.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 43938
   :PG.Title: The Sorceress of Rome
   :PG.Released: 2013-10-11
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Nathan Gallizier
   :MARCREL.ill: The Kinneys
   :MARCREL.ill: P. Verburg
   :DC.Title: The Sorceress of Rome
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1907
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

=====================
THE SORCERESS OF ROME
=====================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: coverpage

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. figure:: images/img-cover.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Cover art

      Cover art

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: frontispiece

   .. _`"Was Stephania not overacting her part?"`:

   .. figure:: images/img-front.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Was Stephania not overacting her part?  (See page 311)

      Was Stephania not overacting her part?  (See page `311`_)

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: titlepage center white-space-pre-line

   .. figure:: images/img-title.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Title page

      Title page

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: xx-large

      THE
      SORCERESS
      OF ROME

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: medium

      BY

   .. class:: x-large

      *NATHAN GALLIZIER*

   .. class:: medium

      AUTHOR OF
      CASTEL DEL MONTE

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      PICTURES BY
      THE KINNEYS

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: small

      DECORATIONS BY P. VERBURG

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium

      THE PAGE COMPANY
      BOSTON
      PUBLISHERS

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: verso center small white-space-pre-line

   Copyright, 1907
   BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
   (INCORPORATED)

   .. vspace:: 2

   Entered at Stationers' Hall, London

   .. vspace:: 2

   All rights reserved

   .. vspace:: 2 

   First Impression, October, 1907
   Second Impression, February, 1920

   .. vspace:: 3

   THE COLONIAL PRESS
   C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.

   .. vspace:: 4

..

   |  Somewhere, in desolate wind-swept space,
   |  In Twilight-land, in no-man's land,
   |  Two hurrying shapes met face to face
   |    And bade each other stand.

   |  "And who are you?" cried one agape
   |  Shuddering in the gloaming light.
   |  "I know not," said the second shape,
   |    "I only died last night."

   |  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
   |

.. figure:: images/img-v.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 4

.. figure:: images/img-vi.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: music fragment

   music fragment

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   INTRODUCTION

.. vspace:: 2

The darkness of the tenth century is dissipated by no
contemporary historian.  Monkish chronicles alone shed a faint
light over the discordant chaos of the Italian world.  Rome
was no longer the capital of the earth.  The seat of empire had
shifted from the banks of the Tiber to the shores of the Bosporus,
and the seven hilled city of Constantine had assumed the
imperial purple of the ancient capital of the Cæsars.

Centuries of struggles with the hosts of foreign invaders
had in time lowered the state of civilization to such a degree,
that in point of literature and art the Rome of the tenth century
could not boast of a single name worthy of being transmitted
to posterity.  Even the memory of the men whose
achievements in the days of its glory constituted the pride and
boast of the Roman world, had become almost extinct.  A
great lethargy benumbed the Italian mind, engendered by the
reaction from the incessant feuds and broils among the petty
tyrants and oppressors of the country.

Together with the rest of the disintegrated states of Italy,
united by no common bond, Rome had become the prey of the
most terrible disorders.  Papacy had fallen into all manner of
corruption.  Its former halo and prestige had departed.  The
chair of St. Peter was sought for by bribery and controlling
influence, often by violence and assassination, and the city was
oppressed by factions and awed into submission by foreign
adventurers in command of bands collected from the outcasts of
all nations.

From the day of Christmas in the year 800, when at the hands
of Pope Leo III, Charlemagne received the imperial crown
of the West, the German Kings dated their right as rulers of
Rome and the Roman world, a right, feebly and ineffectually
contested by the emperors of the East.  It was the dream of
every German King immediately upon his election to cross the
Alps to receive at the hand of the Pope the crown of a country
which resisted and resented and never formally recognized a
superiority forced upon it.  Thus from time to time we find
Rome alternately in revolt against German rule, punished,
subdued and again imploring the aid of the detested foreigners
against the misrule of her own princes, to settle the disputes
arising from pontifical elections, or as protection against
foreign invaders and the violence of contending factions.

Plunged in an abyss from which she saw no other means of
extricating herself, harassed by the Hungarians in Lombardy
and the Saracens in Calabria, Italy had, in the year 961, called
on Otto the Great, King of Germany, for assistance.  Little
opposition was made to this powerful monarch.  Berengar II,
the reigning sovereign of Italy, submitted and agreed to hold
his kingdom of him as a fief.  Otto thereupon returned to
Germany, but new disturbances arising, he crossed the Alps
a second time, deposed Berengar and received at the hands
of Pope John XII the imperial dignity nearly suspended for
forty years.

Every ancient prejudice, every recollection whether of
Augustus or Charlemagne, had led the Romans to annex the
notion of sovereignty to the name of Roman emperor, nor were
Otto and his two immediate descendants inclined to waive
these supposed prerogatives, which they were well able to
enforce.  But no sooner had they returned to Germany than the
old habit of revolt seized the Italians, and especially the Romans
who were ill disposed to resume habits of obedience even to the
sovereign whose aid they had implored and received.  The
flames of rebellion swept again over the seven hilled city
during the rule of Otto II, whose aid the Romans had invoked
against the invading hordes of Islam, and the same republican
spirit broke out during the brief, but fantastic reign of his son,
the third Otto, directing itself in the latter instance chiefly
against the person of the youthful pontiff, Bruno of Carinthia,
the friend of the King, whose purity stands out in marked
contrast against the depravity of the monsters, who, to the number
of ten, had during the past five decades defiled the throne of
the Apostle.  Gregory V is said to have been assassinated during
Otto's absence from Rome.

The third rebellion of Johannes Crescentius, Senator of Rome,
enacted after the death of the pontiff and the election of
Sylvester II, forms but the prelude to the great drama whose final
curtain was to fall upon the doom of the third Otto, of whose
love for Stephania, the beautiful wife of Crescentius,
innumerable legends are told in the old monkish chronicles and
whose tragic death caused a lament to go throughout the world
of the Millennium.

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-ix.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center x-large bold

   CONTENTS

.. vspace:: 1

.. figure:: images/img-xi.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium bold

   BOOK THE FIRST

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent small

Chapter

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I.  `The Grand Chamberlain`_
II.  `The Pageant in the Navona`_
III.  `On the Palatine`_
IV.  `The Wanton Court of Theodora`_
V.  `The Wager`_
VI.  `John of the Catacombs`_
VII.  `The Vision of San Pancrazio`_
VIII.  `Castel San Angelo`_
IX.  `The Sermon in the Ghetto`_
X.  `The Sicilian Dancer`_
XI.  `Nilus of Gaëta`_
XII.  `Red Falernian`_
XIII.  `Dead Leaves`_
XIV.  `The Phantom at the Shrine`_
XV.  `The Death Watch`_
XVI.  `The Conclave`_

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium bold

BOOK THE SECOND

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I.  `The Meeting`_
II.  `The Queen of Night`_
III.  `The Elixir of Love`_
IV.  `The Secret of the Tomb`_
V.  `The Grottos of Egeria`_
VI.  `Beyond the Grave`_
VII.  `Ara Coeli`_
VIII.  `The Gothic Tower`_
IX.  `The Snare of the Fowler`_
X.  `The Temple of Neptune`_
XI.  `The Incantation`_
XII.  `The Hermitage of Nilus`_
XIII.  `The Lion of Basalt`_
XIV.  `The Last Tryst`_
XV.  `The Storm of Castel San Angelo`_
XVI.  `The Forfeit`_
XVII.  `Nemesis`_
XVIII.  `Vale Roma`_

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium bold

BOOK THE THIRD

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I.  `Paterno`_
II.  `Memories`_
III.  `The Consummation`_
IV.  `The Angel of the Agony`_
V.  `Return`_

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-xii.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 4

.. figure:: images/img-xiiia.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

`"Was Stephania not overacting her part?"`_ (*See page* `311`_) *Frontispiece*

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

`"Looking up from the task he was engaged in"`_

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

`"Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask"`_

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

`"The haunting memories of Stephania"`_

.. vspace:: 2

.. figure:: images/img-xiiib.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: decoration

   decoration

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   Book the First

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: xx-large center bold white-space-pre-line

   The Truce
   of God

.. vspace:: 4

..

   |    "As I came through the desert, thus it was
   |  As I came through the desert: All was black,
   |  In heaven no single star, on earth no track;
   |  A brooding hush without a stir or note,
   |  The air so thick it clotted in my throat.
   |  And thus for hours; then some enormous things
   |  Swooped past with savage cries and clanking wings;
   |        But I strode on austere;
   |        No hope could have no fear."
   |                                    —*James Thomson*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium bold

   BOOK THE FIRST

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was the hour of high noon
on a sultry October day in
Rome, in the year of our Lord
nine hundred and ninety-nine.
In the porphyry cabinet of
the imperial palace on Mount
Aventine, before a table covered
with parchments and scrolls,
there sat an individual, who
even in the most brilliant
assembly would have attracted general and immediate attention.

Judging from his appearance he had scarcely passed his
thirtieth year.  His bearing combined a marked grace and
intellectuality.  The finely shaped head poised on splendid
shoulders denoted power and intellect.  The pale, olive tints
of the face seemed to intensify the brilliancy of the black eyes
whose penetrating gaze revealed a singular compound of
mockery and cynicism.  The mouth, small but firm, was not
devoid of disdain, and even cruelty, and the smile of the thin,
compressed lips held something more subtle than any passion
that can be named.  His ears, hands and feet were of that
delicacy and smallness, which is held to denote aristocracy of
birth.  And there was in his manner that indescribable
combination of unobtrusive dignity and affected elegance which, in
all ages and countries, through all changes of manners and
customs has rendered the demeanour of its few chosen
possessors the instantaneous interpreter of their social rank.
He was dressed in a crimson tunic, fastened with a clasp of
mother-of-pearl.  Tight fitting hose of black and crimson
terminating in saffron-coloured shoes covered his legs, and a red
cap, pointed at the top and rolled up behind brought the head
into harmony with the rest of the costume.

Now and then, Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain, cast quick
glances at the sand-clock on the table before him; at last
with a gesture of mingled impatience and annoyance, he
pushed back the scrolls he had been examining, glanced again
at the clock, arose and strode to a window looking out upon
the western slopes of Mount Aventine.

The sun was slowly setting, and the light green silken curtains
hung motionless, in the almost level rays.  The stone houses of
the city and her colossal ruins glowed with a brightness almost
overpowering.  Not a ripple stirred the surface of the Tiber,
whose golden coils circled the base of Aventine; not a breath
of wind filled the sails of the deserted fishing boats, which
swung lazily at their moorings.  Over the distant Campagna
hung a hot, quivering mist and in the vineyards climbing the
Janiculan Mount not a leaf stirred upon its slender stem.
The ramparts of Castel San Angelo dreamed deserted in the
glow of the westering sun, and beyond the horizon of ancient
Portus, torpid, waveless and suffused in a flood of dazzling
brightness, the Tyrrhene Sea stretched toward the cloudless
horizon which closed the sun-bright view.

How long the Grand Chamberlain had thus abstractedly
gazed out upon the seven-hilled city gradually sinking into the
repose of evening, he was scarcely conscious, when a slight
knock, which seemed to come from the wall, caused him to
start.  After a brief interval it was repeated.  Benilo drew the
curtains closer, gave another glance at the sand-clock, nodded
to himself, then, approaching the opposite wall, decorated
with scenes from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, touched a hidden
spring.  Noiselessly a panel receded and, from the chasm thus
revealed, something like a shadow passed swiftly into the
cabinet, the panel closing noiselessly behind it.

Benilo had reseated himself at the table, and beckoned his
strange visitor to a chair, which he declined.  He was tall and
lean and wore the gray habit of the Penitent friars, the cowl
drawn over his face, concealing his features.

For some minutes neither the Grand Chamberlain nor his
visitor spoke.  At last Benilo broke the silence.

"You are the bearer of a message?"

The monk nodded.

"Tell me the worst!  Bad news is like decaying fruit.  It
becomes the more rotten with the keeping."

"The worst may be told quickly enough," said the monk
with a voice which caused the Chamberlain to start.

"The Saxon dynasty is resting on two eyes."

Benilo nodded.

"On two eyes," he repeated, straining his gaze towards the
monk.

"They will soon be closed for ever!"

The Chamberlain started from his seat.

"I do not understand."

"The fever does not temporize."

"'Tis the nature of the raven to croak.  Let thine
improvising damn thyself."

"Fate and the grave are relentless.  I am the messenger
of both!"

"King Otto dying?" the Chamberlain muttered to himself.
"Away from Rome,—the Fata Morgana of his dreams?"

A gesture of the monk interrupted the speaker.

"When a knight makes a vow to a lady, he does not thereby
become her betrothed.  She oftener marries another."

"Yet the Saint may work a miracle.  The Holy Father is
praying so earnestly for his deliverance, that Saint Michael
may fear for his prestige, did he not succour him."

"Your heart is tenderer than I had guessed."

"And joined by the prayers of such as you—"

The monk raised his hand.

"Nay,—I am not holy enough."

"I thought they were all saints at San Zeno."

"That is for Rome to say."

There was a brief pause during which Benilo gazed into
space.  The monk heard him mutter the word "Dying—dying"
as if therein lay condensed the essence of all his
life.

Reseating himself the Chamberlain seemed at last to remember
the presence of his visitor, who scrutinized him stealthily
from under his cowl.  Pointing to a parchment on the table
before him, he said dismissing the subject:

"You are reported as one in whom I may place full trust,
in whom I may implicitly confide.  I hate the black cassocks.
A monk and misfortune are seldom apart.  You see I dissemble
not."

The Grand Chamberlain's visitor nodded.

"A viper's friend must needs be a viper,—like to like!"

"'Tis not the devil's policy to show the cloven hoof."

"Yet an eavesdropper is best equipped for a prophet."

Again the Chamberlain started.

Straining his gaze towards the monk, who stood immobile
as a phantom, he said:

"It is reported that you are about to render a great service
to Rome."

The monk nodded.

"A country without a king is bad!  But to carry the matter
just a trifle farther,—to dream of Christendom without a
Pope—"

"You would not dare!" exclaimed Benilo with real or
feigned surprise, "you would not dare!  In the presence of
the whole Christian world?  Rome can do nothing without
the Sun,—nothing without the Pope.  Take away his
benediction: 'Urbi et Orbi'—What would prosper?"

"You are a poet and a Roman.  I am a monk and a native
of Aragon."

Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

"'Tis but the old question: Cui bono?  How many pontiffs
have, within the memory of man, defiled the chair of Saint
Peter?  Who are your reformers?  Libertines and gossipers in
the taverns of the Suburra, among fried fish, painted women,
and garlic; in prosperity proud, in adversity cowards, but
infamous ever!  The fifth Gregory alone soars so high above
the earth, he sees not the vermin, the mire beneath."

"Perhaps they wished to let the mire accumulate, to furnish
work for the iron broom of your tramontane saint!  Are not
his shoulders bent in holy contemplation, like the moon in the
first quarter?  Is he not shocked at the sight of misery and of
dishevelled despair?  His sensitive nerves would see them with
the hair dressed and bound like that of an antique statue."

"Ay!  And the feudal barons stick in his palate like the hook
in the mouth of the dog fish."

"We want no more martyrs!  The light of the glow-worm
continues to shine after the death of the insect."

"It was a conclave, that disposed of the usurper, John XVI."

"Ay!  And the bravo, when he discovered his error, paid for
three candles for the pontiff's soul, and the monk who officiated
at the last rites praised the departed so loudly, that the corpse
sat up and laughed.  And now he is immortal and possesses the
secret of eternal life," the monk concluded with downcast
eyes.

"Yet there is one I fear,—one who seems to enlist a special
providence in his cause."

"Gerbert of Cluny—"

"The monk of Aurillac!"

"They say that he is leagued with the devil; that in his
closet he has a brazen head, which answers all questions,
and through which the devil has assured him that he shall not
die, till he has said mass in Jerusalem."

"He is competent to convert a brimstone lake."

"Yet a true soldier seeks for weak spots in the armour."

"I am answered.  But the time and the place?"

"In the Ghetto at sunset."

"And the reward?"

"The halo of a Saint."

"What of your conscience's peace?"

"May not a man and his conscience, like ill-mated consorts,
be on something less than speaking terms?"

"They kill by the decalogue at San Zeno."

"Exitus acta probat!" returned the monk solemnly.

Benilo raised his hand warningly.

"Let him disappear quietly—ecclesiastically."

"What is gained by caution when one stands on an earthquake?"
asked the monk.

"You deem not, then, that Heaven might take so strong an
interest in Gerbert's affairs, as to send some of the blessed to
his deliverance?" queried Benilo suavely.

The Chamberlain's visitor betrayed impatience.

"If Heaven troubled itself much about what is done on earth,
the world's business would be well-nigh bankrupt."

"Ay!  And even the just may fall by his own justice!"
nodded Benilo.  "He should have made his indulgences dearer,
and harder to win.  Why takes he not the lesson from women?"

There was a brief pause, during which Benilo had arisen
and paced up and down the chamber.  His visitor remained
immobile, though his eyes followed Benilo's every step.

At last the Grand Chamberlain paused directly before him.

"How fares his Eminence of Orvieto?  He was ailing at
last reports," he asked.

"He died on his way to Rome, of a disease, sudden as the
plague.  He loved honey,—they will accuse the bees."

With a nod of satisfaction Benilo continued his perambulation.

"Tell me better news of our dearly beloved friend, Monsignor
Agnello, Archbishop of Cosenza, Clerk of the Chamber
and Vice-Legate of Viterbo."

"He was found dead in his bed, after eating a most hearty
supper," the monk spoke dolefully.

"Alas, poor man!  That was sudden.  But such holy men
are always ready for their call," replied the Grand Chamberlain
with downcast eyes.  "And what part has his Holiness
assigned me in his relics?"

"Some flax of his hair shirt, to coil a rope therewith,"
replied the monk.

"A princely benefaction!  But your commission for the
Father of Christendom?  For indeed I fear the vast treasures
he has heaped up, will hang like a leaden mountain on his
ascending soul."

"The Holy Father himself has summoned me to Rome!"  The
words seemed to sound from nowhere.  Yet they hovered
on the air like the knell of Fate.

The Grand-Chamberlain paused, stared and shuddered.

"And who knows," continued the monk after a pause,
"but that by some divine dispensation all the refractory
cardinals of the Sacred College may contract some incurable
disease?  Have you secured the names,—just to ascertain if
their households are well ordered?"

"The name of every cardinal and bishop in Rome at the
present hour."

"Give it to me."

A hand white as that of a corpse came from the monk's
ample parting sleeves in which Benilo placed a scroll, which he
had taken from the table.

The monk unrolled it.  After glancing down the list of names,
he said:

"The Cardinal of Gregorio."

The Chamberlain betokened his understanding with a nod.

"He claims kinship with the stars."

"The Cardinal of San Pietro in Montorio."

An evil smile curved Benilo's thin, white lips.

"An impostor, proved, confessed,—his conscience pawned
to a saint—"

"The Cardinal of San Onofrio,—he, who held you over the
baptismal fount," said the monk with a quick glance at the
Chamberlain.

"I had no hand in my own christening."

The monk nodded.

"The Cardinal of San Silvestro."

"He vowed he would join the barefoot friars, if he
recovered."

"He would have made a stalwart mendicant.  All the women
would have confessed to him."

"It is impossible to escape immortality," sighed Benilo.

"Obedience is holiness," replied the other.

After carefully reviewing the not inconsiderable list of names,
and placing a cross against some of them, the monk returned
the scroll to its owner.

When the Chamberlain spoke again, his voice trembled
strangely.

"What of the Golden Chalice?"

"Offerimus tibi Domine, Calicem Salutaris," the monk
quoted from the mass.  "What differentiates Sacramental
Wine from Malvasia?"

The Chamberlain pondered.

"Perhaps a degree or two of headiness?"

"Is it not rather a degree or two of holiness?" replied the
monk with a strange gleam in his eyes.

"The Season claims its mercies."

"Can one quench a furnace with a parable?"

"The Holy Host may work a miracle."

"It is the concern of angels to see their sentences enforced."

"Sic itur ad astra," said the Chamberlain devoutly.

And like an echo it came from his visitor's lips:

"Sic itur ad astra!"

"We understand each other," Benilo spoke after a pause,
arising from his chair.  "But remember," he added with a
look, which seemed to pierce his interlocutor through and
through.  "What thou dost, monk, thou dost.  If thy hand
fail, I know thee not!"

Stepping to the panel, Benilo was about to touch the secret
spring, when a thought arrested his hand.

"Thou hast seen my face," he turned to the monk.  "It is
but meet, that I see thine."

Without a word the monk removed his cowl.  As he did so,
Benilo stood rooted to the spot, as if a ghost had arisen from
the stone floor before him.

"Madman!" he gasped.  "You dare to show yourself in Rome?"

A strange light gleamed in the monk's eyes.

"I came in quest of the End of Time.  Do you doubt the
sincerity of my intent?"

For a moment they faced each other in silence, then the
monk turned and vanished without another word through the
panel which closed noiselessly behind him.

When Benilo found himself once more alone, all the
elasticity of temper and mind seemed to have deserted him.  All
the colour had faded from his face, all the light seemed to
have gone from his eyes.  Thus he remained for a space,
neither heeding his surroundings, nor the flight of time.  At
last he arose and, traversing the cabinet, made for a remote
door and passed out.  Whatever were his thoughts, no
outward sign betrayed them, as with the suave and impenetrable
mien of the born courtier, he entered the vast hall of audience.

A motley crowd of courtiers, officers, monks and foreign
envoys, whose variegated costumes formed a dazzling kaleidoscope
almost bewildering to the unaccustomed eye, met the
Chamberlain's gaze.

The greater number of those present were recruited from
the ranks of the Roman nobility, men whose spare, elegant
figures formed a striking contrast to the huge giants of the
German imperial guard.  The mongrel and craven descendants
of African, Syrian and Slavonian slaves, a strange jumble of
races and types, with all the visible signs of their heterogeneous
origin, stared with insolent wonder at the fair-haired
sons of the North, who took their orders from no man, save the
grandson of the mighty emperor Otto the Great, the vanquisher
of the Magyars on the tremendous field of the Lech.

A strange medley of palace officials, appointed after the
ruling code of the Eastern Empire, chamberlains, pages and
grooms, masters of the outer court, masters of the inner
court, masters of the robe, masters of the horse, seneschals,
high stewards and eunuchs, in their sweeping citron and
orange coloured gowns, lent a glowing enchantment to the
scene.

No glaring lights marred the pervading softness of the
atmosphere; all objects animate and inanimate seemed in
complete harmony with each other.  The entrance to the
great hall of audience was flanked with two great pillars of
Numidian marble, toned by time to hues of richest orange.
The hall itself was surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian
order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carvings; in niches
behind the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of
life.  Enormous pillars of rose-coloured marble supported the
roof, decorated in the fantastic Byzantine style; the floor,
composed of serpentine, porphyry and Numidian marble, was a
superb work of art.  In the centre a fountain threw up sprays
of perfumed water, its basin bordered with glistening shells
from India and the Archipelago.

Passing slowly down the hall, Benilo paused here and there
to exchange greetings with some individual among the
numerous groups, who were conversing in hushed whispers
on the event at this hour closest to their heart, the illness of
King Otto III, in the cloisters of Monte Gargano in Apulia
whither he had journeyed on a pilgrimage to the grottoes of
the Archangel.  Conflicting rumours were rife as to the course
of the illness, and each seemed fearful of venturing a surmise,
which might precipitate a crisis, fraught with direst
consequences.  The times and the Roman temper were uncertain.

The countenance of Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, Chancellor
of the Empire, reflected grave apprehension, which was
amply shared by his companions, Archbishop Willigis of Mentz,
and Luitprand, Archbishop of Cremona, the Patriarch of
Christendom, whose snow-white hair formed a striking
contrast to the dark and bronzed countenance of Count Benedict
of Palestrina, and Pandulph of Capua, Lord of Spoleto and
Beneventum, the lay-members of the group.  The conversation,
though held in whispered tones and inaudible to those moving
on the edge of their circle, was yet animated and it would seem,
that hope had but a small share in the surmises they ventured on
what the days to come held in store for the Saxon dynasty.

Without paying further heed to the motley throng, which
surged up and down the hall of audience, seemingly indifferent
to the whispered comments upon himself as a mere man of
pleasure, Benilo seated himself upon a couch at the western
extremity of the hall.  With the elaborate deliberation of a
man who disdains being hurried by anything whatsoever, he
took a piece of vellum from his doublet, on which from time
to time he traced a few words.  Assuming a reclining position,
he appeared absorbed in deep study, seemingly unheedful of his
surroundings.  Yet a close observer might have remarked that
the Chamberlain's gaze roamed unsteadily from one group to
another, until some chance passer-by deflected its course and
Benilo applied himself to his ostentatious task more studiously
than before.

"What does the courtier in the parrot-frock?"  Duke
Bernhardt of Saxony, stout, burly, asthmatic, addressed a tall,
sallow individual, in a rose-coloured frock, who strutted by his
side with the air of an inflated peacock.

John of Calabria gave a sigh.

"Alas!  He writes poetry and swears by the ancient Gods!"

"By the ancient Gods!" puffed the duke, "a commendable
habit!  As for his poetry,—the bees sometimes deposit their
honey in the mouth of a dead beast."

"And yet the Philistines solved not Samson's riddle," sighed
the Greek.

"Ay!  And the devil never ceases to cut wood for him, who
wishes to keep the kettle boiling," spouted the duke with an
irate look at his companion as they lost themselves among the
throngs.  Suddenly a marked hush, the abrupt cessation of the
former all-pervading hum, caused Benilo to glance toward the
entrance of the audience hall.  As he did so, the vellum rolled
from his nerveless hand upon the marble floor.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PAGEANT IN THE NAVONA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PAGEANT IN THE NAVONA

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The man, who had entered the
hall of audience with the air of
one to whom every nook and
corner was familiar, looked what
he was, a war-worn veteran,
bronzed and hardened by the
effect of many campaigns in
many climes.  Yet his robust
frame and his physique betrayed
but slight evidence of those
fatigues and hardships which had been the habits of his life.
Only a tinge of gray through the close-cropped hair, and now
and then the listless look of one who has grown weary with
campaigning, gave token that the prime had passed.  In
repose his look was stern and pensive, softening at moments
into an expression of intense melancholy and gloom.  A long
black mantle, revealing traces of prolonged and hasty travel,
covered his tall and stately form.  Beneath it gleamed a dark
suit of armour with the dull sheen of dust covered steel.  His
helmet, fashioned after a dragon with scales, wings, and fins of
wrought brass, resembled the headgear of the fabled Vikings.

This personage was Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen,
commander-in-chief of the German hosts, Great Warden of the
Eastern March, and chief adviser of the imperial youth, who
had been entrusted to his care by his mother, the glorious
Empress Theophano, the deeply lamented consort of Emperor
Otto II of Saracenic renown.

The door through which he entered revealed a company of
the imperial body-guard, stationed without, in gilt-mail tunics,
armlets and greaves, their weapon the formidable mace,
surmounted by a sickle-shaped halberd.

The deep hush, which had fallen upon the assembly on
Eckhardt's entrance into the hall, had its significance.  If the
Romans were inclined to look with favour upon the youthful
son of the Greek princess, in whose veins flowed the warm
blood of the South, and whose sunny disposition boded little
danger to their jealously guarded liberties, their sentiments
toward the Saxon general had little in common with their
evanescent enthusiasm over the "Wonder-child of the World."  But
if the Romans loved Eckhardt little, Eckhardt loved the
Romans less, and he made no effort to conceal his contempt for
the mongrel rabble, who, unable to govern themselves, chafed
at every form of government and restraint.

Perhaps in the countenance of none of those assembled in
the hall of audience was there reflected such intensity of
surprise on beholding the great leader as there was in the face of
the Grand Chamberlain, the olive tints of whose cheeks had
faded to ashen hues.  His trembling hands gripped the carved
back of the nearest chair, while from behind the powerful
frame of the Patricius Ziazo he gazed upon the countenance
of the Margrave.

The latter had approached the group of ecclesiastics, who
formed the nucleus round the venerable Archbishop of Cremona.

"What tidings from the king?" queried the patriarch
of Christendom.

Eckhardt knelt and kissed Luitprand's proffered hand.

"The Saint has worked a miracle.  Within a fortnight
Rome will once more greet the King of the Germans."

Sighs of relief and mutterings of gladness drowned the reply
of the archbishop.  He was seen to raise his hands in silent
prayer, and the deep hush returned anew.  Other groups
pushed eagerly forward to learn the import of the tidings.

The voice of Eckhardt now sounded curt and distinct, as he
addressed Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, Chancellor of the
Holy Roman Empire.

"If the God to whom you pray or your patron-saint, has
endowed you with the divine gift of persuasion,—use it now
to prompt your king to leave this accursed land and to return
beyond the Alps.  Roman wiles and Roman fever had well-nigh
claimed another victim.  My resignation lies in the hands
of the King.  My mission here is ended.  I place your sovereign
in your hands.  Keep him safe.  I return to the Eastern
March."

Exclamations of surprise, chiefly from the German element,
the Romans listening in sullen silence, rose round the
commander, like a sullen squall.

Eckhardt waved them back with uplifted arm.

"The king requires my services no longer.  He refuses to
listen to my counsel!  He despises his own country.  His sun
rises and sets in Rome.  I no longer have his ear.  His
counsellors are Romans!  The war is ended.  My sword has grown
rusty.  Let another bear the burden!—I return to the Eastern
March!"

During Eckhardt's speech, whose curtness barely cloaked
the grief of the commander over a step, which he deemed
irrevocable, the pallor in the features of the Grand Chamberlain
had deepened and a strange light shone in his eyes, as,
remote from the general's scrutiny, he watched and listened.

The German contingent, however, was not to be so easily
reconciled to Eckhardt's declaration.  Bernhardt, the Saxon
duke, Duke Burkhardt of Suabia, Count Tassilo of Bavaria
and Count Ludeger of the Palatinate united their protests
against a step so fatal in its remotest consequences, with the
result that the Margrave turned abruptly upon his heels,
strode from the hall of audience, and, passing through the
rank and file of the imperial guard, found himself on the crest
of Mount Aventine.

Evening was falling.  A solemn hush held enthralled the
pulses of the universe.  A dazzling glow of gold swept the
western heavens, and the chimes of the Angelus rang out from
untold cloisters and convents.  To southward, the towering
summits of Soracté glowed in sunset gold.  The dazzling
sheen reflected from the marble city on the Palatine proved
almost too blinding for Eckhardt's gaze, and with quick,
determined step, he began his descent towards the city.

At the base of the hill his progress suffered a sudden check.

A procession, weird, strange and terrible, hymning dirge-like
the words of some solemn chant, with the eternal refrain
"Miserere!  Miserere!" wound round the shores of the Tiber.
Four files of masked, black spectres, their heads engulfed in
black hoods, wooden crucifixes dangling from their necks,
carrying torches of resin, from which escaped floods of
reddish light, at times obscured by thick black smoke, marched
solemnly behind a monk, whose features could but vaguely
be discerned in the tawny glare of the funereal light.
No phantom procession at midnight could have inspired the
popular mind with a terror so great as did this brotherhood of
Death, more terrifying than the later monks and ascetics of
Zurbaran, who so paraded the frightfulness of nocturnal
visions in the pure, unobscured light of the sun.  In
numbers there were approximately four hundred.  Their superior,
a tall, gaunt and terrible monk, escorted by his acolytes,
held aloft a large black crucifix.  A fanatic of the iron
type, whose austerity had won him a wide ascendency, the
monk Cyprianus, his cowl drawn deeply over his face, strode
before the brotherhood.  The dense smoke of their torches,
hanging motionless in the still air of high noon, soon obscured
the monks from view, even before the last echoes of their
sombre chant had died away.

Without a fixed purpose in his mind, save that of observing
the temper of the populace, Eckhardt permitted himself to be
swept along with the crowds.  Idlers mostly and inquisitive
gapers, they constituted the characteristic Roman mob, always
swarming wherever there was anything to be seen, however
trifling the cause and insignificant the attraction.  They were
those who, not choosing to work, lived by brawls and sedition,
the descendants of that uproarious mob, which in the latter
days of the empire filled the upper rows in theatre and circus,
the descendants of the rabble, whose suffrage no Cæsar was
too proud to court in the struggle against the free and
freedom-loving remnants of the aristocracy.

But there were foreign elements which lent life and contrast
to the picture, elements which in equal number and profusion
no other city of the time, save Constantinople, could offer to
the bewildered gaze of the spectator.

Moors from the Western Caliphate of Cordova, Saracens
from the Sicilian conquest, mingled with white-robed
Bedouins from the desert; Greeks from the Morea, Byzantines,
Epirotes, Albanians, Jews, Danes, Poles, Slavs and Magyars,
Lombards, Burgundians and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans
and Venetians, heightened by the contrast of speech, manner
and garb the dazzling kaleidoscopic effect of the scene, while
the powerful Northern veterans of the German king thrust
their way with brutal contempt through the dregs of Romulus.

After having extricated himself from the motley throngs,
Eckhardt, continuing his course to southward and following
the Leonine wall, soon found himself in the barren solitudes of
Trastevere.  Here he slackened his pace, and, entering a
cypress avenue, seated himself on a marble bench, a relic of
antiquity, offering at once shade and repose.

Here he fell into meditation.

Three years had elapsed since the death of a young and beloved
wife, who had gone from him after a brief but mysterious
illness, baffling the skill of the physicians.  In the ensuing solitude
he had acquired grave habits of reflection.  This day he was in
a more thoughtful mood than common.  This day more than
ever, he felt the void which nothing on earth could fill.  What
availed his toils, his love of country, his endurance of hardships?
What was he the better now, in that he had marched and
watched and bled and twice conquered Rome for the empire?
What was this ambition, leading him up the steepest paths,
by the brinks of fatal precipices?  He scarcely knew now,
it was so long ago.  Had Ginevra lived, he would indeed have
prized honour and renown and a name, that was on all men's
lips.  And Eckhardt fell to thinking of the bright days, when
the very skies seemed fairer for her presence.  Time, who heals
all sorrows, had not alleviated his grief.  At his urgent request
he had been relieved of his Roman command.  The very name
of the city was odious to him since her death.  Appointed to
the office of Great Warden of the East and entrusted with the
defence of the Eastern border lands against the ever-recurring
invasions of Bulgarians and Magyars, the formidable name of
the conqueror of Rome had in time faded to a mere memory.

Not so in the camp.  Men said he bore a charmed existence,
and indeed his counsels showed the forethought and caution
of the skilled leader, while his personal conduct was remarkable
for a reckless disregard of danger.  It was observed, though,
that a deep and abiding melancholy had taken possession of
the once free and easy commander.  Only under the pressure
of imminent danger did he seem to brighten into his former
self.  At other times he was silent, preoccupied.  But the
Germans loved their leader.  They discussed him by their
watch-fires; they marvelled how one so ready on the field
was so sparing with the wine cup, how the general who could
stop to fill his helmet from the running stream under a storm
of arrows and javelins and drink composedly with a jest and a
smile could be so backward at the revels.

In the year 996, Crescentius, the Senator of Rome raised the
standards of revolt, expelled Gregory the Fifth and nominated
a rival pontiff in the infamous John the Sixteenth.  Otto, then
a mere youth of sixteen summers, had summoned his hosts to
the rescue of his friend, the rightful pontiff.  Reluctantly, and
only moved by the tears of the Empress Theophano, who
placed the child king in his care and charge, Eckhardt had
resumed the command of the invading army.  Twice had he
put down the rebellion of the Romans, reducing Crescentius
to the state of a vassal, and meting out terrible punishment
to the hapless usurper of the tiara.  After recrossing the Alps,
he had once more turned his attention to the bleak, sombre
forests of the North, when the imperial youth was seized with
an unconquerable desire to make Rome the capital of the
empire.  Neither prayers nor persuasions, neither the threats
of the Saxon dukes nor the protests of the electors could shake
Otto's indomitable will.  Eckhardt was again recalled from the
wilds of Poland to lead the German host across the Alps.

Meanwhile increasing rumours of the impending End of Time
began to upheave and disturb the minds.  A mystical trend of
thought pervaded the world, and as the Millennium drew
nearer and nearer pilgrims of all ages and all stages began to
journey Rome-ward, to obtain forgiveness for their sins, and
to die within the pale of the Church.  At first he resisted the
strange malady of the age, which slowly but irresistibly
attacked every order of society.  But its morbid influences,
seconded by the memory of his past happiness, revived during
his last journey to Rome, at last threw Eckhardt headlong into
the dark waves of monasticism.

During the present, to his mind, utterly purposeless
expedition, it had seemed to Eckhardt that there was no other
salvation for the loneliness in his heart, save that which
beamed from the dismal gloom of the cloister.  At other times
a mighty terror of the great lonesomeness of monastic life
seized him.  The pulses of life began to throb strangely, surging
as a great wave to his heart and threatening to precipitate him
anew into the shifting scenes of the world.  Yet neither mood
endured.

Ginevra's image had engraved itself upon his heart in lines
deep as those which the sculptors trace on ivory with tools
reddened with fire.  Vainly had he endeavoured to cloud its
memory by occupying his mind with matters of state, for the
love he felt for her, dead in her grave, inspired him with secret
terror.  Blindly he was groping through the labyrinth for a
clue—It is hard to say: "Thy will be done."

Passing over the sharp, sudden stroke, so numbing to his
senses at the time, that a long interval had to elapse, ere he
woke to its full agony; passing over the subsequent days of
yearning, the nights of vain regret, the desolation which had
laid waste his life,—Eckhardt pondered over the future.
There was something ever wanting even to complete the dull
torpor of that resignation, which philosophy inculcates and
common sense enjoins.  In vain he looked about for something
on which to lean, for something which would lighten his
existence.  The future was cold and gray, and with spectral
fingers the memories of the past seemed to point down the dull
and cheerless way.  He had lost himself in the labyrinth of life,
since her guiding hand had left him, and now his soul was
racked by conflicting emotions; the desire for the peace of a
recluse, and the longing for such a life of action, as should
temporarily drown the voices of anguish in his heart.

When he arose Rome was bathed in the crimson after glow
of departing day.  The Tiber presented an aspect of peculiar
tranquillity.  Hundreds of boats with many-coloured sails and
fantastically decorated prows stretched along the banks.
Barges decorated with streamers and flags were drawn up
along the quays and wharfs.  The massive gray ramparts of
Castel San Angelo glowed in the rich colours of sunset, and high
in the azure hung motionless the great standard, with the marble
horses and the flaming torch.

Retracing his steps, Eckhardt soon found himself in the
heart of Rome.  An almost endless stream of people, recruiting
themselves from all clans and classes, flowed steadily through
the ancient Via Sacra.  Equally dense crowds enlivened the
Appian Way and the adjoining thoroughfares, leading to the
Forum.  In the Navona, then enjoying the distinction of the
fashionable promenade of the Roman nobility, the throngs
were densest and a vast array of vehicles from the two-wheeled
chariot to the Byzantine lectica thronged the aristocratic
thoroughfare.  Seemingly interminable processions divided
the multitudes, and the sombre and funereal chants of pilgrims
and penitents resounded on every side.

Pressing onward step for step, Eckhardt reached the arch of
Titus; thence, leaving the fountain of Meta Sudans, and the
vast ruins of the Flavian Amphitheatre to the right, he turned
into the street leading to the Caelimontana Gate, known at this
date by the name of Via di San Giovanni in Laterano.  Here
the human congestion was somewhat relieved.  Some patrician
chariots dashed up and down the broad causeway; graceful
riders galloped along the gravelled road, while a motley crowd
of pedestrians loitered leisurely along the sidewalks.  Here a
group of young nobles thronged round the chariot of some
woman of rank; there, a grave, morose-looking scribe, an
advocate or notary in the cloister-like habit of his profession,
pushed his way through the crowd.

While slowly and aimlessly Eckhardt pursued his way
through the shifting crowds, a sudden shout arose in the
Navona.  After a brief interval it was repeated, and soon a
strange procession came into sight, which, as the German
leader perceived, had caused the acclamation on the part of
the people.  In order to avoid the unwelcome stare of the
Roman rabble, Eckhardt lowered his vizor, choosing his point
of observation upon some crumbled fragment of antiquity,
whence he might not only view the approaching pageant, but
at the same time survey his surroundings.  On one side were
the thronged and thickly built piles of the ancient city.  On the
opposite towered the Janiculan hill with its solitary palaces and
immense gardens.  The westering sun illumined the distant
magnificence of the Vatican and suffered the gaze to expand
even to the remote swell of the Apennines.

The procession, which slowly wound its way towards the
point where Eckhardt had taken his station, consisted of some
twelve chariots, drawn by snow-white steeds, which chafed
at the bit, reared on their haunches, and otherwise betrayed
their reluctance to obey the hands which gripped the rein—the
hands of giant Africans in gaudy, fantastic livery.
The inmates of these chariots consisted of groups of young
women in the flower of beauty and youth, whose scant airy
garments gave them the appearance of wood-nymphs, playing
on quaintly shaped lyres.  While renewed shouts of applause
greeted the procession of the New Vestals, as they styled
themselves in defiance of the trade they plied, and the gaze of the
thousands was riveted upon them,—a new commotion arose
in the Navona.  A shout of terror went up, the crowds swayed
backward, spread out and then were seen to scatter on both
sides, revealing a chariot, harnessed to a couple of fiery Berber
steeds, which, having taken fright, refused to obey the driver's
grip and dashed down the populous thoroughfare.  With
every moment the speed of the frightened animals increased,
and no hand was stretched forth from all those thousands to
check their mad career.  The driver, a Nubian in fantastic
livery, had in the frantic effort to stop their onward rush, been
thrown from his seat, striking his head against a curb-stone,
where he lay dazed.  Here some were fleeing, others stood
gaping on the steps of houses.  Still others, with a cry of
warning followed in the wake of the fleeting steeds.  Adding to the
dismay of the lonely occupant of the chariot, a woman,
magnificently arrayed in a transparent garb of black gossamer-web,
embroidered with silver stars, the reins were dragging on the
ground.  Certain death seemed to stare her in the face.  Though
apprehensive of immediate destruction she disdained to appeal
for assistance, courting death rather than owe her life to
the despised mongrel-rabble of Rome.  Despite the terrific
speed of the animals she managed to retain over her face the
veil of black gauze, which completely enshrouded her, though
it revealed rather than concealed the magnificent lines of her
body.  Eckhardt fixed his straining gaze upon the chariot, as it
approached, but the sun, whose flaming disk just then touched
the horizon, blinded him to a degree which made it impossible
for him to discern the features of a face supremely fair.

For a moment it seemed as if the frightened steeds were
about to dash into an adjoining thoroughfare.

Breathless and spellbound the thousands stared, yet there
was none to risk his life in the hazardous effort of stopping the
blind onrush of the maddened steeds.  Suddenly they changed
their course towards the point where, hemmed in by the densely
congested throngs, Eckhardt stood.  Snatching the cloak from
his shoulders, the Margrave dashed through the living wall of
humanity and leaped fearlessly in the very path of the snorting,
onrushing steeds.  With a dexterous movement he flung the
dark cover over their heads, escaping instantaneous death only
by leaping quickly to one side.  Then dashing at the bits he
succeeded, alone and unaided, in stopping the terrified animals,
though dragged along for a considerable space.  A great shout
of applause went up from the throats of those who had not
moved a hand to prevent the impending disaster.  Unmindful
of this popular outburst, Eckhardt held the frightened steeds,
which trembled in every muscle and gave forth ominous snorts,
until the driver staggered along.  Half dazed from his
fall and bleeding profusely from a gash in the forehead, the
Nubian, almost frightened out of his wits, seized the lines and
resumed his seat.  The steeds, knowing the accustomed hand,
gradually quieted down.

At the moment, when Eckhardt turned, to gain a glimpse of
the occupant of the chariot, a shriek close by caused him to turn
his head.  The procession of the New Vestals had come to a
sudden stand-still, owing to the blocking of the thoroughfare,
through which the runaway steeds had dashed, the clearing
behind them having been quickly filled up with a human wall.
During this brief pause some individual, the heraldry of whose
armour denoted him a Roman baron, had pounced upon one of
the chariots and seized one of its scantily clad occupants.
The girl had uttered a shriek of dismay and was struggling to
free herself from the ruffian's clutches, while her companions
vainly remonstrated with her assailant.  To hear the shriek,
to turn, to recognize the cause, and to pounce upon the Roman,
were acts almost of the same moment to Eckhardt.  Clutching
the girl's assailant by the throat, without knowing in whose
defence he was entering the contest, he thundered in accents
of such unmistakable authority, as to give him little doubt of
the alternative: "Let her go!"

With a terrible oath, Gian Vitelozzo released his victim,
who quickly remounted her chariot, and turned upon his assailant.

"Who in the name of the foul fiend are you, to interfere
with my pleasure?" he roared, almost beside himself with rage
as he perceived his prey escaping his grasp.

Through his closed visor, Eckhardt regarded the noblemen
with a contempt which the latter instinctively felt, for he paled
even ere his antagonist spoke.  Then approaching the baron,
Eckhardt whispered one word into his ear.  Vitelozzo's cheeks
turned to leaden hues and, trembling like a whipped cur, he
slunk away.  The crowds, upon witnessing the noble's dismay,
broke into loud cheers, some even went so far as to kiss the hem
of Eckhardt's mantle.

Shaking himself free of the despised rabble whose numbers
had been a hundred times sufficient to snatch his prey from
Vitelozzo and his entire clan, Eckhardt continued upon his
way, wondering whom he had saved from certain death, and
whom, as he thought, from dishonour.  The procession of
the New Vestals had disappeared in the haze of the distance.
Of the chariot and its mysterious inmate not a trace was to be
seen.  Without heeding the comments upon his bravery,
unconscious that two eyes had followed his every step, since he
left the imperial palace, Eckhardt slowly proceeded upon his
way, until he found himself at the base of the Palatine.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ON THE PALATINE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   ON THE PALATINE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The moon was rising over the
distant Alban hills, when
Eckhardt began his ascent.  Now and
then, he paused on a spot, which
offered a particularly striking
view of the city, reposing in the
fading light of day.  No sound
broke the solemn stillness, save
the tolling of convent-bells on
remote Aventine, or the sombre
chant of pilgrims before some secluded shrine.

Like the ghost of her former self, Rome seemed to stretch
interminably into the ever deepening purple haze.

Colossal watch-towers, four-cornered, massive, with twin-like
steeples and crenelated ramparts, dominated the view on
all sides.  Their shadows fell afar from one to another.  Here
and there, conspicuous among the houses, loomed up the
wondrous structures of old Rome, sometimes singly, sometimes
in thickly set groups.  Beyond the walls the aqueducts pursued
their long and sinuous path-ways through the Campagna.
The distant Alban hills began to shroud their undulating
summits in the slowly rising mists of evening.

What a stupendous desolation time had wrought!

As he slowly proceeded up the hill, Eckhardt beheld the
Palatine's enormous structures crumbled to ruin.  The high-spanned
vaulted arches and partitions still rested on their firm
foundations of Tophus stone, their ruined roofs supported by
massive pillars, broken, pierced and creviced.  Resplendent in
the last glow of departing day towered high the imperial
palaces of Augustus, Tiberius and Domitian.  The Septizonium
of Alexander Severus, still well preserved in its seven stories,
had been converted into a feudal stronghold by Alberic, chief
of the Optimates, while Caligula's great piles of stone rose high
and dominating in the evening air.  The Jovian temples were
still standing close to the famous tomb of Romulus, but the old
triumphal course was obstructed with filth.  In crescent shape
here and there a portico was visible, shadeless and long
deprived of roofing.  High towered the Coliseum's stately ruins;
Circus and Stadium were overgrown with bushes; of the baths
of Diocletian and Caracalla, once magnificent and imposing,
only ruins remained.  Crumbling, weatherbeaten masonry
confronted the eye on every turn.  Endless seemed the tangled
maze of crooked lanes, among which loomed a temple-gable
green with moss or a solitary column; an architrave resting
on marble columns, looked down upon the huts of poverty.
Nero's golden palace and the Basilica of Maxentius lay in
ruins; but in the ancient Forum temples were still standing,
their slender columns pointing to the skies with their ornate
Corinthian capitals.

The Rome of the Millennium was indeed but the phantom
of her own past.  On all sides the eye was struck with
inexorable decay.  Where once triumphal arches, proud, erect,
witnessed pomp and power, crumbling piles alone recorded
the memory of a glorious past.  Great fragments strewed the
virgin-soil of the Via Sacra from the splendid arch of
Constantine to the Capitol.  The Roman barons had turned the
old Roman buildings into castles.  The Palatine and the
adjoining Coelian hill were now lorded over by the powerful
house of the Pierleoni.  Crescentius, the Senator of Rome,
claimed Pompey's theatre and the Mausoleum of the Emperor
Hadrian, Castel San Angelo; in the waste fields of Campo
Marzio the Cavalli had seized the Mausoleum of Augustus;
the Aventine was claimed by the Romani and Stefaneschi; the
Stadium of Domitian by the Massimi.  In the Fora of Trajan
and Nerva the Conti had ensconced themselves; the theatre
of Marcellus was held by the Caetani and the Guidi ruled in
the tomb of Metellus.

There was an inexpressible charm in the sadness of this
desolation which chimed strangely with Eckhardt's own life,
now but a memory of its former self.

It was a wonderful night.  Scarce a breath of air stirred the
dying leaves.  The vault of the sky was unobscured, arching
deep-blue over the higher rising moon.  To southward the
beacon fires from the Tor di Vergera blazed like a red star low
down in the horizon.  Wrapt in deep thought, Eckhardt followed
the narrow road, winding his way through a wilderness of
broken arches and fallen porticoes, through a region studded
with convents, cloisters and the ruins of antiquity.  Gray mists
began to rise over housetops and vineyards, through which at
intervals the Tiber gleamed like a yellow serpent in the
moonlight.  Near the Ripetta long spirals of dark smoke curled up
to the azure night-sky and the moon cast a glory on the colossal
statue of the Archangel Michael, where it stood on the gloomy
keep of Castel San Angelo.  The rising night-wind rustled in
organ-tones among the cypress trees; the fountains murmured,
and in a silvery haze the moon hung over the slumbering city.

Slowly Eckhardt continued the ascent of the Palatine and
he had scarcely reached the summit, when out of the ruins
there rose a shadow, and he found himself face to face with
Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain.

"By St. Peter and St. Paul and all the saints I can
remember!" exclaimed the latter, "is it Eckhardt, the
Margrave, or his ghost?  But no matter which,—no man more
welcome!"

"I am but myself," replied Eckhardt, as he grasped the
proffered hand.

"Little did I hope to meet you here," Benilo continued,
regarding Eckhardt intently.  "I thought you far away
among the heathen Poles."

"I hate the Romans so heartily, that now and then I love
to remind them of my presence."

"Ay!  Like Timon of Athens, you would bequeath to them
your last fig-tree, that they may hang themselves from its
branches," Benilo replied with a smile.

"I should require a large orchard.  Is Rome at peace?"

"The burghers wrangle about goats' wool, the monks
gamble for a human soul, and the devil stands by and watches
the game," replied Benilo.

"Have you surprised any strange rumours during my
absence?" questioned Eckhardt guardedly.

"They say much or little, as you will," came the enigmatic
reply.  "I have heard your name from the lips of one, who
seldom speaks, save to ill purpose."

Eckhardt nodded with a grim smile, while he fixed his eyes
on his companion.  Slowly they lost themselves in the
wilderness of crumbling arches and porticoes.

At last Eckhardt spoke, a strange mixture of mirth and
irony in his tones.

"But your own presence among these ruins?  Has Benilo,
the Grand Chamberlain become a recluse, dwelling among
flitter mice and jack-daws?"

"I have not sipped from the fount of the mystics," Benilo
replied.  "But often at the hour of dusk I seek the solitudes of
the Palatine, which chime so strangely with my weird fancies.
Here I may roam at will and without restraint,—here I may
revel in the desolation, enlivened only now and then by the
shrill tones of a shepherd's pipe; here I may ramble
undisturbed among the ruins of antiquity, pondering over the
ancient greatness of Rome, pondering over the mighty that
have fallen.—I have just completed an Ode—all but the
final stanzas.  It is to greet Otto upon his return.  The
Archbishop of Cologne announced the welcome tidings of the
king's convalescence—truly, a miracle of the saint!"

Eckhardt had listened attentively, then he remarked drily:

"Let each man take his own wisdom and see whither it will
lead him.  Otto is still pursuing a mocking phantom under the
ruins of crumbled empires, but to find the bleached bones of
some long-forgotten Cæsar!  Truly, a worthy cause, in which
to brave the danger of Alpine snows and avalanches—and
the fever of the Maremmas."

"We both try to serve the King—each in his way," Benilo
replied, contritely.

Eckhardt extended his hand.

"You are a poet and a philosopher.  I am a soldier and a
German.—I have wronged you in thought—forgive and forget!"

Benilo readily placed his hand in that of his companion.
After a pause Eckhardt continued:

"My business in Rome touches neither emperor nor pope.
Once, I too, wooed the fair Siren Rome.  But the Siren proved a
Vampire.—Rome is a enamel house.—Her caress is Death."

There was a brief silence.

"'Tis three years since last we strode these walks,"
Eckhardt spoke again.  "What changes time has wrought!"

"Have the dead brought you too back to Rome?" queried
Benilo with averted gaze.

"Even so," Eckhardt replied, as he strode by Benilo's
side.  "The dead!  Soon I too shall exchange the garb of the
world for that of the cloister."

The Chamberlain stared aghast at his companion.

"You are not serious?" he stammered, with well-feigned
surprise.

Eckhardt nodded.

"The past is known to you!" he replied with a heavy sigh.
"Since she has gone from me to the dark beyond, I have
striven for peace and oblivion in every form,—in the turmoil
of battle, before the shrines of the Saints.—In vain!  I have
striven to tame this wild passion for one dead and in her grave.
But this love cannot be strangled as a lion is strangled, and the
skill of the mightiest athlete avails nothing in such a struggle.
The point of the arrow has remained in the wound.  Madness,
to wander for ever about a grave, to think eternally, fatefully
of one who cannot see you, cannot hear you, one who has left
earth in all the beauty and splendour of youth."

A pause ensued, during which neither spoke.

They walked for some time in silence among the gigantic
ruins of the Palatine.  Like an alabaster lamp the moon hung
in the luminous vault of heaven.  How peacefully fair beneath
the star-sprinkled violet sky was this deserted region, bordered
afar by tall, spectral cypress-trees whose dark outlines were
clearly defined against the mellow luminance of the ether.
At last Eckhardt and his companion seated themselves on the
ruins of a shattered portico, which had once formed the
entrance to a temple of Saturnus.

Each seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts, when
Eckhardt raised his head and gazed inquiringly at his
companion, who had likewise assumed a listening attitude.
Through the limpid air of the autumnal night, like faint
echoes from dream-land, there came softly vibrating harp-tones,
mingled with the clash of tinkling cymbals, borne aloft
from distant groves.  Faint ringing chimes, as of silver bells,
succeeded these broken harmonies, followed by another clash
of cymbals, stormily persistent, then dying away on the
evanescent breezes.

A strange, stifling sensation oppressed Eckhardt's heart, as
he listened to these bells.  They seemed to remind him of
things which had long passed out of his life, the peaceful
village-chimes in his far-away Saxon land, the brief dream of
the happy days now for ever gone.  But hark! had he not heard
these sounds before?  Had they not caressed his ears on the
night, when accompanying the king from Aix-la-Chapelle
to Merséburg, they passed the fateful Hoerselberg in Thuringia?

Eckhardt made the sign of the cross, but the question
rising to his lips was anticipated by Benilo, who pointed
towards a remote region of the Aventine, just as the peals of
the chiming bells, softened by distance into indistinct tremulous
harmonies, and the clarion clearness of the cymbals again
smote the stillness with their strangely luring clangour.

"Yonder lies the palace of Theodora," Benilo remarked
indifferently.

Eckhardt listened with a strange sensation.

He remembered the pageant he had witnessed in the Navona,
the pageant, from whose more minute contemplation he had
been drawn by the incident with Gian Vitelozzo.

"Who is the woman?" he questioned with some show of
interest.

"Regarding that matter there is considerable speculation,"
replied Benilo.

"Have you any theory of your own?"

The Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders.

"Heard you ever of a remote descendant of Marozia, still
living in Italy?"

"I thought they had all been strangled long ago."

"But if there were one, deem you, that the harlot-blood
which flowed in the veins of her mother and all the women of
her house would be sanctified by time, a damp convent-cell,
and a rosary?"

"I know nothing of a surviving limb of that lightning-blasted
trunk."

"Did not the direct line of Marozia end with John XI,
whom she succeeded in placing in the chair of St. Peter, ere
she herself was banished to a convent, where she died?"
questioned Benilo.

"So it is reported!  And this woman's name is?"

"Theodora!"

"You know her?"

Benilo met Eckhardt's gaze unflinchingly.

"I have visited her circle," he replied indifferently.

Eckhardt nodded.  He understood.

Dexterously changing the subject Benilo continued after
a pause.

"If you had but some heart-felt passion, to relieve your
melancholy; if you could but love somebody or something," he
spoke sympathetically.  "Truly, it was never destined for the
glorious career of Eckhardt to end behind the bleak walls of a
cloister."

Eckhardt bowed his head.

"Philosophy is useless.  Strange ailments require strange
cures."

For some time they gazed in silence into the moonlit night.
Around them towered colossal relics of ancient grandeur,
shattered walls, naked porticoes.  Wildernesses of broken
arches stretched interminably into the bluish haze, amidst
woods and wild vegetation, which had arisen as if to reassert
their ancient possessions of the deserted site.

At last Eckhardt spoke, hesitatingly at first, as one testing
his ground, gradually with firmer purpose, which seemed to
go straight to the heart of his companion.

"There is much about Ginevra's sudden death that puzzles
me, a mystery which I have in vain endeavoured to fathom.
The facts are known to you, I can pass them over, dark as
everything seems to me at this very moment.  So quickly, so
mysteriously did she pass out of my life, that I could not, would
not trust the testimony of my senses.  I left the house on the
Caelian hill on that fateful night, and though I felt as if my
eyes were bursting from my head, they did not shed a single
tear.  Where I went, or what I did, I could not tell.  I walked
about, as one benumbed, dazed, as it sometimes happens,
when the cleaving stroke of an iron mace falls upon one's
helmet, deafening and blinding.  This I remember—I passed
the bridge near the tower of Nona and, ascending the Borgo,
made for the gate of San Sebastian.  The monks of Della
Regola soon appeared, walking two by two, accompanied by
a train of acolytes, chanting the Miserere, and bearing the
coffin covered with a large pall of black velvet."

Eckhardt paused, drawing a deep breath.  Then he continued,
slowly:

"All this did not rouse me from the lethargy which had
benumbed my senses.  Only the one thought possessed me:
Since we had been severed in life, in death at least we could be
united.  We were both journeying to the same far-off land,
and the same tomb would give us repose together.  I followed
the monks with a triumphant but gloomy joy, feeling myself
already transported beyond the barriers of life.  Ponte Sisto
and Trastevere passed, we entered San Pancrazio."

There was another pause, Benilo listening intently.

"The body placed in the chapel, prior to the performance of
the last rites," Eckhardt continued, "I hurried away from the
place and wandered all night round the streets like a madman,
ready to seek my own destruction.  But the hand of Providence
withheld me from the crime.  I cannot describe what I suffered;
the agony, the despair, that wrung my inmost heart.  I could
no longer support a life that seemed blighted with the curse of
heaven, and I formed the wildest plans, the maddest resolutions
in my whirling brain.  For a strange, terrible thought had
suddenly come over me.  I could not believe that Ginevra was
dead.  And the longer I pondered, the greater became my
anxiety and fear.  Late in the night I returned to the chapel.
I knelt in the shadow of the vaulted arches, leaning against
the wall, while the monks chanted the Requiem.  I heard the
'Requiescat in Pace,' I saw them leave the chapel, but I
remained alone in the darkness, for there was no lamp save the
lamp of the Virgin.  At this moment a bell tolled.  The sacristan
who was making the rounds through the church, preparatory
to closing, passed by me.  He saw me, without recognizing
who I was, and said: 'I close the doors.'  'I shall remain,' I
answered.  He regarded me fixedly, then said: 'You are bold!
I will leave the door ajar—stay, if you will!'  And without
speaking another word he was out.  I paid little heed to him,
though his words had strangely stirred me.  What did he mean?
After a few moments my reasoning subsided, but my
determination grew with my fear.  Everything being still as the
grave, I approached the coffin, cold sweat upon my brow.
Removing the pall which covered it, I drew my dagger which
was strong and sharp, intending to force open the lid, when
suddenly I felt a stinging, benumbing pain on my head, as
from the blow of a cudgel.  How long I lay unconscious, I
know not.  When after some days I woke from the swoon, the
monks had raised a heavy stone over Ginevra's grave, during
the night of my delirium.  I left Rome, as I thought, for ever.
But strange misgivings began to haunt my sleep and my waking
hours.  Why had they not permitted me to see once more the
face I had so dearly loved, ere they fastened down for ever the
lid of the coffin?  'Tis true, they contended that the ravages of
the fever to which she had succumbed had precipitated the
decomposition of her body.  Still—the more I ponder over her
death, the more restless grows my soul.  Thus I returned to
Rome, even against my own wish and will.  I will not tarry
long.  Perchance some light may beam on the mystery which
has terrified my dreams, from a source, least expected, though
so far I have in vain sought for the monk who conducted the
last rites, and whose eyes saw what was denied to mine."

There was a dead silence, which lasted for a space, until it
grew almost painful in its intensity.  At last Benilo spoke.

"To return to the night of her interment.  Was there no
one near you, to dispel those dread phantoms which maddened
your brain?"

"I had suffered no one to remain.  I wished to be alone with
my grief."

"But whence the blow?"

"The masons had wrenched away an iron bar, in walling
up the old entrance.  Had the height been greater, I would
not be here to tell the tale."

Benilo drew a deep breath.  He was ghastly pale.

"But your purpose in Rome?"

"I will find the monk who conducted the last rites—I will
have speech with Nilus, the hermit.  If all else fails, the cloister
still remains."

"Let me entreat you not to hasten the irrevocable step.
Neither your king nor your country can spare their illustrious
leader."

"Otto has made his peace with Rome.  He has no further
need of me," Eckhardt replied with bitterness.  "But this I
promise.  I shall do nothing, until I have had speech with the
holy hermit of Gaëta.  Whatever he shall enjoin, thereby will
I abide.  I shall do nothing hastily, or ill-advised."

They continued for a time in silence, each wrapt in his own
thoughts.  Without one ray of light beaming on his course,
Eckhardt beheld a thousand vague and shadowy images
passing before his eyes.  That subterranean love, so long
crouched at his soul's stairway, had climbed a few steps
higher, guided by some errant gleam of hope.  The weight of
the impossible pressed no longer so heavily upon him, since he
had lightened his burden by the long withheld confession.
The vertigo of fatality had seized him.  By a succession of
irregular and terrible events he believed himself hurried
towards the end of his goal.  A mighty wave had lifted him up
and bore him onward.

"Whither?"

From the distance, borne aloft on the wings of the night-wind,
came faintly the chant of pilgrims from secluded shrines
on the roadway.  Eckhardt's mind was made up.  He would
seek Nilus, the hermit.  Perchance he would point out to him
the road to peace and set at rest the dread misgivings, which
tortured him beyond endurance.  This boon obtained, what
mattered all else?  The End of Time was nigh.  It would solve
all mysteries which the heart yearned to know.

And while Benilo seemed to muse in silence over the strange
tale which his companion had poured into his ear, the latter
weighed a resolve which he dared not even breathe, much less
confide to human ear.  Truly, the task required of Nilus was
great.

At last Eckhardt and Benilo parted for the night.  Eckhardt
went his way, pondering, and wondering what the morrow
would bring, and Benilo returned among the ruins of the
Palatine, where he remained seated for a time, staring up at
the starry night-sky, as if it contained the solution of all
that was dark and inscrutable in man's existence.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WANTON COURT OF THEODORA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WANTON COURT OF THEODORA

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

A strange restlessness had seized
the Chamberlain, after his
meeting with the German
commander.  The moon illumined
the desolate region with her
white beams, dividing the silent
avenues into double edged lines
of silvery white, and bluish
shadows.  The nocturnal day
with its subdued tints disguised
and mantled the desolation.  The mutilated columns,
the roofs, crumbled beneath the torrents and thunders
of centuries, were less conspicuous than when seen in the
clear, merciless light of the sun.  The lost parts were
completed by the half tints of shadows; only here and there
a brusque beam of light marked the spot, where a whole edifice
had crumbled away.  The silent genii of Night seemed to have
repaired the ancient city to some representation of fantastic
life.

As he hurried along the slopes of the hill, Benilo fancied at
times that he beheld vague forms, lurking in the shadows;
but they seemed to vanish the moment he approached.  Low
whisperings, an undefined hum, floated through the silence.
First he attributed the noises to a fluttering in his ears, to the
sighing of the night-wind or to the flight of some snake or
lizard through the nettles.  In nature all things live, even
death; all things make themselves heard, even silence.  Never
before had Benilo felt such an involuntary terror.  Once or
twice he precipitately changed his course, hurrying down
some narrow lane, between desolate looking rows of houses,
low and ill-favoured, whose inmates recruited themselves from
the lowest types of the mongrel population of Rome.

