................................................................19

Oke of Okehurst; or, the Phantom Lover ...............................................................................................32

I..............................................................................................................................................................33

II. ............................................................................................................................................................33

III ............................................................................................................................................................37

IV...........................................................................................................................................................44

V. ............................................................................................................................................................48

VI...........................................................................................................................................................50

VII. .........................................................................................................................................................52

VIII. ........................................................................................................................................................56

IX...........................................................................................................................................................59

A Wicked Voice. ....................................................................................................................................61

WE were talking last eveningas the blue moonmist poured in through the oldfashioned grated window,

and mingled with our yellow lamplight at tablewe were talking of a certain castle whose heir is initiated

(as folk tell) on his twentyfirst birthday to the knowledge of a secret so terrible as to overshadow his

subsequent life. It struck us, discussing idly the various mysteries and terrors that may lie behind this fact or

this fable, that no doom or horror conceivable and to be defined in words could ever adequately solve this

riddle; that no reality of dreadfulness could seem aught but paltry, bearable, and easy to face in comparison

And this leads me to say, that it seems to me that the supernatural, in order to call forth those sensations,

terrible to our ancestors and terrible but delicious to ourselves, sceptical posterity, must necessarily, and with

but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in mystery. Indeed, 'tis the mystery that touches us, the vague shroud

of moonbeams that hangs about the haunting lady, the glint on the warrior's breastplate, the click of his

unseen spurs, while the figure itself wanders forth, scarcely outlined, scarcely separated from the surrounding

A number of ingenious persons of our day, desirous of a pocketsuperstition, as men of yore were greedy of

a pocketsaint to carry about in gold and enamel, a number of highly reasoning men of semiscience have

returned to the notion of our fathers, that ghosts have an existence outside our own fancy and emotion; and

have culled from the experience of some Jemima Jackson, who fifty years ago, being nine years of age, saw

her maiden aunt appear six months after decease, abundant proof of this fact. One feels glad to think the

maiden aunt should have walked about after death, if it afforded her any satisfaction, poor soul! but one is

struck by the extreme uninterestingness of this lady's appearance in the spirit, corresponding perhaps to her

want of charm while in the flesh. Altogether one quite agrees, having duly perused the collection of evidence

on the subject, with the wisdom of these modern ghostexperts, when they affirm that you can always tell a

genuine ghoststory by the circumstance of its being about a nobody, its having no point or picturesqueness,

A genuine ghoststory! But then they are not genuine ghoststories, those tales that tingle through our

additional sense, the sense of the supernatural, and fill places, nay whole epochs, with their strange perfume

No, alas! neither the story of the murdered King of Denmark (murdered people, I am told, usually stay quiet,

as a scientific fact), nor of that weird woman who saw King James the Poet three times with his shroud

wrapped ever higher; nor the tale of the finger of the bronze Venus closing over the weddingring, whether

told by Morris in verse patterned like some tapestry, or by M rim e in terror of cynical reality, or droned by

the original medi�val professional storyteller, none of these are genuine ghoststories. They exist, these

ghosts, only in our minds, in the minds of those dead folk; they have never stumbled and fumbled about, with

They are things of the imagination, born there, bred there, sprung from the strange confused heaps,

halfrubbish, halftreasure, which lie in our fancy, heaps of halffaded recollections, of fragmentary vivid

impressions, litter of multicoloured tatters, and faded herbs and flowers, whence arises that odour (we all

know it), musty and damp, but penetratingly sweet and intoxicatingly heady, which hangs in the air when the

ghost has swept through the unopened door, and the flickering flames of candle and fire start up once more

The genuine ghost? And is not this he, or she, this one born of ourselves, of the weird places we have seen,

the strange stories we have heardthis one, and not the aunt of Miss Jemima Jackson? For what use, I

entreat you to tell me, is that respectable spinster's vision? Was she worth seeing, that aunt of hers, or would

she, if followed, have led the way to any interesting brimstone or any endurable beatitude?

The supernatural can open the caves of Jamschid and scale the ladder of Jacob: what use has it got if it land

us in Islington or Shepherd's Bush? It is well known that Dr. Faustus, having been offered any ghost he

chose, boldly selected, for Mephistopheles to convey, no less a person than Helena of Troy. Imagine if the

That is the thingthe Past, the more or less remote Past, of which the prose is clean obliterated by

distancethat is the place to get our ghosts from. Indeed we live ourselves, we educated folk of modern

times, on the borderland of the Past, in houses looking down on its troubadours' orchards and Greek folks'

pillared courtyards; and a legion of ghosts, very vague and changeful, are perpetually to and fro, fetching and

Hence, my four little tales are of no genuine ghosts in the scientific sense; they tell of no hauntings such as

could be contributed by the Society for Psychical Research, of no spectres that can be caught in definite

places and made to dictate judicial evidence. My ghosts are what you call spurious ghosts (according to me

the only genuine ones), of whom I can affirm only one thing, that they haunted certain brains, and have

haunted, among others, my own and my friends'yours, dear Arthur Lemon, along the dim twilit tracks,

among the high growing bracken and the spectral pines, of the south country; and yours, amidst the mist of

moonbeams and olivebranches, dear Flora Priestley, while the moonlit sea moaned and rattled against the

Urbania, August 20th, 1885.I had longed, these years and years, to be in Italy, to come face to face with

the Past; and was this Italy, was this the Past? I could have cried, yes cried, for disappointment when I first

wandered about Rome, with an invitation to dine at the German Embassy in my pocket, and three or four

Berlin and Munich Vandals at my heels, telling me where the best beer and sauerkraut could be had, and what

Is this folly? Is it falsehood? Am I not myself a product of modern, northern civilisation; is not my coming to

Italy due to this very modern scientific vandalism, which has given me a travelling scholarship because I

have written a book like all those other atrocious books of erudition and artcriticism? Nay, am I not here at

Urbania on the express understanding that, in a certain number of months, I shall produce just another such

book? Dost thou imagine, thou miserable Spiridion, thou Pole grown into the semblance of a German pedant,

doctor of philosophy, professor even, author of a prize essay on the despots of the fifteenth century, dost thou

imagine that thou, with thy ministerial letters and proofsheets in thy black professorial coatpocket, canst

Too true, alas! But let me forget it, at least, every now and then; as I forgot it this afternoon, while the white

bullocks dragged my gig slowly winding along interminable valleys, crawling along interminable hillsides,

with the invisible droning torrent far below, and only the bare grey and reddish peaks all around, up to this

town of Urbania, forgotten of mankind, towered and battlemented on the high Apennine ridge. Sigillo, Penna,

Fossombrone, Mercatello, Montemurloeach single village name, as the driver pointed it out, brought to my

mind the recollection of some battle or some great act of treachery of former days. And as the huge

mountains shut out the setting sun, and the valleys filled with bluish shadow and mist, only a band of

threatening smokered remaining behind the towers and cupolas of the city on its mountaintop, and the

sound of church bells floated across the precipice from Urbania, I almost expected, at every turning of the

road, that a troop of horsemen, with beaked helmets and clawed shoes, would emerge, with armour glittering

and pennons waving in the sunset. And then, not two hours ago, entering the town at dusk, passing along the

deserted streets, with only a smoky light here and there under a shrine or in front of a fruitstall, or a fire

reddening the blackness of a smithy; passing beneath the battlements and turrets of the palace.... Ah, that was

August 21st.And this is the Present! Four letters of introduction to deliver, and an hour's polite

conversation to endure with the VicePrefect, the Syndic, the Director of the Archives, and the good man to

August 22nd27th.Spent the greater part of the day in the Archives, and the greater part of my time there

in being bored to extinction by the Director thereof, who today spouted �neas Sylvius' Commentaries for

threequarters of an hour without taking breath. From this sort of martyrdom (what are the sensations of a

former racehorse being driven in a cab? If you can conceive them, they are those of a Pole turned Prussian

professor) I take refuge in long rambles through the town. This town is a handful of tall black houses huddled

on to the top of an Alp, long narrow lanes trickling down its sides, like the slides we made on hillocks in our

boyhood, and in the middle the superb red brick structure, turreted and battlemented, of Duke Ottobuono's

palace, from whose windows you look down upon a sea, a kind of whirlpool, of melancholy grey mountains.

Then there are the people, dark, bushybearded men, riding about like brigands, wrapped in greenlined

cloaks upon their shaggy packmules; or loitering about, great, brawny, lowheaded youngsters, like the

particoloured bravos in Signorelli's frescoes; the beautiful boys, like so many young Raphaels, with eyes

like the eyes of bullocks, and the huge women, Madonnas or St. Elizabeths, as the case may be, with their

clogs firmly poised on their toes and their brass pitchers on their heads, as they go up and down the steep

black alleys. I do not talk much to these people; I fear my illusions being dispelled. At the corner of a street,

opposite Francesco di Giorgio's beautiful little portico, is a great blue and red advertisement, representing an

angel descending to crown Elias Howe, on account of his sewingmachines; and the clerks of the

VicePrefecture, who dine at the place where I get my dinner, yell politics, Minghetti, Cairoli, Tunis,

ironclads, at each other, and sing snatches of La Fille de Mme. Angot, which I imagine they have been

No; talking to the natives is evidently a dangerous experiment. Except indeed, perhaps, to my good landlord,

Signor Notaro Porri, who is just as learned, and takes considerably less snuff (or rather brushes it off his coat

more often) than the Director of the Archives. I forgot to jot down (and I feel I must jot down, in the vain

belief that some day these scraps will help, like a withered twig of olive or a threewicked Tuscan lamp on

my table, to bring to my mind, in that hateful Babylon of Berlin, these happy Italian days)I forgot to record

that I am lodging in the house of a dealer in antiquities. My window looks up the principal street to where the

little column with Mercury on the top rises in the midst of the awnings and porticoes of the marketplace.

Bending over the chipped ewers and tubs full of sweet basil, clove pinks, and marigolds, I can just see a

corner of the palace turret, and the vague ultramarine of the hills beyond. The house, whose back goes sharp

down into the ravine, is a queer upanddown black place, whitewashed rooms, hung with the Raphaels and

Francias and Peruginos, whom mine host regularly carries to the chief inn whenever a stranger is expected;

and surrounded by old carved chairs, sofas of the Empire, embossed and gilded weddingchests, and the

cupboards which contain bits of old damask and embroidered altarcloths scenting the place with the smell of

old incense and mustiness; all of which are presided over by Signor Porri's three maiden sistersSora

Serafina, Sora Lodovica, and Sora Adalgisathe three Fates in person, even to the distaffs and their black

Sor Asdrubale, as they call my landlord, is also a notary. He regrets the Pontifical Government, having had a

cousin who was a Cardinal's trainbearer, and believes that if only you lay a table for two, light four candles

made of dead men's fat, and perform certain rites about which he is not very precise, you can, on Christmas

Eve and similar nights, summon up San Pasquale Baylon, who will write you the winning numbers of the

lottery upon the smoked back of a plate, if you have previously slapped him on both cheeks and repeated

three Ave Marias. The difficulty consists in obtaining the dead men's fat for the candles, and also in slapping

"If it were not for that," says Sor Asdrubale, "the Government would have had to suppress the lottery ages

Sept. 9th.This history of Urbania is not without its romance, although that romance (as usual) has been

overlooked by our Dryasdusts. Even before coming here I felt attracted by the strange figure of a woman,

which appeared from out of the dry pages of Gualterio's and Padre de Sanctis' histories of this place. This

woman is Medea, daughter of Galeazzo IV. Malatesta, Lord of Carpi, wife first of Pierluigi Orsini, Duke of

Stimigliano, and subsequently of Guidalfonso II., Duke of Urbania, predecessor of the great Duke Robert II.

This woman's history and character remind one of that of Bianca Cappello, and at the same time of Lucrezia

Borgia. Born in 1556, she was affianced at the age of twelve to a cousin, a Malatesta of the Rimini family.

This family having greatly gone down in the world, her engagement was broken, and she was betrothed a

year later to a member of the Pico family, and married to him by proxy at the age of fourteen. But this match

not satisfying her own or her father's ambition, the marriage by proxy was, upon some pretext, declared null,

and the suit encouraged of the Duke of Stimigliano, a great Umbrian feudatory of the Orsini family. But the

bridegroom, Giovanfrancesco Pico, refused to submit, pleaded his case before the Pope, and tried to carry off

by force his bride, with whom he was madly in love, as the lady was most lovely and of most cheerful and

amiable manner, says an old anonymous chronicle. Pico waylaid her litter as she was going to a villa of her

father's, and carried her to his castle near Mirandola, where he respectfully pressed his suit; insisting that he

had a right to consider her as his wife. But the lady escaped by letting herself into the moat by a rope of

sheets, and Giovanfrancesco Pico was discovered stabbed in the chest, by the hand of Madonna Medea da

The Pico having been settled, and the marriage with him declared null by the Pope, Medea da Carpi was

solemnly married to the Duke of Stimig liano, and went to live upon his domains near Rome.

Two years later, Pierluigi Orsini was stabbed by one of his grooms at his castle of Stimigliano, near Orvieto;

and suspicion fell upon his widow, more especially as, immediately after the event, she caused the murderer

to be cut down by two servants in her own chamber; but not before he had declared that she had induced him

to assassinate his master by a promise of her love. Things became so hot for Medea da Carpi that she fled to

Urbania and threw herself at the feet of Duke Guidalfonso II., declaring that she had caused the groom to be

killed merely to avenge her good fame, which he had slandered, and that she was absolutely guiltless of the

death of her husband. The marvellous beauty of the widowed Duchess of Stimigliano, who was only

nineteen, entirely turned the head of the Duke of Urbania. He affected implicit belief in her innocence,

refused to give her up to the Orsinis, kinsmen of her late husband, and assigned to her magnificent apartments

in the left wing of the palace, among which the room containing the famous fireplace ornamented with

marble Cupids on a blue ground. Guidalfonso fell madly in love with his beautiful guest. Hitherto timid and

domestic in character, he began publicly to neglect his wife, Maddalena Varano of Camerino, with whom,

although childless, he had hitherto lived on excellent terms; he not only treated with con tempt the

admonitions of his advisers and of his suzerain the Pope, but went so far as to take measures to repudiate his

wife, on the score of quite imaginary illconduct. The Duchess Maddalena, unable to bear this treatment, fled

to the convent of the barefooted sisters at Pesaro, where she pined away, while Medea da Carpi reigned in her

place at Urbania, embroiling Duke Guidalfonso in quarrels both with the powerful Orsinis, who continued to

accuse her of Stimigliano's murder, and with the Varanos, kinsmen of the injured Duchess Maddalena; until

at length, in the year 1576, the Duke of Urbania, having become suddenly, and not without suspicious

circumstances, a widower, publicly married Medea da Carpi two days after the decease of his unhappy wife.

No child was born of this marriage; but such was the infatuation of Duke Guidalfonso, that the new Duchess

induced him to settle the inheritance of the Duchy (having, with great difficulty, obtained the consent of the

Pope) on the boy Bartolommeo, her son by Stimigliano, but whom the Orsinis refused to acknowledge as

such, declaring him to be the child of that Giovanfrancesco Pico to whom Medea had been married by proxy,

and whom, in defence, as she had said, of her honour, she had assassinated; and this investiture of the Duchy

of Urbania on to a stranger and a bastard was at the expense of the obvious rights of the Cardinal Robert,

In May 1579 Duke Guidalfonso died suddenly and mysteriously, Medea having forbidden all access to his

chamber, lest, on his deathbed, he might repent and reinstate his brother in his rights. The Duchess

immediately caused her son, Bartolommeo Orsini, to be proclaimed Duke of Urbania, and herself regent; and,

with the help of two or three unscrupulous young men, particularly a certain Captain Oliverotto da Narni,

who was rumoured to be her lover, seized the reins of government with extraordinary and terrible vigour,

marching an army against the Varanos and Orsinis, who were defeated at Sigillo, and ruthlessly

exterminating every person who dared question the lawfulness of the succession; while, all the time, Cardinal

Robert, who had flung aside his priest's garb and vows, went about in Rome, Tuscany, Venicenay, even to

the Emperor and the King of Spain, imploring help against the usurper. In a few months he had turned the

tide of sympathy against the DuchessRegent; the Pope solemnly declared the investiture of Bartolommeo

Orsini worthless, and published the accession of Robert II., Duke of Urbania and Count of Montemurlo; the

Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Venetians secretly promised assistance, but only if Robert were able to assert

his rights by main force. Little by little, one town after the other of the Duchy went over to Robert, and

Medea da Carpi found herself surrounded in the mountain citadel of Urbania like ascorpion surrounded by

flames. (This simile is not mine, but belongs to Raffaello Gualterio, historiographer to Robert II.) But, unlike

the scorpion, Medea refused to commit suicide. It is perfectly marvellous how, without money or allies, she

could so long keep her enemies at bay; and Gualterio attributes this to those fatal fascinations which had

brought Pico and Stimigliano to their deaths, which had turned the once honest Guidalfonso into a villain,

and which were such that, of all her lovers, not one but preferred dying for her, even after he had been treated

with ingratitude and ousted by a rival; a faculty which Messer Raffaello Gualterio clearly attributed to hellish

At last the exCardinal Robert succeeded, and triumphantly entered Urbania in November 1579. His

accession was marked by moderation and clemency. Not a man was put to death, save Oliverotto da Narni,

who threw himself on the new Duke, tried to stab him as he alighted at the palace, and who was cut down by

the Duke's men, crying, "Orsini, Orsini! Medea, Medea! Long live Duke Bartolommeo!" with his dying

breath, although it is said that the Duchess had treated him with ignominy. The little Bartolommeo was sent

to Rome to the Orsinis; the Duchess, respectfully confined in the left wing of the palace.

It is said that she haughtily requested to see the new Duke, but that he shook his head, and, in his priest's

fashion, quoted a verse about Ulysses and the Sirens; and it is remarkable that he persistently refused to see

her, abruptly leaving his chamber one day that she had entered it by stealth. After a few months a conspiracy

was discovered to murder Duke Robert, which had obviously been set on foot by Medea. But the young man,

one Marcantonio Frangipani of Rome, denied, even under the severest torture, any complicity of hers; so that

Duke Robert, who wished to do nothing violent, merely transferred the Duchess from his villa at Sant' Elmo

to the convent of the Clarisse in town, where she was guarded and watched in the closest manner. It seemed

impossible that Medea should intrigue any further, for she certainly saw and could be seen by no one. Yet she

contrived to send a letter and her portrait to one Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi, a youth, only nineteen years old,

of noble Romagnole family, and who was betrothed to one of the most beautiful girls of Urbania. He

immediately broke off his engagement, and, shortly afterwards, attempted to shoot Duke Robert with a

holsterpistol as he knelt at mass on the festival of Easter Day. This time Duke Robert was determined to

obtain proofs against Medea. Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi was kept some days without food, then submitted to

the most violent tortures, and finally condemned. When he was going to be flayed with redhot pincers and

quartered by horses, he was told that he might obtain the grace of immediate death by confessing the

complicity of the Duchess; and the confessor and nuns of the convent, which stood in the place of execution

outside Porta San Romano, pressed Medea to save the wretch, whose screams reached her, by confessing her

own guilt. Medea asked permission to go to a balcony, where she could see Prinzivalle and be seen by him.

She looked on coldly, then threw down her embroidered kerchief to the poor mangled creature. He asked the

executioner to wipe his mouth with it, kissed it, and cried out that Medea was innocent. Then, after several

hours of torments, he died. This was too much for the patience even of Duke Robert. Seeing that as long as

Medea lived his life would be in perpetual danger, but unwilling to cause a scandal (somewhat of the

priestnature remaining), he had Medea strangled in the convent, and, what is remarkable, insisted that only

womentwo infanticides to whom he remitted their sentenceshould be employed for the deed.

"This clement prince," writes Don Arcangelo Zappi in his life of him, published in 1725, "can be blamed only

for one act of cruelty, the more odious as he had himself, until released from his vows by the Pope, been in

holy orders. It is said that when he caused the death of the infamous Medea da Carpi, his fear lest her

extraordinary charms should seduce any man was such, that he not only employed women as executioners,

but refused to permit her a priest or monk, thus forcing her to die unshriven, and refusing her the benefit of

Such is the story of Medea da Carpi, Duchess of Stimigliano Orsini, and then wife of Duke Guidalfonso II. of

Urbania. She was put to death just two hundred and ninetyseven years ago, December 1582, at the age of

barely sevenand twenty, and having, in the course of her short life, brought to a violent end five of her

Sept. 20th.A grand illumination of the town in honour of the taking of Rome fifteen years ago. Except Sor

Asdrubale, my landlord, who shakes his head at the Piedmontese, as he calls them, the people here are all

Italianissimi. The Popes kept them very much down since Urbania lapsed to the Holy See in 1645.

Sept. 28th.I have for some time been hunting for portraits of the Duchess Medea. Most of them, I imagine,

must have been destroyed, perhaps by Duke Robert II.'s fear lest even after her death this terrible beauty

should play him a trick. Three or four I have, however, been able to findone a miniature in the Archives,

said to be that which she sent to poor Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi in order to turn his head; one a marble bust

in the palace lumberroom; one in a large composition, possibly by Baroccio, representing Cleopatra at the

feet of Augustus. Augustus is the idealised portrait of Robert II., round cropped head, nose a little awry,

clipped beard and scar as usual, but in Roman dress. Cleopatra seems to me, for all her Oriental dress, and

although she wears a black wig, to be meant for Medea da Carpi; she is kneeling, baring her breast for the

victor to strike, but in reality to captivate him, and he turns away with an awkward gesture of loathing. None

of these portraits seem very good, save the miniature, but that is an exquisite work, and with it, and the

suggestions of the bust, it is easy to reconstruct the beauty of this terrible being. The type is that most

admired by the late Renaissance, and, in some measure, immortalised by Jean Goujon and the French. The

face is a perfect oval, the forehead somewhat overround, with minute curls, like a fleece, of bright auburn

hair; the nose a trifle overaquiline, and the cheekbones a trifle too low; the eyes grey, large, prominent,

beneath exquisitely curved brows and lids just a little too tight at the corners; the mouth also, brilliantly red

and most delicately designed, is a little too tight, the lips strained a trifle over the teeth. Tight eyelids and

tight lips give a strange refinement, and, at the same time, an air of mystery, a somewhat sinister

seductiveness; they seem to take, but not to give. The mouth with a kind of childish pout, looks as if it could

bite or suck like a leech. The complexion is dazzlingly fair, the perfect transparent roset lily of a redhaired

beauty; the head, with hair elabo rately curled and plaited close to it, and adorned with pearls, sits like that

of the antique Arethusa on a long, supple, swanlike neck. A curious, at first rather conventional,

artificiallooking sort of beauty, voluptuous yet cold, which, the more it is contemplated, the more it troubles

and haunts the mind. Round the lady's neck is a gold chain with little gold lozenges at intervals, on which is

engraved the posy or pun (the fashion of French devices is common in those days), "Amour DureDure

Amour." The same posy is inscribed in the hollow of the bust, and, thanks to it, I have been able to identify

the latter as Medea's portrait. I often examine these tragic portraits, wondering what this face, which led so

many men to their death, may have been like when it spoke or smiled, what at the moment when Medea da

Carpi fascinated her victims into love unto death"Amour DureDure Amour," as runs her devicelove

that lasts, cruel loveyes indeed, when one thinks of the fidelity and fate of her lovers.

Oct. 13th.I have literally not had time to write a line of my diary all these days. My whole mornings have

gone in those Archives, my afternoons taking long walks in this lovely autumn weather (the highest hills are

just tipped with snow). My evenings go in writing that confounded account of the Palace of Urbania which

Government requires, merely to keep me at work at something useless. Of my history I have not yet been able

to write a word.... By the way, I must note down a curious circumstance mentioned in an anonymous MS. life

of Duke Robert, which I fell upon today. When this prince had the equestrian statue of himself by Antonio

Tassi, Gianbologna's pupil, erected in the square of the Corte, he secretly caused to be made, says my

anonymous MS., a silver statuette of his familiar genius or angel"familiaris ejus angelus seu genius, quod a

vulgo dicitur idolino"which statuette or idol, after having been consecrated by the astrologers"ab

astrologis quibusdam ritibus sacrato"was placed in the cavity of the chest of the effigy by Tassi, in order,

says the MS., that his soul might rest until the general Resurrection. This passage is curious, and to me

somewhat puzzling; how could the soul of Duke Robert await the general Resurrection, when, as a Catholic,

he ought to have believed that it must, as soon as separated from his body, go to Purgatory? Or is there some

semipagan superstition of the Renaissance (most strange, certainly, in a man who had been a Cardinal)

connecting the soul with a guardian genius, who could be compelled, by magic rites ("ab astrologis sacrato,"

the MS. says of the little idol), to remain fixed to earth, so that the soul should sleep in the body until the Day

of Judgment? I confess this story baffles me. I wonder whether such an idol ever existed, or exists nowadays,

Oct. 20th.I have been seeing a good deal of late of the VicePrefect's son: an amiable young man with a

lovesick face and a languid interest in Urbanian history and arch�ology, of which he is profoundly

ignorant. This young man, who has lived at Siena and Lucca before his father was promoted here, wears

extremely long and tight trousers, which almost preclude his bending his knees, a stickup collar and an

eyeglass, and a pair of fresh kid gloves stuck in the breast of his coat, speaks of Urbania as Ovid might have

spoken of Pontus, and complains (as well he may) of the barbarism of the young men, the officials who dine

at my inn and howl and sing like madmen, and the nobles who drive gigs, showing almost as much throat as a

lady at a ball. This person frequently entertains me with his amori, past, present, and future; he evidently

thinks me very odd for having none to entertain him with in return; he points out to me the pretty (or ugly)

servantgirls and dressmakers as we walk in the street, sighs deeply or sings in falsetto behind every

tolerably younglooking woman, and has finally taken me to the house of the lady of his heart, a great

blackmoustachioed countess, with a voice like a fishcrier; here, he says, I shall meet all the best company

in Urbania and some beautiful womenah, too beautiful, alas! I find three huge halffurnished rooms, with

bare brick floors, petroleum lamps, and horribly bad pictures on bright wash ballblue and gamboge walls,

and in the midst of it all, every evening, a dozen ladies and gentlemen seated in a circle, vociferating at each

other the same news a year old; the younger ladies in bright yellows and greens, fanning themselves while my

teeth chatter, and having sweet things whispered behind their fans by officers with hair brushed up like a

hedgehog. And these are the women my friend expects me to fall in love with! I vainly wait for tea or supper

which does not come, and rush home, determined to leave alone the Urbanian beau monde.

It is quite true that I have no amori, although my friend does not believe it. When I came to Italy first, I

looked out for romance; I sighed, like Goethe in Rome, for a window to open and a wondrous creature to

appear, "welch mich versengend erquickt." Perhaps it is because Goethe was a German, accustomed to

German Fraus, and I am, after all, a Pole, accustomed to something very different from Fraus; but anyhow,

for all my efforts, in Rome, Florence, and Siena, I never could find a woman to go mad about, either among

the ladies, chattering bad French, or among the lower classes, as 'cute and cold as moneylenders; so I steer

clear of Italian womankind, its shrill voice and gaudy toilettes. I am wedded to history, to the Past, to women

like Lucrezia Borgia, Vittoria Accoramboni, or that Medea da Carpi, for the present; some day I shall perhaps

find a grand passion, a woman to play the Don Quixote about, like the Pole that I am; a woman out of whose

slipper to drink, and for whose pleasure to die; but not here! Few things strike me so much as the degeneracy

of Italian women. What has become of the race of Faustinas, Marozias, Bianca Cappellos? Where discover

nowadays (I confess she haunts me) another Medea da Carpi? Were it only possible to meet a woman of that

extreme distinction of beauty, of that terribleness of nature, even if only potential, I do believe I could love

her, even to the Day of Judgment, like any Oliverotto da Narni, or Frangipani or Prinzivalle.

Oct. 27th.Fine sentiments the above are for a professor, a learned man! I thought the young artists of Rome

childish because they played practical jokes and yelled at night in the streets, returning from the Caff Greco

or the cellar in the Via Palombella; but am I not as childish to the fullI, melancholy wretch, whom they

Nov. 5th.I can't free myself from the thought of this Medea da Carpi. In my walks, my mornings in the

Archives, my solitary evenings, I catch myself thinking over the woman. Am I turning novelist instead of

historian? And still it seems to me that I understand her so well; so much better than my facts warrant. First,

we must put aside all pedantic modern ideas of right and wrong. Right and wrong in a century of violence and

treachery does not exist, least of all for creatures like Medea. Go preach right and wrong to a tigress, my dear

sir! Yet is there in the world anything nobler than the huge creature, steel when she springs, velvet when she

treads, as she stretches her supple body, or smooths her beautiful skin, or fastens her strong claws into her

Yes; I can understand Medea. Fancy a woman of superlative beauty, of the highest courage and calmness, a

woman of many resources, of genius, brought up by a petty princelet of a father, upon Tacitus and Sallust,

and the tales of the great Malatestas, of C�sar Borgia and suchlike!a woman whose one passion is

conquest and empirefancy her, on the eve of being wedded to a man of the power of the Duke of

Stimigliano, claimed, carried off by a small fry of a Pico, locked up in his hereditary brigand's castle, and

having to receive the young fool's redhot love as an honour and a necessity! The mere thought of any

violence to such a nature is an abominable outrage; and if Pico chooses to embrace such a woman at the risk

of meeting a sharp piece of steel in her arms, why, it is a fair bargain. Young houndor, if you prefer, young

heroto think to treat a woman like this as if she were any village wench! Medea marries her Orsini. A

marriage, let it be noted, between an old soldier of fifty and a girl of sixteen. Reflect what that means: it

means that this imperious woman is soon treated like a chattel, made roughly to understand that her business

is to give the Duke an heir, not advice; that she must never ask "wherefore this or that?" that she must

courtesy before the Duke's counsellors, his captains, his mistresses; that, at the least suspicion of

rebelliousness, she is subject to his foul words and blows; at the least suspicion of infidelity, to be strangled

or starved to death, or thrown down an oubliette. Suppose that she know that her husband has taken it into his

head that she has looked too hard at this man or that, that one of his lieutenants or one of his women have

whispered that, after all, the boy Bartolommeo might as soon be a Pico as an Orsini. Suppose she know that

she must strike or be struck? Why, she strikes, or gets some one to strike for her. At what price? A promise of

love, of love to a groom, the son of a serf! Why, the dog must be mad or drunk to believe such a thing

possible; his very belief in anything so monstrous makes him worthy of death. And then he dares to blab!

