His heart had never known love and he had always regarded it as imagination and poetry. In his life there had never been anything but the natural urge of his manhood and the usual affair with a model. And his ideas about love wavered in too broad and too unreal an equilibrium, without transition or gradation, between a woman who would strip naked for a few lire and Laura; between the desire for a beautiful body and exultation over Beatrice, between flesh and dream. He had never thought of a meeting of soulmates; had never longed for affection, love in the full, burgeoning sense of the word and the concept. And he was not aware that he was now thinking, a great deal, about Cornélie de Retz. In the past he had thought for days, a week about a woman in a poem; never yet about a woman in real life.
And the fact that, though annoyed by some of her words, he nevertheless saw her image with its lily-like outline against his Byzantine triptychs, like a phantom in his dreamer’s solitude, almost frightened him, since it had deprived him of his peace of mind.
IX
IT WAS CHRISTMAS and on the occasion of this festival the Marchesa Belloni offered her guests a tree in the drawing-room, and afterwards a ball in the historical Guercino dining-room. Giving a ball and a tree was the custom with many hoteliers, and those pensioni where there was no ball or tree were well known and harshly criticised by foreigners for this break with tradition. Examples were known of very good pensioni, to which many travellers — especially ladies — would not go, because there was neither a tree nor a ball at Christmas.
The marchesa thought her tree expensive and her ball not cheap either and would happily have found some pretext for making both vanish as if by magic, but she did not dare: the reputation of her pensione rested precisely on its worldliness, its chic: dinner in the beautiful dining-room, where one dressed for the occasion, and a splendid party at Christmas. And it was fun to see how keen all those ladies were to receive on top of their bill for the winter a vulgar Christmas present and the opportunity to dance with free almond drink and a cake, a sandwich and a broth. The old, nodding head waiter, Giuseppe, looked down on these festivities with contempt: he remembered the galas of his archducal evenings and found the ball inferior and the tree a sorry sight; the limping doorman, Antonio, used to his relatively peaceful existence — meeting a guest or taking them to the station — calmly sorting the post a couple of times a day, and apart from that lazing around in and near his cubicle and the lift — hated the ball because of all the people invited by the guests — each of them was allowed three invitations — because of all the tiring fuss about carriages, when on top of that the guests managed to get quickly into their fiacre without paying him a tip. Consequently around Christmas-time, the mood between the marchesa and her two senior dignitaries was far from harmonious, and during those days a torrent of orders and curses beat down on the backs of the old chambermaids, who with their kettles of hot water in their trembling hands clambered laboriously up and down the stairs, and the youthful milksops of waiters who in their reckless keenness charged into each other and broke plates. And only now that the whole staff had been set to work was it apparent how old the chambermaids were, and how young all the waiters, and people found the marchesa’s thrifty policy of employing only old crocks and children “a shame and shocking”. The only muscular facchino, required to lug suitcases, cut an unexpected figure of masculine maturity and robustness. But the marchesa was hated mainly for the large number of her serving staff, realising that now, at and around Christmas, they had to give them all a tip. No, they had not known there were so many staff. Not that many were needed anyway! If the marchesa were to take on a few strapping young girls and menservants! And there were silent conspiracies in the corners of corridors and agreements on how much they would give as a tip: people were anxious not to spoil the staff, yet they were staying all winter, and so one lira was too little, and so people were hesitating between one lira twenty-five and one lira fifty. But when people worked out on their fingers that there were at least twenty-five staff and so one was spending close to forty lire, they found it alarming and organised subscription lists. Two lists circulated, one of one lira, and one of twelve lire per guest, for the whole staff. On the latter list some, who had come a month earlier or were intending to leave, signed for ten lire, and some for six lire. Five lire was generally considered too little, and when it became known that the scruffy aesthetic ladies wanted to pay five lire, they were regarded with the utmost contempt.
Emotions ran high and commotions were the order of the day. Christmas approached and people flocked to the cribs, constructed by painters in Palazzo Borghese — a panorama of Jerusalem; and the shepherds, the angels, the Three Kings, and Mary with the Christ child in the stall with ox and ass. In Ara Coeli they listened to the sermons of little girls and boys, who climbed in turn onto a platform and acted out the story of the birth: some shyly reciting a verse, prompted by an anxious mother; others, mainly girls, declaiming with Italian tragic pathos and rolling eyes like little actresses and ending with a religious moral. The common people and countless tourists listened to the sermons: a pleasant atmosphere prevailed in the church, where the shrill young children’s voices orated; there was loud laughter at gestures and effects; and the clergy walking around were wreathed in unctuous smiles, so sweet and touching was the scene. And in the chapel of the Santo Bambino the miraculous wooden idol was radiant with gold and jewels and the dense throng milled about in front of it.
All the guests at Belloni bought holly branches on Piazza de Spagna and decorated their rooms, and some, for example Baroness Von Rothkirch, set up a private Christmas tree in their own room. The evening before the great festival everyone went to admire these private trees; they walked in and out of rooms, and all the guests, however much they sometimes squabbled and intrigued against each other, wore benevolent seasonal smiles and received everyone. There was general agreement that the baroness had gone to great trouble and that her tree was magnificent, and that her bedroom had been nicely transformed into a boudoir; the beds draped to become sofas, the washbasins concealed, and the trees radiant with light and gold. And the baroness, in a rather sentimental mood this evening, threw open her doors to everyone, and even offered the two aesthetic ladies sweets, when the marchesa also appeared smiling at her door, her bosom wreathed in sky-blue satin, and wearing even larger pendant crystal earrings than usual. The room was full; there were the Van der Staals, Cornélie, Rudyard, Urania Hope, other guests walking in and out, with the result that one could not budge, and was crammed together on the draped beds of mother and daughter. The marchesa brought in at her side an unknown young person: small, slim, with a pale olive complexion, with vivaciously sparkling dark eyes, in tails, and with the nonchalant good manners of an indifferent and weary man of the world; distinguished, yet supercilious. And she proudly approached the baroness, who was constantly and charmingly dabbing her moist eyes and arrogantly introduced him: