The Intruder E-Book

Gabriele D’annunzio

• Herausgeber: Gabriele D?annunzio
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Should I go before the judge and say: "I have committed a crime. He would not be dead if I had not killed him. It is I, Tullio Hermil, who am his assassin. I premeditated that assassination in my house. I committed it with perfect lucidity of conscience, methodically, in all security. And I have gone on living in my house with my secret for a whole year, until to-day. To-day is the anniversary I deliver myself into your hands. Listen to me, judge me."
Can I go before the judge? Can I speak to him like that?
I cannot, and I will not. The justice of men does not reach as far as me. There is no tribunal on earth competent to judge me.
And yet I feel a desire to accuse myself, to confess. I feel a desire to reveal my secret to someone.
TO WHOM?

Leseprobe

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Table of contents

THE INTRUDER.[*]

THE INTRUDER.[*]

[*] In the original Italian, this novel is entitled "L'Innocente."

Should I go before the judge and say: "I have committed a crime. He would not be dead if I had not killed him. It is I, Tullio Hermil, who am his assassin. I premeditated that assassination in my house. I committed it with perfect lucidity of conscience, methodically, in all security. And I have gone on living in my house with my secret for a whole year, until to-day. To-day is the anniversary I deliver myself into your hands. Listen to me, judge me."Can I go before the judge? Can I speak to him like that?I cannot, and I will not. The justice of men does not reach as far as me. There is no tribunal on earth competent to judge me.And yet I feel a desire to accuse myself, to confess. I feel a desire to reveal my secret to someone.TO WHOM?My first recollection is as follows:It was in April. For several days, during the festivities of the Pentecost, Juliana and I and our two little daughters, Maria and Natalia, had been in the country, at my mother's house, a roomy old place known as the Badiola. It was the seventh year of our marriage.Three years had already slipped by since another Pentecost which, passed in that villa, white and isolated as a monastery, and embalmed with tufts of violets, had seemed to me a veritable festival of pardon, peace, and love. At that time Natalia, the second of my little girls, barely emerged from swaddling clothes like a flower from its envelope, was learning to walk; and Juliana was very good and indulgent with me, although there was a shade of melancholy in her smile. I had come back to her, repentant and submissive, after the first serious infidelity. My mother, who knew nothing of what had happened, had tied with her dear hands a sprig of olive at the head of our bed, and filled the little silver holy-water dish hanging on the wall.But what had not happened in three years! Between Juliana and myself the breach was henceforth definitive and irreparable. I had gone on wronging her repeatedly; I had insulted her in the most outrageous manner without regard for her feelings, without restraint, carried away by an appetite greedy for pleasure, by the vertigo of my passions, by the curiosity of my corrupted mind. I had had as mistresses two of her intimate friends; I had spent several weeks at Florence with Teresa Raffo, shamelessly; I had fought with the false Count Raffo a duel in which my unfortunate adversary covered himself with ridicule owing to certain bizarre circumstances. And nothing of all this had remained unknown to Juliana; and she had suffered, but with much pride, and almost without saying anything.We had only had on this subject a few very short interviews, at which I did not tell a single falsehood. It seemed to me that my sincerity would attenuate my fault in the eyes of this sweet and noble woman, who I knew had a superior mind.I knew also that she recognized my intellectual superiority and that she excused in part the disorders of my conduct by the specious theories that, more than once, I had aired in her presence, to the great detriment of the moral doctrines that the majority of men profess to believe in. The conviction that she would not judge me like any ordinary man lightened my conscience of the weight of my errors. "She, too, understands," I thought, "that, since I am different from others, since I have a different conception of life, I have the right to elude the duties that others would impose on me. I have the right to despise the opinions of others, and to lead with absolute sincerity the only life possible to my higher nature."