This is much worse than Pico. Medea is bound to defend her honour a second time; if she could stab Pico, she

Hounded by her husband's kinsmen, she takes refuge at Urbania. The Duke, like every other man, falls wildly

in love with Medea, and neglects his wife; let us even go so far as to say, breaks his wife's heart. Is this

Medea's fault? Is it her fault that every stone that comes beneath her chariotwheels is crushed? Certainly

not. Do you suppose that a woman like Medea feels the smallest illwill against a poor, craven Duchess

Maddalena? Why, she ignores her very existence. To suppose Medea a cruel woman is as grotesque as to call

her an immoral woman. Her fate is, sooner or later, to triumph over her enemies, at all events to make their

victory almost a defeat; her magic faculty is to enslave all the men who come across her path; all those who

see her, love her, become her slaves; and it is the destiny of all her slaves to perish. Her lovers, with the

exception of Duke Guidalfonso, all come to an untimely end; and in this there is nothing unjust. The

possession of a woman like Medea is a happiness too great for a mortal man; it would turn his head, make

him forget even what he owed her; no man must survive long who conceives himself to have a right over her;

it is a kind of sacrilege. And only death, the willingness to pay for such happiness by death, can at all make a

man worthy of being her lover; he must be willing to love and suffer and die. This is the meaning of her

device"Amour DureDure Amour." The love of Medea da Carpi cannot fade, but the lover can die; it is a

Nov. 11th.I was right, quite right in my idea. I have foundOh, joy! I treated the VicePrefect's son to a

dinner of five courses at the Trattoria La Stella d'Italia out of sheer jubilationI have found in the Archives,

unknown, of course, to the Director, a heap of lettersletters of Duke Robert about Medea da Carpi, letters

of Medea herself! Yes, Medea's own handwritinga round, scholarly character, full of abbreviations, with a

Greek look about it, as befits a learned princess who could read Plato as well as Petrarch. The letters are of

little importance, mere drafts of business letters for her secretary to copy, during the time that she governed

the poor weak Guidalfonso. But they are her letters, and I can imagine almost that there hangs about these

The few letters of Duke Robert show him in a new light. A cunning, cold, but craven priest. He trembles at

the bare thought of Medea"la pessima Medea"worse than her namesake of Colchis, as he calls her. His

long clemency is a result of mere fear of laying violent hands upon her. He fears her as something almost

supernatural; he would have enjoyed having had her burnt as a witch. After letter on letter, telling his crony,

Cardinal Sanseverino, at Rome his various precautions during her lifetimehow he wears a jacket of mail

under his coat; how he drinks only milk from a cow which he has milked in his presence; how he tries his dog

with morsels of his food, lest it be poisoned; how he suspects the waxcandles because of their peculiar

smell; how he fears riding out lest some one should frighten his horse and cause him to break his neckafter

all this, and when Medea has been in her grave two years, he tells his correspondent of his fear of meeting the

soul of Medea after his own death, and chuckles over the ingenious device (concocted by his astrologer and a

certain Fra Gaudenzio, a Capuchin) by which he shall secure the absolute peace of his soul until that of the

wicked Medea be finally "chained up in hell among the lakes of boiling pitch and the ice of Caina described

by the immortal bard"old pedant! Here, then, is the explanation of that silver imagequod vulgo dicitur

idolinowhich he caused to be soldered into his effigy by Tassi. As long as the image of his soul was

attached to the image of his body, he should sleep awaiting the Day of Judgment, fully convinced that

Medea's soul will then be properly tarred and feathered, while hishonest man!will fly straight to

Paradise. And to think that, two weeks ago, I believed this man to be a hero! Aha! my good Duke Robert, you

shall be shown up in my history; and no amount of silver idolinos shall save you from being heartily laughed

Nov. 15th.Strange! That idiot of a Prefect's son, who has heard me talk a hundred times of Medea da

Carpi, suddenly recollects that, when he was a child at Urbania, his nurse used to threaten him with a visit

from Madonna Medea, who rode in the sky on a black hegoat. My Duchess Medea turned into a bogey for

Nov. 20th.I have been going about with a Bavarian Professor of medi�val history, showing him all over

the country. Among other places we went to Rocca Sant' Elmo, to see the former villa of the Dukes of

Urbania, the villa where Medea was confined between the accession of Duke Robert and the conspiracy of

Marcantonio Frangipani, which caused her removal to the nunnery immediately outside the town. A long ride

up the desolate Apennine valleys, bleak beyond words just now with their thin fringe of oak scrub turned

russet, thin patches of grass sered by the frost, the last few yellow leaves of the poplars by the torrents

shaking and fluttering about in the chill Tramontana; the mountaintops are wrapped in thick grey cloud;

tomorrow, if the wind continues, we shall see them round masses of snow against the cold blue sky. Sant'

Elmo is a wretched hamlet high on the Apennine ridge, where the Italian vegetation is already replaced by

that of the North. You ride for miles through leafless chestnut woods, the scent of the soaking brown leaves

filling the air, the roar of the torrent, turbid with autumn rains, rising from the precipice below; then suddenly

the leafless chestnut woods are replaced, as at Vallombrosa, by a belt of black, dense fir plantations.

Emerging from these, you come to an open space, frozen blasted meadows, the rocks of snow clad peak, the

newly fallen snow, close above you; and in the midst, on a knoll, with a gnarled larch on either side, the ducal

villa of Sant' Elmo, a big black stone box with a stone escutcheon, grated windows, and a double flight of

steps in front. It is now let out to the proprietor of the neighbouring woods, who uses it for the storage of

chestnuts, faggots, and charcoal from the neighbouring ovens. We tied our horses to the iron rings and

entered: an old woman, with dishevelled hair, was alone in the house. The villa is a mere huntinglodge, built

by Ottobuono IV., the father of Dukes Guidalfonso and Robert, about 1530. Some of the rooms have at one

time been frescoed and panelled with oak carvings, but all this has disappeared. Only, in one of the big

rooms, there remains a large marble fireplace, similar to those in the palace at Urbania, beautifully carved

with Cupids on a blue ground; a charming naked boy sustains a jar on either side, one containing clove pinks,

We returned home late, my companion in excessively bad humour at the fruitlessness of the expedition. We

were caught in the skirt of a snowstorm as we got into the chestnut woods. The sight of the snow falling

gently, of the earth and bushes whitened all round, made me feel back at Posen, once more a child. I sang and

shouted, to my companion's horror. This will be a bad point against me if reported at Berlin. A historian of

twentyfour who shouts and sings, and that when another historian is cursing at the snow and the bad roads!

All night I lay awake watching the embers of my wood fire, and thinking of Medea da Carpi mewed up, in

winter, in that solitude of Sant' Elmo, the firs groaning, the torrent roaring, the snow falling all round; miles

and miles away from human creatures. I fancied I saw it all, and that I, somehow, was Marcantonio

Frangipani come to liberate heror was it Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi? I suppose it was because of the long

ride, the unaccustomed pricking feeling of the snow in the air; or perhaps the punch which my professor

Nov. 23rd.Thank goodness, that Bavarian professor has finally departed! Those days he spent here drove

me nearly crazy. Talking over my work, I told him one day my views on Medea da Carpi; whereupon he

condescended to answer that those were the usual tales due to the mythopoeic (old idiot!) tendency of the

Renaissance; that research would disprove the greater part of them, as it had disproved the stories current

about the Borgias, that, moreover, such a woman as I made out was psychologically and physiologically

impossible. Would that one could say as much of such professors as he and his fellows!

Nov. 24tlh.I cannot get over my pleasure in being rid of that imbecile; I felt as if I could have throttled him

every time he spoke of the Lady of my thoughtsfor such she has becomeMetea, as the animal called her!

Nov. 30th.I feel quite shaken at what has just happened; I am beginning to fear that that old pedant was

right in saying that it was bad for me to live all alone in a strange country, that it would make me morbid. It is

ridiculous that I should be put into such a state of excitement merely by the chance discovery of a portrait of a

woman dead these three hundred years. With the case of my uncle Ladislas, and other suspicions of insanity

Yet the incident was really dramatic, uncanny. I could have sworn that I knew every picture in the palace

here; and particularly every picture of Her. Anyhow, this morning, as I was leaving the Archives, I passed

through one of the many small roomsirregularshaped closetswhich fill up the ins and outs of this

curious palace, turreted like a French ch�teau. I must have passed through that closet before, for the view

was so familiar out of its window; just the particular bit of round tower in front, the cypress on the other side

of the ravine, the belfry beyond, and the piece of the line of Monte Sant' Agata and the Leonessa, covered

with snow, against the sky. I suppose there must be twin rooms, and that I had got into the wrong one; or

rather, perhaps some shutter had been opened or curtain withdrawn. As I was passing, my eye was caught by

a very beautiful old mirrorframe let into the brown and yellow inlaid wall. I approached, and looking at the

frame, looked also, mechanically, into the glass. I gave a great start, and almost shrieked, I do believe(it's

lucky the Munich professor is safe out of Urbania!). Behind my own image stood another, a figure close to

my shoulder, a face close to mine; and that figure, that face, hers! Medea da Carpi's! I turned sharp round, as

white, I think, as the ghost I expected to see. On the wall opposite the mirror, just a pace or two behind where

I had been standing, hung a portrait. And such a portrait!Bronzino never painted a grander one. Against a

background of harsh, dark blue, there stands out the figure of the Duchess (for it is Medea, the real Medea, a

thousand times more real, individual, and powerful than in the other portraits), seated stiffly in a highbacked

chair, sustained, as it were, almost rigid, by the stiff brocade of skirts and stomacher, stiffer for plaques of

embroidered silver flowers and rows of seed pearl. The dress is, with its mixture of silver and pearl, of a

strange dull red, a wicked poppyjuice colour, against which the flesh of the long, narrow hands with

fringelike fingers; of the long slender neck, and the face with bared forehead, looks white and hard, like

alabaster. The face is the same as in the other portraits: the same rounded forehead, with the short fleecelike,

yellowishred curls; the same beautifully curved eyebrows, just barely marked; the same eyelids, a little tight

across the eyes; the same lips, a little tight across the mouth; but with a purity of line, a dazzling splendour of

She looks out of the frame with a cold, level glance; yet the lips smile. One hand holds a dullred rose; the

other, long, narrow, tapering, plays with a thick rope of silk and gold and jewels hanging from the waist;

round the throat, white as marble, partially confined in the tight dullred bodice, hangs a gold collar, with the

On reflection, I see that I simply could never have been in that room or closet before; I must have mistaken

the door. But, although the explanation is so simple, I still, after several hours, feel terribly shaken in all my

being. If I grow so excitable I shall have to go to Rome at Christmas for a holiday. I feel as if some danger

pursued me here (can it be fever?); and yet, and yet, I don't see how I shall ever tear myself away.

Dec. 10th.I have made an effort, and accepted the VicePrefect's son's invitation to see the oilmaking at a

villa of theirs near the coast. The villa, or farm, is an old fortified, towered place, standing on a hillside

among olivetrees and little osierbushes, which look like a bright orange flame. The olives are squeezed in

a tremendous black cellar, like a prison: you see, by the faint white daylight, and the smoky yellow flare of

resin burning in pans, great white bullocks moving round a huge millstone; vague figures working at pulleys

and handles: it looks, to my fancy, like some scene of the Inquisition. The Cavaliere regaled me with his best

wine and rusks. I took some long walks by the seaside; I had left Urbania wrapped in snowclouds; down on

the coast there was a bright sun; the sunshine, the sea, the bustle of the little port on the Adriatic seemed to do

me good. I came back to Urbania another man. Sor Asdrubale, my landlord, poking about in slippers among

the gilded chests, the Empire sofas, the old cups and saucers and pictures which no one will buy,

congratulated me upon the improvement in my looks. "You work too much," he says; "youth requires

amusement, theatres, promenades, amoriit is time enough to be serious when one is bald"and he took

off his greasy red cap. Yes, I am better! and, as a result, I take to my work with delight again. I will cut them

Dec. 14th.I don't think I have ever felt so happy about my work. I see it all so wellthat crafty, cowardly

Duke Robert; that melancholy Duchess Maddalena; that weak, showy, wouldbe chivalrous Duke

Guidalfonso; and above all, the splendid figure of Medea. I feel as if I were the greatest historian of the age;

and, at the same time, as if I were a boy of twelve. It snowed yesterday for the first time in the city, for two

good hours. When it had done, I actually went into the square and taught the ragamuffins to make a

snowman; no, a snowwoman; and I had the fancy to call her Medea. "La pessima Medea!" cried one of the

boys"the one who used to ride through the air on a goat?" "No, no," I said; "she was a beautiful lady, the

Duchess of Urbania, the most beautiful woman that ever lived." I made her a crown of tinsel, and taught the

boys to cry "Evviva, Medea!" But one of them said, "She is a witch! She must be burnt!" At which they all

rushed to fetch burning faggots and tow; in a minute the yelling demons had melted her down.

Dec. 15th.What a goose I am, and to think I am twentyfour, and known in literature! In my long walks I

have composed to a tune (I don't know what it is) which all the people are singing and whistling in the street

at present, a poem in frightful Italian, beginning "Medea, mia dea," calling on her in the name of her various

lovers. I go about humming between my teeth, "Why am I not Marcantonio? or Prinzivalle? or he of Narni?

or the good Duke Alfonso? that I might be beloved by thee, Medea, mia dea," Awful rubbish! My landlord, I

think, suspects that Medea must be some lady I met while I was staying by the seaside. I am sure Sora

Serafina, Sora Lodovica, and Sora Adalgisathe three Parc� or Norns, as I call themhave some such

notion. This afternoon, at dusk, while tidying my room, Sora Lodovica said to me, "How beautifully the

Signorino has taken to singing!" I was scarcely aware that I had been vociferating, "Vieni, Medea, mia dea,"

while the old lady bobbed about making up my fire. I stopped; a nice reputation I shall get! I thought, and all

this will somehow get to Rome, and thence to Berlin. Sora Lodovica was leaning out of the window, pulling

in the iron hook of the shrinelamp which marks Sor Asdrubale's house. As she was trimming the lamp

previous to swinging it out again, she said in her odd, prudish little way, "You are wrong to stop singing, my

son" (she varies between calling me Signor Professore and such terms of affection as "Nino," "Viscere mie,"

"you are wrong to stop singing, for there is a young lady there in the street who has actually stopped to listen

I ran to the window. A woman, wrapped in a black shawl, was standing in an archway, looking up to the

"Medea, mia dea!" I burst out as loud as I could, with a boy's pleasure in disconcerting the inquisitive

passerby. She turned suddenly round to go away, waving her hand at me; at that moment Sora Lodovica

swung the shrinelamp back into its place. A stream of light fell across the street. I felt myself grow quite

Dec. 17th.I fear that my craze about Medea da Carpi has become well known, thanks to my silly talk and

idiotic songs. That VicePrefect's sonor the assistant at the Archives, or perhaps some of the company at

the Contessa's, is trying to play me a trick! But take care, my good ladies and gentlemen, I shall pay you out

in your own coin! Imagine my feelings when, this morning, I found on my desk a folded letter addressed to

me in a curious handwriting which seemed strangely familiar to me, and which, after a moment, I recognised

as that of the letters of Medea da Carpi at the Archives. It gave me a horrible shock. My next idea was that it

must be a present from some one who knew my interest in Medeaa genuine letter of hers on which some

idiot had written my address instead of putting it into an envelope. But it was addressed to me, written to me,

"To SPIRIDION.A person who knows the interest you bear her will be at the Church of San Giovanni

Decollato this evening at nine. Look out, in the left aisle, for a lady wearing a black mantle, and holding a

By this time I understood that I was the object of a conspiracy, the victim of a hoax. I turned the letter round

and round. It was written on paper such as was made in the sixteenth century, and in an extraordinarily

precise imitation of Medea da Carpi's characters. Who had written it? I thought over all the possible people.

On the whole, it must be the VicePrefect's son, perhaps in combination with his ladylove, the Countess.

They must have torn a blank page off some old letter; but that either of them should have had the ingenuity of

inventing such a hoax, or the power of committing such a forgery, astounds me beyond measure. There is

more in these people than I should have guessed. How pay them off? By taking no notice of the letter?

Dignified, but dull. No, I will go; perhaps some one will be there, and I will mystify them in their turn. Or, if

no one is there, how I shall crow over them for their imperfectly carried out plot! Perhaps this is some folly of

the Cavalier Muzio's to bring me into the presence of some lady whom he destines to be the flame of my

future amori. That is likely enough. And it would be too idiotic and professorial to refuse such an invitation;

the lady must be worth knowing who can forge sixteenthcentury letters like this, for I am sure that languid

swell Muzio never could. I will go! By Heaven! I'll pay them back in their own coin! It is now fivehow

Dec. 18th.Am I mad? Or are there really ghosts? That adventure of last night has shaken me to the very

I went at nine, as the mysterious letter had bid me. It was bitterly cold, and the air full of fog and sleet; not a

shop open, not a window unshuttered, not a creature visible; the narrow black streets, precipitous between

their high walls and under their lofty archways, were only the blacker for the dull light of an oillamp here

and there, with its flickering yellow reflection on the wet flags. San Giovanni Decollato is a little church, or

rather oratory, which I have always hitherto seen shut up (as so many churches here are shut up except on

great festivals); and situate behind the ducal palace, on a sharp ascent, and forming the bifurcation of two

steep paved lanes. I have passed by the place a hundred times, and scarcely noticed the little church, except

for the marble high relief over the door, showing the grizzly head of the Baptist in the charger, and for the

iron cage close by, in which were formerly exposed the heads of criminals; the decapitated, or, as they call

him here, decollated, John the Baptist, being apparently the patron of axe and block.

A few strides took me from my lodgings to San Giovanni Decollato. I confess I was excited; one is not

twentyfour and a Pole for nothing. On getting to the kind of little platform at the bifurcation of the two

precipitous streets, I found, to my surprise, that the windows of the church or oratory were not lighted, and

that the door was locked! So this was the precious joke that had been played upon me; to send me on a bitter

cold, sleety night, to a church which was shut up and had perhaps been shut up for years! I don't know what I

couldn't have done in that moment of rage; I felt inclined to break open the church door, or to go and pull the

VicePrefect's son out of bed (for I felt sure that the joke was his). I determined upon the latter course; and

was walking towards his door, along the black alley to the left of the church, when I was suddenly stopped by

the sound as of an organ close by; an organ, yes, quite plainly, and the voice of choristers and the drone of a

litany. So the church was not shut, after all! I retraced my steps to the top of the lane. All was dark and in

complete silence. Suddenly there came again a faint gust of organ and voices. I listened; it clearly came from

the other lane, the one on the righthand side. Was there, perhaps, another door there? I passed beneath the

archway, and descended a little way in the direction whence the sounds seemed to come. But no door, no

light, only the black walls, the black wet flags, with their faint yellow reflec tions of flickering oillamps;

moreover, complete silence. I stopped a minute, and then the chant rose again; this time it seemed to me most

certainly from the lane I had just left. I went backnothing. Thus backwards and forwards, the sounds

always beckoning, as it were, one way, only to beckon me back, vainly, to the other.

At last I lost patience; and I felt a sort of creeping terror, which only a violent action could dispel. If the

mysterious sounds came neither from the street to the right, nor from the street to the left, they could come

only from the church. Halfmaddened, I rushed up the two or three steps, and prepared to wrench the door

open with a tremendous effort. To my amazement, it opened with the greatest ease. I entered, and the sounds

of the litany met me louder than before, as I paused a moment between the outer door and the heavy leathern

curtain. I raised the latter and crept in. The altar was brilliantly illuminated with tapers and garlands of

chandeliers; this was evidently some evening service connected with Christmas. The nave and aisles were

comparatively dark, and about halffull. I elbowed my way along the right aisle towards the altar. When my

eyes had got accustomed to the unexpected light, I began to look round me, and with a beating heart. The idea

that all this was a hoax, that I should meet merely some acquaintance of my friend the Cavaliere's, had

somehow departed: I looked about. The people were all wrapped up, the men in big cloaks, the women in

woollen veils and mantles. The body of the church was comparatively dark, and I could not make out

anything very clearly, but it seemed to me, somehow, as if, under the cloaks and veils, these people were

dressed in a rather extraordinary fashion. The man in front of me, I remarked, showed yellow stockings

beneath his cloak; a woman, hard by, a red bodice, laced behind with gold tags. Could these be peasants from

some remote part come for the Christmas festivities, or did the inhabitants of Urbania don some

As I was wondering, my eye suddenly caught that of a woman standing in the opposite aisle, close to the

altar, and in the full blaze of its lights. She was wrapped in black, but held, in a very conspicuous way, a red

rose, an unknown luxury at this time of the year in a place like Urbania. She evidently saw me, and turning

even more fully into the light, she loosened her heavy black cloak, displaying a dress of deep red, with

gleams of silver and gold embroideries; she turned her face towards me; the full blaze of the chandeliers and

tapers fell upon it. It was the face of Medea da Carpi! I dashed across the nave, pushing people roughly aside,

or rather, it seemed to me, passing through impalpable bodies. But the lady turned and walked rapidly down

the aisle towards the door. I followed close upon her, but somehow I could not get up with her. Once, at the

curtain, she turned round again. She was within a few paces of me. Yes, it was Medea. Medea herself, no

mistake, no delusion, no sham; the oval face, the lips tightened over the mouth, the eyelids tight over the

corner of the eyes, the exquisite alabaster complexion! She raised the curtain and glided out. I followed; the

curtain alone separated me from her. I saw the wooden door swing to behind her. One step ahead of me! I

I stood outside the church. All was empty, merely the wet pavement and the yellow reflections in the pools: a

sudden cold seized me; I could not go on. I tried to reenter the church; it was shut. I rushed home, my hair

standing on end, and trembling in all my limbs, and remained for an hour like a maniac. Is it a delusion? Am

Dec. 19th.A brilliant, sunny day; all the black snowslush has disappeared out of the town, off the bushes

and trees. The snowclad mountains sparkle against the bright blue sky. A Sunday, and Sunday weather; all

the bells are ringing for the approach of Christmas. They are preparing for a kind of fair in the square with the

colonnade, putting up booths filled with coloured cotton and woollen ware, bright shawls and kerchiefs,

mirrors, ribbons, brilliant pewter lamps; the whole turnout of the pedlar in "Winter's Tale." The porkshops

are all garlanded with green and with paper flowers, the hams and cheeses stuck full of little flags and green

twigs. I strolled out to see the cattlefair outside the gate; a forest of interlacing horns, an ocean of lowing

and stamping: hundreds of immense white bullocks, with horns a yard long and red tassels, packed close

together on the little piazza d'armi under the city walls. Bah! why do I write this trash? What's the use of it

all? While I am forcing myself to write about bells, and Christmas festivities, and cattlefairs, one idea goes

Two hours later.That Church of San Giovanni Decollatoso my landlord informs mehas not been

made use of within the memory of man. Could it have been all a hallucination or a dreamperhaps a dream

dreamed that night? I have been out again to look at that church. There it is, at the bifurcation of the two steep

lanes, with its basrelief of the Baptist's head over the door. The door does look as if it had not been opened

for years. I can see the cobwebs in the windowpanes; it does look as if, as Sor Asdrubale says, only rats and

spiders congregated within it. And yetand yet; I have so clear a remembrance, so distinct a consciousness

of it all. There was a picture of the daughter of Herodias dancing, upon the altar; I remember her white turban

with a scarlet tuft of feathers, and Herod's blue caftan; I remember the shape of the central chandelier; it

swung round slowly, and one of the wax lights had got bent almost in two by the heat and draught.

Things, all these, which I may have seen elsewhere, stored unawares in my brain, and which may have come

out, somehow, in a dream; I have heard physiologists allude to such things. I will go again: if the church be

shut, why then it must have been a dream, a vision, the result of overexcitement. I must leave at once for

Rome and see doctors, for I am afraid of going mad. If, on the other handpshaw! there is no other hand in

such a case. Yet if there werewhy then, I should really have seen Medea; I might see her again; speak to

her. The mere thought sets my blood in a whirl, not with horror, but with . . . I know not what to call it. The

feeling terrifies me, but it is delicious. Idiot! There is some little coil of my brain, the twentieth of a

Dec. 20th.I have been again; I have heard the music; I have been inside the church; I have seen Her! I can

no longer doubt my senses. Why should I? Those pedants say that the dead are dead, the past is past. For

them, yes; but why for me?why for a man who loves, who is consumed with the love of a woman?a

woman who, indeedyes, let me finish the sentence. Why should there not be ghosts to such as can see

them? Why should she not return to the earth, if she knows that it contains a man who thinks of, desires, only

A hallucination? Why, I saw her, as I see this paper that I write upon; standing there, in the full blaze of the

altar. Why, I heard the rustle of her skirts, I smelt the scent of her hair, I raised the curtain which was shaking

from her touch. Again I missed her. But this time, as I rushed out into the empty moonlit street, I found upon

the church steps a rosethe rose which I had seen in her hand the moment beforeI felt it, smelt it; a rose,

a real, living rose, dark red and only just plucked. I put it into water when I returned, after having kissed it,

who knows how many times? I placed it on the top of the cupboard; I determined not to look at it for

twentyfour hours lest it should be a delusion. But I must see it again; I must.... Good Heavens! this is

horrible, horrible; if I had found a skeleton it could not have been worse! The rose, which last night seemed

freshly plucked, full of colour and perfume, is brown, drya thing kept for centuries between the leaves of a

bookit has crumbled into dust between my fingers. Horrible, horrible! But why so, pray? Did I not know

that I was in love with a woman dead three hundred years? If I wanted fresh roses which bloomed yesterday,

the Countess Fiammetta or any little sempstress in Urbania might have given them me. What if the rose has

fallen to dust? If only I could hold Medea in my arms as I held it in my fingers, kiss her lips as I kissed its

petals, should I not be satisfied if she too were to fall to dust the next moment, if I were to fall to dust myself?

Dec. 22nd, Eleven at night.I have seen her once more!almost spoken to her. I have been promised her

love! Ah, Spiridion! you were right when you felt that you were not made for any earthly amori. At the usual

hour I betook myself this evening to San Giovanni Decollato. A bright winter night; the high houses and

belfries standing out against a deep blue heaven luminous, shimmering like steel with myriads of stars; the

moon has not yet risen. There was no light in the windows; but, after a little effort, the door opened and I

entered the church, the altar, as usual, brilliantly illuminated. It struck me suddenly that all this crowd of men

and women standing all round, these priests chanting and moving about the altar, were deadthat they did

not exist for any man save me. I touched, as if by accident, the hand of my neighbour; it was cold, like wet

clay. He turned round, but did not seem to see me: his face was ashy, and his eyes staring, fixed, like those of

a blind man or a corpse. I felt as if I must rush out. But at that moment my eye fell upon Her, standing as

usual by the altar steps, wrapped in a black mantle, in the full blaze of the lights. She turned round; the light

fell straight upon her face, the face with the delicate features, the eyelids and lips a little tight, the alabaster

I pushed my way across the nave towards where she stood by the altar steps; she turned quickly down the

aisle, and I after her. Once or twice she lingered, and I thought I should overtake her; but again, when, not a

second after the door had closed upon her, I stepped out into the street, she had vanished. On the church step

lay something white. It was not a flower this time, but a letter. I rushed back to the church to read it; but the

church was fast shut, as if it had not been opened for years. I could not see by the flickering shrinelampsI

rushed home, lit my lamp, pulled the letter from my breast. I have it before me. The handwriting is hers; the

"To SPIRIDION.Let thy courage be equal to thy love, and thy love shall be rewarded. On the night

preceding Christmas, take a hatchet and saw; cut boldly into the body of the bronze rider who stands in the

Corte, on the left side, near the waist. Saw open the body, and within it thou wilt find the silver effigy of a

winged genius. Take it out, hack it into a hundred pieces, and fling them in all directions, so that the winds

may sweep them away. That night she whom thou lovest will come to reward thy fidelity."

Dec. 23rd.So it is true! I was reserved for something wonderful in this world. I have at last found that after

which my soul has been straining. Ambition, love of art, love of Italy, these things which have occupied my

spirit, and have yet left me continually unsatisfied, these were none of them my real destiny. I have sought for

life, thirsting for it as a man in the desert thirsts for a well; but the life of the senses of other youths, the life of

the intellect of other men, have never slaked that thirst. Shall life for me mean the love of a dead woman? We

smile at what we choose to call the superstition of the past, forgetting that all our vaunted science of today

may seem just such another superstition to the men of the future; but why should the present be right and the

past wrong? The men who painted the pictures and built the palaces of three hundred years ago were certainly

of as delicate fibre, of as keen reason, as ourselves, who merely print calico and build locomotives. What

makes me think this, is that I have been calculating my nativity by help of an old book belonging to Sor

Asdrubaleand see, my horoscope tallies almost exactly with that of Medea da Carpi, as given by a

chronicler. May this explain? No, no; all is explained by the fact that the first time I read of this woman's

career, the first time I saw her portrait, I loved her, though I hid my love to myself in the garb of historical

I have got the hatchet and the saw. I bought the saw of a poor joiner, in a village some miles off; he did not

understand at first what I meant, and I think he thought me mad; perhaps I am. But if madness means the

happiness of one's life, what of it? The hatchet I saw lying in a timberyard, where they prepare the great

trunks of the firtrees which grow high on the Apennines of Sant' Elmo. There was no one in the yard, and I

could not resist the temptation; I handled the thing, tried its edge, and stole it. This is the first time in my life

that I have been a thief; why did I not go into a shop and buy a hatchet? I don't know; I seemed unable to

resist the sight of the shining blade. What I am going to do is, I suppose, an act of vandalism; and certainly I

have no right to spoil the property of this city of Urbania. But I wish no harm either to the statue or the city; if

I could plaster up the bronze, I would do so willingly. But I must obey Her; I must avenge Her; I must get at

that silver image which Robert of Montemurlo had made and consecrated in order that his cowardly soul

might sleep in peace, and not encounter that of the being whom he dreaded most in the world. Aha! Duke

Robert, you forced her to die unshriven, and you stuck the image of your soul into the image of your body,

thinking thereby that, while she suffered the tortures of Hell, you would rest in peace, until your

wellscoured little soul might fly straight up to Paradise;you were afraid of Her when both of you should

be dead, and thought yourself very clever to have prepared for all emergencies! Not so, Serene Highness.