At the Agrippina below the bridge of Nero he paused and
gave a sigh of relief.  The phantoms seemed to have vanished.
No breath of life broke the stillness.  As on a second Olympus
the marble palaces of the Cæsars towered on the summit of the
Capitoline hill, glistening white in the ghostly moonlight.
Below, the Tiber sent his sluggish waves down toward Ostia,
rocking the fleet of numberless boats and barges which swung
lazily at their moorings.

Benilo found himself in a quarter of Rome which had been
abandoned for centuries.  Ruins of temples and porticoes
were strewn in the waste which he traversed.  Here at least
he could breathe more freely.  No one was likely to surprise
his presence in these solitudes.  The superstition of the age
prevented the Romans from frequenting the vale between
Mounts Aventine and Testaccio after dark, for it was believed
to be the abode of evil spirits.

As the Chamberlain made his way through the wilderness of
fallen columns, shattered porticoes, and tangles of myrrh and
acanthus, the faint clash of cymbals, like the echo of some
distant bacchanalia, fell upon his ear.  A strange fitful melody,
rising and falling with weird thrilling cadence, was borne upon
the perfumed breezes.

He had not advanced very far, when through an avenue of
tall spectral cypress trees he emerged upon a smooth and level
lawn, shut in by black groups of cedar, through the entwined
branches of which peeped the silver moon.

Traversing a broad marble terrace, garlanded with a golden
wealth of orange trees and odorous oleanders, Benilo approached
a lofty building, surrounded at some distance by a wall of the
height of half-grown palms.  A great gate stood ajar, which
appeared to be closely guarded.  Leaning against one of the
massive pillars which supported it, stood an African of giant
stature, in scarlet tunic and white turban, who, turning his
gleaming eyeballs on Benilo, nodded by way of salutation.
Entering the forbidden grounds, the Chamberlain found himself
in a spacious garden which he traversed with quick, elastic
step, as one familiar with the locality.

As Benilo advanced under the leafy branches, swaying in
melancholy relief against the blue-green sky, the sight of
thousands of coloured lamps hanging in long festoons from
tree to tree first caused him to start and to look about.  A
few moments later he was walking between quaintly clipped
laurel and yew-bushes, which bordered the great avenue
starred with semi-circular lights, where bronze and marble
statues held torches and braziers of flame.

Sounds of joy and merry-making fell upon his ear, causing
a frown, like a black shadow, to flit over his face, deepening
by stages into ill-repressed rage.  In whichever manner the
dark prophecies concerning the Millennium may have affected
the Romans and the world at large, it was quite evident they
disturbed not the merry circle assembled in the great hall
beyond.

At last Benilo found himself at the entrance of a vast
circular hall.  The picture which unfolded itself to his gaze was
like a fairy fantasy.  Gilded doors led in every direction into
vast corridors, ending in a peri-style supported by pillars.
These magnificent oval halls admitted neither the light of day
nor the season of the year.  The large central hall, at the
threshold of which Benilo stood, reviewing the spectacle
before him, had no windows.  Silver candelabra, perpetually
burning behind transparent curtains of sea-green gauze
diffused a jewel-like radiance.

And here, in the drowsy warmth, lounging on divans of
velvet, their feet sunk in costly Indian and Persian carpets,
drinking, gossiping, and occasionally bursting into fitful
snatches of song, revelled a company of distinguished men,
richly clad, representatives of the most exclusive Roman
society of the time.  They seemed bent upon no other purpose
save to enjoy the pleasure of the immediate hour.  Africans in
fantastic attire carried aloft flagons and goblets, whose
crystalline sheen reflected the crimson glow of the spicy
Cyprian.

Benilo's arrival had not been noticed.  In the shadow of
the entrance he viewed the brilliant picture with its changing
tints, its flash of colour, its glint of gold, the enchanting
women, who laughingly gossipped and chatted with their
guests, freed from the least restraint in dress or manner, thus
adding the last spark to the fire of the purple Chianti.  But as
he gazed round the circle, the shade of displeasure deepened
in Benilo's countenance.'

Bembo, the most renowned wit in the seven-hilled city,
had just recited one of his newest and most poignant epigrams,
sparing neither emperor nor pope, and had been rewarded
by the loud applause of his not too critical audience and a
smile from the Siren, who, in the absence of the hostess,
seemed to preside over that merry circle.  With her neck and
shoulders half veiled in transparent gauze, revealing rather
than concealing the soft, undulating lines of her supple body
and arms, her magnificent black hair knotted up at the back
of her head and wreathed with ivy, Roxané smiled radiantly
from the seat of honour, which she had usurped, the object
of mad desire of many a one present, of eager admiration
to all.  A number of attendants moved quickly and noiselessly
about the spacious hall, decorated with palms and other
tropical plants, while among the revellers the conversation
grew more lively every moment.

In the shadow of the great door Benilo paused and listened.

"Where is the Queen of the Groves?" Roffredo, a dissolute
youth, questioned his neighbour, who divided his attention
between the fair nymph by his side and the goblet which
trembled in his hands.

"Silence!" replied the personage to whom the young
noble had addressed himself, with a meaning glance.

Roffredo and the girl by his side glanced in the direction
indicated by the speaker.

"Benilo," replied the Patrician.  "Is he responsible for
Theodora's absence?"

Oliverotto uttered a coarse laugh.

Then he added with a meaning glance:

"I will enlighten you at some other time.  But is it true
that you have rescued some errant damsel from Vitelozzo's
clutches?  Why do you not gladden our eyes with so chaste a
morsel?"

Roffredo shrugged his shoulders.

"Who knows, whether it was the vulture's first visit to the
dove's nest?" he replied with a disgusting smile.  "'Tis not
a matter of much consequence."

Benilo heard the lie and the empty boast.  He hated the
prating youth for reasons of his own, but cared not to
interfere at this stage, unconscious that his presence had been
remarked.

"Is she fair?" questioned the girl by Roffredo's side.

"Some might call her so," replied the latter.

The girl pouted and raised the goblet to her lips.

"Reveal her name to us!" croaked Bembo, who, though
at some distance, had heard every word of the discourse.
"And I will forthwith dedicate to her five and twenty stanzas
on her virtue!"

"Who spoke the fatal word?" laughed Roxané, who
presided over the circle.  "What is amusing you so much,
you ancient wine-cask?"  She then turned to the poet, whose
rather prosaic circumference well justified the epithet.

"The old theme—women!" croaked Bembo good-humouredly.

"Forget it!" shouted Roffredo, draining his goblet.
"Rather than listen to your tirades, they would grasp the
red hot hand of the devil."

"Ah!  We live in a sorry age and it behooves us to think
of the end," Roxané sighed with a mock air of contrition,
which called forth a general outburst of mirth.

"You are the very one to ponder over the most convenient
mode of exit into the beyond," sneered the Lord of Gravina.

"What have we here?" rasped Bembo.  "Who dares to
speak of death in this assembly?"

"Nay, we would rather postpone the option till it finds us
face to face with that villainous concoction you served us,
to make us forget your more villainous poetry," shouted
Oliverotto, hobbling across the hall and slapping the poet on
the back.  "I knew not that Roman soil produced so vile
vintage!"

"'Twas Lacrymae Christi," remonstrated Bembo.  "Would
you have Ambrosia with every epigram on your vileness?"

"Nay, it was Satan's own brew," shrieked the baron, his
voice strident as that of a cat, which has swallowed a fish
bone.

And Oliverotto clinked his goblet and cast amorous glances
right and left out of small watery eyes.

Bembo regarded him contemptuously.

"By the Cross!  You are touched up and painted like a
wench!  Everything about you is false, even to your wit!
Beware, fair Roxané,—he is ogling you as a bullfrog does the
stars!"

At this stage an intermezzo interrupted the light, bantering
tone of conversation.  A curtain in the background parted.  A
bevy of black haired girls entered the hall, dressed in airy
gowns, which revealed every line, every motion of their bodies.
They encircled the guests in a mad whirl, inclining themselves
first to one, then to the other.  They were led by one, garbed
as Diana, with the crescent moon upon her forehead, her black
hair streaming about the whiteness of her statuesque body like
dark sea-waves caressing marble cliffs.  Taking advantage of
this stage of the entertainment Benilo crossed the vast hall
unnoticed and sat apart from the revellers in gloomy silence,
listening with ill-concealed annoyance to the shouts of laughter
and the clatter of irritating tongues.  The characteristic
wantonness of his features had at this moment given place to a look
of weariness and suffering, a seemingly unaccustomed expression;
it was a look of longing, the craving of a passion
unsatisfied, a hope beyond his hope.  Many envied him for his
fame and profligacy, others read in his face the stamp of
sullen cruelty, which vented itself wherever resistance seemed
useless; but there was none to sound his present mood.

Benilo had not been at his chosen spot very long, when some
one touched him on the shoulder.  Looking up, he found
himself face to face with an individual, wrapt in a long mantle,
the colour of which was a curious mixture of purple and brown.
His face was shaded by a conical hat, a quaint combination
of Byzantine helmet and Norse head-gear, being provided
with a straight, sloping brim, which made it impossible to
scrutinize his features.  This personage was Hezilo, a
wandering minstrel seemingly hailing from nowhere.  At least no
one had penetrated the mystery which enshrouded him.

"Are you alone insensible to the charms of these?"  And
Benilo's interlocutor pointed to the whirling groups.

"I was thinking of one who is absent," Benilo replied,
relapsing into his former listless attitude.

"Why not pluck the flowers that grow in your path, waiting
but your will and pleasure?"

Benilo clenched his hands till the nails were buried in the
flesh.

"Have you ever heard of an Eastern drug, which mirrors
Paradise before your senses?"

Hezilo shook his head.  "What of it?"

"He who becomes its victim is doomed irretrievably.
While under its baleful spell, he is happy.  Deprive him of
it and the horrors of hell are upon him.  No rest!  No peace!
And like the fiend addicted to the drug is the thrice accursed
wretch who loves Theodora."

Hezilo regarded the Chamberlain strangely.

"Benilo deploring the inconstancy of woman," he said
with noiseless laugh.  Then, beckoning to one of the attendants,
he took from the salver thus offered to him a goblet,
which he filled with the dark crimson wine.

"Drink and forget," he cried.  "You will find it even better
than your Eastern drug."

Benilo shook his head and pushed away the proffered wine.

"Your advice comes too late!"

For a moment neither spoke.  Benilo, busied with his own
thoughts, sat listening to the boisterous clamour of the revellers,
while the harper's gaze rested unseen upon him.

After a pause he broke the silence.

"How chanced it," he said, placing his hand affectionately
on the other's shoulder, "that Benilo, who has broken all
ten commandments and, withal, hearts untold, Benilo, who
could have at his feet every woman in Rome, became woman's
prey, her abject slave?  That he is grovelling in the dust, where
he might be lord and master?  That he whines and whimpers,
where he should command?"

Benilo turned fiercely upon his interlocutor.

"Who dares say that I whine and whimper and grovel at
her feet?  Fools all!  On a mountain pass the trip is easier
down than up!  Know you what it means to love a woman
with mad consuming passion, but to be cast aside for some
blatant ass, to catch a few crumbs of favour tossed in one's
face?  Men like that rhyming zebra Bembo, who sings of love,
which he has never felt."

"Still you have not answered my question," said the harper
with quiet persistence.  "Why are you the slave where you
should be the master?  Theodora is whimsical, heartless,
cruel; still she is a woman."

"She is a devil, a heartless beautiful devil who grinds the
hearts of men beneath her feet and laughs.  Sometimes she
taunts me till I could strangle her—ah!  But I placed myself
in the demon's power and having myself broken the compact
which bound me to her, body and soul—from the lord I
was, I have sunk to the slave I am,—you see, I speak free
from the heart, what little she has left of it."

The harper nodded.

"Why not leave Rome for a time?" he said.  "Your
absence might soften Theodora's heart.  Your sins, whatever
they were, will appear less glaring in the haze of the
distance."

Benilo looked up like an infuriated tiger.

"Has she appointed you my guardian?" he laughed harshly.

"I have had no words with her," replied the harper.  "But
one with eyes to see, cannot help but sound your ailment."

The Chamberlain relaxed.

"The drug is in the blood," he replied wearily.

"Then win her back, if you can," said the harper.

Benilo clenched his hands while he glared up at the other.
"It is a game between the devil and despair, and the devil
has the deal."

"A losing game for you, should either win."

Benilo nodded.

"I know it!  Yet one single word would make me master
where I am the slave."

"And you waver?"

"Silence!" growled Benilo.  "Tempt me no more!"

Their discourse at this point was rudely interrupted by
the clamour of the guests, bent upon silencing Bembo's exuberance,
whose tongue, like a ribbon in the wind, fluttered incessantly.
He bore himself with the airs of some orator of
antiquity, rolling his eyes until they showed the whites beneath,
and beating the air with his short, chubby arms.

"If Bembo is to be believed there is not in all Rome one
faithful wife nor one innocent girl," roared the lord of Bracciano,
a burly noble who was balancing a dainty dancer on his knee,
while she held his faun-like head encircled with her arms.

"Pah!" cried Guido da Fermo, a baron whose chief merit
consisted in infesting the roads in the Patrimony of St. Peter.
"There are some, but they are scarce, remarkably scarce!"

"Make your wants known at the street corners," exclaimed
Roffredo, taking the cue.  "And I wager our fair Queen would
be the first to claim the prize."

And the young Patrician whose face revealed traces of
grossest debauchery gazed defiantly round the hall, as if
challenging some one to take up the gauntlet, if he dared.

"Be careful!" whispered the girl Nelida, his companion.
"Benilo is looking at you!"

Roffredo laughed boisterously.

"Theodora's discarded lover?  Why should I muffle my
speech to please his ear?"

The girl laughed nervously.

"Because the tongue of a fool, when long enough, is a
rope to hang him by,—and he loves her still!"

"He loves her still," drawled the half-intoxicated Patrician,
turning his head toward the spot where Benilo sat listening
with flaming eyes.  "The impudence!"

And he staggered to his feet, holding aloft the goblet with
one hand, while the other encircled the body of the dancing
girl, who tried in vain to silence him.

"Fill your goblets," he shouted,—"fill your goblets
full—to the brim."

He glanced round the hall with insolent bravado, while
Benilo, who had not lost a word the other had spoken, leaned
forward, his thin lips straightening in a hard white line,
while his narrowing eyelids and his trembling hands attested
his pent up ire louder than words.

"A toast to the absent," shrieked Roffredo.  "A toast to
the most beautiful and the most virtuous woman in Rome, a
toast to—"

He paused for an instant, for a white-cheeked face close
to his, whispered:

"Stop!  On your life be silent!"

But Roffredo paid no heed.

He whirled the crystal goblet round his head, spilling some
of the contents over the girl, who shrank from it, as from
an evil omen.  The purple Chianti looked like blood on her
white skin.

"To Theodora!" shouted the drunken youth, as all except
Benilo raised their goblets to join in the toast.  "To Theodora,
the Wanton Queen, whose eyes are aglow with hell's hot
fire, whose scarlet lips would kiss the fiend, whose splendid
arms would embrace the devil, were he passing fair to look
upon!"

He came no further.

"May lightning strike you in your tracks!" Benilo howled,
insane with long suppressed rage, as he hurled a heavy
decanter he had snatched from the board, at the head of the
offender.

A shrill outcry, dying away into a moan, then into silence,
the crash of broken flagons, a lifeless form gliding from his
paralyzed arms to the floor, roused Roffredo to the reality of
what had happened.  The heavy decanter having missed its
aim, had struck the girl Nelida squarely in the forehead, and
the dark stream of blood which flowed over her eyes, her face,
her neck, down her arms, her airy gown, mingled with the purple
wine from the Patrician's spilled goblet.

It was a ghastly sight.  In an instant pandemonium reigned
in the hall.  The painted women shrieked and rushed for
safety behind columns and divans, leaving the men to
care for the dying girl, whom Bembo and Oliverotto tenderly
lifted to a divan, where the former bandaged the terribly
gashed head.

While he did so the poor dancing girl breathed her last.

The awful sight had effectually sobered Benilo.  For a
moment the drunken noble stared as one petrified on the deed he
had wrought, then the sharp blade of his poniard hissed from
its scabbard and with a half smothered outcry of fury he
flew at Roffredo's throat.

"This is your deed, you lying cur!" he snarled into the
trembling youth's face, whom the catastrophe had completely
unnerved and changed into a blanched coward.  "Retract
your lying boast or I'll send you to hell ere you can utter a
Pater-Noster!"

With the unbounded fury of a maniac who has broken
his chains and against whose rage no mortal strength may
cope, Benilo brought Roffredo down on the floor, where he
knelt on his breast, holding his throat in a vice-like grip,
which choked any words the prostrate youth might endeavour
to speak.

The terror of the deed, which had cast its pall over the
merry revellers, and the suddenness of the attack on Roffredo
had so completely paralyzed those present, that none came to
the rescue of the prostrate man, who vainly struggled to
extricate himself from his opponent's clutches.  His eyes ablaze
with rage, Benilo had set the point of his dagger against the
chest of his victim, whom now no power on earth seemed
able to save, as his cowardly associates made no effort to stay
the Chamberlain's hand.

He who had seen Benilo, in the palace on the Aventine,
composing an ode in the hall of audience, would have been
staggered at the complete transformation from a diplomatic
courtier to a fiend incarnate, his usually sedate features
distorted with mad passion and rage.  A half-choked outcry of
brute fear and despair failed to bring any one to the prostrate
boaster's aid, most of those present, including the women,
thronging round the dead girl Nelida, and Roffredo's fate seemed
sealed.  But at that moment, something happened to stay
Benilo's uplifted hand.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAGER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WAGER

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

At the moment when Benilo had
raised his poniard, to drive it
through his opponent's heart, the
diaphanous curtains dividing the
great hall from the rest of the
buildings were flung aside and
in the entrance there appeared
a woman like some fierce and
majestic fury, who at a
moment's glance took in the
whole scene and its import.  Her manner was that
of a queen, of a queen who was wont to bend all men to her
slightest caprice.  Every eye in the large hall was bent upon
her and every soul felt a thrill of wonder and admiration.
The ivory pallor of her face was enhanced by the dark gloss
of her raven hair.  The slumbrous starry eyes were meant to
hold the memories of a thousand love-thoughts.  A dim
suffused radiance seemed to hover like an aureole above her
dazzling white brow, crowning the perfect oval of her face,
adorned with a clustering wealth of raven-black tresses.
She was arrayed in a black, silk-embroidered diaphanous
robe, the most sumptuous the art of the Orient could supply.
Of softest texture, it revealed the matchless contours of her
form and arms, of her regal throat, heightening by the
contrast the ivory sheen of her satin-skin.

But those eyes which, when kindled with the fires of love,
might have set marble aflame, were blazing with the torches of
wrath, as looking round the hall, she darted a swift inquiring
glance at the chief offenders, one of whom could not have
spoken had he wished to, for Benilo was fairly strangling him.

The rest of the company had instinctively turned their faces
towards the Queen of the Groves, endeavouring at the same
time to hide the sight of the dead girl from her eyes by closely
surrounding the couch, with their backs to the victim.  But
their consternation as well as the very act betrayed them.
From the struggling men on the floor, Theodora's gaze turned
to the affrighted company and she half guessed the truth.
Advancing towards her guests, she pushed their unresisting
forms aside, raised the cover from the dead girl with the
bloody bandage over the still white face, bent over it quickly
to kiss the dark, silken hair, then she demanded an account of
the deed.  One of the women reported in brief and concise
terms what had happened before she arrived.  At the sight of
this flower, broken and destroyed, Theodora's anger seemed for
a moment to subside, like a trampled spark, before a great pity
that rose in her heart.  In an instant the whole company
rushed upon her with excited gestures and before the Babel of
jabbering tongues, each striving to tell his or her story in a
voice above the rest, the Fury returned.

Theodora stamped her foot and commanded silence.  At the
sight of the woman, Benilo's arms had fallen powerlessly by his
side and Roffredo, taking advantage of an unwatched moment,
had pushed the Chamberlain off and staggered to his feet.

"Whose deed is this?" Theodora demanded, holding aloft
the covering of the couch.

"It was my accursed luck!  The decanter was intended for
this lying cur, whose black heart I will wrench out of his
body!"

And Benilo pointed to the shrinking form of Roffredo.

"What had he done?"

"He had insulted you!"

"That proves his courage!" she replied with a withering
glance of contempt.

Then she beckoned to the attendants.

"Have the girl removed and summon the Greek—though
I fear it is too late."

There was a ring of regret in her tones.  It vanished as
quickly as it had come.

The body of Nelida, the dancing girl, was carried away
and the guests resumed their seats.  Roxané had reluctantly
abandoned her usurped place of honour.  A quick flash, a
silent challenge passed between the two women, as Theodora
took her accustomed seat.

"A glass of wine!" she commanded imperiously, and
Roffredo, reassured, rushed to the nearest attendant, took a
goblet from the salver and presented it to the Queen of the
Groves.

"Ah!  Thanks, Roffredo!  So it was you who insulted me
in my absence?" she said with an undertone of irony in
her voice, which had the rich sound of a deep-toned bell.

"I said you would embrace the devil, did he but appear
in presentable countenance!" Roffredo replied contritely,
but with a vicious side glance at Benilo.

An ominous smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.

"The risk would be slight, since I have kept company with
each of you," she replied.  "And our virtuous Benilo took
up the gauntlet?"

Her low voice was soft and purring, yet laden with the
poison sting of irony, as through half-closed lids she glanced
towards the Chamberlain, who sat apart in moody silence like
a spectre at the feast.

Benilo scented danger in her tone and answered cautiously:

"Only a coward will hear the woman he loves reviled with
impunity."

Theodora bowed with mock courtesy.

"If you wish to honour me with this confession, I care as
little for the one as the other.  From your temper I judge
some innocent dove had escaped your vulture's talons."

Benilo met the challenge in her smouldering look and
answered with assumed indifference:

"Your spies have misinformed you!  But I am in no mood
to constitute the target of your jests!"

"There is but one will which rules these halls," Theodora
flashed out.  "If obedience to its mandates is distasteful to
you, the gates are open—spread your pinions and fly away!"

She flung back her head and their eyes met.

Benilo turned away, uttering a terrible curse between his
clenched teeth.

There was a deep hush in the hall, as if the spirit of the
dead girl was haunting the guests.  The harps played a plaintive
melody, which might indeed have stolen from some hearth
of ashes, when stirred by the breath of its smouldering spark,
like phantom-memories from another world, that seemed to
call to Theodora's inner consciousness, each note a foot-step,
leading her away beyond the glint and glitter of the world
that surrounded her, to a garden of purity and peace in the
dim, long-forgotten past.  Theodora sat in a reverie, her
strange eyes fixed on nothingness, her red lips parted, disclosing
two rows of teeth, small, even, pearly, while her full, white
bosom rose and fell with quickened respiration.

"The Queen of the Groves is in a pensive mood to-night,"
sneered the Lord of Bracciano, who had been engaged in
mentally weighing her charms against those of Roxané.

Theodora sighed.

"I may well be pensive, for I have seen to-day, what I
had despaired of ever again beholding in Rome—can you
guess what it is?"

Shouts of laughter broke, a jarring discord, harshly upon
her speech.

"We are perishing with curiosity," shouted, as with one
voice, the debauched nobles and their feminine companions.

"In the name of pity, save our lives!" begged a girl nearest
to Theodora's seat.

"Can you guess?" the Queen of the Groves repeated
simply, as she gazed round the assembly.

All sorts of strange answers were hurled at the throne of
the Queen of the Groves.  She heeded them not.  Perhaps
she did not even hear them.

At last she raised her head.

Without commenting on the guesses of her guests, she said:

"I have seen in Rome to-day—a man!"

Benilo squirmed.  The rest of the guests laughed harshly
and Bembo, the Poet asked with a vapid grin:

"And is the sight so wondrous that the Queen of Love sits
dreaming among her admirers like a Sphinx in the African
desert?"

"Had he horns?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano.

"Or a cloven hoof?" cried Oliverotto.

"What was he like?" sneered a third.

Theodora turned upon her questioners, a dash of scorn in
her barbed reply.

"I speak of a man, not reptiles like you—you all!"

"Mercy, oh queen, mercy!" begged the apoplectic poet,
amid the noisy clamour of his jeering companions.  But
heedless of their jabbering tongues Theodora continued
earnestly:

"Not such men as the barons of Rome are pleased to call
themselves, cowardly, vicious,—beasts, who believe not in
God nor the devil, and whose aim in life is but to clothe their
filthy carcass in gaudy apparel and appease the cravings of
their lust and their greed!  I speak of a man, something the
meaning of which is as dark to you as the riddle of the Sphinx."

The company gazed at each other in mute bewilderment.

Theodora was indeed in a most singular mood.

"Are we not at the Court of Theodora?" shouted the Lord
of Bracciano, who was experiencing some inconvenience in
the feat of embracing with his short arms the two women
between whom he was seated.  "Or has some sudden magic
transported us to the hermitage of the mad monk, who
predicts the End of Time?"

"Nay," Benilo spoke up for the first time since Theodora's
rebuke had silenced him, "perhaps our beautiful Queen of
Love has in store for her guests just such a riddle as the one
the Sphinx proposed to the son of Iokasté—with but a slight
variation."

The illiterate high-born rabble of Rome did not catch the
drift of the Patrician's speech, but the pallor on Theodora's
cheeks deepened.

Roxané alone turned to the speaker.

"And the simile?" she asked in her sweet siren-voice,
tremulous with the desire to clash with her more beautiful
rival.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders, but he winced under
Theodora's deadly gaze.

"The simile?" he replied with a jarring laugh.  "It is this,
that incest and adultery are as old as the Athenian asses, that
never died, and that the Sphinx eventually drowned herself
in the Aegean Sea."

Theodora made no reply, but relapsed into her former state
of thoughtfulness.  As she turned from Benilo, her eyes met
those of Roxané, and again the two women flashed defiance
at each other.

Again the laughter of the revellers rose, louder than before.

"By the Cross," shouted the poet, "the Queen of Love will
take the veil."

"Has she chosen the convent, whose nuns she will cause
to be canonized by her exemplary life and glorious example,"
jeered Roxané.

"We shall sing a thousand Aves and buy tapers as
large as her unimpeached virtue!" cried another of the
women.

"I fear one nunnery is damned from chapel to refectory,"
growled Benilo, keeping his eyes on the floor, as if
fearful of meeting those he instinctively felt burning upon him.

"Silence!" cried Theodora at last, stamping her foot on
the floor, while a glow of hot resentment flushed her cheeks.
"Your merriment and clamour only draws the sharper line
between you and that other, of whom I spoke."

Roffredo looked up with a smile of indolence.

"And who is the demi-god?" he drawled lazily.

She measured him with undisguised scorn and contempt.

"The name!  The story!" bellowed several individuals,
raising their goblets and half spilling their contents in their
besotten mood.

In a strange voice, melodious as the sound of Æolian harps
when the night wind passes over their strings, amid profound
silence Theodora related to her assembled guests the incident
of the runaway steeds in which she had so prominently figured,
the chariot having been her own,—the occupant herself.
She omitted not a detail of the stranger's heroic deed, passing
from her own thrilling experience to Vitelozzo's assault upon
one of the New Vestals, and his discomfiture at the hand of him
who had saved her life.

"And while your Roman scum hissed and hooted and
raised not a finger in the girl's defence, her rescuer alone
braved Vitelozzo's fury—I saw him whisper something into
the ruffian's ear and the mighty lord skulked away like a
frightened cur.  By heaven, I have seen a man!" the Queen of the
Groves concluded ecstatically, disdaining to dwell on her own
rescue.

For a lingering moment there hovered silence on the
assembly.  Gradually it gave way to a flutter of questions.

"Who is he?" queried one.

"What is he like?" shouted another.

Theodora did not heed the questions.  Only her lovely face,
framed by hair dark as the darkest midnight, had grown a
shade more pale and pensive.

Suddenly she turned to the last questioner, a woman.

"What was he like?" she replied.  "Tall, and in the prime
of manhood; his face concealed by his vizor."

The woman sighed amorously.  The men nodded to each
other with meaning glances.  The danger of the convent
seemed passed.

Benilo, who during Theodora's narrative had proven an
ideal listener, of a sudden clenched his fist and gazed round
for the harper, who sat in a remote corner of the hall.

Another moment's musing, then the Chamberlain ground
his teeth together with the fierce determination to carry out
at all hazards, what he had resolved in his mind.  Theodora
herself was playing into his hands.

"Do you know this incomparable hero, this modern
Theseus?" he drawled out slowly and with deliberate
impudence, addressing the Queen of the Groves.

Theodora's gaze was sharp as steel.

"What is it to you?" she hissed.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders disdainfully.

"Nothing whatever!  I also know him!"

There was something in his tone, which struck the
ever-watchful ear of Theodora like a danger-knell.

"You know him?" echoed a chorus of voices from every
part of the great hall.

He waved back the eager questioners.

"I know him!" he declared emphatically, then he was silent.

Theodora seemed to have grown nervous.

"Are you serious?"

"Never more so!" Benilo replied, with a slight peculiar
hardening of the lips.

"Is he a Roman?" cried a voice.

"All Romans according to our fair Queen's judgment, are
curs and degenerates," Benilo drawled insultingly.

Theodora nodded.

"Even so," she replied coldly.

"This demi-god, however, is also slightly known to you,"
the Chamberlain continued, now fairly facing the Queen of
Love, "even though he has not yet found his way to your
bowers."

Theodora winced.

"Why do you taunt me?" she flashed back angrily.

Benilo heeded her not.  Instead of replying, he addressed
himself to the company, speaking in a dry, half-bantering
tone, while Theodora watched him like a tigress.

"Once upon a time, the Queen of Love boasted that mortal
man did not breathe who would resist her charms.  Now
there is at this hour one man here in Rome, whom even the
matchless Theodora dare not summon to her circle, one man
before whose 'No' her vain-glorious boast would break like
a bubble, one man whose soul she may not sap and send to
hell!  And this one man is even the hero of her dreams, her
rescuer,—the rescuer of a maiden of spotless virtue, the
vanquisher of a giant!  Do I speak truth, divine Theodora?"

Those who watched the expression on the face of the Queen
of the Groves marvelled alike at Benilo's audacity and the
startling absence of a passionate outburst on the part of the
woman.  And though the blood seethed through Theodora's
veins, the sudden change of front on Benilo's part seemed to
stagger her for a moment.  It was a novel sensation to see the
man who had heretofore been like clay in the moulder's hands
now daring to flout her openly and to hold up her wounded
pride as a target for the jests of those present.  It was a novel
sensation, to find herself publicly berated, but the shaft sank
deep.  Theodora's eyes flashed scorn and there was something
cruel in her glances.  Benilo felt its sting like a
whiplash.  His nerves quivered and he breathed hard.  But he
had gone too far to recede.  His spirit had risen in arms
against the disdain of the woman he loved,—loved with a
passion that seemed to have slept in a tomb for ages and
suddenly gathered new strength, like a fire kindled anew over dead
ashes.

Acting on a sudden impulse, he raised his head and looked
at her with a fearlessness which for the moment appeared to
startle her self-possession, for a deep flush coloured the fairness
of her face and, fading, left it pale as marble.  Still Theodora
did not speak and the breathless silence which had succeeded
Benilo's last taunt resembled the ominous hush of the heated
atmosphere before a thunder-clap.  No one dared speak and
the Chamberlain, apparently struck by the sudden stillness,
looked round from the tumbled cushions where he reclined.

"You do not answer my question, fair Theodora," he
spoke at last, an undertone of mockery ringing through his
speech.  "I grant you power over some weak fools," and
Benilo glanced round the assembly, little caring for the mutter
which his words raised, "but you will at least admit that there
is one man in Rome at this very hour, on whom all your charms
and blandishments would be wasted as a caress on cold
marble."

Another deep and death-like pause ensued; then Theodora's
silvery cold tones smote the profound silence with sharp
retort, as goaded at last beyond forbearance by his scoffing
tone she sprang to her feet.

"There is not a man in Rome," she hissed into Benilo's
face, "not in Italy, not in all the world, whom I could not
bend to the force of my will.  Where I choose, I conquer!"

A sardonic laugh broke from Benilo's lips.

"And by what means?"

"Benilo," she flashed forth in withering contempt, "I
know not what your object is in taunting me—and I care
not—but by Lucifer, you go too far!  Name to me a man in
Rome, name whom you will, and if I fail to win him in one
month—"

"What then?"

For a moment she hesitated.

"Name the wager yourself!"

An ominous smile curved Benilo's lips.

"All the wealth I possess against you—as my wife!"

She laughed scornfully and shuddered, but did not reply.

"Are you afraid?" he cried, tauntingly.

"What a fate!" she replied with trepidation in her tone.
"But I accept it, even it!"

She turned her back on him after a look of such withering
contempt as one might cast on some reptile, and took her former
seat, when again she was startled by his voice.  Its mock
caressing tones caused her to clench her firm white hands
and bend forward as if tempted to strangle the viper, that had
dared to place its glittering coils in her path.

"It now remains but to name the champion, just to prevent
the wrong bird from fluttering into the nest," said Benilo,
addressing the company.

"The champion!  The champion!" they shouted, breathing
more freely, since the expected lightning did not strike.

"Fill the goblets!" Benilo exclaimed, and in a moment
the wine was poured, the guests arose and gathered round the
central figures.

Benilo raised his goblet and turned to Theodora, wincing
under her look of contempt.

"The champion is to be my choice and to be accepted
unconditionally?" he questioned.

"Not so!" she flashed forth, half rising from her seat,
her eyes flaming with wrath.  "I would not have my words
distorted by so foul a thing as you!  It is to be the rescuer of
the girl, he before whom the lord Vitelozzo slunk away like
a whipped cur!  You have taunted me with my lack of power
face to face with that one—and that one alone, the
only man among a crowd of curs!"

Benilo paused, then he said with a hard, cold smile:

"Agreed!"  And he placed the goblet to his lips.  The
guests did likewise and drank the singular toast, as if it had
not implied a glaring insult to each present, including the one
who reëchoed it.

"And now for his name!" Benilo continued.  "Just to
prevent a mischance."

The irony of his words and the implied insult cut Theodora
to the quick.  With hands tightly clenched as If she would
strangle her tormentor, she sprang to her feet.

"I object!" she gasped, almost choked with rage, while her
startled listeners seemed to lack even voice to vent their
curiosity before this new and unexpected outburst.

"I appeal to the company assembled, who has witnessed
the wager between the Queen of Love and her faithful and
obedient lover," Benilo sneered, looking round among the
guests.  "How know we, what is concealed under a vizor,
beneath a rusty suit of armour?  Security lies but in the name of
the unconscious victim of Theodora's magic, is it not so?"

The smile on the Chamberlain's countenance caused him to
appear more repulsive than his former expression of wildest
rage.  But, prompted by an invincible curiosity, the guests
unanimously assented.

"Be it so!" gasped Theodora, sinking back in her seat.
"I care not."

Benilo watched her closely, and as he did so he almost
repented of his hasty wager.  Just at that moment his gaze
met that of the harper, who stood like some dark phantom
behind the throne of the Queen of the Groves, and the Chamberlain
stifled the misgivings, which had risen within him.  And
though smiling in anticipation of the blow he was about to
deliver, a blow which should prove the sweetest balm for the
misery she had caused him by her disdain, he still wavered,
as if to torment her to the extremest limits.  Then, with a
voice audible in the remotest parts of the great hall, he spoke,
his eye in that of Theodora, slowly emphasizing each title
and name:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of
the German hosts!"

There was the silence of death in the hall.

For a moment Theodora stared fixed and immobile as a
marble statue, her face pale as death, while a thin stream of
purple wine, spilled from her trembling goblet, trickled down
her white, uplifted arm.  Then she rushed upon him, and
knocking the goblet out of his hand, causing it to fall with a
splintering crash at Benilo's feet, she shrieked till the very walls
re-echoed the words:

"You lie!  You lie!"

Benilo crossed his arms over his chest, and, looking squarely
into the woman's eyes, he repeated in the same accents of
defiance:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of
the German hosts."

"Again I tell you you lie!  You lie!" shrieked the woman,
now almost beside herself.  "Is there no one among all this
scum here assembled, to chastise this viper?  Hear me!" she
cried as, affrighted, the guests shrank back from her blazing
eyes and panting breath, while with all the superhuman
beauty of a second Medusa she stood among them, and if her
gaze could have killed, none would have survived the hour.
"Hear me!  Benilo has lied to you, as time and again he has
lied to me!  He, of whom he speaks, is dead,—has died—long ago!"

Benilo breathed hard.  "Then he has arisen from the dead
and returned to earth,—to Rome—" he spoke with biting
irony in his tones.  "A strange hereditary disease affecting
the members of his house."

When he saw the deadly pallor which covered the woman's
face, and the terror reflected in her eyes, Benilo continued:

"And deem you in all truth, O sagacious Theodora, that
a word from the lips of any other man would have caused
Vitelozzo to release his prey?  Deem you not in your undoubted
wisdom that it required a reason, even weightier than the blow
of a gauntleted hand, to accomplish this marvellous feat?
And,—since you are dumb in the face of these arguments,—will
you not enlighten us all why Theodora, the beautiful, the
chaste, would deprive him of the plume, to whom it rightfully
belongs,—the German commander, Margrave Eckhardt of
Meissen, who risked his life to save that of our beautiful
queen?"

Theodora turned upon her tormenter like an animal at bay.

"I have heard enough!  I will not!  The wager is off!"

And rising she prepared to leave the hall without another
word.

It would have been difficult for the most profound physiognomist
to analyze Benilo's feelings, when he saw his purpose,
his revenge, foiled.  Looking up he met the enigmatic gaze of
the harper resting upon him with a strange mixture of derision
and disdain.

"Stay!" Benilo cried to Theodora as she grasped the curtain
in the act of pushing it aside.  He knew if she passed
beyond it, he had lost beyond retrieve.  But she paused and
turned, mute inquiry and defiance in her look.

"The Queen of the Groves has made a wager before you
all," the Chamberlain shouted, lashing himself into the rage
needful to make him carry out his design unflinchingly.
"After being informed of the person of the champion she has
repudiated it!  The reasons are plain,—the champion is
beyond her reach!  The Queen of the Groves is too politic to
play a losing game, especially when she knows that she is sure
to lose!  The charms of our Goddess are great, but alas!
There is one man in Rome whom she dare not challenge!"

He paused to study the effect of his words upon her.

She regarded him with her icy stare.

"It is not a question of power—but of my will!"

"So be it!" retorted Benilo.  "But since the Queen of
Love has refused my wager for reasons no doubt good and
efficient, perhaps there is in this company one less pure, one
less scrupulous, one of beauty as great, who might win, where
Theodora shuns the risk!  Will you take up the gauntlet,
fair Roxané, and lure to the Groves, Eckhardt, the general?"

"Benilo—beware!"

Shrill, sharp like breaking glass, like the cry of a wounded
animal maddened with rage and agony, the outcry seemed
wrenched from Theodora's white, drawn lips.  Her large,
splendid eyes flashed unutterable scorn upon the Chamberlain
and her lithe form swayed and crouched as that of a tigress
about to spring.

"Will Roxané take the wager?" Benilo repeated defiantly.

The anticipation of the on-coming contest caused Roxané's
cheek to blanch.  But not to be thought deficient in courage,
to meet her rival, she replied:

"Since the Queen of the Groves shuns the test, perhaps I
might succeed, where—"

She did not finish the sentence.

Like a lightning flash Theodora turned from the man, who
had roused her ire, to the woman who had stung her pride
with ill-veiled mockery, and while she slowly crept towards
her opponent, her low voice, tremulous with scorn, stung as
a needle would the naked flesh.

"And do you dream that Eckhardt of Meissen has aught
to fear from you, fair Roxané?  Deem you, that the proud
Roxané with all her charms, could cause the general of the
German host to make one step against his will?"

For a moment the two women stood face to face, measuring
each other with deadly looks.

"And what if I would?" flashed Roxané.

Two white hands slowly but firmly encircled her throat.

"I would strangle you!" hissed Theodora, her face deadly pale.

Roxané's cheeks too had lost their colour.  She knew her
opponent and she instinctively felt she had reached the limit.
She gave a little nervous laugh as she drew Theodora's reluctant
hands from the marble whiteness of her throat, where their
touch had left a rosy imprint.

"I do not wish your Saxon bear," she said.  "If you can
tame him, we come to his skin!"

"By Lucifer!" replied the Queen of the Groves, "did I but
choose to, I would make him forget heaven and hell and bring
him to my feet!"

"How dramatic!" sneered Benilo.  "Words are air!  We
want proofs!"

She whirled upon him.

"And what will become of the snake, when the hunter appears?"

Benilo paled.  For a moment his arrogance deserted him.
Then he said with an ominous scowl:

"Let the hunter beware!"

She regarded him with icy contempt.  Then she turned to
the revellers.

"Since Benilo has dared to cross swords with me," she
cried, "though I despise him and all of you, I accept the
challenge, if there is one in this company who will confirm that it
was Eckhardt who discomfited Vitelozzo."

From the background of the hall, where he had sat a silent
listener, there came forward an individual in the gaudy attire
of a Roman nobleman.  He was robust and above the middle
height, and the lineaments of his coarse face betrayed
predominance of brute instincts over every nobler sentiment.

"Vitelozzo!  Vitelozzo!" the guests shouted half amazed,
half amused.

The robber-baron nodded as he faced Theodora on the edge
of the circle.

"I have listened to your discourse," he snarled curtly.
"For your opinions I care not.  And as for the skullion to
whom I gave in,—out of sheer good will,—ha, ha!—may
the devil pull the boots from his legs!—'twas no meaner
a person than he, at whose cradle the fiend stood sponsor,
Eckhardt—the general—but I will yet have the girl, I'll
have her yet!"

And with a vigorous nod Vitelozzo took up a brimming
decanter and transported himself into the background whence
he had arisen.

His word had decided the question.

For a moment there was an intense hush.  Then Theodora
spoke:

"Eckhardt of Meissen, the commander of the German
hosts, shall come to my court!  He shall be as one of
yourselves, a whimpering slave to my evil beauty!  I will
it,—and so it shall be!"

For a moment she glanced at Benilo and the blood froze
in his veins.  Heaven and earth would he have given now to
have recalled the fateful challenge.  But it was too late.  For
a time he trembled like an aspen.  No one knew what he
had read in Theodora's Medusa-like face.

Some of the revellers, believing the great tension relieved,
now pushed eagerly forward, surrounding the Queen of the
Groves and plying her with questions.  They were all eager to
witness a triumph so difficult to achieve, as they imagined,
that even Theodora, though conscious of her invincible
charms, had winced at the task.

But the Queen of Love seemed to have exchanged the
attributes of her trade for those of a Fury, for she turned upon
them like an animal wounded to death, that sees the hounds
upon its track and cannot escape.

"Back!  All of you!" she hissed, raising her arms and
sweeping them aside.  "What is it after all?  Is he not a
man, like—no!  Not like you, not like you!—Why should
I care for him?—Perhaps he has wife and child at home:—the
devils will laugh the louder!"

She paused a moment, drawing a deep breath.  Then she
slowly turned towards the cringing Chamberlain.  Her voice
was slow and distinct and every word struck him as the blow
from a whip.

"I accept your wager," she said, "and I warn you that I
will win!  Win, with all the world, with all your villainy, with
the Devil himself against me.  Eckhardt shall come to the
Groves!  But," she continued with terrible distinctness, "if
aught befall him, ere we have stood face to face, I shall know
the hand that struck the blow, were it covered by the deepest
midnight that ever blushed at your foulness, and by the
devil,—I will avenge it!"

After these words Theodora faced those assembled with
her splendid height in all the glory of her beauty.  Another
moment she was gone.

For a time deep silence succeeded.

Never had such a scene been witnessed in the Groves.
Never had the Queen of Love shown herself in so terrible a
mood.  Never had mortal dared to brave her anger, to challenge
her wrath.  Truly, the end of time must be nigh when her
worshippers would dare defy the Goddess of the Shrine.

But after Theodora had disappeared, the strain gradually
relaxed and soon wore away entirely.  With all, save Benilo.
His calm outward demeanour concealed only with an effort his
terrible apprehensions, as he mixed freely, to divert suspicion,
with the revellers.  These thought the moments too precious
to waste with idle speculations and soon the orgy roared anew
through the great hall.

Benilo alone had retreated to its extreme end, where he
allowed himself to drop into a divan, which had just been
deserted by a couple, who had been swept away by the whirling
Bacchanale.  Here he sat for some time, his face buried in
his hands, when looking up suddenly he found himself face to
face with Hezilo.

"I have done it," he muttered, "and I fear I have gone too
far!"

He paused, scanning the harper's face for approval.
Its expression he could not see, but there was no shade of
reproof in the voice which answered:

"At best you have but erred in the means."

"I wished to break her pride, to humble her, and now the
tables are turned; it is I, who am grovelling in the dust."

"No woman was by such means ever wooed or won," the
harper replied after a brief pause.  "Theodora will win the
wager.  But whether she win or lose, she will despise you for
ever more!"

Benilo pressed his hands against his burning temples.

"My heart is on fire!  The woman maddens me with her
devilish charms, until I am on the verge of delirium."

"You have been too pliant!  You have become her slave!
Her foot is on your neck!  You have lost yourself!  Better
a monstrous villain, than a simpering idiot, who whines
love-ditties under his lady's bower and bellows his shame
to the enduring stars!  Dare to be a man,—despite yourself!"

So absorbed was Benilo in his own thoughts, that the biting
irony of the other's speech was lost upon him.

He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.

"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed.  I have
no choice."

The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered
hand.

At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.

The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves
of Theodora; flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled
their harmonies with the tempest of sound that hovered over
the great orgy, which was now at its height.  The banquet-hall
whirled round him like a vast architectural nightmare.
Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly
endless colonnades.  Everything sparkled, glittered, and
beamed in the light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered
each other in the air.  Viewed through that burning haze even
the inanimate objects seemed to have waked to some fantastic
representation of life.—But through it all he saw one face,
supremely fair in its marble cold disdain,—and unable to
endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out
into the open.

In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing
the city and imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`JOHN OF THE CATACOMBS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   JOHN OF THE CATACOMBS

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: O
   :image: images/img-cap-o.jpg
   :lines: 5

Once outside of the pavillion,
Benilo uttered a sigh of relief.
He had resolved to act without
delay.  Ere dawn he would be
assured that he held in his
grasp the threads of the web.
There was no time to be lost.
Onward he hurried, the phantom
of the murdered girl floating
before his eyes in a purple haze.

While bearing himself ostensibly in the character of a
mere man of pleasure, Benilo the Chamberlain lost no
opportunity of ingratiating himself with the many desperate
spirits who were to be found in the city ready and
willing to assist at any enterprise, which should tend to
complicate the machine of government.  While he rushed into
every extravagance and pleasure, surpassing the companions
of his own rank in his orgies, he suffered no symptoms of a
deeper feeling to escape him, than that of excellence in trifling,
the wine cup, the pageant, the passing show.  It may have
been a strain of mongrel blood, filtering through his veins,
which tempered his endurance with the pliancy essential to
intrigue, a strain that was apparent in the sculptured regularity
of his features.  His movements had the pliant ease, the
stealthy freedom of the tiger.  Had he been caught like Milo,
he would have writhed himself out of the trap with the sinuous
persistency of the snake.  There was something snake-like
in the small, glittering eyes, the clear smoothness of the skin.
With all its brightness no woman worthy of the name but
would have winced with womanly instincts of aversion and
repugnance from his glances.  With all its beauty, none,
save Otto alone, had ever looked confidingly into his face.
Men turned indeed to scan him approvingly as he passed,
but they owned no sympathy with the smooth, set brow, the
ever present smile in the lips of Benilo the Chamberlain.

After deliberating upon the course he was about to pursue
Benilo approached the shores of the Tiber.  Under the cypress
avenues it was dark, and the air came up chill and damp from
the stream.  A sombre blue over-arched the labyrinth of pillars
and ruins, of friezes and statues, of groves and glades which
lay dreaming in the pale light of the moon.  No other light,
save the moist glimmer of the stars whose mist-veiled brightness
heralded the approach of a tempest, fell on the chaos of
undefined forms.  Utter solitude, utter silence prevailed.
More and more Benilo lost himself in the wilderness of this
ill-favoured region.

The shortest way to the haunts of John of the Catacombs,
of whom he was in immediate search, lay across the ancient
Alta Semita, where now the Via di Porta Pia winds round the
Quirinal hill.  But for reasons of his own the Chamberlain
chose to make a detour, preferring streets whose deserted
character would not be likely to bring him into contact with
some unwelcome, nocturnal rambler.  Wrapping himself more
closely in his cloak and looking cautiously about, he hastened
along the North Western declivity of the Quirinal hill, until he
reached the remains of a wall built, so tradition has it, by
Servius Tullius.  This quarter had ever since the time of the
emperors enjoyed the worst reputation in all Rome.  The streets
were tortuous, the houses, squalid, the whole surroundings
evil.  Benilo moved cautiously along the wall, for a few
drinking shops were still open and frequented by a motley throng,
with whom it was not safe to mingle, for to provoke a brawl,
might engender grave consequences.  Wretched women plied
their shameful trade by the light of flickering clay-lamps;
and watery-eyed hags, the outcasts of all nations, mingled
with sailors, bandits and bravi.  Drunken men lay snoring
under tables and coarse songs were shouted from hoarse throats,
half drowned by the uproarious clamour of two fellows who
were playing at dice.  Suddenly there was a commotion followed
by piercing shrieks.  The gamblers had fallen out over
their pretty stakes.  After a short squabble one had drawn his
knife on the other and stabbed him in the side.  The wounded
man fell howling on the ground and the assassin took to his
heels.  The dancers of the establishment, heedless of the
catastrophe, began at once to rattle their castagnettes and
sway and whirl in disgraceful pantomime.

After Benilo had passed the shameful den and reached the
end of the alley he found himself once more in one of the
waste regions of the city.  Truly many an emperor was more
easily discovered than John of the Catacombs.  The region
had the appearance as if an earthquake had shattered into
dust the splendid temples and porticoes of antiquity, so great
was the destruction, which confronted him on every turn.
High in the air could be heard the hoarse cry of the vulture,
wheeling home from some feast of carnage; in the near-by
marshes the croaking of the frogs alternated with the dismal
cry of the whippoorwill.

Suddenly the Chamberlain paused and for a moment even
his stout heart stopped beating, and his face turned a ghastly
pallor.  For directly before him there arose out of the
underbrush, with back apparently turned towards him, some formless
apparition in the dark habit of a monk, the cowl drawn over
his head.  But when he attained his natural height, he faced
Benilo, although the latter would have sworn that he did not
see him turn.

It was with some degree of fascination that Benilo watched
the person and the movements of this human monster.  What
appeared of his head from under the cowl seemed to have
become green with cadaverous tints.  One might say that the
mustiness of the sepulchre already covered the bluish down of
his skin.  His eyes, with their strong gaze sparkled from
beneath a large yellowish bruise, and his drooping jaws were
joined to the skin by two lines as straight as the lines of a
triangle.  The bravo's trembling hands, the colour of yellow
wax, were only a net-work of veins and nerves.  His sleeves
fluttered on his fleshless arms like a streamer on a pole.  His
robe fell from his shoulders to his heels perfectly straight
without a single fold, as rigid as the drapery in the later
pictures of Cimabue or Orcagna.  There appeared to be nothing
but a shadow under the brown cowl and out of that shadow
stared two stony eyes.  John of the Catacombs looked like a
corpse returned to earth, to write his memoirs.

At the sight of the individual, reputed the greatest scourge
in Rome, the Chamberlain could not repress a shudder, and
his right hand sought mechanically the hilt of his poniard.

"Why—thou art a merry dog in thy friar's cowl, Don
Giovan, though it will hardly save thee from the gallows,"
exclaimed Benilo, approaching slowly.  "Since when dost
affect monastic manners?"

"Since the fiend is weary of saints, their cowls go begging,"
a harsh grating voice replied, while a hideous sneer lit up the
almost fleshless skull of the bravo, as with his turbid yellow
eyes, resembling those of a dead fish, he stared in Benilo's face.

"And for all that," the denisen of the ruins continued,
watching from under inflamed eyelids the effect his person
produced on his Maecenas, "and for all that I shall make as
good a saint as was ever catalogued in your martyrology."

"The fiend for aught might make the same," replied Benilo.
"What is your business here?"

"Watching over dead men's bones," replied the bravo doggedly.

"Never lie to the devil,—you will neither deceive him
nor me!  Not that I dispute any man's right to be hanged
or stabbed—least of all thine, Don Giovan."

"'Tis for another to regulate all such honours," replied
the bravo.  "And it is an old saying, never trust a horse or
a woman!"

Benilo started as if the bravo had read his thoughts.

"You prate in enigmas," he said after a pause.  "I will be
brief with you and plain.  We should not scratch, when we
tickle.  I am looking for an honest rogue.  I need a trusty
and discreet varlet, who can keep his tongue between his teeth
and forget not only his master's name, but his own likewise.
Have you the quality?"

John of the Catacombs stared at the speaker as if at a loss
to comprehend his meaning.  Instead of answering he glanced
uneasily in the direction of the river.

"Speak out, man, my time is brief," urged the Chamberlain,
"I have learned to value your services even in the harm you
have wrought, and if you will enter my service, you shall some
day hang the keys of a nobler tower on your girdle than you
ever dreamt of."

The bravo winced, but did not reply.  Suddenly he raised
his head as if listening.  A sound resembling the faint splash
of an oar broke the stillness.  A yell vibrated through the air,
a louder splash was heard, then all was deep silence as before.

"That sounded not like the prayer of a Christian soul
departing," Benilo said with an involuntary shudder, noting
the grin of satisfaction which passed over the outlaw's face.
"What was that?"

"Of my evil brother an evil instrument," replied John of
the Catacombs enigmatically.

"I fear you will have to learn manners in my school, Don
Giovan," said Benilo in return.  "But your answer.  Are
you ready?"

"This very night?" gasped the bravo, suspecting the offer
and fearful of a snare.

"Why not?" demanded the Chamberlain curtly.

"I am bound in another's service!"

"You are an over-punctilious rogue, Don Giovan.  To-morrow
then!"

"Agreed!" gurgled the bravo, extending a monstrously
large hand from under his gown, with a forefinger of
extraordinary length, on the end of which there was a wart.

Benilo pretended not to see the proffered member.  But
before addressing himself further to John of the Catacombs
he glanced round cautiously.

"Are we alone?"

The bravo nodded.

"Is my presence here not proof enough?"

The argument prevailed.

"To our business then!" Benilo replied guardedly, seating
himself upon a fragment of granite and watching every gesture
of the bravo.

"There arrived to-day in Rome, Eckhardt the general.
His welfare is very dear to me!  I should be disconsolate
came he to harm in the exercise of his mission, whatever that
be!"

There was a brief pause during which their eyes met.

The outlaw's face twitched strangely.  Or was it the play
of the moonbeams?

"Being given to roaming at random round the city,"
Benilo continued, speaking very slowly as if to aid the bravo's
comprehension, "for such is their wont in their own
wildernesses,—I am fearful he might go astray,—and the Roman
temper is uncertain.  Yet is Eckhardt so fearless, that he
would scorn alike warning or precaution.  Therefore I would
have you dog his footsteps from afar,—but let him not suspect
your presence, if you wish to see the light of another morning.
Wear your monk's habit, it becomes you!  You look as lean
and hungry and wolfish as a hermit of twelve years' halo,
who feeds on wild roots and snails.  But to me you will each
day report the points of interest, which the German leader
has visited, that I too may become familiar with their attraction.
Do I speak plainly?"

"I will follow him as his shadow," gurgled the bravo.

Benilo held out a purse which John of the Catacombs
greedily devoured with his eyes.

"You are a greedy knave," he said at last with a forced
laugh.  "But since you love gold so dearly, you shall feast
your eyes on it till they tire of its sheen.  Be ready at my first
call and remember—secrecy and despatch!"

"When shall it be?" queried the bravo.

"A matter of a day or two at best—no longer!  Meanwhile
you will improve your antiquarian learning by studying the
walks of Rome in company with the German general.  But
remember your distance, unless you would meet the devil's
grandame instead of creeping back to your hovels.  And where,
by the way, may a pair of good eyes discover John of the
Catacombs in case of urgent need?"

The bravo seemed to ponder.

"There is an old inn behind the Forum.  It will save your
messenger the trouble to seek me in the Catacombs.  Have
him ask for the lame brother of the Penitents,—but do not
write, for I cannot read it."

Benilo nodded.

"If I can trust you, the gain will be yours," he said.  "And
now—lead the way!"

John of the Catacombs preceded his new patron through
the tall weeds which almost concealed him from view, until
they reached a clearing not far from the river, whose turbid
waves rolled sluggishly towards Ostia.  Here they parted, the
bravo retracing his steps towards the region whence they had
come, while Benilo made for the gorge between Mounts
Aventine and Testaccio.  It was an ill-famed vale, noted even
in remote antiquity for the gross orgies whence it had gained
its evil repute, after the cult of Isis had been brought from
Egypt to Rome.

The hour was not far from midnight.  The moon had
passed her zenith and was declining in the horizon.  Her
pale spectral rays cast an uncertain light over the region
and gave the shadows a weird and almost threatening
prominence.  In this gorge there dwelt one Dom Sabbat, half
sorcerer, half madman, towards whose habitation Benilo now
directed his steps.  He was not long reaching a low structure,
half concealed between tall weeds and high boulders.  Swiftly
approaching, Benilo knocked at the door.  After a wait of
some duration shuffling foot steps were to be heard within.
A door was being unbarred, then the Chamberlain could
distinguish the unfastening of chains, accompanied by a low
dry cough.  At last the low door was cautiously opened and
he found himself face to face with an almost shapeless form
in the long loose habit of the cloister, ending in a peaked
cowl, cut as it seemed out of one cloth, and covering the face
as well as the back of the head, barring only two holes for
the eyes and a slit for the mouth.  After the uncanny host
had, by the light of a lantern, which he could shade at will,
peered closely into his visitor's face, he silently nodded,
beckoning the other to enter and carefully barred the door behind
him.  Through a low, narrow corridor, Dom Sabbat led the
way to a sort of kitchen, such as an alchemist might use for
his experiments and with many grotesque bends bade his
visitor be seated, but Benilo declined curtly, for he was ill at
ease.

"I have little time to spare," he said, scarcely noticing the
alchemist's obeisance, "and less inclination to enter into
particulars.  Give me what I want and let me be gone out of
this atmosphere, which is enough to stifle the lungs of an
honest man."

"Hi, hi, my illustrious friend," fawned the other with
evident enjoyment of his patron's impatience.  "Was the
horoscope not right to a minute?  Did not the charm work its
unpronounced intent?"

"'Tis well you remind me!  It required six stabs to finish
your bungling work!  See to it, that you do not again deceive
me!"

"You say six stabs?" replied Dom Sabbat, looking up
from the task he was engaged in, of mixing some substances
in a mortar.  "Yet Mars was in the Cancer and the fourth
house of the Sun.  But perhaps the gentleman had eaten
river-snails with nutmeg or taken a bath in snake skins and
stags-antlers?"

.. _`"Looking up from the task he was engaged in"`:

.. figure:: images/img-081.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Looking up from the task he was engaged in."

   "Looking up from the task he was engaged in."

"To the devil with your river-snails!" exploded Benilo.
"The love-philtre and quickly,—else I will have you smoked
out of your devil's lair ere the moon be two hours older!"

The alchemist shook his head, as if pained by his patron's
ill temper.  Yet he could not abstain from tantalizing him by
assuming a misapprehension of his meaning.

"The hour," he mumbled slowly, and with studied hesitation,
"is not propitious.  Evil planets are in the ascendant and
the influence of your good genius is counteracted by
antagonistic spells."

"Fool!" growled Benilo, at the same time raising his foot
as if to spurn the impostor like a dog.  "You keep but one
sort of wares such as I require,—let me have the strongest."

Neither the gesture nor the insult were lost on Dom Sabbat,
yet he preserved a calm and imperturbable demeanour, while,
as if soliloquizing, he continued his irritating inquiries.

"A love-philtre?  They are priceless indeed;—even a
nun,—three drops of that clear tasteless fluid,—and she were
yours."

Again Benilo's lips straightened in a hard, drawn line.
Stooping over the alchemist, he whispered two words into
his ear, which caused Dom Sabbat to glance up with
such an expression of horror that Benilo involuntarily burst
into a loud laugh, which sent the other spinning to his task.

Ransacking some remote corner in his devil's kitchen he
at last produced a tiny phial, which he wrapped in a thin
scroll.  This he placed with trembling hands into those eagerly
stretched out to grasp it and received therefor a hand full of
gold coin, the weight of which seemed to indicate that secrecy
was to constitute no small portion of the bargain.

After having conducted his visitor to the entrance, where
he took leave of him with many bends of the head and manifold
protestations of devotion, Dom Sabbat locked his abode
and Benilo hastened towards the city.

As he mentally surveyed the events of the evening even to
their remotest consequences, he seemed to have neglected no
precaution, nor omitted anything which might eventually
prevent him from triumphing over his opponents.  But even
while reviewing with a degree of satisfaction the business of
the night, terrible misgivings, like dream shadows, drooped
over his mind.  After all it was a foolhardy challenge he had
thrown to fate.  Maddened by the taunts of a woman, he had
arrayed forces against himself which he must annihilate, else
they would tear him to pieces.  The time for temporizing had
passed.  He stood on the crater of a volcano, and his ears,
trained to the sounds of danger, could hear the fateful rumbling
in the depths below.

In that fateful hour there ripened in the brain of Benilo
the Chamberlain a thought, destined in its final consequences
to subvert a dynasty.  After all there was no security for him
in Rome, while the Germans held sway in the Patrimony of
St. Peter.  But—indolent and voluptuous as he was—caring
for nothing save the enjoyment of the moment, how was he
to wield the thunderbolt for their destruction, how was he to
accomplish that, in which Crescentius had failed, backed by
forces equal to those of the foreigners and entrenched in his
impregnable stronghold?

As Benilo weighed the past against the future, the scales
of his crimes sank so deeply to earth that, had Mercy thrown
her weight in the balance it would not have changed the
ultimate decree of Retribution.  Only the utter annihilation of
the foreign invaders could save him.  Eckhardt's life might
be at the mercy of John of the Catacombs.  The poison phial
might accomplish what the bravo's dagger failed to do,—but
one thing stood out clearly and boldly in his mind; the German
leader must not live!  Theodora dared not win the wager,—but
even therein lay the greater peril.  The moment she
scented an obstacle in her path, she would move all the powers
of darkness to remove it and it required little perspicuity to
point out the source, whence it proceeded.

At the thought of the humiliation he had received at her
hands, Benilo gnashed his teeth in impotent rage.  His pride,
his vanity, his self-love, had been cruelly stabbed.  He might
retaliate by rousing her fear.  But if she had passed beyond
the point of caring?

As, wrapt in dark ruminations, Benilo followed the lonely
path, which carried him toward the city, there came to him a
thought, swift and sudden, which roused the evil nature within
him to its highest tension.

Could his own revenge be more complete than by using his
enemies, one for the destruction of the other?  And as for the
means,—Theodora herself would furnish them.  Meanwhile—how
would Johannes Crescentius bear the propinquity of his
hereditary foe, the emperor?  Might not the Senator be goaded
towards the fateful brink of rebellion?  Then,—Romans and
Germans once more engaged in a death grapple,—his own time
would come, must come, the time of victory and ultimate
triumph.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE VISION OF SAN PANCRAZIO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE VISION OF SAN PANCRAZIO

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

Two days had elapsed since
Eckhardt's arrival in Rome.  At the
close of each day, he had met
Benilo on the Palatine, each
time renewing the topic of their
former discourse.  Benilo had
listened attentively and, with all
the eloquence at his command,
had tried to dissuade the
commander from taking a step so
fateful in its remotest consequences.  On the evening of the
third day the Chamberlain had displayed a strange disquietude
and replied to Eckhardt's questions with a wandering mind.
Then without disclosing the nature of the business which he
professed to have on hand, they parted earlier than had been
their wont.

The shades of evening began to droop with phantom swiftness.
Over the city brooded the great peace of an autumnal
twilight.  The last rays of the sun streaming from between a
heavy cloud-bank, lay across the landscape in broad zones of
brilliancy.  In the pale green sky, one by one, the evening
stars began to appear, but through the distant cloud-bank
quivered summer lightning like the waving of fiery whips.

Feeling that sleep would not come to him in his present
wrought up state of mind, Eckhardt resolved to revisit the
spot which held the dearest he had possessed on earth.  Perhaps,
that prayer at the grave of Ginevra would bring peace to
his soul and rest to his wearied heart.  His feet bore him
onward unawares through winding lanes and deserted streets
until he reached the gate of San Sebastiano.  There, he left the
road for a turfy hollow, where groups of black cypress trees
stretched out their branches like spectral arms, uplifted to
warn back intruders.  He stood before the churchyard of
San Pancrazio.

