



Produced by Al Haines.





                       _THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE_

                              THE INTRUDER


                                   BY

                          GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO


                             TRANSLATED BY
                            ARTHUR HORNBLOW


                         _Beati immaculati..._



                                NEW YORK
                           GEORGE H. RICHMOND
                                  1898




                          COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
                           GEORGE H. RICHMOND




                          By the Same Author.

                         THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH.

                       THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS.




                           *THE INTRUDER.[*]*

[*] In the original Italian, this novel is entitled "L'Innocente."


Should I go before the judge and say: "I have committed a crime.  He
would not be dead if I had not killed him.  It is I, Tullio Hermil, who
am his assassin.  I premeditated that assassination in my house.  I
committed it with perfect lucidity of conscience, methodically, in all
security.  And I have gone on living in my house with my secret for a
whole year, until to-day.  To-day is the anniversary I deliver myself
into your hands.  Listen to me, judge me."

Can I go before the judge?  Can I speak to him like that?

I cannot, and I will not.  The justice of men does not reach as far as
me.  There is no tribunal on earth competent to judge me.

And yet I feel a desire to accuse myself, to confess.  I feel a desire
to reveal my secret to someone.

TO WHOM?

My first recollection is as follows:

It was in April.  For several days, during the festivities of the
Pentecost, Juliana and I and our two little daughters, Maria and
Natalia, had been in the country, at my mother's house, a roomy old
place known as the Badiola. It was the seventh year of our marriage.

Three years had already slipped by since another Pentecost which, passed
in that villa, white and isolated as a monastery, and embalmed with
tufts of violets, had seemed to me a veritable festival of pardon,
peace, and love.  At that time Natalia, the second of my little girls,
barely emerged from swaddling clothes like a flower from its envelope,
was learning to walk; and Juliana was very good and indulgent with me,
although there was a shade of melancholy in her smile.  I had come back
to her, repentant and submissive, after the first serious infidelity.
My mother, who knew nothing of what had happened, had tied with her dear
hands a sprig of olive at the head of our bed, and filled the little
silver holy-water dish hanging on the wall.

But what had not happened in three years!  Between Juliana and myself
the breach was henceforth definitive and irreparable.  I had gone on
wronging her repeatedly; I had insulted her in the most outrageous
manner without regard for her feelings, without restraint, carried away
by an appetite greedy for pleasure, by the vertigo of my passions, by
the curiosity of my corrupted mind.  I had had as mistresses two of her
intimate friends; I had spent several weeks at Florence with Teresa
Raffo, shamelessly; I had fought with the false Count Raffo a duel in
which my unfortunate adversary covered himself with ridicule owing to
certain bizarre circumstances.  And nothing of all this had remained
unknown to Juliana; and she had suffered, but with much pride, and
almost without saying anything.

We had only had on this subject a few very short interviews, at which I
did not tell a single falsehood.  It seemed to me that my sincerity
would attenuate my fault in the eyes of this sweet and noble woman, who
I knew had a superior mind.

I knew also that she recognized my intellectual superiority and that she
excused in part the disorders of my conduct by the specious theories
that, more than once, I had aired in her presence, to the great
detriment of the moral doctrines that the majority of men profess to
believe in. The conviction that she would not judge me like any ordinary
man lightened my conscience of the weight of my errors.  "She, too,
understands," I thought, "that, since I am different from others, since
I have a different conception of life, I have the right to elude the
duties that others would impose on me.  I have the right to despise the
opinions of others, and to lead with absolute sincerity the only life
possible to my higher nature."

I had the conviction of being not only a higher nature, but also a rare
intelligence; and I believed that the rarity of my sensations and my
feelings ennobled, distinguished, all my acts.  Proud and curious of
this rarity of mine, I was incapable of conceiving the slightest
sacrifice, the slightest abnegation of myself; I was incapable of
renouncing the expression, the manifestation of one of my desires. But,
at the bottom of all my subtilties, there was only a terrible egotism
that caused me to neglect my duties, while at the same time I accepted
the benefits of my situation.

Insensibly, in fact, from one abuse to another, I had succeeded in
reconquering my old-time liberty, even with Juliana's consent, without
hypocrisy, without subterfuge, without degrading lies.  I made a study
of being loyal, no matter at what cost, as others make a study of
deception.

At all times, I strove to confirm, between Juliana and myself, the new
pact of fraternal affection and pure friendship.  She was to be my
sister, the best of my friends.

My sister, my only sister, Constance, had died when she was nine years
old, leaving in my heart infinite regret. I often thought, with profound
melancholy, of that little soul who had not been able to offer me the
treasure of her tenderness, a treasure that I dreamed inexhaustible.
Among all human affections, among all earthly loves, that of a sister
had always seemed to me the highest and the most consoling.  I often
thought of that lost great consolation, and the irrevocableness of death
added a sort of mystery to my pain.  Where can one, on earth, find
another sister?

Spontaneously, this sentimental aspiration turned towards Juliana.