You too shall taste what it is to wander after death, and to meet the dead whom one has injured.

Eleven o'clock.No; the church was fast closed; the spell had ceased. Until tomorrow I shall not see her.

Twentyfour hours more till the moment of happinessthe moment for which I seem to have been waiting

all my life. And after that, what next? Yes, I see it plainer every minute; after that, nothing more. All those

who loved Medea da Carpi, who loved and who served her, died: Giovanfrancesco Pico, her first husband,

whom she left stabbed in the castle from which she fled; Stimigliano, who died of poison; the groom who

gave him the poison, cut down by her orders; Oliverotto da Narni, Marcantonio Frangipani, and that poor boy

of the Ordelaffi, who had never even looked upon her face, and whose only reward was that handkerchief

with which the hangman wiped the sweat off his face, when he was one mass of broken limbs and torn flesh:

The love of such a woman is enough, and is fatal"Amour Dure," as her device says. I shall die also. But

why not? Would it be possible to live in order to love another woman? Nay, would it be possible to drag on a

life like this one after the happiness of tomorrow? Impossible; the others died, and I must die. I always felt

that I should not live long; a gipsy in Poland told me once that I had in my hand the cutline which signifies a

violent death. I might have ended in a duel with some brotherstudent, or in a railway accident. No, no; my

death will not be of that sort! Deathand is not she also dead? What strange vistas does such a thought not

open! Then the othersPico, the Groom, Stimigliano, Oliverotto, Frangipani, Prinzivalle degli

Ordelaffiwill they all be there? But she shall love me bestme by whom she has been loved after she has

Dec. 24th.I have made all my arrangements. Tonight at eleven I slip out; Sor Asdrubale and his sisters

will be sound asleep. I have questioned them; their fear of rheumatism prevents their attending midnight

mass. Luckily there are no churches between this and the Corte; whatever movement Christmas night may

entail will be a good way off. The VicePrefect's rooms are on the other side of the palace; the rest of the

square is taken up with staterooms, archives, and empty stables and coachhouses of the palace. Besides, I

I have tried my saw on a stout bronze vase I bought of Sor Asdrubale; and the bronze of the statue, hollow

and worn away by rust (I have even noticed holes), cannot resist very much, especially after a blow with the

sharp hatchet. I have put my papers in order, for the benefit of the Government which has sent me hither. I

am sorry to have defrauded them of their "History of Urbania." To pass the endless day and calm the fever of

impatience, I have just taken a long walk. This is the coldest day we have had. The bright sun does not warm

in the least, but seems only to increase the impression of cold, to make the snow on the mountains glitter, the

blue air to sparkle like steel. The few people who are out are muffled to the nose, and carry earthenware

braziers beneath their cloaks; long icicles hang from the fountain with the figure of Mercury upon it; one can

imagine the wolves trooping down through the dry scrub and beleaguering this town. Somehow this cold

As I walked up the rough, steep, paved alleys, slippery with frost, and with their vista of snow mountains

against the sky, and passed by the church steps strewn with box and laurel, with the faint smell of incense

coming out, there returned to meI know not whythe recollection, almost the sensation, of those

Christmas Eves long ago at Posen and Breslau, when I walked as a child along the wide streets, peeping into

the windows where they were beginning to light the tapers of the Christmastrees, and wondering whether I

too, on returning home, should be let into a wonderful room all blazing with lights and gilded nuts and glass

beads. They are hanging the last strings of those blue and red metallic beads, fastening on the last gilded and

silvered walnuts on the trees out there at home in the North; they are lighting the blue and red tapers; the wax

is beginning to run on to the beautiful spruce green branches; the children are waiting with beating hearts

behind the door, to be told that the ChristChild has been. And I, for what am I waiting? I don't know; all

seems a dream; everything vague and unsubstantial about me, as if time had ceased, nothing could happen,

my own desires and hopes were all dead, myself absorbed into I know not what passive dreamland. Do I long

for tonight? Do I dread it? Will tonight ever come? Do I feel anything, does anything exist all round me? I

sit and seem to see that street at Posen, the wide street with the windows illuminated by the Christmas lights,

Christmas Eve, Midnight.I have done it. I slipped out noiselessly. Sor Asdrubale and his sisters were fast

asleep. I feared I had waked them, for my hatchet fell as I was passing through the principal room where my

landlord keeps his curiosities for sale; it struck against some old armour which he has been piecing. I heard

him exclaim, half in his sleep; and blew out my light and hid in the stairs. He came out in his dressinggown,

but finding no one, went back to bed again. "Some cat, no doubt!" he said. I closed the house door softly

behind me. The sky had become stormy since the afternoon, luminous with the full moon, but strewn with

grey and buffcoloured vapours; every now and then the moon disappeared entirely. Not a creature abroad;

I know not why, I took a roundabout way to the Corte, past one or two church doors, whence issued the faint

flicker of midnight mass. For a moment I felt a temptation to enter one of then; but something seemed to

restrain me. I caught snatches of the Christmas hymn. I felt myself beginning to be unnerved, and hastened

towards the Corte. As I passed under the portico at San Francesco I heard steps behind me; it seemed to me

that I was followed. I stopped to let the other pass. As he approached his pace flagged; he passed close by me

and murmured, "Do not go: I am Giovanfrancesco Pico." I turned round; he was gone. A coldness numbed

Behind the cathedral apse, in a narrow lane, I saw a man leaning against a wall. The moonlight was full upon

him; it seemed to me that his face, with a thin pointed beard, was streaming with blood. I quickened my pace;

but as I grazed by him he whispered, "Do not obey her; return home: I am Marcantonio Frangipani." My teeth

chattered, but I hurried along the narrow lane, with the moonlight blue upon the white walls.

At last I saw the Corte before me: the square was flooded with moonlight, the windows of the palace seemed

brightly illuminated, and the statue of Duke Robert, shimmering green, seemed advancing towards me on its

horse. I came into the shadow. I had to pass beneath an archway. There started a figure as if out of the wall,

and barred my passage with his outstretched cloaked arm. I tried to pass. He seized me by the arm, and his

grasp was like a weight of ice. "You shall not pass!" he cried, and, as the moon came out once more, I saw his

face, ghastly white and bound with an embroidered kerchief; he seemed almost a child. "You shall not pass!"

he cried; "you shall not have her! She is mine, and mine alone! I am Prinzivalle degli Ordelaffi." I felt his

icecold clutch, but with my other arm I laid about me wildly with the hatchet which I carried beneath my

I hurried on. I did it. I cut open the bronze; I sawed it into a wider gash. I tore out the silver image, and

hacked it into innumerable pieces. As I scattered the last fragments about, the moon was suddenly veiled; a

great wind arose, howling down the square; it seemed to me that the earth shook. I threw down the hatchet

and the saw, and fled home. I felt pursued, as if by the tramp of hundreds of invisible horsemen.

Now I am calm. It is midnight; another moment and she will be here! Patience, my heart! I hear it beating

loud. I trust that no one will accuse poor Sor Asdrubale. I will write a letter to the authorities to declare his

innocence should anything happen.... One! the clock in the palace tower has just struck.... "I hereby certify

that, should anything happen this night to me, Spiridion Trepka, no one but myself is to be held ..." A step on

the staircase! It is she! it is she! At last, Medea, Medea! Ah! AMOUR DUREDURE AMOUR!

NOTE.Here ends the diary of the late Spiridion Trepka The chief newspapers of the province of Umbria

informed the public that, on Christmas morning of the year 1885, the bronze equestrian statue of Robert II.

had been found grievously mutilated; and that Professor Spiridion Trepka of Posen, in the German Empire,

had been discovered dead of a stab in the region of the heart, given by an unknown hand.

From the Letters of Doctor Alessandro De Rosis to the Lady Evelyn Savelli, Princess of Sabina.

I TAKE immediate advantage of the generous offer of your Excellency (allow an old Republican who has

held you on his knees to address you by that title sometimes, 'tis so appropriate) to help our poor people. I

never expected to come abegging so soon. For the olive crop has been unusually plenteous. We

semiGenoese don't pick the olives unripe, like our Tuscan neighbours, but let them grow big and black,

when the young fellows go into the trees with long reeds and shake them down on the grass for the women to

collecta pretty sight which your Excellency must see some day: the grey trees with the brown, barefoot

lads craning, balanced in the branches, and the turquoise sea as background just beneath.... That sea of

oursit is all along of it that I wish to ask for money. Looking up from my desk, I see the sea through the

window, deep below and beyond the olive woods, bluishgreen in the sunshine and veined with violet under

the cloudbars, like one of your Ravenna mosaics spread out as pavement for the world: a wicked sea,

wicked in its loveliness, wickeder than your grey northern ones, and from which must have arisen in times

gone by (when Phoenicians or Greeks built the temples at Lerici and Porto Venere) a baleful goddess of

beauty, a Venus Verticordia, but in the bad sense of the word, overwhelming men's lives in sudden darkness

To come to the point. I want you, dear Lady Evelyn, to promise me some money, a great deal of money, as

much as would buy you a little mannish cloth frockfor the complete bringingup, until years of discretion,

of a young stranger whom the sea has laid upon our shore. Our people, kind as they are, are very poor, and

overburdened with children; besides, they have got a certain repugnance for this poor little waif, cast up by

that dreadful storm, and who is doubtless a heathen, for she had no little crosses or scapulars on, like proper

Christian children. So, being unable to get any of our women to adopt the child, and having an old bachelor's

terror of my housekeeper, I have bethought me of certain nuns, holy women, who teach little girls to say their

prayers and make lace close by here; and of your dear Excellency to pay for the whole business.

Poor little brown mite! She was picked up after the storm (such a setout of shipmodels and votive candles

as that storm must have brought the Madonna at Porto Venere!) on a strip of sand between the rocks of our

castle: the thing was really miraculous, for this coast is like a shark's jaw, and the bits of sand are tiny and far

between. She was lashed to a plank, swaddled up close in outlandish garments; and when they brought her to

me they thought she must certainly be dead: a little girl of four or five, decidedly pretty, and as brown as a

berry, who, when she came to, shook her head to show she understood no kind of Italian, and jabbered some

halfintelligible Eastern jabber, a few Greek words embedded in I know not what; the Superior of the

College De Propagand� Fid would be puzzled to know. The child appears to be the only survivor from a

ship which must have gone down in the great squall, and whose timbers have been strewing the bay for some

days past; no one at Spezia or in any of our ports knows anything about her, but she was seen, apparently

making for Porto Venere, by some of our sardinefishers: a big, lumbering craft, with eyes painted on each

side of the prow, which, as you know, is a peculiarity of Greek boats. She was sighted for the last time off the

island of Palmaria, entering, with all sails spread, right into the thick of the stormdarkness. No bodies,

I have received the money, dear Donna Evelina. There was tremendous excitement down at San Massimo

when the carrier came in with a registered letter, and I was sent for, in presence of all the village authorities,

The child has already been settled some days with the nuns; such dear little nuns (nuns always go straight to

the heart of an old priesthater and conspirator against the Pope, you know), dressed in brown robes and

close, white caps, with an immense round strawhat flapping behind their heads like a nimbus: they are

called Sisters of the Stigmata, and have a convent and school at San Massimo, a little way inland, with an

untidy garden full of lavender and cherrytrees. Your prot g e has already half set the convent, the village,

the Episcopal See, the Order of St. Francis, by the ears. First, because nobody could make out whether or not

she had been christened. The question was a grave one, for it appears (as your uncleinlaw, the Cardinal,

will tell you) that it is almost equally undesirable to be christened twice over as not to be christened at all.

The first danger was finally decided upon as the less terrible; but the child, they say, had evidently been

baptized before, and knew that the operation ought not to be repeated, for she kicked and plunged and yelled

like twenty little devils, and positively would not let the holy water touch her. The Mother Superior, who

always took for granted that the baptism had taken place before, says that the child was quite right, and that

Heaven was trying to prevent a sacrilege; but the priest and the barber's wife, who had to hold her, think the

occurrence fearful, and suspect the little girl of being a Protestant. Then the question of the name. Pinned to

her clothesstriped Eastern things, and that kind of crinkled silk stuff they weave in Crete and Cypruswas

a piece of parchment, a scapular we thought at first, but which was found to contain only the name

DioneaDionea, as they pronounce it here. The question was, Could such a name be fitly borne by a young

lady at the Convent of the Stigmata? Half the population here have names as unchristian quiteNorma,

Odoacer, Archimedesmy housemaid is called Themisbut Dionea seemed to scandalise every one,

perhaps because these good folk had a mysterious instinct that the name is derived from Dione, one of the

loves of Father Zeus, and mother of no less a lady than the goddess Venus. The child was very near being

called Maria, although there are already twentythree other Marias, Mariettas, Mariuccias, and so forth at the

convent. But the sisterbookkeeper, who apparently detests monotony, bethought her to look out Dionea first

in the Calendar, which proved useless; and then in a big vellumbound book, printed at Venice in 1625,

called "Flos Sanctorum, or Lives of the Saints, by Father Ribadeneira, S.J., with the addition of such Saints as

have no assigned place in the Almanack, otherwise called the Movable or Extravagant Saints." The zeal of

Sister Anna Maddalena has been rewarded, for there, among the Extravagant Saints, sure enough, with a

border of palmbranches and hourglasses, stands the name of Saint Dionea, Virgin and Martyr, a lady of

Antioch, put to death by the Emperor Decius. I know your Excellency's taste for historical information, so I

forward this item. But I fear, dear Lady Evelyn, I fear that the heavenly patroness of your little seawaif was

Many thanks, dear Donna Evelina, for the money for Dionea's schooling. Indeed, it was not wanted yet: the

accomplishments of young ladies are taught at a very moderate rate at Montemirto: and as to clothes, which

you mention, a pair of wooden clogs, with pretty red tips, costs sixtyfive centimes, and ought to last three

years, if the owner is careful to carry them on her head in a neat parcel when out walking, and to put them on

again only on entering the village. The Mother Superior is greatly overcome by your Excellency's

munificence towards the convent, and much perturbed at being unable to send you a specimen of your

prot g e's skill, exemplified in an embroidered pockethandkerchief or a pair of mittens; but the fact is that

poor Dionea has no skill. "We will pray to the Madonna and St. Francis to make her more worthy," remarked

the Superior. Perhaps, however, your Excellency, who is, I fear but a Pagan woman (for all the Savelli Popes

and St. Andrew Savelli's miracles), and insufficiently appreciative of embroidered pockethandkerchiefs, will

be quite as satisfied to hear that Dionea, instead of skill, has got the prettiest face of any little girl in

Montemirto. She is tall, for her age (she is eleven) quite wonderfully well proportioned and extremely strong:

of all the conventfull, she is the only one for whom I have never been called in. The features are very

regular, the hair black, and despite all the good Sisters' efforts to keep it smooth like a Chinaman's,

beautifully curly. I am glad she should be pretty, for she will more easily find a husband; and also because it

seems fitting that your prot g e should be beautiful. Unfortunately her character is not so satisfactory: she

hates learning, sewing, washing up the dishes, all equally. I am sorry to say she shows no natural piety. Her

companions detest her, and the nuns, although they admit that she is not exactly naughty, seem to feel her as a

dreadful thorn in the flesh. She spends hours and hours on the terrace overlooking the sea (her great desire,

she confided to me, is to get to the seato get back to the sea, as she expressed it), and lying in the garden,

under the big myrtlebushes, and, in spring and summer, under the rosehedge. The nuns say that

rosehedge and that myrtlebush are growing a great deal too big, one would think from Dionea's lying

under them; the fact, I suppose, has drawn attention to them. "That child makes all the useless weeds grow,"

remarked Sister Reparata. Another of Dionea's amusements is playing with pigeons. The number of pigeons

she collects about her is quite amazing; you would never have thought that San Massimo or the neighbouring

hills contained as many. They flutter down like snowflakes, and strut and swell themselves out, and furl and

unfurl their tails, and peck with little sharp movements of their silly, sensual heads and a little throb and

gurgle in their throats, while Dionea lies stretched out full length in the sun, putting out her lips, which they

come to kiss, and uttering strange, cooing sounds; or hopping about, flapping her arms slowly like wings, and

raising her little head with much the same odd gesture as they;'tis a lovely sight, a thing fit for one of your

painters, Burne Jones or Tadema, with the myrtlebushes all round, the bright, whitewashed convent walls

behind, the white marble chapel steps (all steps are marble in this Carrara country), and the enamel blue sea

through the ilexbranches beyond. But the good Sisters abominate these pigeons, who, it appears, are messy

little creatures, and they complain that, were it not that the Reverend Director likes a pigeon in his pot on a

holiday, they could not stand the bother of perpetually sweeping the chapel steps and the kitchen threshold all

Do not tempt me, dearest Excellency, with your invitations to Rome. I should not be happy there, and do but

little honour to your friendship. My many years of exile, of wanderings in northern countries, have made me

a little bit into a northern man: I cannot quite get on with my own fellowcountrymen, except with the good

peasants and fishermen all round. Besidesforgive the vanity of an old man, who has learned to make triple

acrostic sonnets to cheat the days and months at Theresienstadt and SpielbergI have suffered too much for

Italy to endure patiently the sight of little parliamentary cabals and municipal wranglings, although they also

are necessary in this day as conspiracies and battles were in mine. I am not fit for your roomful of ministers

and learned men and pretty women: the former would think me an ignoramus, and the latterwhat would

afflict me much morea pedant.... Rather, if your Excellency really wants to show yourself and your

children to your father's old prot g of Mazzinian times, find a few days to come here next spring. You shall

have some very bare rooms with brick floors and white curtains opening out on my terrace; and a dinner of

all manner of fish and milk (the white garlic flowers shall be mown away from under the olives lest my cow

should eat it) and eggs cooked in herbs plucked in the hedges. Your boys can go and see the big ironclads at

Spezia; and you shall come with me up our lanes fringed with delicate ferns and overhung by big olives, and

into the fields where the cherrytrees shed their blossoms on to the budding vines, the figtrees stretching out

their little green gloves, where the goats nibble perched on their hind legs, and the cows low in the huts of

reeds; and there rise from the ravines, with the gurgle of the brooks, from the cliffs with the boom of the surf,

the voices of unseen boys and girls, singing about love and flowers and death, just as in the days of

Theocritus, whom your learned Excellency does well to read. Has your Excellency ever read Longus, a Greek

pastoral novelist? He is a trifle free, a trifle nude for us readers of Zola; but the old French of Amyot has a

wonderful charm, and he gives one an idea, as no one else does, how folk lived in such valleys, by such

seaboards, as these in the days when daisychains and garlands of roses were still hung on the olivetrees

for the nymphs of the grove; when across the bay, at the end of the narrow neck of blue sea, there clung to the

marble rocks not a church of Saint Laurence, with the sculptured martyr on his gridiron, but the temple of

Venus, protecting her harbour.... Yes, dear Lady Evelyn, you have guessed aright. Your old friend has

returned to his sins, and is scribbling once more. But no longer at verses or political pamphlets. I am

enthralled by a tragic history, the history of the fall of the Pagan Gods.... Have you ever read of their

And if you come to Montemirto, you shall see also your prot g e, of whom you ask for news. It has just

missed being disastrous. Poor Dionea! I fear that early voyage tied to the spar did no good to her wits, poor

little waif! There has been a fearful row; and it has required all my influence, and all the awfulness of your

Excellency's name, and the Papacy, and the Holy Roman Empire, to prevent her expulsion by the Sisters of

the Stigmata. It appears that this mad creature very nearly committed a sacrilege: she was discovered

handling in a suspicious manner the Madonna's gala frock and her best veil of pizzo di Cant , a gift of the

late Marchioness Violante Vigalcila of Fornovo. One of the orphans, Zaira Barsanti, whom they call the

Rossaccia, even pretends to have surprised Dionea as she was about to adorn her wicked little person with

these sacred garments; and, on another occasion, when Dionea had been sent to pass some oil and sawdust

over the chapel floor (it was the eve of Easter of the Roses), to have discovered her seated on the edge of the

altar, in the very place of the Most Holy Sacrament. I was sent for in hot haste, and had to assist at an

ecclesiastical council in the convent parlour, where Dionea appeared, rather out of place, an amazing little

beauty, dark, lithe, with an odd, ferocious gleam in her eyes, and a still odder smile, tortuous, serpentine, like

that of Leonardo da Vinci's women, among the plaster images of St. Francis, and the glazed and framed

samplers before the little statue of the Virgin, which wears in summer a kind of mosquitocurtain to guard it

Speaking of Satan, does your Excellency know that on the inside of our little convent door, just above the

little perforated plate of metal (like the rose of a wateringpot) through which the Sisterportress peeps and

talks, is pasted a printed form, an arrangement of holy names and texts in triangles, and the stigmatised hands

of St. Francis, and a variety of other devices, for the purpose, as is explained in a special notice, of baffling

the Evil One, and preventing his entrance into that building? Had you seen Dionea, and the stolid,

contemptuous way in which she took, without attempting to refute, the various shocking allegations against

her, your Excellency would have reflected, as I did, that the door in question must have been accidentally

absent from the premises, perhaps at the joiner's for repair, the day that your prot g e first penetrated into

the convent. The ecclesiastical tribunal, consisting of the Mother Superior, three Sisters, the Capuchin

Director, and your humble servant (who vainly attempted to be Devil's advocate), sentenced Dionea, among

other things, to make the sign of the cross twentysix times on the bare floor with her tongue. Poor little

child! One might almost expect that, as happened when Dame Venus scratched her hand on the thornbush,

You ask whether, now that the Sisters let Dionea go and do half a day's service now and then in the village,

and that Dionea is a grownup creature, she does not set the place by the ears with her beauty. The people

here are quite aware of its existence. She is already dubbed La bella Dionea; but that does not bring her any

nearer getting a husband, although your Excellency's generous offer of a weddingportion is well known

throughout the district of San Massimo and Montemirto. None of our boys, peasants or fishermen, seem to

hang on her steps; and if they turn round to stare and whisper as she goes by straight and dainty in her

wooden clogs, with the pitcher of water or the basket of linen on her beautiful crisp dark head, it is, I remark,

with an expression rather of fear than of love. The women, on their side, make horns with their fingers as she

passes, and as they sit by her side in the convent chapel; but that seems natural. My housekeeper tells me that

down in the village she is regarded as possessing the evil eye and bringing love misery. "You mean," I said,

"that a glance from her is too much for our lads' peace of mind." Veneranda shook her head, and explained,

with the deference and contempt with which she always mentions any of her countryfolk's superstitions to

me, that the matter is different: it's not with her they are in love (they would be afraid of her eye), but

whereever she goes the young people must needs fall in love with each other, and usually where it is far

from desirable. "You know Sora Luisa, the blacksmith's widow? Well, Dionea did a halfservice for her last

month, to prepare for the wedding of Luisa's daughter. Well, now, the girl must say, forsooth! that she won't

have Pieriho of Lerici any longer, but will have that raggamuffin Wooden Pipe from Solaro, or go into a

convent. And the girl changed her mind the very day that Dionea had come into the house. Then there is the

wife of Pippo, the coffeehouse keeper; they say she is carrying on with one of the coastguards, and Dionea

helped her to do her washing six weeks ago. The son of Sor Temistocle has just cut off a linger to avoid the

conscription, because he is mad about his cousin and afraid of being taken for a soldier; and it is a fact that

some of the shirts which were made for him at the Stigmata had been sewn by Dionea;"... and thus a perfect

string of love misfortunes, enough to make a little "Decameron," I assure you, and all laid to Dionea's

account. Certain it is that the people of San Massimo are terribly afraid of Dionea....

Dionea's strange influence seems to be extending in a terrible way. I am almost beginning to think that our

folk are correct in their fear of the young witch. I used to think, as physician to a convent, that nothing was

more erroneous than all the romancings of Diderot and Schubert (your Excellency sang me his "Young Nun"

once: do you recollect, just before your marriage?), and that no more humdrum creature existed than one of

our little nuns, with their pink baby faces under their tight white caps. It appeared the romancing was more

correct than the prose. Unknown things have sprung up in these good Sisters' hearts, as unknown flowers

have sprung up among the myrtlebushes and the rosehedge which Dionea lies under. Did I ever mention to

you a certain little Sister Giuliana, who professed only two years ago?a funny rose and white little creature

presiding over the infirmary, as prosaic a little saint as ever kissed a crucifix or scoured a saucepan. Well,

Sister Giuliana has disappeared, and the same day has disappeared also a sailorboy from the port.

The case of Sister Giuliana seems to have been but the beginning of an extraordinary love epidemic at the

Convent of the Stigmata: the elder schoolgirls have to be kept under lock and key lest they should talk over

the wall in the moonlight, or steal out to the little hunchback who writes loveletters at a penny apiece,

beautiful flourishes and all, under the portico by the Fishmarket. I wonder does that wicked little Dionea,

whom no one pays court to, smile (her lips like a Cupid's bow or a tiny snake's curves) as she calls the

pigeons down around her, or lies fondling the cats under the myrtlebush, when she sees the pupils going

about with swollen, red eyes; the poor little nuns taking fresh penances on the cold chapel flags; and hears the

longdrawn guttural vowels, amore and morte and mio bene, which rise up of an evening, with the boom of

the surf and the scent of the lemonflowers, as the young men wander up and down, arminarm, twanging

A terrible, terrible thing has happened! I write to your Excellency with hands all atremble; and yet I must

write, I must speak, or else I shall cry out. Did I ever mention to you Father Domenico of Casoria, the

confessor of our Convent of the Stigmata? A young man, tall, emaciated with fasts and vigils, but handsome

like the monk playing the virginal in Giorgione's "Concert," and under his brown serge still the most stalwart

fellow of the country all round? One has heard of men struggling with the tempter. Well, well, Father

Domenico had struggled as hard as any of the Anchorites recorded by St. Jerome, and he had conquered. I

never knew anything comparable to the angelic serenity of gentleness of this victorious soul. I don't like

monks, but I loved Father Domenico. I might have been his father, easily, yet I always felt a certain shyness

and awe of him; and yet men have accounted me a cleanlived man in my generation; but I felt, whenever I

approached him, a poor worldly creature, debased by the knowledge of so many mean and ugly things. Of

late Father Domenico had seemed to me less calm than usual: his eyes had grown strangely bright, and red

spots had formed on his salient cheekbones. One day last week, taking his hand, I felt his pulse flutter, and all

his strength as it were, liquefy under my touch. "You are ill," I said. "You have fever, Father Domenico. You

have been overdoing yourselfsome new privation, some new penance. Take care and do not tempt Heaven;

remember the flesh is weak." Father Domenico withdrew his hand quickly. "Do not say that," he cried; "the

flesh is strong!" and turned away his face. His eyes were glistening and he shook all over. "Some quinine," I

ordered. But I felt it was no case for quinine. Prayers might be more useful, and could I have given them he

should not have wanted. Last night I was suddenly sent for to Father Domenico's monastery above

Montemirto: they told me he was ill. I ran up through the dim twilight of moonbeams and olives with a

sinking heart. Something told me my monk was dead. He was lying in a little low whitewashed room; they

had carried him there from his own cell in hopes he might still be alive. The windows were wide open; they

framed some olivebranches, glistening in the moonlight, and far below, a strip of moonlit sea. When I told

them that he was really dead, they brought some tapers and lit them at his head and feet, and placed a crucifix

between his hands. "The Lord has been pleased to call our poor brother to Him," said the Superior. "A case of

apoplexy, my dear Doctora case of apoplexy. You will make out the certificate for the authorities." I made

out the certificate. It was weak of me. But, after all, why make a scandal? He certainly had no wish to injure

Next day I found the little nuns all in tears. They were gathering flowers to send as a last gift to their

confessor. In the convent garden I found Dionea, standing by the side of a big basket of roses, one of the

Standing opposite this girl, magnificent, radiant in her beauty, before the rosehedge, with the white pigeons

furling and unfurling, strutting and pecking all round, I seemed to see suddenly the whitewashed room of last

night, the big crucifix, that poor thin face under the yellow waxlight. I felt glad for Father Domenico; his

"Take this to Father Domenico from me," said Dionea, breaking off a twig of myrtle starred over with white

blossom; and raising her head with that smile like the twist of a young snake, she sang out in a high guttural

voice a strange chaunt, consisting of the word Amoramoramor. I took the branch of myrtle and threw it

It will be difficult to find a place for Dionea, and in this neighbourhood wellnigh impossible. The people

associate her somehow with the death of Father Domenico, which has confirmed her reputation of having the

evil eye. She left the convent (being now seventeen) some two months back, and is at present gaining her

bread working with the masons at our notary's new house at Lerici: the work is hard, but our women often do

it, and it is magnificent to see Dionea, in her short white skirt and tight white bodice, mixing the smoking

lime with her beautiful strong arms; or, an empty sack drawn over her head and shoulders, walking

majestically up the cliff, up the scaffoldings with her load of bricks.... I am, however, very anxious to get

Dionea out of the neighbourhood, because I cannot help dreading the annoyances to which her reputation for

the evil eye exposes her, and even some explosion of rage if ever she should lose the indifferent contempt

with which she treats them. I hear that one of the rich men of our part of the world, a certain Sor Agostino of

Sarzana, who owns a whole flank of marble mountain, is looking out for a maid for his daughter, who is

about to be married; kind people and patriarchal in their riches, the old man still sitting down to table with all

his servants; and his nephew, who is going to be his soninlaw, a splendid young fellow, who has worked

like Jacob, in the quarry and at the sawmill, for love of his pretty cousin. That whole house is so good,

simple, and peaceful, that I hope it may tame down even Dionea. If I do not succeed in getting Dionea this

place (and all your Excellency's illustriousness and all my poor eloquence will be needed to counteract the

sinister reports attaching to our poor little waif), it will be best to accept your suggestion of taking the girl

into your household at Rome, since you are curious to see what you call our baleful beauty. I am amused, and

a little indignant at what you say about your footmen being handsome: Don Juan himself, my dear Lady

Here is Dionea back upon our hands once more! but I cannot send her to your Excellency. Is it from living

among these peasants and fishingfolk, or is it because, as people pretend, a sceptic is always superstitious? I

could not muster courage to send you Dionea, although your boys are still in sailorclothes and your uncle,

the Cardinal, is eightyfour; and as to the Prince, why, he bears the most potent amulet against Dionea's

terrible powers in your own dear capricious person. Seriously, there is something eerie in this coincidence.