Pausing for a moment irresolutely before its gloomy portals
Eckhardt seemed to waver before entering the burial ground.
Hushing his footsteps, as from a sense of awe, he then followed
the well-known path.  The black foliage drooped heavily
over him; it seemed to draw him in and close him out of
sight, and although there was scarcely any breeze, the dying
leaves above rustled mysteriously, like voices whispering some
awful secret, known to them alone.  A strange mystery seemed
to pervade the silence of their sylvan shadows, a mystery,
dread, unfathomable, and guessed by none.  With a dreary
sense of oppression, yet drawn onward by some mysterious
force, Eckhardt followed the path, which here and there was
over-grown with grass and weeds.  Uneasily he lifted the
overhanging branches and peered between the dense and luminous
foliage.  Up and down he wistfully gazed, now towards the
winding path, lined by old gravestones, leading to the cloister;
now into the shadowy depths of the shrubbery.  At times he
paused to listen.  Never surely was there such a silence
anywhere as here.  The murmur of the distant stream was lost.
The leaves seemed to nod drowsily, as out of the depths of a
dream and the impressive stillness of the place seemed a silent
protest against the solitary intruder, a protest from the dead,
whose slumber the muffled echo of his footsteps disturbed.

For the first time Eckhardt repented of his nocturnal visit
to the abode of the dead.  Seized with a strange fear, his
presence in the churchyard at this hour seemed to him an
intrusion, and after a moment or two of silent musing he
turned back, finding it impossible to proceed.  Absently he
gazed at the decaying flowers, which turned their faces up to
him in apparent wonderment; the ferns seemed to nod and
every separate leaf and blade of grass seemed to question him
silently on the errand of his visit.  Surely no one, watching
Eckhardt at this place and at this hour, if there was such a
one near by chance, would have recognized in him the stern
soldier who had twice stormed the walls of Rome.

Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream, a strange
dream, which had visited him on the preceding night, and
which now suddenly waked in his memory.  It was a vague
haunting thing, a vision of a great altar, of many candles, of
himself in a gown of sack-cloth, striving to light them and
failing again and again, yet still seeing their elusive glare in
a continual flicker before his eyes.  And as he mused upon
his dream his heart grew heavy in his breast.  He had grown
cowardly of pity and renewed grief.

Following a winding path, so overgrown with moss that
his footsteps made no sound upon it, which he believed would
lead him out of the churchyard, Eckhardt was staggered by
the discovery that he had walked in a circle, for almost
directly before him rose the grassy knoll tufted with palms,
between which shone the granite monument over Ginevra's
grave.  Believing at this moment more than ever in his life
in signs and portents, Eckhardt slowly ascended the sloping
ground, now oblivious alike to sight and sound, and lost in the
depths of his own thoughts.  Bitter thoughts they were and
dreamily vague, such as fever and nightmare bring to us.
Relentlessly all the long-fought misery swept over him again,
burying him beneath waves so vast, that time and space
seemed alike to vanish.  He knelt at the grave and with a
fervour such as is born of a mind completely lost in the depths
of mysticism, he prayed that he might once more behold
Ginevra, as her image lived in his memory.  The vague
deep-rooted misery in his heart was concentrated in this greatest
desire of his life, the desire to look once more upon her, who
had gone from him for ever.

After having exhausted all the pent-up fervour of his soul
Eckhardt was about to rise, little strengthened and less
convinced of the efficacy of his prayer, when his eyes were fixed
upon the tall apparition of a woman, who stood in the shadow
of the cypress trees and seemed to regard him with a strange
mixture of awe and mournfulness.  With parted lips and rigid
features, the life's blood frozen in his veins, Eckhardt stared
at the apparition, his face covered with a pallor more deadly
than that of the phantom, if phantom indeed it was.  A long
white shroud fell in straight folds from her head to her feet,
but the face was exposed, and as he gazed upon it, at once so
calm and so passionate, so cold and yet so replete with
life,—he knew it was Ginevra who stood before him.  Her eyes,
strangely undimmed by death, burnt into his very soul, and his
heart began to palpitate with a mad longing.  Spreading out
his arms in voiceless entreaty, the half-choken outcry:
"Ginevra!  Ginevra!" came from his lips, a cry in which was
mingled at once the most supreme anguish and the most
supreme love.

But as the sound of his voice died away, the apparition had
vanished, and seemed to have melted into air.  Only a lizard
sped over the stone in the moonlight and in the branches of
the cypress trees above resounded the scream of some startled
night-bird.  Then everything faded in vague unconsciousness,
across which flitted lurid lights and a face that suddenly grew
dim in the strange and tumultuous upheaval of his senses.
The single moment had seemed an hour, so fraught with strange
and weird impressions.

Dazed, half-mad, his brow bathed in cold dew, Eckhardt
staggered to his feet and glanced round like one waking from
a dream.  The churchyard of San Pancrazio was deserted.
Not another human being was to be seen.  Surely his senses,
strangely overwrought though they were, had not deceived
him.  Here,—close beside him,—the apparition had stood
but a moment ago; with his own eyes he had seen her, yet no
human foot had trampled the fantastic tangle of creepers, that
lay in straggling length upon the emerald turf.  He lingered
no longer to reason.  His brain was in a fiery whirl.  Like one
demented, Eckhardt rushed from the church-yard.  There
was at this moment in his heart such a pitiful tumult of broken
passions, hopelessness and despair, that the acute,
unendurable pain came later.

As yet, half of him refused to accept the revelation.  The
very thought crushed him with a weight of rocks.  Amid the
deceitful shadows of night he had fallen prey to that fear from
which the bravest are not exempt in such surroundings.  The
distinctness of his perception forbade him to doubt the
testimony of his senses.  Yet, what he had seen, was altogether
contrary to reason.  A thousand thoughts and surmises,
one wilder than the other, whirled confusedly through his
brain.  A great benumbing agony gnawed at his heart.  That,
which he in reason should have regarded as a great boon
began to affect him like a mortal injury.  By fate or some
mysterious agency he had been permitted to see her once more,
but the yearning had increased, for not a word had the
apparition vouchsafed him, and from his arms, extended in
passionate entreaty, it had fled into the night, whence it had
arisen.

Accustomed to the windings of the churchyard, Eckhardt
experienced little difficulty in finding his way out.  He paced
through the wastes of Campo Marzio at a reckless speed, like
a madman escaped from his guards.  His brain was aflame;
his cheeks, though deadly pale, burned as from the hidden
fires of a fever.  The phenomenon had dazzled his eyes like
the keen zigzag of a lightning flash.  Even now he saw her
floating before him, as in a luminous whirlwind, and he felt,
that never to his life's end could he banish her image from his
heart.  His love for the dead had grown to vastness like those
plants, which open their blossoms with a thunder clap.  He
felt no longer master of himself, but like one whose chariot is
carried by terrified and uncontrollable steeds towards some
steep rock bristling precipice.

Gradually, thanks to the freshness of the night-air,
Eckhardt became a little more calm.  Feeling now but half
convinced of the reality of the vision, he sought by the
authentication of minor details to convince himself that he
was not the victim of some strange hallucination.  But
he felt, to his dismay, that every natural explanation tell
short of the truth, and his own argumentation was anything
but convincing.

In the climax of wonderment Eckhardt had questioned
himself, whether he might not actually be walking in a dream;
he even seriously asked himself whether madness was not
parading its phantoms before his eyes.  But he soon felt
constrained to admit, that he was neither asleep nor mad.
Thus he began gradually to accept the fact of Ginevra's presence,
as in a dream we never question the intervention of persons
actually long dead, but who nevertheless seem to act like
living people.

The moon was sinking through the azure when Eckhardt
passed the Church of the Hermits on Mount Aventine.  The
portals were open; the ulterior dimly lighted.  The spirit of
repentance burned at fever heat in the souls of the Romans.
From day-break till midnight, and from midnight till day-break,
there rose under the high vaulted arches an incessant hum of
prayer.  The penitential cells, the vaults underneath the chapels,
were never empty.  The crowds which poured into the city
from all the world were ever increasing, and the myriad
churches, chapels and chantries rang night and day with
Kyrie Eleison litanies and sermons, purporting to portray
the catastrophe, the hail of brimstone and fire, until the
terrified listeners dashed away amid shrieks and yells, shaken to
the inmost depths of their hearts with the fear that was upon
them.

There were still some belated worshippers within, and as
Eckhardt ascended the stone steps, he was seized with an
incontrollable desire to have speech with Nilus, the hermit of
Gaëta, who, he had been told, was holding forth in the Church
of the Hermits.  To him he would confess all, that sorely
troubled his mind, seeking his counsel and advice.  The
immense blackness within the Basilica stretched vastly upward
into its great arching roof, giving to him who stood
pigmy-like within it, an oppression of enormity.  Black was the
centre of the Nave and unutterably still.  A few torches in
remote shrines threw their lugubrious light down the aisles.
The pale faces of kneeling monks came now and then into full
relief, when the scant illumination shifted, stirred by ever so
faint a breath of air, heavy with the scent of flowers and
incense.

Almost succumbing under the strain of superstitious awe,
exhausted in body and mind by the strange malady, which had
seized his soul, his senses reeling under the fumes of incense
and the funereal chant of the monks, his eyes burning with the
fires of unshed tears, Eckhardt sank down before the image
of the Mother of God, striving in vain to form a coherent
prayer.

How long he had thus remained he knew not.  The sound
of footsteps in the direction of the North transept roused him
after a time to the purpose of his presence.  Following the
direction indicated to him by one of the sacristans, Eckhardt
groped his way through the dismal gloom towards the enclosure
where Nilus of Gaëta was supposed to hold his dark sessions.
By the dim light of a lamp he perceived in the confessional the
shadowy form of a monk, and approaching the wicket, he
greeted the occupant with a humble bend of the head.  But,
what was visible of the monk's countenance was little
calculated to relieve the oppression which burdened Eckhardt's
soul.

From the mask of the converted cynic peered the eyes of a
fanatic.  The face was one, which might have suggested to
Luca Signorelli the traits of his Anti-Christ in the Capella
Nuova at Orvieto.  In the deep penetrating eyes was reflected
the final remorse of the wisdom, which had renounced its
maker.  The face was evil.  Yet it was a face of infinite grief,
as if mourning the eternal fall of man.

Despite the advanced hour of night the monk was still in
his seat of confession, and the mighty leader of the German
host, wrapt in his long military cloak, knelt before the
emaciated anchorite, his face, manner and voice all betraying
a great weariness of mind.  A look of almost bodily pain
appeared in Eckhardt's stern countenance as, at the request
of the monk, who had receded within the gloom of the
confessional, he recounted the phenomena of the night, after
having previously acquainted him with the burden of his grief.

The monk listened attentively to the weird tale and shook
his head.

"I am most strangely in my senses," Eckhardt urged, noting
the monk's gesture.  "I have seen her,—whether in the
body, or the spirit, I know not,—but I have seen her."

"I have listened, my son," said the monk after a pause, in
his low sepulchral voice.—"Ginevra loved you,—so you
say.  What could have wrought a change in her, such as you
hint?  For if she loved you in life, she loves you in death.
Why should she—supposing her present—flee from your
outstretched arms?  If your love could compel her to return
from the beyond,—why should it lack the power to make the
phantom give response?"

"Could I but fathom that mystery,—could I but fathom it!"

"Did you not speak to her?"

"My lips but uttered her name!"

"I am little versed in matters of this kind," the monk
replied in a strange tone.  "'Tis but the natural law, which may
not be transgressed with impunity.  Is your faith so small,
that you would rather uproot the holiest ties, than deem
yourself the victim of some hallucination, mayhap some jeer of
the fiend?  Dare you raise yourself on a pedestal, which takes
from her her defenceless virtue, cold and silent as her lips are
in death?"

Every word of the monk struck Eckhardt's heart with a
thousand pangs.  A deep groan broke from his lips.

"Madman that I was," he muttered at last, "to think
that such a tale was fit for mortal ears."

Then he turned to the monk.

"Have you no solace to give to me, no light upon the dark
path, I am about to enter upon,—the life of the cloister,
where I shall end my days?"

There was a long pause.  Surprise seemed to have struck
the monk dumb.  Eckhardt's heart beat stormily in
anticipation of the anchorite's reply.

"But," a voice sounded from the gloom, "have you
the patience, the humility, which it behooves the recluse to
possess, and without which all prayers and penances are in
vain?"

"Show me how I can humble myself more, than at this
hour, when I renounce a life of glory, ambition and command.
All I want is peace,—that peace which has forsaken me
since her death!"

His last words died in a groan.

"Peace," repeated the monk.  "You seek peace in the
seclusion of the cloister, in holy devotions.  I thought Eckhardt
of too stern a mould, to be goaded and turned from his duty
by a mere whim, a pale phantom."

A long silence ensued.

"Father," said the Margrave at last, speaking in a low and
broken voice, "I have done no act of wrong.  I will do no act
of wrong, while I have control over myself.  But the thought
of the dead haunts me night and day.  Otto has no further
need of me.  Rome is pacified.  The life at court is irksome
to me.  The king loves to surround himself with perfumed
popinjays, discarding the time-honoured customs of our Northland
for the intricate polity of the East.—There is no place
for Eckhardt in that sphere of mummery."

For a few moments the monk meditated in silence.

"It grieves me to the heart," he spoke at last, "to hear a
soldier confess to being tempted into a life of eternal abnegation.
I judge it to be a passing madness, which distance and work
alone can cure.  You are not fitted in the sight of God and His
Mother for the spiritual life, for in Mezentian thraldom you
have fettered your soul to a corpse in its grave, a sin as black
as if you had been taken in adultery with the dead.  Remain in
Rome no longer!  Return to your post on the boundaries of
the realm.  There,—in your lonely tent, pray nightly to the
Immaculate One for her blessing and pass the day in the saddle
among the scattered outposts of your command!  The monks
of Rome shall not be festered by the presence among them of
your fevered soul, and you are sorely needed by God and His
Son for martial life."

"Father, you know not all!" Eckhardt replied after a brief
pause, during which he lay prostrate, writhing in agony and
despair.  "From youth up have I lived as a man of war.—To
this I was bred by my sire and grandsire of sainted memory.
I have always hoped to die on some glorious field.  But it
is all changed.  I, who never feared mortal man, am trembling
before a shadow.  My love for her, who is no more, has made
me a coward.  I tremble to think that I may not find her in
the darkness, whither soon I may be going.  To this end
alone I would purchase the peace, which has departed.  The
thought of her has haunted me night and day, ever since her
death!  How often in the watches of the night, on the tented
field, have I lain awake in silent prayer, once more to behold
her face, that I can never more forget!"

There was another long pause, during which the monk
cast a piercing glance at the prostrate soldier.  Slowly at last
the voice came from the shadows.

"Then you still believe yourself thus favoured?"

"So firmly do I believe in the reality of the vision, that I
am here to ask your blessing and your good offices with the
Prior of St. Cosmas in the matter closest to my heart."

"Nay," the monk replied as if speaking to himself, "if
you have indeed been favoured with a vision, then were it
indeed presumptuous in one, the mere interpreter of the
will divine, to oppose your request!  You have chosen a strict
brotherhood, though, for when your novitiate is ended, you will
not be permitted to ever again leave the walls of the cloister."

"Such is my choice," replied Eckhardt.  "And now your
blessing and intercession, father.  Let the time of my novitiate
be brief!"

"I will do what I can," replied the monk, then he added
slowly and solemnly:

"Christ accepts your obedience and service!  I purge you
of your sins in the name of the Trinity and the Mother of God,
into whose holy keeping I now commit you!  Go in peace!"

"I go!" muttered the Margrave, rising exhausted from his
long agony and staggering down the dark aisles of the church.

Eckhardt's footsteps had no sooner died away in the gloom
of the high-vaulted arches, than two shadows emerged from
behind a pillar and moved noiselessly down towards the
refectory.

In the dim circle of light emanating from the tapers round
the altar, they faced each other a moment.

"What ails the Teuton?" muttered the Grand Chamberlain,
peering into the muffled countenance of the pseudo-confessor.

"He upbraids the fiend for cheating him of the smile of a
corpse," the monk Cyprianus replied with strangely jarring
voice.

"And yet you fear I will lose my wager?" sneered the
Chamberlain.

The monk shrugged his shoulders.

"They have a proverb in Ferrara: 'He who may not eat
a peach, may not smell at it.'"

"And you were not revealed to him, you, for whom he has
scoured the very slime of the Tiber?" Benilo queried, ignoring
the monk's facetiousness.

"'Tis sad to think, what changes time has wrought,"
replied the latter with downcast eyes.  "Truly it behooves
us to think of the end,—the end of time!"

And without another word the monk passed down the
aisles and his tall form was swallowed in the gloom of the
Church of the Hermits.

"The end!" Benilo muttered to himself as he thoughtfully
gazed after the monk.  "Croak thou thine own doom, Cyprianus!
One soul weighs as much as another in the devil's
balance!"

With these words Benilo passed through the portals of the
church and was soon lost to sight among the ruins of the
Aventine.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`CASTEL SAN ANGELO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   CASTEL SAN ANGELO

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: N
   :image: images/img-cap-n.jpg
   :lines: 5

Night had spread her pinions
over the ancient capital of the
Cæsars and deepest silence had
succeeded the thousand cries
and noises of the day.  Few
belated strollers still lingered in
the deserted squares.  Under the
shadows of the Borgo Vecchio
slow moving figures could be
seen flitting noiselessly as phantoms
through the marble ruins of antiquity, pausing for
a moment under the high unlighted arches, talking in
undertones and vanishing in the night, while the remote swell
of monkish chants, monotonous and droning, died on the
evanescent breezes.

Round Castel San Angelo, rising, a giant Mausoleum, vast
and sombre out of the solitudes of the Flaminian Way, night
wove a more poetic air of mystery and quiet, and but for the
tread of the ever wakeful sentinels on its ramparts, the colossal
tomb of the emperor Hadrian would have appeared a deserted
Memento Mori of Imperial Rome, the possession of which no
one cared to dispute with the shades of the Cæsars or the
ghosts of the mangled victims, which haunted the intricate
labyrinth of its subterranean chambers and vaults.

A pale moon was rising behind the hills of Albano, whose
ghostly rays cast an unsteady glow over the undulating
expanse of the Roman Campagna, and wove a pale silver
mounting round the crest of the imperial tomb, whose towering
masses seemed to stretch interminably into the night, as if
oppressed with their own memories.

What a monstrous melodrama was contained in yonder
circular walls!  They wore a comparatively smiling look only
in the days when Castel San Angelo received the dead.  Then
according to the historian Procopius, the immense three-storied
rotunda, surmounted by a pyramidal roof had its sides covered
with Parian marble, intersected with columns and surmounted
with a ring of Grecian statues.  The first story was a
quadrangular basement, decorated with festoons and tablets of
funeral inscriptions, colossal equestrian groups in gilt bronze
at the four corners.

Within the memory of living generation, this pile had been
the theatre of a tragedy, almost unparalleled in the annals of
Rome, the scene of the wildest Saturnalia, that ever stained
the history of mediæval state.  An incongruous relic of antique
profligacy and the monstrosities of the lower empire, drawing
its fatal power from feudal institutions, Theodora, a woman
illustrious for her beauty and rank, had at the dawn of the
century quartered herself in Castel San Angelo.  From there
she exercised over Rome a complete tyranny, sustained against
German influence by an Italian party, which counted amongst
its chiefs Adalbert, Count of Tuscany, the father of this
second Messalina.  Her fateful beauty ruled Church and state.
Theodora caused one pontiff after another to be deposed and
nominated eight popes successively.  She had a daughter as
beautiful and as powerful as herself and still more depraved.
Marozia, as she was called, reigned supreme in Castel San
Angelo and caused the election of Sergius III, Anastasius III
and John X, the latter a creature of Theodora, who had him
appointed to the bishopric of Ravenna.  Intending to deprive
Theodora and her lover, the Pope, of the dominion of Rome,
Marozia invaded the Lateran with a band of ruffians, put to
the sword the brother of the Pope, and incarcerated the pontiff,
who died in prison either by poison or otherwise.  Tradition
relates that his corpse was placed in Theodora's bed, and
superstition believes that he was strangled by the devil as a
punishment for his sins.

Left as widow by the premature death of the Count of
Tusculum and married to Guido, Prince of Tuscany, Marozia,
after the demise of her second husband, was united by a third
marriage to Hugo of Provence, brother of Guido.  Successively
she placed on the pontifical throne Leo VI and
Stephen VIII, then she gave the tiara to John XI, her younger
son.  One of her numerous offspring imprisoned in the same
dungeon both his mother and his brother, the Pope, and then
destroyed them.  Rumour hath it, however, that a remote
descendant, who had inherited Marozia's fatal beauty, had been
mysteriously abducted at an early age and concealed in a
convent, to save her from the contamination and licentiousness,
which ran riot in the blood of the women of her house.
She had been heard of no more and forgotten long ago.

After the changes and vicissitudes of half a century the
family of the Crescentii had taken possession of Castel San
Angelo, keeping their state in the almost impregnable
stronghold, without which the possession of Rome availed but little
to any conqueror.  It was a period marked by brutal passions
and feudal anarchy.  The Romans had degenerated to the low
estate of the barbarian hordes, which had during the great
upheaval extinguished the light of the Western empire.  The
Crescentii traced their origin even to that Theodora of evil
fame, who had perished in the dungeons of the formidable
keep, and Johannes Crescentius, the present Senator and
Patricius, seemed wrapt in dark ruminations, as from the
window of a chamber in the third gallery he looked out into the
night, gazing upon the eddying Tiber below, bordered by dreary
huts, thinly interspersed with ilex, and the barren wastes,
from which rose massive watch-towers.  Far away to Southward
sloped the Alban hills.  From the dark waving greens of
Monte Pincio the eye, wandering along the ridge of the Quirinal,
reached to the mammoth arches of Constantine's Basilica, to
the cypress bluffs of Aventine.  Almost black they looked at
the base, so deep was their shade, contrasted with the spectral
moon-light, which flooded their eminences.

The chamber in which the Senator of Rome paced to and
fro, was large and exceedingly gloomy, being lighted only
by a single taper which threw all objects it did not touch into
deep shadow.  This fiery illumination, casting its uncertain
glimmer upon the face of Crescentius, revealed thereon an
expression of deepest gloom and melancholy and his thoughts
seemed to roam far away.

The workings of time, the traces of furious passions, the
lines wrought by care and sorrow were evident in the
countenance of the Senator of Rome and sometimes gave it in the
eyes of the physiognomist an expression of melancholy and
devouring gloom.  Only now and then there shot athwart
his features, like lightning through a distant cloud-bank, a
look of more strenuous daring—of almost terrifying keenness,
like the edge of a bare and sharpened sword.

The features of Johannes Crescentius were regular, almost
severe in their classic outlines.  It was the Roman type,
softened by centuries of amalgamation with the descendants
of the invading tribes of the North.  The Lord of Castel San
Angelo was in the prime of manhood.  The dark hair was
slightly touched with gray, his complexion bronzed.  The gray
eyes with their glow like polished steel had a Brutus-like
expression, grave and impenetrable.

The hour marked the close of a momentous interview.
Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain, had just left the Senator's
presence.  He had been the bearer of strange news which, if
it proved true, would once more turn the tide of fortune in
the Senator's favour.  He had urged Crescentius to make
the best of the opportunity—the moment might never return
again.  He had unmasked a plot, the plausibility of which
had even staggered the Senator's sagacious mind.  At first
Crescentius had fiercely resented the Chamberlain's suggestions,
but by degrees his resistance had lessened and after
his departure the course outlined by Benilo seemed to hold
rut a strange fascination.

After glancing at the sand-clock on the table Crescentius
ascended the narrow winding stairs leading to the upper
galleries of the formidable keep, whose dark, blackened walls
were lighted by tapers in measured intervals, and made his
way through a dark passage, until he reached the door of an
apartment at the opposite end of the corridor.  He knocked
and receiving no response, entered, closing the door noiselessly
behind him.

On the threshold he paused taking in at a glance the picture
before him.

The apartment was of moderate size.  The lamp in the
oratory was turned low.  The windows facing the Campagna
were open and the soft breeze of night stole into the
flower-scented room.  There was small semblance of luxury about the
chamber, which was flanked on one side by an oratory, on the
other, by a sleeping room, whose open door permitted a glimpse
of a great, high bed, hung with draperies of sarcenet.

On a couch, her head resting on her bare, white arms
reclined Stephania, the consort of the Senator of Rome.  Tenderly
the night wind caressed the soft dark curls, which stole down
her brow.  Her right hand supported a head exquisitely beautiful,
while the fingers of the left played mechanically with the
folds of her robe.  Zoë, her favourite maiden, sat in silence
on the floor, holding in her lap a red and blue bird, which now
and then flapped its wings and gave forth a strange cry.  All
else was silent within and without.

Stephania's thoughts dwelt in bygone days.

Listless and silent she reclined in her pillows, reviewing
the past in pictures that mocked her soul.  Till a few hours
ago she had believed that she had conquered that madness.
But something had inflamed her hatred anew and she felt like
a goddess bent upon punishing the presumption of mortal man.

The memory of her husband holding the emperor's stirrup
upon the latter's entry into Rome had rekindled in her another
thought which she most of all had striven to forget.  It alone
had, to her mind, sufficed to make reconciliation to existing
conditions impossible.  Shame and hate seethed anew in her
soul.  She could have strangled the son of Theophano with her
own hands.

But did Crescentius himself wish to break the shackles
which were forever to destroy the prestige of a noble house,
that had for more than a century ruled the city of Rome?
Was he content to be the lackey of that boy, before whom a
mighty empire bowed, a youth truly, imbued with the beauty
of body and soul which fall but rarely to one mortal's
lot—but yet a youth, a barbarian, the descendant of the Nomad
tribes of the great upheaval?  Was there no one, worthy of
the name of a great Roman, who would cement the disintegrated
states of Italy, plant his standards upon the Capitol
and proclaim himself lord of new Roman world?  And he, her
husband, from whom at one time she had expected such great
things, was he not content with his lot?  Was he not at this
very moment offering homage to the despised foreigners,
kissing the sandals of a heretical pope, whom a bribed
Conclave had placed in the chair of St. Peter through the armed
manifestation of an emperor's will?

The walls of Castel San Angelo weighed upon her like lead,
since Rome was again defiled by these Northern barbarians,
whom her countrymen were powerless to repulse, whom they
dared not provoke and under whose insolence they smarted.
Stephania heaved a deep sigh.  Then everything faded from
her vision, like a landscape shrouded in mist and she relapsed
in twilight dreams of a past that had gone forever.

For a moment Crescentius lingered on the threshold, as if
entranced by the vision of her loveliness.  The stern and
anxious look, which his face had worn during the interview
with the Chamberlain, passed off like a summer storm, as he
stood before his adored wife.  She started, as his shadow
darkened the doorway, but the next moment he was at her side, and
taking both her white hands in his, he drew her towards him
and gazed with love and scrutiny into the velvet depths of
her eyes.

For a moment her manner seemed slightly embarrassed
and there was something in her tone which did not escape the
Senator's trained ear.

"I am glad you came," she said after the usual interchange
of greetings such as lovers indulge in when brought together
after a brief separation.  "My lord's time has been greatly
occupied in the emperor's absence."

Crescentius failed not to note the reproach in the tone of
his wife, even through her smile.  She seemed more radiantly
beautiful than ever at this moment.

"And what would my queen have?" he asked.  "All I
have, or ever shall have, is hers."

"Queen indeed,—queen of a sepulcher, of the Mausoleum
of an emperor," she replied scornfully.  "But I ask not for
jewels or palaces—or women's toys.  I am my lord's
helpmate.  I am to take counsel in affairs of state."

A musing glance broke from the Senator's eyes.

"Affairs of state," he said, with a smile and a sigh.
"Alas,—I hoped when I turned my back on Aventine, there would be
love awaiting me and oblivion—in Stephania's arms.  But I
have strange news for you,—has it reached your ear?"

She shook her head.  "I know of nothing stranger than the
prevailing state."

He ignored the veiled reproach.

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, the German commander-in-chief,
is bent upon taking holy orders.  I thought it was
an idle rumour, some gossip of the taverns, but within the
hour it has been confirmed to me by a source whose
authenticity is above doubt."

"And your informant?"

"Benilo, the Chamberlain."

"And whence this sudden world weariness?"

"The mastering grief for the death of his wife."

Stephania fell to musing.

"Benilo," she spoke after a time, "has his own ends in
view—not yours.  Trust him not!"

Crescentius felt a strange misgiving as he remembered his
late discourse with the Chamberlain, and the latter's suggestion,
the primary cause of his visit to Stephania's apartments.

"I fear you mistrust him needlessly," he said after a pause.
"Benilo's friendship for the emperor is but the mantle, under
which he conceals the lever that shall raise the Latin world."

Stephania gazed absently into space.

"As I lay dreaming in the evening light, looking out upon
the city, which you should rule, by reason of your name, by
reason of your descent,—of a truth, I did marvel at your
patience."

A laugh of bitter scorn broke from the Senator's lips.

"Can the living derive force and energy from a past, that is
forgotten?  Rome does not want tragedies!  It wants to be
danced to, sung to and amused.  Anything to make the rabble
forget their own abasement.  'Panem et Circenses' has
been for ever their cry."

"Yet ours is a glorious race!  Of a blood which has flowed
untarnished in the veins of our ancestors for centuries.  It
has been our proud boast, that not a drop of the mongrel
blood of foreign invaders ever tainted our own.  It is not for
the Roman rabble I grieve,—it is for ourselves."

"You have wondered at my patience, Stephania, at my
endurance of the foreign yoke, at my seeming indifference to
the traditions of our house.  Would you, after all, counsel
rebellion?"

"I would but have you remember, that you are a Roman,"
Stephania replied with her deep-toned voice.  "Stephania's
husband, and too good to hold an emperor's stirrup."

"Then indeed you sorely misjudge me, if you think that
under this outward mask of serene submission there slumbers
a spirit indifferent to the cause of Rome.  If the prediction of
Nilus is true, we have not much time to lose.  Send the girl
away!  It is not well that she hear too much."

The last words, spoken in a whisper, caused Stephania to
dismiss the Greek maid.  Then she said:

"And do you too, my lord, believe in these monkish dreams?"

"The world cannot endure forever."

Crescentius paused, glanced round the apartment, as if to
convince himself that there was no other listener.  Then he
rose, and strode to the curtain, which screened the entrance
to an inner chamber.  Not until he had convinced himself
that they were alone, did he resume his seat by the side of
Stephania.  Then he spoke in low and cautious accents:

"I have brooded over the present state, until I am well
nigh mad.  I have brooded ever since the first tidings of Otto's
approach reached the city, how to make a last, desperate dash
for freedom and our old rights.  I have conceived a plan, as
yet known to none but to myself.  Too many hunters spoil
the chase.  We cannot count on the people.  Long fasts and
abstinences have made them cowards.  Let them listen to the
monks!  Let them howl their Misereres!  I will not break into
their rogue's litany nor deprive them of their chance in
purgatory."

He paused for a moment, as if endeavouring to bring order
into his thoughts, then he continued, slowly.

"It is but seemly that the Romans in some way requite
the affection so royally showered on them by the German
King.  Therefore it is in my mind to arrange such festivities
in honour of Otto's return from the shrines of Monte Gargano,
as shall cause him to forget the burden of government."

"And enhance his love for our sunny land," Stephania
interposed.

"That malady is incurable," Crescentius replied.  "Otto
is a fantastic.  He dreams of making Rome the capital of the
earth,—a madness harmless in itself, were it not for Bruno
in the chair of St. Peter.  Single handed their efforts might be
stemmed.  Their combined frenzy will sweep everything before
it.  These festivities are to dazzle the eyes of the stalwart
Teutons whose commander is a very Cerberus of watchfulness.
Under the cover of merry-making I shall introduce
into Castel San Angelo such forces from the Calabrian themes
as will supplant the lack of Roman defenders.  And as for
the Teutons—their souls will be ours through our women;
their bodies through our men."

Crescentius paused.  Stephania too was silent, less
surprised at the message than its suddenness.  She had never
wholly despaired of him.  Now his speech revealed to her
that Crescentius could be as crafty in intrigue as he was bold
in warfare.  Proud as she was and averse to dissimulation
the intrigue unmasked by the Senator yet fascinated her, as
the only means to reach the long coveted goal.  "Rome for
the Romans" had for generations been the watchword of her
house and so little pains had she taken to disguise her feelings
that when upon some former occasion Otto had craved an
audience of her, an unheard of condescension, inspired as much
by her social position as by the fame of her unrivalled beauty,
the imperial envoy had departed with an ill-disguised rebuff,
and Stephania had shut herself up within the walls of a
convent till Otto and his hosts had returned beyond the Alps.

"Within one week, Eckhardt is to be consecrated," Crescentius
continued with slight hesitation, as if not quite assured
of the directness of his arguments with regard to the request
he was about to prefer.  "Every pressure is being brought
to bear upon him, to keep him true to his purpose.  Even a
guard is—at Benilo's instigation—to be placed at the portals
of St. Peter's to prevent any mischance whatsoever during the
ceremony."

He paused, to watch the effect of his speech upon Stephania
and to ascertain if he dared proceed.  But as he gazed into
the face of the woman he loved, he resolved that not a shadow
of suspicion should ever cloud that white brow, caressed by
the dark wealth of her silken hair.

"The German leader removed for ever," Crescentius
continued, "immured alive within the inexorable walls of the
cloister—small is indeed the chance for another German
victory."

"But will King Otto acquiesce to lose his great leader?"

"Benilo is fast supplanting Eckhardt in Otto's favour.
Benilo wishes what Otto wishes.  Benilo sees what Otto sees.
Benilo speaks what Otto thinks.  Rome is pacified; Rome is
content; Rome is happy; what need of heavy armament?
Eckhardt reviles the Romans,—he reviles Benilo, he reviles
the new state,—he insists upon keeping his iron hosts
in the Neronian field,—within sight of Castel San Angelo.
It was to be Benilo or Eckhardt—you know the result."

"But if you were deceived," Stephania replied with a
shudder.  "Your eagle spirit often ascends where mine fails
to follow.  Yet,—be not over-bold."

"I am not deceived!  I bide my time.  'Tis not by force
men slay the rushing bull.  Otto would regenerate the
Roman world.  But he himself is to be the God of his new
state, a jealous God who brooks no rival—only subjects or
slaves.  He has nursed this dream until it is part of himself,
of his own flesh and blood.  What may you expect of a youth,
who, not content to absorb the living, calls the dead to his aid?
He shall nevermore recross the Alps alive."

Crescentius' tone grew gloomy as he continued.

"I bear the youth no grudge, nor ill-will.—But Rome
cannot share.  He has a power of which he is himself
unconscious; it is the inheritance from his Hellenic mother.
Were he conscious of its use, hardly the grave would be a safe
refuge for us.  Once Rome triumphed over Hellas.  Shall
Hellas trample Rome in the dust in the person of this boy,
whose unspoken word will sweep our old traditions from the
soil?"

"But this power, this weakness as you call it—what is
it?" Stephania interposed, raising her head questioningly.
"I know you have not scrutinized the armour, which encases
that fantastic soul, without an effort to discover a flaw."

"And I have discovered it," Crescentius replied, his heart
beating strangely.  Stephania herself was leading up to the
fatal subject of his visit; but in the depths of his soul he
trembled for fear of himself, and wished he had not come.

"And what have you discovered?" Stephania persisted
curiously.

"The weak spot in the armour," he replied, avoiding her gaze.

"Is there a remedy?"

"We lack but the skilful physician."

Stephania raised herself from her recumbent position.
With pale and colourless face she stared at the speaker.

"Surely—you would not resort to—"

She paused, her lips refusing to utter the words.

Crescentius shook his head.

"If such were my desire, the steel of John of the Catacombs
were swifter.  No,—it is not like that," he continued musingly,
as if testing the ground inch by inch, as he advanced.  "A
woman's hand must lead the youth to the fateful brink.  A
woman must enwrap him and entrap him; a woman must
cull the hidden secrets from his heart;—a woman must make
him forget time and eternity, forget the volcano, on whose
crater he stands,—until the great bell of the Capitol shall
toll the hour of doom for German dominion in Rome."

He paused, trembling, lest she might read and anticipate
the thoughts of his heart.

But she seemed not to guess them, for with a smile she said:

"They say the boy has never loved."

"Thereon have I built my plans.  Some Circe must be
found to administer to him the fatal lotus,—to estrange
him from his country, from his leaders, from his hosts."

"But where is one to be trusted so supremely?" she questioned.

Crescentius had anticipated the question.

"There is but one in all Rome—but one."

"And she?" the question came almost in a whisper.  "Do
you know her?"

Crescentius breathed hard.  For a moment he closed his
eyes, praying inwardly for courage.  At last he replied with
seeming indifference:

"I have known her long.  She is loyal to Rome and true to
herself."

"Her name?" she insisted.

"Stephania."

A wild laugh resounded in the chamber.  Its echoes seemed
to mock those two, who faced each other, trembling, colourless.

"That was Benilo's advice."

Like a knife-thrust the words from Stephania's lips pierced
the heart of the Senator of Rome.

Stephania stared at him in such bewilderment, as if she
thought him mad.  But when he remained silent, when she
read in his downcast eyes the mute confirmation of his speech,
she sprang from her couch, facing him in the whole
splendour of her beauty.

"Surely you are jesting, my lord, or else you rave, you are
mad?" she cried.  "Or can it be, that my ears tinkle with
some mockery of the fiend?  Speak!  You have not said it!
You did not!  You dared not."

She removed a stray lock of hair from her snow white brow,
while her eyes burnt into those of Crescentius, like two orbs
of living fire.

"Your ears did not belie you, Stephania," the Senator said
at last.  "I said you are the one—the only one."

With these words he took her hands in his and attempted to
draw her down beside him, but she tore them from his grasp,
while her face alternately paled and flushed.

"Nay," she spoke with cutting irony, "the Senator of Rome
is a model husband.  He disdains the dagger and poison
phial, instead he barters his wife.  You have an admirable code
of morality, my lord!  'Tis a pity I do not share your views,
else the fiend might teach me how to profit by your suggestion."

Crescentius did not interrupt the flow of her indignation,
but his face betrayed a keenness of anguish which did not
escape Stephania's penetrating gaze.  She approached him and
laying her hands on his shoulders bade him look her in the eye.

"How could you say this to me?" she spoke in softer, yet
reproachful tones.  "How could you?  Has it come to the
pass where Rome can but be saved by the arts of a wanton?
If so, then let Rome perish,—and we ourselves be buried under
her ruins."

Her eyes reflected her noble, undaunted spirit and never had
Stephania appeared more beautiful to the Senator, her husband.

"Your words are the seal of loyalty upon your soul,
Stephania," Crescentius replied.  "Think you, I would cast
away my jewel, cast it before these barbarians?  But you do
not understand.  I will be more plain.  It was not that part
you were to assume."

Stephania resumed her seat by his side.  Her bosom heaved
and her eyes peered dimly through a mist of tears.

"Of all the hosts who crossed the Alps with him," Crescentius
spoke with a voice, unsteady at first, but gradually
gaining the strength of his own convictions, "none shares the
emperor's dreams, none his hopes of reconstruction.  An
embassy from the Palatinate is even now on the way, to demand
his return.—Not he!  But there is one, the twin of his mind
and soul—Gregory the Pontiff, who will soon have his hands
full with a refractory Conclave, and will not be able to succour
his friend in the realization of his fantastic dreams.  He must
be encouraged,—his watchfulness beguiled until we are
strong enough to strike the final blow.  Only an intellect
equal to his own dares assail the task.  He must be led by a
firm hand, by a hand which he trusts—but by a hand never
forgetful of its purpose, a hand closed to bribery of chattel or
soul.  He must be ruled by a mind that grasps all the strange
excrescences of his own diseased brain.  Let him build up his
fantastic dream-empire, while Rome rallies her forces for a
final reckoning, then let the mirage dissolve.  This is the part
I had assigned to you.  I can entrust it to none else.  Our hopes
hang upon the fulfilment.  Thus, his hosts dissatisfied, the
electors muttering beyond the Alps, the Romans awakening
to their own disgrace, the king at odds with his leaders
and himself, the pontiff menaced by the hostile Cardinals, there
is one hope left to us, to crush the invaders—our last.  If it
miscarries,—there will not be gibbets enough in the
Campagna for the heads that will swing."

Stephania had gradually regained her composure.  Raising
her eyes to those of Crescentius, she said with hesitation:

"There is truth in your words, but I like not the task.  I
hate Otto with all my Roman heart; with all my soul do I
hate that boy whose lofty aims shame our depravity.  'Tis
an ill time for masks and mummeries.  Why not entrust the
task to the one so eminently fitted for it,—Benilo, the glittering
snake?"

"There will be work enough for all of us," Crescentius
replied evasively.  Somehow he hated to admit even to his
wife, that he mistrusted the Chamberlain's serpent wisdom.
He had gone too far.  He dared not recede without betraying
his own misgivings.

Stephania heaved a deep sigh.

"What would you have me do?"

"You have so far studiously avoided the king.  You have
not even permitted him to feast his eyes on the most beautiful
woman in all Rome.  Be gracious to him, enter into his
vagaries, point out to him old temples and forgotten tombs,
newly dug-up friezes and musty crypts!  Tell him of our legends
and lead him back into the past, from whose labyrinth no
Ariadne will guide him back to the present hour,—It is for
Rome I ask."

"Truly, were I a man, I would not trap my foe by woman's
wiles, as long as I could grip mace or lance.  Is there no man
among all these Romans of yours treacherous enough for
the task?"

"It is even their treachery I dread," replied Crescentius.
"Ambition or the lust of gain may at the last moment carry
victory from the field.  My maxim, you know: Trust none—Fear
none!  These festivities are to dazzle the aim of
suspicion, to attach the people once more to our cause and to
give you the desired opportunity to spread your nets.  Then
lead him step for step away from life, until he shall himself
become but a spectre of the past."

"It is a game unworthy of you and me," Stephania replied
after a long pause.  "To beguile a trusting foe—but the end?
What is it to be?"

"Once in the councils of the king, you will lull his
suspicions to slumber!  You will counteract the pressure of his
flaxen-haired leaders!  You will make him a puppet in your
hands, that has no will save yours.  Then sound the
watchword: Rome and Crescentius!"

"I too love glory," Stephania spoke almost inaudibly.
"Glory achieved by valour, not intrigue.  Give me time, my
lord.  As yet I hardly know if I am fitted for the high mission
you have laid out for me.  Give me but time."

"There shall be no further mention of this matter between
us," Crescentius replied.  "You will be worthy of your self
and of Rome, whose fates I have laid into your hands.  The
task is grave, but great will be the reward.  Where will the
present state lead to?  Is there to be no limit to humiliation?
Is every rebellion unlawful?  Has Fate stamped on our brow,
Suffer and be silent?"

"For whom then is this comedy to be enacted?"

Crescentius shrugged his shoulders.

"Say for ourselves if you will.  Deem you, Stephania, I
would put my head in the sling for that howling mob down
yonder in their hovels?  For the rabble which would stone him,
who gives them bread?  Or for the barons of Rome, who
have encroached upon our sovereignty?  If Fate will but grant
me victory, their robber dens shall crumble into dust, as if
an earthquake had levelled them.  For this I have planned this
Comedy of Love—for this alone."

Stephania slowly rose from her seat beside the Senator.
Every vestige of colour had faded from her face.

"Surely I have not heard aright," she said.  "Did you say
'Comedy of Love'?"

Crescentius laughed, a low but nervous laugh.

"Why stare you so, Stephania, as if I bade you in all truth
to betray me?  Is it so hard to feign a little affection for
this wingless cherub whom you are to mould to your fancies?
The choice is his,—until—"

"Until it is his no longer," Stephania muttered under her
breath, which quickly came and went.

There was a pause of some duration, during which the
Senator of Rome restlessly paced the apartment.  Stephania
had resumed her former station and seemed lost in deep
rumination.  From without no sounds were audible.  The
city slept.  The evening star burnt low down in the horizon.
The moon sickle slept on the crests of the mountains of Albano.

At last Stephania rose and laid her white arm on the shoulder
of the Senator of Rome.

"I will do your bidding," she said slowly, looking straight
into his eyes, "for the glory of Rome and your own!"

"For our glory," Crescentius replied with a deep sigh of
relief.  "I knew you would not fail me in this hour of need."

Stephania raised her hand, as if deprecating the reward.

"For your glory alone, my lord,—it will suffice for both
of us," she replied hurriedly, as her arms sank down by her
side.

"Be it so, since you so wish it," Crescentius replied.  "I
thank you, Stephania!  And now farewell.  It waxes late and
grave matters of state require my instant attention.  Await
not my return to-night."

And kissing her brow, Crescentius hurriedly left his wife's
apartment and ascended a spiral stairway, leading to the
chamber of his astrologer.  Suddenly he staggered, as if he
had seen his own ghost and turned sick at heart.

"What have I done!" he gasped, grasping his forehead
with both hands.  "What have I done!"

Was it a presentiment that suddenly rushed over Him,
prompting him to retrace his steps, prompting him to take
back his request?  For a moment he wavered.  His pride and
his love struggled for supremacy,—but pride conquered.
He would not have Stephania think that he feared a rival on
earth.  He would not have her believe that he questioned
her love.

After Crescentius had departed from the chamber, Stephania
gazed long and wistfully into the starlit night without, so
calm and so serene.

Then a laugh, wild and shrill, broke from her lips, and
sinking back among her cushions, a shower of tears came to
her relief.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SERMON IN THE GHETTO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SERMON IN THE GHETTO

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The Contubernium Hebræorum,
as it is loftily styled in the
pontifical edicts of the time,
the Roman Ghetto, was a
district of considerable extent,
reclaimed originally from the
swamps of the Tiber at the foot
of the Capitoline Hill, and
surrounded either by lofty walls,
or houses which were not
permitted to have even a loop-hole to the exterior.  Five massive
gates, guarded by the halberdiers of the Roman magistrate
were opened at sun-rise and closed at sun-set to emit and to
receive back their jealously guarded inmates, objects of
unutterable contempt and loathing with the populace, into whose
heart the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages had infused a
veneration and love for the person of the Redeemer rather
than for his attributes, and whose passions and devotions were
as yet unalloyed by the skepticism and indifference which
began to pervade the higher ranks of society in the century
of the Renaissance.

Three or four times a year, a grand attempt at conversion
was made, the Pope appointing the most renowned ecclesiastics
to deliver the sermons.

On the occasion about to be described towards the end of
the year 999, the Jews had good reason to expect a more than
commonly devout throng in the train of the pontifical delegate.
They had prepared accordingly.  Upon entering the gates of
the Ghetto the beholder was struck with the dreary and melancholy
aspect of the houses and the emptiness of the little shops
which appeared like holes in the walls.  Such precious wares
as they possessed had been as carefully concealed as those
they had abstracted on the eve of their departure from Egypt.
The exceeding narrowness of the streets, which were in some
parts scarcely wide enough to allow two persons to walk
abreast, and seemed in a manner arched, in-as-much as one
story extended above the others, increased the disagreeable
effect.  Noisome smells greeted the nostrils on every turn and
the flutter of rags from numerous dark lattices seemed to
testify to the poverty within.

Such the Roman Ghetto appeared on the eve of the great
harangue for which the reigning Pontiff, Gregory V, had, in
accordance with the tradition of the Holy See, delegated the
most renowned light of the church.  Not a Jew was to be seen,
much less a Jewess, throughout the whole line of march from
the gates of the Ghetto to the large open square where they
held their markets, and where they had been summoned to
assemble in mass.  The long narrow and intricate windings
misled many who did not keep pace with the Pope's delegate
and his attendants, but the greater part of the rabble rushed
into the square like a mountain stream, leaping over opposing
boulders, shouting, laughing, yelling and crushing one another,
as if they were taking possession of a conquered city.

The square itself was paved with volcanic tufa, very
unevenly laid.  In the center was a great fountain of granite
without the least ornament, intended exclusively for the use of
the inmates of this dreary quarter.  Into this square radiated
numberless streets and alleys giving its disordered architecture
the appearance of being reft and split into chasms, some of the
houses being doubtfully propped with timbers.

Round the fountain stone benches had been arranged with
tables of similar crude material, at which usually sat the
Elders, who decided all disputes, regulated the market and
governed this inner empire partly by the maxims of common
sense and justice, partly by the laws prescribed by their sacred
books, severe indeed and executed with rigour, without
provoking a thought of appeal to the milder and often opposing
Christian judicature.

But now this Sanhedrim was installed in its place of honour
for a different purpose; to hear with outward complacency
and inner abhorrence their ancient law denounced and its
abolition or reform advocated.  For this purpose a movable
pulpit, which resembled a bronze caldron on a tripod, carried
by four Jewish converts, was duly planted under the supreme
direction of the companion friar of the pontifical delegate,
who ordered its position reversed several times, ere it seemed
to suit his fancy.

The delegate of the Pope himself, surrounded by the pontifical
guards, was still kneeling in silent prayer, when a stranger,
who had followed the procession from afar, entered the Ghetto,
unremarked in the general tumult and ensconced himself out
of observation in a dark doorway.  From his point of vantage,
Eckhardt had leisure to survey the whole pandemonium.
On his left there rose an irregular pile of wood-work, built not
without some pretentions to architecture, with quaint carvings
and devices of birds and beasts on the exposed joints and
window-frames, but in a state of ruinous decay.  About midheight
sloped a pent-house with a narrow balcony, supported like many
of the other buildings by props of timber, set against it from
the ground.  The lower part of the house was closed and barred
and had the appearance of having been forsaken for decades.

While, himself unseen Eckhardt surveyed every detail of
his surroundings; the preparations for the sermon continued.
Beyond the seats of the Elders was assembled the great mass
of those who were to profit by the exhortation, remarkable
for their long unkempt beards, their glittering eyes and their
peculiar physiognomies.

Beyond the circle of these compelled neophytes a tumultuous
mob struggled for the possession of every point, whence a view
of the proceedings could be obtained, quarrelling, scoffing and
buffeting the unresisting Jews, whose policy it was not to offer
the least pretext for pillage and general massacre, which on
these occasions hovered over their heads by a finer thread
than that to which hung the sword of Damocles.  Without
expostulations they submitted to the rude swaying of the mob,
to their blows and revilings, opposing to their tormentors a
seemingly inexhaustible endurance.  But the horror, anxiety,
and rage which glowed in their bosoms were strongly reflected
in their faces, peering through the smoky glare of innumerable
torches, which they were compelled to exhibit at all the windows
of their houses.  Engaged in this office only now and then a
woman appeared for a brief instant, for the most part withered
and old, or veiled and muffled with more than Turkish
scrupulousness.

At last the pulpit was duly hoisted and placed to the
satisfaction of the attending friar.  The Pope's delegate having
concluded his prayer arose and two of the Elders advanced,
to present him with a copy of the Old Testament, for from their
own laws were they to be refuted.  They offered it with a deep
Oriental bend and the humble request, that the representative
of his Holiness, their sovereign, would be pleased to deliver his
message.  The monk replied briefly that it was not the message
of any earthly power which he was there to deliver and then
mounted the pulpit by a ladder, which his humbler associate
held for him.  The attendant friar then sprinkled a lustration
round the pulpit with a bunch of hyssop, which he had dipped
in an urn of holy water.  This he showered liberally upon the
Elders who dared not resent it, and ground their teeth in
impotent rage.

Strangely interested, as Eckhardt found himself in the
scene about to be enacted, watching the rolling human sea
under the dark blue night-sky, he found his own curiosity
shared by a second personage, who had taken his position
immediately below the door-way, in which he stood concealed.
This worthy wore a large hat, slouched over his face, which
gave him the appearance of a peasant from the marshes; but
his dirty gray mantle and crooked staff denoted him a pilgrim.
Of his features very little was to be seen, save his glittering
minx-eyes.  These he kept fixed on the balcony of the ruined
house, which had also attracted Eckhardt's attention.  At
other times that worthy's gaze searched the shadows
beneath the gloomy structure with something of mingled
scrutiny and scorn.

"Surely this boasted steel-hearted knave of yours means
to play us false?  Where is the rogue?  He keeps us waiting
long."

These words, as Eckhardt perceived, were addressed to an
individual, who, to judge from the mask he wore, did not wish
to be recognized.

"Were it against the fiend, I would warrant him," answered
a hushed voice.  "But folks here have a great reverence for
this holy man, who goes to comfort a plague-stricken patient
more cheerfully than another visits his lady-love.  And, if
he needs must die, were it not wiser to venture the deed in
some of the lonely places he haunts, than here in the midst
of thousands?"

"Nay," replied his companion in an undertone, every
word of which was understood by his unseen listener.
"Here alone can a tumult be raised without much danger,
and as easily quelled.  I do not set forests on fire, to warm
my feet.  Here they will lay the mischief to the Jews—elsewhere,
suspicion would be quickly aroused, for what bravo
would deem it worth his while to slay a wretched monk?"

Again the pseudo-pilgrim's associate peered into the shadows.
Then he plucked his companion by the sleeve of his mantle.

"Yonder he comes—and by all my sins—streaming like
a water-dog!  Raise your staff, but no—he sees us," concluded
the masked individual, shrinking back into the shadows.

Presently a third individual joined the pilgrim and his
friend.

"Don Giovan!  Thou dog!  How long hast kept me gaping
for thee!" the principal speaker hissed into the bravo's face
as he limping approached.  "But, by the mass,—who baptized
thee so late in life?"

There was something demoniacal in the sunken, cadaverous
countenance of John of the Catacombs, as he peered into the
speaker's eyes.  His ashen-pale face with the low brow and
inflamed eyelids, never more fittingly illustrated a living
sepulchre.  He growled some inarticulate response, half stifled
by impotent rage and therefore lost upon his listener.  For at
this moment the voice of the preacher was heard above all
the confused noise and din in the large square, reading a
Hebrew text, which he subsequently translated into Latin.  It
was the powerful voice of the speaker, which prevented
Eckhardt from distinctly hearing the account which the bravo
gave of his forced immersion.  But towards the conclusion of
his talk, the pilgrim drew the bravo deeper into the shadows
of the overhanging balcony and now their conversation became
more distinct.

"Dog of a villain!" he addressed John of the Catacombs.
"How dare you say that you will fail me in this?  Have you
forgotten our compact?"

"That I have not, my lord," replied the bravo, shuddering
with fear and the cold of his dripping garments.  "But an
angel was sent for the prevention of the deed!  No man would
have braved John of the Catacombs and lived."

"Thou needest not proclaim my rank before all this rabble,"
growled the pseudo-pilgrim.  "Have I not warned thee, idiot?
Deemest thou an angel would have touched thee, without
blasting thee?  What had thine assailant to do to stir up
the muddy waves?  An angel!  Coward?  Is the bribe not
large enough?  Name thine own hire then!"

"A pyramid of gold shall not bribe me to it," replied the
bravo doggedly.  "But I am a true man and will keep no
hire which I have not earned.  So come with me to the
catacombs, and I will restore all I have received of your gold.
But the saints protect that holy man—I will not touch him!"

The pilgrim regarded the speaker with ill-repressed rage.

"Holy—maybe—," he sneered, "holy, according to thy
country's proverb: 'La Cruz en los pechos, el diablo en los
hechos.'  Thou superstitious slave!  What has one like thou
to fear from either angel or devil?"

"May my soul never see paradise, if I lift steel against that
holy man!" persisted the bravo.

"Fool!  Coward!  Beast!" snarled the pilgrim, gnashing
his teeth like a baffled tiger.  "You refuse, when this monk's
destruction will set the mob in such roaring mutiny as will
give your noble associates, whom I see swarming from afar,
a chance to commence a work that will enrich you for ever?"

"For ever?" repeated the bravo, somewhat dubiously.
"But—it is impossible.  See you not he is surrounded by
the naked swords of the guards?  I thought he would have
come darkling through some narrow lane, according to his
wont, else I should never—moreover I have taken an oath,
my lord, and a man would not willingly damn himself!"

"Will you ever and ever forget my injunction and how
much depends upon its observance?" snarled the disguised
pilgrim, looking cautiously around.  "I warn you again, not
to proclaim my rank before all your cut-throats!  You swore,"
he then continued more sedately, "not to lift steel against
him!  But have I not seen you bring down an eagle's flight
with your cross-bow?  Where is it?"

"I have sold it to some foreign lord, from beyond the
Alps, where they love such distant fowling," the bravo
replied guardedly.  "I for my part prefer to steal my game with
a club, or a dagger."

"You have no choice!  Wait!  I think I can yet provide
you with a weapon such as you require!  I have for some
time observed yonder worthy, whoever he may be, staring at
that old bower, as if it contained some enchanted princess,"
said the pilgrim, emerging slightly from under the shadows
of the doorway and beckoning John of the Catacombs to his
side.  This movement brought the two—for the third seemed
to be engaged in a look-out for probable danger—closer
to Eckhardt, but luckily without coming in contact with
him, for it may be conjectured that he had no desire to
expose himself to a conflict in the dark, with three such
opponents.

The personage indicated by the disguised pilgrim had
indeed for some time been engaged in scrutinizing the form of
a young girl, who, seemingly attracted by the novelty of the
scene below had appeared behind a window of the apparently
deserted house, vainly soliciting her attentions with gestures
and smiles.  He was of middling height, but very stout and
burly of frame, a kind of brutal good humour and joviality
being not entirely unmingled with his harsher traits.

"By the mass!" the disguised pilgrim turned to the object
of his scrutiny, in whom we recognize no lesser a personage
than Gian Vitelozzo, as he cautiously approached and saluted
him.  "I see your eyes are caught too!"

He winked at the window which seemed to hold the
fascination for the other, then nodded approval.

"Saw you ever a prettier piece of flesh and blood?"

"Yet she looks more like a waxen image than a woman
of the stuff you mention, Sir Pilgrim," returned the nobleman
in a barbarous jargon of tenth century Latin.

"She is poisoned by the stench amid which she lives, and
it were charity to take her out of it," replied the pilgrim,
with a swift glance at the cross-bow slung over the other's
shoulders.

"Ay, by the mass!  You speak truth!" affirmed Vitelozzo,
while a fourth personage, whom he had not heretofore observed,
had during their discourse emerged from the shadows and
had silently joined the survey.

"Would the whole Ghetto were put to plunder!" sighed
the baron, turning to the pilgrim, "but I am under severe
penance now by order of the Vicar of the Church."

"You must indeed have wrought some special deed of
grace, to need his intercession," the pilgrim sneered with
disgusting familiarity.

Vitelozzo peered into the face of his interlocutor, doubtful
whether to resent the pleasantry or to feel flattered.  Then he
shrugged his shoulders.

"'Twas but for relieving an old man of some few evil days
of pains and aches," he then replied carelessly.  "But since
we are at questioning,—what merit is yours to travel so far
with the cockle-shells?  Surely 'twas not just to witness the
crumbling of this planet into its primeval dust?"

"They say—I killed my brother," replied the disguised
pilgrim coldly.

"Mine was but my uncle," said Vitelozzo eagerly, as if
rejoicing in the comparative inferiority of his crime.  "'Tis
true he had pampered me, when a child, but who can wait
for ever for an inheritance?"

"Ay—and old men never die," replied the pseudo-pilgrim
gloomily.  "You are a bold fellow and no doubt a soldier too,"
he continued, simulating ignorance of the other's rank, in
order to gain his point.  "I have been a good part of mine
a silly monk.  As you see, I am still in the weeds.  Yet I will
wager, that I dare do the very thing, which you are even now
but daring to think."

"What am I thinking then?  I pray your worship enlighten
my poor understanding," replied the nobleman sarcastically.

"You are marking how conveniently those timbers are set
to the balcony of yonder crow's nest, for a man to climb up
unobserved, and that you would be glad if you could summon
the courage to scale it to the scorn of this circumcized mob,"
said the pilgrim.

Vitelozzo laughed scornfully.

"For the fear of it?  I have clambered up many a strong
wall with only my dagger's aid, when boiling lead poured down
among us like melting snow and the devil himself would have
kept his foot from the ladder.  But," he concluded as if
remembering that it behooved not his own dignity to continue
parley with the pilgrim, "who are you, that you dare bandy
words with me?"

The pilgrim considered it neither opportune nor discreet to
introduce himself.

"My staff against your cross-bow," he replied boastfully
instead.  "You dare not attempt it and I will succeed in it!"

"By the foul fiend!  Not until I have failed," replied
Vitelozzo, colouring.  "Hold my cross-bow while I climb.  But
if you mean mischief or deceit, know better than to practise
it, for I am not what I seem, but a great lord, who would as
soon crack your empty pate as an egg!"

The pseudo-pilgrim replied apparently with some warmth,
but as the preacher's tone now rose above the surrounding
buzz only the conclusion of his speech was audible, wherein
he declared that he would restore the noble's cross-bow or
rouse his friends to his assistance in the event of danger.
This compact concluded Eckhardt noted that the Roman
baron gave his helmet, cross-bow and other accoutrements,
which were likely to prove an impediment, into the care of
the pilgrim, and prepared to accomplish his insolent purpose.

The disguised pilgrim, whose identity Eckhardt had vainly
endeavoured to establish, now retired instantly and rejoined
his companions, who had been eagerly listening in their
concealment under the doorway.  The newcomer, who had for
a time swelled their number, had retreated unobserved after
having concluded his observations, as it seemed, to his
satisfaction, for Eckhardt saw him nod to himself ere he vanished
from sight.

"Here then is a weapon, Don Giovan, if you would not
rather have the point in your own skull," the pilgrim said,
handing the bravo a small bow of peculiar construction which
Vitelozzo was wont to carry on his fowling expeditions, as he
styled his nightly excursions.

"Moreover," the pilgrim continued encouragingly, noting
the manifest reluctance on the part of the bravo, "I have
caused you a pretty diversion.  When the tumult, which this
villain will raise, shall begin, you have but to adjust the arrow
and watch the monk's associate.  When he raises his hand—let fly!"

John of the Catacombs shivered, but did not reply, while
Eckhardt scrutinized the monk indicated by the pilgrim,
as well as the glare of the torches and their delusive light
would permit.  But his face being averted, he again turned
his attention to the trio in the shadows below.

The pontifical delegate meanwhile continued his sermon as
unconcerned as if his deadliest enemy did not stand close beside
him ready to imprint on his brow the pernicious kiss of Judas.

"Fear you aught for your foul carcass and the thing you
call your soul?" the pilgrim snarled, seemingly exasperated
by the reluctance of the instrument to obey the master's behest.
"Fear you for your salvation, when so black a wretch as
Vitelozzo—for I know the ruffian, who slew his benefactor,—hazards
both for a fool's frolic?  The monk is a fair mark!
Look but at him perched in the pulpit yonder, with his arms
spread out as if he would fly straightway to heaven!"

"He looks like a black crucifixion," muttered the bravo
with a shudder.

"Tush, fool!  You can easily conceal yourself in these
shadows, for the blame will fall on the Jews and the uproar
which I will raise at different extremities of the crowd will
divert all attention from the perpetrator of the deed!"

John of the Catacombs seemed to yield gradually to the
force of the other's arguments.  The deed accomplished, it had
been agreed that they would dive into the very midst of the
congested throngs and urge the inflamed minds to the
extermination of the hated race of the Ghetto.

Eckhardt's consternation upon listening to this devilish
plot was so great, that for a time he lost sight of the
would-be assailant of the young girl, whom he was unable to see
from his concealment almost directly beneath the balcony.
Again he was staggered by the dilemma confronting him,
how best to direct his energies for the prevention of the double
crime.  To rush forth and, giving a signal to the pontifical
guards, to proclaim the intended treachery, would perhaps in
any other country, age or place have been sufficient to counteract
the plot.  But in this case it was most likely to secure the
triumph of the offenders.  It was far from improbable, that
the projectors of this deed of darkness, upon finding their
sinister designs baffled, would fall combined upon whosoever
dared to cross their path, and silence him for ever ere he had
time to reveal their real purpose.  In the rancorous irritation
and mutually suspicious state of men's minds the least spark
might kindle a universal blaze.  The fears and hatred of both
parties would probably interpret the first flash of steel into a
signal for preconcerted massacre and the very consequences
sought to be averted would inevitably follow.

A further circumstance which baffled Eckhardt was the
cause of the implacable hatred, which the moving spirit of the
trio seemed to bear the pontifical delegate.  But the sagacious
intellect of the man into whose hands fate had so opportunely
placed a lever for preventing a crime, whose consequences it
was difficult to even surmise, suggested these dangers and
their remedies almost simultaneously.  Thus he patiently
awaited the separation of the colleagues on their several
enterprises, regarding the monk with renewed interest in this new
and appalling light.

His tall and commanding form was to be seen from every
point.  The austerity and gloom of the speaker's countenance
only seemed to aid in displaying more brilliantly the
irradiations of the mind which illumined it.  His harangue seemed
imbued with something of supernatural inspiration and dark
as had appeared to Eckhardt the motive for the contemplated
crime, the probable reason suddenly flashed through his
mind.  For in the pulpit stood Gerbert of Aurillac, Archbishop
of Rheims, Bishop of Ravenna, the teacher of the Emperor,
the friend of the Pontiff, he who was so soon as Sylvester II
to be crowned with the Triple Tiara of St. Peter.

But there was no time for musing if the double crime was
to be prevented.  For John of the Catacombs, who had now
turned his back on the crowds, had possessed himself of
Vitelozzo's cross-bow and was tightening the bow-strings.
With equal caution, to avoid betraying his presence, Eckhardt
unsheathed his sword.  But the jar of the blade against the
scabbard, though ever so slight, startled the outlaw's
attention.  He paused for a moment, listening and glancing
furtively about.  Then he muttered to himself: "A rat," and
resumed his occupation, while Eckhardt slowly stepped from
his concealment, taking his station directly behind the kneeling
bravo, unseen by the pilgrim and the latter's silent companion.

