Dear Prince,
I come to you with a request. Yesterday morning you were kind enough to offer me your help. At the time I felt able to refuse your friendly offer. But I hope that you will not find it terribly whimsical if today I turn to you to ask you to lend me what you were prepared to offer yesterday.
Lend me two hundred lire. I hope to be able to return them to you as soon as possible. Of course you need not keep it secret from Urania, but do not let Duco know about it. Yesterday I tried to sell my bracelets, but only sold one, for very little. The goldsmith was offering too low a price, but I was forced to part with one for forty lire, as I hadn’t a sou! And now I am appealing to your friendship and asking you to put the two hundred lire in an envelope and allowing me to collect them PERSONALLY from the concierge. Please accept my sheerest thanks in advance.
What an entertaining evening you provided us with yesterday. An hour or two of friendly chat over an excellent dinner does me the world of good. However happy I feel, our present situation with its money worries sometimes oppresses me, though I keep up appearances for Duco’s sake. Fretting about money disturbs his work and undermines his energy. That is why I talk to him as little as possible about it, and so ask you expressly to keep this small secret from him.
CORNÉLIE DE RETZ
When she went out later that morning she headed immediately for Palazzo Ruspoli.
“Has his Highness already left?”
The concierge bowed respectfully, familiarly.
“An hour ago, signora. His Excellency left behind with me a letter and a package, to give to you if you should call. Allow me to fetch them …”
He went and soon returned and handed Cornélie the package and letter. She went off down a side street of the Corso, opened the envelope and among a number of banknotes found a letter:
My Dear Madam,
I am so happy that you turned to me and I’m sure Urania will approve. I believe I am acting entirely in her spirit in sending you not two hundred, but a thousand lire, with the most humble request that you accept them and keep them for as long as you choose. Since I do not of course dare say: accept them as a gift. Still, I am bold enough to send you a souvenir. For when I read that you had felt obliged to sell your bracelet, the news pained me so terribly that without a second thought I dropped into Marchesini’s and as best I could chose a bracelet, which I beg you on my knees to accept. You must not refuse your friend this. Keep my bracelet secret from both Urania and Van der Staal.
Once again accept my deepest thanks for deigning to accept my help and rest assured that I greatly appreciate this token of your favour.
Your very humble servant,
VIRGILIO DI F B
Cornélie opened the package: in a velvet case she saw a bracelet in Etruscan style: a slim gold band set with pearls and sapphires.
XXXI
IN THE HEAT OF MAY the spacious studio, facing north, was cool, while the city outside was scorching. Duco and Cornélie did not go out before nightfall when they started thinking about going for dinner somewhere. Rome was quiet: Roman society was away, the tourists had gone. They saw no one and their days flowed past. He worked hard; Banners was finished: the two of them, arms around each other’s waists, her head on his shoulder, sat in front of it, with swelling, smiling pride in those final days before the watercolour was to be sent to the International Exhibition in Knightsbridge, London. There had never been such pure harmony in their feelings for each other, such a unity of like-mindedness as now when his great project was finished. He felt that he had never done such noble work, so sure and unhesitating, with such strength in himself and yet so tender, and he was grateful to her. He admitted to her that he would never have been able to work in this way if she had not shared his thoughts and feelings in the hours spent reflecting, the hours spent staring at the procession, the women’s theory that developed from the night that crumbled down in columns to the City of nothing but new whiteness and glowing glass buildings. His soul was at rest now that he had done such great and noble work. And both of them felt pride: pride in their lives, in their independence, in that work of lofty and distinguished art. In their happiness there was a large element of conceit and of looking down at people, the crowd, the world. Particularly for him. In her there was something quieter and more humble, though outwardly she showed herself as proud as he was. Her article on the Social Situation of the Divorced Woman had appeared as a pamphlet and had been a success. Her name was applauded among progressive women. But what she had done did not make her as proud as Duco’s art made her, and proud of him, and proud of their life and happiness.
As she read the reviews of her pamphlet in Dutch newspapers and magazines — often disagreeing with her, but never dismissive, and always acknowledging her authority to speak out on this matter — as she re-read her pamphlet, a doubt rose in her about her own conviction. She felt how difficult it is to be pure in fighting for a cause, the way those symbolic women, there in the watercolour, went into battle. She felt she had written fresh from her own suffering, her own experience, and solely from her own suffering and experience; she realised that she had generalised her own feeling about life and suffering, but without a deeper vision of the core of things; not out of pure conviction, but rather out of bitterness and anger; not from reflection, but from sad dreaming about her own fate: not out of love for women, but rather out of petty hate for society. And she remembered Duco’s original silence; his silent disapproval, his intuitive feeling that the source of her inspiration was not pure, but full of the bitterness and murkiness of her own experience. Now she respected that intuition; now she realised his true purity; now she felt him — because of his art — to be exalted, noble, without ulterior motives in his actions, creating beauty for its own sake. But she also felt that she had roused him to this. That was her pride and happiness and she loved him even more deeply. But she was humble about herself. She felt her womanly nature, which prevented her from going on fighting for the goal of Women. And again she thought of her upbringing, her husband, their short but unhappy married life … and she thought of the prince. She felt herself to be so many people, and would have liked to be one. She lurched from contradiction to contradiction and admitted to herself: she did not know herself. It created a dusky melancholy in the days of her happiness …
The prince … Had she not asked him with only apparent pride not to tell Urania that she was living with Duco, because she would tell her herself? In fact she was afraid of Urania’s opinion … She was annoyed by the dishonesties of petty everyday life: she called the intersection of her line and those of other, petty people: petty everyday life. Why when she came to such an intersection did she feel as if by instinct that honesty was not always sensible? Where were her pride and self-confidence — not apparent, but real — the moment she was afraid of Urania’s criticism, the moment she feared that the criticism could harm her in some way? And why did she not mention Virgilio’s bracelet to Duco? She did not tell him about the thousand lire, since she knew that money matters oppressed him, and that he did not want to borrow from the prince. Because if he got to know of this he would not be able to work with his usual energy and gusto and concentration … As it was he had worked untroubled and her silence had been for a noble aim. But why did she not mention Gilio’s bracelet …?