How wretched we are, my friend, if we can’t be the judges of our own happiness. I wrote you a letter that today is a bitter irony, that I can’t read without crying. Listen: there we were, at the window, silent and happy, with our dreams. All of a sudden there was uproar: Vigilante was barking, and my father’s voice could be heard, as well as Gigi’s. I abruptly drew back and closed the window. I was trembling all over, as if I’d committed a great offence. Papa found me in bed. I was running a fever and it lasted all night. Giuditta didn’t come. I could hear her talking in the next room. She sounded annoyed and in a very bad mood. The next day I was so pale when I got up that papa wanted to send for the doctor. Later, mama called me to her room, and just looking at her face, I felt my knees buckle. She spoke at length about her responsibilities and mine, about my vocation, and the need imposed on me by my poverty to be ruled by that vocation. She spoke of the dangers that a young girl destined for the convent might encounter in the most straightforward relationships, and concluded by telling me that in future, when outsiders came to our house, even the Valentini, I was to stay shut in my room.
My God! how did I endure the torment of those reproofs. She seemed to take delight in needling me, in levelling at me veiled accusations of a thousand misdeeds, and she didn’t even make clear to me whether or not she’d discovered that Nino had left the dance to come and find me.
More than once, while she was talking, I felt that I was about to faint, but she didn’t notice my pallor, or my trembling, she didn’t notice that I had to clutch the back of a chair because I couldn’t stand upright any more. If she’d realized the state I was in, she would surely have taken pity on me and spared me this torture. Once I could be alone, I went to bed. My fever had returned. I felt ill, and I wished I were dead.
Giuditta didn’t even come then. She was cross with me. My God, what have I done to her? I had the sense of being like one of those criminals that everyone avoids and no one dares to go near … I felt ashamed before that window, opposite my bed, there, like some adamant accuser. I was hurt by this isolation and neglect. Towards evening I called for my sister – I needed to see her, to be comforted. Even my dear papa looked more serious than usual. Giuditta eventually came, but she seemed very cold. I threw myself into her arms, and I thought the tears that made me feel much better irritated her.
Now I’m alone. Everyone seems to be avoiding me, and I’m hateful to myself. They’re right, I’m very much at fault. Only God can pardon me – God whom I’ve sinned against by loving one of His creatures more than Him.
I sew, I sew, all day long at the window, with the curtains kept scrupulously closed, and I cry when I’m lucky enough not to be seen, and to be able to give vent to my tears. And my eyes sting … The sky is cloudy, the fields desolate, the rustling of the trees frightens me, the birds don’t sing any more … only occasionally I hear a plaintive nightingale somewhere. Yet I spend hours with my hands crossed in my lap, looking through the window-panes at those huge dark clouds racing westwards, at the treetops slowly swaying and shedding their dead leaves. Winter has arrived in the natural world, just as the winter of the soul has arrived. Carino has flown away, poor thing! I neglected him so much! He’s taken his chirpiness and his lively twittering somewhere else, because I’m living in such a gloomy atmosphere. Only Vigilante comes now and again to seek me out, hoping for a smile, expecting me to stroke him. He comes in very quietly, almost hesitantly, questioning me with his beautiful eyes, asking whether he’s bothering me. Then he stops in uncertainty, and wags his tail and licks his lips – all of which means to say, ‘I’m sorry to be so persistent.’ And he comes and lays his head on my lap to tell me that he still loves me, and he looks sad when he goes away, but he still wags his tail and stops at the door to say goodbye.
All day long I can hear the voices of the Valentini talking with my family in another room. Two or three times I’ve heard a voice that has wrung my heart – his voice.
Him! Him! Always him! Always there’s this thorn in my heart, this temptation in my mind, this fever in my blood. Always I see him, before my eyes, there at the window, with his face in his hands. Always in my ears is the sound of his voice, and on my hands the dampness of his tears … O God, my God!
Several times I’ve heard footsteps outside my window, and my heart felt as though it would burst from my breast. I have dizzy spells, faintings fits and bouts of delirium. I can’t cry, I can’t sleep, I can’t pray any more. O Marianna!
What will he think, not seeing me again? Will he know that I’ve been forbidden to see him? Will he perhaps curse me? Will he be angry? Will he forgive me? You see how far I’ve fallen? I pray God to make me forget him, and I feel maddened by the mere thought that he might forget me. Sometimes, at dawn, when I’m quite sure that no one might catch me by surprise, I very quietly open the window to look down into the valley, at the house where he lives, where he’s probably asleep at that hour, to see his roof, his window, the pot of jasmine, the vine that casts its shade over his door … Then I try to guess the spot where he’ll rest his elbows on the sill when he opens the window, the clod of earth that he’ll first set foot on, his line of vision when he first gazes out, seeking my window … for my heart tells me that he will first gaze at my window, and he will know that I was here, watching him sleep, thinking of him, always of him – in my dreams, before I fall asleep, when I first waken, and in my prayers. O Marianna! Pray for this poor sinner who is weaker than her sin. Send me the scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel that was blessed in Rome, and send me your little prayer book. I want to think of God. I want to pray to the Virgin, so that she will protect me, and hide me under her mantle of mercy, from the eyes of the world, from myself, my shame and my transgression, and from God’s punishment!