A brilliant glow, emanating from some mysterious source
near the monk and which many afterwards contended as
having proceeded directly from his person, suddenly illumined
not only the square, the pontifical delegate, and the monk,
who held his arms aloft as if imploring a benediction, but
likewise the towering form of Eckhardt, leaning on his bare and
glittering brand.

With a yell as if he had seen a wild beast crouching for its
deadly spring, John of the Catacombs sprang up, only to be
instantly struck down by a mighty blow from the commander's
gauntleted hand.  He lay senseless on the ground, covered
with blood.  The bow had fallen from his grasp.  Setting his
foot on the outlaw's breast, Eckhardt hesitated for a moment
whether to rid Rome of so monstrous a villain, or spare him,
in order to learn the real instigators of the crime, when a
piercing shriek from above convinced him that while the bravo
had failed, the high-born ruffian had been more successful.

There was no time for parley.

Trampling with his crushing weight over the bravo's breast
Eckhardt turned towards the spot whence the cry of distress
had come.  An intense hush fraught with doubts and fears
had fallen upon the monk's audience at the ominous outcry,—a
cry which might have been but the signal for some
preconcerted outrage, and the hush deepened when the tall
powerful form of the German leader was seen stalking toward
the deserted house and entering it through a door, which Gian
Vitelozzo had forced, the obstacle which had luckily prevented
him from reaching before his unsuspecting victim.  The ruffian
could be seen from below, holding in his arms on the balcony
the shrieking and struggling girl, disregarding in his brutal
eagerness all that passed below.  Suddenly his shoulder was
grasped as in the teeth of a lion, and so powerful was the
pressure that the noble's arms were benumbed and dropped
powerlessly by his side.  Before he recovered from his surprise
and could make one single effort at resistance, Eckhardt had
seized him round the waist and hurled him down on the square
amidst a roaring thunder of applause mingled with howls of
derision and rage.  Those immediately beneath the balcony,
consisting chiefly of the scum and rabble, who cared little for
the monk's arguments, rejoiced at the prompt retribution
meted out to one of their oppressors, though the discomfiture
of the hapless victim had left them utterly indifferent.  Why
should they carry their skin to market to right another's
wrong?

Thus they offered neither obstacle nor assistance when the
Roman baron, in no wise hurt by his fall, as the balcony was
at no great height from the ground, rose in a towering rage
and challenged his assailant to descend and to meet him
in mortal combat.  But by this time the disturbance
had reached the monk's ears, and at once perceiving the
cause from his lofty point of vantage, Gerbert shouted
to his audience to secure the brawler in the name of
God and the Church.  The mob obeyed, though swayed
by reluctance and doubts, while the pontifical guards
closed round the offending noble to cut off his escape.  But
Gian Vitelozzo seemed to possess sovereign reasons for dreading
to find himself in the custody of the Vicar of the Church
and promptly took to flight.

Overthrowing the first who opposed him, the rest offering
no serious resistance, he forced his way to one of the narrow
passages of the Ghetto, fled through it, relinquishing his
accoutrements and vanished in the shadows, which haunted
this dismal region by day and by night.  But Gerbert of Aurillac
was not to be so easily baffled.  He had recognized the Roman
baron despite his demeaning attire.  With a voice of thunder
he ordered his entire following to the ruffian's pursuit, and
noting the direction in which Vitelozzo had disappeared, he
leaped, despite his advanced years, from his pulpit and waving
a cross high in the air, led the pursuit in person, which
inaugurated a general stampede of nobles, Jews, pilgrims,
monks and the ever-present rabble of Rome.

This unforeseen incident having drawn off the crowd, which
had invaded the Ghetto, in the preacher's wake, the great
square was quickly deserted and the torches in the high
windows were extinguished as if a sudden wind-storm had snuffed
out their glowing radiance.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SICILIAN DANCER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SICILIAN DANCER

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

After a fruitless search for the
hapless victim of the Roman
baron's licentiousness, in order
to restore her in safety to her
kindred or friends, Eckhardt
concluded at last that she had
found a haven of security and
turned his back upon the Ghetto
and its panic-stricken inmates
without bestowing another
thought upon an incident, in itself not uncommon and but
an evidence of the deep-rooted social disorder of the times.
His thoughts reverted rather to the attempt upon the life of
the pontifical delegate, which some happy chance had permitted
him to frustrate, but in vain did he try to fathom the
reasons prompting a deed, the accomplishment of which seemed
to hold out such meagre promise of reward to its perpetrators,
whose persons were enshrouded in a veil of mystery.  Eckhardt
could only assign personal reasons to an attempt, which,
if successful, could not enrich the moving spirits of the plot,
a consideration always uppermost in men's minds, and pondering
thus over the strange events, the commander aimlessly
pursued his way in a direction opposite to the one the monk
and his following had chosen for the pursuit of the baron.
How long he had thus strolled onward, he knew not, when he
found himself in the space before the Capitol.  The moon
gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of the
heavens, trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain
which flowed from beneath the Capitoline rock.

Here some scattered groups of the populace sat or lolled on
the ground, discussing the events of the day, jesting, laughing
or love-making.  Others paraded up and down, engaged in
conversation and enjoying the balmy night air, tinged with the
breath of departing summer.

Wearied with thought, Eckhardt made his way to the fountain,
and, seated on the margin regardless of the chattering
groups which continually clustered round it and dispersed, he
felt his spirits grow calm in the monotony of the gurgling flow
of the water, which was streaming down the rock and spurting
from several grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins.  The
stars sparkled over the dark, towering cypresses, which
crowned the surrounding eminences, and the palaces and ruins
upon them stood forth in distinctness of splendour or
desolation against the luminous brightness of the moonlit sky.

Eckhardt's ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a
tambourine, and looking up from his reverie, he perceived that
the populace were gathering in a wide circle before the fountain,
attracted by the sound of the instrument.  In the background,
kept thus remote by the vigilance of an old woman and two
half-savage Calabrians, who seemed to be the proprietors of
the show, stood a young woman in the garb of a Sicilian,
apparently just preparing to dance.  She seemed to belong to
a class of damsels who were ordained under severe penalties
to go masked during all religious festivals, to protect the
pilgrims from the influence of their baleful charms.  Else there
could be no reason why an itinerant female juggler or minstrel
who employed the talents, which the harmonious climate of
Italy lavishes on its poorest children, to enable them to earn
a scant living from the rude populace, should affect the modesty
or precaution of a mask.  But her tall, voluptuous form as she
stood collecting her audience with the ringing chimes of her
tambourine, garbed as she was in that graceful Sicilian
costume, which still retains the elegance of its Greek original,
proved allurement enough despite her mask.  While thus
unconsciously diverting his disturbed fancies, Eckhardt became
aware, that he had himself attracted the notice of the dancer,
for he encountered her gaze beaming on him from the depths
of her green-speckled mask, which its ordainer had intended
to represent the corruption of disease, but which the humour
of the populace had transmuted into a more pleasant
association, by calling them, "Cardinal melons."

The dancer started from her somewhat listless attitude into
one of gayety and animation, when she saw how earnestly
the dark stranger scrutinized her, and tripping across the
intervening space, she paused before him and said in a voice
whose music flowed to his heart in its mingled humility and
tenderness:

"Sainted Stranger!  Will you disdain dancing the Tarantella
with a poor Sicilian sinner for the love of Santa Rosalia?"

"Thou art like to make many for the love of thyself,"
replied Eckhardt.  "But it were little seemly to behold a
sinner in my weeds join in the dance with one in thine."

As he spoke, he peered so intently into the masked visage
of the Sicilian dancer, that she precipitately retreated.

"Nay—then I must use my spells," she replied after a
moment's thought, and glancing round the circle, which was
constantly increasing, she added slowly, "my spells to raise
the dead, since love and passion are dead in your consecrated
breast!  Mother—my mandolin!"

The smile of her lips seemed to gleam even through her
mask as she threw her tambourine by its silver chain over her
shoulders, taking instead the instrument, which one of the
Calabrians handed to her.  Tuning her mandolin she again
turned to Eckhardt.

"But first you must fairly answer a question, else I shall
not know which of my spells to use: for with some memory
alone avails,—with others hope."

And without waiting his reply, she began to sing in a voice
of indescribable sweetness.  After the second stanza she paused,
apparently to await the reply to her question, while a murmur
of delight ran through the ranks of her listeners.  The first
sound of her voice had fixed Eckhardt's attention, not alone
for its exquisite purity and sweetness, but the strange,
mysterious air which hovered round her, despite her demeaning
attire.

Yet his reply partook of the asperity of his Northern forests.

"Deem you such gossamer subtleties were likely to find
anchorage in this restless breast, which, you hear, I strike and
it answers with the sound of steel?"

"Nay, then so much the worse for you," replied the dancer.
"For where the pure spirit comes not,—the dark one will,"
and she continued her song in a voice of still more mellow and
alluring sweetness.

Suddenly she approached him again, her air more mysterious
than ever.

"Ah!" she whispered.  "And I could teach you even a
sweeter lesson,—but you men will never learn it, as long as
women have been trying to teach it on earth."

"Wherefore then wear you this mask?" questioned
Eckhardt with a severity in his tone, which seemed to
stagger the girl.

"To please one greater than myself," the dancer replied
with a mock bow, which produced a general outburst of
laughter.

"Well then,—what do you want with me?  Why do you
shrink away?"

"Nay,—if you will not dance with me, I must look for
another partner, for my mother grows impatient, as you may
see by the twirling of her girdle," replied the girl pettishly.
"I never cared who it was before,—and now simply because
I like you, you hate me."

"You know it is the bite of the poison spider, for which the
Tarantella is the antidote," spoke Eckhardt sternly.

Without replying the girl began her dance anew, flitting
before her indifferent spectator in a maze of serpentine
movements, at once alluring and bewildering to the eye.  And to
complete her mockery of his apathy, she continued to sing
even during all the vagaries of her dance.

The crowd looked on with constantly increasing delight
testifying its enthusiasm with occasional outbursts of joyful
acclamation.  Showers of silver, even gold, which fell in the
circle, showed that the motley audience had not exhausted its
resources in pious contributions, and the coins were greedily
gathered in by the old woman and her comrades, while several
nobles who had joined the concourse whispered to the hag,
gave her rings and other rich pledges, all of which she accepted,
repaying the donors with the less substantial coin of promise.

Suddenly the relentless fair one concluded her mazy circles
by forming one with her nude arms over Eckhardt's head and
inclining herself towards him, she whispered a few words into
his ear.  A lightning change seemed to come over the
commander's countenance, intensifying its pallor, and struck with
the impression she had produced, the Sicilian continued her
importunities, nodding towards the old hag in the background,
until Eckhardt half reluctantly, half wrathfully permitted
himself to be drawn towards the group, of which the old woman
formed the center.  Pausing before her and whispering a few
words into her ear, which caused the hag to glance up with a
scowling leer, the girl took a small bronze mirror of oval
shape from beneath her tunic and after breathing upon the
surface, requested the old woman to proceed with the spell.
The two Calabrians hurriedly gathered some dried leaves,
which they stuffed under a tripod, that seemed to constitute
the entire stock-in-trade of the group.  After placing thereon
a copper brazier, on which the old woman scattered some
spices, the latter commanded the girl to hold the mirror over
the fumes, which began to rise, after the two Calabrians had
set the leaves on fire.  The flames, which greedily licked them
up, cast a strange illumination over the scene.  The crowds
attracted by the uncommon spectacle pushed nearer and
nearer, while Eckhardt watched the process with an air of
ill-disguised impatience and annoyance leaning upon his huge
brand.

The old woman was mumbling some words in a strange
unintelligible jargon and the Calabrians were replenishing the
consumed leaves with a new supply they had gathered up,
when Eckhardt's strange companion drawing closer, whispered
to him:

"Now your wish!  Think it—but do not speak!"

Eckhardt nodded, half indifferently, half irritated, when the
girl suddenly held the bronze mirror before his eyes and bade
him look.  But no sooner had he obeyed her behest, than with
an outcry of amazement he darted forward and fairly captured
his unsuspecting tormentor.

"Who are you?" he questioned breathlessly, "to read
men's thoughts and the silent wish of their heart?"

But in his eagerness he probably hurt the girl against the
iron scales, of whose jangling he had boasted, for she uttered
a cry and called in great terror: "Rescue—Rescue!"

Before the words were well uttered the two Calabrians
rushed towards them with drawn daggers.  The mob also
raised a shout and seemed to meditate interference.  This
uproar changed the nature of the dancer's alarm.

"In our Holy Mother's name—forbear—" she addressed
the two Calabrians, and the mob, and turning to her captor,
she muttered in a tone of almost abject entreaty:

"Release me—noble stranger!  Indeed I am not what I
seem, and to be recognized here would be my ruin.  Nay—look
not so incredulous!  I have but played this trick on you,
to learn if you indeed hated all woman-kind.  You think me
beautiful,—ah!  Could you but see my mistress!  You would
surely forget these poor charms of mine."

"And who is your mistress?" questioned Eckhardt persisting
in his endeavour to remove her mask, and still under
the spell of the strange and to him inexplicable vision in the
bronze mirror.

.. _`"Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask"`:

.. figure:: images/img-138.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask.

   Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask.

"Mercy—mercy!  You know it is a grievous offence to
be seen without my Cardinal melon," pleaded the girl with a
return of the wiling witchery in her tones and attempting, but
in vain, to release herself from Eckhardt's determined grasp.

"Who is your mistress?" insisted the Margrave.  "And
who are you?"

"Release the wanton!  How dare you, a soldier of the
church, break the commands of the Apostolic lieutenant?"
exclaimed a husky voice and a strong arm grasped Eckhardt's
shoulder.  Turning round, the latter saw himself confronted
by the towering form of the monk Nilus, who seemed ignorant
of the person and rank of him he was addressing and whose
countenance flamed with fanatic wrath.

"Ay!  And it hath come to my turn to rescue damsels, and
moreover to serve the church," added another speaker in a
bantering tone and Eckhardt instantly recognized the Lord
Vitelozzo, who having eluded the pursuit of the monk of
Cluny, held a mace he had secured in lieu of his cross-bow
high and menacingly in the air.

"Friar, look to your ally, if such he be, lest I do what I
should have done before and make a very harmless rogue of
him," said Eckhardt, holding the girl with one hand while
with the other he unsheathed his sword.

"Peace, fool!" the monk addressed his would-be ally,
drawing him back forcibly.  "The church needs not the aid
of one rogue to subdue another.  Let the girl go, my son!"
he then turned to the Margrave.

"Nay, father—by these bruises, which still ache, I will
retrieve my wrong and rescue the wench," insisted the Roman,
again raising his massive weapon, but the monk and some
bystanders wedged themselves between Eckhardt and his
opponent.

"Nay, then, now we are like to have good sport," exclaimed
a fourth.  "A monk, a woman and a soldier,—it requires
not more to set the world ablaze."

"Stranger,—I implore you, release me," whispered Eckhardt's
captive with frantic entreaty amidst the ever increasing
tumult of the bystanders, who appeared to be divided, some
favouring the monk, while others sided with the girl's captor,
whose intentions they sorely misconstrued.  "I would not stand
revealed to yonder monk for all the world!" concluded the girl
in fear-struck tones.

At this moment a cry among the bystanders warned Eckhardt
that Vitelozzo's wrath had at length mastered every effort to
restrain him, and, whirling round, to defend himself he was
compelled to release the girl.  But instead of making the use
she might have been expected to do of her liberty, she called
to the monk, to part the combatants in the name of the saints.

But it required no expostulation on the part of the friar, for
when Eckhardt turned fully upon him, Vitelozzo, for the first
time recognizing his antagonist, beat a precipitate retreat,
but at some distance he turned, shouting derisively:

"An olive for a fig!  Your dove has flown!" and when
Eckhardt, recovering from his surprise, wheeled about, he
found, much to his chagrin, the Roman's words confirmed by
the absence of the girl as well as of her associates, who managed
to make their escape at the moment when the impending
encounter had momentarily drawn off the attention of the crowd.

"The devil can speak truth, they say, though I believed it
not till now," muttered Eckhardt to himself as, vexed and
mystified beyond measure, he strode through the scattering
crowds.

Had it been some jeer of the fiend?  Had he been made
the victim of some monstrous deceit?

Who was the Sicilian dancer, whose manners and golden
language belied her demeaning attire, whose strange eyes had
penetrated into the darkness of his soul, whose voice had
thrilled him with the echoes of one long silent and forever?

The magic mirror in which, as in a haze, he had seen the
one face he most longed to see,—the strange and sudden
fulfillment of the unspoken wish of his heart,—the dancer's
marked persistence in the face of his declared abhorrence,—her
mask and her incongruous companions,—her fear of the
monk and concern for himself,—all these incidents, which
one by one floated on the mirror of his memory, rose ever and
anon before his inner gaze—each time more mystifying and
bewildering.

In deep rumination Eckhardt pursued his way, gazing
absently upon the roofless columns and shattered walls,
everywhere visible, over which the star-light shone—ghostly and
transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses
of the Cavalli, half hidden by the dark foliage that sprang
up amidst the very fanes and palaces of old.  Now and then he
paused with a deep and heavy sigh, as he pondered over the
dark and desolate path upon which he was about to enter,
over the lack of a guiding hand in which he might trust, over
the uncertainty of the step, which, once taken was beyond
recall.

Suddenly a light caught the solitary rambler's eye, a light
almost like a star, scarcely larger indeed, but more red and
intense in its ray.  Of itself it was nothing uncommon and
might have shone from either convent or cottage.  But it
streamed from a part of the Aventine, which contained no
habitations of the living, only deserted ruins and shattered
porticoes of which even the names and memories of their
former inhabitants had been long forgotten.  Aware of this,
Eckhardt felt a slight awe, as the light threw its unsteady
beam over the dreary landscape; for he was by no means free
from the superstition of the age and it was near the hour
consecrated to witches and ghosts.

But fear, whether of this world or the next, could not long
daunt the mind of the Margrave; and after a brief hesitation
he resolved to make a digression from his way, to discover the
cause of the phenomenon.  Unconsciously Eckhardt's tread
passed over the site of the ill-famed temple of Isis which had at
one time witnessed those wildest of orgies commemorated by
the pen of Juvenal.  At last he came to a dense and dark
copse from an opening in the center of which gleamed the
mysterious light.  Penetrating the gloomy foliage Eckhardt
found himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless.  Through
a rift in the wall, forming a kind of casement and about ten
feet from the ground, the light gleamed over the matted and
rank soil, embedded, as it were, in vast masses of shade.
Without knowing it, Eckhardt stood on the very spot once
consecrated to the cult of the Egyptian goddess, and now
shunned as an abode of evil spirits.  The walls of the ruin
were covered with a dense growth of creepers, which entwined
even the crumbled portico to an extent that made it almost
impossible to penetrate into its intricate labyrinth of corridors.

While indulging in a thousand speculations, occasioned by
the hour and the spot, Eckhardt suddenly perceived a shadow
in the portico.  Only the head was visible in the moonlight,
which bathed the ruin, and it disappeared almost as quickly
as it had been revealed.  While meditating upon the expediency
of exploring the mystery which confronted him, Eckhardt
was startled by the sound of footsteps.  Straining his gaze
through the haze of the moonlight he beheld emerging from
the portico of the temple the tall form of a man, wrapt in a
long black cloak.  He wore a conical hat with sloping brim
which entirely shadowed his face and on his right arm he
carried the apparently lifeless body of a girl.  With the object
of preventing a probable crime Eckhardt stepped from his place
of concealment just as the stranger was about to pass him with
his mysterious burden and placed his hands arrestingly on the
other's shoulder.

"Who are you?  And what is your business here?" he
questioned curtly, attempting to remove the stranger's vizor.

"The one matters little to your business,—the other little
to mine," the tall individual replied enigmatically while he
dexterously resisted his questioner's effort to gain a glimpse
at his face.  "But," he added in a strange oracular tone,
which moved Eckhardt despite himself, "if you value my
aid in your hour of trial—assist me now in my hour of need!"

"Your aid?" echoed Eckhardt, staring amazed at his
companion.  "Do you know me?  In what can you assist me?"

"You are Eckhardt the Margrave," replied the stranger;
then inclining his head slightly towards him he whispered a
word, the effect of which seemed to paralyze his listener, for
his arresting hand fell and he retreated a step or two, surveying
him in speechless wonder.

"Who are you?" he stammered at last.

The stranger raised the long visor of his conical hat.  An
exclamation of surprise came from Eckhardt's lips.

"Hezilo, the harper!"

The other replied with a silent nod.

"And we have never met!"

"I seldom go out!" said the harper.

"What know you of Ginevra?" begged the Margrave.

The harper shook his head.

"This is neither the time, nor the place.  I must be gone—to
shelter my burden!  We shall meet again!  If you follow
me," he concluded, noting Eckhardt's persistence, "you will
learn nothing and only endanger my safety and that of this
child!"

"Is she dead?" Eckhardt questioned with a shudder.

"Would she were!" replied the stranger mournfully.

"Can I assist you?"

"I thank you!  The burden is light.  We will meet again."

There was something in the harper's tone which arrested
Eckhardt's desire to ignore his injunction.  How long he
remained on the site of the ill-famed ruin, the Margrave hardly
knew.  When the fresh breeze of night, blowing from the
Campagna, roused him at last from his reverie the mysterious
stranger and his equally mysterious burden had disappeared
in the haze of the moonlit night.  Like one walking in a
dream Eckhardt slowly retraced his steps to his palace on the
Caelian Mount, where an imperial order sanctioning his
purpose and relieving him of his command awaited him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NILUS OF GAËTA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   NILUS OF GAËTA

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

A grand high mass in honour of
the pilgrims was on the
following eve to be celebrated in the
ancient Basilica of St. Peter's.
But vast as was its extent, only
a part of the pilgrims could be
contained and the bronze gates
were thrown open to allow the
great multitude which filled the
square to share the benefits and
some of the glories of the ceremony.

The Vatican Basilica of the tenth century, far from possessing
its present splendour, was as yet but the old consecrated palace,
hallowed by memories of the olden time, in which Charlemagne
enjoyed the hospitality of Leo III, when at his hands
he received the imperial crown of the West.  Similar to the
restored church of St. Paul fuori le Mure, as we now see it, it
was some twenty feet longer and considerably wider, having
five naves divided off by four rows of vast monolith columns.
There were ninety-six columns in all, of various marbles,
differing in size and style, for they had been the first hasty
spoils of antique palaces and temples.  The walls above the
order of columns were decorated with mosaics such as no
Roman hand could then produce or even restore.  A grand
arch, such as we see at the older Basilicas to-day, inlaid with
silver and adorned with mosaic, separated the nave from the
chancel, below which was the tribune, an inheritance from the
prætor's court of old.  It now contained the high altar and the
sedile of the Vicar of Christ.  Before the altar stood the
Confession, the vault wherein lay the bones of St. Peter, with a
screen of silver crowned with images of saints and virgins.
And the whole was illumined by a gigantic candelabrum holding
more than a thousand lighted tapers.

The chief attraction, however, was yet wanting, for the
pontiff and his court still tarried in the Vatican receiving the
homage of the foreign pilgrims.  While listlessly noting the
preparations from his chosen point of vantage, Eckhardt
discovered himself the object of scrutiny on the part of a monk,
who had been listlessly wandering about and who disappeared
no sooner than he had caught the eye of the great leader.

Unwilling to continue the target of observation on the part
of those who recognized him despite his closed visor, Eckhardt
entered the Basilica and took up his station near a remote
shrine, whence he could witness the entrance of the pontifical
procession, without attracting undue attention to his person.
When the pontifical train did appear, it seemed one mass of
glitter and sumptuous colour, as it filed down the aisles of the
Basilica.  The rich copes of the ecclesiastics, stiff with gold
and gorgeous brocade, the jewelled mantles of the nobles, the
polished breast plates and tasselled spears of the guards passed
before his eyes in a bewildering confusion of splendour.  In
his gilded chair, under a superb canopy, Gregory, the youthful
pontiff, was borne along, surrounded by a crowd of bishops,
extending his hands in benediction as he passed the kneeling
worshippers.

An infinite array of officials followed.  Then came pilgrims
of the highest rank, each order marching in separate divisions,
in the fantastic costumes of their respective countries.  In
their wake marched different orders of monks and nuns, the
former carrying torches, the latter lighted tapers, although the
westering sun still flamed down the aisles in cataracts of
light.  After these fraternities and sisterhoods, Crescentius,
the Senator, was seen to enter with his suite, conspicuous for
the pomp of their attire, the taste of Crescentius being to
sombre colours.

Descending from his elevated station, Gregory proceeded to
officiate as High Priest in the august solemnity.  Come with
what prejudices one might, it was not in humanity to resist
the impressions of overwhelming awe, produced by the
magnificence of the spectacle and the sublime recollections with
which the solemnity itself in every stage is associated.  Despite
his extreme youth, Gregory supported all the venerableness
and dignity of the High Priest of Christendom and when at the
conclusion of the high mass he bestowed his benediction on all
Christendom, Eckhardt was kneeling with the immense multitude,
perhaps more convinced than the most enthusiastic
pilgrim, that he was receiving benediction direct from heaven.

The paroxysm only subsided, when raising his head, he
beheld a gaunt monk in the funereal garb of the brotherhood
of Penitent Friars ascend the chancel.  He was tall, lean as a
skeleton and from his shrivelled face two eyes, sunken deep
in their sockets, burnt with the fire of the fanatic.  This was
the celebrated hermit, Nilus of Gaëta, of whose life and manners
the most wonderful tales were current.  He was believed to
be of Greek extraction, perhaps owing to his lengthy residence
in Southern Italy, near the shrines of Monte Gargano in
Apulia.  In the pursuit of recondite mysteries of the Moorish
and Cabalistical schools, he had attained such proficiency,
that he was seized with a profound disgust for the world and
became a monk.  Several years he spent in remote and pagan
lands, spreading the tidings of salvation, until, as it was
whispered, he received an extraordinary call to the effect, as
was more mysteriously hinted, to turn the church from diverse
great errors, into which she had fallen, and which threatened
her downfall.  Last, not least, he was to prepare the minds
of mortal men for the great catastrophe of the Millennium,—the
End of Time, the end of all earthly vanity.  Special visions
had been vouchsafed him, and there was that in his age, in his
appearance and his speech which at once precluded the
imposter.  Nilus of Gaëta himself believed what he preached.

There was a brief silence, during which the Romans
acquainted their foreign guests in hurried whispers with the
name and renown of the reputed hermit.  The latter stood
motionless in the chancel and seemed to offer up a silent
prayer, ere he pronounced his harangue.

His sermon was delivered in Latin, still the common language
of Italy, even in its corrupt state, and its quality was such
as to impress at once the most skeptical with the extraordinary
gifts of the preacher.

The monk began with a truly terrific picture of the state
of society and religion throughout the Christian world, which
he delineated with such gloom and horror, that but for his
arabesque entanglement and his gorgeousness of imagery one
might have believed him a spirit of hell, returned to paint the
orb of the living with colours borrowed from its murkiest
depths.  But with all the fantastic convolutions of his reasoning
the fervour of a real eloquence soon began to overflow the
twisted fountains, in which the scholastic rhetoric of the time
usually confined its displays.  These qualities Nilus especially
exhibited when describing the pure dawn of Christianity, in
which the pagan gods had vanished like phantoms of night.
He declared that they were once more deified upon earth and
the clear light all but extinguished.  And treating the antique
divinities as impersonations of human passions and lusts, the
monk's eloquence suddenly took the most terrible tints, and
considering the nature of some of the crimes which he thus
delineated and anathematized, his audience began to suspect
personal allusions of the most hideous nature.

After this singular exordium, the monk proceeded in his
harangue and it seemed as if his words, like the lava overflow
from a volcano, withered all that was green and flowery in
their path.  The Universe in his desponding eloquence seemed
but a vast desolation.  All the beautiful illusions which the
magic of passion conjures into the human soul died beneath
his touch, changing into the phantoms, which perhaps they are.
The vanity of hope, the shallowness of success, the bitterness
which mingles with the greatest glory, the ecstasy of love,—all
these the monk painted in the most powerful colours, to
contrast them with the marble calm of that drooping form
crucified upon the hill of Calvary.

Spellbound, the immense multitude listened to the almost
superhuman eloquence of the friar.  As yet his attacks had
dealt only in generalities.  The Senator of Rome seemed to
listen to his words with a degree of satisfaction.  A singularity
remarked in his character by all his historians, which, by
some, has been considered as proof of a nature not originally
evil, was his love of virtue in the abstract.  Frequent
resolutions and recommendations to reform were perhaps only
overcome by his violent passions, his ambition and the exigencies
of his ambiguous state between church and empire.  But as
the monk detailed the crimes and monstrosities of the age,
the calm on the Senator's face changed to a livid, satirical
smile, and occasionally he pointed the invectives of the friar
by nodding to those of his followers who were supposed to be
guilty of the crimes alleged, as if to call upon them to notice
that they were assailed, and many a noble shrank behind his
neighbour whose conscience smote him of one or all the crimes
enumerated by Nilus.

In one of his most daring flights the monk suddenly checked
himself and announcing his vision of impending judgment,
he bid his listeners prepare their souls in a prophetic and
oracular tone, which was distinctly audible, amid all the
muttering which pervaded the Basilica.

A few moments of devout silence followed.  The monk was
expected to kneel, to offer up a prayer for divine mercy.  But
he stood motionless in the chancel, and after waiting a short
time, Gregory turned to an attendant:

"Go and see what ails the disciple of Benedict,—we will
ourselves say the Gratias."

After rising, he stepped to the altar with the accustomed
retinue of cardinals and prelates and chanted the benediction.
At the conclusion Crescentius approached the altar alone,
demanded permission to make a duteous offering and emptied
a purse of gold on the salver.

"A most princely and regal benefaction," muttered the
Pontifical Datary—"a most illustrious example."

"Charlemagne gave more, but so will I, when like him I
come to receive the crown of the West," muttered the Senator
of Rome.  His example was immediately followed, and in a
few moments the altar was heaped round with presents of
extraordinary magnificence and bounty.  Sacks of gold and
silver were emptied out, jewels, crucifixes, relics, amber,
gold-dust, ivories, pearls and rare spices were heaped up in
promiscuous profusion, and in return each donor received a branch
of consecrated palm from the hand of the Datary, whose keen
eyes reflected the brightness of the treasures whose receipts
he thus acknowledged.

The chant from various chapels now poured down the
aisles its torrents of melody, the vast multitudes joining in
the Gloria in Excelsis.  Eckhardt's remote station had not
permitted him to witness all that had happened.  His gaze was
still riveted on the friar, who was now staggering from the
pulpit, when a terrific event turned and absorbed his attention.

The great bell of the Basilica was tolling and the vibration
produced by so many sounds shook the vast and ancient pile
so violently that a prodigious mass of iron, which formed one
of the clappers of the bell, fell from the belfry in the airy
spire and dashing with irresistible force through every obstruction,
reached the floor at the very feet of the Pontiff, crushing
a deep hole in the pavement and throwing a million pieces of
shattered marble over him and his retinue.

The vast assembly was for a moment motionless with
terror and surprise, expecting little less than universal
destruction in the downfall of the whole edifice on their heads,
with all its ponderous mass of iron and stone.  A cry arose that
the Pontiff had been killed, which was echoed in a thousand
varying voices, according as men's fears or hopes prevailed.
But in the first moment of panic, when it was doubtful whether
or not the entire center of the Basilica would crumble upon
the assembly, Eckhardt had rushed from the comparative
safety of his own station to the side of the Pontiff as if to
shield him, when with the majesty of a prophet interposing
between offended heaven and the object of its wrath, Gerbert
of Aurillac uttered with deep fervour and amid profound silence
a De Profundis.  The multitudes were stilled from their panic,
which might have been attended with far more serious
consequences than the accident itself.  There was a solemn pause,
broken only by a sea-like response of "Amen"—and a
universal sigh of relief, which sounded like the soughing of
the wind in a great forest.

All distinctions of rank seemed blotted out in that supreme
moment.  Then the voice of Nilus was heard thundering
above the breathless calm, while he held aloft an ebony
crucifix, in which he always carried the host:

"The summits of St. Peter still stand!  When they too fall,
pilgrims of the world—even so shall Christendom fall with
them."

At a sign from the Pontiff his attendants raised aloft the
canopy, under which he had entered.  But he refused to
mount the chair and heading the bishops and cardinals, he
left the church on foot.  The Datary gave one look of hopeless
despair, as the masses crowded out of the Basilica, and
abandoned all hope of restoring order.  In an incredibly short
time the vast area was emptied, Crescentius being one of the
last to remain in its deepening shadows.  With a degree of
vacancy he gazed after the vanishing crowds, more gorgeous
in their broken and mingled pomp, as they passed out of the
high portals, than when marshalled in due rank and order.

He too was about to leave, when he discerned a monk who
stood gazing, as it were, incredulously at the shattered
altar-pavement and the mass of iron deeply embedded in it.  Hastily
he advanced towards him, but as he approached he was struck
by observing the monk raise his eyes, sparkling with mad
fury, to the lighted dome above and clench his hands as if in
defiance of its glory.

"Thou seemest to hold thy life rather as a burden than a
blessing, monk, since thus thou repayest thy salvation,"
Crescentius addressed the friar, somewhat staggered by his
attitude.

"Ay!  If I have done Heaven a temporal injury,—be
comforted, ye saints—for ye have wrought me an eternal
one!" growled the monk between clenched teeth.

"Heaven?" questioned Crescentius, almost tempted to the
conclusion that the monk, whoever he was, was out of his
senses.

"Even Heaven," replied the monk.  "One cubit nearer the
altar,—I thought the struggle over in my soul between the
dark angel and the bright—I had strung my soul to its mighty
task,—yet I shrank from it, a second, and more cowardly
Judas."

Crescentius gazed at the friar without grasping his meaning.

"Take thy superior out of the church, he is mad and
blasphemes," he turned to the monk's companion who listened
stolidly to his raving.

"Ay!" spoke the strange monk, gnashing his teeth and
shaking his fist towards heaven, "even the church shall
anon be rent in twain and form a chasm, down which countless
generations shall tumble into the abyss—'twere just
retribution!"

"Tell me but this, monk, how could Heaven itself throw
obstacles in the way of thine intent?" questioned Crescentius,
perceiving that the monk had turned to depart and more
convinced than ever that he was speaking to a madman.

"How?  How?  Oh, thou slow of understanding,—how?"

And the monk pointed downward, to the crushed and
shattered marble of the pavement, in which the iron clapper
of the bell lay embedded.

Crescentius receded involuntarily before the fierce, insane
gleam in the monk's eyes, while the terrible import of his
speech suddenly flashed upon his understanding.  Crossing
himself, he left the strange friar to himself and passed swiftly
through the motley crowds which were waiting their turn of
admission to the subterranean chapel of the Grand
Penitentiarius.

Another had remained in the dense gloom of the Basilica,
though he had not witnessed the scene which had just come
to a close.  After the Pontiff's departure, Eckhardt had retired
to the shrine of Saint Michael, where he knelt in silent prayer.
His mind was filled with fantastic imaginings, inspired chiefly
by his recent pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano.
The deep void within him made itself doubly felt in this hour
and more than ever he felt the need of divine interposition in
order to retain that consciousness of purpose which was to
guide his future course.

At last he arose.  A remote chant fell upon his ears, and he
saw a procession moving slowly from the refectory into the
nave of the Basilica.  By the dusky glare of the torches, which
they carried, Eckhardt distinguished a number of penitent
friars, bearing aloft the banner, destined in after-generations
to become the standard of the Holy Inquisition, a Red Cross in
a black field with the motto: "In Hoc Signo Vinces."  Among
them and seemingly the chief personage, strode the strange
friar.  With down-cast head and eyes he walked, eyes which,
while they seemed fixed on the ground in self-abasement,
stealthily scanned the features of those he passed.

"I marvel the holy saints think it worth while to trouble
themselves about the soul of every putrid, garlic-chewing
knave," said an old beggar on the steps of the Cathedral to an
individual with whose brief review Eckhardt was much struck.
He was a man past the middle-age, with the sallow complexion
peculiar to the peasants of the marshes.  His broad hat,
garnished with many coloured ribbons, was drawn over his
visage, though not sufficiently so, to conceal the ghastly scars,
with which it was disfigured.  His lurking, suspicious eye and
the peculiar manner with which, from habit, he carried his
short cloak drawn over his breast, as if to conceal the naked
stiletto, convinced Eckhardt that, whatsoever that worthy
might assume to be, he was one of those blackest of the scourges
of Italy, which the license of the times had rendered fearfully
numerous, the banditti and bravi.

"Whether the saints care or no," that individual returned,
"the monk is competent to convert the fiend himself.  What
an honour for the brotherhood to have produced such a saint."

Scarcely bestowing more than a thought upon so usual an
evidence of social disorder, which neither pontifical nor
imperial edicts had been able to correct, Eckhardt passed out,
without noticing that he had himself attracted at least equal
attention from the worthy described, who after having satisfied
his curiosity, slunk back among the crowds and was
lost to sight.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RED FALERNIAN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   RED FALERNIAN

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The palace of Theodora resounded
with merriment,
though it was long past midnight.

Round a long oval table in
the great hall sat a score or
more of belated revellers, their
Patrician garbs in disorder, and
soiled with wine, their faces
inflamed, their eyes red and
fiery, their tongues heavy and beyond the bounds of control.
Here and there a vacant or overturned chair showed where a
guest had fallen in the debauch, and had been permitted to
remain on his self-chosen bed of repose.  A band of players
hidden in a remote gallery still continued to fill up the pauses
in the riotous clamour with their barbaric strains.

At the head of the table, first in place as in rank sat Benilo,
the Chamberlain.  He seemed to take little interest in the
conversation, for, resting his head on his hands, he stared
into his untouched goblet, as if he endeavoured to cast some
augury from the rising and vanishing bubbles of the wine.

Next to him sat Pandulph, Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum.
His low, though well-set figure, dark hair, keen, black eyes
and swarthy features bespoke his semi-barbaric extraction.
His countenance was far from comely, when in repose, even
ugly and repulsive, but in his eyes lay the force of a powerful
will and a depth and subtlety of intellect, that made men fear,
when they could not love him.  On the right of the Count sat
the Lord of Civitella, a large, sensual man, with twinkling
grey eyes, thick nose and full red lips.  His broad face, flushed
with wine, glowed like the harvest moon rising above the
horizon.  Opposite him sat the Patricius Ziazo, crafty and
unscrupulous, a parasite who flattered whosoever ministered
to his pleasure.  The Patricius was conversing with an individual
who outshone Pandulph in rapine, the Lord of Civitella in
coarseness and himself in sycophancy, Guido of Vanossa, an
arrogant libertine, whose pinched features and cunning leer
formed the true index to his character.  The Lords of Sinigaglia,
Torre del Grecco, Bracciano, Cavallo and Caetano swelled the
roll of infamy on the boards of Theodora,—worthy predecessors
of the Orsini and Savelli, who were to oppress the city
in after time.

Among those who had marked the beginning of the evening
by more than ordinary gaiety, Benilo had by his splendid
dissipation excited the general envy and admiration among
his fellow revellers.  His face was inflamed, his dark eyes
were glittering with the adder tongues of the serpent wine,
and his countenance showed traces of unlimited debauchery.
It seemed to those present, as if the ghost of the girl Nelida,
whom he had killed in this very hall, was haunting him, so
madly did he respond to the challenges from all around, to
drink.  But as the wine began to flood every brain, as the hall
presented a scene of riotous debauch, his former reckless mood
seemed for the nonce to have changed to its very opposite.
Through the fumes of wine the dead girl seemed to regard him
with sad, mournful eyes.

"Fill the goblets," cried Pandulph, with a loud and still
clear voice.  "The lying clock says it is day.  But neither
cock-crows nor clock change the purple night to dawn in the
Groves of Theodora, save at the will of the Goddess herself.
Fill up, companions!  The lamp-light in the wine cup is
brighter than the clearest sun that ever shone."

"Well spoken, Pandulph!  Name the toast and we will
pledge it, till the seven stars count fourteen and the seven
hills but one," said the Cavallo looking up.  "I see four hour
glasses even now and every one of them lies, if it says it is
dawn."

"You shall have my toast," said Pandulph, raising his
goblet.  "We have drunk it twenty times already, but we will
drink it twenty times more:—the best prologue to wine
ever devised by wit of man—Woman."

A shadow moved in the dusky background and peered unseen
into the hall.

"And the best epilogue," replied the Lord of Civitella,
visibly drunk.  "But the toast—my cup is waiting."

"To the health—wealth—and love by stealth of Theodora!"
yelled Pandulph, gulping down the contents of his
goblet.

Benilo's face turned ashen pale, but he smiled.

"To Theodora!"

Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained.

"My Lord, it is your turn now," said Pandulph, turning to
the Lord of Civitella.  "The good folks of Urbino have not yet
rung the fire-bells against you, but some say they soon will.
Who shall it be?"

The Lord of Civitella filled up his cup with unsteady hand,
until it was running over and propping his body against the
table as he stood up, he said:

"A toast to Roxané!  And as for my foragers—they sweep
clean."

The toast was drunk with rapturous applause.

"Right you are," bellowed the Cavallo.  "Better brooms
were never made on the Posilippo,—not a straw lies in
your way."

"Did you accomplish it without fight?" sneered the Lord
of Bracciano.

"Fight?  Why fight?  The burghers never resist a noble!
We conjure the devil down with that.  When we skin our
eels, we don't begin at the tail."

"Better to steal the honey, than to kill the bees that make it."

"But what became of the women and children after this
swoop of your foragers?" asked the Lord of Bracciano, who
appeared to entertain some few isolated ideas of honour
floating on the top of the wine he had gulped down.

"The women and children?" replied the Lord of Civitella
with a mocking air, crossing his thumbs, like the peasants of
Lugano, when they wish to inspire belief in their words.
"They can breakfast by gaping!  They can eat wind, like the
Tarentines,—it will make them spit clear."

The Lord of Bracciano, irritated at the mocking sign and
proverbial allusion to the gaping propensities of the people
round the Lago, started up in wrath and struck his clenched
fist on the table.

"My Lord of Civitella," he cried, "do not cross your damned
thumbs at me, else I will cut them off!  The people of
Bracciano have still corn in plenty, until your thieving bands
scorch their fingers in the attempt to steal it."

Andrea Cavallo interposed to stop the rising quarrel.

"Do not mind the Lord of Civitella," he whispered to
Bracciano.  "He is drunk!"

"The rake!  The ingrate!" growled Bracciano, "after
my men opened the traps, in which the Vicar of the Church
had caught him."

"Nay!  If you gape at man's ingratitude, your mouth will
be wide enough, ere you die, my lord," spoke Pandulph with
a sardonic laugh.  "And men in our day stand no more on
precedence in plots than in love affairs,—do they, my lord
Benilo?"

"Nay, I'll dispute no man's right to be hanged or quartered
before me—least of all yours, my Lord Pandulph," the
Chamberlain replied venomously.

"My lord Benilo," replied Pandulph, "you are, when
drunk, the greatest ruffian in Christendom, and the biggest
knave when sober.  Bring in more tankards, and we will not
look for day till midnight booms again on the old tower of San
Sebastian!  I call for full brimmers, varlets,—bring your
largest cups!  We will drink another toast five fathoms deep
in wine, strong enough to melt Cleopatra's pearls, and to a
jollier dame than Egypt's queen."

The servitors flew out and in.  In a few moments the table
was replenished with huge drinking cups, silver flagons and
all the heavy impediments of the army of Bacchus.

"We drink to the Fair Lady of the Groves,—and in her
presence, too!" shouted the Lord of Spoleto, raising his
goblet anew.  "Why is she not among us?  They say," he
turned to Benilo with a sneer, "that you are so jealous of the
charms of your bird of paradise, that you have forbidden her to
appear before your friends."

Roaring peals of laughter crowned Pandulph's speech.

Benilo saw the absurdity of anger, but he felt it nevertheless.

"She chooses not to leave her bower even to look on you, my
Lord Pandulph.  I warrant you, she has not slept all night,
listening to your infernal din."

A renewed outburst of mirth was the response.

"Then you will permit us to betake ourselves forthwith
to her gilded chamber to implore pardon on our knees for
disturbing her rest."

"Well spoken—by the boot of St. Benedict!" roared
Guido of Vanossa.

"You may measure my foot and satisfy yourself that I am
able to wear it," shouted the Lord of Civitella.  "On our knees
we will crawl to the Sanctuary of our Goddess,—on our knees!"

"But before we start on our pilgrimage, we will drain a
draught long as the bell-rope of the Capitol," bellowed the Lord
of Bracciano.

"Fill up the tankards!" exclaimed the Lord of Spoleto.
"My goblet is as empty as an honest man's purse,—and one
of my eyes is sober yet."

"Do not take it to heart!" spoke Guido of Vanossa, whose
eyes were full of tears and wine.  "You will not die in the
jolly fellow's faith!"  And with unsteady voice he began to
sing a stanza in dog-Latin:

   |  "Dum Vinum potamus
   |  Fratelli cantiamo
   |  A Bacco sia Onore!
   |  Te Deum laudamus!"
   |

"Would your grace had a better voice, you have a good
will!" stammered the lord of Sinigaglia.  "'Tis ample time
to repent when you can do no better.  Besides—if you are
damned, it is in rare good company!"

"Ay!  Saint and Sinner come to the same end!" gurgled
the Lord Pandulph, ogling the purple Falernian.

"Fill up your goblets!  Though it be a merry life to lead,
I doubt if it will end in so cheery a death!" said Benilo, his eye
wandering slowly from one to the other.

"Fill up the goblets!" shouted the Lord of Spoleto, rising
and supporting his bulky carcass on the heavy oaken table.

With a sleepy leer he blinked at the guests.

"Down on your knees," he roared suddenly, his former
intent reverting to him.  "To the Sanctuary of the Goddess!
On our knees we will implore her to receive us into her favour."

A strange spirit of recklessness had seized Benilo.  Instead
of resenting or resisting the proposition, he was the first to get
down on all fours.  His example had an electrifying effect.
Although they swayed to and fro like sail-boats on angry
sea-waves, all those still sober enough imitated the Chamberlain
amid cheers and grunts, and slowly the singular procession,
led by Benilo, set in motion with the expressed purpose of
invading Theodora's apartments, which were situated beyond
the great hall.  The Lord Pandulph resembled some huge
bear as on all fours he hobbled across the mosaic floor beside
the Lord of Bracciano, who panted, grunted and swore and
called on the saints, to witness his self-abasement.  Being
gouty and stout, he was at one time seized with a cramp in his
leg and struck out vigorously with the result of striking the
Lord of Civitella squarely in the jaw, whereupon the latter,
toppling over, literally flooded the hall with profanity and
surplus wine.  The other ten hobbled behind the leaders,
cursing their own folly, but enjoying to a degree the novelty
of the pageant.

Thus they had traversed the great hall at a speed as great
as their singular mode of locomotion and their intoxicated
condition would permit.  The background of the hall was but
dimly lighted; the great curtain strung between the two
massive pillars, which guarded the entrance into Theodora's
apartments, excluded the glow of the multi-coloured lamps,
strung in regular intervals in the corridor beyond.

Benilo was the first to reach the curtain.  Resting one
hand on the floor, he raised the other, after the manner of a
dog, trying to push its folds aside, when they suddenly and
noiselessly parted.  Something hissed through the air, striking
the object of its aim a stinging blow in the face—a cry of
pain and rage, and Benilo, who had sprung to his feet, stood
face to face with Theodora.  At the same moment the lights
in the great hall were turned on to a full blaze, revealing in
its entire repelling atrocity the spectacle of the drunken
revellers, who, upon experiencing a sudden check to their
further progress, had come to a sluggish halt, some of them
unable to retain their balance and toppling over in their tracks.

"Beasts!  Swine!" hissed the woman, her eyes ablaze with
wrath, the whip which had struck Benilo in the face, still
quivering in her infuriated grasp.  "Out with you—out!"

The sound of a silver whistle, which she placed between her
lips, brought some five or six giant Africans to the spot.  They
were eunuchs, whose tongues had been torn out, and who,
possessing no human weakness, were ferocious as the wild
beasts of their native desert.  Theodora gave them a brief
command in their own tongue and ere the amazed revellers knew
what was happening to them, they found themselves picked
up by dusky, muscular arms and unceremoniously ejected from
the hall, those lying in a semi-conscious stupor under the
tables sharing the same fate.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DEAD LEAVES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   DEAD LEAVES

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: W
   :image: images/img-cap-w.jpg
   :lines: 5

While the Nubians set about in
cleaning the hall and removing
the last vestiges of the night's
debauch, Theodora faced Benilo
with such contempt in her dark
eyes, that for a moment the
Chamberlain's boasted insolence
almost deserted him, and though
seething with rage at the
chastisement inflicted upon him he
awaited her speech in silence.  She faced him, leaning against
a marble statue, her hands playing nervously with the whip.

"For once I have discovered you in your true station, the
station of the foul, crouching beast, to which you were born,
had not some accident played into the devil's hands by giving
you the glittering semblance of the snake," she said slowly and
with a disdain ringing from her words, which cut even his
debased nature to the core.  "I have whipped you, as one whips
a cur: do you still desire me for your wife?"

With lips tightly compressed he looked down, not daring to
meet her fierce gaze of hatred, which was burning into his very
brain.

"I see little reason for changing my mind," he replied after
a brief pause, while as he spoke his cheek seemed to burn
with shame, where the whip had struck it, and her evil, terrible
beauty, exposed in her airy night-robe, roused all the wild
demoniacal passions in his soul.

The whip trembled in her hands.

"And you call yourself a man!" she said with a withering
look of contempt, under which he winced.

Then she continued in a hard and cheerless voice, wherein
spoke more than simple aversion, a voice that seemed as it
were petrified with grief, with remorse and hatred of the man
who had been the cause of her fall.

"Listen to me, Benilo,—mark well my words.  What I
have been, you know: the beloved, the adored wife of a man,
who would have carried me through life's storms under the
shelter of his love,—a man, who would have shed the last
drop of his life's blood for Ginevra,—that was.  For two
years we lived in happiness.  I had begged him never to lift
the veil which shrouded my birth,—a wish he respected, a
promise he kept.  In the field and at court he pursued the
even tenor of his way,—happy and content with my love.
Then there crept into our home a hypocrite, a liar, a fiend,
who could mock the devils in hell to scorn.  He stands
there,—Benilo, his name,—a foul thing, who shrank from nothing
to gain his ends.  Some fiend revealed to him the awful secret
of Ginevra's birth, a secret which he used to draw her step
by step from the man she loved, to perpetrate a deceit, the
cunning of which would put the devils to blush.  He promised
to restore to her what is her own by right of her birth.  He
roused in her all the evil which ran riot in her blood, and when
she had given herself to him, he revealed himself the lying fiend
he was.  Stung by the furies of remorse, which haunted her
night and day,—in her despair the woman made her love the
prize, wherewith to purchase that for which she had broken
the holiest ties.  But those she made happy were beasts,—enjoying
her favour, giving nothing in return.  My heart is
sick of it,—sick of this sham, sick of this baseness.  Heaven
once vouchsafed me a sinner's glimpse of paradise, of a home
of purity and peace where indeed I might have been a
queen,—a queen so different from the one who rules a gilded
charnel-house."

Benilo had listened in silent amazement.  He failed to
sound the drift of Theodora's speech.  The whip-lash burned
on his cheek.  Her sudden dejection gave him back some of
his former courage.

"I believe Theodora is discovering that she once possessed
a conscience," he said with a sardonic smile.  "How does the
violent change agree with you?" he drawled insolently, for
the first time raising his eyes to hers.

She appeared not to heed the question, but nodding wearily
she said:

"I am not myself to-night.  Despite all which has happened,
I stand here a suppliant before the man who has ruined my
life.  I have something else to say."

"Then I fear you have played your game and lost," he said
brutally.

Theodore interrupted his speech with a gesture, and when she
spoke, a shade of sadness touched her halting tones.

"Last night he came to me in my dream.—I will never
forget the expression with which he regarded me.  I am weary
of it all,—weary unto death."

"Unfortunately our wager does not concern itself with
sleep-walking—though it seems your only chance of luring
your over-scrupulous mate to your bower."

The woman started.

"Surely, you do not mean to hold me to the wager?"

He smiled sardonically.

"Considering the risk I run in this affair—why
not?  Eckhardt is a man of action—so is Benilo,—who
has performed the rare miracle of compelling the grave
to return to his arms Ginevra, a queen indeed,—of her
kind."

Surely some extraordinary change had taken place in the
bosom of the woman before him.  She received the thrust
without parrying it.

"I see," he continued after a brief pause, "Eckhardt proves
too mighty a rock, even for Theodora to move!"

"His will is strong—but all night in his lonely cell he
called Ginevra's name."

"You are well informed.  Why not take the veil yourself,—since
a life of serene placidity seems so suddenly to
your taste?"

"And where is it written that I shall not?" she questioned,
looking him full in the eye.  Benilo winced.  If she would
but quarrel.  He felt insecure in her present mood.

"Here—on the tablets of my memory, where a certain
wager is recorded," he replied.

She turned upon him angrily.

"It is you who forced me to it against my will.—I took
up your gauntlet, stung by your biting ridicule, goaded by
your insults to a weak and senseless folly."

"Then you acknowledge yourself vanquished?"

"I am not vanquished.  What I undertake, I carry through—if
I wish to carry it through."

"It has to my mind ceased to be a matter of choice with
you," drawled the Chamberlain.  "In three days Eckhardt's
fate will be sealed,—as far as this world of ours is concerned.
You see, your chances are small and you have no time to lose."

"Day after to-morrow—holy Virgin—so soon?" gasped
Theodora.

"You have inadvertently called on one whose calls you
have not of late returned," sneered the Chamberlain, with
insolent nonchalance.

"Day after to-morrow," Theodora repeated, stroking her
brow with one white hand.  "Day after to-morrow!"

"Do not despair," Benilo drawled sardonically.  "Much
can happen in two days."

She did not seem to hear him.  Her thoughts seemed to
roam far away.  Then they returned to earth.  For a moment
she studied the man before her in silence, then dropping the
whip, she stretched out her hand to him.

"Release me from this wager," she pleaded, "and all
shall be forgotten and forgiven."

He did not touch the hand.  It fell.

"Theodora," he whispered hoarsely.  "You will never
know how I love you!  I am not as evil as I seem.  But
there are moments when I lose control and madness chokes
my better self, in the hopeless hunt for your love.
Theodora—bury the past!  Give up this baleful existence—live with me
again."

She laughed a shrill laugh.

"Your concubine!  And you have the courage to ask this?"

"You know I love the very ground you tread on."

"Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Is not that enough?"

"No—it is not enough!" she replied with flashing eyes.
"Between us stand the barriers of eternity!"

He paled.

"Do not dismiss me like this.  It is far more cruel than you
know.  If you kill my hope, you leave me a prey to the devils
of jealousy and madness,—the evil things of your own
creation!  Come back to me!  I only ask the love you gave
me once,—the love you thought you gave me,—a grain, a
crumb."

She turned her face away.

"Never again!  Never again!"

The fevered blood raced swiftly from his cheek.  For a
moment he watched her in silence, his eyes like slits in his
hard, pale face, then he turned on his heel and laughed aloud.

A shudder she could not repress crept over the woman's
soft, white skin.

"Benilo!" she called to him.  He turned and came slowly back.

"Benilo," she continued nervously, "release me from this
wager!  I cannot go on—I cannot.  If he is bent upon leaving
the world, let him retire in peace and do not stir the misery
which lies couchant in the hidden depths of his soul.  He has
suffered enough,—more than enough,—more than should
fall to one man's lot.  Do not drive me to madness,—I
cannot do it—I cannot."

"Your thoughts are only for him.  For me you have
nothing," he replied fiercely.

"I owe him everything—nothing to you!"

"Then go to him, to release you,—I will not!"

"I cannot do it!  Be merciful!"

The Chamberlain bowed and answered mockingly.

"It rests with you!"

"With me?"

"Acknowledge your defeat!"

"What do you mean?" she asked with rising fear.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

"We made a wager—the loser pays."

"But the forfeit?" she cried in terror.  "You would not
claim—you would not chain me to you for ever?"

He regarded her with a slow triumphant smile and answered
cruelly:

"Forever?  At one time the thought had less terrors for you!"

She disregarded his sarcasm, continuing in the same plaintive
tone of entreaty, which was music in Benilo's ear.

"But surely—you do not mean it!  You would not profit
by a woman's angry folly.  I was mad,—insane,—I knew
not what I said, what I did!  Benilo, I will admit
defeat,—failure,—anything,—only release me from this fearful
wager.  I ask you as a man,—have pity on me!"

"What pity have you lavished on me?"

"Were you deserving of pity?"

"My love—"

"Your love!  What is your love, but the lust of the wild
beast?" she exclaimed, flying into a passion, but instantly
checking herself.

"Think of it, Benilo," she urged in desperation, "I could
conquer, if I would.  Once Eckhardt lays eyes on me, I can
lead him to my will.  Never can I forget the look he gave me
when I faced him before my own tomb in the churchyard of
San Pancrazio.  Never will that wild expression of despair and
longing, which spoke to me from his mute eyes, fade from
my memory.  Whether he believed that I was a pale, mocking
phantom—what he imagined that I was, I know not—I
could win him, if I would."

"Then win him!" snarled Benilo, through his straight
thin lips.

"No!  No!" she cried piteously.  "Eckhardt is noble.
He believed in me,—he trusted me.  He believes me dead.
He has no inkling of the vile thing I am!  I listened to his
prayer to the Virgin—once more he asked to see the face of
the woman he had loved above everything on earth.  And you
ask me to tear the veil from his eyes and drag him down into
the sloth and slime of my existence!  His faith falls upon me
like a knotted scourge,—his love—a blow upon my guilty
head.  He gave me life-long love in payment for a lie; he gave
me love unwavering and true beyond the grave.  When I
think of it all—I long to die of shame!  You caused me to
believe he was dead,—that he had fallen defending the Eastern
March.  I thanked Heaven for the message; I envied him his
eternal rest.  It was one of your black deceits,—perhaps one
of your mildest.  Let it pass!  But again to enter into his
life—No! no!" she moaned.  "By the God of Love—I will not!"

She gave a wild moan and covered her face with her hands.
Benilo looked on in silence, scarce crediting the proof of
sight and sound.  Once—twice he moved his lips, ere speech
would flow.

"You have but to choose," he said.  "Come to me—my
wife or concubine,—I care not which, and I pledge you my
word, he shall die!  I have but spared him until I sounded
your humour!"

She shivered, and raised her hands as if to conjure away
some apparition.

"No—no—never!" she gasped.  "You would not dare!
You would not dare!  You are but frightening me!  Have pity
on me and let me go!"

"I do not detain you!  Go if you will, but remember the
wager!"

Her head drooped, while Benilo drew nearer, bending his
exultant eyes on her wilted form, and in the passion which
mastered him, he grasped her wrists and drew her hands
apart, then kissed her passionately upon the lips.

With a hunted cry, she wrenched herself away, and leaping
backward, faced him, her voice choked with panting fury:

"Fool!  Devil!  Coward!  Could you not respect a woman's
grief for the degradation you have forced upon her?  Dog!
I might have paid your forfeit had I died of shame!  But
now—I will not!"  She snapped her fingers in his face.  "This for
your wager!  This for an oath to you—the vermin of the
earth!"

Benilo took a backward step, awed by the flaming madness
in her eyes.

"Take care!" he growled threateningly.

"The vermin that crawls in the dust, I say," she reiterated
panting, "the dust—the dust!  Better a thousand deaths
than the brute love you offer!  Between us it is a duel to the
death!  I will win him back,—if I have to barter my evil
beauty for eternal damnation,—if our entwined souls burn
to crisp in purgatory,—I will win him back, revealing
myself to him the foul thing I am,—and by way of contrast
sing your praises, my Lord Benilo—believe me,—the devils
themselves shall be wroth with jealousy at my song."

There was something in the woman's eye, which staggered
the Chamberlain.

"You would not dare!" he exclaimed aghast.

"I dare everything!  You have challenged me and now
your coward soul quails before the issue!—You would have
me recede,—go!  I've done with you!"

"Not yet," Benilo replied, with his sinister drawl—edging
nearer the woman.  "I have something else to say to you!
Your words are but air!  You have measured your strength
with mine and failed!  Go to your old time love!  Tell him
you found a conscience,—tell him where you found it,—and
see if he allows you leisure to confess all your other
peccadilloes, trifling though they be!  Still—the risk is
equal.  I have a mind to take the chance!  Once more,
Theodora,—confess yourself defeated,—acknowledge that the
champion is beyond your reach—be mine—and the wager
shall be wiped out!"

She recoiled from him, raising her hands in unfeigned
horror and cried:

"Never—never."

Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

"As you will!"

"Then you would have me make him untrue to his vows?
You would have me add this sin too, to my others?"

He laughed sardonically, while he feasted his eyes on her
great beauty.

"It will not add much to the burden, I ween."

She gave him one look, in which fear mingled with contempt
and turned to go, when with a spring, stealthy as the
panther's, he overtook her, and pinning down her arms, bent
back the proud head and once more pressed his lips upon the
woman's.

With a cry like a wounded animal she released herself,
pushed him back with the strength of her vigorous youth and
spat in his face.

"Do you still desire me?" she hissed with flaming eyes.

He sprang at her with a furious oath, but his outstretched
fingers grasped the air.  Theodora had vanished.  Recoiling
from the towering forms of the Africans, who guarded the
corridor leading to her apartments, Benilo staggered blindly
back into the dark deserted halls.  Here he found himself face
to face with Hezilo the harper, who seemed to rise out of the
shadows like some ill-omened phantom.

"If you waver now," the harper spoke with his strange
unimpassioned voice,—"you are lost!"

The Chamberlain stopped before the harper's arresting
words.

"What can I do?" he groaned with a deep breath.  "My
soul half sinks beneath the mighty burden I have heaped upon
it, it quails before the fatal issue."

"You have measured your strength with the woman's,"
replied the harper.  "She has felt the conquering whip-hand.
Onward!  Unflinchingly!  Relentlessly!  She dare not face the
final issue!"

"I need new courage, as the dread hour approaches!"
Benilo replied, his breath coming fast between his set teeth.
"And from your words, your looks, I drink it!"

"Then take it from this also: If now you fail hardly the
grave would be a refuge."

Benilo peered up at his strange counsellor.

"Man or devil,—who are you to read the depths of the soul
of man?" he queried amazed, vainly endeavouring to penetrate
the vizor, which shaded the harper's face.

"Perhaps neither," a voice answered which seemed to come
from the remotest part of the great hall, yet it was Hezilo the
harper, who spoke, "Perchance some spirit, permitted to
return to earth to goad man to his final and greatest fall."

"It shall be as you say!" Benilo spoke, rousing himself.
"Onward!  Relentlessly!  Unflinchingly!"

He staggered from the hall.

"Perhaps I too should have flagged and failed, had not one
thought whispered hope to me in the long and solitary hours
which fill up the interstices of time," muttered the harper,
gazing after the Chamberlain's vanishing form.

The voices died to silence.  The pale light of dawn peered
into the deserted hall.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PHANTOM AT THE SHRINE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PHANTOM AT THE SHRINE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

At last the evening had come,
when Eckhardt was for ever to
retire from the world, to spend
the remainder of his days in
prayers and penances, within
the dismal walls of the cloister.
The pontiff himself was to
officiate at the high ceremony,
which was to close the last
chapter in the great general's
life.  Daylight was fading fast, and the faint light, which
still glimmered through the western windows of St. Peter's
Basilica had long since lost its sunset ruddiness and was little
more than a pale shadow.  The candles, their mighty rival
departed, blazed higher now in merry fitfulness, delighting to
play in grotesque imagery over the monkish faces, which
haunted the gloom.

One end of the Basilica was now luminous with the pale
glow of innumerable slender tapers of every length, ranged in
gradated order round the altar.  Their mellow radiance drove
the gloom a quarter of the way down the cathedral.  The
massive bronze doors at the farther end were still shut and
locked.  The only way of entering the church was through
the sacristy, by way of the north transepts, to which only the
monks had access.  No sound that should ring out within
these mighty walls to-night could reach the ears of those who
might be in the streets without.

Meanwhile the quiescent echoes of the vast Basilica were
disturbed by fitful murmurs from the Sacristy.  Far in the
distance, from the north transept, might be distinguished
light footfalls.  Slowly a double file of monks entered the
church, walking to the rhythm of a subdued processional chant,
which rose through the sombre shadows of the aisles.  At the
same time the great portals of the Basilica were thrown open
to the countless throngs, which had been waiting without and
which now, like waters released from the impediment of a
dam, rushed into the immense area, waiting to receive them.

The rumour of Eckhardt's impending consecration had
added no little to the desire of the Romans to be present at a
spectacle such as had not within the memory of man fallen to
their lot to behold, and it seemed as if all Rome had flocked to
the ancient Basilica to witness the great and touching ordeal
at which the youthful Pontiff himself was to officiate.
Seemingly interminable processions of monks, bearing huge waxen
tapers, of choristers, acolytes and incense-bearers, with a
long array of crosses and other holy emblems continued to
pour into the Basilica.  The priests were in their bright robes
of high-ceremony.  The choristers chanted a psalm as they
passed on and the incense bearers swung their silver censers.