Poor Dionea! I feel sorry for her, exposed to the passion of a once patriarchally respectable old man. I feel

even more abashed at the incredible audacity, I should almost say sacrilegious madness, of the vile old

creature. But still the coincidence is strange and uncomfortable. Last week the lightning struck a huge olive in

the orchard of Sor Agostino's house above Sarzana. Under the olive was Sor Agostino himself, who was

killed on the spot; and opposite, not twenty paces off, drawing water from the well, unhurt and calm, was

Dionea. It was the end of a sultry afternoon: I was on a terrace in one of those villages of ours, jammed, like

some hardy bush, in the gash of a hillside. I saw the storm rush down the valley, a sudden blackness, and

then, like a curse, a flash, a tremendous crash, reechoed by a dozen hills. "I told him," Dionea said very

quietly, when she came to stay with me the next day (for Sor Agostino's family would not have her for

another halfminute), "that if he did not leave me alone Heaven would send him an accident."

My book? Oh, dear Donna Evelina, do not make me blush by talking of my book! Do not make an old man,

respectable, a Government functionary (communal physician of the district of San Massimo and Montemirto

Ligure), confess that he is but a lazy unprofitable dreamer, collecting materials as a child picks hips out of a

hedge, only to throw them away, liking them merely for the little occupation of scratching his hands and

standing on tiptoe, for their pretty redness.... You remember what Balzac says about projecting any piece of

work?"C'est fumier des cigarettes enchant es.."... Well, well! The data obtainable about the ancient gods

in their days of adversity are few and far between: a quotation here and there from the Fathers; two or three

legends; Venus reappearing; the persecutions of Apollo in Styria; Proserpina going, in Chaucer, to reign over

the fairies; a few obscure religious persecutions in the Middle Ages on the score of Paganism; some strange

rites practised till lately in the depths of a Breton forest near Lannion.... As to Tannh�user, he was a real

knight, and a sorry one, and a real Minnesinger not of the best. Your Excellency will find some of his poems

in Von der Hagen's four immense volumes, but I recommend you to take your notions of Ritter Tannh�user's

poetry rather from Wagner. Certain it is that the Pagan divinities lasted much longer than we suspect,

sometimes in their own nakedness, sometimes in the stolen garb of the Madonna or the saints. Who knows

whether they do not exist to this day? And, indeed, is it possible they should not? For the awfulness of the

deep woods, with their filtered green light, the creak of the swaying, solitary reeds, exists, and is Pan; and the

blue, starry May night exists, the sough of the waves, the warm wind carrying the sweetness of the

lemonblossoms, the bitterness of the myrtle on our rocks, the distant chaunt of the boys cleaning out their

nets, of the girls sickling the grass under the olives, Amoramoramor, and all this is the great goddess

Venus. And opposite to me, as I write, between the branches of the ilexes, across the blue sea, streaked like a

Ravenna mosaic with purple and green, shimmer the white houses and walls, the steeple and towers, an

enchanted Fata Morgana city, of dim Porto Venere;... and I mumble to myself the verse of Catullus, but

"Procul a mea sit furor omnis, Hera, domo; alios; age incitatos, alios age rabidos."

Yes; I will do everything in my power for your friends. Are you wellbred folk as well bred as we,

Republican bourgeois, with the coarse hands (though you once told me mine were psychic hands when the

mania of palmistry had not yet been succeeded by that of the Reconciliation between Church and State), I

wonder, that you should apologise, you whose father fed me and housed me and clothed me in my exile, for

giving me the horrid trouble of hunting for lodgings? It is like you, dear Donna Evelina, to have sent me

photographs of my future friend Waldemar's statue.... I have no love for modern sculpture, for all the hours I

have spent in Gibson's and Dupr 's studio: 'tis a dead art we should do better to bury. But your Waldemar has

something of the old spirit: he seems to feel the divineness of the mere body, the spirituality of a limpid

stream of mere physical life. But why among these statues only men and boys, athletes and fauns? Why only

the bust of that thin, delicatelipped little Madonna wife of his? Why no wideshouldered Amazon or

You ask me how poor Dionea is getting on. Not as your Excellency and I ought to have expected when we

placed her with the good Sisters of the Stigmata: although I wager that, fantastic and capricious as you are,

you would be better pleased (hiding it carefully from that grave side of you which bestows devout little books

and carbolic acid upon the indigent) that your prot g e should be a witch than a servingmaid, a maker of

A maker of philters. Roughly speaking, that is Dionea's profession. She lives upon the money which I dole

out to her (with many useless objurgations) on behalf of your Excellency; and her ostensible employment is

mending nets, collecting olives, carrying bricks, and other miscellaneous jobs; but her real status is that of

village sorceress. You think our peasants are sceptical? Perhaps they do not believe in thoughtreading,

mesmerism, and ghosts, like you, dear Lady Evelyn. But they believe very firmly in the evil eye, in magic,

and in lovepotions. Every one has his little story of this or that which happened to his brother or cousin or

neighbour. My stableboy and male factotum's brotherinlaw, living some years ago in Corsica, was seized

with a longing for a dance with his beloved at one of those balls which our peasants give in the winter, when

the snow makes leisure in the mountains. A wizard anointed him for money, and straightway he turned into a

black cat, and in three bounds was over the seas, at the door of his uncle's cottage, and among the dancers. He

caught his beloved by the skirt to draw her attention; but she replied with a kick which sent him squealing

back to Corsica. When he returned in summer he refused to marry the lady, and carried his left arm in a sling.

"You broke it when I came to the Veglia!" he said, and all seemed explained. Another lad, returning from

working in the vineyards near Marseilles, was walking up to his native village, high in our hills, one

moonlight night. He heard sounds of fiddle and fife from a roadside barn, and saw yellow light from its

chinks; and then entering, he found many women dancing, old and young, and among them his affianced. He

tried to snatch her round the waist for a waltz (they play Mme. Angot at our rustic balls), but the girl was

unclutchable, and whispered, "Go; for these are witches, who will kill thee; and I am a witch also. Alas! I

I could tell your Excellency dozens of such stories. But lovephilters are among the commonest things to sell

and buy. Do you remember the sad little story of Cervantes' Licentiate, who, instead of a lovepotion, drank a

philter which made him think he was made of glass, fit emblem of a poor mad poet? ... It is lovephilters that

Dionea prepares. No; do not misunderstand; they do not give love of her, still less her love. Your seller of

lovecharms is as cold as ice, as pure as snow. The priest has crusaded against her, and stones have flown at

her as she went by from dissatisfied lovers; and the very children, paddling in the sea and making mudpies

in the sand, have put out forefinger and little finger and screamed, "Witch, witch! ugly witch!" as she passed

with basket or brick load; but Dionea has only smiled, that snakelike, amused smile, but more ominous than

of yore. The other day I determined to seek her and argue with her on the subject of her evil trade. Dionea has

a certain regard for me; not, I fancy, a result of gratitude, but rather the recognition of a certain admiration

and awe which she inspires in your Excellency's foolish old servant. She has taken up her abode in a deserted

hut, built of dried reeds and thatch, such as they keep cows in, among the olives on the cliffs. She was not

there, but about the hut pecked some white pigeons, and from it, startling me foolishly with its unexpected

sound, came the eerie bleat of her pet goat.... Among the olives it was twilight already, with streakings of

faded rose in the sky, and faded rose, like long trails of petals, on the distant sea. I clambered down among

the myrtlebushes and came to a little semicircle of yellow sand, between two high and jagged rocks, the

place where the sea had deposited Dionea after the wreck. She was seated there on the sand, her bare foot

dabbling in the waves; she had twisted a wreath of myrtle and wild roses on her black, crisp hair. Near her

was one of our prettiest girls, the Lena of Sor Tullio the blacksmith, with ashy, terrified face under her

flowered kerchief. I determined to speak to the child, but without startling her now, for she is a nervous,

hysteric little thing. So I sat on the rocks, screened by the myrtlebushes, waiting till the girl had gone.

Dionea, seated listless on the sands, leaned over the sea and took some of its water in the hollow of her hand.

"Here," she said to the Lena of Sor Tullio, "fill your bottle with this and give it to drink to Tommasino the

"Love is salt, like seawaterI drink and I die of thirst.... Water! water! Yet the more I drink, the more I

Your friends are settled here, dear Lady Evelyn. The house is built in what was once a Genoese fort, growing

like a grey spiked aloes out of the marble rocks of our bay; rock and wall (the walls existed long before

Genoa was ever heard of) grown almost into a homogeneous mass, delicate grey, stained with black and

yellow lichen, and dotted here and there with myrtleshoots and crim son snapdragon. In what was once the

highest enclosure of the fort, where your friend Gertrude watches the maids hanging out the fine white sheets

and pillowcases to dry (a bit of the North, of Hermann and Dorothea transferred to the South), a great

twisted figtree juts out like an eccentric gurgoyle over the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into the deep blue

pools. There is but scant furniture in the house, but a great oleander overhangs it, presently to burst into pink

splendour; and on all the windowsills, even that of the kitchen (such a background of shining brass

saucepans Waldemar's wife has made of it!) are pipkins and tubs full of trailing carnations, and tufts of sweet

basil and thyme and mignonette. She pleases me most, your Gertrude, although you foretold I should prefer

the husband; with her thin white face, a Memling Madonna finished by some Tuscan sculptor, and her long,

delicate white hands ever busy, like those of a medi�val lady, with some delicate piece of work; and the

strange blue, more limpid than the sky and deeper than the sea, of her rarely lifted glance.

It is in her company that I like Waldemar best; I prefer to the genius that infinitely tender and respectful, I

would not say loveryet I have no other wordof his pale wife. He seems to me, when with her, like some

fierce, generous, wild thing from the woods, like the lion of Una, tame and submissive to this saint.... This

tenderness is really very beautiful on the part of that big lion Waldemar, with his odd eyes, as of some wild

animalodd, and, your Excellency remarks, not without a gleam of latent ferocity. I think that hereby hangs

the explanation of his never doing any but male figures: the female figure, he says (and your Excellency must

hold him responsible, not me, for such profanity), is almost inevitably inferior in strength and beauty; woman

is not form, but expression, and therefore suits painting, but not sculpture. The point of a woman is not her

body, but (and here his eyes rested very tenderly upon the thin white profile of his wife) her soul. "Still," I

answered, "the ancients, who understood such matters, did manufacture some tolerable female statues: the

"Ah! yes," exclaimed Waldemar, smiling, with that savage gleam of his eyes; "but those are not women, and

the people who made them have left as the tales of Endymion, Adonis, Anchises: a goddess might sit for

Has it ever struck your Excellency in one of your La Rochefoucauld fits (in Lent say, after too many balls)

that not merely maternal but conjugal unselfishness may be a very selfish thing? There! you toss your little

head at my words; yet I wager I have heard you say that other women may think it right to humour their

husbands, but as to you, the Prince must learn that a wife's duty is as much to chasten her husband's whims as

to satisfy them. I really do feel indignant that such a snowwhite saint should wish another woman to part

with all instincts of modesty merely because that other woman would be a good model for her husband; really

it is intolerable. "Leave the girl alone," Waldemar said, laughing. "What do I want with the un�sthetic sex, as

Schopenhauer calls it?" But Gertrude has set her heart on his doing a female figure; it seems that folk have

twitted him with never having produced one. She has long been on the lookout for a model for him. It is odd

to see this pale, demure, diaphanous creature, not the more earthly for approaching motherhood, scanning the

"If you insist on speaking to Dionea," I said, "I shall insist on speaking to her at the same time, to urge her to

refuse your proposal." But Waldemar's pale wife was indifferent to all my speeches about modesty being a

We went up to the cliffs together, after some sharp words, Waldemar's wife hanging on my arm as we slowly

clambered up the stony path among the olives. We found Dionea at the door of her hut, making faggots of

myrtlebranches. She listened sullenly to Gertrude's offer and explanations; indifferently to my admonitions

not to accept. The thought of stripping for the view of a man, which would send a shudder through our most

brazen village girls, seemed not to startle her, immaculate and savage as she is accounted. She did not

answer, but sat under the olives, looking vaguely across the sea. At that moment Waldemar came up to us; he

"Gertrude," he said, "do leave her alone. I have found a modela fisherboy, whom I much prefer to any

Waldemar stood silent; his eyes were fixed on her, where she stood under the olives, her white shift loose

about her splendid throat, her shining feet bare in the grass. Vaguely, as if not knowing what he said, he

asked her name. She answered that her name was Dionea; for the rest, she was an Innocentina, that is to say, a

foundling; then she began to sing: "Flower of the myrtle! My father is the starry sky; The mother that

I confess I was an old fool to have grudged Waldemar his model. As I watch him gradually building up his

statue, watch the goddess gradually emerging from the clay heap, I ask myselfand the case might trouble a

more subtle moralist than mewhether a village girl, an obscure, useless life within the bounds of what we

choose to call right and wrong, can be weighed against the possession by mankind of a great work of art, a

Venus immortally beautiful? Still, I am glad that the two alternatives need not be weighed against each other.

Nothing can equal the kindness of Gertrude, now that Dionea has consented to sit to her husband; the girl is

ostensibly merely a servant like any other; and, lest any report of her real functions should get abroad and

discredit her at San Massimo or Montemirto, she is to be taken to Rome, where no one will be the wiser, and

where, by the way, your Excellency will have an opportunity of comparing Waldemar's goddess of love with

our little orphan of the Convent of the Stigmata. What reassures me still more is the curious attitude of

Waldemar towards the girl. I could never have believed that an artist could regard a woman so utterly as a

mere inanimate thing, a form to copy, like a tree or flower. Truly he carries out his theory that sculpture

knows only the body, and the body scarcely considered as human. The way in which he speaks to Dionea

after hours of the most rapt contemplation of her is almost brutal in its coldness. And yet to hear him exclaim,

"How beautiful she is! Good God, how beautiful!" No love of mere woman was ever so violent as this love of

You asked me once, dearest Excellency, whether there survived among our people (you had evidently added

a volume on folklore to that heap of halfcut, dog'seared books that litter about among the Chineseries and

medi�val brocades of your rooms) any trace of Pagan myths. I explained to you then that all our fairy

mythology, classic gods, and demons and heroes, teemed with fairies, ogres, and princes. Last night I had a

curious proof of this. Going to see the Waldemar, I found Dionea seated under the oleander at the top of the

old Genoese fort, telling stories to the two little blonde children who were making the falling pink blossoms

into necklaces at her feet; the pigeons, Dionea's white pigeons, which never leave her, strutting and pecking

among the basil pots, and the white gulls flying round the rocks overhead. This is what I heard... "And the

three fairies said to the youngest son of the King, to the one who had been brought up as a shepherd, 'Take

this apple, and give it to her among us who is most beautiful.' And the first fairy said, 'If thou give it to me

thou shalt be Emperor of Rome, and have purple clothes, and have a gold crown and gold armour, and horses

and courtiers;' and the second said, 'If thou give it to me thou shalt be Pope, and wear a mitre, and have the

keys of heaven and hell;' and the third fairy said, 'Give the apple to me, for I will give thee the most beautiful

lady to wife.' And the youngest son of the King sat in the green meadow and thought about it a little, and then

said, 'What use is there in being Emperor or Pope? Give me the beautiful lady to wife, since I am young

Dionea droned out the story in her halfGenoese dialect, her eyes looking far away across the blue sea, dotted

She took a handful of oleanderblossoms from the ground, and throwing them in the air, answered listlessly,

as she watched the little shower of rosy petals descend on her black hair and pale breast

How strange is the power of art! Has Waldemar's statue shown me the real Dionea, or has Dionea really

grown more strangely beautiful than before? Your Excellency will laugh; but when I meet her I cast down my

eyes after the first glimpse of her loveliness; not with the shyness of a ridiculous old pursuer of the Eternal

Feminine, but with a sort of religious awethe feeling with which, as a child kneeling by my mother's side, I

looked down on the church flags when the Mass bell told the elevation of the Host.... Do you remember the

story of Zeuxis and the ladies of Crotona, five of the fairest not being too much for his Juno? Do you

rememberyou, who have read everythingall the bosh of our writers about the Ideal in Art? Why, here is

a girl who disproves all this nonsense in a minute; she is far, far more beautiful than Waldemar's statue of her.

He said so angrily, only yesterday, when his wife took me into his studio (he has made a studio of the

longdesecrated chapel of the old Genoese fort, itself, they say, occupying the site of the temple of Venus).

As he spoke that odd spark of ferocity dilated in his eyes, and seizing the largest of his modelling tools, he

obliterated at one swoop the whole exquisite face. Poor Gertrude turned ashy white, and a convulsion passed

I wish I could make Gertrude understand, and yet I could never, never bring myself to say a word. As a

matter of fact, what is there to be said? Surely she knows best that her husband will never love any woman

but herself. Yet ill, nervous as she is, I quite understand that she must loathe this unceasing talk of Dionea, of

the superiority of the model over the statue. Cursed statue! I wish it were finished, or else that it had never

This morning Waldemar came to me. He seemed strangely agitated: I guessed he had something to tell me,

and yet I could never ask. Was it cowardice on my part? He sat in my shuttered room, the sunshine making

pools on the red bricks and tremulous stars on the ceiling, talking of many things at random, and

mechanically turning over the manuscript, the heap of notes of my poor, neverfinished book on the Exiled

Gods. Then he rose, and walking nervously round my study, talking disconnectedly about his work, his eye

suddenly fell upon a little altar, one of my few antiquities, a little block of marble with a carved garland and

rams' heads, and a halfeffaced inscription dedicating it to Venus, the mother of Love.

"It was found," I explained, "in the ruins of the temple, somewhere on the site of your studio: so, at least, the

Waldemar looked at it long. "So," he said, "this little cavity was to burn the incense in; or rather, I suppose,

since it has two little gutters running into it, for collecting the blood of the victim? Well, well! they were

wiser in that day, to wring the neck of a pigeon or burn a pinch of incense than to eat their own hearts out, as

we do, all along of Dame Venus;" and he laughed, and left me with that odd ferocious lightingup of his face.

Presently there came a knock at my door. It was Waldemar. "Doctor," he said very quietly, "will you do me a

favour? Lend me your little Venus altaronly for a few days, only till the day after tomorrow. I want to

copy the design of it for the pedestal of my statue: it is appropriate." I sent the altar to him: the lad who

carried it told me that Waldemar had set it up in the studio, and calling for a flask of wine, poured out two

glasses. One he had given to my messenger for his pains; of the other he had drunk a mouthful, and thrown

the rest over the altar, saying some unknown words. "It must be some German habit," said my servant. What

You ask me, dearest Excellency, to send you some sheets of my book: you want to know what I have

discovered. Alas! dear Donna Evelina, I have discovered, I fear, that there is nothing to discover; that Apollo

was never in Styria; that Chaucer, when he called the Queen of the Fairies Proserpine, meant nothing more

than an eighteenth century poet when he called Dolly or Betty Cynthia or Amaryllis; that the lady who

damned poor Tannh�user was not Venus, but a mere little Suabian mountain sprite; in fact, that poetry is only

the invention of poets, and that that rogue, Heinrich Heine, is entirely responsible for the existence of Dieux

en Exil.... My poor manuscript can only tell you what St. Augustine, Tertullian, and sundry morose old

Bishops thought about the loves of Father Zeus and the miracles of the Lady Isis, none of which is much

worth your attention.... Reality, my dear Lady Evelyn, is always prosaic: at least when investigated into by

And yet, it does not look so. The world, at times, seems to be playing at being poetic, mysterious, full of

wonder and romance. I am writing, as usual, by my window, the moonlight brighter in its whiteness than my

mean little yellowshining lamp. From the mysterious greyness, the olive groves and lanes beneath my

terrace, rises a confused quaver of frogs, and buzz and whirr of insects: something, in sound, like the vague

trails of countless stars, the galaxies on galaxies blurred into mere blue shimmer by the moon, which rides

slowly across the highest heaven. The olive twigs glisten in the rays: the flowers of the pomegranate and

oleander are only veiled as with bluish mist in their scarlet and rose. In the sea is another sea, of molten,

rippled silver, or a magic causeway leading to the shining vague offing, the luminous pale skyline, where

the islands of Palmaria and Tino float like unsubstantial, shadowy dolphins. The roofs of Montemirto

glimmer among the black, pointing cypresses: farther below, at the end of that halfmoon of land, is San

Massimo: the Genoese fort inhabited by our friends is profiled black against the sky. All is dark: our

fisherfolk go to bed early; Gertrude and the little ones are asleep: they at least are, for I can imagine

Gertrude lying awake, the moonbeams on her thin Madonna face, smiling as she thinks of the little ones

around her, of the other tiny thing that will soon lie on her breast.... There is a light in the old desecrated

chapel, the thing that was once the temple of Venus, they say, and is now Waldemar's workshop, its broken

roof mended with reeds and thatch. Waldemar has stolen in, no doubt to see his statue again. But he will

return, more peaceful for the peacefulness of the night, to his sleeping wife and children. God bless and watch

I have your Excellency's telegram in answer to mine. Many thanks for sending the Prince. I await his coming

with feverish longing; it is still something to look forward to. All does not seem over. And yet what can he

The children are safe: we fetched them out of their bed and brought them up here. They are still a little

shaken by the fire, the bustle, and by finding themselves in a strange house; also, they want to know where

their mother is; but they have found a tame cat, and I hear them chirping on the stairs.

It was only the roof of the studio, the reeds and thatch, that burned, and a few old pieces of timber. Waldemar

must have set fire to it with great care; he had brought armfuls of faggots of dry myrtle and heather from the

bakehouse close by, and thrown into the blaze quantities of pinecones, and of some resin, I know not what,

that smelt like incense. When we made our way, early this morning, through the smouldering studio, we were

stifled with a hot churchlike perfume: my brain swam, and I suddenly remembered going into St. Peter's on

It happened last night, while I was writing to you. Gertrude had gone to bed, leaving her husband in the

studio. About eleven the maids heard him come out and call to Dionea to get up and come and sit to him. He

had had this craze once before, of seeing her and his statue by an artificial light: you remember he had

theories about the way in which the ancients lit up the statues in their temples. Gertrude, the servants say, was

Do you see it? I have seen nothing else these hours, which have seemed weeks and months. He had placed

Dionea on the big marble block behind the altar, a great curtain of dull red brocadeyou know that Venetian

brocade with the gold pomegranate patternbehind her, like a Madonna of Van Eyck's. He showed her to

me once before like this, the whiteness of her neck and breast, the whiteness of the drapery round her flanks,

toned to the colour of old marble by the light of the resin burning in pans all round.... Before Dionea was the

altarthe altar of Venus which he had borrowed from me. He must have collected all the roses about it, and

thrown the incense upon the embers when Gertrude suddenly entered. And then, and then ...

We found her lying across the altar, her pale hair among the ashes of the incense, her bloodshe had but

little to give, poor white ghost!trickling among the carved garlands and rams' heads, blackening the

heapedup roses. The body of Waldemar was found at the foot of the castle cliff. Had he hoped, by setting

the place on fire, to bury himself among its ruins, or had he not rather wished to complete in this way the

sacrifice, to make the whole temple an immense votive pyre? It looked like one, as we hurried down the hills

to San Massimo: the whole hillside, dry grass, myrtle, and heather, all burning, the pale short flames waving

against the blue moonlit sky, and the old fortress outlined black against the blaze.

Of Dionea I can tell you nothing certain. We speak of her as little as we can. Some say they have seen her, on

stormy nights, wandering among the cliffs: but a sailorboy assures me, by all the holy things, that the day

after the burning of the Castle Chapelwe never call it anything elsehe met at dawn, off the island of

Palmaria, beyond the Strait of Porto Venere, a Greek boat, with eyes painted on the prow, going full sail to

sea, the men singing as she went. And against the mast, a robe of purple and gold about her, and a

myrtlewreath on her head, leaned Dionea, singing words in an unknown tongue, the white pigeons circling

DEAR BOUTOURLINE,Do you remember my telling you, one afternoon that you sat upon the

You thought it a fantastic tale, you lover of fantastic things, and urged me to write it out at once, although I

protested that, in such matters, to write is to exorcise, to dispel the charm; and that printers' ink chases away

the ghosts that may pleasantly haunt us, as efficaciously as gallons of holy water.

But if, as I suspect, you will now put down any charm that story may have possessed to the way in which we

had been working ourselves up, that firelight evening, with all manner of fantastic stuffif, as I fear, the

story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst will strike you as stale and unprofitablethe sight of this little book will serve

at least to remind you, in the middle of your Russian summer, that there is such a season as winter, such a

THAT sketch up there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I wonder whether you could guess

who she was. A singular being, is she not? The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a

wonderful elegance, exotic, farfetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of grace and research in every

outline and movement and arrangement of head and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a lot of

pencilsketches I made while I was preparing to paint her portrait. Yes; there's nothing but her in the whole

sketchbook. Mere scratches, but they may give some idea of her marvellous, fantastic kind of grace. Here

she is leaning over the staircase, and here sitting in the swing. Here she is walking quickly out of the room.

That's her head. You see she isn't really handsome; her forehead is too big, and her nose too short. This gives

no idea of her. It was altogether a question of movement. Look at the strange cheeks, hollow and rather flat;

well, when she smiled she had the most marvellous dimples here. There was something exquisite and

uncanny about it. Yes; I began the picture, but it was never finished. I did the husband first. I wonder who has

his likeness now? Help me to move these pictures away from the wall. Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge

wreck. I don't suppose you can make much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see my

idea was to make her leaning against a wallthere was one hung with yellow that seemed almost brownso

It was very singular I should have chosen that particular wall. It does look rather insane in this condition, but

I like it; it has something of her. I would frame it and hang it up, only people would ask questions. Yes; you

have guessed quite rightit is Mrs. Oke of Okehurst. I forgot you had relations in that part of the country;

besides, I suppose the newspapers were full of it at the time. You didn't know that it all took place under my

eyes? I can scarcely believe now that it did: it all seems so distant, vivid but unreal, like a thing of my own

invention. It really was much stranger than any one guessed. People could no more understand it than they

could understand her. I doubt whether any one ever understood Alice Oke besides myself. You mustn't think

me unfeeling. She was a marvellous, weird, exquisite creature, but one couldn't feel sorry for her. I felt much

sorrier for the wretched creature of a husband. It seemed such an appropriate end for her; I fancy she would

have liked it could she have known. Ah! I shall never have another chance of painting such a portrait as I

wanted. She seemed sent me from heaven or the other place. You have never heard the story in detail? Well, I

don't usually mention it, because people are so brutally stupid or sentimental; but I'll tell it you. Let me see.

It's too dark to paint any more today, so I can tell it you now. Wait; I must turn her face to the wall. Ah, she

You remember, three years ago, my telling you I had let myself in for painting a couple of Kentish squireen?

