Part 13 (2/2)

”Father!” said I; ”Father!” and with a beseeching gesture I walked toward him. I heard him say: ”Good day, Vico mio!” And it was his voice, even more than it was his face.

Then I gave him my hand and he took it. He tried to press my hand and it seemed to cost him physical exertion.

I said, ”Have you forgiven me?”

It was a warm, glorious sensation; I saw that he tried his best and he looked at me mildly.

He murmured something, but I could not understand it or I have forgotten it. Thereupon, with the utmost effort to express myself clearly and with sincerest fervor, I asked: ”Can you give me advice? I seek for the best. Tell me what I must do, counsel me!”

But he said nothing.

Then an old question arose in me, unexpectedly and without my having resolved anything about it:

”Father,” I said, ”what is Christ?”

Then I heard him say:

”Ask the b.u.t.terfly.”

And I understood that he meant the b.u.t.terfly in the last dream with the blue decorated wings. I asked:

”Can you tell me nothing?”

Then he shook his head very gently and everything in my dream vanished; I saw only his head shaking ”no” - and with that I awoke. The day was dawning, and I lay thinking over everything and impressing it on my memory.

I felt absolutely certain that I had spoken with him.

I went to sleep again and dreamed, as frequently happens after a dream of this kind, that I related my dream, but without knowing that I was sleeping.

That morning I was extraordinarily refreshed and happy. And the whole day the sound of his voice was in my ears, with the words: ”Good day, Vico mio!” And repeatedly I tried to recall the exact tones.

I had this dream some time before the first appearance of Emmy, and had asked for advice, because at the time I was still in conflict with myself whether I should take Lucia for my wife.

XVII

”How is it that they wired you so late that your little friend had died, so many months after?” Lucia asked me, some days after we had left Lucerne.

”Because I, myself, had only then wired to inquire about her.”

Lucia looked at we silently and thoughtfully for a while, and then said with a kindly unsuspecting earnestness, full of delicate chast.i.ty:

”Oh, then I understand. Then she appeared to you in a vision, didn't she?”

I nodded and Lucia questioned me no further.

She had remained a strict Catholic and had retained much of the lavish popular superst.i.tion of my country. She attached importance to amulets, to trinkets blessed by the Pope, to the offering of candies to saints.

Regarding dreams she held a creed, elaborated in every detail, the accuracy of which she continued to maintain, although I never heard from her a single striking proof. To dream of flowers, of water, of money, of blood - it all meant something, but it was always equally vaguely a.s.serted, equally inaccurately observed, and with equally little foundation accounted proved. For me it was absolutely worthless and I carefully guarded against contradicting her in these things and making her a partner of my own experiences.

But it was strange and remarkable that a certain dream to which she herself attached no significance and whereof her dream-lore made no mention, always repeated itself in connection with a certain experience of mine in my night and day life.

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