The Pontiff's face was a rarely lovely one to look upon;
it was that of a mere youth.  His chin was smooth as any
woman's and the altar cloth was not as white as his delicate
hands.  The halo of golden hair, which encircled his tonsure,
gave him the appearance of a saint.  Marvellously, indeed,
did stole, mitre and staff become the delicate face and figure
of Bruno of Carinthia, and if there was some incongruity
between the spun gold of his fair hair and the severity of the
mitre, which surrounded it, there was none in all that assembly
to note it.

At the door, awaiting the pontifical train, stood the venerable
Gerbert of Aurillac, impressive in his white and gold dalmatica
against the red robes of the chapter.  Preceded by two cardinals
the Pontiff mounted the steps, entering through the great
bronze portals of the Basilica, which poured a wave of music
and incense out upon the hushed piazza.  Then they closed
again, engulfing the brilliant procession.

The chant ceased and the monks silently ranged themselves
in a close semi-circle about the high-altar.  There was a brief
and impressive silence, while the deep, melodious voice of
the Archbishop of Rheims was raised in prayer.  The monks
chanted the Agnus Dei, then a deep hush of expectation fell
upon the multitudes.

The faint echoes of approaching footsteps now broke the
intense silence which pervaded the immense area of the
Basilica.  Accompanied by two monks, Eckhardt slowly strode down
the aisle, which the reverential tread of millions had already
worn to unevenness.  In an obscured niche he had waited
their signal, racked by doubts and fears, and less convinced
than ever that the final step he was about to take would lead
to the desired goal.  From his station he could distinguish
faint silhouettes of the glittering spars in the vaulting, and
the sculptured chancel, twisted and beaten into fantastic
shapes and the line of ivory white Apostles.  As he approached
the monks gathered closely round the chancel, where, under
the pontifical canopy, stood the golden chair of the Vicar of
Christ.

Eckhardt did not raise his eyes.  Once only, as in mute
questioning, did his gaze meet that of Gregory, then he knelt
before the altar.  His ardent desire was about to be fulfilled.
As this momentous time approached, Eckhardt's hesitation
in taking the irrevocable step seemed to diminish—and
gradually to vanish.  He was even full of impatient joy.  Never
did bridegroom half so eagerly count the hours to his wedding,
as did the German leader the moments which were for ever to
relieve him of that gnawing pain that consumed his soul.
In the broken fitful slumber of the preceding night he had seen
himself chanting the mass.  To be a monk seemed to him now
the last and noblest refuge from the torments which gnawed
the strings of his heart.  At this moment he would have
disdained the estate of an emperor or king.  There was no choice
left now.  The bridge leading into the past was destroyed and
Eckhardt awaited his anointment more calmly.

Gregory's face was grave and to a close observer it would
have appeared to withhold approval from that which added
greater glory to the Church, as if anticipating proportionately
greater detriment for the state.  As Eckhardt knelt in silent
prayer, all but entranced in religious ecstasy, he noted not the
nearness of Benilo, who watched him like a tiger from the half
gloom of his station.  The hush in the Basilica was well-nigh
oppressive.  The Romans, who had flocked hither to witness
the uncommon sight of a victorious leader abandoning the
life at a court for the cassock of a monk, and perhaps inwardly
calculating the immense consequences of a step so grave,
waited breathlessly until that step should be accomplished.
Those whose sympathies lay with the imperial party were
filled with grave misgivings, for if Eckhardt's example found
imitators in the German host, the cause of the emperor would
grow weaker in proportion as the prestige of the Romans and
the monks increased.

The benediction had been pronounced.  The Communion
in both kind had been partaken.  The palms of Eckhardt had
been anointed with consecrated oil, and finally the celebration
of the Holy Rite had been offered up in company with the
officiating Cardinal.

It was done.  There remained little more than the cutting
of the tonsure, and from the world, which had once claimed
him—from the world to which he still unconsciously clung
with fevered pulses,—Eckhardt was to vanish for ever.  As the
officiating Cardinal of San Gregorio approached the kneeling
general, the latter chanced to raise his head.  A deadly pallor
overspread his features as his eyes gazed beyond the ecclesiastic
at one of the great stone pillars, half of which was wrapt in
dense gloom.  The ceremony, so splendid a moment ago,
seemed to fade before the aspect of those terrible eyes, which
peered into his own from a woman's face, pale as death.
Throughout the church darkness seemed suddenly to reign,
The candles paled in their sconces of gold before the glare of
those eyes, calculated to make or mar the destinies of man.

Against the incense saturated gloom, her beauty shone out
like a heavenly revelation; she seemed herself the fountain of
light, to give it rather than to receive it.  For a moment
Eckhardt lowered his gaze, little doubting but that the apparition
was some new temptation of the fiend, to make him waver at
the decisive moment.  The ceremony proceeded.  But when
after a few moments, not being able to withstand the lure, he
looked up again, he saw her glittering in a bright penumbra,
which dazzled him like the burning disk of the sun.  And as
he gazed upon the strange apparition, tall with the carriage of
a goddess, her eyes darting rays like stars, winging straight
for his heart—and she the very image of his dead wife, just
as she had appeared to him on that memorable night in the
churchyard of San Pancrazio,—he hardly knew whether the
flame that lighted those orbs came from heaven to strengthen
his resolve, or from hell, to foil it.  But from devil or angel
assuredly it came.

Her white teeth shone in the terrible smile, with which she
regarded him.  The smooth alabaster skin of her throat glistened
with a pearly sheen.  Her white robe, falling from her head to
her feet, straight as the winding sheet of death, matched the
marble pallor of her complexion, and her hands, seemingly
holding the shroud in place, were as white as fresh fallen snow.

As Eckhardt continued to gaze upon her, he felt the floodgates
of his memory re-open; he felt the portals of the past,
which had seemed locked and barred, swing back upon their
hinges, grating deep down in his soul.  And with the sight of
the phantom standing before him, so life-like, so beautiful,
all the mad longing bounded back into his heart.  Gripped by
a terrible pain, he heard neither the chant, nor the words of
the Cardinal.  Everything around him seemed to fade, but the
terrible being still held his gaze with those deep and marvellous
eyes, that had all the brightness and life of the sapphire seas.

Eckhardt felt he was being carried far from the sphere of
the cloister into a world at whose gates new desires were
knocking.  While he mechanically muttered the responses to
the queries, which the Cardinal put to him, his whole soul
began to rise in arms against the words his tongue was uttering.
A secret force seemed to drag them from him, he felt the gaze
of the thousands weighing upon him like a cope of lead.  Yet
it seemed that no one in all that vast assembly heeded the
strange apparition, and if there appeared any hesitancy in
Eckhardt's responses, or a strange restlessness in his
demeanour, it was charged to the consciousness of the
momentous change, the responsibility of the irrevocable step,
crushing life, ambition and hope.

But the countenance of the mysterious apparition did not
change as the ceremony progressed.  Steadfastly, with tender
and caressing gaze she seemed to regard him, her whole soul
in her straining eyes.  With an effort, which might have
moved a mountain, Eckhardt strove to cry out, that he would
never be a monk.  It was in vain.  His tongue clove to the
roof of his mouth.  Not even by sign could he resist.  Wide
awake, he seemed to be in the throes of one of those nightmares,
wherein one cannot utter the words on which life itself depends.
The apparition seemed instinctively to read and to comprehend
the torture, which racked Eckhardt's breast.  And the glance
she cast upon him seemed so fraught with the echoes of despair,
that it froze his heart to the core.

Was it indeed but an apparition?

Was this terrible semblance to his dead wife more than a
mere accident?

The chalice, with the blood of Christ, trembled in Eckhardt's
hand.  He was about to pass it to his lips.  But try as he
might, he could not avert his gaze.  Those terrible eyes, the
marble calm of the face of his dead wife seemed to draw him
onward,—onward.—Forgotten was church, and ceremony,
and vow; forgotten everything before that phantom from
beyond the grave.  It held him with a power which mocked to
scorn every effort to escape its spell.  The apparition lured
him on, as almost imperceptibly it began to recede, without
once abandoning its gaze.

A wild shriek re-echoed through the high-vaulted dome
of the Basilica of St. Peter.  It was the shriek of a
madman, who has escaped his guards, but fears to be overtaken.
The golden chalice fell from Eckhardt's nerveless grasp, spilling
its contents over the feet of the Cardinal of San Gregorio who
raised his hands in unfeigned dismay and muttered an anathema.
Then, with a white, wet face, Eckhardt staggered blindly
to his feet, groping, with outstretched arms, toward the
apparition—which seemed to recede farther and farther away into
the gloom.

The hush of death had fallen upon the assembly.  The monk
Cyprianus raised aloft his arms, as though invoking divine
interposition and exorcising the fiend.  His eyes, the eyes of the
assembled thousands and the stare of Benilo, the Chamberlain,
followed the direction of Eckhardt's outstretched arms.
Suddenly he was seen to pause before one of the massive pillars,
pale as death, mumbling strange words, accompanied by
stranger gestures.  Then he gazed about like one waking from
a terrible dream—the spot where the apparition had mocked
him but a moment ago was deserted!  Had it been but another
temptation of the fiend?

But no!  It was impossible.  This woman had made him
utterly her own; her glance had sufficed to snap asunder the
fetters of a self-imposed yoke, as though her will, powerful even
after death, had suddenly passed upon him.  Though he saw
her not at the present moment, he had but to close his eyes,
to see her as distinctly as if she were still present in the body.
And in that moment Eckhardt felt all the horrors of the path
he was about to choose, the dead and terrible aspect of the life
he was about to espouse.  To be a monk, to crawl till death
in the chill shade of the cloister, to see none save living
spectres, to watch by the nameless corpses of folks unknown,
to wear his raiment for his coffin's pall—a terrible dread
seized him.  One brief hour spent before an altar and some
gabbled words were about to cut him off for ever from the society of
the living.  With his own hand he was about to seal the stone
upon his tomb, and turn the key in the lock of the door of Life.

Like a whirlwind these thoughts passed through Eckhardt's
brain.  Then he imagined once more that he saw the eyes of
his dead wife gazing upon him, burning into the very depths
of his soul.  What made their aspect so terrible to him, he was
not just then in the frame to analyze.  Some mysterious
force, which had left the sweetness of her face unmarred,
seemed to have imparted something to her eyes that inspired
him with an unaccountable dread.

As he paused thus before the pillar, pressing his icy hands
to his fevered temples, vainly groping for a solution, vainly
endeavouring to break the fetters which bound his will and
seemed to crush his strength, there broke upon his ears the
loud command of the officiating monk, to return and bid the
Fiend desist.  These words broke the deadly spell which had
benumbed his senses and caused him to remain riveted to
the spot, where the phantom had hovered.  His sunken eyes
glared as those of a madman, as he slowly turned in response
to the monk's behest.  The hot breath came panting from
between his parched lips.  Then, without heeding the ceremony,
without heeding the monks or the spectators who had flocked
hither to witness his consecration, Eckhardt dashed through
the circle of which he had formed the central figure and, ere
the amazed spectators knew what happened or the monks could
stem his precipitate flight, the chief of the imperial hosts
rushed out of the church in his robes of consecration and
vanished from sight.

So quickly, so unexpectedly did it all happen, that even the
officiating Cardinal seemed completely paralyzed by the
suddenness of Eckhardt's flight.  There was no doubt in the mind
of Cyprianus that the Margrave had gone mad and his whispered
orders sent two monks speeding after the demented neophyte.
Deep, ominous silence hovered over the vast area of the Basilica.
It seemed as if the very air was fraught with deep portent, and
ominous forebodings of impending danger filled the hearts of
the assembled thousands.  The people knelt in silent prayer
and breathless expectation.  Would Eckhardt return?  Would
the ceremony proceed?

Among all those, who had so eagerly watched the uncommon
spectacle of whose crowning glory they were about to see
themselves deprived, there was but one to whom the real cause of
the scene which had just come to a close, was no mystery.
Benilo alone knew the cause of Eckhardt's flight.  To the
last moment he had triumphed, convinced that no temptation
could turn from his chosen path a mind so stern as Eckhardt's.
But when the effect of the mysterious vision upon the kneeling
general became apparent, when his restlessness grew with
every moment, up to the terrible climax, accentuated by his
madman's yell, when, unmindful of the monk's admonition—he
saw him rush out of the church in his consecrated robes—then
Benilo knew that the general would not return.  For the
time all the insolent boastfulness of his nature forsook him
and he shivered as one seized with a sudden chill.  Without
awaiting what was to come, unseen and unnoticed amidst
the all-pervading consternation, the Chamberlain rushed out
of the Basilica by the same door through which Eckhardt
had gained the open.

Under his canopy sat the Vice-Gerent of Christ, surrounded
by the consecrated cardinals and bishops and the monks of
the various orders.  Without an inkling of the true cause
prompting Eckhardt's precipitate flight Gregory had witnessed
the terrible scene, which had just come to a close.  But
inwardly he rejoiced.  For only when every opposition to
Eckhardt's mad desire had appeared fruitless, had the Pontiff
acquiesced in granting to him the special dispensation, which
shortened the time of his novitiate to the limit of three days.

But it was not a matter for the moment, for Gregory himself
was to partake of the Communion and the monk Cyprianus,
who was to perform the holy office, a tribute to the order
whose superior he was, had just blessed the host.  In his
consecrated hand the wine was to turn into the blood of Christ,
Gregory had just partaken of the holy wafer.  Now the monk
placed the golden tube in the golden chalice and, drawing his
cowl deeply over his forehead, passed the other end of the
tube to the Pontiff.

Gregory placed the golden tube to his lips, and as he sipped
the wine, changed into blood, the two cardinals on duty
approached the sacred throne, a torch in one hand, a small
bundle of tow in the other.  According to custom they set the
tow on fire.

Again the unison chant of the monks resounded; the
assembled thousands lying prostrate in prayer.

Suddenly there arose a strange bustle round the pontifical
canopy.  Suppressed murmurs broke the silence.  Monks were
to be seen rushing hither and thither.  Gregory had fainted!
The monk Cyprianus seemed vainly endeavouring to revive
him.  For a moment the crowds remained in awe-struck
silence, then, as if the grim spectre of Death had visibly
appeared amongst them, the terror-stricken worshippers rushed
out of the Basilica of St. Peter and soon the terrible rumour
was rife in the streets of Rome.  Pope Gregory the Fifth was
dying.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE DEATH WATCH`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE DEATH WATCH

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The sun had sunk to rest and
the noises of the day were
dying out, one by one.  The
deep hush of the hour of dusk
settled once more over the city,
shaken to its very depths by
the terrible catastrophe and
upheaved by the fanaticism of the
monks, who roused the populace
to a paroxysm of frenzy and
fear which gave way to pandemonium itself, when the feelings
of the masses, strung to their utmost tension, leaped into the
opposite extreme.  Crescentius had remained shut up in Castel
San Angelo, but the monk Cyprianus could be seen stalking
through the city at the hour of dusk, and whosoever met him
crossed himself devoutly, and prayed to have time for
confession, when the end was nigh.

The importance of the impending change impressed itself
upon every mind.  The time when worldly power alone could
hope to successfully cope with the crying evils of a fast decaying
age, of a world, grown old and stale and rotten, upon which
had not yet fallen the beam of the Renaissance, was not yet at
hand, and the fatal day of Canossa had not yet illumined the
century with its lurid glare.

Therefore Otto had chosen Bruno, the friend of his boyhood,
for the highest honours in Christendom, Bruno, one in mind,
one in soul with himself, and the Conclave had by its vote
ratified the imperial choice.  But Bruno himself had not wished
the honour.  While he shared the high ideals of his royal
friend he lacked that confidence in himself, which was so
essential a requirement for the ruler whose throne swayed
on the storm-tossed billows of the Roman See.  Bruno was
of a rather retrospective turn of mind, and it was doubtful,
whether he would be able to carry out the sweeping reforms
planned by Theophano's idealistic son, and regarded with
secret abhorrence by the Italian cardinals.  Only with the aid
of the venerable Gerbert had Gregory consented to enter upon
the grave duties awaiting him at the head of the Christian
world at a time when that world seemed to totter in its very
foundations.  And he had paid the penalty, cut down in the
prime of life.

In the Vatican chapel on a bier, round which were burning
six wax candles in silver-sticks, lay the fast decaying body of
Gregory V.  Terrible rumours concerning the Pontiff's death
were abroad in the city.  The doors of the Pope's private
apartments had been found locked from within.  The terrified
attendants had not ventured to return to the Vatican until the
gray morning light of the succeeding day broke behind the
crests of the Apennines.  They had broken down the door,
rumour had it, but to recoil from the terrible sight which met
their eyes.  On his bed lay the dead Pontiff.  The head and
right arm almost touched the floor, as if in the death-struggle
he had lost his balance.  Traces of burnt parchment on the
floor and an empty phial on the table beside him intensified,
rather than cleared up the mystery.  And as they approached,
terror-stricken, and endeavoured to lift the body, the right arm
almost severed itself from the trunk at their touch, and the body
was fast turning black.  The handsome features of the youth
were gray and drawn, his hair clammy and dishevelled and the
open eyes stared frightfully into space as if vainly searching
for the murderer.

Whatever Gerbert's suspicions were when, too late, he
arrived in the death chamber, no hint escaped his lips.  Under
his personal care the body of the hapless youth was prepared
for interment, then he hurriedly convoked the Conclave and
ordered the gates of Rome closed against any one attempting
to leave the city.

The Vatican chapel was hung with funereal tapestry.
Everywhere were seen garlands of flowers entwined with
branches of cypress.  In the middle of the chapel stood the bier,
covered with black velvet.  A choir of monks, robed in
vestments of black damask, was chanting the last Requiem.  The
Cardinal of Sienna was conducting the last rites.  As the
echoes of the chant died away under the vaulted arches, a
monk approached the bier, and sprinkled the corpse with holy
water.  The Cardinal pronounced the benediction; the monk
bent slightly over the body when a drop from the forehead of
the dead Pontiff rebounded to his face.  He shuddered and
hastily retreated behind the monks, who formed into the
recessional.  Only two remained in the chapel.  Contrary to
all custom they extinguished the candles which had burnt
down half-way.  The smaller ones they left to flicker out,
until they should pitifully flare up once, more, then to go out
in the great darkness like the soul of man, when his hour has
come.

The last and only one to remain within the chapel to hold
the death-watch with the Pontiff, was Eckhardt, the Margrave.
Wrapt in his dark fancies he sat beside the bier.  After his
precipitate flight all memory of what succeeded had vanished.
Exhausted and tottering he had found himself in the palace
on the Caelian Mount, where he shut himself up till the terrible
tidings of the Pontiff's death penetrated to the solitude of his
abode.  Now it seemed to him that the moment he would set
foot in the streets of Rome, some dark and fearful revelation
awaited him.  Since that night, when the strange apparition
had drawn him from the altars of Christ, had caused him to
renounce the vows his lips were about to pronounce, a terrible
fear and suspicion had gripped his soul.  The presentiment of
some awful mystery haunted him night and day, as he brooded
over the terrible fascination of those eyes, which had laid their
spell upon him, the amazing resemblance of the apparition to
the wife of his soul, long dead in her grave.  And the more he
pondered the heavier grew his heart within him, and he
groped in vain for a ray of light on his dark and lonely
path,—vainly for a guiding hand, to conduct him from the labyrinth
of doubt and fear into the realms of oblivion and peace.  The
Margrave's senses reeled from the heavy fumes of flowers and
incense, which filled the Basilica.  The light from a cresset-lantern
on the wall, contending singly with the pale mournful
rays of the moon, which cast a dim light through the long
casement, over pillars and aisles, fell athwart his pallid face.
The terrible incidents of the past night, which had thrown him
back into the throes of the world, and had snuffed out the
Pontiff's life, weighed heavily upon him, and for the nonce,
the commander abandoned every attempt to clear the terrible
mystery which enshrouded him.  He almost despaired of
combating the spectre single-handed, and now the one man, who
might by counsel and precept have guided his steps, had been
struck down by the assassin's hand.

The sanctity of the place, the solemnity of the hour, and the
deep silence around were well calculated to deepen the
melancholy mood of the solitary watcher.  Weird were the fancies
that swept over his mind, memories of a long forgotten past,
and dim, indistinct plans for the future, till at length, wearied
with his own reflections over that saddest of all earthly enigmas,
what might have been, he seated himself on a low bench beside
the bier.  The moonbeams grew fainter and more faint, as the
time wore on, and the sharp distinction between light and
shadow faded fast from the marble floor.

Thicker and thicker drooped the shadows round the bier
of the dead Pontiff.  The silence seemed to deepen.  The moon
was gone.  Save for the struggling rays of the cresset-lantern
above him, the blackness of night closed round the solemn
and ghostly scene.

The scent of flowers and the fumes of incense weighed
heavily on Eckhardt's senses.  Vainly did he combat the
drowsiness; the silence, the dim light and the heavy fumes at
last laid their benumbing spell upon him and lulled him to
sleep.  His head fell back and his eyes closed.

But his sleep was far from calm.  Weird dreams beset him.
Again he lived over the terrible ordeal of the preceding night.
Again he saw himself surrounded, hemmed in by a vast
concourse.  Again he saw the phantom at the shrine, the phantom
with Ginevra's face,—Ginevra's eyes; again he heard her
strange luring words.  The wine spilled from the sacred
chalice looked like blood on the marble stairs of the altar.  He
heard his own voice, strange, unearthly; gripped by a choking
sensation he rushed from the crowded Basilica, the air of which
seemed to stifle him,—rushed in pursuit of the phantom
with Ginevra's face,—Ginevra's eyes.  At the threshold of the
church a hand seized his own,—a woman's hand.  How long,
since he had felt a woman's hand in his own!  It was cold as
the skin of a serpent, yet it burnt like fire.  And the hand drew
him onward, ever onward.  There was no resisting the gaze
of those eyes which burnt into his own.

A deep azure overspread the sky.  The trees were clothed in
the raiment of spring.  Blindly he staggered onward.  Blindly
he followed his strange guide through groves, fragrant with
the perfumes of flowers,—the air seemed as a bower of love.
The hand drew him onward with its chill, yet burning touch.
The way seemed endless.  Faster and faster grew their speed.
At last they seemed to devour the way.  The earth flitted
beneath them as a gray shadow.  The black trees fled in the
darkness like an army in rout.  They delved into glens, gloomy
and chill.  The night-birds clamoured in the forest deeps;
will-o'-the-wisps gleamed over stagnant pools and now and
then the burning eyes of spectres pierced the gloom, who
lined a dark avenue in their nebulous shrouds.

And the hand drew him onward—ever onward!  Neither
spoke.  Neither questioned.  At last he found himself in a
churchyard.  The scent of faded roses hovered on the air like
the memory of a long-forgotten love.  They passed tombstone
after tombstone, gray, crumbling, with defaced inscriptions;
the spectral light of the moon in its last quarter dimly
illumined their path till at last they reached a stone half hidden
behind tall weeds and covered with ivy, moss and lichen.  The
earth had been thrown up from the grave, which yawned to
receive its inmate.  Owls and bats flocked and flapped about
them with strange cries; the foxes barked their answer far away
and a thousand evil sounds rose from the stillness.  As they
paused before the yawning grave he gazed up into his
companion's face.  Pale as marble Ginevra stood by his side,
the long white shroud flowing unbroken to her feet.  Through
the smile of her parted lips gleamed her white teeth, as
she pointed downward, to the narrow berth, then her arms
encircled his neck like rings of steel; her eyes seemed to pierce
his own, he felt unable to breathe, he felt his strength giving
way, together they were sinking into the night of the grave—

A shrill cry resounded through the silence of the Basilica.
Awakened by the terrible oppression of his dream,—roused
by the sound of his own voice, Eckhardt opened his eyes and
gazed about, fearstruck and dismayed.  After a moment or
two he arose, to shake off the spell, which had laid its
benumbing touch upon him, when he suddenly recoiled, then
stood rooted to the spot with wild, dilated eyes.  At the foot of
the Pontiff's bier stood the tall form of a woman.  The fitful
rays of the cresset-lantern above him illumined her white,
flowing garb.  A white transparent veil drooped from her head
to her feet; but the diaphanous texture revealed a face pale
and beautiful, and eyes which held him enthralled with their
slumbrous, mesmeric spell.  Breathless with horror Eckhardt
gazed upon the apparition; was it but the continuation of his
dream or was he going mad?

As the phantom slowly began to recede into the shadows,
Eckhardt with a supreme effort shook off the lethargy which
benumbed his limbs.  He dared remain no longer inert, he
must penetrate the mystery, whatever the cost, whatever the
risk.  With imploring, outstretched arms he staggered after
the apparition,—if apparition indeed it was,—straining his
gaze towards her slowly receding form—and so absorbed was
he in his pursuit, that he saw not the shadow which glided
into the mortuary chapel.  Suddenly some dark object hurled
itself against him; quick as a flash, and ere he could draw a
second breath, a dagger gleamed before Eckhardt's eyes; he
felt the contact of steel with his iron breast-plate, he heard
the weapon snap asunder and fall at his feet, but when he
recovered from his surprise, the would-be assassin, without
risking a second stroke, had fled and the apparition seemed to
have melted into air.  Eckhardt found himself alone with the
dead body of the Pontiff.

With loud voice he called for the sentry, stationed without,
and when that worthy at last made his appearance, his heavy,
drooping eyelids and his drowsy gait did not argue in favour
of too great a watchfulness.  Making the sentry doff his heavy
iron shoes, Eckhardt bade him secure a torch, then he made
the round of the chapel, preceded by his stolid companion.
The Margrave's anxiety found slight reflex in the coarse features
of his subordinate, who understood just enough of what was
wanted of him to comprehend the disappointment in his
master's countenance.  As every door was locked and bolted,
the only supposition remaining was that the bravo had
discovered some outlet from within.  But Eckhardt's tests proved
unavailing.  The floor and the walls seemed of solid masonry
which to penetrate seemed impossible.  The broken blade
offered no clue either to the author or perpetrator of this deed of
darkness, and after commanding the sentry to keep his watch
for the remainder of the night, inside, Eckhardt endeavoured
once more to compose himself to rest, while the man-at-arms
stretched his huge limbs before the pontifical bier.

The bells of St. Peter's chimed shrill and loud as a mighty
multitude, greater even than that of the preceding night,
swept within its portals toward the chapel of Boniface VIII.
There, filling every inch of space, only the more fortunate of
the crowd gained a glimpse of the coffin, which had been closed,
for the corpse was decaying fast, the effect of the terrible and
mysterious poison which had been mixed in the holy wine.
At length, as the solemn chant of the choristers began to swell
through the edifice, preluding the celebration of the Death
Mass for the departed Pontiff, a silence as of the tomb pervaded
the vast edifice.

Thus the day wore on,—thus the day departed.

The solemn chant had died away.  The sun of another day
had set.

The funeral cortege set in motion.  Fifty torches surrounded
the bier and so numerous were the lamps in the windows of the
streets through which the funeral procession passed, so
abundant the showers of roses which poured upon the bier, that the
people declared it surpassed the procession Corpus Domini.

Interchanging solemn hymns, the cortege arrived at last
before the church of San Pietro in Montorio, where the body
was to be placed in the niche provisionally appointed, where
it was to remain till the death of the succeeding pope should
consign it to its final place of rest.

The ceremony ended, the people dispersed.  Few loiterers
remained on the pavement of the church.  The sacristan
announced that it was about to be closed, and waiting until,
as he thought, all had departed, he turned the ponderous
doors on their hinges and shut them with a crash.  The report,
reverberating from arch to arch, shook the ancient sepulchre
through its every angle.  The lamps, which at wide intervals
burned feebly before the shrines of the saints, lent additional
solemnity and awe to the obscurity of the place.  One torch
was left to light a narrow circle round the entrance to the
crypt.

Silence had succeeded when out of the shadow of the tomb
there passed two figures, who upon entering the narrow
circle of light emanating from the dim, flickering taper, faced
each other in mute amazement and surprise.

"What are you doing here?" spoke the one, in the garb
of a monk, as they stood revealed to each other in the half
gloom.

With a gesture of horror and dismay the other, a woman,
wrapt in a dark mantle, which covered her tall and stately form
from head to foot, turned away from him.

"I give you back the question," she replied, dread and fear
in her tones.

"My presence here concerns the dead," said the monk.

"They say, the hand of the dead Pontiff has touched his
murderer."

The monk paled.  For a moment he almost lost his self-control.

"He had to die some way," he replied with a shrug.

"Monster!" she exclaimed, recoiling from him, as if she
had seen a snake in her path.

"He travelled in godly company," said the monk Cyprianus
with a dark laugh.  "An entire Conclave will welcome him
at the gates of Paradise.  Why are you here?" the monk
concluded, a shade of suspicion lingering in his tones.

"Am I accountable to you?" flashed Theodora.

"Being what you are through my intercession,—perhaps,"
replied the monk.

She measured him with a look of unutterable contempt.

"Because the prying eyes of a perjured wretch, who screened
his vileness behind the cassock of the monk, dared to offend
the majesty of Death and to disturb the repose of the departed,
you come to me like some importunate slave dissatisfied with
his hire?  You dare to constitute yourself my guardian, to
call Theodora a thing of your creation?  Take care!  You
speak to a descendant of Marozia.  I have had enough of
whimpering monks.  For the service demanded of you in a
certain hour you have been paid.  So clear the way, and
trouble me no more!"

The monk did not stir.

"The fair Theodora has not inherited Ginevra's memory,"
he said with a sneer.  "The gold was to purchase the
repose of Ginevra's soul."

Theodora shuddered, as if oppressed with the memories of
the past.

"Candles and masses," she said, as one soliloquizing.  "How
signally they failed!"

The monk shrugged his shoulders.

"If a thousand Aves, and tapers six foot long fail in their
purpose,—what undiscovered penance could perform the
miracle?"

There was something in the gleam of the monk's eye which
brought Theodora to herself.

"What do you want of me?" she questioned curtly.

"The fulfilment of your pledge."

"You have been paid."

The monk waved his hands.

"'Tis not for gold, I have ventured this—"

And he pointed to the crypts below.

She recoiled from him, regarding him with a fixed stare.

"What do you want of me?" she again asked with a look,
in which hate and wonder struggled for the mastery.

"The new Conclave will be made up of your creatures.
Their choice must fall—on me!"

"On the perjured assassin?" shrieked the woman.  "Out
of my way!  I've done with you!"

The monk stirred not.  From his drawn white face two eyes
like glowing coals burnt into those of the woman.

"Remember your pledge!"

"Out of my way, assassin!  Dare you so high?  The chair
of St. Peter shall never be defiled by such a one—as you!"

"And thus Theodora rewards the service rendered to
Ginevra," the monk said, breathing hard, and making a
step towards her.  She watched him narrowly, her hand
concealed under her cloak.

"Dare but to touch the hem of this robe with your
blood-stained hands—"

Cyprianus retreated before the menace in her eyes.

"I thought I had lived too long for surprises," he said
calmly.  "Yet, considering that I bear here in this bosom a
secret, which one, I know, would give an empire to
obtain,—Cyprianus can be found tractable."

With a last glance at the woman's face, stony in its marble-cold
disdain, the monk turned and left the church through the
sacristy.  For a moment Theodora remained as one spell-bound,
then she drew her mantle more closely about her and left
the sepulchre by an exit situated in an opposite direction.  No
sooner had her footsteps died to silence when two shadowy
forms sped noiselessly through the incense-saturated dusk of
S. Pietro in Montorio, pausing on the threshold of the door,
through which the monk Cyprianus had gained the open.

"I need that man!" whispered the taller into the ear of
his companion, pointing with shadowy finger to the swiftly
vanishing form of the monk.

The other nodded with a horrid grin, which glowed upon his
visage like phosphorus upon a skull.

With a quick nod of understanding, the Grand Chamberlain
and John of the Catacombs quitted the steps of S. Pietro in
Montorio.

Darkness fell.

Night enveloped the trembling world with her star
embroidered robe of dark azure.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CONCLAVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CONCLAVE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

A vast concourse surrounded the
portals of the Vatican.  It
seemed as if the entire
population of Rome, from the Porta
del Popolo to the Coliseum,
from the baths of Diocletian to
Castel San Angelo, had
assembled by appointment in the
Piazza of St. Peter.  For so
dense was the multitude, that its
pressure filled the adjacent thoroughfares, the crowds clinging
round columns, winding along the broken outlines of the walls,
and grouping themselves among the ruins of temples and fallen
porticoes.

The eyes of all were fixed upon that wing of the pontifical
palace where the Conclave, hurriedly convoked, was assembled,
and as Gregory V had now been dead sixteen days, the cardinals
were proceeding with the election of a new Pope.  Never possibly,
from the hour when the first successor of St. Peter mounted
the throne of the Apostle, had there been exhibited so much
unrest and disquietude as there was in this instance to be
observed among the masses.  The rumour that Gregory had
died of poison had proved true, and the Romans had been seized
with a strange fear, urging all ranks towards the Vatican or
Monte Cavallo, according as the scarlet assembly held its
sittings in one place or another.  During the temporary
interregnum, the Cardinal of Sienna, president of the Apostolic
Chamber, had assumed the pontifical authority.

For three days the eyes of the Romans had been fixed upon
a chimney in the Vatican, whence the first signal should issue,
proclaiming the result of the pending election.  Yet at the hour
when the Ave Maria announced the close of day, a small column
of smoke, ascending like a fleecy cloud of vapour to the sky,
had been the only reward for their anxiety, and with cries
mingled with shouts of menace, discordant murmurs of
raillery and laughter the crowds had each day dispersed.  For
the smoke announced that the Romans were still without
a Pontiff, that the ballot-list had been burnt, and that the
Sacred College had not yet chosen a successor to Gregory.

The day had been spent in anxious expectation.  Hour
passed after hour, without a sign either to destroy or to excite
the hope, when the first stroke of five was heard.  Slowly the bells
tolled the hour, every note falling on the hearts of the people,
whose anxious gaze was fixed on the chimney of the Vatican.
The last stroke sounded; its vibrations faintly fading on the silent
air of dusk, when a thunderous clamour, echoing from thousands
of throats, shook the Piazza of St. Peter, succeeded by a death-like
silence of expectation as with a voice, loud and penetrating,
Cardinal Colonna, who had stepped out upon the balcony,
announced to the breathless thousands:

"I announce to you tidings of great joy: Gerbert of Aurillac,
Archbishop of Rheims, Bishop of Ravenna and Vice-Chancellor
of the Church, has been elected to the exalted office of Pontiff
and has ascended the chair of St. Peter under the name of
Sylvester II."

As the Cardinal finished his announcement a monk in the
grey habit of the Penitent friars was seen to pale and to totter,
as if he were about to fall.  Declining the aid of those endeavouring
to assist him he staggered through the crowds, covering
his face with his arms and was soon lost to sight.

The thunderous applause at the welcome tidings was followed
by sighs of relief, as the people retired to their houses and
hovels.  The place, where a few minutes before a nation seemed
collected, was again deserted, save for a few groups, composed
of such whom curiosity might detain or others who, residing in
the immediate neighbourhood, were less eager to depart.  Even
these imperceptibly diminished, and when the hour of eight was
repeated from cloisters and convents, the lights in the houses
gradually disappeared, save in one window of the Vatican,
whence a lamp still shed its fitful light through the nocturnal
gloom.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MEETING`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   Book the Second

.. class:: center xx-large bold

   The Sorceress

.. vspace:: 4

..

   |    "As I came through the desert, thus it was
   |  As I came through the desert: I was twain;
   |  Two selves distinct, that cannot join again.
   |  One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
   |  And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
   |  And she came on and never turned aside,
   |  Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
   |      And as she came more near,
   |      My soul grew mad with fear."
   |                                —*James Thomson*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

THE MEETING

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: N
   :image: images/img-cap-n.jpg
   :lines: 5

Not many days after, in the still
noontide of mellow autumn, a
small band of horsemen drew
towards Rome.  They rode along
the Via Appia, between the
ancient tombs; all about them,
undulant to the far horizon,
stretched a brown wilderness
dotted with ruins.  Ruins of
villas, of farms, of temples,
with here and there a church or a monastery, that told of the
newer time.  Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a speck
of tilled soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and
awful silence, but rarely did a human figure meet the eye.
Marshy ground and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing
them to glance sadly at those great aqueducts, which had in
bygone ages carried water from the hills into Rome.

They rode in silence, tired with their journey, occupied with
heavy or anxious thoughts.  Otto, King of the Germans,
impatient to arrive, was generally a little ahead of the rest of
the company.  The pallor of his smooth and classic face was
enhanced by the coarse military cloak, dark and travel-stained,
which covered his imperial vestments.  A lingering expression
of sadness was revealed in his eyes, and his lips were tightly
compressed in wordless grief, for the tidings of the untimely
death of the Pontiff, the friend of his youth and his boyhood
days, had reached him just after his departure from the shrines
of St. Michael in Apulia.  Dark hints had been contained in the
message, which Sylvester II, Gregory's chosen successor and
Otto's former teacher, had despatched to the ruler of the Roman
world, urging his immediate return,—for the temper of the
Romans brooked no trifling, their leaders being ever on the
alert for mischief.

Earthworks and buildings of military purpose presently
appeared, recalling the late blockade; churches and oratories
told them they were passing the sacred ground of the
Catacombs, then they trotted along a hollow way and saw before
them the Appian gate.  Only two soldiers were on guard;
these, not recognizing the German king, took a careless view
of the travellers, then let them pass without speaking.

At the base of the Aventine the cavalcade somewhat slackened
its pace.  Slowly they ascended the winding road, until
they reached the old wall of Servius Tullius.  Here Otto reined
in his charger, pausing, for a moment, to observe the view.
To the west and south-west stretched the brown expanse of the
Campagna, merging into the distant gray of the Roman
Maremma, while beyond that point a clear blue line marked
the Ionian Sea.  Beneath them the Tiber wound its coils
round St. Bartholomew's Island, the yellow water of the river,
stirred into faint ripples by the breeze, looking from the distance
like hammered brass.  Beyond the Tiber rose the Janiculan
Mount, behind which the top of the Vatican hill was just
visible.  To southward the view was bounded by the Church of
Santa Prisca above them and far off rose the snow-capped
cone of Soracté.  Northeast and east lay the Palatine and
Esquiline with the Campaniles of Santa Maria Maggiore and
San Pietro in Vincoli.  Over the Caelian Mount they could see
the heights of the Sabine hills, and running their eyes along the
Appian way, they could almost descry the Alban lake.  At a
sign from their sovereign the cavalcade slowly set in motion.
Passing the monastery of St. Jerome and its dependencies, the
three churches of the Aventine, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria
Aventina and St. Alexius, the imperial cavalcade at last drew
rein before the gates of Otto's Golden Palace on the Aventine.

Again in his beloved Rome, Otto's first visit was to Bruno's
grave.  He had dismissed his attendants, wishing to be alone
in his hour of grief.  Long he knelt in tears and silent prayers
before the spot, which seemed to contain half his young life,
then he directed his steps towards the Basilica of St. Peter,
there to conclude his devotions.

It was now the hour of Vespers.

The area of St. Peters was filled with a vast and silent crowd,
flowing in and out of the Confessor's station, which was in the
subterranean chapel, that contains the Apostle's tomb, the
very lode-stone of devotion throughout the Christian word.

After having finished his devotions, Otto was seized with the
desire to seek the confessor, in order to obtain relief from the
strange oppression which hovered over him like a presentiment
of evil.  Taking his station in line with a number of
penitents, in the dusky passage leading to the confessional, the
scene within was now and then revealed to his gaze for the
short space of a moment, when the bronze gates opened for
the entrance or exit of some heavily burdened sinner.  The
tomb was stripped of all its costly ornaments, and lighted only
by the torches of some monks, whose office it was to interpret
the Penitentiarius, whenever occasion arose.  These torches
shed a mournful glow over the dusk, suiting the place of
sepulchre of martyred saints.  On the tomb itself stood an urn
of black marble, beneath which was an alabaster tablet, on
which was engraved the prophecy concerning the Millennium
and the second coming of Christ, and the conditions of penance
and prayer, which were to enable the faithful to share in and
obtain its benefits.  Only now and then, when the curtain
waved aside, the person of the Grand Penitentiarius became
visible, his hands rigidly clasped, and his usually pale and stern
visage overspread with even a darker haze of its habitual
gloom.

While Otto was anxiously waiting his turn to be admitted
to the presence of the Confessor, the gates of the confessional
suddenly swung open and a woman glided out.  She was closely
veiled and in his mental absorption Otto might scarcely have
noticed her at all, but for the singular intensity of the gaze,
with which the monk followed her retreating form.

As she passed the German King in the narrow passage, her
veil became entangled and she paused to adjust it.  As she did
so, her features were for the brief space of a moment revealed
to Otto, and with such an air of bewilderment did he stare at
her, that she almost unconsciously raised her eyes to his.  For
a moment both faced each other, motionless, eye in eye—then
the woman quickened her steps and hastened out.  After
she had disappeared, Otto touched his forehead like one
waking from a trance.  Never, even in this city of beautiful
women, had he seen the like of her, never had his eyes met
such perfection, such exquisite beauty and loveliness.  She
combined the stately majesty of a Juno with the seductive
charms of Aphrodite.  In dark ringlets the silken hair caressed
the oval of her exquisite face, a face of the soft tint of Parian
marble, and the dark lustrous eyes gave life to the classic
features of this Goddess of Mediæval Rome.  Before she
vanished from sight, the woman, seemingly obeying an impulse
not her own, turned her head in the direction of Otto.  This
was due perhaps to the strange discrepancy between his face
and his attire, or to the presence of one so young and of
appearance so distinguished among the throngs which habitually
crowded the confessional.

How long he stood thus entranced, Otto knew not, nor did
he heed the curious gaze of those who passed him on entering
and leaving the confessional.  At last he roused himself, and,
oblivious of his station and rank, flew down the dark,
vaulted passage at such a speed as almost to knock down
those who encountered him in his headlong pursuit of the fair
confessionist.  It was more than a matter of idle curiosity to him
to discover, if possible, her station and name, and after having
attracted to himself much unwelcome attention by his rash
and precipitate act, he gradually fell into a slower pace.  He
reached the end of the dark passage in time to see what he
believed to be her retreating form vanish down a corridor
and disappear in one of the numerous side-chapels.  Concluding
that she had entered to perform some special devotion,
he resolved to await her return.

Considerable time elapsed.  At last, growing impatient,
Otto entered the chapel.  He found it draped throughout with
black, an altar in the center, dimly illumined.  Some monks
were chanting a Requiem, and before the altar there knelt a
veiled woman, apparently under the spell of some deep emotion,
for Otto heard her sob when she attempted to articulate the
responses to the solemn and pathetic litany, which the Catholic
church consecrates to her dead.

But the German King's observation suffered an immediate check.

A verger came forward on those soundless shoes, which all
vergers seem to have, and little guessing the person or quality
of the intruder informed him of the woman's desire, that none
should be admitted during the celebration of the mass.  Otto
stared his informant in the face, as if he were at a loss to
comprehend his meaning, and the latter repeated his request
somewhat more slowly, under the impression that the
stranger's seeming lack of understanding was due to his
unfamiliarity with the speaker's barbarous jargon.

Otto slowly retreated and deferring his intended visit to the
chapel of the Confessor to an hour more opportune, left the
Basilica.  As he recalled to himself, trace after trace, line upon
line, that exquisite face, whose creamy pallor was enhanced
by the dark silken wealth of her hair, and from whose perfect
oval two eyes had looked into his own, which had caused his
heart-beats to stop and his brain to whirl, he could hardly
await the moment when he should learn her name, and perhaps
be favoured with the assurance that her visit on that
evening was not likely to have been her last to the Confessor's
shrine.

Imbued with this hope, he slowly traversed the streets of
Rome, experiencing a restful, even animating contentment in
breathing once more the atmosphere of the thronging city,
of being once more in a great center of humanity.  At a familiar
corner sat an old man with an iron tripod, over which, by a
slow fire, he roasted his chestnuts, a sight well remembered,
for often had he passed him.  He threw him some coins and
continued upon his way.  Beyond, at his shop-door stood a
baker, deep in altercation with his patrons.  From an alley
came a wine-vender with his heavy terra-cotta jars.  Before
an osteria a group of pifferari piped their pastoral strains.  A
few women of the sturdy, low-browed Contadini-type
hastened, basket-laden, homeward.  A patrol of men-at-arms
marched down the Navona, while up a narrow tortuous lane
flitted a company of white-robed monks, bearing to some
death-bed the last consolation of the church.

Otto had partaken of no food since morning and nature
began to assert her rights.  Finding himself at the doorway of
an inn for wayfarers, with a pretentious coat-of-arms over
the entrance, he entered unceremoniously, and seated himself
apart from the rather questionable company which patronized
the Inn of the Mermaid.  Here the landlord, a burly Calabrian,
served his unknown guest with a most questionable beverage,
faintly suggestive of the product of the vintage, and viands so
strongly seasoned that they might have undertaken a
pilgrimage on their own account.

For these commodities, making due allowance for his guest's
abstracted state of mind, the uncertainty of the times and the
crowded state of the city, the host of the Mermaid only
demanded a sum equal to five times the customary charge, which
Otto paid without remonstrance, whereupon the worthy host
of the Mermaid called to witness all the saints of the calendar,
that he deserved to spend the remainder of his life in a pig-sty,
for having been so moderate in his reckoning.

As one walking in a dream, Otto returned to his palace on
the Aventine.  Had he wavered in the morning, had the
dictates of reason still ventured to assert themselves—the past
hour had silenced them for ever.  Before his gaze floated the
image of her who had passed him in the Basilica.  At the
thought of her he could hear the beating of his own heart.
Rome—the dominion of the earth—with that one to share
it—delirium of ecstasy!  Would it ever be realized!  Then
indeed the dream of an earthly paradise would be no mere
fable!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE QUEEN OF NIGHT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE QUEEN OF NIGHT

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a.jpg
   :lines: 5

A week had passed since Otto's
arrival in Rome.  Eckhardt,
wrapped in his own dark fancies,
had only appeared at the palace
on the Aventine when
compelled to do so in the course of
his newly resumed duties.  The
terrible presentiment which had
haunted him night and day
since he left the gray, bleak
winter skies of his native land, had become intensified during
the past days.  Day and night he brooded over the terrible
fascination of those eyes which had laid their spell upon him,
over the amazing resemblance of the apparition to the one
long dead in her grave.  And the more he pondered the heavier
grew his heart within him, and vainly he groped for a ray of
light upon his dark and lonely path, vainly for a guiding hand
to conduct him from the labyrinth of doubt and fear.

It had been a warm and sultry day.  Towards evening
dark clouds had risen over the Tyrrhene Sea and spread in long
heavy banks across the azure of the sky.  Sudden squalls of
rain swept down at short intervals, driving the people into
shelter.  All the life of the streets took refuge in arcades or
within dimly lighted churches.  Soon the slippery marble
pavements were deserted, and the water from the guttered
roofs dripped dolefully into overflowing cisterns.  A strange
atmosphere of discomfort and apprehension lay over the city.

The storm increased as evening fell.  From the seclusion of
the gloomy chamber he occupied in the old weather-beaten
palace of the Pierleoni, Eckhardt looked out into the growing
darkness.  The clouds chased each other wildly and the driving
rain obliterated every outline.

How long he had thus stood, he did not know.  A rattle
of hailstones against the window, a gust of wind, which
suddenly blew into his face, and the lurid glare of lightning
which flashed through the ever-deepening cloud-bank, roused
Eckhardt from his reverie to a sense of reality.  The lamp on
the table shed a fitful glare over the surrounding objects.
Now the deep boom of thunder reverberating through the hills
caused him to start from his listless attitude.  Just as he
turned, the lamp gave a dismal crackle and went out, leaving
him in Stygian gloom.  With an exclamation less reverent
than expressive, Eckhardt groped his way through the
darkness, vainly endeavouring to find a flint-stone.  A flash of
lightning which came to his aid not only revealed to him the
desired object, but likewise a tall, shadowy form standing on
the threshold.  From the dense obscurity which enshrouded
him, Eckhardt could not, in the intermittent flashes of
lightning, see the stranger's features, but a singular, and even to
himself quite inexplicable perversity of humour, kept him
silent and unwilling to declare his presence, although he
instinctively felt that the strange visitor, whoever he was, had
seen him.  Meanwhile the latter advanced a pace or two,
paused, peered through the gloom and spoke with a voice
strangely blended with deference and irony:

"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"

Without once taking his eyes from the individual, whose
dark form now stood clearly revealed in the lightning flashes,
which followed each other at shorter intervals, the same
strange obstinacy stiffened Eckhardt's tongue, and concealed
in the gloom, he still held his peace.  But the stranger drew
nearer, till in height and breadth he seemed suddenly to
overshadow the Margrave, and once again the voice spoke:

"Is Eckhardt of Meissen present?"

"I am here!" the latter replied curtly, rising out of the
darkness, and striking the flint-stones, he succeeded, after
some vain efforts, in relighting the lamp.  As he did so, a
tremendous peal of thunder shook the house and the stranger
precipitately retreated into the shadow of the doorway.

"You are the bearer of a message?" Eckhardt turned
towards him, with unsteady voice.  The stranger made no
move to deliver what the other seemed to expect.

"Everything in death has its counterpart in life," he replied
with a calm, passionless voice which, by its very absence of
inflection, thrilled Eckhardt strangely.  "If you have the
courage—follow me!"

Without a word the Margrave placed upon his head a skullcap
of linked mail, and after having adjusted his armour,
turned to the mysterious messenger.

"Who bade you speak those words?"

"One you have seen before."

"Where?"

"Your memory will tell you."

"Her name?"

"You will hear it from her own lips."

"Where will you lead me?"

"Follow me and you will see."

"Why do you conceal your face?"

"To hide the blush for the thing called man."

The stranger's enigmatic reply added to Eckhardt's conviction
that this night of all was destined to clear the mystery
which enshrouded his life.

A mighty struggle, such as he had never before known,
seemed to rend his soul, as with throbbing heart he followed
his strange guide on his mysterious errand.  Thus they sped
through the storm-swept city without meeting one single
human being.  At the top of the Esquiline they came to a
momentary standstill, for the storm raged with a force that
nothing could resist.  Leaning for a moment against a ruined
portico, Eckhardt gazed westward over the night-wrapt city.
In the driving rain he could scarcely distinguish the huge
structures of the Flavian Amphitheatre and the palaces on the
Capitoline hill.  The Janiculan Mount stood out like a darker
storm-cloud against the lowering sky, and the air was filled
with a dull moan and murmur like the breathing of a sleeping
giant.  On the southern slope of the hill the wind attacked
them with renewed fury, and the blasts howled up the Clivus
Martis and the Appian Way.  The region seemed completely
deserted.  Only a solitary travelling chariot rolled now and
then, clattering, over the stones.

The road gradually turned off to the right.  The dark mass
to their left was the tomb of the Scipios and there in front,
hardly visible in the darkness of night, rose the arch of Drusus,
through which their way led them.  Eckhardt took care to
note every landmark which he passed, to find the way, should
occasion arise, without his guide.  The latter, constantly
preceding him, took no note of the Margrave's scrutiny, but
continued unequivocally upon his way, leaving it to Eckhardt to
follow him, or not.

A blinding flash of lightning illumined the landscape far
away to the aqueducts and the Alban hills, followed by a
deafening peal of thunder.  The uproar of the elements for a time
shook Eckhardt's resolution.

Just then he heard the clanging of a gate.

An intoxicating perfume of roses and oleander wooed his
bewildered senses as his guide conducted him through a
labyrinthine maze of winding paths.  Only an occasional gleam of
lightning revealed to the Margrave that they traversed a garden
of considerable extent.  Now the shadowy outlines of a vast
structure, illumined in some parts, appeared beyond the dark
cypress avenue down which they strode at a rapid pace.

Suddenly Eckhardt paused, addressing his guide: "Where
am I, and why am I here?"

The stranger turned, regarding him intently.  Then he replied:

"I have nothing to add to my errand.  If you fear to follow
me, there is yet time to retreat."

Had he played upon a point less sensitive, Eckhardt might
have turned his back even now upon the groves, whose whispering
gloom was to him more terrible than the din of battle, and
whose mysterious perfumes exercised an almost bewildering
effect upon his overwrought senses.

A moment's deliberation only and Eckhardt replied:

"Lead on!  I follow!"

He was now resolved to penetrate at every hazard the
mystery which mocked his life, his waking hours and his
dreams.

On they walked.

Here and there, from branch-shadowed thickets gleamed
the stone-face of a sphinx or the white column of an obelisk,
illumined by the lightnings that shot through the limitless
depth of the midnight sky.  The storm rustled among the
arched branches, driving the dead and dying leaves in a mad
whirl through the wooded labyrinth.

At last, Eckhardt's strange guide stopped before a cypress
hedge of great height, which loomed black in the night, and
penetrating through an opening scarce wide enough for one
man, beckoned to Eckhardt to follow him.  As the latter did
so he stared in breathless bewilderment upon the scene which
unfolded itself to his gaze.

The cypress hedge formed the entrance to a grotto, the
interior of which was faintly lighted by a crystal lamp of
tenderest rose lustre.

For a moment Eckhardt paused where he stood, then he
touched his head with both hands, as if wondering if he were
dreaming or awake.  If it was not the work of sorcery, if he
was not the victim of some strange hallucination, if it was
not indeed a miracle—what was it?  He gazed round,
awe-struck, bewildered.  His guide had disappeared.

The denizen of the grotto, a woman reclining on a divan,
like a goddess receiving the homage of her worshippers, was
the image of the one who had gone from him for ever, and the
longer his gaze was riveted on this enchanting counterfeit of
Ginevra, the more his blood began to seethe and his senses to
reel.

Slowly he moved toward the enchantress, who from her
half-reclining position fixed her eyes in a long and questioning
gaze upon the new-comer, a gaze which thrilled him through
and through.  He dared not look into those eyes, which he felt
burning into his.  His head was beginning to spin and his
heart to beat with a strange sensation of wonderment and fear.
Never till this hour had he seen Ginevra's equal in beauty,
and now that it broke on his vision, it was with the face, the
form, the hair, the eyes, the hands, of the woman so passionately
loved.  Only the face was more pale—even with the pallor
of death, and there was something in the depths of those eyes
which he had never seen in Ginevra's.  But the light, the
perfume, the place and the seductive beauty of the woman before
him, garbed as she was in a filmy, transparent robe of silvery
tissue, which clung like a pale mist about the voluptuous
curves of her body, flowing round her like the glistening waves
of a cascade, began to play havoc with his senses.

"Welcome, stranger, in the Groves of Enchantment," she
spoke, waving her beautiful snowy arms toward her visitor.
"I rejoice to see that your courage deserves the welcome."

There was an undercurrent of laughter in her musical tones,
as she pointed to a seat by her side.  Unable to answer, unable
to resist, Eckhardt moved a few paces nearer.  His brain whirled.
For a moment Ginevra's image seemed forgotten in the
contemplation of the rival of her dead beauty.  A wild, desperate
longing seized him.  On a sudden impulse he turned away,
in a dizzy effort to escape from the mesmeric gleam of
those sombre, haunting eyes, which pierced the very depths of
his soul.  Fascinated, at the same time repelled, his very soul
yearned for her whose embrace he knew was destruction and
he was filled with a strange sudden fear.  There was something
terrible in the steadfast contemplation which the woman
bestowed upon him,—something that seemed to lie outside
the pale of human passions, and the pallor of her exquisite
face seemed to increase in proportion as the devouring fire of
her eyes burnt more intensely.

"Are you afraid of me?" she laughed, raising her arms
and holding them out toward him.

Still he hesitated.  His breast heaved madly as his eyes met
those, which swam in a soft languor, strangely intoxicating.
Her lips parted in a faint sigh.

"Eckhardt," she said tremulously, "Eckhardt."

Then she paused as if to watch the effect of her words upon
him.

Mute, oppressed by indistinct hovering memories, Eckhardt
fed his gaze on her seductive fairness, but a terrible pain and
anguish gnawed at his heart.  Not only the face, even the voice
was that of Ginevra.

"Everything in death has its counterpart in life:"—

That had been the pass-word to her presence.

One devouring look—and forgetting all fear and warning
and all presence of mind he rushed towards that flashing
danger-signal of beauty, that seemed to burn the very air
encompassing it, that living image of his dead wife, and with
wild eyes, outstretched arms and breathless utterance, he
cried: "Ginevra!"

She whom he thus called turned toward him, as he came
with the air of a madman upon her, and her marvellous
loveliness, as she raised her dark eyes questioningly to his,
checked his impetuous haste, held him tongue-tied, bewildered
and unmanned.

And truly, nothing more beautiful in the shape of woman
could be imagined than she.  Her fairness was of that rare and
subtle type which has in all ages overwhelmed reason, blinded
judgment and played havoc with the passions of men.

Well did she know her own surpassing charm and thoroughly
did she estimate the value of her fatal power to lure and to
madden and to torture all whom she chose to make the victim
of her almost resistless attraction.  Her hair, black as night,
was arranged loosely under a jewelled coif.  Her eyes, large
and brilliant, shone from under brows delicately arched.  Her
satin skin was of the creamy, colourless, Southern type, in
startling contrast to the brilliant scarlet of the small bewitching
mouth.

Beautiful and delicate as the ensemble was, there was in
that enchanting face a lingering expression, which a woman
would have hated and a man would have feared.

"Ginevra!" Eckhardt cried, then he checked himself, for,
her large eyes, suddenly cold as the inner silence of the sea,
surveyed him freezingly, as though he were some insolently
obtrusive stranger.  But her face was pale as that of a corpse.

"Ginevra!" he faltered for the third time, his senses reeling
and he no longer master of himself.  "Surely you know
me—Eckhardt,—him whose name you have just called!  Speak
to me, Ginevra—speak!  By all the love I have borne for
you—speak, Ginevra,—speak!"

A shadow flitted through the background and paused behind
Theodora's couch.  Neither had seen it, though Theodora
shuddered as if she had felt the strange presence of something
uncalled, unbidden.

A strange light of mockery, or of annoyance, gleamed in the
woman's eyes.  Her crimson lips parted, showing two rows of
even, small white teeth, then a gleam of amusement shot
athwart her face, raising the delicately pencilled corners of the
eye-brows, as she broke into a soft peal of careless mocking
laughter.

"I am not Ginevra," she said.  "Who is Ginevra?  I am
Theodora—the Queen of Love."

Again, as she saw his puzzled look, she gave way to her
silvery, mocking mirth, while her eyes flung him a glittering
challenge to approach.  Eckhardt had recovered partial
control over his feelings and met her taunting gaze steadfastly
and with something of sadness.  His face had grown very
pale and all the warmth and rapture had died out of his voice,
when he spoke again.

"I am Eckhardt," he said quietly, with the calm of a
madman who argues for a fixed idea,—"and you are Ginevra—or
her ghost—I know not which.  Why did you return to the
world from your cold and narrow bed in the earth and shun the
man who worships you as one worships an idol?  Is it for
some transgression in the flesh that your soul cannot find
rest?"

An ominous shuffling behind her caused Theodora to start.
She turned her head as if by chance and when again she
faced Eckhardt, she was as pale as death.  Noting her
momentary embarrassment, Eckhardt made a resolute step toward
her, catching her hands in his own.  He was dazed.

"Is this your welcome back in the world, Ginevra?" he
pleaded with a passionate whisper.  "Have you no thought
what this long misery apart from you has meant?  Remember
the old days,—the old love,—have pity—speak to me as
of old."

His voice in its very whisper thrilled with the strange music
that love alone can give.  His eyes burnt and his lips quivered.
Suddenly he seemed to wake to a realization of the scene.
He had been mocked by a fatal resemblance to his dead
wife.  His heart was heavy with the certainty, but the spell
remained.

Without warning he threw himself on his knees, holding
her unresisting hands in his.

"Demon or Goddess," he faltered, and his voice, even to
his own ears, had a strange sound.  "What would you have
with me?  Speak, for what purpose did you summon me?
Who are you?  What do you want with me?"

Her low laugh stirred the silence into a faint tuneful echo.

"Foolish dreamer," she murmured half tenderly, half
mockingly.  "Is it not enough for you to know that you have
been found worthy to join the few chosen ones to whom
this earthly paradise is not a book with seven seals?  Like
your sad-eyed, melancholy countrymen, you would analyze
the essence of love and try to dissolve it into its own
heterogeneous particles.  If you were given the choice of the fairest
woman you would descend into the mouldering crypts of the
past, to unearth the first and last Helen of Troy.  Ah!  Is it
not so?  You Northmen prefer a theoretical attachment to
the body of living, breathing, loving woman?"

He looked at her surprised, perplexed, and paused an
instant before he made reply.  Was she mocking him?  Did she
speak truth?

"Surely so peerless an enchantress, with admirers so
numerous, cannot find it worth her while to add a new
worshipper to the idolatrous throng?" he answered.

"Ah!  Little you know," she murmured indolently, with a
touch of cold disdain in her accents.  "My worshippers are my
puppets, my slaves!  There is not a man amongst them," she
added, raising her voice, "not a man!  They kiss the hand
that spurns their touch!  As for you," she added, leaning
forward, so that the dark shower of her hair brushed his
cheek and her drowsy eyes sank into his own, "As for you—you
are from the North.—I love a nature of strongly repressed
and concentrated passion, of a proud and chilly temper.
Like our volcanoes they wear crowns of ice, but fires
unquenchable smother in their depths.  And—might not at
a touch from the destined hand the flame in your heart leap
forth uncontrolled?"

Eckhardt met the enchantress' look with one of mingled
dread and intoxication.  She smiled, and raising a goblet of
wine to her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to him with an
indescribably graceful swaying gesture of her whole form,
which resembled a tall white lily bending to the breeze.  He
seized the cup eagerly and drank thirstily from it.  Again her
magic voice, more melodious than the sounds of Æolian harps
thrilled his ears and set his pulses to beating madly.

"But you have not yet told me," she whispered, while her
head drooped lower and lower, till her dark fragrant tresses
touched his brow, "you have not yet told me that you love me?"

Was it the purple wine that was so heavy on his senses?
Heavier was the drowsy spell of the enchantress' eyes.
Eckhardt started up.  His heart ached with the memory of Ginevra,
and a dull pang shot through his soul.  But the spell that was
upon him was too heavy to be broken by human effort.  Nothing
short of the thunder of Heaven could save him now.

Theodora's words chimed in his ear, while her hands clasped
his own with their soft, electrifying touch.  With a supreme
effort he endeavoured to shake off the spell, into whose
ravishment he was being slowly but surely drawn, his efforts at
resistance growing more feeble and feeble every moment.

Again the voice of the Siren sent its musical cadence through
his brain in the fateful question:

"Do you love me?"

Eckhardt attempted to draw back, but could not.

Entwining her body with his arms, he devoured her beauty
with his eyes.  From the crowning masses of her dusky hair,
over the curve of her white shoulders and bosom, down to the
blue-veined feet in the glistening sandals, his gaze wandered
hungrily, searchingly, passionately.  His heart beat with wild,
mad desire, but, though his lips moved, no words were audible.

She too, was silent, apparently watching the effect of her
spell upon him, sure of the ultimate fateful result.  In reality
she listened intently, as if expecting some unwelcome intrusion,
and once her dark fear-struck eyes tried to penetrate the deep
shadows of the grotto.  She had heard something stir,—and
a mad fear had seized her heart.

Eckhardt, unconscious of the woman's misgivings, gazed
upon her as one dazed.  He felt, if he could but speak the one
word, he would be saved and yet—something warned
him that, if that word escaped his lips, he would be lost.  Half
recumbent on her couch, Theodora watched her victim narrowly.
A smile of delicate derision parted her lips, as she said:

"What ails you?  Are you afraid of me?  Can you not be
happy, Eckhardt," she whispered into his brain, "happy as
other men,—and loved?"

She bent toward him with arms outstretched.  Closely she
watched his every gesture, endeavouring, in her great fear, to
read his thoughts.

"I cannot," he replied with a moan, "alas—I cannot!"

"And why not?" the enchantress whispered, bending
closer toward him.  She must make him her own, she must
win the terrible wager; from out of the gloom she felt two
eyes burning upon her with devilish glee.  She preferred
instant death to a life by the side of him she hated with all
the strength of a woman's hate for the man who has lied to
her, deceived her, and ruined her life.  Noting the fateful effect
of her blandishments upon him, she threw herself with a sudden
movement against Eckhardt's breast, entwining him so
tightly with her arms that she seemed to draw the very breath
from him.  Her splendid dark eyes, ablaze with passion,
sank into his, her lips curved in a sweet, deadly smile.  Roused
to the very height of delirium, Eckhardt wound his arms
round Theodora's body.  A dizziness had seized him.  For a
moment Ginevra—past, present and future seemed forgotten.
Closer and closer he felt himself drawn towards the fateful
abyss—slowly the enchantress was drawing him onward,—until
there would be no more resistance,—all flaming delirium,
and eternal damnation.

With one white arm she reached for the goblet, but ere her
fingers touched it, a shadowy hand, that seemed to come from
nowhere and belong to no visible body, changed the position
of the drinking vessels.  Neither noted it.  Theodora kissed the
brim of the first goblet and started to sip from its contents
when a sudden pressure on her shoulder caused her to look up.
Her terror at what she saw was so great that it choked her
utterance.  Two terrible eyes gazed upon her from a white,
passion-distorted face, which silently warned her not to drink.
So great was her terror, that she noticed not that Eckhardt
had taken the goblet from her outstretched hand, and putting
it to his lips on the very place where the sweetness of her
mouth still lingered, drained it to the dregs.