I really could not understand what had possessed me to say yes to that man. A friend of mine had brought

him one day to my studioMr. Oke of Okehurst, that was the name on his card. He was a very tall, very

wellmade, very goodlooking young man, with a beautiful fair complexion, beautiful fair moustache, and

beautifully fitting clothes; absolutely like a hundred other young men you can see any day in the Park, and

absolutely uninteresting from the crown of his head to the tip of his boots. Mr. Oke, who had been a

lieutenant in the Blues before his marriage, was evidently extremely uncomfortable on finding himself in a

studio. He felt misgivings about a man who could wear a velvet coat in town, but at the same time he was

nervously anxious not to treat me in the very least like a tradesman. He walked round my place, looked at

everything with the most scrupulous attention, stammered out a few complimentary phrases, and then,

looking at his friend for assistance, tried to come to the point, but failed. The point, which the friend kindly

explained, was that Mr. Oke was desirous to know whether my engagements would allow of my painting him

and his wife, and what my terms would be. The poor man blushed perfectly crimson during this explanation,

as if he had come with the most improper proposal; and I noticedthe only interesting thing about hima

very odd nervous frown between his eyebrows, a perfect double gash,a thing which usually means

something abnormal: a maddoctor of my acquaintance calls it the maniacfrown. When I had answered, he

suddenly burst out into rather confused explanations: his wifeMrs. Okehad seen some of

mypicturespaintingsportraitsat thethewhat d'you call it?Academy. She hadin short, they

had made a very great impression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great taste for art; she was, in short, extremely

"My wife," he suddenly added, "is a remarkable woman. I don't know whether you will think her

handsome,she isn't exactly, you know. But she's awfully strange," and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little

sigh and frowned that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an expression of opinion had cost

It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career. A very influential sitter of mineyou remember the fat

lady with the crimson curtain behind her?had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted

her old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned against me, the newspapers had

taken up the matter, and for the moment I was considered as a painter to whose brushes no woman would

trust her reputation. Things were going badly. So I snapped but too gladly at Mr. Oke's offer, and settled to go

down to Okehurst at the end of a fortnight. But the door had scarcely closed upon my future sitter when I

began to regret my rashness; and my disgust at the thought of wasting a whole summer upon the portrait of a

totally uninteresting Kentish squire, and his doubtless equally uninteresting wife, grew greater and greater as

the time for execution approached. I remember so well the frightful temper in which I got into the train for

Kent, and the even more frightful temper in which I got out of it at the little station nearest to Okehurst. It

was pouring floods. I felt a comfortable fury at the thought that my canvases would get nicely wetted before

Mr. Oke's coachman had packed them on the top of the waggonette. It was just what served me right for

coming to this confounded place to paint these confounded people. We drove off in the steady downpour. The

roads were a mass of yellow mud; the endless flat grazinggrounds under the oaktrees, after having been

burnt to cinders in a long drought, were turned into a hideous brown sop; the country seemed intolerably

My spirits sank lower and lower. I began to meditate upon the modern Gothic countryhouse, with the usual

amount of Morris furniture, Liberty rugs, and Mudie novels, to which I was doubtless being taken. My fancy

pictured very vividly the five or six little Okesthat man certainly must have at least five childrenthe

aunts, and sistersinlaw, and cousins; the eternal routine of afternoon tea and lawntennis; above all, it

pictured Mrs. Oke, the bouncing, wellinformed, model housekeeper, electioneering, charityorganising

young lady, whom such an individual as Mr. Oke would regard in the light of a remarkable woman. And my

spirit sank within me, and I cursed my avarice in accepting the commission, my spiritlessness in not throwing

it over while yet there was time. We had meanwhile driven into a large park, or rather a long succession of

grazinggrounds, dotted about with large oaks, under which the sheep were huddled together for shelter from

the rain. In the distance, blurred by the sheets of rain, was a line of low hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish

firs and a solitary windmill. It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there was

none to be seen in the distancenothing but the undulation of sere grass, sopped brown beneath the huge

blackish oaktrees, and whence arose, from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a

sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. It was not what I had expected. In a dip

in the ground a large redbrick house, with the rounded gables and high chimneystacks of the time of James

I.,a forlorn, vast place, set in the midst of the pastureland, with no trace of garden before it, and only a

few large trees indicating the possibility of one to the back; no lawn either, but on the other side of the sandy

dip, which suggested a filledup moat, a huge oak, short, hollow, with wreathing, blasted, black branches,

upon which only a handful of leaves shook in the rain. It was not at all what I had pictured to myself the

My host received me in the hall, a large place, panelled and carved, hung round with portraits up to its

curious ceilingvaulted and ribbed like the inside of a ship's hull. He looked even more blond and pink and

white, more absolutely mediocre in his tweed suit; and also, I thought, even more goodnatured and duller.

He took me into his study, a room hung round with whips and fishingtackle in place of books, while my

things were being carried upstairs. It was very damp, and a fire was smouldering. He gave the embers a

"You must excuse my not introducing you at once to Mrs. Oke. My wifein short, I believe my wife is

"Is Mrs. Oke unwell?" I asked, a sudden hope flashing across me that I might be off the whole matter.

"Oh no! Alice is quite well; at least, quite as well as she usually is. My wife," he added, after a minute, and in

a very decided tone, "does not enjoy very good healtha nervous constitution. Oh no! not at all ill, nothing

at all serious, you know. Only nervous, the doctors say; mustn't be worried or excited, the doctors say;

There was a dead pause. This man depressed me, I knew not why. He had a listless, puzzled look, very much

"I suppose you are a great sportsman?" I asked from sheer despair, nodding in the direction of the whips and

"Oh no! not now. I was once. I have given up all that," he answered, standing with his back to the fire, and

staring at the polar bear beneath his feet. "II have no time for all that now," he added, as if an explanation

were due. "A married manyou know. Would you like to come up to your rooms?" he suddenly interrupted

himself. "I have had one arranged for you to paint in. My wife said you would prefer a north light. If that one

I followed him out of the study, through the vast entrancehall. In less than a minute I was no longer thinking

of Mr. and Mrs. Oke and the boredom of doing their likeness; I was simply overcome by the beauty of this

house, which I had pictured modern and philistine. It was, without exception, the most perfect example of an

old English manorhouse that I had ever seen; the most magnificent intrinsically, and the most admirably

preserved. Out of the huge hall, with its immense fireplace of delicately carved and inlaid grey and black

stone, and its rows of family portraits, reaching from the wainscoting to the oaken ceiling, vaulted and ribbed

like a ship's hull, opened the wide, flatstepped staircase, the parapet surmounted at intervals by heraldic

monsters, the wall covered with oak carvings of coatsofarms, leafage, and little mythological scenes,

painted a faded red and blue, and picked out with tarnished gold, which harmonised with the tarnished blue

and gold of the stamped leather that reached to the oak cornice, again delicately tinted and gilded. The

beautifully damascened suits of court armour looked, without being at all rusty, as if no modern hand had

ever touched them; the very rugs under foot were of sixteenthcentury Persian make; the only things of

today were the big bunches of flowers and ferns, arranged in majolica dishes upon the landings. Everything

was perfectly silent; only from below came the chimes, silvery like an Italian palace fountain, of an

"What a magnificent house!" I exclaimed as I followed my host through a long corridor, also hung with

leather, wainscoted with carvings, and furnished with big wedding coffers, and chairs that looked as if they

came out of some Vandyck portrait. In my mind was the strong impression that all this was natural,

spontaneousthat it had about it nothing of the picturesqueness which swell studios have taught to rich and

"It is a nice old place," he said, "but it's too large for us. You see, my wife's health does not allow of our

I thought I noticed a vague complaint in his voice; and he evidently was afraid there might have seemed

"I don't care for children one jackstraw, you know, myself; can't understand how any one can, for my part."

If ever a man went out of his way to tell a lie, I said to myself, Mr. Oke of Okehurst was doing so at the

When he had left me in one of the two enormous rooms that were allotted to me, I threw myself into an

armchair and tried to focus the extraordinary imaginative impression which this house had given me.

I am very susceptible to such impressions; and besides the sort of spasm of imaginative interest sometimes

given to me by certain rare and eccentric personalities, I know nothing more subduing than the charm, quieter

and less analytic, of any sort of complete and outofthecommonrun sort of house. To sit in a room like

the one I was sitting in, with the figures of the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight,

the great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers reddening beneath the

overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, a vague scent of roseleaves and spices, put into the

china bowls by the hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every now and then,

its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the room;to do this is a special kind of voluptuousness,

peculiar and complex and indescribable, like the halfdrunkenness of opium or haschisch, and which, to be

conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would require a genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire.

After I had dressed for dinner I resumed my place in the armchair, and resumed also my reverie, letting all

these impressions of the pastwhich seemed faded like the figures in the arras, but still warm like the

embers in the fireplace, still sweet and subtle like the perfume of the dead roseleaves and broken spices in

the china bowlspermeate me and go to my head. Of Oke and Oke's wife I did not think; I seemed quite

Gradually the embers grew paler; the figures in the tapestry more shadowy; the columned and curtained bed

loomed out vaguer; the room seemed to fill with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned

bowwindow, beyond whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, stretched a greyishbrown expanse

of sere and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs,

the wet sky was suffused with the bloodred of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the ivy

outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the lambs separated from their mothers, a

I FEEL that I cannot possibly reconstruct my earliest impressions of Mrs. Oke. My recollection of them

would be entirely coloured by my subsequent knowledge of her; whence I conclude that I could not at first

have experienced the strange interest and admiration which that extraordinary woman very soon excited in

me. Interest and admiration, be it well understood, of a very unusual kind, as she was herself a very unusual

kind of woman; and I, if you choose, am a rather unusual kind of man. But I can explain that better anon.

This much is certain, that I must have been immeasurably surprised at finding my hostess and future sitter so

completely unlike everything I had anticipated. Or nonow I come to think of it, I scarcely felt surprised at

all; or if I did, that shock of surprise could have lasted but an infinitesimal part of a minute. The fact is, that,

having once seen Alice Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that one could have fancied

her at all different: there was something so complete, so completely unlike every one else, in her personality,

that she seemed always to have been present in one's consciousness, although present, perhaps, as an enigma.

Let me try and give you some notion of her: not that first impression, whatever it may have been, but the

absolute reality of her as I gradually learned to see it. To begin with, I must repeat and reiterate over and over

again, that she was, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and exquisite woman I have ever seen, but with

a grace and an exquisiteness that had nothing to do with any preconceived notion or previous experience of

what goes by these names: grace and exquisiteness recognised at once as perfect, but which were seen in her

for the first, and probably, I do believe, for the last time. It is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand

years there may arise a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, a gesture, which is new,

unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our desires for beauty and rareness? She was very tall; and I suppose

people would have called her thin. I don't know, for I never thought about her as a bodybones, flesh, that

sort of thing; but merely as a wonderful series of lines, and a wonderful strangeness of personality. Tall and

slender, certainly, and with not one item of what makes up our notion of a wellbuilt woman. She was as

straightI mean she had as little of what people call figureas a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high,

and she had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never once wore uncovered. But this bamboo

figure of hers had a suppleness and a stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that I can't

compare to anything else; there was in it something of the peacock and something also of the stag; but, above

all, it was her own. I wish I could describe her. I wish, alas!I wish, I wish, I have wished a hundred

thousand timesI could paint her, as I see her now, if I shut my eyeseven if it were only a silhouette.

There! I see her so plainly, walking slowly up and down a room, the slight highness of her shoulders just

completing the exquisite arrangement of lines made by the straight supple back, the long exquisite neck, the

head, with the hair cropped in short pale curls, always drooping a little, except when she would suddenly

throw it back, and smile, not at me, nor at any one, nor at anything that had been said, but as if she alone had

suddenly seen or heard something, with the strange dimple in her thin, pale cheeks, and the strange whiteness

in her full, wideopened eyes: the moment when she had something of the stag in her movement. But where

is the use of talking about her? I don't believe, you know, that even the greatest painter can show what is the

real beauty of a very beautiful woman in the ordinary sense: Titian's and Tintoretto's women must have been

miles handsomer than they have made them. Somethingand that the very essencealways escapes,

perhaps because real beauty is as much a thing in timea thing like music, a succession, a seriesas in

space. Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beautiful in the conventional sense. Imagine, then, how much

more so in the case of a woman like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, can't

succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere wretched wordswords possessing

only a wretched abstract meaning, an impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs.

Oke of Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and strange,an exotic creature, whose

charm you can no more describe than you could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered tropical

That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr. OkeOke of Okehurst, as the people down there called

himwas horribly shy, consumed with a fear of making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then

thought. But that sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered that, although it was doubtless

increased by the presence of a total stranger, it was inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife. He would

look every now and then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain himself, and

remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, manly young fellow, who ought to have had any

amount of success with women, suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor

was it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, although always slow and timid, had

a certain amount of ideas, and very defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and

desire to attain certainty and truth which was rather touching. On the other hand, Oke's singular shyness was

not, so far as I could see, the result of any kind of bullying on his wife's part. You can always detect, if you

have any observation, the husband or the wife who is accustomed to be snubbed, to be corrected, by his or her

betterhalf: there is a selfconsciousness in both parties, a habit of watching and faultfinding, of being

watched and found fault with. This was clearly not the case at Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble

herself about her husband in the very least; he might say or do any amount of silly things without rebuke or

even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since his weddingday. You felt that at once.

Mrs. Oke simply passed over his existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine.

At first I thought it an affectation on her partfor there was something farfetched in her whole appearance,

something suggesting study, which might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a

strange way, not according to any established �sthetic eccentricity, but individually, strangely, as if in the

clothes of an ancestress of the seventeenth century. Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on her part, this

mixture of extreme graciousness and utter indifference which she manifested towards me. She always seemed

to be thinking of something else; and although she talked quite sufficiently, and with every sign of superior

intelligence, she left the impression of having been as taciturn as her husband.

In the beginning, in the first few days of my stay at Okehurst, I imagined that Mrs. Oke was a highly superior

sort of flirt; and that her absent manner, her look, while speaking to you, into an invisible distance, her

curious irrelevant smile, were so many means of attracting and baffling adoration. I mistook it for the

somewhat similar manners of certain foreign womenit is beyond English oneswhich mean, to those who

can understand, "pay court to me." But I soon found I was mistaken. Mrs. Oke had not the faintest desire that

I should pay court to her; indeed she did not honour me with sufficient thought for that; and I, on my part,

began to be too much interested in her from another point of view to dream of such a thing. I became aware,

not merely that I had before me the most marvellously rare and exquisite and baffling sub ject for a portrait,

but also one of the most peculiar and enigmatic of characters. Now that I look back upon it, I am tempted to

think that the psychological peculiarity of that woman might be summed up in an exorbitant and absorbing

interest in herselfa Narcissus attitudecuriously complicated with a fantastic imagination, a sort of

morbid daydreaming, all turned inwards, and with no outer characteristic save a certain restlessness, a

perverse desire to surprise and shock, to surprise and shock more particularly her husband, and thus be

revenged for the intense boredom which his want of appreciation inflicted upon her.

I got to understand this much little by little, yet I did not seem to have really penetrated the something

mysterious about Mrs. Oke. There was a waywardness, a strangeness, which I felt but could not explaina

something as difficult to define as the peculiarity of her outward appearance, and perhaps very closely

connected therewith. I became interested in Mrs. Oke as if I had been in love with her; and I was not in the

least in love. I neither dreaded parting from her, nor felt any pleasure in her presence. I had not the smallest

wish to please or to gain her notice. But I had her on the brain. I pursued her, her physical image, her

psychological explanation, with a kind of passion which filled my days, and prevented my ever feeling dull.

The Okes lived a remarkably solitary life. There were but few neighbours, of whom they saw but little; and

they rarely had a guest in the house. Oke himself seemed every now and then seized with a sense of

responsibility towards me. He would remark vaguely, during our walks and afterdinner chats, that I must

find life at Okehurst horribly dull; his wife's health had accustomed him to solitude, and then also his wife

thought the neighbours a bore. He never questioned his wife's judgment in these matters. He merely stated the

case as if resignation were quite simple and inevitable; yet it seemed to me, sometimes, that this monotonous

life of solitude, by the side of a woman who took no more heed of him than of a table or chair, was producing

a vague depression and irritation in this young man, so evidently cut out for a cheerful, commonplace life. I

often wondered how he could endure it at all, not having, as I had, the interest of a strange psychological

riddle to solve, and of a great portrait to paint. He was, I found, extremely good,the type of the perfectly

conscientious young Englishman, the sort of man who ought to have been the Christian soldier kind of thing;

devout, pureminded, brave, incapable of any baseness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled by all

manner of moral scruples. The condition of his tenants and of his political partyhe was a regular Kentish

Torylay heavy on his mind. He spent hours every day in his study, doing the work of a land agent and a

politi cal whip, reading piles of reports and newspapers and agricultural treatises; and emerging for lunch

with piles of letters in his hand, and that odd puzzled look in his good healthy face, that deep gash between

his eyebrows, which my friend the maddoctor calls the maniacfrown. It was with this expression of face

that I should have liked to paint him; but I felt that he would not have liked it, that it was more fair to him to

represent him in his mere wholesome pink and white and blond conventionality. I was perhaps rather

unconscientious about the likeness of Mr. Oke; I felt satisfied to paint it no matter how, I mean as regards

character, for my whole mind was swallowed up in thinking how I should paint Mrs. Oke, how I could best

transport on to canvas that singular and enigmatic personality. I began with her husband, and told her frankly

that I must have much longer to study her. Mr. Oke couldn't understand why it should be necessary to make a

hundred and one pencilsketches of his wife before even determining in what attitude to paint her; but I think

he was rather pleased to have an opportunity of keeping me at Okehurst; my presence evidently broke the

monotony of his life. Mrs. Oke seemed perfectly indifferent to my staying, as she was perfectly indifferent to

my presence. Without being rude, I never saw a woman pay so little attention to a guest; she would talk with

me sometimes by the hour, or rather let me talk to her, but she never seemed to be listening. She would lie

back in a big seventeenthcentury armchair while I played the piano, with that strange smile every now and

then in her thin cheeks, that strange whiteness in her eyes; but it seemed a matter of indifference whether my

music stopped or went on. In my portrait of her husband she did not take, or pretend to take, the very faintest

interest; but that was nothing to me. I did not want Mrs. Oke to think me interesting; I merely wished to go on

The first time that Mrs. Oke seemed to become at all aware of my presence as distinguished from that of the

chairs and tables, the dogs that lay in the porch, or the clergyman or lawyer or stray neighbour who was

occasionally asked to dinner, was one dayI might have been there a weekwhen I chanced to remark to

her upon the very singular resemblance that existed between herself and the portrait of a lady that hung in the

hall with the ceiling like a ship's hull. The picture in question was a full length, neither very good nor very

bad, probably done by some stray Italian of the early seventeenth century. It hung in a rather dark corner,

facing the portrait, evidently painted to be its companion, of a dark man, with a somewhat unpleasant

expression of resolution and efficiency, in a black Vandyck dress. The two were evidently man and wife; and

in the corner of the woman's portrait were the words, "Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, Esq., and wife

to Nicholas Oke of Okehurst," and the date 1626"Nicholas Oke" being the name painted in the corner of

the small portrait. The lady was really wonderfully like the present Mrs. Oke, at least so far as an

indifferently painted portrait of the early days of Charles I. can be like a living woman of the nineteenth

century. There were the same strange lines of figure and face, the same dimples in the thin cheeks, the same

wideopened eyes, the same vague eccentricity of expression, not destroyed even by the feeble painting and

conventional manner of the time. One could fancy that this woman had the same walk, the same beautiful line

of nape of the neck and stooping head as her descendant; for I found that Mr. and Mrs. Oke, who were first

cousins, were both descended from that Nicholas Oke and that Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret. But the

resemblance was heightened by the fact that, as I soon saw, the present Mrs. Oke distinctly made herself up

to look like her ancestress, dressing in garments that had a seventeenthcentury look; nay, that were

"You think I am like her," answered Mrs. Oke dreamily to my remark, and her eyes wandered off to that

"You are like her, and you know it. I may even say you wish to be like her, Mrs. Oke," I answered, laughing.

And she looked in the direction of her husband. I noticed that he had an expression of distinct annoyance

"Isn't it true that Mrs. Oke tries to look like that portrait?" I asked, with a perverse curiosity.

"Oh, fudge!" he exclaimed, rising from his chair and walking nervously to the window. "It's all nonsense,

"Wouldn't what?" asked Mrs. Oke, with a sort of contemptuous indifference. "If I am like that Alice Oke,

why I am; and I am very pleased any one should think so. She and her husband are just about the only two

members of our familyour most flat, stale, and unprofitable familythat ever were in the least degree

"I don't see why you should abuse our family, Alice," he said. "Thank God, our people have always been

"Excepting always Nicholas Oke and Alice his wife, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, Esq.," she answered,

"How childish he is!" she exclaimed when we were alone. "He really minds, really feels disgraced by what

our ancestors did two centuries and a half ago. I do believe William would have those two portraits taken

down and burned if he weren't afraid of me and ashamed of the neighbours. And as it is, these two people

really are the only two members of our family that ever were in the least interesting. I will tell you the story

As it was, the story was told to me by Oke himself. The next day, as we were taking our morning walk, he

suddenly broke a long silence, laying about him all the time at the sere grasses with the hooked stick that he

carried, like the conscientious Kentishman he was, for the purpose of cutting down his and other folk's

"I fear you must have thought me very illmannered towards my wife yesterday," he said shyly; "and indeed

Oke was one of those chivalrous beings to whom every woman, every wifeand his own most of

allappeared in the light of something holy. "ButbutI have a prejudice which my wife does not enter

into, about raking up ugly things in one's own family. I suppose Alice thinks that it is so long ago that it has

really got no connection with us; she thinks of it merely as a picturesque story. I daresay many people feel

like that; in short, I am sure they do, otherwise there wouldn't be such lots of discreditable family traditions

afloat. But I feel as if it were all one whether it was long ago or not; when it's a question of one's own people,

I would rather have it forgotten. I can't understand how people can talk about murders in their families, and

"Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?" I asked. The place seemed as if it required some to complete

"If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they should be taken lightly. God would not

We walked on some time in silence, I wondering at the strange type of this commonplace young man, and

half wishing I could put something into my portrait that should be the equivalent of this curious

unimaginative earnestness. Then Oke told me the story of those two picturestold it me about as badly and

He and his wife were, as I have said, cousins, and therefore descended from the same old Kentish stock. The

Okes of Okehurst could trace back to Norman, almost to Saxon times, far longer than any of the titled or

betterknown families of the neighbourhood. I saw that William Oke, in his heart, thoroughly looked down

upon all his neighbours. "We have never done anything particular, or been anything particularnever held

any office," he said; "but we have always been here, and apparently always done our duty. An ancestor of

ours was killed in the Scotch wars, another at Agincourtmere honest captains." Well, early in the

seventeenth century, the family had dwindled to a single member, Nicholas Oke, the same who had rebuilt

Okehurst in its present shape. This Nicholas appears to have been somewhat different from the usual run of

the family. He had, in his youth, sought adventures in America, and seems, generally speaking, to have been

less of a nonentity than his ancestors. He married, when no longer very young, Alice, daughter of Virgil

Pomfret, a beautiful young heiress from a neighbouring county. "It was the first time an Oke married a

Pomfret," my host informed me, "and the last time. The Pomfrets were quite different sort of

peoplerestless, selfseeking; one of them had been a favourite of Henry VIII." It was clear that William

Oke had no feeling of having any Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with an evident family

dislikethe dislike of an Oke, one of the old, honourable, modest stock, which had quietly done its duty, for

a family of fortuneseekers and Court minions. Well, there had come to live near Okehurst, in a little house

recently inherited from an uncle, a certain Christopher Lovelock, a young gallant and poet, who was in

momentary disgrace at Court for some love affair. This Lovelock had struck up a great friendship with his

neighbours of Okehursttoo great a friendship, apparently, with the wife, either for her husband's taste or

her own. Anyhow, one evening as he was riding home alone, Lovelock had been attacked and murdered,

ostensibly by highwaymen, but as was afterwards rumoured, by Nicholas Oke, accompanied by his wife

dressed as a groom. No legal evidence had been got, but the tradition had remained. "They used to tell it us

when we were children," said my host, in a hoarse voice, "and to frighten my cousinI mean my wifeand

me with stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope may die out, as I sincerely pray to

heaven that it may be false." "AliceMrs. Okeyou see," he went on after some time, "doesn't feel about it

FROM that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of Mrs. Oke; or rather, I began to

perceive that I had a means of securing her attention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often

reproached myself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to guess that I was making mischief

merely by chiming in, for the sake of the portrait I had undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological

mania, with what was merely the fad, the little romantic affectation or eccentricity, of a scatterbrained and

eccentric young woman? How in the world should I have dreamed that I was handling explosive substances?

A man is surely not responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals with as with

So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost

unique subject for a portraitpainter of my particular sort, and a most singular, bizarre personality. I could not

possibly do my subject justice so long as I was kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character

of the woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any more innocent way of doing so

could be found than talking to a woman, and letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of

ancestors of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had murdered?particularly as I studiously

respected the prejudices of my host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain Mrs. Oke

I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the year 1626 was the caprice, the mania, the

pose, the whatever you may call it, of the Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was the sure

way of gaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary craze, of all the extraordinary crazes of

childless and idle women, that I had ever met; but it was more than that, it was admirably characteristic. It

finished off the strange figure of Mrs. Oke, as I saw it in my imaginationthis bizarre creature of enigmatic,

farfetched exquisitenessthat she should have no interest in the present, but only an eccentric passion in

the past. It seemed to give the meaning to the absent look in her eyes, to her irrelevant and faroff smile. It

was like the words to a weird piece of gipsy music, this that she, who was so different, so distant from all

women of her own time, should try and identify herself with a woman of the pastthat she should have a

I told Mrs. Oke that I had learnt from her husband the outline of the tragedy, or mystery, whichever it was, of

Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, and the poet Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague contempt, of a

desire to shock, which I had noticed before, came into her beautiful, pale, diaphanous face.

"I suppose my husband was very shocked at the whole matter," she said"told it you with as little detail as

possible, and assured you very solemnly that he hoped the whole story might be a mere dreadful calumny?

Poor Willie! I remember already when we were children, and I used to come with my mother to spend

Christmas at Okehurst, and my cousin was down here for his holidays, how I used to horrify him by insisting

upon dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and playing the story of the wicked Mrs. Oke; and he always

piously refused to do the part of Nicholas, when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I didn't know

then that I was like the original Alice Oke; I found it out only after our marriage. You really think that I am?"

She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a white Vandyck dress, with the green of the

parkland rising up behind her, and the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, her

exquisitely bowed head, with a paleyellow halo. But I confess I thought the original Alice Oke, siren and

murderess though she might be, very uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom

I had rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all her unlikely wayward exquisiteness.

One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservative manifestoes and rural

decisionshe was justice of the peace in a most literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending

the weak and admonishing the illconductedone morning while I was making one of my many

pencilsketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of my future sitter, Mrs. Oke gave me her version

"Do you suppose there was anything between them?" I asked"that she was ever in love with him? How do

you explain the part which tradition ascribes to her in the supposed murder? One has heard of women and

their lovers who have killed the husband; but a woman who combines with her husband to kill her lover, or at

least the man who is in love with herthat is surely very singular." I was absorbed in my drawing, and really

"I don't know," she answered pensively, with that distant look in her eyes. "Alice Oke was very proud, I am

sure. She may have loved the poet very much, and yet been indignant with him, hated having to love him.

She may have felt that she had a right to rid herself of him, and to call upon her husband to help her to do so."

"Good heavens! what a fearful idea!" I exclaimed, half laughing. "Don't you think, after all, that Mr. Oke may

be right in saying that it is easier and more comfortable to take the whole story as a pure invention?"

"I cannot take it as an invention," answered Mrs. Oke contemptuously, "because I happen to know that it is

"Indeed!" I answered, working away at my sketch, and enjoying putting this strange creature, as I said to

"How does one know that anything is true in this world?" she replied evasively; "because one does, because

"Have you ever read any of Lovelock's poetry?" she asked me suddenly the next day.

"Lovelock?" I answered, for I had forgotten the name. "Lovelock, who" But I stopped, remembering the

And she looked full at her husband, as if in perverse enjoyment of the evident annoyance which it caused

"Alice," he entreated in a low voice, his whole face crimson, "for mercy's sake, don't talk about such things

Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather hysterical laugh, the laugh of a naughty child.

"The servants! Gracious heavens! do you suppose they haven't heard the story? Why, it's as well known as

Okehurst itself in the neighbourhood. Don't they believe that Lovelock has been seen about the house?

Haven't they all heard his footsteps in the big corridor? Haven't they, my dear Willie, noticed a thousand

times that you never will stay a minute alone in the yellow drawingroomthat you run out of it, like a

True! How was it I had not noticed that? or rather, that I only now remembered having noticed it? The yellow

drawingroom was one of the most charming rooms in the house: a large, bright room, hung with yellow

damask and panelled with carvings, that opened straight out on to the lawn, far superior to the room in which

we habitually sat, which was comparatively gloomy. This time Mr. Oke struck me as really too childish. I felt

"The yellow drawingroom!" I exclaimed. "Does this interesting literary character haunt the yellow

"Nothing ever happened there, so far as I know," he said, and rose from the table.

"Nothing did happen there," answered Mrs. Oke slowly, playing mechanically with a fork, and picking out

the pattern of the tablecloth. "That is just the extraordinary circumstance, that, so far as any one knows,

nothing ever did happen there; and yet that room has an evil reputation. No member of our family, they say,

can bear to sit there alone for more than a minute. You see, William evidently cannot."

"I presume you have not," I asked, half laughing, of Mrs. Oke, "since you don't mind sitting in that room for

hours alone? How do you explain this uncanny reputation, since nothing ever happened there?"

"Perhaps something is destined to happen there in the future," she answered, in her absent voice. And then

Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was very white, and looked as if he were going to say something, but

"Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?" I asked, when he had gone into his smokingroom with his usual

bundle of papers. "It is very cruel of you, Mrs. Oke. You ought to have more consideration for people who

believe in such things, although you may not be able to put yourself in their frame of mind."

"Who tells you that I don't believe in such things, as you call them?" she answered abruptly.

"Come," she said, after a minute, "I want to show you why I believe in Christopher Lovelock. Come with me

WHAT Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow room was a large bundle of papers, some printed and some

manuscript, but all of them brown with age, which she took out of an old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet. It took

her some time to get them, as a complicated arrangement of double locks and false drawers had to be put in

play; and while she was doing so, I looked round the room, in which I had been only three or four times

before. It was certainly the most beautiful room in this beautiful house, and, as it seemed to me now, the most

strange. It was long and low, with something that made you think of the cabin of a ship, with a great

mullioned window that let in, as it were, a perspective of the brownish green parkland, dotted with oaks, and

sloping upwards to the distant line of bluish firs against the horizon. The walls were hung with flowered

damask, whose yellow, faded to brown, united with the reddish colour of the carved wainscoting and the

carved oaken beams. For the rest, it reminded me more of an Italian room than an English one. The furniture

was Tuscan of the early seventeenth century, inlaid and carved; there were a couple of faded allegorical

pictures, by some Bolognese master, on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack of dwarf orangetrees, a

little Italian harp sichord of exquisite curve and slenderness, with flowers and landscapes painted upon its

cover. In a recess was a shelf of old books, mainly English and Italian poets of the Elizabethan time; and

close by it, placed upon a carved weddingchest, a large and beautiful melonshaped lute. The panes of the

mullioned window were open, and yet the air seemed heavy, with an indescribable heady perfume, not that of

any growing flower, but like that of old stuff that should have lain for years among spices.

