human
I am so earthly, she went on.
gpt
I have prayed for a better nature, for an angelic heart, raised above all human desires, that I might simply love you, and wish for nothing else. I have exhausted myself with prayers and tears, trying thus to forget that you could not care for me. I have forbidden myself the great comfort of writing to you. I left Naples, and came here, far from you--from you who were, who are my light, my life. In vain, I have passed whole days here, praying to my mother and to the Madonna to free me from these terrible, heavy, earthly chains that bind me to that longing to be loved, and that are killing me. No use, no use! My prayers have not been answered. I have come away from them with a greater ardour, a more intense longing, than ever. I am a woman. I am a woman who doesn't know how to lift herself above womanly things, who, womanlike, longs to be loved, and who will never, never be consoled for the love she cannot have.
human
And what do you wish me to do, Anna?
gpt
Nothing.
human
Nothing?
gpt
There is nothing to be done. All is ended; all is over. Or, rather, nothing has ever been begun.
human
Anna, I assure you, it grieves me to see you suffer.
gpt
Thank you. But what can you do for me? It is all due to my own folly. I admit that I am unbalanced, extravagant. I know it. I am paying dearly for my folly; ah, the expiation is hard. It is all due to my one mistake, my one fault. Everybody is very kind to me, more than kind. But I have sinned, and I must expiate my sin.
human
But how is it all to end?
gpt
Do you know what the simplest solution would be?
human
What?
gpt
My death. Ah, to rest! to rest for ever, under the earth, in a dark grave!
human
Don't say that. People don't die of love.
gpt
Yes that is true. There is indeed no recognised disease called _love_. Neither ancient nor modern doctors are acquainted with it; they have never discovered it in making their autopsies. But love is such a subtle deceiver! It is at the bottom of all mortal illnesses. It is at the bottom of those wasting declines from which people suffer for years, people who have loved too much, who have not been loved enough. It is in those maladies of the heart, where the heart bursts with emotion or dries up with despair. It is in those long anæmias which destroy the body fibre by fibre, sapping its energies. It is in that nervousness which makes people shiver with cold and burn with insupportable heat. Oh, no one dies suddenly of love. We die slowly, slowly, of troubles that have so many names, but are really all just this--that we can endure to love no longer, and that we are not loved. Who will ever know the right name of the illness from which I shall die? The doctor will write a scientific word on paper, to account for my death to you, to Laura, to Stella. But you know, you at least, that I shall die because you do not love me.
human
Calm yourself, Anna.
gpt
I am calm. I have no longer the shadow of a hope. But I am calm, believe me. I have to tell you these things because they well up from my soul of their own accord. I am an absolutely desperate woman, but I am calm, I shall always be calm. Don't answer me. Everything that you can say I have already said to myself. All is ended. Why should I not be calm?
human
But, if you no longer hope for anything, then you have hoped for something. For what?
gpt
Oh, heavens! she cried.
human
That you should ask me that!
gpt
Tell me, Anna. You see that I ask it with sympathy, with lively sympathy.
human
But you must have forgotten what love is like, if you ask me to tell you what its hopes are, she exclaimed.
gpt
One hopes for everything when one loves. From the moment when I first trembled at the sound of your voice, from the moment when first the touch of your hand on mine thrilled me with delight, from the moment when first the words you spoke, whether they were hard or kind, scornful or friendly, seemed to engrave themselves upon my spirit, from the moment when I first realised that I was yours--yours for life, from that moment I have hoped that you might love me. From that moment it has been my dream that you might love me, with a love equal to my own, with a self-surrender equal to my own, with an absolute concentration of all your heart and soul, as I love you. That has been the sublime hope that my love has cherished.
human
It was an illusion,
gpt
I know it. Why do you remind me of it? Why are we talking of it? My soul had fallen into a torpor. But now you rouse me from it. My heart throbs as if you had reopened its wound. Don't tell me again that you don't care for me. I know it, I know it.
human
Anna, Anna, why do you torment yourself like this?
gpt
Ah, yes, I have known it a long while now. My great hope died little by little, day by day, as I saw how unlike me you were, how far from me; as I understood your contempt for me, your pity; as I realised that there were secrets in your life which I could not know; as I perceived that the differences of our ages and tastes had bred differences of feeling. In a hundred ways, voluntarily and involuntarily, you showed me that love did not exist for you, either that you would never love, or, at any rate, that you would never love me. I read my sentence written in letters of flame on my horizon. And yet, you see, in spite of the blows that fate had overwhelmed me with, I was not resigned. I told myself that a young and ardent woman could not thus miserably lose herself and her love. I thought that there was a way of saving herself which ought to be tried, a humble way, but one that I could pursue in patience. Shall I tell you my other dream?
human
Yes, tell me.
gpt
Well, I dreamed that you would let me unite my weak and stormy youth to your warm and serene maturity, in such a manner as to complete more profoundly and more intimately the work of protection that Francesco Acquaviva had confided to you at his death. You saved me at Pompeii. That seemed to sanction a supreme act of devotion on my part. My dream was simple and modest. I would love you with all my strength, but in silence; I would live with you, loving and following you like a fond shadow. Every hour, every minute, I would be able to offer you unspoken, but eloquent proofs of my love. I would be your satellite, circling round you, drinking in the light of my sun. I would watch my chance to do for you, to serve you, to make you happy. And in this way, never asking for gratitude, asking for nothing, I would spend my life, to its last day, blessing you, worshipping you, for your kindness in letting me be near you, in letting me love you. Ah, what a vision! It would be worthy of me, to make such a sacrifice of every personal desire; and worthy of you to lift a poor girl up to the happiness of seeing you every day, of sharing your home and your name.
human
You would like me to marry you?
gpt
Your wife, your mistress, your friend, your servant--whatever you wish will suffice for me. To be where you are, to live my life out near to you----
human
I am old,
gpt
I am young, but I am dying, Cesare.
human
Old age is a sad thing, Anna. It freezes one's blood and one's heart.
gpt
What does it matter? I don't ask you to love me. I only want to love you.
human
Will you never ask it of me?
gpt
Never.
human
Promise.
gpt
I promise.
human
By whatever you hold most sacred, will you promise it?
gpt
By Heaven that hears me, by the blessed souls of my mother and father who watch over me; by my affection for my sister Laura; by the holiest thing in my heart, that is, by my love for you, I promise it, I swear it, I will never ask you to love me.
human
You won't complain of me, and of my coldness?
gpt
I will never complain. I will regard you as my greatest benefactor.
human
You will let me live as I like?
gpt
You will be the master. You shall dispose of your life and of mine.
human
You will let me go and come, come and go, without finding fault, without recriminations?
gpt
When you go out I will await in patience the happy hour of your return.