Wild-eyed with terror she stared at the man before her.
A strange sensation had come over him.  His brain seemed to
be on fire.  His resistance was vanquished.  He could not have
gone, had he wished to.

The night was still.  The silence was rendered even more
profound by the rustling of the storm among the leaves.

Suddenly Eckhardt's hand went to his head.  He started
to rise from his kneeling position, staggered to his feet, then as
if struck by lightning he fell heavily against the mosaic of the
floor.

With a wild shriek of terror, Theodora had risen to her
feet—then she sank back on the couch staring speechlessly
at what was passing before her.  The gaunt form of a monk,
clad in the habit of the hermits of Mount Aventine, had rushed
into the grotto, just as Eckhardt fell from the effect of the drug.
Lifting him up, as if he were a mere toy, the monk rushed out
into the open and disappeared with his burden, while four
eyes followed him in speechless dread and dismay.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ELIXIR OF LOVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE ELIXIR OF LOVE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was late on the following
evening, when in the hermitage
of Nilus of Gaëta, Eckhardt
woke from the death-like stupor
which had bound his limbs since
the terrible scenes of the
previous night.  Thanks to the
antidotes applied by the friar as soon
as he reached the open, the
deadly effect of the poison had
been stemmed ere it had time to penetrate Eckhardt's system,
but even despite this timely precaution, the benumbing effect
of the drug was not to be avoided, and during the time when
the stupor maintained its sway Nilus had not for a moment
abandoned the side of his patient.  A burning thirst consumed
him, as he awoke.  Raising himself on his elbows and vainly
endeavouring to reconcile his surroundings, the monk who was
seated at the foot of his roughly improvised bed rose and
brought him some water.  It was Nilus himself, and only after
convincing himself that the state of the Margrave's condition
was such as to warrant his immediately satisfying the flood of
inquiries addressed to him, did the hermit go over the events
of the preceding night, starting from the point where Eckhardt
had lost consciousness and his own intervention had saved him.

Eckhardt's hand went to his head which still felt heavy and
ached.  His brain reeled at the account which Nilus gave him,
and there was a choking dryness in his throat when the friar
accused Theodora of the deed.

"For such as she the world was made.  For such as she
fools and slaves abase themselves," the monk concluded his
account.  "Pray that your eyes may never again behold her
accursed face."

Eckhardt made no reply.  What could he say in extenuation
of his presence in the groves?  And by degrees, as consciousness
and memory returned, as he strained his reasoning
faculties in the endeavour to find some cause for the woman's
attempt to poison him, after having mocked him with her fatal
likeness to Ginevra—his most acute logic could not reconcile
her actions.  For a moment he tried to persuade himself that
he was in a dream, and he strove in vain to wake from it.
It was amazing in what brief time and with what vividness all
that could render death terrible, and this death of all most
terrible, rushed upon his imagination.  Despite the languor and
inertness which still continued, one terrible certainty rose
before him.  Far from having solved the mystery, it had
intensified itself to a degree that seemed to make any further
attempt at solution hopeless.  During the twilight consciousness
of his senses numerous faces swam around him,—but
of all these only one had remained with him, Ginevra's pale
and beautiful countenance, her sweet but terrible eyes.  But
the ever-recurring thought was madness.—Ginevra was dead.

But the hours spent in the seclusion of the friar's hermitage
were not entirely lost to Eckhardt.  They ripened a
preconceived and most fantastic plan in his mind, which he
no sooner remembered, than he began to think seriously of
its execution.

A second night spent in Nilus's hermitage had sufficiently
restored Eckhardt's vitality to enable him to leave it on the
following morning.  After having taken leave of the monk,
confessing himself his debtor for life, the Margrave chose the
road toward the Imperial palace, as his absence was likely to
give rise to strange rumours, which might retard or prevent the
task he had resolved to accomplish.  He was in a state
bordering on nervous collapse, when he reached the gates of the
palace, where the Count Palatine, in attendance, ushered
him into an ante-room pending his admission to Otto's
presence.  Eckhardt's thoughts were gloomy and his
countenance forbidding as he entered, and he did not notice the
presence of Benilo, the Chamberlain.  When the latter glanced
up from his occupation, his countenance turned to ashen hues
and he stared at the leader of the imperial hosts as one would at
an apparition from the beyond.  The hands, which held a
parchment, strangely illuminated, shook so violently that he
was compelled to place the scroll on the table before him.
Eckhardt had been so wrapt in his own dark ruminations that
he saw and heard nothing, thus giving Benilo an opportunity
to collect himself, though the stereotyped smile on the Chamberlain's
lips gave the lie to his pretense of continuing interested
in the contents of the chart which lay on the table before him.

But Benilo's restlessness, his eagerness to acquaint himself
with the purpose of Eckhardt's visit, did not permit him to
continue the task in which the general's entrance had found him
engaged.  The Chamberlain seemed undaunted by Eckhardt's
apparent preoccupation of mind.

"We have just achieved a signal victory," he addressed the
Margrave after a warm greeting, which was to veil his
misgivings, while his unsteady gaze roamed from the parchment
on the table to Eckhardt's clouded brow.  "The Byzantine
ceremonial will be henceforth observed at the Imperial
court."

"What shall it all lead to?" replied Eckhardt wearily.

"To the fulfilment of the emperor's dream," Benilo replied
with his blandest smile, "his dream of the ten-fold crown of
Constantine Porphyrogenitus."

"I thought the Saxon crown weighed heavily enough."

"That is because your crown is material," Benilo deigned
to expound, "not the symbolic crown of the East, which embodies
all the virtues of the gold and iron.  It was a stupendous
task which confronted us—but together we have solved the
problem.  In the Graphia, after much vain research and
study, and in the 'Origines' of Isidor, we found that which
shall henceforth constitute the emblem of the Holy Roman
Empire; not the Iron Crown of Lombardy, nor the Silver
Crown of Aix-la-Chapelle, nor the Golden Crown of
Rome—but all three combined with the seven of the East."

"Ten crowns?" exclaimed Eckhardt aghast.  "On the
emperor's frail brow?"

"Nay," spoke Benilo, with the same studied smile upon his
lips, while he relinquished not for a moment the basilisk gaze
with which he followed every movement of the Margrave.
"Nay!  They oppress not the brow of the anointed.  The
Seven Crowns of the East are: The crown of Ivy, the crown of
the Olive, the crown of Poplar Branches and Oak, the crown of
Laurels, the Mitra of Janus, the crown of the Feathers of the
Pea-fowl, and last of all the crown set with diamonds, which
Diocletian borrowed from the King of the Persians and
whereon appeared the inscription: 'Roma Caput Mundi Regit
Orbis Frena Rotundi.'"

Eckhardt listened half dazed to this exhibition of antiquarian
learning on the part of the Chamberlain.  What were these
trifles to avail the King in establishing order in the
discordant chaos of the Roman world?

But Benilo was either in excellent spirits over the result of
his antiquarian researches which had made him well nigh
indispensable to Otto, and into which he condescended to
initiate so unlettered an individual as Eckhardt; or he
tormented the latter with details which he knew wearied the great
leader, to keep his mind from dwelling on dangerous matters.
Thus continuing his information on these lines with a suave
air of superiority, he cited the treatise of Pigonius concerning
the various modes of triumph and other antiquated splendours
as enumerated in the Codex, until Eckhardt's head swam with
meaningless titles and newly created offices.  Even an admiral
had been appointed: Gregory of Tusculum.  In truth, he had
no fleet to command, because there existed no fleet, but the
want had been anticipated.  Then there were many important
offices to be filled, with names long as the ancient triumphal
course; and would not the Romans feel flattered by these
changes?  Would they not willingly console themselves with
the loss of their municipal liberties, knowing that Hungary,
and Poland, Spain and Germany were to be Roman provinces
as of old?

Eckhardt saw through it all.

Knowing Otto's fantastic turn of mind, Benilo was guiding
him slowly but surely away from life, into the wilderness of
a decayed civilization, whose luring magic was absorbing his
vital strength.  Else why this effort to rear an edifice which
must crumble under its own weight, once the architect was
removed from this hectic sphere?

With the reckless enthusiasm of his character the imperial
youth had plunged into the deep ocean of learning, to whose
shores his studies with Benilo conducted him.  The animated
pictures which the ponderous tomes presented, into whose
dust and must he delved, the dramatic splendour of the
narrative in which the glowing fancies of the chroniclers had
clothed the stirring events of the times, deeply impressed his
susceptible mind, just as the chords of Æolian harps are mute
till the chance breeze passes which wakes them into passionate
music.  Gerbert, now Sylvester II, had no wish to stifle nor
even to stem this natural sensibility, but rather to divert its
energies into its proper channels, for he was too deeply versed
in human science not to know that even the eloquence of
religion is cold and powerless, unless kindled by those fixed
emotions and sparkling thoughts which only poetical
enthusiasm can strike out of the hard flint of logic.

But now the activity of Otto's genius, lacking the proper
channels, vented its wild profusion in inert speculation and
dreamy reverie.  Indistinct longings ventured out on that
shimmering restless sea of love and glory, which his imagination
painted in the world, a vague yearning for the mysterious
which was hinted at in that mediæval lore.

All things were possible in those legends.  No scent of
autumn haunted the deep verdure of those forests, even the
harsh immutable laws of nature seemed to yield to their
magic.  Death and Despair and Sorrow were but fore-shadowed
angels, not the black fiends of Northern imagery.  Their heroes
and heroines died, but reclining on beds of violets, the songs of
nightingales sweetly warbling them to rest.

And the son of the Greek princess resented fiercely any
intrusion in to his paradise.  It was a thankless task to recall
him to the hour and to reality.

The appearance of a page, who summoned Eckhardt into
Otto's presence, put an end to Benilo's effusive archæology,
and as the Margrave disappeared in the emperor's
cabinet, Benilo wondered how much he knew.

What transpired during his protracted audience remained
for the present the secret of those two.  But when Eckhardt
left the palace, his brow was even more clouded than before.
While his conference with Otto had not been instrumental in
dissipating the dread misgivings which tortured his mind, he
had found himself face to face with the revelation that a
fraud had been perpetrated upon him.  For Otto disclaimed all
knowledge of signing any order which relieved Eckhardt of
his command, flatly declaring it a forgery.  While its purpose
was easy to divine, the question remained whose interest
justified his venturing so desperate a chance?  Eckhardt parted
from his sovereign with the latter's full approval of the course
his leader intended to pursue, and so far from granting him the
dispensation once desired, Otto did not hesitate to pronounce
the vision which had interposed at the fatal moment between
Eckhardt and the fulfilment of his desire, a divine interposition.

Slowly the day drew to a close.  The eve of the great festival
approached.

When darkness finally fell over the Capitoline hill, the old
palace of the Cæsars seemed to waken to a new life.  In the
great reception hall a gorgeous spectacle awaited the guests.
The richly dressed crowds buzzed like a swarm of bees.  Their
attires were iridescent, gorgeous in fashions borrowed from
many lands.  The invasion of foreigners and the enslavement
of Italy could be read in the garbs of the Romans.  The robes
of the women, fashioned after the supreme style of Constantinople,
hanging in heavy folds, stiff with gold and jewels,
suggested rather ecclesiastical vestments.  The hair was
confined in nets of gold.

Stephania, the consort of the Senator of Rome, was by
common accord the queen of the festival which this night
was to usher in.  Attracting, as she did on every turn, the eyes
of heedless admirers, her triumphant beauty seemed to have
chosen a fit device in the garb which adorned her, some filmy
gossamer web of India, embroidered with moths burning their
wings in flame.

Whether or no she was conscious of the lavish admiration
of the Romans, her eyes, lustrous under the dark tresses, were
clear and cold; her smile calm, her voice, as she greeted the
arriving guests, melodious and thrilling like the tones of a
harp.  Amid the noise and buzz, she seemed a being apart,
alien, solitary, like a water lily on some silent moon-lit pool.
At last a loud fanfare of trumpets and horns announced the
arrival of the German king.  Attended by his suite the son of
Theophano, whose spiritualized beauty he seemed to have
inherited, received the homage of the Senator of Rome, the
Cavalli, Caetani, Massimi and Stephaneschi.  Stephania was
standing apart in a more remote part of the hall, surrounded
by women of the Roman nobility.  Her face flushed and paled
alternately as she became aware of the commotion at the
entrance.  The airy draperies of summer, which revealed rather
than concealed her divine beauty, gave her the appearance of
a Circe, conquering every heart at sight.

As she slowly advanced toward the imperial circle, with the
three appropriate reverences in use, the serene composure of
her countenance made it seem as if she had herself been born
in purple.  But as Otto's gaze fell upon the consort of the
Senator of Rome, he suddenly paused, a deep pallor chasing
the flush of joy from the beardless face.  Was she not the
woman he had met at the gates of the confessional?  A great
pain seized his heart as the thought came to him, that she of
whom he had dreamed ever since that day, she in whose love
he had pictured to himself a heaven, was the consort of another.
Before him stood Stephania, the wife of his former foe, the wife
of the Senator of Rome.  And as he gazed into her large limpid
eyes, at the exquisite contour of her head, at the small crimson
lips, the clear-cut beauty of the face, of the tint of richest
Carrara marble, Otto trembled.  Unable to speak a word,
fearful lest he might betray his emotions, he seized the white,
firm hand which she extended to him with a bewitching smile.

"So we are to behold the King's majesty, at last," she
said with a voice whose very accent thrilled him through and
through.  "I thought you were never going to do us that
honour,—master of Rome, and master—of Rome's mistress."

Her speech, as she bent slightly toward him, whispering
rather than speaking the last words, filled Otto's soul with
intoxication.  Stunned by the manner of his reception, her
mysterious words still ringing in his ears, Otto muttered a
reply, intelligible to none but herself, nerving his whole nature
to remain calm, though his heart beat so loudly that he thought
all present must hear its wild throbs even through his imperial
vestments.

As slowly, reluctantly he retreated from her presence, to
greet the rest of the assembled guests, Otto marked not the
meaning-fraught exchange of glances between the Senator of
Rome and his wife.  The smiles of the beautiful women around
him were as full of warning as the scowls of a Roman mob.
Once or twice Otto gazed as if by chance in the direction of
Stephania.  Each time their eyes met.  Truly, if the hatred of
Crescentius was a menace to his life, the favour of Stephania
seemed to summon him to dizzy, perilous heights.

At last the banquet was served, the company seated and
amidst soft strains of music, the festival took its course.  Otto
now had an opportunity to study in detail the galaxy of profligate
courtiers and beauties, which shed their glare over the
sunset of Crescentius's reign.  But so absorbed was he in the
beauty of Stephania, that, though he attempted to withdraw his
eyes, lest their prolonged gaze should attract observation, still
they ever returned with increased and devouring eagerness
to feast upon her incomparable beauty, while with a strange
agony of mingled jealousy and anger he noted the court paid
to the beautiful wife of Crescentius by the Roman barons,
chief among them Benilo.  It seemed, as if the latter wanted
to urge the king to some open and indiscreet demonstration
by the fire of his own admiration, and, dear as he was to his
heart, Otto heaved a sigh of relief at the thought that he had
guarded his secret, which if revealed, would place him beyond
redemption in the power of his enemy, the Senator.

Stephania herself seemed for the nonce too much absorbed
in her own amusements to notice the emotions she had
evoked in the young king of the Germans.  But when she
chanced to turn her smiling eyes from the Senator, her husband,
she suddenly met the ardent gaze of Otto riveted upon her with
burning intensity.  The smile died on her lips and for a moment
the colour faded from her cheeks.  Otto flushed a deep crimson
and played in affected indifference with the tassels of his
sword, and for some moments they seemed to take no further
heed of each other.  What happened at the banquet, what
was spoken and the speakers, to Otto it was one whirling
chaos.  He saw nothing; he heard nothing.  The gaze of
Stephania, the wife of Crescentius, had cast its spell over him
and there was but one thought in his mind,—but one dream
in his heart.

At the request of some one, some of the guests changed their
seats.  Otto noted it not.  Peals of laughter reverberated
through the high arched Sala; some one recited an ode on
the past greatness of Rome, followed by loud applause; to
Otto it was a meaningless sound.  Suddenly he heard his own
name from lips whose tones caused him to start, as if electrified.

Stephania sat by his side.  Crescentius seemed conversing
eagerly with some of the barons.  Raising her arm, white as
fallen snow, she poured a fine crimson wine into a goblet,
until it swelled to the golden brim.  There was a simultaneous
bustle of pages and attendants, offering fruits and wine to the
guests, and Otto mechanically took some grapes from a salver
which was presented to him, but never for a moment averted
his gaze from Stephania, until she lifted the goblet to her lips.

"To thee!" she whispered with a swift glance at Otto, which
went to his heart's core.  She sipped from the goblet, then,
bending to him, held it herself to his lips.  His trembling hands
for a moment covered her own and he drank strangely deep of
the crimson wine, which made his senses reel, and in the trance
in which their eyes met, neither noticed the sphinx-like
expression on the face of Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain.

But if the wine, of which Otto had partaken with Stephania,
was not in reality compounded of magic ingredients, the most
potent love philtre could scarcely have been more efficacious.
For the first time it seemed as if he had yielded up his whole
soul and being to the fascination of marvellous beauty, and with
such loveliness exhausting upon him all its treasures of infinite
charm, wit and tenderness, stirred by every motive of triumph
and rivalry,—even if a deceptive apology had not worked in
his own mind, it would scarcely have been possible to resist
the spell.

The banquet passed off in great splendour, enlivened by the
most glittering and unscrupulous wit.  Thousands of lamps
shed their effulgence on the scene, revealing toward the end a
fantastic pageant, descending the grand stair-case to some
equally strange and fantastic music.  It was a procession of
the ancient deities; but so great was the illiterate state of mind
among the Romans of that period, that the ideas they
represented of the olden time were hopelessly perplexed and an
antiquarian, had there been one present, would have thrown
up his hands in despair at the incongruous attire of the pagan
divinities who had invaded the most Christian city.  During
this procession Otto's eyes for the third time sought those of
Stephania.  She seemed to feel it, for she turned and her lips
responded with a smile.

The night passed like some fantastic dream, conjured up
from fairy land.  And Otto carried his dreaming heart back to
the lonely palace on the Aventine.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SECRET OF THE TOMB`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SECRET OF THE TOMB

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: W
   :image: images/img-cap-w.jpg
   :lines: 5

While the revelling on the
Capitoline hill was at its height,
Eckhardt had approached Benilo
and drawing him aside, engaged
him in lengthy conversation.
The Chamberlain's countenance
had lost its studied calm and
betrayed an amazement which
vainly endeavoured to vent
itself in adequate utterance.  He
appeared to offer a strenuous opposition to Eckhardt's request,
an opposition which yielded only when every argument seemed
to have failed.  At last they had parted, Eckhardt passing
unobserved to a terrace and gaining a path that led through
an orange grove behind the Vatican gardens.  A few steps
brought him to a gate, which opened on a narrow vicolo.
Here he paused and clapped his hands softly together.  The
signal was repeated from the other side and Eckhardt thereupon
lifted the heavy iron latch, which fastened the gate on
the inner side and, passing out, carefully closed it behind him.
Here he was joined by another personage wrapt in a long, dark
cloak, and together they proceeded through a maze of dark,
narrow and unfrequented alleys.  Lane after lane they
traversed, all unpaved and muddy.  Another ten minutes' walk
between lightless houses, whose doors and windows were for
the most part closed and barred, and they reached an old
time-worn dwelling with a low unsightly doorway.  It was secured
by strong fastenings of bolts and bars, as though its tenant
had sufficient motives for affecting privacy and retirement.
The very nature of his calling would however have secured him
from intrusion either by day or by night, from any one not
immediately in need of his services.  For here lived Il Gobbo,
the grave digger, a busy personage in the Rome of those days.
Eckhardt and his companion exchanged a swift glance as they
approached the uncanny dwelling; eyeless, hoary with
vegetation, rooted here and there, the front of the house gave no
welcome.  Eckhardt whispered a question to his companion,
which was answered in the affirmative.  Then he bade him
knock.  After a wait of brief duration, the summons was
answered by a low cough within.  Shuffling footsteps were
heard, then the unbarring of a door, followed by the creaking
of hinges, and the low bent figure of an old man appeared.
Il Gobbo, the grave digger wore a loose gray tunic, which reached
to his knees.  What was visible of his countenance was cadaverous
and ashen gray, as that of a corpse.  His small rat-like
eyes, whose restless vigilance argued some deficiency or warping
of the brain, a tendency, however remote, to insanity, scrutinized
the stranger with marked suspicion, while a long nose, curving
downward over a projecting upper lip, which seemed in
perpetual tremor, imbued his countenance with something
strangely Mephistophelian.

In a very few words Eckhardt's companion requested
the grave digger to make ready and follow them, and
that worthy, seeing nothing strange in a summons of
this sort, complied at once, took pick and spade, and
after having locked and barred his habitation, asked his
solicitor to which burial grounds he was to accompany them.

"To San Pancrazio," was Eckhardt's curt reply.  The
silence had become almost insufferable to him, and something
in the manner of his speech caused the grave digger to
bestow on him a swift glance.  Then he preceded them in silence
on the well-known way.

It was a wonderful night.

There was not a breath of air to stir the dying leaves of
the trees.  The clouds, which had risen at sunset in the West,
had vanished, leaving the sky unobscured, arching deep blue
over the yellow moon.

As they approached the Ripetta, the grave digger suddenly
paused and, facing the Margrave and his companion, inquired
where the corpse was awaiting them.

A strange, jarring laugh broke from Eckhardt's lips.

"Never fear, my honest friend!  It is a very well conditioned
corpse, that will play us no pranks and run away.  Corpses
do sometimes—so I have been told.  What think you, honest
Il Gobbo?"

The grave digger bestowed a glance upon his interlocutor,
which left little doubt as to what he thought of his patron's
sanity, then he crossed himself and hastened onward.  The
Tiber lay now on their left, and an occasional flash revealed
the turbid waves rolling down toward the sea in the moonlight.
Eckhardt and his companion exchanged not a word, as silently
they strode behind their uncanny guide.  On their left hand
now appeared the baths of Caracalla, their external
magnificence slowly crumbling to decay, waterless and desolate.
Towering on their right rose the Caelian hill in the moonlight,
covered with ruins and neglected gardens.  The rays of the
higher rising moon fell through the great arches of the Neronian
Aqueduct and near by were the round church of St. Stephen
and a cloister dedicated to St. Erasmus.  As they proceeded
over the narrow grass-grown road, the silence which
encompassed them was as intense as among the Appian sepulchres.
At the gate of San Sebastiano, all traces of the road vanished.
A winding path conducted them through a narrow valley,
the silence of which was only broken by the occasional hoot of
an owl, or the flitting across their path of a bat, which like an
evil thought, seemed afraid of its own shadow.  Then they
passed the ancient church of Santa Ursula, which for many
years formed the center of a churchyard.  The path became
more sterile and desolate with every step, only a few dwarfish
shrubs breaking the monotony, to make it appear even more
like a wilderness, until they came upon a ruined wall, and
following its course for some distance, reached a heavy iron gate.
It gave a dismal, creaking sound as Il Gobbo pushed it
open and entered the churchyard of San Pancrazio in advance
of his companions.

Pausing ere he continued upon a way as yet unknown to
him, he again turned questioningly toward his mysterious
summoners, for as far as his eye could reach in the bright
moonlight, he could discover no trace of a funeral cortege or
ever so small number of mourners.  Instead of satisfying
Il Gobbo's curiosity, Eckhardt briefly ordered him to follow him,
and the grave digger, shaking his head with grave doubt, followed
the mysterious stranger, who seemed so familiar with this
abode of Death.  They traversed the churchyard at a rapid
pace, until they reached a mortuary chapel situated in a remote
region.  Here Eckhardt and his companion paused, and the
former, turning about and facing Il Gobbo, pointed to a grave
in the shadows of the chapel.

"Know you this grave?" the Margrave accosted the
grave digger, pointing to the grass-plot at his feet.

The grave digger seemed to grope through the depths of his
memory; then he bent low as if to decipher the inscription
on the stone, but this effort was in so far superfluous, as he
could not read.

"Here lies one Ginevra,—the wife of the German Commander—"

He paused, again searching his memory, but this time in vain.

"Eckhardt," supplied the Margrave himself.

"Eckhardt—Eckhardt," the grave digger echoed, crossing
himself at the sound of the dreaded name.

"Open the grave!"  Eckhardt broke into Il Gobbo's babbling,
who had been wondering to what purpose he had been brought
here.

Il Gobbo stared up at the speaker as if he mistrusted his
hearing, but made no reply.

"Open the grave!" Eckhardt repeated, leaning upon his
sword.

Il Gobbo shook his head.  No doubt the man was mad;
else why should he prefer the strange request?  He looked
questioningly at Eckhardt's companion, as if expecting the
latter to interfere.  But he moved not.  A strange fear began
to creep over the grave digger.

"Here is a purse of gold, enough to dispel the qualms of your
conscience," Eckhardt spoke with terrible firmness in his
tones, offering Il Gobbo a leather purse of no mean size.  But
the latter pushed it back with abhorrence.

"I cannot—I dare not.  Who are you to prefer this
strange request?"

"I am Eckhardt, the general!  Open the grave!"

Il Gobbo cringed as though he had been struck a blow from
some invisible hand.

"I dare not—I dare not," he whined, deprecating the
proffered gift.  "The sin would be visited upon my head.—It
is written: Disturb not the dead."

A terrible look passed into Eckhardt's face.

"Is this purse not heavy enough?  I will add another."

"It is not that—it is not that," Il Gobbo replied, almost
weeping with terror.  "I dread the vengeance of the
dead!  They will not permit the sacrilege to pass unpunished."

"Then let the punishment fall on my head!" replied Eckhardt
with terrible voice.  "Take your spade, old man, for
by the Almighty God who looks down upon us, you will not
leave this place alive, unless you do as you are told."

The old grave digger trembled in every limb.  Helplessly
he gazed about; imploringly he looked up into the face of
Eckhardt's immobile companion, but he read nothing in the
eyes of these two, save unrelenting determination.  Instinctively
he knew that no argument would avail to deter them from their
mad purpose.

Eckhardt watched the old man closely.

"You dug this grave yourself, three years ago," he then
spoke in a tone strangely mingled of despair and irony.  "It
is a poor grave digger who permits his dead to leave their cold
and narrow berth and go forth among the living in the form
they bore on earth!  It has been whispered to me," he
continued with a terrible laugh, "that some of your graves are
shallow.  I would fain be convinced with my own eyes, just
to be able to give your calumniators the lie!  Therefore, good
Il Gobbo, take up your spade with all speed, and imagine, as
you perform your task, that you are not opening this grave to
disturb the repose of her who sleeps beneath the sod, but
preparing a reception to one still in the flesh!  Proceed!"

The last word was spoken with such menace that the grave
digger reluctantly complied, and taking up the spade, which
he had dropped, he pushed it slowly into the sod.  Leaning
silently on his sword, his face the pallor of death, Eckhardt and
his companion watched the progress of the terrible work,
watched one shovel of earth after the other fly up, piling up
by the side of the grave; watched the oblong opening grow
deeper and deeper, till after a breathless pause of some duration
the spade of the grave digger was heard to strike the top of the
coffin.

Il Gobbo, who all but his head stood now in the grave,
looked up imploringly to Eckhardt, hoping that at the last
moment he would desist from the terrible sacrilege he was
about to commit.  But when he read only implacable determination
in the commander's face, he again turned to his task
and continued to throw up the earth until the coffin stood free
and unimpeded in its narrow berth.

"I cannot raise it up," the old man whined.  "It is too heavy."

"We will assist you!  Out it shall come if all the devils in
hell clung to it from beneath.  Bring your ropes and bring them
quickly!  Hear you?" thundered Eckhardt in a frenzy.
His self-enforced calm was fast giving way before the terrible
ordeal he was passing through.

"Would it not be safer to go down and open the lid?"
questioned Eckhardt's companion, for the first time breaking
the silence.

"There is not room enough,—unless the berth is widened,"
Eckhardt replied.  Then he turned to Il Gobbo, who was
slowly scrambling out of the grave.

"Widen the berth—we will come down to you!"

The grave digger returned to his task; then after a time,
which seemed eternity to those waiting above, his head again
appeared in the opening.  One shovel of earth after another
flew up at the feet of Eckhardt and his companion.  Again
and again they heard the spade strike against the coffin, till
at last something like a groan out of the gloom below informed
them that the task had been accomplished.

"Have you any tools?" Eckhardt shouted to Il Gobbo.

"None to serve that end," stammered the grave digger.

"Then take your spade and prise the lid open!" cried
Eckhardt.  He was trembling like an aspen, and his breath
came hard through his half-closed lips.  The expression of
his face and his demeanour were such as to vanquish the last
scruples of Il Gobbo, who belaboured the coffin with much good
will, which was mocked by the result, for it seemed to have
been hermetically sealed.

After waiting some time in deadly, harrowing suspense,
Eckhardt addressed his companion.

"I hate to abase my good sword for such a purpose,—but
the coffin shall be opened."  And without warning he bounded
down into the grave, while Il Gobbo, thinking his last moment
at hand, had dropped pick and spade, and stood, more dead
than alive, at the foot of the grave.

Picking up the grave digger's spade, Eckhardt dealt the coffin
such a terrific blow that he splintered its top to atoms.  A
second blow completely severed the lid, and it lurched heavily
to one side, lodging between the coffin and the earth wall.

The ensuing silence was intense.

The moon, which had risen high in the heavens, illumined
with her beams the chasm in which Eckhardt stood, bending
over the coffin.  What his eyes beheld was too terrible for words
to express.  Only one tress of dark silken hair had escaped
the dread havoc of death, which the open coffin revealed.  It
was a sight such as would cause the blood to freeze in the veins
of the bravest.  It was the visible execution of the judgment
pronounced in the garden of Eden: "Dust thou art, and to
dust thou shall return."

Only one dark silken tress of all that splendour of body and
youth!

Eckhardt leaped from the grave and stood aside, leaving
it for his companion to give his final instructions to
Il Gobbo, the grave digger, and the reward for his night's
labour.

As they strode from the churchyard of San Pancrazio,
neither spoke.  The havoc of death, which Eckhardt's eyes
had beheld, the contrast between the image of Ginevra, such
as it lived in his memory, and the sight which had met his
eyes, had re-opened every wound in his heart.  No beam of
hope, no thought of heavenly mercy, penetrated the night of
his soul.  His heart seemed steel-cased and completely walled
up.  He could not even shed a tear.  One hour had worked a
dreadful transformation.  Silently the Margrave and his
companion left the churchyard.  Silently they turned toward the
city.  At the base of Aventine, Benilo parted from Eckhardt,
himself more dead than alive, promising to see him on the
following day.  He dared not trust himself even to ask Eckhardt
what he had seen.  There would be time enough when his
terrible frenzy had subsided.

As Eckhardt continued upon his way, he grew more calm.
The feast of Death, which he had dared to break into, while
for a time completely stupefying him with its horrors, seemed
at least to have brought proof positive, that whoever Ginevra's
double, it was not Ginevra returned to earth.  There was much
in that thought to comfort his soul, and after the fresh air of
night had cooled his fevered brow, saner reflections began to
gain sway over his whirling brain.

But they did not endure.  What he had seen proved nothing.
Another body might have been substituted in the coffin.  The
supposition was monstrous indeed—yet even the wildest
surmises seemed justified when thrown in the scales against
the fatal likeness of the woman who had drawn him from the
altars of Christ, had frustrated his design to become a monk,
and had, as he believed, attempted his life.  Could he but find
the monk who had conducted the last rites!  He had searched
for him in every cloister and sanctuary in Rome, yet all those
of whom he inquired disclaimed all knowledge of his abode.
Several times the thought had recurred to Eckhardt of returning
to the Groves, to seek a second interview with the woman,
and thus for ever to silence his doubts.  But a strange dread
had assailed and restrained him from the execution.  There
was something in the woman's eyes he had never seen in
Ginevra's, and he felt that he would inevitably succumb,
should he ever again stand face to face with her.  He almost
wished that he had followed Benilo's advice,—that he had
refrained from an act prompted by frenzy and despair.  Vain
regrets!  He must find the monk, if he was still in Rome.
Though everything and everybody seemed to have conspired
against him nothing should bend him from his course.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GROTTOS OF EGERIA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GROTTOS OF EGERIA

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: F
   :image: images/img-cap-f.jpg
   :lines: 5

For the following day the
Senator of Rome had arranged a
Festival of Pan, and the place
appointed for the divertissement
was one which the Seneschal of
the Decameron might have
chosen as fit for the reception of
his luxurious masters, where
every object was in harmony with
the delicious and charmed existence
which they had devised in defiance of Death.  Arcades of
vines, bright with the gold and russet foliage of autumn, ascended
in winding terraces to a height, on which they converged,
forming a spacious canopy over an expanse of brightest emerald
turf, inlaid with a mosaic of flowers.  In the centre there was
a fountain, which sent its spray to a great height in the clear
air, refreshing soul and body with the harmony of its waters.
Between the interstices of the vines, magnificent views of the
whole surrounding country were offered to the eye, to which
feature perhaps, or to the effect of a dazzling variety of
late roses, which grew among the vines, and the lofty cypresses
which made the elevation a conspicuous object in every
direction, it owes its present designation of Belvedere.

Stephania's spell had worked powerfully on its intended
victim.  Surrounded by everything which could kindle the
fires of Love and stimulate the imagination, exposed to the
influence of her marvellous beauty and the infinite charm of
her individuality, Otto was devoured by a passion, which
hourly increased, despite the struggle which he put forth to
resist it.  Stephania's absence had taught him how necessary
she had become to his existence, and although he was well
informed that she rarely quitted Castel San Angelo, he was yet
tortured by the wildest fancies, entirely oblivious that he had
given all his youth, his love, his heart to a beautiful
phantom,—the wife of another, who could never be his own.  And though
he endeavoured to reason with his madness, though he questioned
himself where it would lead to, in what strange manner
he had absorbed the poison which rioted in his system, it was
of no avail.  The dictates of Fate vanquish the paltry laws
of mortals.  This love had come to him unbidden—uncalled.
Why must the soul remain for ever isolated when the unbounded
feast of beauty was spread to all the senses?  And was it not
too late to retreat?  It was the last trump of the tempter.

He won.

As he approached the Minotaurus, Otto's hope brightened
with the tints of the rainbow.  For the first time since his
return from Monte Gargano he had discarded his usual cumbrous
habiliments, and though his garb was still that prescribed
by the court ceremonial, it added much to display his princely
person to advantage.  Confiding much more in the secrecy of
his movements than in the protection of his attendants, Otto
had left the palace on the Aventine unobserved and arrived in
the vale of Egeria with a whirl of passion and a rush of
recollections, which not only took from him all power, but every
wish of resistance,—a far more dangerous symptom.

Stephania's duenna was in waiting and informed him that
the latter had dismissed her ladies to amuse themselves at
their pleasure in the gardens, while Stephania herself was
wreathing a garland for the evening in the Egerian Grotto,
which formed the centre of the fantastic labyrinth called the
Minotaurus, from an antique statue of the monster which
adorned it.  Slipping a ring of great value on the old dame's
finger, as a testimony, he said, of his gratitude, for watching
over her mistress, Otto hastened onward.  His heart beat so
heavily when he came within view of the rose-matted arches
leading to the ancient grotto, that he was obliged to pause to
recover his breath.  At that moment a voice fell upon his ear,
but it was not the voice of Stephania, and with a feeling almost
of suffocation in the intensity of his passion, Otto drew aside
the foliage to ascertain whether or not his senses had belied him.

The figure of the Minotaurus was cast in bronze, a monstrous
bull, crouched, head to the ground, on the marble pavement
of the temple.  Passing the statue, Otto made for the
grotto indicated by his guide, and, raising the tapestry of ivy,
which concealed it, disappeared within.  Guided by the warm
evening light to its entrance, he hesitated as if apprehending
some treachery.  Then, with quick determination he groped
his way into the cavern, paused somewhat suddenly and looked
about.

It was deserted, but a faint glimmer lured him to the
background, where a fountain gleamed in the purple twilight.

"Rash mortal," said a voice, in tones that made his heart
jump to his throat, "I think you are now as near as devout
worshippers are wont to approach to my waves, though, as
one of the initiated, the vestal nymphs of these caves bid you
very welcome."

"I have kept my faith," Otto replied, pausing before the
veiled apparition which sat on the rim of the fountain.  "But
your veil hides you as effectually from my gaze as a mountain."

His agitation betrayed itself in his wavering tones.

"Are you afraid," she asked, noting his hesitancy, "lest I
should prove the fiend who tempted Cyprianus?"

"All fears redouble in the darkness.  Let me see your face!"

"Why have you come here?"

"Why have you summoned me?"

"Perhaps to test your courage."

"I fear nothing!"

"One word of mine, one gesture,—and you are my prisoner."

Otto remained standing.  His face was pale, but no trace of
fear appeared thereon.

"I trust you."

"I am a Roman,—and your enemy!  I am the enemy of
your people!"

"I trust you!"

"Suppose I had lured you hither to end for ever this
unbearable state?"

"I trust you!"

Stephania's eyes cowered beneath Otto's gaze.  Rising
abruptly she averted her head, but every trace of colour had
left her face as she raised the veil.  Then she turned slowly and
extended her hand.  Otto grasped it, pressing it to his lips
in an ecstasy of joy, then he drew her down to the seat she had
abandoned, kneeling by her side.

For a moment she gazed at him thoughtfully.

"What do you want of me?" she then asked abruptly.

"I would have you be my friend," he stammered,
idol-worship in his eyes.

"Is a woman's friendship so rare a commodity, that you
come to me?" she replied, drawing her hand from him.

"I have never known woman's love nor friendship,—and
it is yours I want."

Stephania drew a long breath.  Truly,—it required no
effort on her part to lead him on.  He made her task an easy
one.  Yet there rose in her heart a spark of pity.  The complete
trust of this boy-king was to the wife of Crescentius a novel
sensation in the atmosphere of doubt and suspicion in which
she had grown up.  It was almost a pity to shatter the temple
in which he had placed her as goddess.

The mood held sway but a moment, then with a cry of
delirious gayety, she wrote the word "Friendship" rapidly
on the water.

"Look," she said, "scarcely a ripple remains!  That is
the end.  Let us but add another word, 'Farewell'—and
let the trace it shall leave tell when we shall meet again."

The words died on Otto's lips.  He could not fathom the
lightning change which had come over her.  With mingled
sadness and passion he gazed upon the lovely face, so pale and
cold.

"Let us not part thus," he stammered.

Stephania had risen abruptly, shaking herself free of his
kneeling form.

"What is it all to lead to?" she questioned.

Otto rose slowly to his feet.  Reeling as if stunned by a blow,
he staggered after her.

"Do not leave me thus," he begged with outstretched arms.

Stephania started away from him, as if in terror.

"Do not touch me,—as you are a man—"

Otto's hand went to his head.  Was he waking?  Was he
dreaming?  Was this the same woman who had but a moment ago—

He had not time to think out the thought.

He felt his neck encircled by an airy form and arms, and lips
whose sweetness made his senses reel were breathlessly pressed
upon his own.

But for an evanescent instant the sensation endured.

A voice whispered low: "Otto!"

When he tried to embrace the mocking phantom he grasped
the empty air.

He rushed madly forward, but at this instant there arose
a wild uproar and clamour around him.  The silver moon on
the fountain burst into a blaze of whirling light, which illumined
the whole grotto.  The shrill summons of a bell was to be heard
as from the depths of the fountain, and suddenly the verdant
precincts were crowded with a most extraordinary company,
shouting, hooting, laughing, yelling, and waving torches.
Satyrs, nymphs, fauns, and all varieties of sylvan deities poured
out of every nook and cranny by which there was an entrance,
all shrieking execration on the profaner of the sacred solitudes
and brandishing sundry weapons appropriate to their qualities.
The satyrs wielded their crooked staves, the fauns their stiff
pine-wreaths, the nymphs their branches of oak, and a loud
clamour arose.  But by far the most formidable personages were
a number of shepherds with huge boar-spears, who made
their appearance on every side.

"Pan!  Pan!" shouted a hundred voices.  "Come and
judge the mortal who has dared to profane thy solitudes.
Echo—where is Pan?"

Distant and faint the cry came back:

"Pan!  Where is Pan?"

For a moment Otto stood rooted to the spot, believing himself
in all truth surrounded by the rural gods of antiquity.
He stared at the scene before him as on some strange sorcery.
But suddenly a suspicion rushed upon him that he was
betrayed, either to be made the jest of a company of carnival's
revellers, or, perhaps, the object of vengeance of the Senator
of Rome.

Gazing round with a quick fear in his heart, at finding
himself thus completely surrounded, and meditating whether to
attempt a forcible escape, he was startled by the shrill shriek
of sylvan pipes and attended by a riotous company of satyrs,
Pan on his goat-legs hobbled into the grotto, the satyrs playing
a wild march on their oaken reeds.

"Silence!  Where is the guilty nymph who has lured the
mortal hither?" shouted the sylvan god.

"Egeria!  Egeria!" resounded numerous accusing voices.

"At thine old tricks again luring wisdom whither it should
least come?" questioned Pan, severely.  "Yes, hide thyself
in thy blushing waves!  But the mortal,—where is he?"

"Here!  Here!" exclaimed the nymphs with one voice.
"Had it been old Silenus or one of his satyrs,—we had not
wondered."

"The King! the King!" resounded on all sides amidst a
general outburst of laughter.

Otto became more and more convinced that the scene had
been enacted to mock him, and though he did not understand
the drift of their purpose, at which Stephania had doubtlessly
connived, a cold hand seemed to clutch his heart.

"In very truth, you have the laughing side of the jest," he
turned to the Sylvan god.  "But if you will confront me with
the nymph, I will prove that at least we ought to share in equal
punishment," Otto concluded his defence, endeavouring to
make the best of his dangerous position.

"This shall not be!" exclaimed a nymph near by.  "Bring
him along and our queen shall judge him."

Ere Otto could give vent to remonstrance, he found himself
hemmed in by the shepherds with their spears.  His doubts
as to the ultimate purpose of the revellers seemed now to call
for some imperative decision, but while he remembered the
dismal legends of these haunts, his lips still tingled with the
magic fire of Stephania's kiss and it seemed impossible to him
that she could really mean to harm him.  Still he had grave
misgivings, when suddenly a mocking voice saluted him and
into the cave strode Johannes Crescentius, Senator of
Rome,—apparently from the valley without, a smiling look of welcome
on his face.

"Fear nothing, King Otto," he said jovially.  "Your sentence
shall not be too severe.  Your forfeit shall be light, if
you will but discover and point out to us the nymph who
usurped the part of Egeria, that we may further address
ourselves to her for her reprehensible conduct."

The feelings with which Otto listened to this beguiling and
perhaps perfidious statement may be imagined.  But he
replied with great presence of mind.

"It were a vain effort indeed to recognize one nymph from
another in the gloom.  Lead on then, since it is the Senator of
Rome who guarantees my immunity from the fate of
Orpheus."

Marching like a prisoner of war and surrounded by the
shepherd spearmen, Otto affected to enter into the spirit of
the jest and suffered himself quietly to be bound with chains
of ivy which the least effort could snap asunder.  The moment
he stepped forth from the grotto his path was beset by a
multitude of the most extraordinary phantoms.  The surrounding
woods teemed with the wildest excrescences of pagan worship;
statues took life; every tree yielded its sleeping Dryad; strange
melodies resounded in every direction; Nayades rose in the
stream and laughingly showered their spray upon him.  With
a cheerful hunting blast Diana and her huntresses appeared
on an overhanging rock and darted blunt arrows with gilded
heads at him, until he arrived at an avenue of lofty elms, whose
overarching branches, filigreed by the crimson after-glow of
departing day, resembled the interior of a Gothic cathedral
and formed a natural hall of audience fit for the rural divinities.
Bosquets of orange trees, whose ivory tinted blossoms gleamed
like huge pearls out of the dark green of the foliage, wafted an
inexpressibly sweet perfume on the air.

The vista terminated in an open, semi-circular court,
surrounded by terraces of richest emerald hue, in the midst of
which rose an improvised throne.  The rising moon shone
upon it with a light, like that of a rayless sun, and Otto
discovered that the terraces were thronged with a splendid court,
assembled round a woman who occupied the throne.

As the prisoner approached, environed by his grotesque
captors, laughter as inextinguishable as that which shook the
ancient gods of Olympus on a similar occasion, resounded
among the occupants of the terrace.  Continuing his forced
advance, Otto discovered with a strange beating of the heart
in the splendidly attired queen, Stephania, the wife of
Crescentius.

A bodice of silver-tissue confined her matchless form,
which with every heave of her bosom threw iridescent gleams,
and a diadem which shone as with stars, so bright were its
jewels, flashed upon her brow.

She looked a queen indeed, and but for the ivory pallor of her
face it would have been impossible to guess that she was in any
way concerned with the object of the strange pageant, which
now approached her throne.

The sphinx-like countenance of the Senator of Rome seemed
to evince no very great enthusiasm in the frolic; the invited
guests appeared not to know how to look, and took their cue
from the Lord of Castel San Angelo.

When Otto was at last brought face to face with his fair
judge, his own pallor equalled that of Stephania, and both
resembled rather two marble statues than beings of flesh and
blood.  Stephania's lips were tightly compressed, and when
Pan recited his accusation, complaining of an attempt to
profane his solitudes and to misguide one of his chastest nymphs,
so far from overwhelming the culprit with the laughing
raillery of which she was mistress and an outburst of which all
seemed to expect, Stephania was silent and kept her eyes fixed
on the ground, as if she feared to raise them and to meet
Otto's burning gaze.

"Answer, King of the Germans," urged Crescentius with
a smile, "else you are lost!"

"The charges are too vague," Otto replied.  "Let Pan, if
he has any witness, of what has happened, allege
particulars—and if he does—by his crooked staff,
even my accusers shall
acquit me without denial on my part."

General mutterings and suppressed laughter followed this
singular defence, during which Stephania's countenance took
all the pallid tints, which the return of his consciousness and
dignity had chased from Otto's cheeks.

But she did not think it wise to prolong the scene.

"Since the august offender," she said hastily and without
lifting her long silken lashes, "cannot discover among my
retinue the nymph who enticed him into the grotto, I pronounce
this sentence upon him: 'Let his ignorance be perpetual.'"

Then she invited him to a seat in the circle over which she
presided and her graciousness obviously caused Otto's spirits
to rise, for, starting up, as it were, into new existence at the
word, he took his station in a manner which enabled him to
see Stephania's face and her glorious eyes.

At the beck of her hand there now approached a band of
musicians and the effect of their harmonies beneath the hushed
and now star-resplendent skies was inexpressibly delicious.  The
dreams of Elysium seemed to be realized.  These indeed seemed
to be the happy fields, in the atmosphere of which the
delighted spirit was consoled for every woe, and as Otto almost
unwittingly gazed upon the woman before him, so passionately
loved and to him lost for ever; as he marked the languor and
melancholy which had stolen over her countenance, he could
hardly restrain himself from throwing himself and all he called
his, at her feet.

Emperor and king though he was,—the one jewel he
craved lay beyond the confines of his dominion.

After the conclusion of the serenade, the nymphs of Stephania's
retinue showered their flowers upon the sylvan gods,
who eagerly scrambled over them, when Stephania started up,
as from a dream.

"How is this?" she hurriedly exclaimed, "I still hold
my flowers?  And you are all matched by the chances of the
fragrant blossoms?  But King Otto is likewise without his
due share, and so it would seem that fate would have him my
companion at the collation awaiting us.  Therefore, my lords
and ladies, link hands as the flow'ry oracles direct.  I shall
follow last with my exalted guest."

Otto did not remark the quick glance which flashed between
Crescentius and his wife.  The ladies of Stephania's retinue
immediately conformed to the expressed wish of the hostess
by taking the arms of the cavaliers who had chanced upon
their flowers.

A number of pages, beautiful as cupids, lighted the way with
torches which flamed with a perfumed lustre, and the
procession moved anew towards the grotto, where, during their
absence, a repast had been spread.  But the last couple had
preceded them some twenty paces, ere Stephania, without
raising her eyes, took Otto's motionless arm.

The memory of all that had passed, a natural feeling of
embarrassment on both sides, prolonged the silence between
them.  Stephania doubtlessly fathomed his thoughts, for she
smiled with a degree of timidity not unmingled with doubt,
as she broke the silence.

The question, though softly spoken, came swift as a dart
and equally unexpected.

"Have you ever loved, King Otto?"

Otto looked up with a start into her radiant face.

He had anticipated some veiled rebuke for his own strange
conduct, anything,—not this.

He breathed hard, then he replied:

"Until I came to Rome, I never gazed on beauty that won
from me more than the applause of the eye, which a statue or a
painting, equally beautiful, might have claimed."

She nodded dreamily.

"I have heard it said that the blue-eyed, sunny-haired
maidens of your native North make us Romans appear poor
in your sight!"

"Not so!  The red rose is not discarded for the white.  The
contrast only heightens the beauty."

"I have heard it said," Stephania continued, choosing a
circuitous path instead of the direct one her guests had taken,
"that you Teutons have ideals even, while you starve on bread
and water.  And I have been told that, were you permitted to
choose for your life's companion the most beautiful woman on
earth, you would hie yourselves into the gray ages of the world's
dawn for the realization of your dreams.  Has your ideal been
realized, since you have established your residence in Rome,
King Otto?"

There was a brief pause, then he replied, looking straight
ahead:

"Love comes more stealthily than light, of which even the
dark cypresses are enamoured in your Italian noondays."

"You evade my question."

"What would you have me say?"

She gave him a quick glance, which set his pulses to throbbing
wildly and sent the hot blood seething through his veins.

"Is your heart free, King Otto?"

A drear sense of desolation and loneliness came over the
youth.

"Free," he replied almost inaudibly.

She gave a little, nervous laugh.

"But how know you that, surrounded by such loveliness,
as that which you have this very night witnessed in my circle,
your hour may not strike at last?"

Otto raised his eyes to those of the woman by his side.

"Fair lady, beautiful as Love's oracle itself, my heart is in
little danger even from your fairest satellites.  But mistake
not my meaning.  I am not insusceptible to the fever of the
Gods!  Love I have sought under all forms and guises!  And
if I found it not, if I have listened to its richest eloquence as
to some song in a foreign tongue, which my heart understood
not,—it is not that I have lacked the soul for love.  Love I
found not, though phantoms I have eagerly chased in this
troubled dream of life.  What avails it, to contend with one's
destiny?  And this is mine!"

Stephania laughed.

"You speak like some hoary anchorite from the Thebaide.
Truly, now I begin to understand, why your chroniclers call
you the 'Wonder-child of the World.'  Lover, idealist, and
cynic in one!"

"Nay—you wrong me!  Cynic I am not!  My mother was
a princess of Greece.  The fairest woman my eyes ever gazed
upon—save one!  She died in her youth and beauty, following
my father, the emperor, into his early grave.  I was left alone
in the world, alone with the monks, alone in the great gloom
of our tall and spectral pines!  The monks understood not my
craving for the sun and the blue skies.  The whiter snows of
Thuringia chilled my heart and froze my soul!  I longed for
Rome—I craved for the South.  My dead mother's blood
flows in my veins.  Hither I came, braving the avalanches
and the fever and the wrath of the electors, I came, once more
to challenge the phantoms of the past from their long forgotten
tombs, to make Rome—what once she was—the capital of
the earth.  Rome's dream is Eternity!"

Stephania listened in silence and with downcast eyes.

Never had the ear of the beautiful Roman heard words like
these.  The illiteracy, vileness, and depravity of her own
countrymen never perhaps presented itself to her in so glaring
a contrast, as when thrown into comparison with the ideal son
of the Empress Theophano and Otto II, of Saracenic renown.
His words were like some strange music, which flatters the
senses, that try in vain to retain their harmonies.

There was a pause during which neither spoke.

Otto thought he felt the soft pressure of Stephania's arm
against his own.

"You spoke of one who alone might challenge the dead
empress in point of fairness," the woman spoke at last and her
voice betrayed an emotion which she vainly strove to conceal.
"Who is that one?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Theophano's beauty was renowned.  Even our poets sing of her."

"I will tell you at some other time."

"Tell me now!"

"We are approaching the grotto.  Your guests are waiting."

"Tell me now!"

"Crescentius is expecting us.  He will be wondering at our
tardiness."

"Tell me now!"

Otto breathed hard.

"Oh, why do you ask, Stephania, why do you ask?"

"Who is the woman?"

The question fell huskily from her lips.

The answer came, soft as a zephyr that dies as it passes:

"Stephania!"

Quickening their steps they reached the grotto, without
daring to face each other.  The woman's heart throbbed as
impetuously as that of the youth, as they found themselves
at the entrance of the Grotto of Egeria in a blaze of light,
emanating from innumerable torches artfully arranged among
the stalactites, which diffused brilliant irradiations.  The
sumptuous dresses of the nobles and barons blazed into view;
the spray from the fountain leaped up to a great height and
descended in showers of liquid jewels of iridescent hues.

A collation of fruits and wines wooed the appetite of the
guests on every hand.  Sweet harmonies floated from the
adjoining groves, and, amidst a general buzz of delight and
admiration, Stephania took her seat at the festal board between
the Senator of Rome and the German king.

The flower of beauty, wit and magnificence of the Senator's
Roman court had been culled to grace this festival, for there
was no one present, who was not remarked for at least one of
these attributes, some even by the union of all.  The most
beautiful women of Rome surrounded the consort of the
Senator, who outshone them all.  Even envy could not deny
her the crown.

Nevertheless, and for the first time, perhaps, Stephania
seemed to misdoubt the supremacy and power of her great
beauty, and while she affected being absorbed in other matters,
her eye watched with devouring anxiety every glance of her
exalted guest, whose feverish vivaciousness betrayed to her
his inmost thoughts.

The Senator's countenance was that of the Sphinx of the
desert.  He appeared neither to see nor to hear.

Otto meanwhile, in order to remove from his path the terrible
temptation which he felt growing with every instant, in order
to divert Eckhardt's attention, who he instinctively felt was
watching his every gesture, and to stifle any possible
suspicions, which Crescentius might entertain, affected to be
struck with the appearance of one of Stephania's ladies, who
resembled her in stature and in the colour of her hair.  He
intentionally mistook her for the fairy in the grotto, laughingly
challenging her acquaintance, which she as merrily denied,
declaring herself to be the wife of one of the barons present.
But Otto would not be convinced and attached himself to her
with a zeal, which brought on both many pointed jests on the
part of the assembled revellers.

Stephania immediately observed the ruse, but as her eye met
that of the Senator, an unaccountable terror seized her.  She
turned away and pretended to join her guests in their
merriment.  Among those present were some of the most
imaginative and prolific minds of an age, otherwise dark
and illiterate, yet the brilliant play and coruscations of
Stephania's wit, the depth of some of the glittering remarks
which fell from her lips, were not surpassed by any.  At times
she exhibited a tone of recklessness almost bordering on
defiance and mockery, the lightning's power to scorch as well as
to illumine, but when relapsing into what appeared her more
natural mood, it was scarcely possible to resist the grace and
seductiveness of her manner.  Even the doctrines, which half
in gayety, half in haughty acceptance of the character assigned
to her on this evening, she promulgated, full of poetical
epicureanism, fell with so sweet a harmony from her lips, that
saints could not have wished them mended.

Otto, meanwhile, continued to play his serf-assigned part,
but he lost not a single word or gesture of Stephania and his
fervour towards his chosen partner rose in proportion with
Stephania's gayety.  But he did not fail to observe that her
siren-smile was directed towards himself and his soul drank
in the beams of her beauty, as the palm-tree absorbs the fervid
suns of Africa, motionless with delight.

While gayety and convivial enjoyment seemed at their
height, Eckhardt strode from the grotto, unobserved by the
revellers and entered a secluded path leading into the remoter
regions of the park.  Otto's predilection for the wife of the
Senator of Rome had escaped him as little as had her own
seeming coquetry, and he had looked on in silence, until,
seized with profound disgust, he could bear it no longer.

What he had always feared was coming to pass.

When the Romans could no longer vanquish their foes on
the field of battle, they destroyed them with their women.

The gardens which Eckhardt traversed resembled the
fabled treasure-house of Aladdin.  Every tree glistened with
sparkling clusters of red, blue and green lights, every flowerbed
was bordered with lines and circles of iridescent globes,
and the fountains tossed up spiral columns of amber, rose
and amethyst spray against the transparent azure of the
summer skies, in which a lustrous golden moon shone full.

But a madness seemed suddenly to have seized the revellers.

No one knew whither Crescentius had gone.

No one knew who was a dancer, a flute-player, a noble.

Satyrs and fauns fell to chasing nymphs with shouting.
Everywhere laughter and shouts were heard, whispers and
panting breaths.  Darkness covered certain parts of the
groves.  Truly it was a long time, since anything similar had
been seen in Rome.

Roused and intoxicated by the contamination, the fever had
at last seized Otto.  Rushing into the forest, he ran with the
others.  New flocks of nymphs swarmed round him every
moment.  Seeing at last a band of maidens led by one arrayed
as Diana, he sprang to it, intending to scrutinize the goddess
more closely.  They encircled him in a mad whirl, and, evidently
bent upon making him follow, rushed away the next moment
like a herd of deer.  But he stood rooted to the spot with wildly
beating heart.

A great yearning, such as he had never felt before, seized
him at that moment and the love for Stephania rushed to his
heart as a tremendous tidal wave.  Never had she seemed to
him so pure, so dear, so beloved, as in that forest of frenzied
madness.  A moment before he had himself wished to drink
of that cup, which drowned past and present; now he was
seized with repugnance and remorse.  He felt stifled in this
unholy air; his eyes sought the stars, glimmering through
the interstices of the interwoven branches.

A shadow fell across his path.

He turned.  Before him stood Eckhardt, the Margrave.

"I have seen and heard," he spoke in response to Otto's
questioning gaze.  "King of the Germans, I have enough of
Rome, enough of feasts, enough of conquests.  I am stifling.
I cannot breathe in this accursed air.  Command the return
beyond the Alps.  On these siren rocks your ship will founder!
Rome is no place for you!"

Otto stared at the man as if he feared he had lost his senses.

"King of the Germans," Eckhardt continued, "on my
knees I entreat you—at the risk of your displeasure,—return
beyond the Alps!  See what has become of you!  See what a
woman has made of you, you, the son of the vanquisher of the
Saracens!"

He stretched out his arms entreatingly, as if to lead him away.

Otto covered his face with both hands.

"And I love only her in the wide, wide world," he muttered.

At this juncture a light, elastic step resounded on the gravel
path.

Benilo stepped into the clearing.

"Stephania awaits the king in the pavillion."

Eckhardt laid his hands on Otto's shoulders, straining his
eyes in silent entreaty into those of the King.

"Do not go!" he begged.

Otto winced, but the presence of Benilo caused him to shake
himself free of the Margrave's restraining hand.

"Stephania is waiting," he stammered.

"Then you will not grant my request?" Eckhardt spoke
with quivering voice.

"In Rome we live,—in Rome we die!"

Taking Benilo's arm he hastened away, leaving Eckhardt
to ponder over his prophetic words.

For a moment the Margrave remained, straining his gaze
after Otto's retreating form.

His heart was heavy,—heavy to breaking.  Dared he enter
the arena against the Sorceress of Rome?  He laughed aloud.

There are moments when the tragedy of our own life is
almost amusing.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BEYOND THE GRAVE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   BEYOND THE GRAVE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: E
   :image: images/img-cap-e.jpg
   :lines: 5

Eckhardt turned to go, but he
had barely moved, when, as if
risen from the earth, there
stood before him the tall, veiled
form of a woman, who whispered,
flooding his face with her
burning breath:

"I love you!  Come!  No one will see us!"

Eckhardt trembled in every
limb.  He would have known that voice, even if it had spoken
to him from the depths of the grave.  The heavy veil which
shrouded the woman's face prevented him from scrutinizing
her features.

"Who are you?" he stammered, just to say something.
Swift as thought she threw her arms round him, but to
recede as swiftly.

"Hurry!  See how lonely it is!  I love you!  Come!"

"Who are you?"

"Can you not guess?"

He stretched out his arms toward her, but she gambolled
before him, as a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower.

"Night of Love—night of madness," she whispered.
"To-night, if you but will it, the secret is yours!"

Her voice thrilled him through and through.  The
perfume of the Poppy-flower sank benumbing into
his heart.  It was her voice,—it was her form,—was
it but a mocking phantom,—what was it?  Again she
approached him.

"Lift the veil!" she spoke in a voice of command.

With trembling hand he started to obey, when the leaves of
the nearest myrtle-bush began to rustle.

Eckhardt heard nothing, saw nothing.

As Benilo stepped into the moonlight, the apparition vanished
like a dream phantom, but from the distance her laugh was
heard, strange in some way, and ominous.

Eckhardt rushed after the fading vision like a madman.

Would it mock him for ever, wherever he was, wherever he went?

How long he had followed it, in headlong, breathless pursuit,
as on that fateful eve, when it had lured him from the altars of
Christ, he knew not.  When he at last desisted from the mad
and fruitless chase, he found himself at the base of the
Capitoline Hill.  Here were scattered the ruins of the old Mamertine
prisons, once a series of cells rising in stages against the rock
to a considerable height.  Here were the baths of Mamertius,
where Jugurtha, the Numidian, was starved.  There Simon Bar
Gioras, the Jew, was strangled, he, who to the last maintained
the struggle against the victorious son of Vespasian.  In the
cell to the right Appius Claudius, the Triumvir, was said to have
committed suicide.  Another cell reëchoed from the clangour
of the chains of Simon Petrus.  It was not a region where men
tarried long, and few relished the fare of the low taverns, which
were strung along the gray wall of Servius Tullius.  For weird
and dismal wails were at times to be heard in clear moonlight
nights, and the region of the Capitoline Hill, cut by the old
Gemonian stairs, was in ill repute, as in the days of Republican
Rome.

He had not gone very far when he found himself before
the entrance of a cavern, and Eckhardt's attention was caught
by a strange red glow as from some fire within.  As he gazed
it died out, and he was left in doubt, whether it was an illusion
of his imagination, or some phenomenon peculiar to the spot.
The prisoners of the Roman state were no longer conveyed
hither for safe-keeping, but confined in the dismal dungeons
of Torre di Nona and Corte Savella.  The glimmer he had seen
could not therefore emanate from the cell of some unfortunate,
here awaiting his sentence.  Vainly he strained his gaze.
All was darkness again within, and although the moon was
high in a clear sky, set with innumerable stars, their distant
glimmer could not penetrate the murky depths.

Eckhardt waited some minutes and the glimmer reappeared.
What urged him onward to explore the cause of the strange
light he could not have told.  Still he dared not venture into
the gloom without the aid of a torch.  Quickly resolved he
retraced his steps towards the few scattered houses, near the
ancient wall, entered a dimly lighted, evil-smelling shop,
purchased torch and flints and returned to the entrance of
the cavern.

After lighting his torch he entered slowly and carefully,
marking every step he took in the dust and sand, which covered
the ground of the cave.  The farther he advanced the more
singular grew the spectacle which greeted his gaze.

The cavern was of great extent, composed of enormous
masses of rocks, seemingly tossed together in chaotic confusion,
and glittering all over in the blaze of innumerable irradiations,
as with serpents of coloured light, so singularly brilliant and
twisted were the stalactites which clustered within.  There
was one rock, in which a strong effort of the imagination
might have shaped resemblance to a crucifix.  Fastened to
this by an iron rivet, a chain and a belt round his waist, lay
the form of a man, apparently in a deadly swoon, as if
exhausted from the struggle against the massive links.  Some
embers still burned near the prisoner and had probably been
the means of attracting Eckhardt's attention.

Startled by the strange sight which encountered his gaze,
Eckhardt eagerly surveyed the person of the prisoner.  He
appeared a man who had passed his prime, and his frame
betokened a scholar rather than an athlete.  His head being
averted, Eckhardt was not able to scan his features.

At first Eckhardt was inclined to attribute the prisoner's
plight to an attack by outlaws who had stripped him, and
then, to secure secrecy and immunity, had left him to his
fate.  But a second consideration staggered this presumption,
for as he raised his torch above the man's head, he discovered
the tonsure which proclaimed him a monk, and what bandit,
ever so desperate, would perpetrate a deed, which would consign
his soul to purgatory for ever more?  Besides, what wealth
had a friar to tempt the avidity of a bravo?

Vainly puzzling his brain, as to the probable authorship of
a deed, as dark as the identity of the hapless creature, thus
securely fettered to the stone, he looked round.  There was
no vestige of drink or food; perhaps the man was starved and
slowly expiring in the last throes of exhaustion.  His breath
came in rasping gasps and the short-cropped raven-blue hair
slightly tinged with gray heightened the cadaverous tints of
the body, which was of the colour of dried parchment.

The sudden flow of light, which flooded his eyes, perhaps
long unaccustomed thereto, caused the prostrate man to writhe
and to start from his swoon.  His eyes, deeply sunk in their
sockets, and flashing a strange delirious light, stared with awe
and fear into the flame of the torch.

But no sooner had he encountered Eckhardt's gaze than he
uttered a cry of dismay and would have relapsed into his
swoon, had not the Margrave grasped him by the shoulder
in an effort to support the weak, tottering body.  But the cry
had startled him, and so great was Eckhardt's dismay, that
his fingers relaxed their hold and the man fell back, striking his
head against the rock.

