THE COLLECTED EDITION OF THE WORKS OF W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM _W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM_ THE PAINTED VEIL LONDON WILLIAM HEINEMANN LTD ". . . _the painted veil which those who live call Life._" PREFACE This story was suggested by the lines of Dante that run as follows: _Deh, quando tu sarai tornato al mondo, E riposato della lunga via, Seguitò 'l terzo spirito al secondo, Ricorditi di me, che son la Pia: Siena mi fé; disfecemi Maremma: Salsi colui, che, 'nnanellata pria Disposando m'avea con la sua gemma._ "Pray, when you are returned to the world, and rested from the long journey," followed the third spirit on the second, "remember me, who am Pia. Siena made me, Maremma unmade me: this he knows who after betrothal espoused me with his ring." I was a student at St. Thomas's Hospital and the Easter vacation gave me six weeks to myself. With my clothes in a gladstone bag and twenty pounds in my pocket I set out. I was twenty. I went to Genoa and Pisa and then to Florence. Here I took a room in the via Laura, from the window of which I could see the lovely dome of the Cathedral, in the apartment of a widow lady, with a daughter, who offered me board and lodging (after a good deal of haggling) for four lire a day. I am afraid that she did not make a very good thing out of it, since my appetite was enormous, and I could devour a mountain of macaroni without inconvenience. She had a vineyard on the Tuscan hills, and my recollection is that the Chianti she got from it was the best I have ever drunk in Italy. Her daughter gave me an Italian lesson every day. She seemed to me then of mature age, but I do not suppose that she was more than twenty-six. She had had trouble. Her betrothed, an officer, had been killed in Abyssinia and she was consecrated to virginity. It was an understood thing that on her mother's death (a buxom, grey-haired, jovial lady who did not mean to die a day before the dear Lord saw fit) Ersilia would enter religion. But she looked forward to this with cheerfulness. She loved a good laugh. We were very gay at luncheon and dinner, but she took her lessons seriously, and when I was stupid or inattentive rapped me over the knuckles with a black ruler. I should have been indignant at being treated like a child if it had not reminded me of the old-fashioned pedagogues I had read of in books and so made me laugh.