Too proud to accept a division, she had already renounced all caresses,
all abandon.  And I, for some time past, no longer felt a shade of
sensual disturbance when near her. In vain I felt her breath on my
cheek, respired her perfume, looked at the little brown mole on her
neck.  I remained absolutely cold.  It seemed impossible to me that this
was the same woman.

I then offered to become a brother to her; and she accepted, without
affectation.  If she were sad, I myself was still more so in thinking
that our love was buried forever and without hope of resurrection, in
thinking that our lips doubtless would never, never meet again.

And, in the blindness of my egotism, it seemed to me that at heart she
ought to be grateful to me for this sadness, which I felt was already
incurable; it seemed to me that she ought to be pleased at it and find a
consolation in it, as if with a reflection of our past love.

There had been a time when we both dreamed, not only of love, but of
passion until death--_usque ad mortem_.  We had both believed in our
dream--and more than once, during our moments of ecstasy, we had uttered
the great illusionary words: _Always! never!_  We had ended by believing
in the affinity of our flesh, in that affinity so rare, so mysterious,
which binds two human creatures together by the frightful bond of
insatiable desire.  We believed so because the acuteness of our
sensations had not diminished even after, by the creation of a new
being, the obscure Genius of the Species had attained, by means of our
persons, his unique object.

Then the illusion had faded away; the flame had gone out.  My soul--I
swear it--had sincerely wept over the catastrophe.  But how to prevent a
necessary phenomenon? How to avoid the inevitable?

It was, therefore, very fortunate that, after the death of our love,
caused by the fatal necessity of the phenomenon, and consequently by the
fault of neither of us, we were able to go on living in the same house,
bound by a new sentiment, which was perhaps not less profound than the
old one, and which, assuredly, was higher and more singular.  It was
very fortunate that a new illusion could replace the old one, and
establish between our souls an exchange of pure affections, delicate
emotions, and exquisite sadness.

But, in reality, what was to be the end of this species of platonic
rhetoric?  To induce the victim to smilingly consent to her own
immolation.

In reality, our new existence, henceforth fraternal and no longer
conjugal, was based entirely on this hypothesis: that the _sister_
should make complete abnegation of herself. I myself resumed my liberty,
I could go in quest of those new sensations which my nerves needed, I
could feel passion for another woman, devote to my mistress all the time
that I liked, live away from home a strange and ardent existence, and
then return, find there again the _sister_ who was awaiting me, see
everywhere in my rooms visible traces of her care: on my table, a vase
full of roses that her hands had arranged; on all sides order,
refinement, and the radiant cleanliness of a place in which lives a
Grace. Was not that an enviable condition for me?  And was not she an
extraordinarily precious wife, who would consent to sacrifice her youth
to me and who considered herself well recompensed if only I pressed a
grateful and almost religious kiss on her proud and gentle brow?

At times my gratitude became so warm that it took the form of an
infinity of attentions and affectionate greetings. I possessed the art
of being the best of brothers.  When I was absent, I wrote Juliana long
letters full of melancholy and tenderness, which were often posted at
the same time as those addressed to my mistress.  And my mistress could
not have been jealous of them any more than she could be jealous of my
adoration of Constance's memory.

All absorbed as I was by the intensity of my peculiar life, I could not
elude the problems which, at times, presented themselves to my mind.
That Juliana could continue her sacrifice with such marvellous strength,
she must love me with a sovereign love; but if she loved me and could be
only my _sister_, she must, without any possible doubt, bear in her soul
the secret of a mortal despair.  Was not, therefore, any man a madman
who, without remorse, immolated to other loves, disturbed and
chimerical, this creature who smiled so sadly, and was so gentle and
brave? I remember (and I am surprised now at my perversity at that
time), I remember that, among the reasons that I advanced to calm
myself, the strongest was this one: "Since moral greatness results from
the violence of the sorrows over which one triumphs, it is necessary
that she should suffer all I make her suffer so that she may have an
opportunity to display her heroism."

But, one day, I noticed that she was also suffering in her health.  I
perceived that her pale face was growing still whiter, and at times took
on livid tints.  More than once I noticed on her face the contractions
of suppressed pain; more than once, in my presence, she was seized with
an irresistible trembling which shook her entire being and made her
teeth rattle as by the shiver of a sudden fever. One evening while she
was upstairs I heard her give a piercing cry.  I ran to her and found
her standing upright, leaning against a cupboard, convulsed, writhing,
as if she had taken poison.  She seized my hand, and held it tight as in
a vise.

"Tullio!  Tullio!  How horrible it is!  Oh, how horrible it is!"

She looked at me, close to; she kept fixed upon me her dilated eyes,
which in the twilight seemed of unusual size. And in those large orbs I
saw pass something like the waves of some mysterious agony.  That
persistent, intolerable gaze suddenly filled me with a mad terror.  It
was evening, twilight, and the window was open, and the swollen curtains
shook at the breath of the wind, and a candle was burning on a table,
before a mirror.  And, I know not why, the shaking of the curtains, the
hopeless flickering of the tiny flame which