"I am dying—fetch me some water," he begged piteously
and Eckhardt stepped outside of the cavern and filled his helmet
from a well, whose crystal stream seemed to pour from the
fissures of the Tarpeian rock.  This he carried to the hapless
wretch, raising his head and holding it to his lips.  The prisoner
drank greedily and stammered his thanks in a manner as if
his tongue had swollen too big for his mouth.

There was a breathless silence, then Eckhardt said:

"I have sought you long—everywhere.  How came you
in this plight?"

The monk looked up.  In his eyes there was a great fear.

"Pity—pity!" he muttered, vainly endeavouring to raise
himself.

Eckhardt's stern gaze was his sole reply.

The ensuing silence seemed to both an eternity.

The monk could not bear the Margrave's gaze, and had
closed his eyes.

"What of Ginevra?"

Slowly the words fell from Eckhardt's lips.

The monk groaned.  His limbs writhed and strained against
the chains that fettered him to the rock.  But he made no
reply.

"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt repeated inexorably.

Still there came no answer.

Eckhardt stooped over the prostrate form like a spirit of
vengeance descended from on high and so fiercely burned his
gaze upon the monk that the latter vainly endeavoured to
turn away his face.  He could feel those eyes, even though his
own were closed.

"You stand in the shadow of death," Eckhardt spoke,
"You will never leave this cavern alive!  Answer briefly
and truthfully,—and I will have your body consigned to
consecrated earth and masses said for your soul.  Remain
obdurate and rot where you lie, till the trumpet blast of
resurrection day chases the worms from their loathsome
feast!"

The dying man answered with a groan.

"What of Ginevra?" Eckhardt questioned for the third time.

The monk breathed hard.  A tremor shook his limbs as he
gasped:

"Ginevra—lives."

Eckhardt's hands went to his head.  He closed his eyes in
mortal agony and for a moment nothing but his heavy
breathing was to be heard in the cavern.  When he again looked
down upon the prostrate man, he saw his lips turn purple, saw
the film of death begin to cover his eyes.  How much there
was to be asked.  How brief the time!

"You chanted the Requiem over the body of Ginevra,
knowing her to be among the living?"

The monk nodded feebly.

Eckhardt's breath came hard.  His breast heaved, as if it
must burst and his hand shook so violently that some of the
hot pitch from the taper struck the prisoner on the shoulder.
He writhed with a groan.

"What prompted the hellish deceit?" Eckhardt continued.
"Did she not have my love?"

The monk shook his head.

"It was not enough.  It was not enough!"

"What more had I to give?"

"Marozia's inheritance—the emperor's tomb!"

"Marozia's inheritance?" Eckhardt repeated, like one in a
dream.  "The emperor's tomb?  What madness is this?
She never hinted at a wish unfulfilled."

"She asked you never to lift the veil from her past!"

The monk's words fell like a thunderbolt on Eckhardt's
head.

"How came you by this knowledge?" he questioned aghast.

"Give me some water—I am choking," gasped the monk.

Again Eckhardt held the helmet to his lips, while he prayed
that the spark of life might remain long enough in that
enfeebled body, to clear the mystery, at whose brink he stood.

The monk drank greedily, and when his thirst seemed
appeased the water ran out of the corners of his mouth.  He
again relapsed into a swoon; he heard Eckhardt's questions,
but lacked strength to answer.

Stooping over him, Eckhardt grasped him by the shoulder
and shook him mercilessly.  He must not die, until he knew all.

A terrible certainty flashed through his mind.

This monk knew what was to him a seven times sealed book.

He had repeated to him Ginevra's wish,—now, nor heaven
nor hell should turn him from his path.

"I thought,—Marozia's descendants were all dead," he
said, fear and hesitation in his tones.

The monk feebly shook his head.

"One lives,—the deadliest of the flock."

A chill as of death seemed to benumb Eckhardt's limbs.

"One lives," he gasped.  "Her name?"

Delirium seemed to have seized the prostrate wretch.  He
mumbled strange words while his fingers were digging into
the sand, as if he were preparing his own grave.

"Her name!" thundered Eckhardt into the monk's ear.

The latter raised himself straight up and stared at the
Margrave with dead, expressionless eyes.

"In the world, Ginevra,—beyond the grave—Theodora!"

"Theodora!"  A groan broke from Eckhardt's lips.

"And is this her work?"

He pointed to the monk's chains, and the iron rivets driven
into the rocks.

The monk shook his head.  The spark of life flickered up
once more.

"Five days without food,—without water,—left here to
perish—by a villain—whom the lightnings of heaven may
blast—the betrayer of God and of man,—I am
dying,—remember,—burial—masses—"

The monk fell back with a gasp.  The death-rattle was in
his throat.

Eckhardt knelt by his side, raised his head and tried to stem
the fleeting tide of life.

"His name!  His name!" he shrieked, mad with fear,
anguish and despair.  "His name!  Oh God, let him live but
long enough for that,—his name?"

It was too late.

The spark of life had gone out.  The murderer of Gregory
stood before a higher bar of judgment.

There was a long silence in the rock caves under the Gemonian
Stairs.  Nothing was to be heard, save the hard breathing
of the despairing man.  He saw it all now,—all, but the
instigator, the abettor of the terrible crime against him.  If
Ginevra was indeed the last link in that long chain of infamy,
which had held its high revels in Castel San Angelo during the
past decades, she could never hope to come into her own
without some potent ally.  The thought lay very near, that she
might be intriguing in this very hour to regain the lost power
of Marozia.  But a second consideration at least staggered this
theory.  It rather seemed as if the man on whom she had relied
for the realization of her terrible ambition had deceived her,
after he had made her his own,—or had in some way failed
to keep his pledge,—until, in the endeavour to find the
support she required, she had sunk from the arms of one into
those of another.

A wild shriek resounded through the cavern.

Eckhardt trembled at the sound of his own despair.

Like a caged, wild beast he paced up and down in the darkness.

The torch had fallen from his grasp and continued to glimmer
on the sand.

Had it lain within his power he would have shaken down
the mighty rock over his head and buried himself with the
hapless victim chained to the stone.

In vain he tried to order his chaotic thoughts.

Monstrous deception she had practised upon him!

All her endearments, all her caresses, her kisses, her whisperings
of love,—were they but the threads of the one vast fabric
of a lie?

It seemed too monstrous to be true; it seemed too monstrous
to grasp!

And all for what?

The fleeting phantom of dominion, which must vanish as
it came—unsatisfied.

How long he remained thus, he knew not.  His torch had
well nigh burnt down when at length he roused himself from
his deadly stupor.  Groping his way to the entrance of the
cave, he stepped into the open.

Like one dazed he returned to his palace.

But he could not sleep.

Profound were the emotions, which were awakened in his
bosom, as he set foot within his chamber.  Scenes of other
days arose before him with the vividness of reality.  He beheld
himself again in the full vigour of manhood, ardent,
impassioned, blessed with the hand of the woman he loved and
anticipating a cloudless future.  He beheld her as she was
when he first called her his own, young, proud, beautiful.
Her accents were those of endearment, her looks tenderness
and love.  They smote him now like a poniard's point driven
to his very heart.  He did not think he could have borne a
pang so keen and live.

Why,—he asked in despair—could not the past be
recalled or for ever cancelled?  Why could not men live their
loves over again, to repair, what they might have omitted,
neglected and regain their lost happiness?

Pressing his hands before his eyes, he tried to shut out the
beautiful, agonizing vision.

It could not be excluded.

Staggering towards a chair, he sank upon it, a prey to
unbearable anguish.  Avenging furies beset him and lashed
him with whips of steel.

He could not rest.  He strode about the room.  He even
thought of quitting the house, denouncing himself as a
madman for having come here at all.  But where was he to go?
He must endure the tortures.  Perhaps they would subside.
Little hope of it.

He walked to the fire-place.  The air of autumn was chill
without.  The embers, still glowing with a crimson reflection,
had sunk in the grate.  Aye—there he stood, where he had
stood years ago, and oh, how unlike his former self!  How
different in feeling!  Then he had some youth left, at least,
and hope.  Now he was crushed by the weight of a mystery
which haunted him night and day.  Could he but quit Rome!
Could he but induce the king to return beyond the Alps.
Little doubt, that under the immense gray sky, which formed
so fitting a cupola for his grief, his soul might find rest.  Here,
with the feverish pulses of life beating madly round him, here,
vegetating without purpose, without aim, he felt he would
eventually go mad.  He had inhaled the poison of the
poppy-flower:—he was doomed.

Eckhardt did not attempt to court repose.  Sleep was out of
the question in his present wrought-up state of mind.  Then
wherefore seek his couch until he was calmer?

Calmer!

Could he ever be calm again, till his brain had ceased to
work and his heart to beat?  Should he ever know profound
repose until he slept the sleep of death?

Yet what was to insure him rest even within the tomb?
Might he not encounter her in the beyond,—a thing apart
from him through all eternity?  During the brief period while
he had cherished the thought of disappearing from the world
for ever, he had pondered over many problems, which neither
monk nor philosophers had been able to solve.

Could we but know what would be our lot after death!

There was a time, when he had rebelled against the thought
that our footsteps are filled up and obliterated, as we pass on,
like in a quicksand.

There was a time, he could not bear to think, that yesterday
was indeed banished and gone for ever,—that a to-morrow
must come of black and endless night.

And now he craved for nothing more than annihilation,
complete unrelenting annihilation.  He knew not what he
believed.  He knew not what he doubted.  He knew not what
he denied.

He was on the verge of madness.

And the devil was busy in his heart, suggesting a solution
he had hitherto shunned.  The thought filled him with dread,
tossing him to and fro on a tempestuous sea of doubt and yet
pointing to no other refuge from black despair.

He strove to resist the dread suggestion, but it grew
upon him with fearful force and soon bore down all opposition.

If all else failed—why not leap over the dark abyss?

A dreadful calm succeeded his agitation.  It was vain to
puzzle his brain with a solution of the problem which
confronted him, a problem which mocked to scorn his efforts and
his prayers.

He closed his eyes, vainly groping for an escape from the
dreadful labyrinth of doubt, and sinking deeper and deeper into
rumination.  Nature at last asserted her rights, and he fell
into fitful, uneasy slumbers, in which all the misery of his life
seemed to sweep afresh through his heart and to uproot the
remotest depths of his tortured soul.

When Eckhardt woke from his stupor, the gray dawn was
breaking.  As he started up, a face which had appeared against
the window quickly vanished.  Was it but part of his dream
or had he seen Benilo, the Chamberlain?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ARA COELI`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ARA COELI

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was not till late that night,
that Otto found himself alone.
He had at last withdrawn from
the maddening revelry.  Silence
was falling on the streets of
Rome and the dimness of
midnight upon the sky, through
which blazing meteors had torn
their brilliant furrows.  After
dismissing his attendants, the
son of Theophano sat alone in the lonely chamber of his palace
on the Aventine.  A sense of death-like desolation had come
over him.  Never had the palace seemed so vast and so silent.
And he—he, the lord of it all—he had no loving heart to
turn to, no one, that understood him with a woman's intuition.
The waves of destiny seemed to close over him and the circumstances
of his past rose poignant and vivid before his fading sight.

But uppermost in his soul was the certainty that he could
not further behold Stephania with impunity.  When he
recalled the meeting in the Minotaurus and the subsequent
events of the evening, he lost all peace of mind.  What then
would be the result of a new meeting?  What would become
of him, should he thereafter find himself unable to contain his
passion in darkness and in silence?  Would he exhibit to the
world the ridiculous spectacle of an insane lover, or would he,
by some unheedful action, bring down upon himself the
disdainful pity of the woman, unable as he was to resist the
vertigo of her fascination?

He gazed out into the moonlit night.  The ancient
monuments stood out mournful and deserted as a line of tombs.
The city seemed a graveyard, and himself but a disembodied
ghost of the dead past.

Gradually the hour laid its tranquillizing hush upon him.
By degrees, with the dim light of the candles, he grew drowsy.
His mental images became more and more indistinct, and he
gradually drifted away into the land of dreams.  After a time
he was awakened by a light that shone upon his face.  Starting
up, Otto was for a moment overcome by a strange sensation
of faintness, which vanished as he gazed into the face of
Benilo, whom his anxiety had carried to the side of the King
after having in vain searched for him among the late revellers
on the Capitoline hill.

Otto smiled at the expression of anxiety in the Roman's face.

"'Twas naught, save that I was weary," he replied to
Benilo's concerned inquiry.  "'Tis many a week since we
revelled so late.  But perchance you had best leave me now,
that I may rest."

Benilo withdrew and Otto fell into a fitful slumber filled
with hazy visions, in which the persons of Crescentius and
Stephania were strangely mingled, melting rapidly from one
into the other.

He slept later than usual on the following day.  When the
shadows of evening began to fall over the undulating expanse
of the Roman Campagna, Otto left the palace on the Aventine
by a postern gate.  This hour he wished to be free from all
affairs of state, from all intrusions and cares.  This hour he
wished fitly to prepare himself for the great work of his life.
In the dreamy solitude he would question his own heart as to
his future course with regard to Stephania.

The evening was serene and fair.  The brick skeletons of
arches, vaults and walls glowed fiery in the rays of the sinking
sun.  Among olives and acanthus was heard the bleating of
sheep and the chirrup of the grasshopper.

Otto descended the tangled foot-path on the northern slope of
the Aventine, not far from the gardens of Capranica, and soon
reached the foot of the Capitoline hill, the ruins of the temple
of Saturnus, the place where in the days of glory had stood the
ancient Forum.  From the arch of Septimius Severus as far as
the Flavian Amphitheatre the Via Sacra was flanked with
wretched hovels.  Their foundations were formed of fragments
of statues, of the limbs and torsos of Olympian gods.  For
centuries the Forum had been a quarry.  Christian churches
languished on the ruins of pagan shrines.  Still lofty columns
soared upward through the desolation, carrying sculptured
architraves, last traces of a vanished art.  Here a feudal
tower leaned against the arch of Titus; beside it a tavern
befouled the fallen columns, the marble slabs, the half defaced
inscription.  Behind it rose the arch, white and pure, less
shattered than the remaining monuments.  The sunlight
streaming through it from the direction of the Capitol lighted
up the bas-relief of the Emperor's triumph, the malodorous
curls of smoke from the tavern appearing like clouds of incense.

Otto's heart beat fast as, turning once more into the Forum,
he heard the dreary jangling of bells from the old church of
Santa Maria Liberatrice, sounding the Angelus.  It seemed to
him like a dirge over the fallen greatness of Rome.  Half
unconsciously he directed his steps toward the Coliseum.
Seating himself on the broken steps of the Amphitheatre, he
gazed up at the blue heavens, shining through the gaps in the
Coliseum walls.

Sudden flushes of crimson flamed up in the western horizon.
Slowly the sun was sinking to rest.  A pale yellow moon had
sailed up from behind the stupendous arches of Constantine's
Basilica, severing with her disk a bed of clouds, transparent
and delicately tinted as sea-shells.  The three columns in front
of Santa Maria Liberatrice shone like phantoms in the waning
light of evening.  And the bell sounding the Christian Angelus
seemed more than ever like a dirge over the forgotten Rome
of the past.

Wrapt in deep reveries, Otto continued upon his way.  He
had lost all sense of life and reality.  It was one of those
moments when time and the world seem to stand still, drifting
away on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between
reality and dream-land.  And the solitary rambler gave himself
up to the half painful, half delicious sense of being drawn
in, absorbed and lost in infinite imaginings, when the intense
stillness around him was broken by the peals of distant
convent bells, ringing with silvery clearness through the evening
calm.

Suddenly Otto paused, all his life-blood rushing to his heart.

At the lofty flight of stairs, by which the descent is made
from Ara Coeli, stood Stephania.

She had come out of the venerable church, filled with the
devout impressions of the mass just recited.  The chant still
rang in her ears as she passed down the long line of uneven
pillars, which we see to-day, and across the sculptured tombs
set in the pavement which the reverential tread of millions
has worn to smooth indistinctness.  Now the last rays of the
sun flooded all about her, mellowing the tints of verdure and
drooping foliage, and softening the outlines of the Alban hills.

As she looked down she saw the German king and met his
upturned gaze.  For a moment she seemed to hesitate.  The
sunlight fell on her pale face and touched with fire the dark
splendour of her hair.  Slowly she descended the long flight
of stairs.

They faced each other in silence and Otto had leisure to
steal a closer look at her.  He was struck by the touch of awe
which had suddenly come upon her beauty.  Perhaps the
evening light spiritualized her pure and lofty countenance,
for as Otto looked upon her it seemed to him that she was
transformed into a being beyond earthly contact and his heart
sank with a sense of her remoteness.

Timidly he lifted her hand and pressed his lips upon it.

Silence intervened, a silence freighted with the weight of
suspended destinies.  There was indeed more to be felt between
them, than to be said.  But what mattered it, so the hour was
theirs?  The narrow kingdom of to-day is better worth ruling
than the widest sweep of past and future, but not more than
once does man hold its fugitive sceptre.  Otto felt the nearness
of that penetrating sympathy, which is almost a gift of divination.
The mere thought of her had seemed to fill the air with
her presence.

Steadily, searchingly, she gazed at the thoughtful and earnest
countenance of Otto, then she spoke with a touch of domineering
haughtiness:

"Why are you here?"

He met her gaze eye in eye.

"I was planning for the future of Rome,—and dreaming
of the past."

She bent her proud head, partly in acknowledgment of his
words, partly to conceal her own confusion.

"The past is buried," she replied coldly, "and the future
dark and uncertain."

"And why may it not be mine,—to revive that past?"

"No sunrise can revive that which has died in the sunset glow."

"Then you too despair of Rome ever being more than a
memory of her dead self?"

She looked at him amusedly.

"I am living in the world—not in a dream."

Otto pointed to the Capitoline hill.

"Yet see how beautiful it is, this Rome of the past!" he
spoke with repressed enthusiasm.  "Is it not worth braving
the dangers of the avalanches that threaten to crush rider and
horse—even the wrath of your countrymen, who see in us
but unbidden, unwelcome invaders?  Ah!  Little do they
know the magic which draws us hither to their sunny shores
from the gloom of our Northern forests!  Little they
know the transformation this land of flowers works on the
frozen heart, that yearns for your glowing, sun-tinted vales!"

"Why did you come to Rome?" she questioned curtly.
"To remind us of these trifles,—and incidentally to dispossess
us of our time-honoured rights and power?"

Otto shook his head.

"I came not to Rome to deprive the Romans of their own,—rather
to restore to them what they have almost forgotten—their
glorious past."

"It is useless to remind those who do not wish to be
reminded," she replied.  "The avalanche of centuries has long
buried memory and ambition in those you are pleased to call
Romans.  Desist, I beg of you, to pursue a phantom which
will for ever elude you, and return beyond the Alps to your
native land!"

"And Stephania prefers this request?" Otto faltered,
turning pale.

"Stephania—the consort of the Senator of Rome."

There was a pause.

Through the overhanging branches glimmered the pale disk
of the moon.  A soft breeze stirred the leaves of the trees.
There was a hushed breathlessness in the air.  Fantastic,
dream-like, light and shadows played on the majestic tide of
the Tiber, and all over the high summits of the hills mysterious
shapes, formed of purple and gray mists, rose up and crept
softly downward, winding in and out the valleys, like wandering
spirits, sent on some hidden, sorrowful errand.

Gazing up wistfully, Stephania saw the look of pain in Otto's
face.

"I ask what I have," she said softly, "because I know the
temper of my countrymen."

"What would you make of me?" he replied.  "On this
alone my heart is set.  Take it from me,—I would drift an
aimless barque on the tide of time."

She shook her head but avoided his gaze.

"You aim to accomplish the impossible.  Crows do not
feed on the living, and the dead do not rise again.  Ah!  How,
if your miracle does not succeed?"

Otto drew himself up to his full height.

"Gloria Victis,—but before my doom, I shall prove worthy
of myself."

Suddenly a strange thought came over him.

"Stephania," he faltered, "what do you want with me?"

"I want you to be frankly my foe," exclaimed the beautiful
wife of Crescentius.  "You must not pass by like this,
without telling me that you are.  You speak of a past.  Sometimes
I think it were better, if there had been no past.  Better burn
a corpse than leave it unburied.  All the friends of my dreams
are here,—their shades surround us,—in their company one
grows afraid as among the shroudless dead.  It is impossible.
You cannot mean the annihilation of the past, you cannot
mean to be against Rome—against me!"

Otto faced her, pale and silent, vainly striving to speak.
He dared not trust himself.  As he stepped back, she clutched
his arm.

"Tell me that you are my enemy," she said, with heart-broken
challenge in her voice.

"Stephania!"

"Tell me that you hate me."

"Stephania—why do you ask it?"

"To justify my own ends," she replied.  Then she covered
her face with her hands.

"Tell me all," she sobbed.  "I must know all.  Do
you not feel how near we are?  Are you indeed afraid to
speak?"

She gazed at him with moist, glorious eyes.

Striding up and down before the woman, Otto vainly groped
for words.

"Otto," she approached him gently, "do you believe in me?"

"Can you ask?"

"Wholly?"

"What do you mean?"

"I thought,—feared,—that you suffered from the same
malady as we Romans."

"What malady?"

"Distrust."

There was a pause.

"The temple is beautiful in the moonlight," Stephania said
at last.  "They tell me you like relics of the olden time.  Shall
we go there?"

Otto's heart beat heavily as by her side he strode down the
narrow path.  They approached a little ruined temple, which
ivy had invaded and overrun.  Fragments lay about in the
deep grass.  A single column only remained standing and its
lonely capital, clear cut as the petals of a lily, was outlined in
clear silhouette against the limpid azure.

At last he spoke—with a voice low and unsteady.

"Be not too hard on me, Stephania, for my love of the
world that lies dead around us.  I scarcely can explain it to
you.  The old simple things stir strange chords within me.
I love the evening more than the morning, autumn better
than spring.  I love all that is fleeting, even the perfume of
flowers that have faded, the pleasant melancholy, the golden
fairy-twilight.  Remembrance has more power over my soul
than hope."

"Tell me more," Stephania whispered, her head leaning
back against the column and a smile playing round her lips.
"Tell me more.  These are indeed strange sounds to my ear.
I scarcely know if I understand them."

He gazed upon her with burning eyes.

"No—no!  Why more empty dreams, that can never be?"

She pointed in silence to the entrance of the temple.

Otto held out both hands, to assist her in descending the
sloping rock.  She appeared nervous and uncertain of foot.
Hurriedly and agitated, anxious to gain the entrance she
slipped and nearly fell.  In the next moment she was caught
up in his arms and clasped passionately to his heart.

"Stephania—Stephania," he whispered, "I love you—I
love you!  Away with every restraint!  Let them slay me,
if they will, by every death my falsehood deserves,—but let
it be here,—here at your feet."

Stephania trembled like an aspen in his strong embrace,
and strove to release herself, but he pressed her more closely
to him, scarcely knowing that he did so, but feeling that he
held the world, life, happiness and salvation in this beautiful
Roman.  His brain was in a whirl; everything seemed blotted
out,—there was no universe, no existence, no ambition,
nothing but love,—love,—love,—beating through every
fibre of his frame.

The woman was very pale.

Timidly she lifted her head.  He gazed at her in speechless
suspense; he saw as in a vision the pure radiance of her face,
the star-like eyes shining more and more closely into his.
Then came a touch, soft and sweet as a rose-leaf pressed against
his lips and for one moment he remembered nothing.  Like
Paris of old, he was caught up in a cloud of blinding gold,
not knowing which was earth, which heaven.

For a moment nothing was to be heard, save the hard
breathing of these two, then Otto held Stephania off at an
arm's length, gazing at her, his soul in his eyes.

"You are more beautiful than the angels," he whispered.

"The fallen angels," was her smiling reply.

Then with a quick, spontaneous movement she flung her
bare arms round his neck and drew him toward her.

"And if I did come toward you to prophesy glory and the
fulfilment of your dreams?" she murmured, even as a
sibyl.  "You alone are alive among the dead!  What matters
it to me that your love is hopeless, that our wings are seared?
My love is all for the rejected!  I love the proud and solitary
eagle better than the stained vulture."

He felt the fire of the strange insatiate kiss of her lips and
reeled.  It seemed as if the Goddess of Love in the translucence
of the moon, had descended, embracing him, mocking to scorn
the anguish that consumed his heart, but to vanish again in
the lunar shadows.

"Stephania—" he murmured reeling, drunk with the
sweetness of her lips.

Never perhaps had the beautiful Roman bestowed on mortal
man such a glance, as now beamed from her eyes upon the
youth.  The perfume of her hair intoxicated his senses.  Her
breath was on his cheek, her sweet lips scarce a hand's breath
from his own.

Had Lucifer, the prince of darkness, himself appeared at
this moment, or Crescentius started up like a ghost from the
gaping stone floor, Stephania could scarcely have changed
as suddenly as she did, to the cold impassive rigidity of
marble.  Following the direction of her stony gaze, Otto
beheld emerging as it were from the very rocks above him a
dark face and mailed figure, which he recognized as Eckhardt's.
Whether or not the Margrave was conscious of having thus
unwittingly interrupted an interview,—if he had seen, his
own instincts at once revealed to him the danger of his position.
Eckhardt's countenance wore an expression of utter unconcern,
as he passed on and vanished in the darkness.

For a moment Otto and Stephania gazed after his retreating
form.

"He has seen nothing," Otto reassured her.

"To-morrow," she replied, "we meet here again at the
hour of the Angelas.  And then," she added changing her
tone to one of deepest tenderness, "I will test your
love,—your constancy,—your loyalty."

They faced each other in a dead silence.

"Do not go," he faltered, extending his hands.

She slowly placed her own in them.  It was a moment upon
which hung the fate of two lives.  Otto felt her weakness in
her look, in the touch of her hands, which shivered, as they
lay in his, as captive birds.  And the long smothered cry
leaped forth from his heart: What was crown, life,
glory—without love!  Why not throw it all away for a caress of
that hand?  What mattered all else?

But the woman became strong as he grew weak.

"Go!" she said faintly.  "Farewell,—till to-morrow."

He dropped her hands, his eyes in hers.

Giving one glance backward, where Eckhardt had disappeared,
Stephania first began to move with hesitating steps,
then seized by an irresistible panic, she gathered up her trailing
robe and ran precipitately up the steep path, her fleeting form
soon disappearing in the moonlight.

Otto remained another moment, then he too stepped out
into the clear moonlit night.  In silent rumination he continued
his way toward the Aventine.

Past and future seemed alike to have vanished for him.
Time seemed to have come to a stand-still.

Suddenly he imagined that a shadow stealthily crossed
his path.  He paused, turned—but there was no one.

Calmly the stars looked down upon him from the azure
vault of heaven.

And like a spider in his web, Johannes Crescentius sat in
Castel San Angelo.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GOTHIC TOWER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE GOTHIC TOWER

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: D
   :image: images/img-cap-d.jpg
   :lines: 5

Deep quiet reigned in the city,
when a man, enveloped in a
mantle, whose dimly shadowed
form was outlined against the
massive, gray walls of
Constantine's Basilica glided slowly
and cautiously from among the
blocks of stone scattered round
its foundations and advanced to
the fountain which then formed
the centre of the square, where the Obelisk now stands.  There
he stopped and, concealed by the obscurity of the night and the
deeper shadows of the monument, glanced furtively about, as
if to be sure that he was unobserved.  Then drawing his sword,
he struck three times upon the pavement, producing at each
stroke light sparks from its point.  This signal, for such it
was, was forthwith answered.  From the remote depths of the
ruins the cry of the screech-owl was thrice in succession
repeated, and, guided by the ringing sound, a second figure
emerged from the weeds, which were in some places the height
of a man.  Obeying the signal of the first comer, the second,
who was likewise enveloped in a mantle, silently joined him
and together they proceeded half-way down the Borgo Vecchio,
then turned to the right and entered a street, at the remote
extremity of which there was a figure of the Madonna with its
lamp.

Onward they walked with rapid steps, traversed the Borgo
Santo Spirito and followed the street Della Lingara to where it
opens upon the church Regina Coeli.  After having pursued
their way for some time in silence they entered a narrow
winding path, which conducted them through a deserted valley, the
silence of which was only broken by the occasional hoot of an
owl or the fitful flight of a bat.  In the distance could be heard
the splashing of water from the basin of a fountain, half
obscured by vines and creepers, from which a thin, translucent
stream was pouring and bubbling down the Pincian hillsides
in the direction of Santa Trinita di Monte.

They lost themselves in a maze of narrow and little frequented
lanes, until at last they found themselves before a
gray, castellated building, half cloister, half fortress, rising
out of the solitudes of the Flaminian way, before which they
stopped.  Over the massive door were painted several skeletons
in the crude fashion of the time, standing upright with mitres,
sceptres and crowns upon their heads, holding falling scrolls,
with faded inscriptions in their bony grasp.

The one, who appeared to be the moving spirit of the two,
knocked in a peculiar manner at the heavy oaken door.  After
a wait of some duration they heard the creaking of hinges.
Slowly the door swung inward and closed immediately behind
them.  They entered a gloomy passage.  A number of owls,
roused by the dim light from the lantern of the warden, began
to fly screeching about, flapping their wings against the walls
and uttering strange cries.  After ascending three flights of
stairs, preceded by the warden, whose appearance was as little
inviting as his abode, they paused before a chamber, the door
of which their guide had pushed open, remaining himself on
the threshold, while his two visitors entered.

"How is the girl?" questioned the foremost in a whisper,
to which the warden made whispered reply.

Beckoning his companion to follow him, the stranger then
passed into the room, which was dimly illumined by the
flickering light of a taper.  Throwing off his mantle, Eckhardt
surveyed with a degree of curiosity the apartment and its
scanty furnishings.  Nothing could be more dreary than the
aspect of the place.  The richly moulded ceiling was festooned
with spiders' webs and in some places had fallen in heaps upon
the floor.  The glories of Byzantine tapestry had long been
obliterated by age and time.  The squares of black and white
marble with which the chamber was paved were loosened and
quaked beneath the foot-steps and the wide and empty
fireplace yawned like the mouth of a cavern.

Straining his gaze after the harper who was bending over
a couch in a remote corner of the room, Eckhardt was about
to join him when Hezilo approached him.

"Would you like to see?" he asked, his eyes full of tears.

Eckhardt bowed gravely, and with gentle foot-steps they
approached a bed in the corner of the room, on which there
reposed the figure of a girl, lying so still and motionless that
she might have been an image of wax.  Her luxurious brown
hair was spread over the pillow and out of this frame the pinched
white face with all its traces of past beauty looked out in pitiful
silence.  One thin hand was turned palm downward on the
coverlet, and as they approached the fingers began to work
convulsively.

Hezilo bent over her, and touched her brow with his lips.

"Little one," he said, "do you sleep?"

The girl opened her sightless eyes, and a faint smile, that
illumined her face, making it wondrously beautiful, passed over
her countenance.

"Not yet," she spoke so low that Eckhardt could scarcely
catch the words, "but I shall sleep soon."

He knew what she meant, for in her face was already that
look which comes to those who are going away.  Hezilo looked
down upon her in silence, but even as he did so a change for
the worse seemed to come to the sick girl, and they became
aware that the end had begun.  He tried to force some wine
between her lips, but she could not swallow, and now, instead
of lying still, she continued tossing her head from side to side.
Hezilo was undone.  He could do nothing but stand at the head
of the bed in mute despair, as he watched the parting soul of
his child sob its way out.

"Angiola—Angiola—do not leave me—do not go from
me!" the harper cried in heart-rending anguish, kneeling down
before the bed of the girl and taking her cold, clammy hands
into his own.  Impelled by a power he could not resist, Eckhardt
knelt and tried to form some words to reach the Most High.
But they would not come; he could only feel them, and he rose
again and took his stand by the dying girl.

She now began to talk in a rambling manner and with that
strength which comes at the point of death from somewhere;
her voice was clear but with a metallic ring.  What Eckhardt
gathered from her broken words, was a story of trusting love,
of infamous wrong, of dastardly crime.  And the harper shook
like a branch in the wind as the words came thick and fast from
the lips of his dying child.  After a while she became still—so
still, that they both thought she had passed away.  But she
revived on a sudden and called out:

"Father,—I cannot see,—I am blind,—stoop down and
let me whisper—"

"I am here little one, close—quite close to you!"

"Tell him,—I forgive—  And you forgive him too—promise!"

The harper pressed his lips to the damp forehead of his
child but spoke no word.

"It is bright again—they are calling me—Mother!
Hold me up—I cannot breathe."

Hezilo sank on his knees with his head between his hands,
shaken by convulsive sobs, while Eckhardt wound his arm
round the dying girl, and as he lifted her up the spirit passed.
In the room there was deep silence, broken only by the harper's
heart-rending sobs.  He staggered to his feet with despair in
his face.

"She said forgive!" he exclaimed with broken voice.
"Man—you have seen an angel die!"

"Who is the author of her death?" Eckhardt questioned,
his hands so tightly clenched, that he almost drove the nails
into his own flesh.

If ever words changed the countenance of man, the Margrave's
question transformed the harper's grief into flaming wrath.

"A devil, a fiend, who first outraged, then cast her forth
blinded, to die like a reptile," he shrieked in his mastering grief.
"Surely God must have slept, while this was done!"

There was a breathless hush in the death-chamber.

Hezilo was bending over the still face of his child.  The dead
girl lay with her hands crossed over her bosom, still as if cut
out of marble and on her face was fixed a sad little smile.

At last the harper arose.

Staggering to the door he gave some whispered instructions
to the individual who seemed to fill the office of warden, then
beckoned silently to Eckhardt to follow him and together they
descended the narrow winding stairs.

"I will return late—have everything prepared," the harper
at parting turned to the warden, who had preceded them with
his lantern.  The latter nodded gloomily, then he retraced
his steps within, locking the door behind him.

Under the nocturnal starlit sky, Eckhardt breathed more
freely.  For a time they proceeded in silence, which the
Margrave was loth to break.  He had long recognized in the harper
the mysterious messenger who in that never-to-be-forgotten
night had conducted him to the groves of Theodora, and who
he instinctively felt had been instrumental in saving his life.
Something told him that the harper possessed the key to the
terrible mystery he had in vain endeavoured to fathom, yet
his thoughts reverted ever and ever to the scene in the tower
and to the dead girl Angiola, and he dreaded to break into
the harper's grief.

They had arrived at the place of the Capitol.  It was deserted.
Not a human being was to be seen among the ruins, which the
seven-hilled city still cloaked with her ancient mantle of glory.
Dark and foreboding the colossal monument of the Egyptian
lion rose out of the nocturnal gloom.  The air was clear but
chill, the starlight investing the gray and towering form of
basalt with a more ghostly whiteness.  At the sight of the dread
memory from the mystic banks of the Nile, Eckhardt could not
suppress a shudder; a strange oppression laid its benumbing
hand upon him.

Involuntarily he paused, plunged in gloomy and foreboding
thoughts, when the touch of the harper's hand upon his
shoulder caused him to start from his sombre reverie.

Drawing the Margrave into the shadow of the pedestal,
which supported the grim relic of antiquity, Hezilo at last
broke the silence.  He spoke slowly and with strained accents.

"The scene you were permitted to witness this night has
no doubt convinced you that I have a mission to perform in
Rome.  Our goal is the same, though we approach it from
divergent points.  They say man's fate is pre-ordained,
irrevocable, unchangeable—from the moment of his birth.
A gloomy fantasy, yet not a baseless dream.  By a
strange succession of events the thread of our destiny has
been interwoven, and the knowledge which you would acquire
at any cost, it is in my power to bestow."

"Of this I felt convinced, since some strange chance brought
us face to face," Eckhardt replied gloomily.

"'Twas something more than chance," replied the harper.
"You too felt the compelling hand of Fate."

"What of the awful likeness?" Eckhardt burst forth,
hardly able to restrain himself at the maddening thought, and
feeling instinctively that he should at last penetrate the web
of lies, though ever so finely spun.

The harper laid a warning finger on his lips.

"You deemed her but Ginevra's counterfeit?"

"Ginevra!  Ginevra!" Eckhardt, disregarding the harper's
caution, exclaimed in his mastering agony.  "What know you
of her?  Speak!  Tell me all!  What of her?"

"Silence!" enjoined his companion.  "How know we what
these ruins conceal?  I guided you to the Groves at the woman's
behest.  What interest could she have in your destruction?"

Eckhardt was supporting himself against the pedestal of
the Egyptian lion, listening as one dazed to the harper's words.
Then he broke into a jarring laugh.

"Which of us is mad?" he cried.  "Wherein did I offend
the woman?  She plied but the arts of her trade."

"You are speaking of Ginevra," replied the harper.

"Ginevra," growled Eckhardt, his hair bristling and his eyes
flaming as those of an infuriated tiger while his fingers gripped
the hilt of his dagger.

"You are speaking of Ginevra!" the harper repeated inexorably.

With a moan Eckhardt's hands went to his head.  His
breast heaved; his breath came and went in quick gasps.

"I do not understand,—I do not understand."

"You made no attempt to revisit the Groves," said the harper.

Eckhardt stroked his brow as if vainly endeavouring to
recall the past.

"I feared to succumb to her spell."

"To that end you had been summoned."

"I have since been warned.  Yet it seemed too monstrous
to be true."

"Warned?  By whom?"

"Cyprianus, the monk!"

The harper's face turned livid.

"No blacker wretch e'er strode the streets of Rome.  And
he confessed?"

"A death-bed confession, that makes the devils laugh,"
Eckhardt replied, then he briefly related the circumstances
which had led him into the deserted region of the Tarpeian Rock
and his chance discovery of the monk, whose strange tale
had been cut short by death.

"He has walked long in death's shadow," said the harper.
"Fate was too kind, too merciful to the slayer of Gregory."

There was a brief pause, during which neither spoke.  At
last the harper broke the silence.

"The hour of final reckoning is near,—nearer than you
dream, the hour when a fiend, a traitor must pay the penalty
of his crimes, the hour which shall for ever more remove the
shadow from your life.  The task required of you is great;
you may not approach it as long as a breath of doubt remains
in your heart.  Only certainty can shape your unrelenting
course.  Had Ginevra a birth-mark?"

Eckhardt breathed hard.

"The imprint of a raven-claw on her left arm below the
shoulder."

Hezilo nodded.  A strange look had passed into his eyes.

"There is a means—to obtain the proof."

"I am ready!" replied Eckhardt with quivering lips.

"If you will swear on the hilt of this cross, to be guarded by
my counsel, to let nothing induce you to reveal your identity,
I will help you," said the harper.

Eckhardt touched the proffered cross, nodding wearily.  His
heart was heavy to breaking, as the harper slowly outlined his
plan.

"The woman has been seized by a mortal dread of her
betrayer,—the man who wrecked her life and yours.  No
questions now,—this is neither the hour or the place!  In
time you shall know, in time you shall be free to act!  Acting
upon my counsel, she has bid me summon to her presence a
sooth-sayer, one Dom Sabbat, who dwells in the gorge between
Mounts Testaccio and Aventine.  To him I am to carry these
horoscopes and conduct him to the Groves on the third night
before the full of the moon."

The harper's voice sank to a whisper, while Eckhardt listened
attentively, nodding repeatedly in gloomy silence.

"On that night I shall await you in the shadows of the
temple of Isis.  There a boat will lie in waiting to convey us
to the water stairs of her palace."

The harper extended his hand, wrapping himself closer in
his mantel.

"The third night before the full of the moon!" he said.
"Leave me now, I implore you, that I may care for my dead.
Remember the time, the place, and your pledge!"

Eckhardt grasped the proffered hand and they parted.

The harper strode away in the direction of the gorge below
Mount Aventine, while Eckhardt, oppressed by strange
forebodings, shaped his course towards his own habitation on the
Caelian Mount.

Neither had seen two figures in black robes, that lingered in
the shadows of the Lion of Basalt.

No sooner had Eckhardt and Hezilo departed, than they
slowly emerged, standing revealed in the star-light as Benilo
and John of the Catacombs.  For a moment they faced each
other with meaning gestures, then they too strode off in the
opposite directions, Benilo following the harper on his singular
errand, while the bravo fastened himself to the heels of the
Margrave, whom he accompanied like his own shadow, only
relinquishing his pursuit when Eckhardt entered the gloomy
portals of his palace.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: W
   :image: images/img-cap-w.jpg
   :lines: 5

While these events transpired in
Rome, a feverish activity
prevailed in Castel San Angelo.  In
day time the huge mausoleum
presented the same sullen and
forbidding aspect as ever but
without revealing a trace of the
preparations, which were being
pushed to a close within.  Under
cover of night the breaches had
been repaired; huge balistae and catapults had been placed in
position on the ramparts, and the fortress had been rendered
almost impregnable to assault, as in the time of Vitiges, the
Goth.

Events were swiftly approaching the fatal crisis.  While
Otto languished in the toils of Stephania, whose society became
more and more indispensable to him, while with pernicious
flattery Benilo closed the ear of the king to the cries of his
German subjects and estranged him more and more from his
leaders, his country, and his hosts, while Eckhardt vainly strove
to arouse Otto to the perils lurking in his utter abandonment
to Roman councillors and Roman polity, the Senator of Rome
had introduced into Hadrian's tomb a sufficiently strong body
of men, not only to withstand a siege, but to vanquish any
force, however superior to his own, to frustrate any assault,
however ably directed.  While the German contingents
remained on Roman soil he dared not engage his enemy in
a last death-grapple for the supremacy over the Seven Hills,
which Otto's war-worn veterans from the banks of the Elbe
and Vistula had twice wrested from him.  The final draw in
the great game was at hand.  On this day the envoys of the
Electors would arrive in Rome to demand Otto's immediate
return to his German crown-lands, whose eastern borders were
sorely menaced by the ever recurring inroads of Poles and
Magyars.  In the event of Otto's refusing compliance with the
Electoral mandate, Count Ludeger of the Palatinate was to
relieve Eckhardt of his command and to lead the German
contingents back across the Alps.

But it was no part of the Senator's policy to permit Otto to
return.  For while there remained breath in the youth, Rome
remained the Fata Morgana of his dreams, and Crescentius
remained the vassal of Theophano's son.  He could never
hope to come into his own as long as the life of that boy-king
overshadowed his own.  Therefore every pressure must be
brought to bear upon the headstrong youth, to defy the Electoral
mandate, to rebuff, to offend the Electoral envoys.  Then,
the great German host recalled, Eckhardt relieved of his
command, Otto isolated In a hostile camp, Stephania should cry
the watchword for his doom.  The inconsiderable guard
remaining would be easily vanquished and the son of
Theophano, utterly abandoned and deserted, should fall an easy
prey to the Senator's schemes, a welcome hostage in the
dungeons of Castel San Angelo, for him to deal with according to
the dictates of the hour.  The task to urge Otto to this fatal
step had been assigned to Benilo, but Crescentius was
prepared for all emergencies arising from any unforeseen turn of
affairs.  He had gone too far to recede.  If now he quailed
before the impending issue, the mighty avalanche he had
started would hurl him to swift and certain doom.

Since that fateful hour, when in a moment of unaccountable
weakness Crescentius had listened to Benilo's serpent-wisdom,
and had arrayed his own wife against the German King, the
Senator of Rome had seen but little of Stephania.  The preparations
for the impending revolt of the Romans, in whose fickle
minds his emissaries found a fertile soil for the seed of treason
and discontent, engaged him night and day.  He seemed present
at once on the ramparts, in the galleries and in the vaults of
his formidable keep.  But when chance for a fleeting moment
brought the Senator face to face with his consort, the
meaning-fraught smile on the lips of Stephania seemed to assure
him that everything was going well.  Otto was lost to the world.
Heaven and earth seemed alike blotted out for him in her
presence.  Together they continued to stroll among the ruins,
while Stephania poured strange tales into the youth's ear,
tales which crept to his brain, like the songs of the Sirens that
lure the mariner among the crimson flowers of their abode.
And Eckhardt despised the Romans too heartily to fear them,
and even therein he revealed the heel of Achilles.

If the present day was gained, the Senator's diplomacy
would carry victory from the field, and Benilo had well plied
his subtle arts.  Yet Crescentius was resolved to attend in
person the audience of the envoys.  He would with his own
ears hear the King's reply to the Electors.  If Benilo had played
him false?  He hardly knew why a lingering suspicion of the
Chamberlain crept into his mind at all.  But he shook himself
free of the thought, which had for a moment clouded the future
with its sombre shadow.

As the Senator of Rome hurriedly traversed the galleries of
the vast mausoleum, he suddenly found himself face to face
with Stephania.

Her face was pale and her eyes revealed traces of tears.

At the first words she uttered, Crescentius paused, surprise
and gladness in his eyes.

"We are well met, my lord," she said, after a brief greeting,
an unwonted tremor vibrating in her tones.  "I have sought
you in vain all the morning.  Release me from the task
you have imposed upon me!  I cannot go on!  I am not
further equal to it.  It is a game unworthy of you or me!"

The surprise at her words for a moment choked the Senator's
utterance and almost struck him dumb.

"Imposed upon?" he replied.  "I thought you had accepted
the mission freely.  Is the boy rebellious?"

"On the contrary!  Were he so, perhaps I should not now
prefer this request.  He is but too pliant."

"He has made your task an easy one," Crescentius nodded
meaningly.

"He has laid his whole soul bare to me; not a thought therein,
ever so remote, which I have not sounded.  I can not stand
before him.  My brow is crimsoned with the flush of shame.
He gave me truth for a lie,—friendship for deceit.  He
deserves a better fate than the Senator of Rome has decreed for
him."

Crescentius breathed hard.

"The weakness does you honour," he replied after a pause.
"Perchance I should have spared you the task.  I placed him
in your hands, because I dared trust no one else.  And now it
is too late—too late!"

"It is not too late," replied Stephania.

Crescentius pointed silently to the ramparts, where a score
of men were placing a huge catapult in position.

"It is not too late!" she repeated, her cheeks alternately
flushing and paling.  "To-day, my lord informed me, the King
stands at the Rubicon.  To-day he must choose, If it is to be
Rome, if Aix-la-Chapelle.  If he elects to return to the gray
gloom of his northern skies, to the sombre twilight of his
northern forests, let him go, my lord,—let him go!  Much
misery will be thereby averted,—much heart-rending despair!"

Crescentius had listened in silence to Stephania's pleading.
There was a brief pause, during which only his heavy breathing
was heard.

"His choice is made," he replied at last in a firm tone.

"I do not understand you, my lord!"

The Senator regarded his wife with singularly fixed intentness.

"The toils of the Siren Rome are too firm to be snapped
asunder like a spider's web."

She covered her face with her hands.  Her breath came and
went with quick, convulsive gasps.

"It is shameful—shameful—" she sobbed.  "Had I
never lent myself to the unworthy task!  How could you conceive
it, my lord, how could you?  But it was not your counsel!
May his right hand wither, who whispered the thought into
your ear!"

Crescentius winced.  He felt ill at ease.

"Is it so hard to play the confessor to yonder wingless
cherub?" he said with a forced smile.

Stephania straightened herself to her full height.

"When I undertook the shameless task, I believed the son
of Theophano a tyrant, an oppressor, his hands stained with
the best of Roman blood!  Such your lying Roman chroniclers
had painted him.  I gloried in the thought, to humble a
barbarian, whose vain-glorious, boastful insolence meditated new
outrages upon us Romans.  Yet his is a purer, a loftier spirit,
than is to be found in all this Rome of yours!  Were it not
nobler to acknowledge him your liege, than to destroy him
by woman's wiles and smiles?"

"I cannot answer you on these points," Crescentius spoke
after a pause, during which the olive tints of his countenance
had faded to ashen hues.  "I regard those dreams, whose
mock-halo has blinded you, in a different light.  It is the
wise man who rules the state,—it is the dreamer who
dashes it to atoms.  We have gone too far!  I could not
release you,—even if I would!"

Stephania breathed hard.  Her hands were tightly clasped.

"It can bring glory to neither you, nor Rome," she said in
a pleading voice.  "Let him depart in peace, my lord, and I
will thank you to my dying hour!"

"How know you he wishes to depart?"

"How know you he wishes to remain?"

"His destiny is Rome.  Here he will live—and here he
will die!" the Senator spoke with slow emphasis.  "But we
have not yet agreed upon the signal," he continued with cold
and merciless voice.  "After the departure of the envoys
you will lead the King into his favourite haunts, the labyrinth
of the Minotaurus, to the little temple of Neptune.  There I
will in person await him.  When you see the gleam of
spearpoints in the thickets, you will wave your kerchief with the
cry: 'For Rome and Crescentius.'  No harm shall befall the
youth,—unless he resist.  He shall have honourable conduct
to the guest chamber, prepared for him,—below."

And Crescentius pointed downward with the thumb of his
right hand.

Stephania's bosom rose and fell in quick respiration.

"I am not accustomed to prefer a request and be denied,"
she said proudly, her face the pallor of death.  "Is this your
last word, my lord?"

Crescentius met her gaze unflinchingly.

"It is my last," he replied.  "Yet one choice remains with
you: You may betray the King,—or the Senator of Rome!"

He turned to go, but something whispered to him to stay.
At that moment he despised himself for having imposed upon
his wife a task, against which Stephania's loftier nature had
rebelled and he inwardly cursed the hour which had ripened the
seed and him, who had sown it.  Gazing after Stephania's
retreating form, all the love he bore her surged up into
his heart as he cried her name.

Arrested by his voice, Stephania turned and paused for a
moment swift as thought, but in that moment she seemed to
read the very depths of his soul and the utter futility of further
entreaty.  Without a word she ascended the spiral stairway
leading to the upper galleries and re-entered her own apartments,
while with long and wistful gaze Crescentius followed
the vanishing form of his wife.

.. vspace:: 2

And it seemed as if the Senator's prophecy was to be fulfilled.
At the reading of the Electoral manifesto, Otto had been
seized with an uncontrollable fit of rage.  He had torn the
document to shreds and cast its fragments at the feet of the
Bavarian duke, who acted as spokesman for his colleagues,
the dukes of Thuringia, Saxony and Westphalia.  Neither the
arguments of the Electoral envoys, nor the violent denunciations
of Eckhardt, who aired his hatred of Rome in language
never before heard in the presence of a sovereign, could stand
before Benilo's eloquent pleading.  On his knees the Chamberlain
implored the King not to abandon Rome and his beloved
Romans.  Vainly the German dukes pointed to the dangers
besetting the realm, vainly to the inadequate defences of the
Eastern March.  With a majesty far above his years, Otto
declared his supreme will to make Rome the capital of the
earth, and to restore the pristine majesty of the Holy Roman
Empire.  Rome was his destiny.  Here he would live, and here
he would die.  Rome was pacified.  He required no longer the
presence of the army.  Let Bavaria and Saxony defend their
own boundaries as best they might; let the Count Palatine
lead his veteran hosts across the Alps.  He would remain.
This his reply to the Electors.

On the eve of that eventful day the German dukes departed,
while the Count Palatine proceeded to Tivoli, to prepare the
great armament for their winter march across the Alps.  It
had come to pass as Crescentius had predicted.  The die was
cast.  Rome, the Siren, had conquered.

In the night following these events, Rome in her various
quarters presented a strange aspect of secret activity.

In the fortresses of the Cavalli and Caetani lights flitted to
and fro through the gratings in the main court.  Benilo, the
Chamberlain, might be seen stealing from the postern gate.
Towards the ruins of the Coliseum men whose dress bespoke
them of the lowest rank, were seen creeping from lanes and
alleys.  From these ruins at a later hour, glided again the form
of the Grand Chamberlain.  Later yet,—when a gray light
is breaking in the east, the gates of Rome, by St. John Lateran,
are open.  Benilo is conversing with the Roman guard.  The
mountains are dim with a mournful and chilling haze when
Benilo enters the palace on the Aventine.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TEMPLE OF NEPTUNE

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: S
   :image: images/img-cap-s.jpg
   :lines: 5

Shaken to the inmost depths of
his soul by a storm of
forebodings, hope, fear and passion,
Otto had shaken himself free
from the throng of flattering
friends and courtiers and had
sought the solitude of his own
chamber.  He had dismissed the
envoys of the Electors with the
unalterable reply that he would
not return to his gloomy Saxon-land.  Let the Saxon dukes
defend the borders of the realm, let them keep Poles and Slavs
in check.  His own destiny was Rome.  Here he would live,
and here he would die.  Deeply offended, the German envoys
had departed.  The consequences might be far-reaching indeed.
Tearing off his accoutrements and all insignia of office and
rank, Otto flung himself on his couch in solitary seclusion.
All had been against him,—save Benilo.  Benilo alone understood
him.  Benilo alone encouraged the young king to follow
out his destiny.  Benilo alone had pointed out that the earth
might be governed from the ancient seat of empire without
detriment to any of the nations of the Holy Roman Empire.
Benilo alone had demonstrated the necessity of Otto's presence
in his chosen capital, whose heterogeneous elements would
obey no lesser authority.

Weary and torn by conflicting emotions he at last sank
down before the image of Mary and prayed to the Mother of
God to guide his steps in the dark wilderness in which he
found himself entangled.  Thus transported out of himself
far beyond the vociferous pageant of that exhausting day, Otto
gave himself with all the mystical fervour of his Hellenic
nature to visions of the future.

Thus the evening approached.  Long before the hour appointed
he slowly bent his steps towards the little temple of
Neptune, crowning the olive-clad summits of Mount Aventine
and overlooking the vale of Egeria and the meandering course
of the Tiber.  The clouds above, beautiful with changing
sunset tints, mottled the broken surface of the river with hues
of bronze and purple between the leaves of the creeping
water-plants, which clogged the movement of the stream.  On the
river-bank the rushes were starred with iris and ranunculus.

The sun was declining in the horizon.  A solemn stillness,
like the presage of some divine event, held the pulses of the
universe.  A soft rose crept into the shimmer of the
water, cresting the summits of far off Soracté.  The transient,
many-tinted glories of the autumn sunset were reflected
in opalescent lights on the waves of the Tiber, and swept the
landscape in one dazzling glow of gold and amber, strangely
blending with the gold and russet of the autumn foliage.  The
floating smell of flowers invisible hovered on the air; a mystic
yearning seemed to pervade all nature in that chill, melancholy
odour, that puts men in mind of death.  The soft masses of
leaves decayed caused a brushing sound under the feet of the
lonely rambler.

Round him in the silent woods burnt the magnificent
obsequies of departing summer.

Fire-flies moved through the embalmed air, like the torches
of unseen angels.  The late roses exhaled their mystic odour,
and silently like dead butterflies, here and there a wan leaf
dropped from the branches.

At every step the wood became more lonely.  It was as
untroubled by any sound as an abandoned cemetery.  Birds
there were few, the shade of the laurel-grove being too dense
and no song of theirs was heard.  A grasshopper began his shrill
cry, but quickly ceased, as if startled by its own voice.  Insects
alone were humming faintly in a last slender ray of sunlight,
but ventured not to quit its beam for the neighbouring gloom.
Sometimes Otto trended his path along wider alleys bordered
by titanic walls of weird cypress, casting dark shade as a
moonless night.  Here and there subterranean waters made the
moss spongy.  Streams ran everywhere, chill as melted snow,
but silently, with no tinkling ripples, as if muted by the
melancholy of the enchanted wood.  Moss stifled the sound of the
falling drops and they sank away like the tears of an unspoken
love.

For a moment; Otto lingered among a tangle of elder-bushes.
The oblique sun rays filtering through the dense laurel became
almost lunar, as if seen through the smoke of a funeral torch.

Along the edge of the road goats were contentedly browsing
and a rugged sun-burnt little lad with large black eyes was
driving a flock of geese.  Storm clouds lined with gold were
rising in the North over the unseen Alps, and high up in the
clear sky there burned a single star.

Deep in thought, Otto passed the walls of the cloisters of
St. Cosmas.

Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream.

Through the purple silence came faintly the chant of the
monks:

   |  "Fac me plagis vulnerari
   |  Pac me cruce inebriari
   |    Ob amorem Filii."
   |

At last the Ionic marble columns, softly steeped in the warmth
of departing day, came into sight.  Silence and coolness
encompassed him.  The setting sun still cast his glimmer on the
capitals of the columns whose fine, illumined scroll work,
contrasted with the penumbral shadows of the interior, seemed
soft and bright as tresses of gold.

A hand softly touched Otto's shoulder.  A voice whispered:

"If you would know all—come!  Come and I will tell you
the secret which never yet I have uttered to mortal man."

In the departing light, veiled by the thick cypresses and pale
as the moon-beams, just as in the Egerian wilderness in the
whiteness of summer-lightnings, she put her face close to his,
her face white as marble, with its scarlet lips, its witch-like
eyes.

On they walked in silence, hand in hand.

On they walked along the verge of a precipice, where none
have walked before, resisting the vertigo and the fatal attraction
of the abyss.  If they should prove unequal to the
strain,—overstep the magic circle?

Stephania was pale and trembled.  She smiled,—but the
smile troubled him, he scarce knew why.  He tried to think
it was the melancholy, caused by the wild and stormy look of
the sunset and the loud cawing of the hereditary rooks, which
seemed to croak an everlasting farewell to life and hope in the
oaks of the convent.

Must he repulse the love that surged up to him in resistless
waves?

Must he renounce the near for the far-away, the ideal,
whose embodiment she was, for the commonplace?

Slowly the sun sank to rest in a sea of crimson and gold,
a fiery funeral of foliage and flowers.

A clock boomed from a neighbouring tower.  The heavy
measured clang vibrated long through the stillness, quivering
In the air, like a warning knell of fate.

Softly she drew him into the dusk of the pagan temple, drew
him down beside her on one of the scattered fragments of
antiquity, a dog-eared God of black Syenite from Egypt, which
had shared the fate of its Latin equals.

But he could not sit beside—her.

Abruptly he rose; standing before her, the passion of the
long fight surged up in him.  Stephania sat motionless, and
for a time neither spoke.

At last Otto broke the silence.  His voice was strained as if
he were suffering some great pain.

"I have come!" he said.  "I have cut every bridge between
present and past!  I am here.—Have you thought of my
appeal?"

"Oh, why do you torture me?" she replied half sobbing,
"I venture to ask for a delay, and you arraign me as though I
stood at the bar of judgment."

"It is our day of judgment," he replied.  "It is the day
when life confronts us with our own deeds,—when we must
answer for them, when we must justify them.  For if we are
but triflers, we cannot stand in the face either of heaven or of
hell!"

He bent down and took her hands in his.

"Stephania," he said, "I too have doubted, I too have
wavered:—give me but one word of assurance,—my love
for you is a wound which no eternity can cure."

She broke from him, to hide her weeping.

"Have you thought of the forfeit?" she faltered after a time.

"I would not forego the doom!—You alone are my light
in this dark country of the world.  Do not stifle the voice in
your heart with reasons—"

"Reasons!  Reasons!" she interrupted.  "What does the
heart know of reasons!  Mine has long forgotten their
pleadings—else, were I here?"

Something in her voice and gesture was like a lightning
flash over a dark landscape.  In an instant he saw the pit at
his feet.

"What then," he faltered, "is this to lead to?"

"Some one has been with you," she said quickly.  "These
words were not yours."

He rallied with a fault smile.

"A pretext for not heeding them."

"Eckhardt has been with you!  He has maligned me to you!"

"He has warned me against you!"

She turned very pale.

"And you heeded?"

"I am here, Stephania!"

The subtle perfume clinging to her gown mounted to his
brain, choking back reason and resistance.

"Yet again I ask you, what is this to lead to?  I am afraid
of the future as a child of the dark!"

She held his hands tightly clasped.

"Oh!" she sobbed, "why will you torture me?  I have
borne much for our love's sake—but to answer you now is to
relive it and I lack the strength."

He held her hands fast, his eyes in hers.

"No, Stephania," he said, "your strength never failed you
when there was call on it, and our whole past calls on it now!
Eckhardt tells me that the Romans hate me,—that they
resent the love I bear them—oh, if it were true!"

Stephania gazed at him with wide astonished eyes.

"Ah!  It is this then," she said with a sigh of relief.  "A
moment's thought must show you what passions are here at
work.  You must rise above such fears.  As for us,—no one
can judge between us, but ourselves.  Shake off these dread
fancies!  There lies but one goal before us.  You pointed the
way to it once.  Surely you would not hold me back from it
now?"

Gently she drew him down by her side.  Through the crevices
in the roof glimmered the evening star.

She saw the conflict, which raged within him, the instinct
to break away from her, who could never more be his own.
She saw the fear which bound him to her,—she saw the great
love he bore her, and she knew that he was hers soul and
body, her instrument, her toy,—her lover if she so willed.

He spoke to her of his childhood in the bleak northern
forests; of the black pines of Thuringia, of the snow-drifts,
which froze his heart; of the sad sea horizons brooding
infinitely away; of the gloomy abbey of Merséburg, in the
Saxon-land, where the great Emperor Otto, his grandsire, was
sleeping towards the day of resurrection, where under the abbot's
guidance he had first been initiated into the magic of a sunnier
clime.  He spoke to her of his Greek mother, the Empress
Theophano, whose great beauty was only rivalled by her own,
and of that eventful night, when he descended into the crypts
of Aix-la-Chapelle and opened the tomb of Charlemagne, then
dead almost two hundred years.  He told her how he had
fought against this mad, unreasoning love, which had at
first sight of her crept into his heart, urging naught in palliation
of his offence, but like a flagellant laying bare his tortured
flesh to a self-inflicted scourge.  He begged her to decide for
him, to guide him, lonely antagonist of destiny—dared he
ask for more?  She was the wife of the Senator of Rome.

As he ceased speaking, Otto covered his face with his hands,
but Stephania drew them down and held them firmly in her
own.  Truly, if it was victory to accomplish the end, by drawing
out a loving, confiding heart, the victory was with the
vanquished.  And with the memory of the compact she had sealed
a wondrous pity flashed through the woman's soul, a mighty
longing, to lift the son of the Greek Princess up into joyous
peace!  No thought of evil marred her pure desire,—alas!
She knew not at that moment, that even in that pity lay his
direst snare, and hers.

The decisive moment was at hand.  In the thickets before
the temple her eye discerned the gleam of spear-points.  For
a moment a violent tremor passed through her body.  She had
hardly strength sufficient to maintain her presence of mind,
and her face was pale as that of a corpse.

Would she, a second Delilah, deliver Otto to her
countrymen—the Romans?

It was some time ere she felt sufficiently composed to speak.
Her throat was dry and she seemed to choke.

Otto remarked her discomfiture, far from guessing its cause.

"I will fetch you some water," he said, starting up to leave
the temple.

Quick as lightning she had arisen, holding him back.

"It is nothing," she whispered nervously.  "Do not leave me!"

And he obeyed.

Stephania closed her eyes as if to exclude the sight of the
spear-points.

"Otto," she said softly, after a pause, for the first time
calling him by his name, "I fear there is one great lesson you
have never learned."

"And what is this lesson?"

"That, what you are doing for the Romans might also be
done for you!  Is there no heart to share your sorrow, to help
you bear the pain of disappointment, which must come to you
sooner or later?  You told me, you had never loved before we
met—"

He nodded assent.

"Never—Never!"

"Ah!  Then you do not know.  You seek for light, where the
sun can never shine!  Striving for the highest ideals of
mankind we can rise from the black depths of doubt but by one
ladder,—that of a woman's love!"

Again the dreadful doubt assailed him.

"If you mean—that,—oh, do not speak of it, Stephania!
The wound is already past healing."

She bent towards him and rested her head upon his shoulders.

"And yet I must,—here—and to you."

"No—no—no!" he muttered helplessly and turned
away.  The words of Eckhardt rushed and roared through his
memory: "Once you are hers,—no human power can save
you from the abyss."

But Eckhardt hated the Romans as one hates a scorpion,
a basilisk.

Stephania relinquished not her victim.  He must be hers,
body and soul, ere she shrieked the fatal word.—The warm
blood hurtling through her veins quenched the last pitying
spark.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh.  "You have never known the
tenderness of a woman's smile,—the touch of a woman's
hand,—her soft caress,—the sound of her voice,—that
haunts you everywhere,—waking,—in your dreams—"

"Stephania!" he gasped, and rose as if to flee from her,
but she held him back.

"You have never known the ear that listens for your
footsteps,—the lips that meet your own in a long, passionate
kiss,—the kiss that thrills—and burns—and maddens—"

"Stephania—in mercy—cease!"

Again he attempted to rise, again she drew him down.

"You are not like other men—Otto!  Will you always live
so lonely,—so companionless,—with no one to love you
with that lasting love, for which your whole soul cries out?"

Shivering he raised his arms as if to shut the sight of her
from his dazzled gaze.  Again, though fainter, Eckhardt's
terrible warning knocked at the gates of his memory.  But her
purring voice with its low melodious roll, wooed his listening
heart till the doors of reason tottered on their hinges.  And
the end—what would be the end?

"Tell me no more," he gasped, "tell me no more!  I cannot
listen!  I dare not listen!  You will destroy me!  You will
destroy us both!"

Her lips parted in a smile,—that fateful smile, which
caused his soul to quake.  Her fine nostrils quivered, as she
bent towards him.

"You cannot?" she said.  "You dare not?  Will you pass
the cup untasted, the cup that brims with the crimson joy of
love?  Is there none in all the world to take you by the
hand,—to lead you home?"

