His sister-in-law, whom he loved tenderly, was the only one who brought some solace to his final days, coming to see him several times a day, with Alexis.
One afternoon, as she was going to see the Viscount, just as she was drawing up to his house, the horses of her carriage suddenly took fright; she was violently flung out, trampled by a horseman who was galloping by, and brought into Baldassare’s house unconscious, with her skull split open.
The coach driver, who had not been wounded, immediately came to announce the accident to the Viscount, whose face turned waxen with shock and anger. His teeth were clenched, his eyes flashed and bulged and, in a terrible outburst of wrath, he hurled prolonged abuse at the coach driver; but it seemed as if these explosions of violence were an attempt to disguise a cry of pain which, in the intervals, could faintly be heard. It was as if, next to the infuriated Viscount, there was a sick man lamenting. Soon this plaint, at first feeble, stifled his cries of anger, and he fell onto a chair, sobbing.
Then he wanted to have his face washed so that his sister-in-law would not be alarmed by the traces of his grief. His servant shook his head sadly; the wounded woman had not regained consciousness. The Viscount spent two desperate days and nights at his sister-in-law’s side. At any moment she might die. On the second night, a hazardous operation was attempted. On the morning of the third day, her fever had fallen, and the patient smiled as she looked at Baldassare who, unable to hold back his tears any longer, wept uninterruptedly for joy. While death had been approaching him little by little, he had refused to see it; now he had found himself suddenly in its presence. It had terrified him by threatening what he held most dear; he had begged it for mercy, and he had forced death to yield.
He felt strong and free, proudly sensing that his own life was not as precious to him as was that of his sister-in-law, and that he could view it with so much scorn now that she, a different person, had filled him with pity. It was death, now, that he could look in the face, and not the scenes he had imagined would accompany that death. He wanted to remain as he now was right up to the end, and no longer give in to the lie which, by trying to arrange a fine and splendid deathbed agony for him, would have thereby committed the last and worst of its profanations, sullying the mysteries of his death just as it had hidden from him the mysteries of his life.
4
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time –
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
– Shakespeare, Macbeth*
The stress and upheaval Baldassare had experienced during his sister-in-law’s illness had accelerated his own malady. He had just heard from his confessor that he had less than a month to live; it was ten o’clock in the morning, and it was pouring with rain. A carriage stopped outside the chateau. It was Duchess Oliviane. When he had been making those artistic arrangements for the scene of his death, he had told himself:
“…it will happen on a clear evening. The sun will have set, and the sea, visible between the apple trees, will be mauve. As light as weightless, withered wreathes, and as persistent as regrets, little blue and pink clouds will be floating on the horizon…”
It was ten in the morning, under a louring, filthy sky, as the rain came pelting down, when Duchess Oliviane arrived; and, worn out by his illness, his mind entirely given over to higher things, and no longer susceptible to the grace of all that had once seemed to constitute the value, the charm, the splendour and refinement of life, he asked them to tell the Duchess that he was not strong enough to see her.
She insisted, but he refused to receive her. And this was not even out of a sense of duty: she meant nothing to him any more. Death had made short work of breaking those bonds whose capacity to enslave him he had for some weeks so greatly feared. When he tried to think of her, he saw nothing appear before his mind’s eye, and the eyes of his imagination and his vanity had closed.
However, about one week before his death, the announcement of a ball to be given by the Duchess of Bohemia, at which Pia was to lead the cotillion with Castruccio, who was leaving for Denmark the next day, reawoke his jealousy in all its fury. He asked for Pia to come to him; his sister-in-law resisted his request for a while; he thought that they were preventing him from seeing her, that they were persecuting him; he flew into a rage, and so as not to torment him further, they immediately sent for her.
When she arrived, he was completely calm, but in a deep state of sadness. He drew her over to his bed and immediately started talking to her about the Duchess of Bohemia’s ball. He told her:
“We were not related, you won’t need to go into mourning for me, but I wish to beg one thing of you: promise me you won’t go to that ball.”
They gazed into one another’s eyes, from which their souls seemed to peer out – those melancholy, passionate souls that death had not succeeded in uniting.
He understood her hesitation, pressed his lips together painfully and gently told her:
“Oh! It’s better if you don’t promise! Don’t break a promise made to a dying man. If you’re not sure you can keep your promise, don’t make one.”
“I can’t promise you that, I haven’t seen him for two months and I may never see him again; nothing would ever console me, in all eternity, if I didn’t go to that ball.”
“You’re right, since you love him, and death may happen any minute… and you are still living life to the full… But you will do one little thing for me; during the time you spend at the ball, set aside the period that you’d have been obliged to spend with me so as to divert suspicion from you. Invite my soul to remember for a few moments, together with you – spare some thought for me.”
“I hardly dare promise you that, the ball will last such a short time. Even if I don’t leave his side, I will hardly have time to see him. I’ll set aside some time for you on all the days that follow.”
“You won’t be able to, you’ll forget me; but if, after one year – alas! More than that, perhaps – something sad that you read, someone’s death or a rainy evening make you think of me, what charity you will be doing me! I’ll never, ever see you again… except in spirit, and for that to happen, we’d need to be thinking of each other simultaneously. I will think of you always, so that my soul will always be open to you, if you wish to enter it.
But how long the guest will keep me waiting! The November rains will have rotted the flowers on my tomb, June will have withered them, and my soul will still be weeping with impatience. Ah! I hope that one day, the sight of some souvenir, the return of an anniversary, the drift of your thoughts will lead your memory into the neighbourhood of my tenderness; then it will be as if I had heard you and spotted you coming, and some magic spell will have decked everything out with flowers for your arrival. Think of the dead man. But, ah! – can I hope that death, and your own sense of the gravity of things, will accomplish what life, with all its passion, and all our tears, and our moments of gaiety, and our lips, could not?”
5
Now cracks a noble heart; good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!
– Shakespeare, Hamlet*
Meanwhile, a violent fever accompanied by delirium refused to loosen its grip on the Viscount; a bed had been made up for him in the vast rotunda where Alexis had seen him on his thirteenth birthday, when he had still been so cheerful, and from which the sick man could now look out over the sea and the harbour jetty and at the same time, on the other side, the pastures and the woods. Now and then, he would start to speak; but his words no longer bore the trace of those thoughts of higher things that, over the last weeks, had purified him with their visit.
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