Grazia also bore the weight of that uneasy heritage, which, of all the patrimony of ancient families, is the least in danger of being dissipated in transit. She, at least, was aware of it. It is a great source of strength to know our weakness, to make ourselves, if not the masters, the pilots of the soul of the race to which we are bound, which bears us like a vessel upon its waters—to make fate our instrument, to use it as a sail which we furl or clew up according to the wind. When Grazia closed her eyes, she could hear within herself more than one disturbing voice, of a tone familiar to her. But in her healthy soul even the dissonances were blended to form a profound, soft music, under the guiding hand of her harmonious reason.
Unhappily it is not within our power to transmit the best of our blood to the creatures of our blood.
Of Grazia’s two children, the little girl, Aurora, who was eleven years old, was like her mother; she was not so pretty, being a little coarser in fiber; she had a slight limp; she was a good little girl, affectionate and gay, with splendid health, abundant good nature, few natural gifts, except idleness, a passion for doing nothing. Christophe adored her. When he saw her with Grazia he felt the charm of a twofold creature, seen at two ages of life, two generations together. … Two flowers upon one stem; a Holy Family of Leonardo, the Virgin and Saint Anne, different shades of the same smile. With one glance he could take in the whole blossoming of a woman’s soul; and it was at once fair and sad to see: he could see whence it came and whither it was going. There is nothing more natural than for an ardent, chaste heart to love two sisters at one and the same time, or mother and daughter. Christophe would have loved the woman of his love through all her descendants, just as in her he loved the stock of which she came. Her every smile, her every tear, every line in her face, were they not living beings, the memories of a life which was before her eyes opened to the light, the forerunners of a life which was to come, when her eyes should be forever closed?
The little boy, Lionello, was nine. He was much handsomer than his sister, of a finer stock, too fine, worn out and bloodless, wherein he was like his father. He was intelligent, well-endowed with bad instincts, demonstrative, and dissembling. He had big blue eyes, long, girlish, fair hair, a pale complexion, a delicate chest, and was morbidly nervous, which last, being a born comedian and strangely skilled in discovering people’s weaknesses, he upon occasion turned to good account. Grazia was inclined to favor him, with the natural preference of a mother for her least healthy child—and also through the attraction which all kindly, good women feel for the sons who are neither well nor ill (for in them a part of their life which they have suppressed finds solace). In such attraction there is something of the memory of the husbands who have made them suffer, whom they loved even while they despised them, or the strange flora of the soul, which wax strong in the dark, humid hothouse of conscience.
In spite of Grazia’s care equally to bestow her tenderness upon her children, Aurora felt the difference, and was a little hurt by it. Christophe divined her feeling, and she divined Christophe’s: they came together instinctively; while between Christophe and Lionello there was an antipathy which the boy covered up with exaggerated, lisping, charming ways—and Christophe thrust from him as a shameful feeling. He wrestled with himself and forced himself to cherish this other man’s child as though he were the child whom it would have been ineffably sweet for him to have had by the beloved. He would not allow himself to see Lionello’s bad nature or anything that could remind him of the “other man”: he set himself to find in him only Grazia. She, more clear-sighted, was under no illusions about her son, and she only loved him the more.
However, the disease which for years had been lying dormant in the boy broke out. Consumption supervened. Grazia resolved to go and shut herself up in a sanatorium in the Alps with Lionello, Christophe begged to be allowed to go with her. To avoid scandal she dissuaded him. He was hurt by the excessive importance which she attached to the conventions. She went away and left her daughter with Colette. It was not long before she began to feel terribly lonely among the sick people who talked of nothing but their illness, surrounded by the pitiless mountains rising above the rags and tatters of men. To escape from the depressing spectacle of the invalids with their spittoons spying upon each other and marking the progress of death over each one of them, she left the Palace hospital, and took a chalet, where she lived aloof with her own little invalid. Instead of improving Lionello’s condition, the high altitude aggravated it. His fever waxed greater. Grazia spent nights of anguish. Christophe knew it by his keen intuition, although she told him nothing: for she was growing more and more rigid in her pride; she longed for Christophe to be with her, but she had forbidden him to follow her, and she could not bring herself to confess: “I am too weak, I need you. …”
One evening, as she stood in the veranda of the chalet in the twilight hour, which is so bitter for hearts in agony, she saw … she thought she saw coming up from the station of the funicular