"It is a beautiful room!" I exclaimed. "I should awfully like to paint you in it;" but I had scarcely spoken the

words when I felt I had done wrong. This woman's husband could not bear the room, and it seemed to me

Mrs. Oke took no notice of my exclamation, but beckoned me to the table where she was standing sorting the

"Look!" she said, "these are all poems by Christopher Lovelock;" and touching the yellow papers with

delicate and reverent fingers, she commenced reading some of them out loud in a slow, halfaudible voice.

They were songs in the style of those of Herrick, Waller, and Drayton, complaining for the most part of the

cruelty of a lady called Dryope, in whose name was evidently concealed a reference to that of the mistress of

Okehurst. The songs were graceful, and not with out a certain faded passion; but I was thinking not of them,

Mrs. Oke was standing with the brownish yellow wall as a background to her white brocade dress, which, in

its stiff seventeenthcentury make, seemed but to bring out more clearly the slightness, the exquisite

suppleness, of her tall figure. She held the papers in one hand, and leaned the other, as if for support, on the

inlaid cabinet by her side. Her voice, which was delicate, shadowy, like her person, had a curious throbbing

cadence, as if she were reading the words of a melody, and restraining herself with difficulty from singing it;

and as she read, her long slender throat throbbed slightly, and a faint redness came into her thin face. She

evidently knew the verses by heart, and her eyes were mostly fixed with that distant smile in them, with

"That is how I would wish to paint her!" I exclaimed within myself; and scarcely noticed, what struck me on

thinking over the scene, that this strange being read these verses as one might fancy a woman would read

"Those are all written for Alice OkeAlice the daughter of Virgil Pomfret," she said slowly, folding up the

papers. "I found them at the bottom of this cabinet. Can you doubt of the reality of Christopher Lovelock

The question was an illogical one, for to doubt of the existence of Christopher Lovelock was one thing, and to

"Look!" she said, when she had replaced the poems, "I will show you something else." Among the flowers

that stood on the upper storey of her writingtablefor I found that Mrs. Oke had a writingtable in the

yellow roomstood, as on an altar, a small black carved frame, with a silk curtain drawn over it: the sort of

thing behind which you would have expected to find a head of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. She drew the

curtain and displayed a largesized miniature, representing a young man, with auburn curls and a peaked

auburn beard, dressed in black, but with lace about his neck, and large pearshaped pearls in his ears: a

wistful, melancholy face. Mrs. Oke took the miniature religiously off its stand, and showed me, written in

faded characters upon the back, the name "Christopher Lovelock," and the date 1626.

"I found this in the secret drawer of that cabinet, together with the heap of poems," she said, taking the

"Doesdoes Mr. Oke know that you have got it here?" I asked; and then wondered what in the world had

Mrs. Oke smiled that smile of contemptuous indifference. "I have never hidden it from any one. If my

husband disliked my having it, he might have taken it away, I suppose. It belongs to him, since it was found

I did not answer, but walked mechanically towards the door. There was something heady and oppressive in

this beautiful room; something, I thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me,

I scarcely know why, but I neglected Mrs. Oke that afternoon. I went to Mr. Oke's study, and sat opposite to

him smoking while he was engrossed in his accounts, his reports, and electioneering papers. On the table,

above the heap of paperbound volumes and pigeonholed documents, was, as sole ornament of his den, a

little photograph of his wife, done some years before. I don't know why, but as I sat and watched him, with

his florid, honest, manly beauty, working away conscientiously, with that little perplexed frown of his, I felt

But this feeling did not last. There was no help for it: Oke was not as interesting as Mrs. Oke; and it required

too great an effort to pump up sympathy for this normal, excellent, exemplary young squire, in the presence

of so wonderful a creature as his wife. So I let myself go to the habit of allowing Mrs. Oke daily to talk over

her strange craze, or rather of drawing her out about it. I confess that I derived a morbid and exquisite

pleasure in doing so: it was so characteristic in her, so appropriate to the house! It completed her personality

so perfectly, and made it so much easier to conceive a way of painting her. I made up my mind little by little,

while working at William Oke's portrait (he proved a less easy subject than I had anticipated, and, despite his

conscientious efforts, was a nervous, uncomfortable sitter, silent and brooding)I made up my mind that I

would paint Mrs. Oke standing by the cabinet in the yellow room, in the white Vandyck dress copied from

the portrait of her ancestress. Mr. Oke might resent it, Mrs. Oke even might resent it; they might refuse to

take the picture, to pay for it, to allow me to exhibit; they might force me to run my umbrella through the

picture. No matter. That picture should be painted, if merely for the sake of having painted it; for I felt it was

the only thing I could do, and that it would be far away my best work. I told neither of my resolution, but

prepared sketch after sketch of Mrs. Oke, while continuing to paint her husband.

Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent even than her husband, for she did not feel bound, as he did, to

attempt to entertain a guest or to show any interest in him. She seemed to spend her lifea curious, inactive,

halfinvalidish life, broken by sudden fits of childish cheerfulnessin an eternal daydream, strolling about

the house and grounds, arranging the quantities of flowers that always filled all the rooms, beginning to read

and then throwing aside novels and books of poetry, of which she always had a large number; and, I believe,

lying for hours, doing nothing, on a couch in that yellow drawingroom, which, with her sole exception, no

member of the Oke family had ever been known to stay in alone. Little by little I began to suspect and to

verify another eccentricity of this eccentric being, and to understand why there were stringent orders never to

It had been a habit at Okehurst, as at one or two other English manorhouses, to keep a certain amount of the

clothes of each generation, more particularly weddingdresses. A certain carved oaken press, of which Mr.

Oke once displayed the contents to me, was a perfect museum of costumes, male and female, from the early

years of the seventeenth to the end of the eighteenth centurya thing to take away the breath of a

bricabrac collector, an antiquary, or a genre painter. Mr. Oke was none of these, and therefore took but

little interest in the collection, save in so far as it interested his family feeling. Still he seemed well

He was turning over the clothes for my benefit, when suddenly I noticed that he frowned. I know not what

impelled me to say, "By the way, have you any dresses of that Mrs. Oke whom your wife resembles so

"We have it," he answered hesitatingly, "butit isn't here at presentI can't find it. I suppose," he blurted

out with an effort, "that Alice has got it. Mrs. Oke sometimes has the fancy of having some of these old

A sudden light dawned in my mind. The white dress in which I had seen Mrs. Oke in the yellow room, the

day that she showed me Lovelock's verses, was not, as I had thought, a modern copy; it was the original dress

of Alice Oke, the daughter of Virgil Pomfretthe dress in which, perhaps, Christopher Lovelock had seen

The idea gave me a delightful picturesque shudder. I said nothing. But I pictured to myself Mrs. Oke sitting

in that yellow roomthat room which no Oke of Okehurst save herself ventured to remain in alone, in the

dress of her ancestress, confronting, as it were, that vague, haunting something that seemed to fill the

Mrs. Oke, as I have said, was extremely silent, as a result of being extremely indifferent. She really did not

care in the least about anything except her own ideas and daydreams, except when, every now and then, she

was seized with a sudden desire to shock the prejudices or superstitions of her husband. Very soon she got

into the way of never talking to me at all, save about Alice and Nicholas Oke and Christopher Lovelock; and

then, when the fit seized her, she would go on by the hour, never asking herself whether I was or was not

equally interested in the strange craze that fascinated her. It so happened that I was. I loved to listen to her,

going on discussing by the hour the merits of Lovelock's poems, and analysing her feelings and those of her

two ancestors. It was quite wonderful to watch the exquisite, exotic creature in one of these moods, with the

distant look in her grey eyes and the absentlooking smile in her thin cheeks, talking as if she had intimately

known these people of the seventeenth century, discussing every minute mood of theirs, detailing every scene

between them and their victim, talking of Alice, and Nicholas, and Lovelock as she might of her most

intimate friends. Of Alice particularly, and of Lovelock. She seemed to know every word that Alice had

spoken, every idea that had crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me as if she were telling me, speaking of

herself in the third person, of her own feelingsas if I were listening to a woman's confidences, the recital of

her doubts, scruples, and agonies about a living lover. For Mrs. Oke, who seemed the most selfabsorbed of

creatures in all other matters, and utterly incapable of understanding or sympathising with the feelings of

other persons, entered completely and passionately into the feelings of this woman, this Alice, who, at some

"But how could she do ithow could she kill the man she cared for?" I once asked her.

"Because she loved him more than the whole world!" she exclaimed, and rising suddenly from her chair,

I could see, from the movement of her neck, that she was sobbing. She did not turn round, but motioned me

I closed the door gently behind me. What mystery was there in this woman's life? This listlessness, this

strange selfengrossment and stranger mania about people long dead, this indifference and desire to annoy

towards her husbanddid it all mean that Alice Oke had loved or still loved some one who was not the

master of Okehurst? And his melancholy, his preoccupation, the something about him that told of a broken

THE following days Mrs. Oke was in a condition of quite unusual good spirits. Some visitorsdistant

relativeswere expected, and although she had expressed the utmost annoyance at the idea of their coming,

she was now seized with a fit of housekeeping activity, and was perpetually about arranging things and

giving orders, although all arrangements, as usual, had been made, and all orders given, by her husband.

"If only Alice were always well like this!" he exclaimed; "if only she would take, or could take, an interest in

life, how different things would be! But," he added, as if fearful lest he should be supposed to accuse her in

any way, "how can she, usually, with her wretched health? Still, it does make me awfully happy to see her

I nodded. But I cannot say that I really acquiesced in his views. It seemed to me, particularly with the

recollection of yesterday's extraordinary scene, that Mrs. Oke's high spirits were anything but normal. There

was something in her unusual activity and still more unusual cheerfulness that was merely nervous and

feverish; and I had, the whole day, the impression of dealing with a woman who was ill and who would very

Mrs. Oke spent her day wandering from one room to another, and from the garden to the greenhouse, seeing

whether all was in order, when, as a matter of fact, all was always in order at Okehurst. She did not give me

any sitting, and not a word was spoken about Alice Oke or Christopher Lovelock. Indeed, to a casual

observer, it might have seemed as if all that craze about Lovelock had completely departed, or never existed.

About five o'clock, as I was strolling among the redbrick roundgabled outhouseseach with its armorial

oakand the oldfashioned spalliered kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs. Oke standing, her hands full of

York and Lancaster roses, upon the steps facing the stables. A groom was currycombing a horse, and outside

"Let us have a drive!" suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Oke, on seeing me. "Look what a beautiful eveningand

look at that dear little cart! It is so long since I have driven, and I feel as if I must drive again. Come with me.

I was quite amazed; and still more so when the cart drove up before the door, and Mrs. Oke called to me to

accompany her. She sent away the groom, and in a minute we were rolling along, at a tremendous pace, along

I could scarcely believe my senses. This woman, in her mannish little coat and hat, driving a powerful young

horse with the utmost skill, and chattering like a schoolgirl of sixteen, could not be the delicate, morbid,

exotic, hothouse creature, unable to walk or to do anything, who spent her days lying about on couches in

the heavy atmosphere, redolent with strange scents and associations, of the yellow drawingroom. The

movement of the light carriage, the cool draught, the very grind of the wheels upon the gravel, seemed to go

"It is so long since I have done this sort of thing," she kept repeating; "so long, so long. Oh, don't you think it

delightful, going at this pace, with the idea that any moment the horse may come down and we two be

killed?" and she laughed her childish laugh, and turned her face, no longer pale, but flushed with the

The cart rolled on quicker and quicker, one gate after another swinging to behind us, as we flew up and down

the little hills, across the pasture lands, through the little redbrick gabled villages, where the people came

out to see us pass, past the rows of willows along the streams, and the darkgreen compact hopfields, with

the blue and hazy treetops of the horizon getting bluer and more hazy as the yellow light began to graze the

ground. At last we got to an open space, a highlying piece of commonland, such as is rare in that ruthlessly

utilised country of grazinggrounds and hopgardens. Among the low hills of the Weald, it seemed quite

preternaturally high up, giving a sense that its extent of flat heather and gorse, bound by distant firs, was

really on the top of the world. The sun was setting just opposite, and its lights lay flat on the ground, staining

it with the red and black of the heather, or rather turning it into the surface of a purple sea, canopied over by a

bank of darkpurple cloudsthe jetlike sparkle of the dry ling and gorse tipping the purple like sunlit

"What is the name of this place?" I asked. It was the only bit of impressive scenery that I had met in the

"It is called Cotes Common," answered Mrs. Oke, who had slackened the pace of the horse, and let the reins

There was a moment's pause; and then she proceeded, tickling the flies from the horse's ears with the end of

her whip, and looking straight into the sunset, which now rolled, a deep purple stream, across the heath to our

"Lovelock was riding home one summer evening from Appledore, when, as he had got halfway across

Cotes Common, somewhere about herefor I have always heard them mention the pond in the old

gravelpits as about the placehe saw two men riding towards him, in whom he presently recognised

Nicholas Oke of Okehurst accompanied by a groom. Oke of Okehurst hailed him; and Lovelock rode up to

meet him. 'I am glad to have met you, Mr. Lovelock,' said Nicholas, 'because I have some important news for

you;' and so saying, he brought his horse close to the one that Lovelock was riding, and suddenly turning

round, fired off a pistol at his head. Lovelock had time to move, and the bullet, instead of striking him, went

straight into the head of his horse, which fell beneath him. Lovelock, however, had fallen in such a way as to

be able to extricate himself easily from his horse; and drawing his sword, he rushed upon Oke, and seized his

horse by the bridle. Oke quickly jumped off and drew his sword; and in a minute, Lovelock, who was much

the better swordsman of the two, was having the better of him. Lovelock had completely disarmed him, and

got his sword at Oke's throat, crying out to him that if he would ask forgiveness he should be spared for the

sake of their old friendship, when the groom suddenly rode up from behind and shot Lovelock through the

back. Lovelock fell, and Oke immediately tried to finish him with his sword, while the groom drew up and

held the bridle of Oke's horse. At that moment the sunlight fell upon the groom's face, and Love lock

recognised Mrs. Oke. He cried out, 'Alice, Alice! it is you who have murdered me!' and died. Then Nicholas

Oke sprang into his saddle and rode off with his wife, leaving Lovelock dead by the side of his fallen horse.

Nicholas Oke had taken the precaution of removing Lovelock's purse and throwing it into the pond, so the

murder was put down to certain highwaymen who were about in that part of the country. Alice Oke died

many years afterwards, quite an old woman, in the reign of Charles II.; but Nicholas did not live very long,

and shortly before his death got into a very strange condition, always brooding, and sometimes threatening to

kill his wife. They say that in one of these fits, just shortly before his death, he told the whole story of the

murder, and made a prophecy that when the head of his house and master of Okehurst should marry another

Alice Oke, descended from himself and his wife, there should be an end of the Okes of Okehurst. You see, it

seems to be coming true. We have no children, and I don't suppose we shall ever have any. I, at least, have

Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face towards me with the absent smile in her thin cheeks: her eyes no longer

had that distant look; they were strangely eager and fixed. I did not know what to answer; this woman

positively frightened me. We remained for a moment in that same place, with the sunlight dying away in

crimson ripples on the heather, gilding the yellow banks, the black waters of the pond, surrounded by thin

rushes, and the yellow gravelpits; while the wind blew in our faces and bent the ragged warped bluish tops

of the firs. Then Mrs. Oke touched the horse, and off we went at a furious pace. We did not exchange a single

word, I think, on the way home. Mrs. Oke sat with her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking the silence now and

then only by a word to the horse, urging him to an even more furious pace. The people we met along the

roads must have thought that the horse was running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke's calm manner and

the look of excited enjoyment in her face. To me it seemed that I was in the hands of a madwoman, and I

quietly prepared myself for being upset or dashed against a cart. It had turned cold, and the draught was icy in

our faces when we got within sight of the red gables and high chimneystacks of Okehurst. Mr. Oke was

standing before the door. On our approach I saw a look of relieved suspense, of keen pleasure come into his

He lifted his wife out of the cart in his strong arms with a kind of chivalrous tenderness.

"I am so glad to have you back, darling," he exclaimed"so glad! I was delighted to hear you had gone out

with the cart, but as you have not driven for so long, I was beginning to be frightfully anxious, dearest. Where

Mrs. Oke had quickly extricated herself from her husband, who had remained holding her, as one might hold

a delicate child who has been causing anxiety. The gentleness and affection of the poor fellow had evidently

"I have taken him to Cotes Common," she said, with that perverse look which I had noticed before, as she

Mr. Oke flushed as if he had bitten upon a sore tooth, and the double gash painted itself scarlet between his

Outside, the mists were beginning to rise, veiling the parkland dotted with big black oaks, and from which,

in the watery moonlight, rose on all sides the eerie little cry of the lambs separated from their mothers. It was

THE next day Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement, was doing the honours of it as if

a house full of commonplace, noisy young creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of

The afternoon of the third daythey had come for an electioneering ball, and stayed three nightsthe

weather changed; it turned suddenly very cold and began to pour. Every one was sent indoors, and there was

a general gloom suddenly over the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have got sick of her guests, and was

listlessly lying back on a couch, paying not the slightest attention to the chattering and pianostrumming in

the room, when one of the guests suddenly proposed that they should play charades. He was a distant cousin

of the Okes, a sort of fashionable artistic Bohemian, swelled out to intolerable conceit by the amateuractor

"It would be lovely in this marvellous old place," he cried, "just to dress up, and parade about, and feel as if

we belonged to the past. I have heard you have a marvellous collection of old costumes, more or less ever

The whole party exclaimed in joy at this proposal. William Oke looked puzzled for a moment, and glanced at

"There is a press full of clothes belonging to the family," he answered dubiously, apparently overwhelmed by

the desire to please his guests; "butbutI don't know whether it's quite respectful to dress up in the clothes

"Oh, fiddlestick!" cried the cousin. "What do the dead people know about it? Besides," he added, with mock

seriousness, "I assure you we shall behave in the most reverent way and feel quite solemn about it all, if only

Again Mr. Oke looked towards his wife, and again met only her vague, absent glance.

An hour later the house was filled with the strangest crew and the strangest noises. I had entered, to a certain

extent, into William Oke's feeling of unwillingness to let his ancestors' clothes and personality be taken in

vain; but when the masquerade was complete, I must say that the effect was quite magnificent. A dozen

youngish men and womenthose who were staying in the house and some neighbours who had come for

lawntennis and dinnerwere rigged out, under the direction of the theatrical cousin, in the contents of that

oaken press: and I have never seen a more beautiful sight than the panelled corridors, the carved and

escutcheoned staircase, the dim drawingrooms with their faded tapestries, the great hall with its vaulted and

ribbed ceiling, dotted about with groups or single figures that seemed to have come straight from the past.

Even William Oke, who, besides myself and a few elderly people, was the only man not masqueraded,

seemed delighted and fired by the sight. A certain schoolboy character suddenly came out in him; and finding

that there was no costume left for him, he rushed upstairs and presently returned in the uniform he had worn

before his marriage. I thought I had really never seen so magnificent a specimen of the handsome

Englishman; he looked, despite all the modern associations of his costume, more genuinely oldworld than

all the rest, a knight for the Black Prince or Sidney, with his admirably regular features and beautiful fair hair

and complexion. After a minute, even the elderly people had got costumes of some sortdominoes arranged

at the moment, and hoods and all manner of disguises made out of pieces of old embroidery and Oriental

stuffs and furs; and very soon this rabble of masquers had become, so to speak, completely drunk with its

own amusementwith the childishness, and, if I may say so, the barbarism, the vulgarity underlying the

majority even of wellbred English men and womenMr. Oke himself doing the mountebank like a

Mrs. Oke had vanished. I could fully understand that to this eccentric being, with her fantastic, imaginative,

morbid passion for the past, such a carnival as this must be positively revolting; and, absolutely indifferent as

she was to giving offence, I could imagine how she would have retired, disgusted and outraged, to dream her

But a moment later, as we were all noisily preparing to go in to dinner, the door opened and a strange figure

entered, stranger than any of these others who were profaning the clothes of the dead: a boy, slight and tall, in

a brown ridingcoat, leathern belt, and big buff boots, a little grey cloak over one shoulder, a large grey hat

slouched over the eyes, a dagger and pistol at the waist. It was Mrs. Oke, her eyes preternaturally bright, and

Every one exclaimed, and stood aside. Then there was a moment's silence, broken by faint applause. Even to

a crew of noisy boys and girls playing the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and buried,

there is something questionable in the sudden appearance of a young married woman, the mistress of the

house, in a ridingcoat and jackboots; and Mrs. Oke's expression did not make the jest seem any the less

"What is that costume?" asked the theatrical cousin, who, after a second, had come to the conclusion that

Mrs. Oke was merely a woman of marvellous talent whom he must try and secure for his amateur troop next

"It is the dress in which an ancestress of ours, my namesake Alice Oke, used to go out riding with her

husband in the days of Charles I.," she answered, and took her seat at the head of the table. Involuntarily my

eyes sought those of Oke of Okehurst. He, who blushed as easily as a girl of sixteen, was now as white as

"Don't you recognise my dress, William?" asked Mrs. Oke, fixing her eyes upon him with a cruel smile.

He did not answer, and there was a moment's silence, which the theatrical cousin had the happy thought of

breaking by jumping upon his seat and emptying off his glass with the exclamation

Mrs. Oke nodded, and with an expression I had never seen in her face before, answered in a loud and

"To the health of the poet, Mr. Christopher Lovelock, if his ghost be honouring this house with its presence!"

I felt suddenly as if I were in a madhouse. Across the table, in the midst of this room full of noisy wretches,

tricked out red, blue, purple, and particoloured, as men and women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and

eighteenth centuries, as improvised Turks and Eskimos, and dominoes, and clowns, with faces painted and

corked and floured over, I seemed to see that sanguine sunset, washing like a sea of blood over the heather, to

where, by the black pond and the windwarped firs, there lay the body of Christopher Lovelock, with his

dead horse near him, the yellow gravel and lilac ling soaked crimson all around; and above emerged, as out of

the redness, the pale blond head covered with the grey hat, the absent eyes, and strange smile of Mrs. Oke. It

FROM that moment I noticed a change in William Oke; or rather, a change that had probably been coming on

I don't know whether he had any words with his wife about her masquerade of that unlucky evening. On the

whole I decidedly think not. Oke was with every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of all so with his

wife; besides, I can fancy that he would experience a positive impossibility of putting into words any strong

feeling of disapprobation towards her, that his disgust would necessarily be silent. But be this as it may, I

perceived very soon that the relations between my host and hostess had become exceedingly strained. Mrs.

Oke, indeed, had never paid much attention to her husband, and seemed merely a trifle more indifferent to his

presence than she had been before. But Oke himself, although he affected to address her at meals from a

desire to conceal his feeling, and a fear of making the position dis agreeable to me, very clearly could

scarcely bear to speak to or even see his wife. The poor fellow's honest soul was quite brimful of pain, which

he was determined not to allow to overflow, and which seemed to filter into his whole nature and poison it.

This woman had shocked and pained him more than was possible to say, and yet it was evident that he could

neither cease loving her nor commence comprehending her real nature. I sometimes felt, as we took our long

walks through the monotonous country, across the oakdotted grazinggrounds, and by the brink of the

dullgreen, serried hoprows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, the drainage of the estate,

the village schools, the Primrose League, and the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst

carefully cut down every tall thistle that caught his eyeI sometimes felt, I say, an intense and impotent

desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it

well seemed to imply such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so unfair that just he should be

condemned to puzzle for ever over this enigma, and wear out his soul trying to comprehend what now

seemed so plain to me. But how would it ever be possible to get this serious, conscientious, slowbrained

representative of English simplicity and honesty and thoroughness to understand the mixture of

selfengrossed vanity, of shallowness, of poetic vision, of love of morbid excitement, that walked this earth

So Oke of Okehurst was condemned never to understand; but he was condemned also to suffer from his

inability to do so. The poor fellow was constantly straining after an explanation of his wife's peculiarities; and

although the effort was probably unconscious, it caused him a great deal of pain. The gashthe

maniacfrown, as my friend calls itbetween his eyebrows, seemed to have grown a permanent feature of

Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the very worst of the situation. Perhaps she resented her husband's tacit

reproval of that masquerade night's freak, and determined to make him swallow more of the same stuff, for

she clearly thought that one of William's peculiarities, and one for which she despised him, was that he could

never be goaded into an outspoken expression of disapprobation; that from her he would swallow any amount

of bitterness without complaining. At any rate she now adopted a perfect policy of teasing and shocking her

husband about the murder of Lovelock. She was perpetually alluding to it in her conversation, discussing in

his presence what had or had not been the feelings of the various actors in the tragedy of 1626, and insisting

upon her resemblance and almost identity with the original Alice Oke. Something had suggested to her

eccentric mind that it would be delightful to perform in the garden at Okehurst, under the huge ilexes and

elms, a little masque which she had discovered among Christopher Lovelock's works; and she began to scour

the country and enter into vast correspondence for the purpose of effectuating this scheme. Letters arrived

every other day from the theatrical cousin, whose only objection was that Okehurst was too remote a locality

for an entertainment in which he foresaw great glory to himself. And every now and then there would arrive

some young gentleman or lady, whom Alice Oke had sent for to see whether they would do.

I saw very plainly that the performance would never take place, and that Mrs. Oke herself had no intention

that it ever should. She was one of those creatures to whom realisation of a project is nothing, and who enjoy

planmaking almost the more for knowing that all will stop short at the plan. Meanwhile, this perpetual talk

about the pastoral, about Lovelock, this continual attitudinising as the wife of Nicholas Oke, had the further

attraction to Mrs. Oke of putting her husband into a condition of frightful though suppressed irritation, which

she enjoyed with the enjoyment of a perverse child. You must not think that I looked on indifferent, although

I admit that this was a perfect treat to an amateur student of character like myself. I really did feel most sorry

for poor Oke, and frequently quite indignant with his wife. I was several times on the point of begging her to

have more consideration for him, even of suggesting that this kind of behaviour, particularly before a

comparative stranger like me, was very poor taste. But there was something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which

made it next to impossible to speak seriously with her; and besides, I was by no means sure that any

One evening a curious incident took place. We had just sat down to dinner, the Okes, the theatrical cousin,

who was down for a couple of days, and three or four neighbours. It was dusk, and the yellow light of the

candles mingled charmingly with the greyness of the evening. Mrs. Oke was not well, and had been

remarkably quiet all day, more diaphanous, strange, and faraway than ever; and her husband seemed to have

felt a sudden return of tenderness, almost of compassion, for this delicate, fragile creature. We had been

talking of quite indifferent matters, when I saw Mr. Oke suddenly turn very white, and look fixedly for a

"Who's that fellow looking in at the window, and making signs to you, Alice? Damn his impudence!" he

cried, and jumping up, ran to the window, opened it, and passed out into the twilight. We all looked at each

other in surprise; some of the party remarked upon the carelessness of servants in letting nastylooking

fellows hang about the kitchen, others told stories of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke did not speak; but I

After a minute William Oke came in, his napkin in his hand. He shut the window behind him and silently

"Nobody. II must have made a mistake," he answered, and turned crimson, while he busily peeled a pear.

"It was probably Lovelock," remarked Mrs. Oke, just as she might have said, "It was probably the gardener,"

but with that faint smile of pleasure still in her face. Except the theatrical cousin, who burst into a loud laugh,

none of the company had ever heard Lovelock's name, and, doubtless imagining him to be some natural

appanage of the Oke family, groom or farmer, said nothing, so the subject dropped.

From that evening onwards things began to assume a different aspect. That incident was the beginning of a

perfect systema system of what? I scarcely know how to call it. A system of grim jokes on the part of Mrs.

Oke, of superstitious fancies on the part of her husbanda system of mysterious persecutions on the part of

some less earthly tenant of Okehurst. Well, yes, after all, why not? We have all heard of ghosts, had uncles,

cousins, grandmothers, nurses, who have seen them; we are all a bit afraid of them at the bottom of our soul;

so why shouldn't they be? I am too sceptical to believe in the impossibility of anything, for my part! Besides,

when a man has lived throughout a summer in the same house with a woman like Mrs. Oke of Okehurst, he

gets to believe in the possibility of a great many improbable things, I assure you, as a mere result of believing

in her. And when you come to think of it, why not? That a weird creature, visibly not of this earth, a

reincarnation of a woman who murdered her lover two centuries and a half ago, that such a creature should

have the power of attracting about her (being altogether superior to earthly lovers) the man who loved her in

that previous existence, whose love for her was his deathwhat is there astonishing in that? Mrs. Oke

herself, I feel quite persuaded, believed or half believed it; indeed she very seriously admitted the possibility

thereof, one day that I made the suggestion half in jest. At all events, it rather pleased me to think so; it fitted

in so well with the woman's whole personality; it explained those hours and hours spent all alone in the

yellow room, where the very air, with its scent of heady flowers and old perfumed stuffs, seemed redolent of

ghosts. It explained that strange smile which was not for any of us, and yet was not merely for herselfthat

strange, faroff look in the wide pale eyes. I liked the idea, and I liked to tease, or rather to delight her with it.

He became day by day more silent and perplexedlooking; and, as a result, worked harder, and probably with

less effect, at his landimproving schemes and political canvassing. It seemed to me that he was perpetually

listening, watching, waiting for something to happen: a word spoken suddenly, the sharp opening of a door,

would make him start, turn crimson, and almost tremble; the mention of Lovelock brought a helpless look,

half a convulsion, like that of a man overcome by great heat, into his face. And his wife, so far from taking

any interest in his altered looks, went on irritating him more and more. Every time that the poor fellow gave

one of those starts of his, or turned crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, Mrs. Oke would ask him, with

her contemptuous indifference, whether he had seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was

getting perfectly ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed scrutinisingly on his wife,

as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her

listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. During our walks and rides, which

we continued pretty regularly, he would start whenever in the roads or lanes surrounding Okehurst, or in its

grounds, we perceived a figure in the distance. I have seen him tremble at what, on nearer approach, I could

scarcely restrain my laughter on discovering to be some wellknown farmer or neighbour or servant. Once,

as we were returning home at dusk, he suddenly caught my arm and pointed across the oakdotted pastures in

the direction of the garden, then started off almost at a run, with his dog behind him, as if in pursuit of some

"Who was it?" I asked. And Mr. Oke merely shook his head mournfully. Sometimes in the early autumn

twilights, when the white mists rose from the parkland, and the rooks formed long black lines on the

palings, I almost fancied I saw him start at the very trees and bushes, the outlines of the distant oasthouses,

with their conical roofs and projecting vanes, like gibing fingers in the half light.

"Your husband is ill," I once ventured to remark to Mrs. Oke, as she sat for the hundredandthirtieth of my

preparatory sketches (I somehow could never get beyond preparatory sketches with her). She raised her

beautiful, wide, pale eyes, making as she did so that exquisite curve of shoulders and neck and delicate pale

"I don't see it," she answered quietly. "If he is, why doesn't he go up to town and see the doctor? It's merely

"You should not tease him about Lovelock," I added, very seriously. "He will get to believe in him."

"Why not? If he sees him, why he sees him. He would not be the only person that has done so;" and she

smiled faintly and half perversely, as her eyes sought that usual distant indefinable something.

But Oke got worse. He was growing perfectly unstrung, like a hysterical woman. One evening that we were

sitting alone in the smokingroom, he began unexpectedly a rambling discourse about his wife; how he had

first known her when they were children, and they had gone to the same dancingschool near Portland Place;

how her mother, his auntinlaw, had brought her for Christmas to Okehurst while he was on his holidays;

how finally, thirteen years ago, when he was twentythree and she was eighteen, they had been married; how

terribly he had suffered when they had been disappointed of their baby, and she had nearly died of the illness.

"I did not mind about the child, you know," he said in an excited voice; "although there will be an end of us

now, and Okehurst will go to the Curtises. I minded only about Alice." It was next to inconceivable that this

poor excited creature, speaking almost with tears in his voice and in his eyes, was the quiet, wellgotup,

irreproachable young exGuardsman who had walked into my studio a couple of months before.

Oke was silent for a moment, looking fixedly at the rug at his feet, when he suddenly burst out in a scarce

"If you knew how I cared for Alicehow I still care for her. I could kiss the ground she walks upon. I would

give anythingmy life any dayif only she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a littleas if she

didn't utterly despise me;" and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he

suddenly began to laugh outright, exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely

"Damn it, old fellow, this is a queer world we live in!" and rang for more brandy and soda, which he was

beginning, I noticed, to take pretty freely now, although he had been almost a blueribbon manas much so

IT became clear to me now that, incredible as it might seem, the thing that ailed William Oke was jealousy.

He was simply madly in love with his wife, and madly jealous of her. Jealousbut of whom? He himself

would probably have been quite unable to say. In the first placeto clear off any possible

suspicioncertainly not of me. Besides the fact that Mrs. Oke took only just a very little more interest in me

than in the butler or the upperhousemaid, I think that Oke himself was the sort of man whose imagination

would recoil from realising any definite object of jealousy, even though jealousy might be killing him inch by

inch. It remained a vague, permeating, continuous feelingthe feeling that he loved her, and she did not care

a jackstraw about him, and that everything with which she came into contact was receiving some of that

notice which was refused to himevery person, or thing, or tree, or stone: it was the recognition of that

strange faroff look in Mrs. Oke's eyes, of that strange absent smile on Mrs. Oke's lipseyes and lips that

Gradually his nervousness, his watchfulness, suspiciousness, tendency to start, took a definite shape. Mr. Oke

was for ever alluding to steps or voices he had heard, to figures he had seen sneaking round the house. The

sudden bark of one of the dogs would make him jump up. He cleaned and loaded very carefully all the guns

and revolvers in his study, and even some of the old fowlingpieces and holsterpistols in the hall. The

servants and tenants thought that Oke of Okehurst had been seized with a terror of tramps and burglars. Mrs.

"My dear William," she said one day, "the persons who worry you have just as good a right to walk up and

down the passages and staircase, and to hang about the house, as you or I. They were there, in all probability,

long before either of us was born, and are greatly amused by your preposterous notions of privacy."

Mr. Oke laughed angrily. "I suppose you will tell me it is Lovelockyour eternal Lovelockwhose steps I

hear on the gravel every night. I suppose he has as good a right to be here as you or I." And he strode out of

"LovelockLovelock! Why will she always go on like that about Lovelock?" Mr. Oke asked me that

"It's only because she has that play of his on the brain," I answered: "and because she thinks you

How could he? And if I had tried to make him do so, he would merely have thought I was insulting his wife,

and have perhaps kicked me out of the room. So I made no attempt to explain psychological problems to him,

and he asked me no more questions until once But I must first mention a curious incident that happened.

The incident was simply this. Returning one afternoon from our usual walk, Mr. Oke suddenly asked the

servant whether any one had come. The answer was in the negative; but Oke did not seem satisfied. We had

hardly sat down to dinner when he turned to his wife and asked, in a strange voice which I scarcely

"Who was it, then, that was walking with you near the pond, about five o'clock?" asked Oke slowly.

"II thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice," he brought out with an effort; adding, for

the sake of appearances before me, "I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for me."

"I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this afternoon," she said slowly. "If you saw any

And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her mind some delightful but too evanescent

I looked at my host; from crimson his face had turned perfectly livid, and he breathed as if some one were

No more was said about the matter. I vaguely felt that a great danger was threatening. To Oke or to Mrs.

Oke? I could not tell which; but I was aware of an imperious inner call to avert some dreadful evil, to exert

myself, to explain, to interpose. I determined to speak to Oke the following day, for I trusted him to give me a

quiet hearing, and I did not trust Mrs. Oke. That woman would slip through my fingers like a snake if I

I asked Oke whether he would take a walk with me the next afternoon, and he accepted to do so with a

curious eagerness. We started about three o'clock. It was a stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of white

clouds rolling rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of sunlight, broad and yellow, which

made the black ridge of the storm, gathered on the horizon, look blueblack like ink.

We walked quickly across the sere and sodden grass of the park, and on to the highroad that led over the low

hills, I don't know why, in the direction of Cotes Common. Both of us were silent, for both of us had

something to say, and did not know how to begin. For my part, I recognised the impossibility of starting the

subject: an uncalledfor interference from me would merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him doubly dense

of comprehension. So, if Oke had something to say, which he evidently had, it was better to wait for him.

Oke, however, broke the silence only by pointing out to me the condition of the hops, as we passed one of his

many hopgardens. "It will be a poor year," he said, stopping short and looking intently before him"no

I looked at him. It was clear that he had no notion what he was saying. The darkgreen bines were covered

with fruit; and only yesterday he himself had informed me that he had not seen such a profusion of hops for

I did not answer, and we walked on. A cart met us in a dip of the road, and the carter touched his hat and

greeted Mr. Oke. But Oke took no heed; he did not seem to be aware of the man's presence.

The clouds were collecting all round; black domes, among which coursed the round grey masses of fleecy

"I think we shall be caught in a tremendous storm," I said; "hadn't we better be turning?" He nodded, and

The sunlight lay in yellow patches under the oaks of the pasturelands, and burnished the green hedges. The

air was heavy and yet cold, and everything seemed preparing for a great storm. The rooks whirled in black

clouds round the trees and the conical red caps of the oasthouses which give that country the look of being

studded with turreted castles; then they descendeda black lineupon the fields, with what seemed an

unearthly loudness of caw. And all round there arose a shrill quavering bleating of lambs and calling of

"I don't know you very well," he began hurriedly, and without turning his face towards me; "but I think you

are honest, and you have seen a good deal of the worldmuch more than I. I want you to tell mebut truly,

"Imagine," he went on quickly, "that a man cares a great deala very great deal for his wife, and that he find

out that shewell, thatthat she is deceiving him. Nodon't misunderstand me; I meanthat she is

constantly surrounded by some one else and will not admit itsome one whom she hides away. Do you

understand? Perhaps she does not know all the risk she is running, you know, but she will not draw

"My dear Oke," I interrupted, attempting to take the matter lightly, "these are questions that can't be solved in

the abstract, or by people to whom the thing has not happened. And it certainly has not happened to you or

Oke took no notice of my interruption. "You see," he went on, "the man doesn't expect his wife to care much

about him. It's not that; he isn't merely jealous, you know. But he feels that she is on the brink of

dishonouring herselfbecause I don't think a woman can really dishonour her husband; dishonour is in our

own hands, and depends only on our own acts. He ought to save her, do you see? He must, must save her, in

one way or another. But if she will not listen to him, what can he do? Must he seek out the other one, and try

and get him out of the way? You see it's all the fault of the othernot hers, not hers. If only she would trust

"Look here, Oke," I said boldly, but feeling rather frightened; "I know quite well what you are talking about.

And I see you don't understand the matter in the very least. I do. I have watched you and watched Mrs. Oke

And taking his arm, I tried to explain to him my view of the situationthat his wife was merely eccentric,

and a little theatrical and imaginative, and that she took a pleasure in teasing him. That he, on the other hand,

was letting himself get into a morbid state; that he was ill, and ought to see a good doctor. I even offered to

I poured out volumes of psychological explanations. I dissected Mrs. Oke's character twenty times over, and

tried to show him that there was absolutely nothing at the bottom of his suspicions beyond an imaginative

pose and a gardenplay on the brain. I adduced twenty instances, mostly invented for the nonce, of ladies of

my acquaintance who had suffered from similar fads. I pointed out to him that his wife ought to have an

outlet for her imaginative and theatrical overenergy. I advised him to take her to London and plunge her into

some set where every one should be more or less in a similar condition. I laughed at the notion of there being

any hidden individual about the house. I explained to Oke that he was suffering from delusions, and called

upon so conscientious and religious a man to take every step to rid himself of them, adding innumerable

examples of people who had cured themselves of seeing visions and of brooding over morbid fancies. I

struggled and wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, and I really hoped I had made some impression. At first,

indeed, I felt that not one of my words went into the man's brainthat, though silent, he was not listening. It

seemed almost hopeless to present my views in such a light that he could grasp them. I felt as if I were

expounding and arguing at a rock. But when I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and himself, and

appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that I was making an impression.

"I daresay you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of the red gables of Okehurst, and

speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I

daresay it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit to be locked up. But don't think I

don't struggle against it. I do, I do continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night

and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove these dreadful thoughts from

me. God knows, I know what a wretched creature I am, and how unfit to take care of that poor girl."

And Oke again pressed my hand. As we entered the garden, he turned to me once more.

"I am very, very grateful to you," he said, "and, indeed, I will do my best to try and be stronger. If only," he

added, with a sigh, "if only Alice would give me a moment's breathingtime, and not go on day after day

I HAD begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. She was unusually quiet that morning; but,

it seemed to me, with the quietness of a woman who is expecting something, and she gave me the impression

of being extremely happy. She had been reading, at my suggestion, the "Vita Nuova," which she did not

know before, and the conversation came to roll upon that, and upon the question whether love so abstract and

so enduring was a possibility. Such a discussion, which might have savoured of flirtation in the case of

almost any other young and beautiful woman, became in the case of Mrs. Oke something quite different; it

seemed distant, intangible, not of this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes.

"Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of the oakdotted parkland, "is very rare, but it

can exist. It becomes a person's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, not merely of

the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, and goes on in the spiritual world until it meet a

reincarnation of the beloved; and when this happens, it jets out and draws to it all that may remain of that

Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to her self, and I had never, I think, seen her look so strange and so

beautiful, the stiff white dress bringing out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of her

"I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There is something dreadfully esoteric

"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent for some time. But, through her

quietness and silence, I felt, as it were, the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had

Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke

had scarcely once alluded to Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful

and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and once or twice I had caught in him a

look of great gentleness and lovingkindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail thing, as

But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue and retired to her room, and Oke

had driven off on some business to the nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked

a little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about the house.

It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that brings the perfume out of everything,

the damp ground and fallen leaves, the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring

on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections and expectations, a something half

pleasurable, half painful, that makes it impossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at all

unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping to look at the pictures, which I

knew already in every detail, to follow the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn

flowers, arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I took up one book after

another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite

alone, although I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host had returned. I

was lazily turning over a book of versesI remember it perfectly well, it was Morris's 'Love is Enough'in

a corner of the drawingroom, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself. He did not

enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was something in his face that made me start up and

follow him at once. He was ex tremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very pale.

"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted hall, hung round with ancestral

pictures, into the gravelled space that looked like a filledup moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its

twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather the piece of parkland that ran up to the

house. We walked quickly, he in front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where there

jutted out the bowwindow of the yellow drawingroom, and I felt Oke's hand tight upon my arm.

"I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and he led me to the window.

I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but against the yellow wall I saw Mrs.

Oke sitting alone on a couch in her white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand.

"Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe now? Was it all my fancy? But

I will have him this time. I have locked the door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape."

The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with him silently outside that window. But

he broke loose, pulled open the window, and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold,

something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and the thud of a body on the ground.

Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him; and at his feet, sunk down from

the sofa, with her blond head resting on its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her

mouth was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wideopen white eyes seemed to smile vaguely

I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second that lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned

"The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly unlocking the door, rushed out of the

That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but merely fractured his jaw, and died a

few days later, raving. There were all sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and

whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary madness. That was the end of Alice

Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It

contained some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I am quite sure it was

THEY have been congratulating me again today upon being the only composer of our daysof these days

of deafening orchestral effects and poetical quackerywho has despised the newfangled nonsense of

Wagner, and returned boldly to the traditions of Handel and Gluck and the divine Mozart, to the supremacy

O cursed human voice, violin of flesh and blood, fashioned with the subtle tools, the cunning hands, of Satan!

O execrable art of singing, have you not wrought mischief enough in the past, degrading so much noble

genius, corrupting the purity of Mozart, reducing Handel to a writer of highclass singingexercises, and

defrauding the world of the only inspiration worthy of Sophocles and Euripides, the poetry of the great poet

Gluck? Is it not enough to have dishonoured a whole century in idolatry of that wicked and contemptible

wretch the singer, without persecuting an obscure young composer of our days, whose only wealth is his love

And then they compliment me upon the perfection with which I imitate the style of the great dead masters; or

ask me very seriously whether, even if I could gain over the modern public to this bygone style of music, I

could hope to find singers to perform it. Sometimes, when people talk as they have been talking today, and

laugh when I declare myself a follower of Wagner, I burst into a paroxysm of unintelligible, childish rage,

Yes; some day we shall see! For, after all, may I not recover from this strangest of maladies? It is still

possible that the day may come when all these things shall seem but an incredible nightmare; the day when

Ogier the Dane shall be completed, and men shall know whether I am a follower of the great master of the

Future or the miserable singingmasters of the Past. I am but halfbewitched, since I am conscious of the

spell that binds me. My old nurse, far off in Norway, used to tell me that werewolves are ordinary men and

women half their days, and that if, during that period, they become aware of their horrid transformation they

may find the means to forestall it. May this not be the case with me? My reason, after all, is free, although my

artistic inspiration be enslaved; and I can despise and loathe the music I am forced to compose, and the

Nay, is it not because I have studied with the doggedness of hatred this corrupt and corrupting music of the

Past, seeking for every little peculiarity of style and every biographical trifle merely to display its vileness, is

it not for this presumptuous courage that I have been overtaken by such mysterious, incredible vengeance?

And meanwhile, my only relief consists in going over and over again in my mind the tale of my miseries.

This time I will write it, writing only to tear up, to throw the manuscript unread into the fire. And yet, who

knows? As the last charred pages shall crackle and slowly sink into the red embers, perhaps the spell may be

It was a breathless evening under the full moon, that implacable full moon beneath which, even more than

beneath the dreamy splendour of noontide, Venice seemed to swelter in the midst of the waters, exhaling,

like some great lily, mysterious influences, which make the brain swim and the heart fainta moral malaria,

distilled, as I thought, from those languishing melodies, those cooing vocalisations which I had found in the

musty musicbooks of a century ago. I see that moonlight evening as if it were present. I see my

fellowlodgers of that little artists' boardinghouse. The table on which they lean after supper is strewn with

bits of bread, with napkins rolled in tapestry rollers, spots of wine here and there, and at regular intervals

chipped pepperpots, stands of toothpicks, and heaps of those huge hard peaches which nature imitates from

the marbleshops of Pisa. The whole pensionfull is assembled, and examining stupidly the engraving which

the American etcher has just brought for me, knowing me to be mad about eighteenth century music and

musicians, and having noticed, as he turned over the heaps of penny prints in the square of San Polo, that the

Singer, thing of evil, stupid and wicked slave of the voice, of that instrument which was not invented by the

human intellect, but begotten of the body, and which, instead of moving the soul, merely stirs up the dregs of

our nature! For what is the voice but the Beast calling, awakening that other Beast sleeping in the depths of

mankind, the Beast which all great art has ever sought to chain up, as the archangel chains up, in old pictures,

the demon with his woman's face? How could the creature attached to this voice, its owner and its victim, the

singer, the great, the real singer who once ruled over every heart, be otherwise than wicked and

I can see all my fellowboarders, leaning on the table, contemplating the print, this effeminate beau, his hair

curled into ailes de pigeon, his sword passed through his embroidered pocket, seated under a triumphal arch

somewhere among the clouds, surrounded by puffy Cupids and crowned with laurels by a bouncing goddess

of fame. I hear again all the insipid exclamations, the insipid questions about this singer:"When did he

live? Was he very famous? Are you sure, Magnus, that this is really a portrait," And I hear my own voice, as

if in the far distance, giving them all sorts of information, biographical and critical, out of a battered little

volume called The Theatre of Musical Glory; or, Opinions upon the most Famous Chapelmasters and

Virtuosi of this Century, by Father Prosdocimo Sabatelli, Barnalite, Professor of Eloquence at the College of

Modena, and Member of the Arcadian Academy, under the pastoral name of Evander Lilyb�an, Venice,

1785, with the approbation of the Superiors. I tell them all how this singer, this Balthasar Cesari, was

nicknamed Zaffirino because of a sapphire engraved with cabalistic signs presented to him one evening by a

masked stranger, in whom wise folk recognised that great cultivator of the human voice, the devil; how much

more wonderful had been this Zaffirino's vocal gifts than those of any singer of ancient or modern times; how

his brief life had been but a series of triumphs, petted by the greatest kings, sung by the most famous poets,

and finally, adds Father Prosdocimo, "courted (if the grave Muse of history may incline her ear to the gossip

My friends glance once more at the engraving; more insipid remarks are made; I am requestedespecially

by the American young ladiesto play or sing one of this Zaffirino's favourite songs"For of course you

know them, dear Maestro Magnus, you who have such a passion for all old music. Do be good, and sit down

to the piano." I refuse, rudely enough, rolling the print in my fingers. How fearfully this cursed heat, these

cursed moonlight nights, must have unstrung me! This Venice would certainly kill me in the longrun! Why,

the sight of this idiotic engraving, the mere name of that coxcomb of a singer, have made my heart beat and

After my gruff refusal, the company begins to disperse; they prepare to go out, some to have a row on the

lagoon, others to saunter before the caf s at St. Mark's; family discussions arise, gruntings of fathers,

murmurs of mothers, peals of laughing from young girls and young men. And the moon, pouring in by the

wideopen windows, turns this old palace ballroom, nowadays an inn diningroom, into a lagoon,

scintillating, undulating like the other lagoon, the real one, which stretches out yonder furrowed by invisible

gondolas betrayed by the red prowlights. At last the whole lot of them are on the move. I shall be able to get

some quiet in my room, and to work a little at my opera of Ogier the Dane. But no! Conversation revives,

and, of all things, about that singer, that Zaffirino, whose absurd portrait I am crunching in my fingers.

The principal speaker is Count Alvise, an old Venetian with dyed whiskers, a great check tie fastened with

two pins and a chain; a threadbare patrician who is dying to secure for his lanky son that pretty American girl,

whose mother is intoxicated by all his mooning anecdotes about the past glories of Venice in general, and of

his illustrious family in particular. Why, in Heaven's name, must he pitch upon Zaffirino for his mooning, this

"Zaffirino,ah yes, to be sure! Balthasar Cesari, called Zaffirino," snuffles the voice of Count Alvise, who

always repeats the last word of every sentence at least three times. "Yes, Zaffirino, to be sure! A famous

singer of the days of my forefathers; yes, of my forefathers, dear lady!" Then a lot of rubbish about the

former greatness of Venice, the glories of old music, the former Conservatoires, all mixed up with anecdotes

of Rossini and Donizetti, whom he pretends to have known intimately. Finally, a story, of course containing

plenty about his illustrious family:"My great grandaunt, the Procuratessa Vendramin, from whom we

have inherited our estate of Mistr�, on the Brenta"a hopelessly muddled story, apparently, fully of

digressions, but of which that singer Zaffirino is the hero. The narrative, little by little, becomes more

"It seems," says the Count, "that there was one of his songs in particular which was called the 'Husbands'

Air'L'Aria dei Maritbecause they didn't enjoy it quite as much as their betterhalves.... My grandaunt,

Pisana Renier, married to the Procuratore Vendramin, was a patrician of the old school, of the style that was

getting rare a hundred years ago. Her virtue and her pride rendered her unapproachable. Zaffirino, on his part,

was in the habit of boasting that no woman had ever been able to resist his singing, which, it appears, had its

foundation in factthe ideal changes, my dear lady, the ideal changes a good deal from one century to

another!and that his first song could make any woman turn pale and lower her eyes, the second make her

madly in love, while the third song could kill her off on the spot, kill her for love, there under his very eyes, if

he only felt inclined. My grandaunt Vendramin laughed when this story was told her, refused to go to hear

this insolent dog, and added that it might be quite possible by the aid of spells and infernal pacts to kill a

gentildonna, but as to making her fall in love with a lackeynever! This answer was naturally reported to

Zaffirino, who piqued himself upon always getting the better of any one who was wanting in deference to his

voice. Like the ancient Romans, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. You American ladies, who are so

learned, will appreciate this little quotation from the divine Virgil. While seeming to avoid the Procuratessa

Vendramin, Zaffirino took the opportunity, one evening at a large assembly, to sing in her presence. He sang

and sang and sang until the poor grandaunt Pisana fell ill for love. The most skilful physicians were kept

unable to explain the mysterious malady which was visibly killing the poor young lady; and the Procuratore

Vendramin applied in vain to the most venerated Madonnas, and vainly promised an altar of silver, with

massive gold candlesticks, to Saints Cosmas and Damian, patrons of the art of healing. At last the

brotherinlaw of the Procuratessa, Monsignor Almor� Vendramin, Patriarch of Aquileia, a prelate famous

for the sanctity of his life, obtained in a vision of Saint Justina, for whom he entertained a particular devotion,

the information that the only thing which could benefit the strange illness of his sisterinlaw was the voice

of Zaffirino. Take notice that my poor grandaunt had never condescended to such a revelation.

"The Procuratore was enchanted at this happy solution; and his lordship the Patriarch went to seek Zaffirino

in person, and carried him in his own coach to the Villa of Mistr�, where the Procuratessa was residing. On

being told what was about to happen, my poor grandaunt went into fits of rage, which were succeeded

immediately by equally violent fits of joy. However, she never forgot what was due to her great position.

Although sick almost unto death, she had herself arrayed with the greatest pomp, caused her face to be

painted, and put on all her diamonds: it would seem as if she were anxious to affirm her full dignity before

this singer. Accordingly she received Zaffirino reclining on a sofa which had been placed in the great

ballroom of the Villa of Mistr�, and beneath the princely canopy; for the Vendramins, who had intermarried

with the house of Mantua, possessed imperial fiefs and were princes of the Holy Roman Empire. Zaffirino

saluted her with the most profound respect, but not a word passed between them. Only, the singer inquired

from the Procuratore whether the illustrious lady had received the Sacraments of the Church. Being told that

the Procuratessa had herself asked to be given extreme unction from the hands of her brotherinlaw, he

declared his readiness to obey the orders of His Excellency, and sat down at once to the harpsichord.

"Never had he sung so divinely. At the end of the first song the Procuratessa Vendramin had already revived

most extraordinarily; by the end of the second she appeared entirely cured and beaming with beauty and

happiness; but at the third airthe Aria dei Mariti, no doubtshe began to change frightfully; she gave a

dreadful cry, and fell into the convulsions of death. In a quarter of an hour she was dead! Zaffirino did not

wait to see her die. Having finished his song, he withdrew instantly, took posthorses, and travelled day and

night as far as Munich. People remarked that he had presented himself at Mistr� dressed in mourning,

although he had mentioned no death among his relatives; also that he had prepared everything for his

departure, as if fearing the wrath of so powerful a family. Then there was also the extraordinary question he

had asked before beginning to sing, about the Procuratessa having confessed and received extreme unction....

No, thanks, my dear lady, no cigarettes for me. But if it does not distress you or your charming daughter, may

And Count Alvise, enchanted with his talent for narrative, and sure of having secured for his son the heart

and the dollars of his fair audience, proceeds to light a candle, and at the candle one of those long black

... If this state of things goes on I shall just have to ask the doctor for a bottle; this ridiculous beating of my

heart and disgusting cold perspiration have increased steadily during Count Alvise's narrative. To keep

myself in countenance among the various idiotic commentaries on this cockandbull story of a vocal

coxcomb and a vapouring great lady, I begin to unroll the engraving, and to examine stupidly the portrait of

Zaffirino, once so renowned, now so forgotten. A ridiculous ass, this singer, under his triumphal arch, with

his stuffed Cupids and the great fat winged kitchenmaid crowning him with laurels. How flat and vapid and

But he, personally, is not so utterly vapid as I had thought. That effeminate, fat face of his is almost beautiful,

with an odd smile, brazen and cruel. I have seen faces like this, if not in real life, at least in my boyish

romantic dreams, when I read Swinburne and Baudelaire, the faces of wicked, vindictive women. Oh yes! he

is decidedly a beautiful creature, this Zaffirino, and his voice must have had the same sort of beauty and the

"Come on, Magnus," sound the voices of my fellowboarders, "be a good fellow and sing us one of the old

chap's songs; or at least something or other of that day, and we'll make believe it was the air with which he

"Oh yes! the Aria dei Mariti, the 'Husbands' Air,'" mumbles old Alvise, between the puffs at his impossible

black cigar. "My poor grandaunt, Pisana Vendramin; he went and killed her with those songs of his, with

I feel senseless rage overcoming me. Is it that horrible palpitation (by the way, there is a Norwegian doctor,

my fellowcountryman, at Venice just now) which is sending the blood to my brain and making me mad?

The people round the piano, the furniture, everything together seems to get mixed and to turn into moving

blobs of colour. I set to singing; the only thing which remains distinct before my eyes being the portrait of

Zaffirino, on the edge of that boardinghouse piano; the sensual, effeminate face, with its wicked, cynical

smile, keeps appearing and disappearing as the print wavers about in the draught that makes the candles

smoke and gutter. And I set to singing madly, singing I don't know what. Yes; I begin to identify it: 'tis the

Biondina in Gondoleta, the only song of the eighteenth century which is still remembered by the Venetian

people. I sing it, mimicking every oldschool grace; shakes, cadences, languishingly swelled and diminished

notes, and adding all manner of buffooneries, until the audience, recovering from its surprise, begins to shake

with laughing; until I begin to laugh myself, madly, frantically, between the phrases of the melody, my voice

finally smothered in this dull, brutal laughter.... And then, to crown it all, I shake my fist at this longdead

singer, looking at me with his wicked woman's face, with his mocking, fatuous smile.

"Ah! you would like to be revenged on me also!" I exclaim. "You would like me to write you nice roulades

That night I dreamed a very strange dream. Even in the big halffurnished room the heat and closeness were

stifling. The air seemed laden with the scent of all manner of white flowers, faint and heavy in their

intolerable sweetness: tuberoses, gardenias, and jasmines drooping I know not where in neglected vases. The

moonlight had transformed the marble floor around me into a shallow, shining. pool. On account of the heat I

had exchanged my bed for a big oldfashioned sofa of light wood, painted with little nosegays and sprigs,

like an old silk; and I lay there, not attempting to sleep, and letting my thoughts go vaguely to my opera of

Ogier the Dane, of which I had long finished writing the words, and for whose music I had hoped to find

some inspiration in this strange Venice, floating, as it were, in the stagnant lagoon of the past. But Venice had

merely put all my ideas into hopeless confusion; it was as if there arose out of its shallow waters a miasma of

longdead melodies, which sickened but intoxicated my soul. I lay on my sofa watching that pool of whitish

light, which rose higher and higher, little trickles of light meeting it here and there, wherever the moon's rays

struck upon some polished surface; while huge shadows waved to and fro in the draught of the open balcony.

I went over and over that old Norse story: how the Paladin, Ogier, one of the knights of Charlemagne, was

decoyed during his homeward wanderings from the Holy Land by the arts of an enchantress, the same who

had once held in bondage the great Emperor C�sar and given him King Oberon for a son; how Ogier had

tarried in that island only one day and one night, and yet, when he came home to his kingdom, he found all

changed, his friends dead, his family dethroned, and not a man who knew his face; until at last, driven hither

and thither like a beggar, a poor minstrel had taken compassion of his sufferings and given him all he could

givea song, the song of the prowess of a hero dead for hundreds of years, the Paladin Ogier the Dane.

The story of Ogier ran into a dream, as vivid as my waking thoughts had been vague. I was looking no longer

at the pool of moonlight spreading round my couch, with its trickles of light and looming, waving shadows,

but the frescoed walls of a great saloon. It was not, as I recognised in a second, the diningroom of that

Venetian palace now turned into a boardinghouse. It was a far larger room, a real ballroom, almost circular

in its octagon shape, with eight huge white doors surrounded by stucco mouldings, and, high on the vault of

the ceiling, eight little galleries or recesses like boxes at a theatre, intended no doubt for musicians and

spectators. The place was im perfectly lighted by only one of the eight chandeliers, which revolved slowly,

like huge spiders, each on its long cord. But the light struck upon the gilt stuccoes opposite me, and on a large

expanse of fresco, the sacrifice of Iphigenia, with Agamemnon and Achilles in Roman helmets, lappets, and

kneebreeches. It discovered also one of the oil panels let into the mouldings of the roof, a goddess in lemon

and lilac draperies, foreshortened over a great green peacock. Round the room, where the light reached, I

could make out big yellow satin sofas and heavy gilded consoles; in the shadow of a corner was what looked

like a piano, and farther in the shade one of those big canopies which decorate the anterooms of Roman

palaces. I looked about me, wondering where I was: a heavy, sweet smell, reminding me of the flavour of a

Little by little I began to perceive sounds; little, sharp, metallic, detached notes, like those of a mandoline;

and there was united to them a voice, very low and sweet, almost a whisper, which grew and grew and grew,

until the whole place was filled with that exquisite vibrating note, of a strange, exotic, unique quality. The

note went on, swelling and swelling. Suddenly there was a horrible piercing shriek, and the thud of a body on

the floor, and all manner of smothered exclamations. There, close by the canopy, a light suddenly appeared;

and I could see, among the dark figures moving to and fro in the room, a woman lying on the ground,

surrounded by other women. Her blond hair, tangled, full of diamondsparkles which cut through the

halfdarkness, was hanging dishevelled; the laces of her bodice had been cut, and her white breast shone

among the sheen of jewelled brocade; her face was bent forwards, and a thin white arm trailed, like a broken

limb, across the knees of one of the women who were endeavouring to lift her. There was a sudden splash of

water against the floor, more confused exclamations, a hoarse, broken moan, and a gurgling, dreadful

Outside, in the blue haze of the moon, the church and belfry of St. George loomed blue and hazy, with the

black hull and rigging, the red lights, of a large steamer moored before them. From the lagoon rose a damp

seabreeze. What was it all? Ah! I began to understand: that story of old Count Alvise's, the death of his

I returned to my room; I struck a light, and sat down to my writingtable. Sleep had become impossible. I

tried to work at my opera. Once or twice I thought I had got hold of what I had looked for so long.... But as

soon as I tried to lay hold of my theme, there arose in my mind the distant echo of that voice, of that long

note swelled slowly by insensible degrees, that long note whose tone was so strong and so subtle.

There are in the life of an artist moments when, still unable to seize his own inspiration, or even clearly to

discern it, he becomes aware of the approach of that longinvoked idea. A mingled joy and terror warn him

that before another day, another hour have passed, the inspiration shall have crossed the threshold of his soul

and flooded it with its rapture. All day I had felt the need of isolation and quiet, and at nightfall I went for. a

row on the most solitary part of the lagoon. All things seemed to tell that I was going to meet my inspiration,

I had stopped my gondola for a moment, and as I gently swayed to and fro on the water, all paved with

moonbeams, it seemed to me that I was on the confines of an imaginary world. It lay close at hand, enveloped

in luminous, pale blue mist, through which the moon had cut a wide and glistening path; out to sea, the little

islands, like moored black boats, only accentuated the solitude of this region of moonbeams and wavelets;

while the hum of the insects in orchards hard by merely added to the impression of untroubled silence. On

some such seas, I thought, must the Paladin Ogier, have sailed when about to discover that during that sleep

at the enchantress's knees centuries had elapsed and the heroic world had set, and the kingdom of prose had

While my gondola rocked stationary on that sea of moonbeams, I pondered over that twilight of the heroic

world. In the soft rattle of the water on the hull I seemed to hear the rattle of all that armour, of all those

swords swinging rusty on the walls, neglected by the degenerate sons of the great champions of old. I had

long been in search of a theme which I called the theme of the "Prowess of Ogier;" it was to appear from time

to time in the course of my opera, to develop at last into that song of the Minstrel, which reveals to the hero

that he is one of a longdead world. And at this moment I seemed to feel the presence of that theme. Yet an

instant, and my mind would be overwhelmed by that savage music, heroic, funereal.

Suddenly there came across the lagoon, cleaving, chequering, and fretting the silence with a lacework of

sound even as the moon was fretting and cleaving the water, a ripple of music, a voice breaking itself in a

I sank back upon my cushions. The vision of heroic days had vanished, and before my closed eyes there

seemed to dance multitudes of little stars of light, chasing ard interlacing like those sudden vocalisations.

But the sounds had ceased; and there came from the orchards, with their mulberrytrees glistening in the

moonlight, and their black swaying cypressplumes, nothing save the confused hum, the monotonous chirp,

I looked around me: on one side empty dunes, orchards, and meadows, without house or steeple; on the other,

the blue and misty sea, empty to where distant islets were profiled black on the horizon.

A faintness overcame me, and I felt myself dissolve. For all of a sudden a second ripple of voice swept over

the lagoon, a shower of little notes, which seemed to form a little mocking laugh.

Then again all was still. This silence lasted so long that I fell once more to meditating on my opera. I lay in

wait once more for the halfcaught theme. But no. It was not that theme for which I was waiting and

watching with baited breath. I realised my delusion when, on rounding the point of the Giudecca, the murmur

of a voice arose from the midst of the waters, a thread of sound slender as a moonbeam, scarce audible, but

exquisite, which expanded slowly, insensibly, taking volume and body, taking flesh almost and fire, an

ineffable quality, full, passionate, but veiled, as it were, in a subtle, downy wrapper. The note grew stronger

and stronger, and warmer and more passionate, until it burst through that strange and charming veil, and

emerged beaming, to break itself in the luminous facets of a wonderful shake, long, superb, triumphant.

The gondola glided through the long, glittering track of moonbeams, and rent the great band of yellow,

reflected light, mirroring the cupolas of St. Mark's, the lacelike pinnacles of the palace, and the slender pink

In the larger of the two squares the military band was blaring through the last spirals of a crescendo of

Rossini. The crowd was dispersing in this great openair ballroom, and the sounds arose which invariably

follow upon outofdoor music. A clatter of spoons and glasses, a rustle and grating of frocks and of chairs,

and the click of scabbards on the pavement. I pushed my way among the fashionable youths contemplating

the ladies while sucking the knob of their sticks; through the serried ranks of respectable families, marching

arm in arm with their white frocked young ladies close in front. I took a seat before Florian's, among the

customers stretching themselves before departing, and the waiters hurrying to and fro, clattering their empty

cups and trays. Two imitation Neapolitans were slipping their guitar and violin under their arm, ready to

"Stop!" I cried to them; "don't go yet. Sing me somethingsing La Camesella or Funicul", funicul�no

matter what, provided you make a row;" and as they screamed and scraped their utmost, I added, "But can't

I felt the need of noise, of yells and false notes, of something vulgar and hideous to drive away that

Again and again I told myself that it had been some silly prank of a romantic amateur, hidden in the gardens

of the shore or gliding unperceived on the lagoon; and that the sorcery of moonlight and seamist had

transfigured for my excited brain mere humdrum roulades out of exercises of Bordogni or Crescentini.

But all the same I continued to be haunted by that voice. My work was interrupted ever and anon by the

attempt to catch its imaginary echo; and the heroic harmonies of my Scandinavian legend were strangely

interwoven with voluptuous phrases and florid cadences in which I seemed to hear again that same accursed

To be haunted by singingexercises! It seemed too ridiculous for a man who professedly despised the art of

singing. And still, I preferred to believe in that childish amateur, amusing himself with warbling to the moon.

One day, while making these reflections the hundredth time over, my eyes chanced to light upon the portrait

of Zaffirino, which my friend had pinned against the wall. I pulled it down and tore it into half a dozen

shreds. Then, already ashamed of my folly, I watched the torn pieces float down from the window, wafted

hither and thither by the seabreeze. One scrap got caught in a yellow blind below me; the others fell into the

canal, and were speedily lost to sight in the dark water. I was overcome with shame. My heart beat like

bursting. What a miserable, unnerved worm I had become in this cursed Venice, with its languishing

moonlights, its atmosphere as of some stuffy boudoir, long unused, full of old stuffs and potpourri!

That night, however, things seemed to be going better. I was able to settle down to my opera, and even to

work at it. In the intervals my thoughts returned, not without a certain pleasure, to those scattered fragments

of the torn engraving fluttering down to the water. I was disturbed at my piano by the hoarse voices and the

scraping of violins which rose from one of those musicboats that station at night under the hotels of the

Grand Canal. The moon had set. Under my balcony the water stretched black into the distance, its darkness

cut by the still darker outlines of the flotilla of gondolas in attendance on the musicboat, where the faces of

the singers, and the guitars and violins, gleamed reddish under the unsteady light of the Chineselanterns.

"Jammo, jammo; jammo, jammo j�," sang the loud, hoarse voices; then a tremendous scrape and twang, and

the yelledout burden, "Funicul", funicul�; funicul", funicul�; jammo, jammo, jammo, jammo, jammo j�."

Then came a few cries of "Bis, Bis!" from a neighbouring hotel, a brief clapping of hands, the sound of a

handful of coppers rattling into the boat, and the oarstroke of some gondolier making ready to turn away.

The musicians, under their green and yellow and red lamps, held a whispered consultation on the manner of

conciliating these contradictory demands. Then, after a minute's hesitation, the violins began the prelude of

that once famous air, which has remained popular in Venicethe words written, some hundred years ago, by

That cursed eighteenth century! It seemed a malignant fatality that made these brutes choose just this piece to

At last the long prelude came to an end; and above the cracked guitars and squeaking fiddles there arose, not

My arteries throbbed. How well I knew that voice! It was singing, as I have said, below its breath, yet none

the less it sufficed to fill all that reach of the canal with its strange quality of tone, exquisite, farfetched.

They were longdrawnout notes, of intense but peculiar sweetness, a man's voice which had much of a

woman's, but more even of a chorister's, but a chorister's voice without its limpidity and innocence; its

youthfulness was veiled, muffled, as it were, in a sort of downy vagueness, as if a passion of tears withheld.

There was a burst of applause, and the old palaces reechoed with the clapping. "Bravo, bravo! Thank you,

And then a bumping of hulls, a splashing of oars, and the oaths of gondoliers trying to push each other away,

But no one stirred on board. It was to none of them that this applause was due. And while every one pressed

on, and clapped and vociferated, one little red prowlamp dropped away from the fleet; for a moment a single

For several days the mysterious singer was the universal topic. The people of the musicboat swore that no

one besides themselves had been on board, and that they knew as little as ourselves about the owner of that

voice. The gondoliers, despite their descent from the spies of the old Republic, were equally unable to furnish

any clue. No musical celebrity was known or suspected to be at Venice; and every one agreed that such a

singer must be a European celebrity. The strangest thing in this strange business was, that even among those

learned in music there was no agreement on the subject of this voice: it was called by all sorts of names and

described by all manner of incongruous adjectives; people went so far as to dispute whether the voice

In all these musical discussions I, alone, brought forward no opinion. I felt a repugnance, an impossibility

almost, of speaking about that voice; and the more or less commonplace conjectures of my friend had the

Meanwhile my work was becoming daily more difficult, and I soon passed from utter impotence to a state of

inexplicable agitation. Every morning I arose with fine resolutions and grand projects of work; only to go to

bed that night without having accomplished anything. I spent hours leaning on my balcony, or wandering

through the network of lanes with their ribbon of blue sky, endeavouring vainly to expel the thought of that

voice, or endeavouring in reality to reproduce it in my memory; for the more I tried to banish it from my

thoughts, the more I grew to thirst for that extraordinary tone, for those mysteriously downy, veiled notes;

and no sooner did I make an effort to work at my opera than my head was full of scraps of forgotten

eighteenth century airs, of frivolous or languishing little phrases; and I fell to wondering with a bittersweet

At length it became necessary to see a doctor, from whom, however, I carefully hid away all the stranger

symptoms of my malady. The air of the lagoons, the great heat, he answered cheerfully, had pulled me down

a little; a tonic and a month in the country, with plenty of riding and no work, would make me myself again.

That old idler, Count Alvise, who had insisted on accompanying me to the physician's, immediately

suggested that I should go and stay with his son, who was boring himself to death superintending the maize

harvest on the mainland: he could promise me excellent air, plenty of horses, and all the peaceful

surroundings and the delightful occupations of a rural life"Be sensible, my dear Magnus, and just go

Mistr�the name sent a shiver all down me. I was about to decline the invitation, when a thought suddenly

"Yes, dear Count," I answered; "I accept your invitation with gratitude and pleasure. I will start tomorrow

The next day found me at Padua, on my way to the Villa of Mistr�. It seemed as if I had left an intolerable

burden behind me. I was, for the first time since how long, quite light of heart. The tortuous, roughpaved

streets, with their empty, gloomy porticoes; the illplastered palaces, with closed, discoloured shutters; the

little rambling square, with meagre trees and stubborn grass; the Venetian gardenhouses reflecting their

crumbling graces in the muddy canal; the gardens without gates and the gates without gardens, the avenues

leading nowhere; and the population of blind and legless beggars, of whining sacristans, which issued as by

magic from between the flagstones and dustheaps and weeds under the fierce August sun, all this

dreariness merely amused and pleased me. My good spirits were heightened by a musical mass which I had

Never in all my days had I heard anything comparable, although Italy affords many strange things in the way

of sacred music. Into the deep nasal chanting of the priests there had suddenly burst a chorus of children,

singing absolutely inde pendent of all time and tune; grunting of priests answered by squealing of boys,

slow Gregorian modulation interrupted by jaunty barrelorgan pipings, an insane, insanely merry jumble of

bellowing and barking, mewing and cackling and braying, such as would have enlivened a witches' meeting,

or rather some medi�val Feast of Fools. And, to make the grotesqueness of such music still more fantastic

and Hoffmannlike, there was, besides, the magnificence of the piles of sculptured marbles and gilded

bronzes, the tradition of the musical splendour for which St. Anthony's had been famous in days gone by. I

had read in old travellers, Lalande and Burney, that the Republic of St. Mark had squandered immense sums

not merely on the monuments and decoration, but on the musical establishment of its great cathedral of Terra

Firma. In the midst of this ineffable concert of impossible voices and instruments, I tried to imagine the voice

of Guadagni, the soprano for whom Gluck had written Che far� senza Euridice, and the fiddle of Tartini, that

Tartini with whom the devil had once come and made music. And the delight in anything so absolutely,

barbarously, grotesquely, fantastically incongruous as such a performance in such a place was heightened by

a sense of profanation: such were the successors of those wonderful musicians of that hated eighteenth

The whole thing had delighted me so much, so very much more than the most faultless performance could

have done, that I determined to enjoy it once more; and towards vespertime, after a cheerful dinner with two

bagmen at the inn of the Golden Star, and a pipe over the rough sketch of a possible cantata upon the music

which the devil made for Tartini, I turned my steps once more towards St. Anthony's.

The bells were ringing for sunset, and a muffled sound of organs seemed to issue from the huge, solitary

church; I pushed my way under the heavy leathern curtain, expecting to be greeted by the grotesque

I proved mistaken. Vespers must long have been over. A smell of stale incense, a cryptlike damp filled my

mouth; it was already night in that vast cathedral. Out of the darkness glimmered the votivelamps of the

chapels, throwing wavering lights upon the red polished marble, the gilded railing, and chandeliers, and

plaqueing with yellow the muscles of some sculptured figure. In a corner a burning taper put a halo about the

head of a priest, burnishing his shining bald skull, his white surplice, and the open book before him. "Amen"

he chanted; the book was closed with a snap, the light moved up the apse, some dark figures of women rose

from their knees and passed quickly towards the door; a man saying his prayers before a chapel also got up,

The church was empty, and I expected every minute to be turned out by the sacristan making his evening

round to close the doors. I was leaning against a pillar, looking into the greyness of the great arches, when the

organ suddenly burst out into a series of chords, rolling through the echoes of the church: it seemed to be the

conclusion of some service. And above the organ rose the notes of a voice; high, soft, enveloped in a kind of

downiness, like a cloud of incense, and which ran through the mazes of a long cadence. The voice dropped

into silence; with two thundering chords the organ closed in. All was silent. For a moment I stood leaning

against one of the pillars of the nave: my hair was clammy, my knees sank beneath me, an enervating heat

spread through my body; I tried to breathe more largely, to suck in the sounds with the incenseladen air. I

was supremely happy, and yet as if I were dying; then suddenly a chill ran through me, and with it a vague

The evening sky lay pure and blue along the jagged line of roofs; the bats and swallows were wheeling about;

and from the belfries all around, halfdrowned by the deep bell of St. Anthony's, jangled the peel of the Ave

"You really don't seem well," young Count Alvise had said the previous evening, as he wel comed me, in

the light of a lantern held up by a peasant, in the weedy backgarden of the Villa of Mistr�. Everything had

seemed to me like a dream: the jingle of the horse's bells driving in the dark from Padua, as the lantern swept

the acaciahedges with their wide yellow light; the grating of the wheels on the gravel; the suppertable,

illumined by a single petroleum lamp for fear of attracting mosquitoes, where a broken old lackey, in an old

stable jacket, handed round the dishes among the fumes of onion; Alvise's fat mother gabbling dialect in a

shrill, benevolent voice behind the bullfights on her fan; the unshaven village priest, perpetually fidgeting

with his glass and foot, and sticking one shoulder up above the other. And now, in the afternoon, I felt as if I

had been in this long, rambling, tumbledown Villa of Mistr�a villa threequarters of which was given up

to the storage of grain and garden tools, or to the exercise of rats, mice, scorpions, and centipedesall my

life; as if I had always sat there, in Count Alvise's study, among the pile of undusted books on agriculture, the

sheaves of accounts, the samples of grain and silkworm seed, the inkstains and the cigarends; as if I had

never heard of anything save the cereal basis of Italian agriculture, the diseases of maize, the peronospora of

the vine, the breeds of bullocks, and the iniquities of farm labourers; with the blue cones of the Euganean

After an early dinner, again with the screaming gabble of the fat old Countess, the fidgeting and

shoulderraising of the unshaven priest, the smell of fried oil and stewed onions, Count Alvise made me get

into the cart beside him, and whirled me along among clouds of dust, between the endless glister of poplars,

In the burning sun some twenty or thirty girls, in coloured skirts, laced bodices, and big strawhats, were

threshing the maize on the big red brick threshingfloor, while others were winnowing the grain in great

sieves. Young Alvise III. (the old one was Alvise II.: every one is Alvise, that is to say, Lewis, in that family;

the name is on the house, the carts, the barrows, the very pails) picked up the maize, touched it, tasted it, said

something to the girls that made them laugh, and something to the head farmer that made him look very

glum; and then led me into a huge stable, where some twenty or thirty white bullocks were stamping,

switching their tails, hitting their horns against the mangers in the dark. Alvise III. patted each, called him by

his name, gave him some salt or a turnip, and explained which was the Mantuan breed, which the Apulian,

which the Romagnolo, and so on. Then he bade me jump into the trap, and off we went again through the

dust, among the hedges and ditches, till we came to some more brick farm buildings with pinkish roofs

smoking against the blue sky. Here there were more young women threshing and winnowing the maize,

which made a great golden Dana' cloud; more bullocks stamping and lowing in the cool darkness; more

joking, faultfinding, explaining; and thus through five farms, until I seemed to see the rhythmical rising and

falling of the flails against the hot sky, the shower of golden grains, the yellow dust from the

winnowingsieves on to the bricks, the switching of innumerable tails and plunging of innumerable horns,

"A good day's work!" cried Count Alvise, stretching out his long legs with the tight trousers riding up over

the Wellington boots. "Mamma, give us some aniseedsyrup after dinner; it is an excellent restorative and

"Oh! you've got fever in this part of the world, have you? Why, your father said the air was so good!"

"Nothing, nothing," soothed the old Countess. "The only thing to be dreaded are mosquitoes; take care to

"Well," rejoined young Alvise, with an effort of conscience, "of course there are fevers. But they needn't hurt

you. Only, don' go out into the garden at night, if you don't want to catch them. Papa told me that you have

fancies for moonlight rambles. It won't do in this climate, my dear fellow; it won't do. If you must stalk about

at night, being a genius, take a turn inside the house; you can get quite exercise enough."

After dinner the aniseedsyrup was produced, together with brandy and cigars, and they all sat in the long,

narrow, halffurnished room on the first floor; the old Countess knitting a garment of uncertain shape and

destination, the priest reading out the newspaper; Count Alvise puffing at his long, crooked cigar, and pulling

the ears of a long, lean dog with a suspicion of mange and a stiff eye. From the dark garden outside rose the

hum and whirr of countless insects, and the smell of the grapes which hung black against the starlit, blue sky,

on the trellis. I went to the balcony. The garden lay dark beneath; against the twinkling horizon stood out the

tall poplars. There was the sharp cry of an owl; the barking of a dog; a sudden whiff of warm, enervating

perfume, a perfume that made me think of the taste of certain peaches, and suggested white, thick, waxlike

petals. I seemed to have smelt that flower once before: it made me feel languid, almost faint.

"I am very tired," I said to Count Alvise. "See how feeble we city folk become!"

But, despite my fatigue, I found it quite impossible to sleep. The night seemed perfectly stifling. I had felt

nothing like it at Venice. Despite the injunctions of the Countess I opened the solid wooden shutters,

The moon had risen; and beneath it lay the big lawns, the rounded treetops, bathed in a blue, luminous mist,

every leaf glistening and trembling in what seemed a heaving sea of light. Beneath the window was the long

trellis, with the white shining piece of pavement under it. It was so bright that I could distinguish the green of

the vineleaves, the dull red of the catalpaflowers. There was in the air a vague scent of cut grass, of ripe

American grapes, of that white flower (it must be white) which made me think of the taste of peaches all

melting into the delicious freshness of falling dew. From the village church came the stroke of one: Heaven

knows how long I had been vainly attempting to sleep. A shiver ran through me, and my head suddenly filled

as with the fumes of some subtle wine; I remembered all those weedy embankments, those canals full of

stagnant water, the yellow faces of the peasants; the word malaria returned to my mind. No matter! I

remained leaning on the window, with a thirsty longing to plunge myself into this blue moonmist, this dew

and perfume and silence, which seemed to vibrate and quiver like the stars that strewed the depths of

heaven.... What music, even Wagner's, or of that great singer of starry nights, the divine Schumann, what

music could ever compare with this great silence, with this great concert of voiceless things that sing within

As I made this reflection, a note, high, vibrating, and sweet, rent the silence, which immediately closed

around it. I leaned out of the window, my heart beating as though it must burst. After a brief space the silence

was cloven once more by that note, as the darkness is cloven by a falling star or a firefly rising slowly like a

rocket. But this time it was plain that the voice did not come, as I had imagined, from the garden, but from

Mistr�Mistr�! The name rang in my ears, and I began at length to grasp its significance, which seems to

have escaped me till then. "Yes," I said to myself, "it is quite natural." And with this odd impression of

naturalness was mixed a feverish, impatient pleasure. It was as if I had come to Mistr� on purpose, and that I

Grasping the lamp with its singed green shade, I gently opened the door and made my way through a series of

long passages and of big, empty rooms, in which my steps reechoed as in a church, and my light disturbed

whole swarms of bats. I wandered at random, farther and farther from the inhabited part of the buildings.

All of a sudden there came a soundchords, metallic, sharp, rather like the tone of a mandolineclose to

my ear. Yes, quite close: I was separated from the sounds only by a partition. I fumbled for a door; the

unsteady light of my lamp was insufficient for my eyes, which were swimming like those of a drunkard. At

last I found a latch, and, after a moment's hesitation, I lifted it and gently pushed open the door. At first I

could not understand what manner of place I was in. It was dark all round me, but a brilliant light blinded me,

a light coming from below and striking the opposite wall. It was as if I had entered a dark box in a

halflighted theatre. I was, in fact, in something of the kind, a sort of dark hole with a high balustrade,

halfhidden by an updrawn curtain. I remembered those little galleries or recesses for the use of musicians

or lookersonwhich exist under the ceiling of the ballrooms in certain old Italian palaces. Yes; it must

have been one like that. Opposite me was a vaulted ceiling covered with gilt mouldings, which framed great

timeblackened canvases; and lower down, in the light thrown up from below, stretched a wall covered with

faded frescoes. Where had I seen that goddess in lilac and lemon draperies foreshortened over a big, green

peacock? For she was familiar to me, and the stucco Tritons also who twisted their tails round her gilded

frame. And that fresco, with warriors in Roman cuirasses and green and blue lappets, and

kneebreecheswhere could I have seen them before? I asked myself these questions without experiencing

any surprise. Moreover, I was very calm, as one is calm sometimes in extraordinary dreamscould I be

I advanced gently and leaned over the balustrade. My eyes were met at first by the darkness above me, where,

like gigantic spiders, the big chandeliers rotated slowly, hanging from the ceiling. Only one of them was lit,

and its Muranoglass pendants, its carnations and roses, shone opalescent in the light of the guttering wax.

This chandelier lighted up the opposite wall and that piece of ceiling with the goddess and the green peacock;

it illumined, but far less well, a corner of the huge room, where, in the shadow of a kind of canopy, a little

group of people were crowding round a yellow satin sofa, of the same kind as those that lined the walls. On

the sofa, halfscreened from me by the surrounding persons, a woman was stretched out: the silver of her

embroidered dress and the rays of her diamonds gleamed and shot forth as she moved uneasily. And

immediately under the chandelier, in the full light, a man stooped over a harpsichord, his head bent slightly,

He struck a few chords and sang. Yes, sure enough, it was the voice, the voice that had so long been

persecuting me! I recognised at once that delicate, voluptuous quality, strange, exquisite, sweet beyond

words, but lacking all youth and clearness. That passion veiled in tears which had troubled my brain that

night on the lagoon, and again on the Grand Canal singing the Biondina, and yet again, only two days since,

in the deserted cathedral of Padua. But I recognised now what seemed to have been hidden from me till then,

The voice wound and unwound itself in long, languishing phrases, in rich, voluptuous rifiorituras, all fretted

with tiny scales and exquisite, crisp shakes; it stopped ever and anon, swaying as if panting in languid

delight. And I felt my body melt even as wax in the sunshine, and it seemed to me that I too was turning fluid

and vaporous, in order to mingle with these sounds as the moonbeams mingle with the dew.

Suddenly, from the dimly lighted corner by the canopy, came a little piteous wail; then another followed, and

was lost in the singer's voice. During a long phrase on the harpsichord, sharp and tinkling, the singer turned

his head towards the dais, and there came a plaintive little sob. But he, instead of stopping, struck a sharp

chord; and with a thread of voice so hushed as to be scarcely audible, slid softly into a long cadenza. At the

same moment he threw his head backwards, and the light fell full upon the handsome, effeminate face, with

its ashy pallor and big, black brows, of the singer Zaffirino. At the sight of that face, sensual and sullen, of

that smile which was cruel and mocking like a bad woman's, I understoodI knew not why, by what

processthat his singing must be cut short, that the accursed phrase must never be finished. I understood

that I was before an assassin, that he was killing this woman, and killing me also, with his wicked voice.

I rushed down the narrow stair which led down from the box, pursued, as it were, by that exquisite voice,

swelling, swelling by insensible degrees. I flung myself on the door which must be that of the big saloon. I

could see its light between the panels. I bruised my hands in trying to wrench the latch. The door was

fastened tight, and while I was struggling with that locked door I heard the voice swelling, swelling, rending

asunder that downy veil which wrapped it, leaping forth clear, resplendent, like the sharp and glittering blade

of a knife that seemed to enter deep into my breast. Then, once more, a wail, a deathgroan, and that dreadful

noise, that hideous gurgle of breath strangled by a rush of blood. And then a long shake, acute, brilliant,

The door gave way beneath my weight, one half crashed in. I entered. I was blinded by a flood of blue

moonlight. It poured in through four great windows, peaceful and diaphanous, a pale blue mist of moonlight,

and turned the huge room into a kind of submarine cave, paved with moonbeams, full of shimmers, of pools

of moonlight. It was as bright as at midday, but the brightness was cold, blue, vaporous, supernatural. The

room was completely empty, like a great hayloft. Only, there hung from the ceiling the ropes which had

once supported a chandelier; and in a corner, among stacks of wood and heaps of Indiancorn, whence

spread a sickly smell of damp and mildew, there stood a long, thin harpsichord, with spindlelegs, and its

I felt, all of a sudden, very calm. The one thing that mattered was the phrase that kept moving in my head, the

phrase of that unfinished cadence which I had heard but an instant before. I opened the harpsichord, and my

fingers came down boldly upon its keys. A jinglejangle of broken strings, laughable and dreadful, was the

Then an extraordinary fear overtook me. I clambered out of one of the windows; I rushed up the garden and

wandered through the fields, among the canals and the embankments, until the moon had set and the dawn

People expressed much satisfaction at my recovery. It seems that one dies of those fevers.

Recovery? But have I recovered? I walk, and eat and drink and talk; I can even sleep. I live the life of other

living creatures. But I am wasted by a strange and deadly disease. I can never lay hold of my own inspiration.

My head is filled with music which is certainly by me, since I have never heard it before, but which still is

not my own, which I despise and abhor: little, tripping flourishes and languishing phrases, and longdrawn,

O wicked, wicked voice, violin of flesh and blood made by the Evil One's hand, may I not even execrate thee

in peace; but is it necessary that, at the moment when I curse, the longing to hear thee again should parch my

soul like hellthirst? And since I have satiated thy lust for revenge, since thou hast withered my life and

withered my genius, is it not time for pity? May I not hear one note, only one note of thine, O singer, O