With a cry half inarticulate he sprang toward her,—his
fierce words tumbling from delirious lips:

"Yes,—there is one,—there is one,—one who could
lift me up till my soul should sing in heavenly bliss,—one
who could bring to me forgetfulness and peace,—one who
could change my state of exalted loneliness to a delirium of
ecstasy,—one who could lead me, wherever she would—could
I but lay my head on her breast,—touch her lips,—call
her mine—"

Stephania stretched out her white, bare arms that made
him dizzy.  He stood before her quivering with hands pressed
tightly against his throbbing temples.  One moment only.—Half
risen from her seat, her eye on the gleaming spear-points
in the thicket, she seemed to crouch towards him like some
beautiful animal, then a half choked out cry broke from his
lips, as their eyes looked hungrily into each others, and they
were clasped in a tight embrace.  Stephania's arms encircled
Otto's neck and she pressed her lips on his in a long, fervid
kiss, which thrilled the youth to the marrow of his bone.

At that moment a curtain of matted vines, which divided
the vestibule of the little temple from its inner chambers was
half pushed aside by a massive arm, wrapped with scales of
linked mail.  Standing behind them, Crescentius witnessed the
embrace and withdrew without a word.

.. _`311`:

Was Stephania not overacting her part?

He waited for the signal.

No signal came.

Then a terrible revelation burst upon the Senator's mind.

Johannes Crescentius had lost the love of his wife.

After a time the spear-points disappeared.

The Senator of Rome saw his own danger and the forces
arrayed against him.  He was no longer dealing with statecraft.
The weapon had been turned.  With a smothered outcry of
anguish he slowly retraced his steps.

Neither had seen the silent witness of their embrace.

Silence had ensued in the temple.

Each could feel the tremor in the soul of the other.

After a time Otto stumbled blindly into the open.  Stephania
remained alone in rigid silence.

In frozen horror she stared into the dusk.

"The game is finished,—I have won,—oh, God forgive
me—God forgive me!" she moaned.  "Otto ... Otto
... Otto ..."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1

"If you would know all,—come at midnight to the churchyard
near Ponte Sisto," whispered a voice close by his side, as
Crescentius staggered towards the Aelian bridge.

He felt a hand upon his shoulder, turned, and saw, like
some ill-omened ghost in the wintry twilight, a lean pale face
staring into his own.

In the darkness, under the dense shadows of the cypress-trees
he could not distinguish the features of his companion,
who wore the habit of a monk.

But when Crescentius turned to reply, he was alone.

"Christ too prayed a human prayer for a miracle:
Father, let this cup pass from me!" he muttered, continuing
upon his way.

With eyes on the ground he strode along the narrow
walk, skirting the Tiber, in whose turbid waves no stars
were reflected.  And scarce consciously he repeated to
himself:

"As like as a man and his own phantom,—his own phantom."

He passed the bridge and entered the mausoleum of the
Flavian emperor.  Rapidly he ascended to his own chamber.

The candle was burning low.

Up and down he paced in the endeavour to order his thoughts.
But no order would come into the chaotic confusion of his mind.

What was the dominion of Rome to him now?

What the dominion of the Universe?

What devil in human shape had counselled the act in the
seeds of which slumbered his own destruction?

The flame of the dying candle flickered and grew dim.

Had Stephania returned?

He heard no steps, no sound in her chamber.

At the memory of what he had seen, a groan broke from
his lips.

How he hated that boy, who after wresting from him the
dominion of the city, had stolen from him the love of his wife!

Stolen?  Had it not been thrust upon him?  What mortal
could have resisted the temptation?  He would die—thus
it was written in the stars;—but Stephania would weep for
him—

On tip-toe the Senator stole to the chamber of his wife.
The door stood ajar.  The chamber was empty.

The candle flared up for the last time, lighting up the gloom.
Then it sank down and went out.

Crescentius was alone in the darkness.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE INCANTATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE INCANTATION

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was near the hour of midnight
when a figure, muffled and
concealed in an ample mantle left
Castel San Angelo.  The guards
on duty did not challenge it and
after crossing the Aelian bridge,
it traversed the deserted
thoroughfares until it reached the
Flaminian way, which it
entered.  Avoiding the foot-path
near the river, the figure moved stealthily along the farther
side of the road, which, as far as could be discerned by the
glimpses of the moon which occasionally shone forth from a
bank of heavy clouds, was deserted.  A few sounds arose from
the banks of the river and there was now and then a splash in
the water or a distant cry betokening some passing craft.
Otherwise profound silence reigned.  The low structures and
wharfs on the opposite bank could be but imperfectly discerned,
but the moonlight fell clear upon the mausoleum of Augustus
and the adjacent church of St. Eufemia.  The same glimmer
also ran like a silver-belt across the stream and revealed the
gloomy walls of the Septizonium.  The world of habitations
beyond this melancholy stronghold was buried in darkness.

After crossing Ponte Sisto the muffled rambler entered a
churchyard, which seemed to have been abandoned for ages.
The moon was now shining brightly and silvered the massive
square watchtowers, the battlements, and pinnacles with
gorgeous tracery.  Crescentius had hardly set foot on the
moss-grown path, when two individuals wrapped in dark, flowing
mantles, whose manner was as mysterious as their appearance,
glided stealthily past him.

They seemed not to have noticed his presence but pursued
their way through the churchyard, creeping beneath the shadow
of a wall in the direction of some low structure, which
appeared to be a charnel-house situated at its north-western
extremity.  Before this building grew a black and stunted
yew-tree.  Arrived at it, they paused to see whether they were
observed.  They did not notice the unbidden visitor, who had
concealed himself behind a buttress.  One of the two individuals
who seemed bent by great age then unlocked the door of the
charnel-house and brought out a pick-axe and a spade.  Then
both men proceeded some little distance from the building
and began to shovel out the mould from a grass-grown grave.

Determined to watch their proceeding, Crescentius crept
towards the yew-tree, behind which he ensconced himself.
The bent and decrepit one of the two meanwhile continued to
ply his spade with a vigour that seemed incomprehensible in
one so far stricken in years and of such infirm appearance.
At length he paused, and kneeling within the shallow grave
endeavoured to drag something from it.  His assistant,
apparently younger and possessed of greater vigour, knelt to lend
his aid.  After some exertion they drew forth the corpse of
a woman which had been interred without a coffin and
apparently in the habiliments worn during life.  Then the two
men raised the corpse, and conveyed it to the charnel-house.
After having done so, one of them returned to the grave for
the lantern and, upon returning, entered the building and
closed and fastened the door behind him.

Crescentius had chosen the moment when one of the two
individuals left the lone house, to enter unobserved and to conceal
himself in the shadows.  What he had witnessed, had
exercised a terrible fascination over him, and he was determined
to see to an end the devilish rites about to be performed by
the personage, in quest of whom he had come.  The chamber
in which he found himself was in perfect keeping with the
horrible ceremonial about to be performed.  In one corner
lay a mouldering heap of skulls, bones and other fragments
of mortality; in the other a pile of broken coffins, emptied of
their tenants and reared on end.  But what chiefly attracted
his attention, was a ghastly collection of human limbs
blackened with pitch, girded round with iron hoops and hung like
meat in a shamble against the wall.  There were two heads,
and although the features were scarcely distinguishable owing
to the liquid in which they had been immersed, they still
retained a terrible expression of agony.  These were the quarters
of two priests recently executed for conspiracy against the
Pontiff, which had been left there pending their final
disposition.  The implements of execution were scattered about
and mixed with the tools of the sexton, while in the centre of
the room stood a large wooden frame supported by rafters.
On this frame, bespattered with blood and besmeared with
pitch, the body was now placed.  This done, the one who
seemed to be the moving spirit of the two, placed the lantern
beside it, and as the light fell upon its livid features, sullied
with earth, and exhibiting traces of decay, Crescentius was so
appalled by the sight, that he revealed his presence by a half
suppressed outcry.  Seeing the futility of further concealment,
he stepped into the light of the lantern and was about to speak,
when he heard the older address his assistant, neither of
whom evinced the least surprise at his presence, while he
pointed toward him:

"Look!  It is the very face!  The bronzed and strongly
marked features,—the fierce gray eye—the iron frame of
the figure we beheld in the show-stone!  Thus he looked, as we
tracked his perilous course."

"You know me then?" asked the intruder uneasily.

"You are the Senator of Rome!"

"You spoke of my perilous course!  How have you learned this?"

"By the art that reveals all things!  And in proof that your
thoughts are known to me, I will tell you the inquiry you
would make before it is uttered.  You came here to learn
whether the enterprise in which you are engaged will succeed."

"Such was my intent," replied Crescentius.  "From the
reports about you, I will freely admit, I regarded you as an
impostor!  Now I am convinced that you are skilled in the
occult science and would fain consult you on the future.
What is the meaning of this?" he continued pointing to the
corpse before him.

"I expected you!" was the conjurer's laconic reply.

"How is that possible?" exclaimed Crescentius.  "It is
only within the hour, that I conceived the thought,—and only
the events of this evening prompted it."

"I know all!" replied Dom Sabbat.  "Yet I would caution
you: beware, how you pry into the future.  You may repent
of your rashness, when it is too late."

"I have no fear!  Let me know the worst!" replied Crescentius.

The conjurer pointed to the corpse.

"That carcass having been placed in the ground without the
holy rites of burial, I have power over it.  As the witch of Endor
called up Samuel, as is recorded in Holy Writ,—as Erichtho
raised up a corpse, to reveal to Sextus Pompejus the event of the
Pharsalian war,—as the dead maid was brought back to life
by Appollonius of Thyana,—so I, by certain powerful
incantations will lure the soul of this corpse for a short space
into its former abode, and compel it to answer my questions.
Dare you be present at the ceremony?"

"I dare!" replied the Senator of Rome.

"So it be!" replied Dom Sabbat.  "You will need all your
courage!" and he extinguished the light.

An awful silence ensued in the charnel-house, broken only
by a low murmur from the conjurer who appeared to be
reciting an incantation.  As he proceeded, his tones became
louder and his voice that of command.  Suddenly he paused
and seemed to await a response.  But as none was
made, greatly to the disappointment of Crescentius, whose
curiosity, despite his fears, was raised to the highest pitch,
cried:

"Blood is wanting to complete the charm!"

"If that be all, I will speedily supply the deficiency," replied
the Senator, bared his left arm and, drawing his poniard, pricked
it slightly with the point of the weapon.

"I bleed now!" he cried.

"Sprinkle the corpse with the blood," commanded Dom Sabbat.

"The blood is flowing upon it!" replied Crescentius with
a shudder.

Upon this the conjurer began to mutter an incantation in a
louder and more authoritative tone than before.  His assistant
added his voice, and both joined in a sort of chorus, but in a
jargon entirely unintelligible to the Senator.

Suddenly a blue flame appeared above their heads, and slowly
descending, settled upon the brow of the corpse, lighting up
the sunken cavities of the eyes and the discoloured and distorted
features.

"She moves!  She moves!" shouted the Senator frantically.
"She moves!  She is alive."

"Be silent!" cried Dom Sabbat, "else mischief may ensue!"

And again he started his incantation.

"Down on your knees!" he exclaimed at length with
terrible voice.  "The spirit is at hand."

There was a rushing sound and a stream of white, dazzling
light shot down upon the corpse, which emitted a hollow
groan.  In obedience to Dom Sabbat's demand Crescentius had
prostrated himself on the ground, but he kept his gaze steadily
fixed on the body, which, to his infinite amazement, slowly
arose until it stood erect upon the frame.  There it remained
perfectly motionless, with the arms close to the sides and the
habiliments torn and dishevelled.  The blue light still retained
its position upon the brow and communicated a horrible
glimmer to the features.  The spectacle was so dreadful, that
Crescentius would have averted his eyes, but he was unable to
do so.  The conjurer and his familiar meanwhile continued
their invocations, until, as it seemed to the Senator, the lips
of the corpse moved and a voice of despair exclaimed: "Why
have you called me?"

"To question you about the future!" replied Dom Sabbat rising.

"Speak and I will answer," replied the corpse.

"Ask her,—but be brief;—her time is short," said Dom
Sabbat, addressing the Senator.  "Only as long as that flame
burns, have I power over her!"

"What is her name?" questioned the Senator.

"Marozia!"

The Senator's hand went to his forehead; he tottered and
almost fell.  But he caught himself.

"Spirit of Marozia," he cried, "if indeed thou standest
before me, and some demon has not entered thy frame to
delude me,—by all that is holy, and by every blessed saint do
I adjure thee to tell me, whether the scheme, on which I am
now engaged for the glory of Rome, will prosper?"

"Thou art mistaken, Johannes Crescentius," returned the
corpse.  "Thy scheme is not for the glory of Rome!"

"I will not pause to argue this point," continued the Senator.
"Will the end be successful?"

"The end will be death," replied the corpse.

"To the King—or to myself?"

"To both!"

"Ha!" ejaculated Crescentius, breathing hard.  "To both!"

"Proceed if you have more to ask,—the flame is expiring,"
cried the conjurer.

"And—Stephania?"  But he could not utter the question.
He felt like one choking.

But before the question was formed, the light vanished and
a heavy sound was heard, as of the body falling on the frame.

"It is over!" said Dom Sabbat

"Can you not summon her again?" asked Crescentius,
in a tone of deep disappointment.  "I must know that other."

"Impossible," replied the conjurer.  "The spirit has flown
and cannot be recalled.  We must commit the body to the
earth!"

"My curiosity is excited,—not satisfied," said the Senator.
"Would it were to occur again!"

"Thus it is ever," replied Dom Sabbat.  "We seek to know
that which is forbidden, and quench our thirst at a fount,
which but inflames our curiosity the more.  You have
embarked on a perilous enterprise;—be warned, Senator of
Rome!  If you continue to pursue it, it will lead you to
perdition."

"I cannot retreat," replied Crescentius.  "And I would
not, if I could.  Death to both of us:—this at least is
atonement!"

"I warn you again,—if you persist, you are lost!"

"Impossible,—I cannot retreat;—I could not, if I would!
By no sophistry can I clear my conscience of the ties imposed
upon it.  I have sworn never to desist from the execution of
this scheme, never—never!  And so resolved am I, that if I
stood alone in this very hour—I would go on."

"You stand alone!"

No one knew whence the voice had come.  The three stood
appalled.

A deep groan issued from the corpse.

"For the last time,—be warned!" expostulated Dom Sabbat.

"Come forth!" cried Crescentius rushing towards the door.
"This place stifles me!" And he unbolted the door and threw
it wide open, stepping outside.

The moon was shining brightly from a deep blue azure.
Before him stood the old church of St. Damian bathed in the
moonlight.  The Senator gazed abstractedly at the venerable
structure, then he re-entered the charnel-house, where he
found the conjurer and his companion employed in placing the
body of the excommunicated denizen of Castel San Angelo
into a coffin, which they had taken from a pile in the corner.
He immediately proffered his assistance and in a short space
the task was completed.  The coffin was then borne toward the
grave, at the edge of which it was laid, while the Dom Sabbat
mumbled a strange Requiem over the departed.

This ended, it was laid into its shallow resting place, and
speedily covered with earth.

When all was ready for their departure, Dom Sabbat turned
to the Senator of Rome, bidding him farewell.  Declining the
proffered gold, he observed:

"If you are wise, my lord, you will profit by the awful
warning you have this night received."

"Who are you?" the Senator questioned abruptly, trying
to peer through the cowl which the adept of the black arts had
drawn over his face, "since the devils obey your beck?"

The conjurer laughed a soundless laugh.

"Of dominion over devils I am innocent—since I rule no men!"

At the entrance of the churchyard, Crescentius parted from
the conjurer and his associate, about whose personality he
had not troubled himself, and returned in deep rumination to
Castel San Angelo.

No sooner had the Senator of Rome departed, than the
conjurer's familiar tore the trappings from his person and
stood revealed to his companion as Benilo, the Chamberlain.

"Dog!  Liar!  Impostor," he hissed into Dom Sabbat's
face, while kicking and buffeting him.  "Marozia has been
dead some fifty years.  How dare you perpetrate this monstrous
fraud?  Was it this I bade you tell the Senator of Rome?"

Dom Sabbat cringed before the blows and the flaming madness
in the Chamberlain's eyes.  Folding his arms over his
chest and bending low he replied with feigned contrition:

"It was not for me to compel the spirit's answer!  And as
for the corpse, 'twas Marozia's.  Thus read you the devil's
favour.  Until blessed by the holy rite, the body cannot return
to its native dust."

"Then it was Marozia's spirit we beheld?" Benilo queried
with a shudder, as they left the churchyard.

"Marozia's spirit," replied Dom Sabbat.  "Yet who would
raise a fabric on the memory of a lie?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HERMITAGE OF NILUS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HERMITAGE OF NILUS

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: S
   :image: images/img-cap-s.jpg
   :lines: 5

Stephania's sleep had been
broken and restless.  She tossed
and turned in her pillows and
pushed back the hair from her
fevered cheeks and throbbing
temples in vain.  It was weary
work, to lie gazing with eyes
wide open at the flickering
shadows cast by the night-lamp
on the opposite wall.  It was
still less productive of sleep to shut them tight and to abandon
herself to the visions thus evoked, which stood out in life-like
colours and refused to be dispelled.

Do what she would to forget him, to conjure up some other
object in her soul, there stood the son of Theophano, towering
like a demi-god over the mean, effeminate throng of her
countrymen.  Her whole being had changed in the brief space
of time, since first they had met face to face.  Then the woman's
heart, filled with implacable hatred of that imperial phantom,
which had twice wrested the dominion of Rome from the
Senator's iron grasp, filled with hatred of the unwelcome
intruder, had given one great bound for joy at the certainty
that he was hers,—hers to deal with according to her desire,—that
he had not withstood the vertigo of her fateful beauty.
With the first kiss she had imprinted on his lips, she had
dedicated him to the Erynnies,—it was not enough to
vanquish, she must break his heart.  Thus only would her victory
be complete.

What a terrible change had come over her now!  All she
possessed, all she called her own, she would gladly have given
to undo what she had done.  For the first time, as with the
lightning's glare, the terrible chasm was revealed to her, at
the brink of which she stood.  Strange irony of fate!  Slowly
but surely she had felt the hatred of Otto vanish from her heart.
He had bared his own before her, she had penetrated the
remotest depths of his soul.  She had read him as an open book.
And as she revolved in her own mind the sordid aspirations of
those she called her countrymen, the promptings of tyrants
and oppressors,—thrown in the scales against the pure and
lofty ideals of the King,—a flush of shame drove the pallor
from her cheeks and caused hot tears of remorse to well up
from the depths of her eyes.

For the first time the whole enormity of what she had done,
of the scheme to which she had lent herself, flashed upon her,
and with it a wave of hot resentment rushed through her heart.
Her own blind hate and the ever-present consciousness of the
low estate to which the one-time powerful house of Crescentius
had fallen, had prompted her to accept the trust, to commit
the deed for which she despised herself.  Would the youth,
whom she was to lead the sure way to perdition, have chosen
such means to attain his ends?  And what would he say to her
at that fatal moment, when all his illusions would be shattered
to atoms, his dreams destroyed and his heart broken?  Would
he not curse her for ever having crossed his path?  Would he
not tear the memory of the woman from his heart, who had
trifled with its most sacred heavings?  He would die, but she!
She must live—live beside the man for whom she had sinned,
for whose personal ends she had spun this gigantic web of
deception.  Otto would die:—he would not survive the shock
of the revelation.  His sensitive, finely-strung temperament was
not proof against such unprecedented treachery.  What the
Senator's shafts and catapults had failed to achieve,—the
Senator's wife would have accomplished!  But the glory of the
deed?  "Gloria Victis," he had said to her when she pointed the
chances of defeat.  "Gloria Victis"—and she must live!

Otto loved her;—with a love so passionate and enduring
that even death would mock at separation.—They would
belong to each other ever after.  It was not theirs to choose.
It seemed to her as if they had been destined for each other
from the begin of time, as if their souls had been one, even
before their birth.  And all the trust reposed in her, all the love
given to her—how was she about to requite them?  Were
her countrymen worthy the terrible sacrifice?  Was Crescentius,
her husband?  Had his rule ennobled him?  Had his
rule ennobled the Romans?  Were the motives not purely
personal?

She knew she had gone too far to recede.  And even if she
would, nothing could now save the German King.  The
avalanche which had been started could not be stopped.  The
forces arrayed against Teutonic rule now defied the control of
him who had evoked them.  How could she save the King?

Salvation for him lay only in immediate flight from Rome!
The very thought was madness.  He would never consent.
Not all his love for her could prompt a deed of cowardice.
He would remain and perish,—and his blood would be
charged to her account in the book of final judgment.

How long were these dreadful hours!  They seemed never
ending like eternity.  A moan broke from Stephania's lips.
She hid her burning face in her white arms.  Oh, the misery
of this fatal love!  There was no resisting it, there was no
renouncing it;—ever present in her soul, omnipotent in her
heart, it would not even cease with death; yea, perhaps this
was but the beginning.—Would she survive the terrible hour
of the final trial, when, a second Delilah, she called the
Philistines down upon her trusting foe?  She moaned and tossed
as in the agues of a fever and only towards the gray dawn of
morning she fell into a fitful slumber.

The preparations for his last rebellion against German rule
had kept the Senator of Rome within the walls of the formidable
keep, which since the days of Vitiges, the Goth, had defied
every assault, no matter who the assailant.  Crescentius had
succeeded in repairing the breaches in the walls and in
strengthening the defences in a manner, which would cause every
attempt to carry the mausoleum by storm to appear an
undertaking as mad as it was hopeless.  He had augmented his
Roman garrison, swelled by the men-at-arms of the Roman
barons pledged to his support, by Greek auxiliaries, drawn from
Torre del Grecco, and under his own personal supervision the
final preparations were being pushed to a close.  His activity
was so strenuous that he appeared to be in the vaults and the
upper galleries of Castel San Angelo at the same time.  He had
been seized with a restlessness which did not permit him to
remain long on any one spot.  But the terrible misgivings
which filled his heart with drear forebodings, which, now it
was too late to recede, caused him to tremble before the final
issue, drove the Senator of Rome like a madman through the
corridors of the huge mausoleum.  Had he in truth lost the
love of his wife?  Then indeed was the victory of the son of
Theophano complete.  He had robbed him of all, but life—a
life whose last spark should ignite the funeral torches for
the King and,—if it must be—for Rome.

The day was fading fast, when Crescentius mounted the
stairs which led to Stephania's apartments.  His heart was
heavy with fear.  This hour must set matters right between
them;—in this hour he must know the worst,—-and from
her own lips.  She would not fail him at the final issue, of
that, as he knew her proud spirit, he was convinced.  But
what availed that final issue, if he had lost the one jewel
in his crown, without which the crown itself was idle
mockery?

Stephania's apartments were deserted.  Where was his
wife?  She never used to leave the Castello without informing
him of the goal of her journey.  Times were uncertain and
the precaution well justified.  With loud voice the Senator of
Rome called for Stephania's tirewoman.  Receiving no
immediate reply, a terrible thought rushed through his head.
Perhaps she was even now with him,—with Otto!  In its
undiminished vividness the scene at the Neptune temple arose
before him.  What availed it to rave and to moan and to
shriek?  Was it not his own doing,—rather the counsel of
one who perhaps rejoiced in his discomfiture?  Crescentius'
hand went to his head.  Was such black treachery conceivable?
Could Benilo,—-but no!  Not even the fiend incarnate
would hatch out such a plot, tossing on a burning pillow of
anguish in sleepless midnight.

He was about to retrace his steps below, when the individual
desired, Stephania's tirewoman, appeared and informed the
Senator that her mistress had but just left, to seek an interview
with her confessor.  A momentary sigh of relief came from the
lips of Crescentius.  His fears had perhaps been groundless.
Still he felt the imperative necessity to obtain proof positive
of her innocence or guilt.  Thus only could his soul find rest.

Stephania had gone to her confessor.  Fate itself would
never again throw such an opportunity in his way.  And he
made such good speed, that, when he came within sight of the
ruins of the baths of Caracalla, he perceived by the advancing
torches, which the guards accompanying her litter carried,
that she had not yet reached her destination.

Approaching closer, he saw them halt near the ruins and in
a few moments a woman, wrapt in a dark mantilla, stepped
from her litter, received by a bubbling, gesticulating monk,
in whom the Senator immediately recognized Fra Biccocco,
the companion of Nilus.  Escorted by him, she walked hastily
into the ruins, and was soon lost to sight in their intricate
windings.

Recalling the observations he had made on a previous
visit, Crescentius wound his way from the rear to the same
point, so that none of Stephania's retinue, who were laughing
and chatting among themselves, discerned him or even
discovered his presence.  Then he rapidly threaded his way to the
chamber through which Fra Biccocco and Stephania had just
passed, boldly followed them into the clearing, from which
Nilus' cell was reached, and concealed himself in the long grass
until Biccocco returned from the hermit's cell.  Then he
approached the monk's hermitage and took up his post of
observation in the shadows, out of sight but able to hear every
word which would be exchanged between Nilus and his
confessor.

The monk of Gaëta had been far from anticipating a visitor
at this late hour.  Seated at his stone table, he had been
reading some illuminated manuscript, when he suddenly laid down
the scroll and listened.  The perfect stillness of the deserted
Aventine permitted some breathings of remote music from
the distant groves of Theodora to strike his ear, and after
listening for a time, he arose and traversed his cell with rapid
steps.  He was about to reseat himself and to continue his
disquisition by the pale, flickering light of the candle burning
before a crucifix, when voices were audible and Biccocco
entered, having scarcely time to announce Stephania, ere she
followed.

"Good even, Father,—be not startled,—I was returning
from my gardens of Egeria and I have brought your altar some
of its choicest flowers," she said in a hushed and timid voice,
while at the same time she offered the monk some beautiful
white roses of a late bloom.  "Moreover, I would speak a few
words alone with you,—alone with you,—Father Biccocco,—with
your permission."

Biccocco, looking at her, as she threw back her mantle from
her shoulders, respectfully prepared to obey, almost wondering
that there could be on earth anything so wondrously beautiful
as this woman.

"Biccocco, I command thee, stay!" exclaimed Nilus
starting up.  "I would say—nay, daughter—is it thou?  I
knew not at first,—my sight is dim—Biccocco, let no one
trouble me—but tears?  What ails our gentle penitent?
Has she forgotten a whole string of Aves?  Or what heavier
offence?  It was but yesterday I counselled thee,—but a
few hours are so much to a woman.—Wherefore glow thy
cheeks with the fires of shame?  Biccocco—leave us!"

"Father, I have sinned—yea, grievously sinned in these
few hours, since I have seen thee," said Stephania, when the
restraint of Biccocco's presence was removed, little suspecting
what listener had succeeded.  "I have sinned and I repent,—but
even in my offence lies my greatest chastisement."

"Art well assured, that it is remorse, and not regret?"
replied the hermit of Gaëta.  "Thy sex often mistakes one for
the other.  But what is the matter?  Surely it might not
prevent thee from taking thy needful rest, might bide the light
of day, to be told,—to be listened to,—yet—thou art
strangely pale!"

"I have been mad, father, crazed,—I know not what I
have done!  I dare not look upon thee, and tell thee!  Let me
arrange my flowers in thy chalice, while I speak," replied
Stephania, hiding her face in the fragrant bundle.

"Not so!" replied the monk.  "Eye and gesture often
confess more than the apologizing lip!  Kneel in thy wonted
place!  No other attitude becomes thy dignity or mine;—for
either thou kneelest to the servant of God or thou debasest
thyself before the brother of man!"

Stephania complied instantly, and Nilus, throwing himself
back in his chair, fixed his eyes on the crucifix before him,
without even glancing at the penitent.

"Father—you had warned me of all the ills that would
befall," she began, almost inaudibly, "but I longed to see him
at my feet,—and more,—much more!"

"What is all this?" said the monk turning very pale and
glancing at his fair penitent with a degree of fierceness mingled
with surprise.

"Ah!  You know not what a woman feels,—when—when—"  She
paused, breathing hard.

"Hast thou then committed a deadly sin?  Some dark
adultery of the soul?" exclaimed Nilus.  "Nay, daughter,"
he continued, as she shrank within herself at his words, "I
speak too harshly now!  But what more hast to say?  Time
wears—and this soft cheek should be upon the down, or its
sweetness will not bloom as freshly as some of its rivals, at
dawn.  Thou see'st this hermitage, from which thou wouldst
lure me, yields some recollections to brighten its desolation
and gloom.  What is it thou wouldst say?"

Stephania stared for a moment into the monk's face, at a
loss to grasp his meaning.  At last she stammered.

"Yet—I but intended to win him to—some silly tryst,—wherein
I intended to deride his boyish passions."

"And he refused thy lures and thou art vexed to have escaped
perdition?" said the monk, more mildly.

"Nay—for he came!"

"He came!  Jest not in a matter like this!  He came?
Thou knowest of all mankind I have reasons to wish this youth
well,—this one at least!" said Nilus somewhat incoherently.

"He came,—once,—twice,—many times!  He came,
I say, and—-"

"What of him?  Thou hast not had him harmed for
trusting his enemy?"

Stephania's cheek took the hues of marble.

"Harmed?  I would rather perish myself than that he
should come to harm."

Nilus was silent for a moment or two, and Stephania, as if
to take courage, timidly took his hand, holding it between her
own.

"I must needs avow my whole offence," she stammered,
"he came,—and—"

"Why dost pause, daughter?" questioned the monk, with
penetrating look.

"Nay—but hear me!" continued Stephania.  "I first
intended but to win his confidence,—then,—having drawn
him out—expose him to the just laughter of my court."

"A most womanly deed!  But where did this meeting take place?"

"In the Grottos of Egeria!"

"In the Grottos of Egeria!" the monk repeated aghast.

"And then," she continued with a great sadness in her
tone, "I never felt so strangely mad,—I would have him share
some offence, to justify the clamour I had provided, scarcely
I know how to believe it now myself.—I did to his lips,—what
I now do to your hand."

And she kissed the monk's yellow hand with timid reverence.

"Thou!  Thou!  Stephania,—the wife of Crescentius, and
not yet set in the first line of the book of shame!" shouted the
monk, convulsively starting at every word of his own climax.
"Begone—begone!  The vessel is full, even to overflowing!—Tell
me no more,—tell me no more!"

"Your suspicion indeed shows me all my ignominy," said
Stephania, groping for his hand, which he had snatched
furiously away.  "But he only suffered it,—because he
guessed not my intent in the darkness."

"In the darkness?"

"In the darkness."

"Deemest thou it possible to clasp the plague and to evade
the contagion?" questioned the monk.  "Woman, I command
thee, stop!  Stop ere the condemning angel closes the
record!"

Stephania raised her head petulantly.

"Monk, thou knowest not all!  During all this meeting the
Senator of Rome was present in the Grotto and watched us
from one of the ivy hollows in the cave!"

"The Senator of Rome!" exclaimed the monk with evident
amazement.  "How came he there?"

"By contrivance!"

"I do not understand!"

"It was at his behest that I have done the deed, to further
his vast projects, call it his ambition, if you will—to which
the King is the stumbling block.  Ask me no more,—for I
will not answer!"

Nilus seemed struck dumb by the revelation.

"Take comfort, daughter, he cannot,—he cannot—"
whispered the monk, bending over her and speaking in so low
a tone that the devouring listener could not distinguish one
word.

For a time not a word was to be heard, Nilus inclining his
ear to Stephania's lips, whose confession was oft times broken
by sobs.

"Tell me all,—all!" said the monk.

"As the fatal hour approaches the strength begins to
forsake me,—I cannot do it!" she groaned.

"Yet he is the enemy of Rome, so you say," the monk
said mockingly.

"He is the friend of Rome and—I love him!"

In a shriek the last words broke from her lips.

"Domine an me reliquisti!" shouted the monk.  "Some
sign now—some sign—or—"

His raving exclamation was cut short by a sound not unlike
the oracle implored.  A large block of stone, dislodged by a
sudden and violent movement of the unseen listener, rolled
with a hollow rumble down into the vaults below.

The monk started up from the benediction which he was
bending forward to pronounce, almost dashed Stephania
away, rushed to his altar and casting himself prostrate before
the divine symbol which adorned it, he muttered in a frantic
ecstasy of devotion:

"Gloria Domino!  Gloria in Excelsis!  Blessed be Thy
name for ever and ever!  Praise ye the Lord!  He saves in
the furnace of fire!"

Stephania gazed in mute amazement at the monk.  His
frantic appeal and its apparent fulfilment had struck dismay
into her soul, and when at length he raised himself, and turned
towards her, she could hardly find words to speak.

But Nilus waved his hand.

"Go now, Stephania," he commanded.  "Go!  I will
devise some fitting penance at more leisure."

"But, Father—my request."

"Ay, truly," he replied, with supreme melancholy.  "Is
it not the wont of the world to throw away the flower, when
we have withered it with our evil breath?"

"But I cannot do it,—I cannot do it," Stephania moaned,
raising her hands imploringly to the monk.

"It is for a mightier than Nilus to counsel," the monk
spoke mournfully.  "Thou standest on the brink of a precipice,
from which nothing but the direct intervention of Heaven
can save thee!  Pray to the Immaculate One for enlightenment,
and if the words of a monk have weight with thee, even against
him, thou callest thy lord before the world,—desist, ere
thou art engulfed in the black abyss, which yawns at thy
feet.—When he is dead, it will be too late!"

And raising his lamp, to escort Stephania to her litter, the
monk and the woman left the chamber, and Crescentius had
barely time to conceal himself behind the boulders ere they
appeared and passed by him, the monk anxiously guiding
every step of his penitent.

The moon was sinking, when Stephania arrived at Castel
San Angelo.

Taking the candle from the hands of the page, who had
awaited her return with sleepy eyes, she dismissed him and
passed into the lofty hall, dark and chill as a cellar, beyond
which lay the Senator's, her husband's, apartments.  She
swiftly traversed the hall,—then she hesitated.  No doubt
he was asleep.  What good was there in waking him?  As
she turned to retrace her steps to her own chamber, a strange
and eerie gust of wind swept shrieking round the battlements,
howled in the chimney, invaded the chamber with icy breath
and almost extinguished the candle.  Then there was a great
hush.  It seemed to her she could hear distant music from the
Aventine, the murmur of voices, the sound of iron chains from
the vaults below.  To this,—or to death,—she had consigned
the son of Theophano, the boy-king, who loved her.—To
this?—Anguish and terror seized her soul.  She felt, she
must not move—must not look.  There it stood,—blacker
than the investing darkness,—its head bent,—shrouded in
the cowl of a monk.  What was it?  Once before she had seen
it,—then it had faded away in the gloom.  But misfortune
rode invariably in its wake.  She tried to scream, to call the
page, but her voice choked in her throat.  She staggered toward
the door; her limbs refused to support her;—groaning she
covered her eyes.  Otto down there,—or dead,—why had
she never thought of it before?  Now the monk made a step
toward her; the face had nothing corpse-like in it, nothing
appalling, yet she felt a freezing and unearthly cold; almost
fainting she staggered up the narrow winding stairs.  And
entering her lofty chamber Stephania fell unconscious upon
her couch.

After Crescentius had returned from the hermitage of Nilus,
he gave strict orders to the guards of Castel San Angelo to
admit no one, no matter who might crave an audience, and
entering his own chamber, he lighted a candle.  He had seen
and heard, and he knew that the heart of his wife had gone from
him for ever!  At the terrible certainty he grew dizzy.  A fearful
price he had paid for his perfidy,—and now, there was no
one in all the world he could trust.  He dared not speak.  He
dared not even breathe his anguish.  She must never know
that he knew all,—no one must know.  His lips must be
sealed.  The world should never point at him,—for this at
least!

But terrible as his suffering must be his vengeance.  He
who had robbed him of his priceless gem, the wife of his
soul, all he loved on earth,—he should languish and rot
under her very chambers, where she might nightly hear his
groans, without daring to plead for him.  There was no further
time for parley.  The stroke must fall at once!  Too long had he
tarried.  The Rubicon was passed.

Pacing up and down the gloomy chamber, Crescentius
paused before the sand-clock.  It was near midnight.  Yet
sleep was far from caressing his aching lids, as far as balm
from his aching heart.  He raised the candle in an unconscious
effort, to go to his wife's apartment.  He lingered.  Then he
placed the candle down again and seated himself in a chair.
His gaze fell upon a broad stain on the floor and like one
fascinated he followed its least meander to a distance of several
feet from the door, when suddenly a form met his eyes, whether
the off-spring of his delirious fancy or one of those inexplicable
and tremendous phenomena, which are incapable of human
solution, while the secrets of death remain such.  His garb
was that of a monk; the face bore the awful pallor of
the tomb, and a mournful tenderness seemed to struggle
with the rigidity of death.  The phantom, if such it was,
stood perfectly motionless between Crescentius and the couch,
in a few moments it grew indistinct and finally faded into
air.

It was then only, that Crescentius recovered breath and
life, and staggered back to his chair.  A few moments' rally
persuaded him that what he had seen had been merely the
illusion of his excited organs.  But a dreadful longing for
death assailed him, a longing like that which prompts men
to leap when they gaze down a precipice.  He rose,—again
the phantom seemed there,—this time distinct and clear.
Terror rendered him motionless; the room seemed to whirl
round, a million lights danced in his eyes, then he sank back
covering his face with his hands.

When he again opened his eyes, his brain seemed shooting
with the keenest darts of pain.  He endeavoured to pray,
but could not.  His ideas rushed confusedly through each
other.  The taper was fast sinking in the socket, and it seemed
as if his mind would sink with it.  He emptied a goblet of
wine which stood upon the table, and strove to remember
what he intended to do.  It seemed a vain effort and he fell
back in his chair into a semi-conscious doze.  An hour might
have passed thus, when he became aware of a slight crackling
noise in his ears and starting with a sensation of cold he looked
round.  The fire in the chimney had burnt into red embers,
and though his own form was lost in the shadow of the chimney,
the rest of the room was faintly illumined by the crimson
glow from the grate.

Suddenly he saw the tapestry figure of some mythical
deity opposite his own seat stir; the tapestry swelled out,
then a head appeared, which peered cautiously round.  The
body soon followed the head, and Crescentius rose with a sigh
of relief as he stood face to face with Benilo.  The
Chamberlain's face was pale; his eyes, with their unsteady glow,
showed traces of wakefulness.  He took from his doublet a
scroll which he placed into the outstretched hand of the Senator
of Rome.  Mechanically Crescentius unrolled it.  His hands
trembled as he superficially swept its contents.

"The barons pledge their support,—not a name is missing,"
Benilo broke the silence in hushed tones.

"What is it to be?" questioned Crescentius.

"I speak for the extreme course and for Rome.  For attack—sudden
and swift!"

There was a pause, Crescentius stared into the dying embers.

"Are all your plans complete?"

"The Romans wait impatiently upon my words.  At the
signal all Rome will rise to arms!"

"But how about the Romans?  Can they be depended upon?"

"I move them at the raising of my hand!"

There was another pause.

Crescentius appeared strangely abstracted.

"But what of Otto?  What of Eckhardt?  Do they scent
the wind from Castel San Angelo?"

"As for the Saxon cherub," Benilo replied with a disgusting
smile, "he is dreaming of his—"

He did not finish the sentence, for Crescentius cast such a
terrible look upon him, that the blood froze in the traitor's
veins, and his eyes sank before those blazing upon him.  After
a moment's hesitation he continued, the shadow of a forced
smile hovering round his thin, quivering lips:

"When he is dead, we shall cause the Wonder-child to be
canonized!"

But Crescentius was in no jocular mood.

"Have you chosen your men?" he queried curtly.

"They will be stationed in the labyrinth of the Minotaurus,"
Benilo replied.  "At the signal agreed upon, they will rush
forth and seize the King—"

As he spoke those words the Chamberlain gazed timidly into
the Senator's face.

"The signal will not fail," Crescentius replied firmly.

"Is the mausoleum prepared to withstand an assault?"
Benilo questioned guardedly.

"The hidden balistae have been disinterred.  My Albanian
stradiotes and the Romagnole guards occupy the chief
approaches.  The upper galleries are reserved for our Roman
allies.  They will never scale these walls while Crescentius
lives.  Remember—the gates of Rome are to be closed.  We
will smother the Saxon under our caresses!  I must have Otto
dead or alive!  Revenge and Death are now written on my
standards!  Up with the flag of rebellion and perdition to the
emperor and his hosts!"

The gray dawn was peeping into the windows of the Senator's
chamber, when Crescentius sought his couch for a brief and
fitful repose.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LION OF BASALT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LION OF BASALT

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was midnight of a dark and
still evening on the Tiber and
peace had for the most part
descended upon the great city.
The lamps in the houses were
extinguished and the challenges
of the watch alone were now
and then to be heard.  The
streets were deserted, for few
ventured abroad after night
fall.  Sluggishly the turbid tide of the Tiber rolled towards
ancient Portus.  The moon was hidden behind heavy cloudbanks,
and when now and then it pierced a rift in the nebulous
masses, it shed a spectral light over the silent hills, but to
plunge them back into abysmal darkness.

The bells from distant cloisters and convents were pealing
the midnight hour when out of the gloom of the waters there
passed a light skiff wherein were seated two men, closely
wrapped in their long, dark cloaks.  The one seated on the
prow was bent almost double with age, and his long beard
swept the bottom of the skiff.  He appeared indifferent to his
surroundings and stared straight before him into the darkness,
while his companion, constantly on the alert, never seemed to
take his eyes from the boatman who plied his oars in silence,
causing the frail craft to descend the river with great swiftness.

At last they made for the shore.  An extensive mansion
loomed out of the gloom, which seemed to be the goal of their
journey.  Obeying the whispered directions of the taller of
his passengers, the boatman steered his craft under a dark
archway, whence a flight of stairs led up to the door, of what
appeared to be a garden pavilion.  Swiftly the sculler shot under
the arch and in another moment drew up by the stairs.

Leaning heavily on the arm of his companion the soothsayer
alighted from the skiff with slow and uncertain steps
and after ascending the water-stairs his guide knocked three
times at the door of the pavilion.  It was instantly opened
and an African in fantastic livery, who seemed to fill the office
of Cubicular, beckoned them to enter.  With all the signs of
exhaustion and the weariness of his years weighing heavily
upon him, the conjurer dropped into a seat, paying no heed
whatever to his surroundings nor to his companion, who had
withdrawn into the shadows, while he awaited the arrival of
the woman, who had called on his skill.

He had not long to wait.

Noiselessly a door opened and the majestic and graceful
form of a woman glided into the pavilion, robed in a long black
cloak and closely veiled.  She motioned to the attendants to
withdraw and to the astrologer to approach.

"Most learned doctor of astral science," she said in a soft
clear voice of command, "you have brought me the calculations
which your learning has enabled you to make as to the
future of the persons whose nativities were supplied to you?"

The astrologer had been seized with a sudden violent fit of
coughing and some moments elapsed ere he seemed able to
speak.

So low and weak were his tones, that the woman could not
understand one word he uttered, and she began to exhibit
unequivocal signs of impatience, when the conjurer's voice
somewhat improved.

"The horoscopes," he said in a strangely jarring tone, "are
the most wonderful that our science has ever revealed to me.
They indicate most amazing changes of life, and signs of
imminent peril."

"You speak of one,—or of both?"

"Of both!"

"Give me the details of each horoscope!"

The astrologer nodded.

Theodora watched him from behind her veil as closely as
he did her, for ever and anon he stole furtive glances at her
and was immediately seized with his cough.

His voice grated strangely in her ear as he spoke.

"The first, whose nativity I have calculated, is that of one
born thirty years, one hundred and seventeen days, and ten
hours from this moment.  It was a birth under the sign of the
Serpent, at an hour charged with vast possibilities for the
future.  At that instant the Zodiac was moved by portentous
lights and the earth shook with tremors as I have ascertained
in the records of our art!"

"What are the signs of the future?" the woman interrupted
the speaker.  "What is past and gone, we all know, even
without the aid of your profound wisdom.  What of the future,
I ask?" she concluded imperiously.

"I hate to impart to you what I have found," said the
astrologer cringing.  "It is terrible.  The declination of the
house of Death stands close to the right ascension of the house
of Life!"

Theodora gave a sudden start.  For a moment she seemed
to lose her self-control.  Her piercing eyes seemed to look the
astrologer through and through, though he had shrunk back
into the wide girth of his mantle.

"Give me the scroll!"

She stretched out a hand white as alabaster to take the
parchment whereon the astrologer had marked the rise and
fall of the star records.  But, as if seized with a sudden fear,
she withdrew the hand ere the man of the stars could comply
with her request.

"The second horoscope!" she spoke imperiously.

Again a long fit of coughing prevented the astrologer from
speaking.

When it subsided, he said with profound solemnity, watching
her expression intently from between his half-closed lids:

"That other, whose nativity you have sent to me, shall find
death,—death, sudden and shameful—"

She stood rigid as a statue.

"Tell me more!" she gasped.  "Tell me more!"

"He will die hated,—unlamented,—despised—"

She drew a deep breath.

"When shall that be?"

"There is at this moment a most ominous sign in the
heavens," replied the astrologer shrinking within himself.
"Venus, who rules the skies is obscured by too close attendance
upon a lower and less honourable star."

Theodora held her breath.

"What comes after?" she whispered.

"The lore of astral combinations does not reveal such
things.  But palmistry may aid, where the constellations
fail.  Deign to let me trace the lines in the palm of your hand."

Flinging aside her last reserve, Theodora in her eagerness
held out her palm to the astrologer.  He bent over it, without
touching it, shaking his head, and muttering:

"The line of life,—the line of love,—the line of death—"

As the astrologer pronounced the last word, his hand grasped
with a vice-like grip the one whose lines he had pretended to
read, while with the other, which had dropped the supporting
staff, he pushed back the loose sleeve of her gown, baring her
arm almost to the shoulder, constantly muttering:

"The line of Death,—the line of Death,—the line of Death!"

When Theodora first felt the tightening grip on her wrist,
she tried to withdraw her hand, but her strength was not equal
to the task.  She felt the benumbing pressure of what she
imagined were the astrologer's fleshless claws, but when, with
a motion almost too swift for one bent with age and infirmity,
he laid bare to the shoulder the marble whiteness of her arm,
she thought he had gone mad.  But when the astrologer's
trembling finger pointed to the red birthmark on her arm,
just below her shoulder, resembling the claw of a raven,
constantly muttering: "The line of Death—the line of
Death," she uttered a piercing shriek for help, vainly
endeavouring to shake him off.

A shadow dashed between the two, neither knew whence it came.

The astrologer saw the gleam of a dagger before his eyes,
felt its point strike against the corselet of mail beneath his
cloak, felt the weapon rebound and snap asunder, the fragments
falling at his feet, and releasing the woman, who stood
like an image of stone, he dropped his cloak and supporting
staff, and clove with one blow of his short double-edged sword
the skull of his assailant to the neck.  With a piercing shriek
Theodora rushed from the Pavilion, followed in mad breathless
pursuit by the pseudo-astrologer, who had dropped his false
beard with his other disguises and stood revealed to her
terror-stricken gaze as Eckhardt, the Margrave.

Without heeding the warning cry of Hezilo, his companion,
he was bent upon taking the woman.  In the darkness he could
hear the rush of her frightened footsteps through the corridors;
he seemed to gain upon her, when her giant Africans rushing
through another passage came between the Margrave and his
intended victim.  Three steps did he make through the press
and three of her guards fell beneath his sword.  But a stranger
in the labyrinth of the great pavilion, he could hardly hope
to gain his end, even if unimpeded, and Theodora's formidable
body-guard still outnumbered him three to one.  Eckhardt's
doom would have been sealed had not at that very moment
Hezilo appeared in the passage behind him and laid an arresting
hand upon his arm.

Before the harper's well-known presence the Africans fell
back, raising their dead from the blood-stained floor and
skulking back into the dusk of the corridor.

"You have no time to lose," urged the harper.  "Follow
me!—Speak not,—question not.  Remember your compact
and your oath."

Eckhardt turned upon his guide like a lion at bay.  His face
was pale as that of a corpse.  His blood-shot eyes stared, as
if they must burst from their sockets; his hair bristled like
that of a maniac.

"What care I?" he growled fiercely.  "Compact or oath—what
care I?"

"There are other considerations at stake," replied Hezilo
calmly.  "You promised to be guided by my counsel.  The
hour of final reckoning is not yet at hand."

Eckhardt's breast heaved so violently, that it almost deprived
him of the faculty of speech.

"Must I turn back at the very gates of fulfilment?" he
burst forth at last.  But sheathing his weapon he reluctantly
followed the harper and, retracing their steps, they re-entered
the Pavilion.  In the slain boatman they recognized the ghastly
features of John of the Catacombs, though the bravo's skull
was literally cloven in twain and a strange dread seized upon
them at the terrible revelation.  Eckhardt stood by idly, while
the harper insisted upon removing the body, and wrapping his
ghastly burden in his blood-stained monkish gown, showed
small repugnance to carrying the bravo's carcass to the
landing, where he fastened a short iron chain to the gruesome
package and dropped it into the muddy waves of the Tiber.

Dark clouds swept over the face of the moon and the chill
wind of autumn moaned dismally through the spectral pines,
as the boat, propelled by the sturdy arms of Hezilo, flew up
stream over the murky, foam-crested waves.

An icy hand seemed to grip Eckhardt's heart.  The words wrung
from the dying wretch in the rock-caves under the Gemonian
stairs had proved true.  In baring Theodora's left arm his eyes
had fallen upon the well-remembered birthmark resembling
the raven claw.  The terrible revelation had for the nonce
almost upset his reason, and caused him prematurely to
drop his mask.  All clarity of thought, all fixedness of purpose
had deserted him; he felt as one stunned by the blinding
blow of a maze.  Dazed he stared before him into the gloom
of the autumnal night; his hair dishevelled, his eyelids swollen,
his lips compressed.  He could not have uttered a word had
his life depended upon it.  His tongue seemed to cleave to the
roof of his mouth; his brow was fevered, yet his hands were
cold as ice.  At last then he had stood face to face with the
awful mystery, which had mocked his waking hours, his
dreams,—a mystery, even now but half guessed, but half
revealed.  He tried to recall fragments of the monk's tale.
But his brain refused to work, steeped in the apathy of despair.
The future hour must give birth to the considerations of the
final step, to the closing chapters of his life.  Yet he felt that
delay would engender madness; long brooding had shaken his
reason and swift action alone could now save it from tottering
to a hopeless fall.

The frail craft shot round the elbow-like bend of the Tiber
at the base of Aventine when Hezilo for the first time broke
the silence.  He had refrained from questioning or commenting
on the result of their visit to the Groves.  Now, pointing to
the ramparts of Castel San Angelo he whispered into Eckhardt's
ear:

"Are your forces beyond recall?"

Eckhardt stared up into the speaker's face, as if the latter
had addressed him in some strange tongue.  Only after Hezilo
had repeated his question, Eckhardt roused himself from the
lethargy, which benumbed his senses and gazed in the direction
indicated by the harper.

An errant moonbeam illumined just at this moment the
upper galleries of Hadrian's tomb.  Straining his gaze towards
the ramparts of the formidable keep, Eckhardt strove to
discover a reason for Hezilo's warning.  But the moon
disappeared behind a bank of clouds and at that moment the
sculler ran in shore.

Unconsciously his hand tightened round the hilt of his sword.

"The earth breeds hard men and weak men," he muttered.
"The gods can but laugh at them or grow wroth with them.
As for these Romelings,—they are not worth destroying.
They will perish of themselves."

"The hour is close at hand, when everything shall be
known to you," Hezilo turned to Eckhardt at parting.  "But
three days remain to the full of the moon."

Weary and sick at heart Eckhardt grasped the harper's
proffered hand, as they parted.

But he was in no mood to return within the four walls of
his palace.  He was as one upon whom has descended a thunder
bolt from Heaven.

The terrible revelation deprived him of his senses, of his
energies, of the desire to live,—and there was little doubt
that this would have been Eckhardt's last night on earth, had
there not remained one purpose to his life.

How small did even that appear by the magnitude of the
crime, which had been visited upon his head.  The how and
why and when remained as great a mystery to him as ever.
Eckhardt's memory roamed back into the years of the past.
He tried to recall every word Ginevra had spoken to him;
he tried to recall every wish her lips had expressed, he
tried to recall every unstinted caress.  And with these
memories there rose up before his inner eye Ginevra's image and
with it there welled up from his heart an anguish so great,
that it drove the nails of his fingers deep into the flesh of his
clenched hands.

He remembered her strange request never to inquire into
her past, but to love her and let his trust be the proof of his
love.  Then there came floating faintly, like phantoms on the
dark waves of his memory, her inordinate desire for power,
hinted rather than expressed,—then darkness swallowed,
everything else.  Only boundless anguish remained, fathomless
despair.  After a while his feelings suffered a reverse; they
changed to a hate of the woman as great as his love had been,—a
hate for the fateful siren, Rome, who had deprived him of all
that was dearest to him on earth.

Bending his solitary steps towards the Capitol, he saw the
veil-like mists gathering above the wild grass, which waves
above the palaces of the Cæsars.  On a mound of ruins he
stood with folded arms musing and intent.  In the distance
lay the melancholy tombs of the Campagna and the circling
hills faintly outlined beneath the pale starlight.  Not a breeze
stirred the dark cypresses and spectral pines.  There was
something weird in the stillness of the skies, hushing the
desolate grandeur of the earth below.

He had not gone very far when a shadow fell across his
path.  Looking up he again found himself by the staircase of
the Lion of Basalt.  The weird relic from the banks of the Nile
filled him with a strange dread.  With a shudder he paused.
Was it the ghastly and spectral light or did the face of the old
Egyptian monster wear an aspect as that of life?  The stony
eye-balls seemed bent upon him with a malignant scowl and
as he passed on and looked behind they appeared almost
preternaturally to follow his steps.  A chill sank into his heart
when the sound of footsteps arrested him and Eckhardt stood
face to face with the hermit of Gaëta.  He beckoned to the
monk to accompany him, vainly endeavouring to frame the
question, which hovered on his lips.  The monk joined him in
silence.  After walking some little way Nilus suddenly paused,
fixing his questioning gaze on the brooding face of his
companion.  Then a strange expression passed into his eyes.

"Life is full of strange surprises.  Yet we cling to it, just
to keep out of the darkness through which we know not the way."

Sick at heart Eckhardt listened.  How little the monk knew,
he thought, and Nilus was staggered at the haggard expression
of the Margrave's face, as he stumbled blindly and giddily
down the moonlit avenue beside him.

"Would I had never seen her!" Eckhardt groaned.  "In
what a fair disguise the fiend did come to tempt my soul!"

He paused.  The monk drew him onward.

"Come with me to my hermitage!  Thou art strangely
excited and do what thou mayest,—thou must follow out
thy destiny!  Hesitate not to confide in me!"

"My destiny!" Eckhardt replied.  "Monk, do not mock
me!  If thou hast any mystic power, read my soul and measure
its misery.  I have no destiny, save despair."

The monk regarded him strangely.

"Because a woman is false and thy soul is weak, thou
needest not at once make bosom friends with despair.  It is a
long time since I have been in the world.  It is a long time
since I have abjured its vanities.  Let him who has withstood
the terrible temptation, cast the first stone.  For the flesh is
weak and the sin is as old as the world; And perchance even
the monk may be able to counsel, to guide thee in some
matters,—for verily thou standest on the brink of a precipice."

"I am well-nigh mad!" Eckhardt replied wearily.  "Were
there but a ray of light to guide my steps."

Nilus pointed upward.

"All light flows from the fountain-head of truth.  Be true
to thyself!  Life is duty!  In its fulfilment alone can there be
happiness,—and in the renunciation of that, which has
been denied us by the Supreme Wisdom.  No more than thou
canst reverse the wheel of time, no more canst thou compel
that dark power, Fate.  And at best—what matters it for the
short space of this earthly existence?  For believe me, the End
of Time is nigh,—and in the beyond all will be as if it had
never been."

Nilus paused and their eyes met.  And in silence Eckhardt
followed the monk among the ruins of the latter's abode.

As the morning dawned, some fishermen dragging their
nets off St. Bartholomew's island pulled up from the muddy
waves the body of an old man clad in the loose garb of a monk.
But as the day grew older a new crime and fresh scandal
filled Forum and wine shops and the incident was forgotten
ere night-fall.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAST TRYST`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE LAST TRYST

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The great clock on the tower
of San Sebastian struck the
second hour of night.  The air
was so pure, so transparent, that
against the horizon the
snow-capped summit of Soracté was
visible, like a crown of
glittering crystal.  Mysteriously the
stars twinkled in the fathomless
blue of the autumnal night.
Procession after procession traversed the city.  From their
torches smoky spirals rose up to the starry skies.  The pale
rays of the moon, the crimson glare of the torches, illumined
faces haggard with fear, seamed with anxiety and dread.
Despite the late hour, the people swarmed like ants, occupying
every point of vantage, climbing lantern poles and fallen
columns, armed with clubs, halberds, scythes, pitchforks and
staves.  Here and there strange muffled forms were to be seen
mingling with the crowds, whispering here and there a word
into the ear of a chance passerby and vanishing like phantoms
into the night.

Among the many abroad in the city at this hour was Eckhardt.
He mistrusted the Romans, he mistrusted the Senator,
he mistrusted the monks.  The fire of his own consuming
thoughts would not permit him to remain within the four walls
of his palace.  Like a grim spectre of the past he stalked through
Rome, alone, unattended.  How long would the terrible mystery
of his life continue to mock him?  How much longer must he
bear the awful weight which was crushing his spirit with its
relentless agony?  What availed his presence in Rome?  The
king had long ceased to consult him on matters of state;
Benilo and Stephania possessed his whole ear—and Eckhardt
was no longer in his counsels.

With a degree of anxiety, which he had in vain endeavoured
to dispel, Eckhardt had watched the growing intimacy between
his sovereign and the Senator's wife.  Time and again he had,
even at the risk of Otto's fierce displeasure, warned the King
against the danger lurking behind Stephania's mask of
friendship.  Wearied and exasperated with his importunities, Otto
had asserted the sovereign, and Eckhardt's lips had remained
sealed ever since, though his watchfulness had not relaxed
one jot, and even while he endeavoured to lift the veil, which
enshrouded his own life, he remained circumspect and on the
alert, true to his promise to the Empress Theophano, now in
her grave.

The sounds which on this night fell from every side on
Eckhardt's ear were not of a nature to dispel his misgivings
of the Roman temper.  As by a subtle intuition he felt that they
were ripe for a change, though when and whence and how it
would come he could not guess.  His own mood was as dark
as the sky-gloom lowering over the Seven Hills.  Rome had
made of him what he was, Rome had poisoned his life with
the viper-sting of Ginevra's terrible deed, and now he longed
for nothing more than for some great event, which would toss
him into the foaming billows of strife, therein to sink and to
go under for ever.

Drawing his mantle closer about him and lowering the vizor
of his helmet, Eckhardt slowly made his way through the
congested throngs.  He had not proceeded very far, when he felt
some one pluck him by the mantle.  Turning abruptly and
shaking himself free, from what he believed to be the clutches
of a beggar, he was about to dismiss the offender with an oath,
when to his surprise he beheld a woman dressed in the garb of
a peasant, but clearly disguised, as her speech gave the lie to
her affectation of low birth.

"You are Eckhardt, the Margrave?" she asked timidly.

"I am Eckhardt," the general replied curtly.

"Then lose no time to save him, else he will run into
perdition as sure as yonder moon shines down upon us.  Oh!  He
knows not the dangers that beset him;—on my knees I
implore you—-save him!"

"When I understand the meaning of your gibberish, doubt
not I will serve you!  I pray you give me a glimpse of its
purport," replied the Margrave.

The woman seemed so entirely wrapt up in her own business
that she did not heed Eckhardt's question.

"I dare not whisper the secret to any one else,—and my
Lord Benilo bade me seek you in case of danger.  And if you
cannot move him from his mad purpose, he is lost, for never
was he so bent to have his own way.  If you come with me,
you will find him waiting on the terrace,—and do your
best to lead him back,—else he will come to as evil an end
as a wasp in a bee's hive,—for all the honey!"

"And whom shall I find on the terrace?" asked Eckhardt
with ill-concealed impatience.  He liked not the babbling
crone.  "Cease your spurting and speak plainly, else go your
way:—I am not for such as you!"

"It wants but a moment—whom else but your King,
for whom she has sent under pretext of important
business,—aye,—at this very hour and on the terraces of the
Minotaurus."

"Otto,—important business,—Minotaurus—" repeated
Eckhardt.  "Who has sent for him?"

"Stephania."

Eckhardt shrugged his shoulders.

"What is it to me?  Go your way, hoary pander,—what
is it to me?  Hasten to him, who has paid you to tell this tale
and get your ransom from him!  I wager, he knows the style
of old!"

The woman did not move.

"Nay, my lord, that we all should go mad at one time,"
she sobbed with evidently strong emotions, which were perhaps
not caused by the motive alleged.  "Then I must away and
fulfil his destiny,—for a man cannot serve two masters,—nor
a woman either."

There was something in the speaker's tone that caused a
shadow of apprehension to rise in Eckhardt's mind.  Was
there more behind all this than she cared to confess?
"Fulfil his destiny"—these words at least were not her own.
A grave fear seized him.  Otto might be ambushed,—carried
away,—he might rot in Castel San Angelo, and no man the
wiser for it.

"Stay!  I will go and cross the boy's path to his guilty
paradise," repeated Eckhardt after permitting the woman to
draw away from him at a very slow and wistful pace and
overtaking her with a couple of strides.  "Lead on, but do
not speak!  I have no tongue to answer you!"

The woman immediately took the well-known route towards
the terraces of the Minotaurus and soon they reached the spot.
A covered archway at one extremity admitted on a terrace,
flanked on one side by a high dead wall of the Vatican, on the
other by a steep and precipitous slope, wooded with orange
trees and myrtle.  This spot, little frequented in day time, was
deserted by night.  The woman whispered that it was here, she
expected the King, and cautioning Eckhardt to remove him
with all speed from this danger zone, which offered no means
of escape, she precipitately retired, leaving Eckhardt alone to
meditate upon what he had heard, and to pursue his adventure
in the darkness.

The Margrave hastened along the archway and peering into
the shadows he quickly discerned the slim outline of a man,
wrapt in an ample cloak, leaning against the dead wall at the
end of the platform.  His eyes seemed fixed intently upon the
heavens, while an expression of impatience reigned uppermost
in the pale, thoughtful face.

Eckhardt quickly approached the edge of the terrace, where
he had discovered Otto, and although the King kept his face
averted, he could scarcely hope to escape recognition.

"Otto—the King—can it be?" Eckhardt said with
feigned surprise, as he faced the youth.  "I beg your majesty's
pardon,—are you a lodger in yonder palace or how chances
it that you are here alone,—unattended?"

"Ay—since you know me," replied Otto with a forced
smile, "I will not deny my name nor business either.  The
ladies of the Senator's court are fair, and an ancient crone
whispered to me at my devotions to Our Lady, on this terrace
and at this hour, if I prayed heartily, I should have good
news.  Matter enough, I ween, to stir one's curiosity,
but,—I fear,—I should be alone."

The blood surged thickly through Eckhardt's brain.  He
could scarcely breathe, as he listened to this falsehood and for
a few moments he gazed in silence on the flushed and paling
visage of the youth.

At last he spoke.

"Is it possible that the air of Rome can even change a
nature like yours to utter a falsehood?  My liege,—you are
not yourself!" Eckhardt exclaimed, discarding all reserve,
for he knew there was no time to be lost.  And if perchance
the fair serpent that had lured him hither was nigh,
his words should strike her heart with shame and dismay.
"It is to Stephania you go,—it is Stephania, whom you await!"

There was a brief pause during which a hectic flush chased
the deep pallor from Otto's face, as he passively listened to
the unaccustomed speech.

"Stephania," he repeated absently, and suffering his cloak
to drop aside in his absorption, he revealed the richness and
splendour of the garb beneath.

"The wife of the Senator of Rome!" Eckhardt supplemented
sternly.

"And what if it be?" Otto responded with mingled petulancy
and confusion.  "What if the Senator's consort has vouchsafed
me a private audience?"

"Are you beside yourself, King Otto?  You venture into
this place alone,—unattended,—to please some woman's
whim,—a woman who is playing with you,—and will lead
you to perdition?"

"How dare you arraign your King and his deeds?" Otto
exclaimed fiercely.

"I am here to save you—from yourself!  You know not
the consequences of your deed!"

"Let them be what they will!  I am here, to abide them!"

Eckhardt crossed his arms over his broad chest as he
regarded the offspring of the vanquisher of the Saracens with
mingled scorn and pity.

"The spell is heavy upon you, here among the crimson and
purple flowers, where the Siren sings you to destruction," he
said with forced calmness.  "But you shall no longer listen
to her voice, else you are lost.  Otto,—Otto,—away with
me!  We will leave this accursed spot and Rome together—for
ever!  There is no other refuge for you from the spell of the
Sorceress."

"Not for all the lands on which the sun sets to-night will
I refuse obedience to Stephania's call," Otto replied.  "You
sorely mistake your place and presume too much on the
authority placed into your hands by the august Empress, my
mother.  But attempt not to exercise mastery over your King
or to bend him to your will and purpose—for he will do as he
chooses!"

"It has come to this then," replied Eckhardt without
stirring from the spot and utterly disregarding Otto's increasing
nervousness.  "It has come to this!  Are there no chaste and
fair maidens in your native land?  Maidens of high birth and
lineage, fit to adorn an emperor's couch?  Must you needs
come hither,—hither,—to this thrice accursed spot, to love
an alien, to love a Roman, and of all Romans, a married
woman—the wife of your arch-enemy, the Senator?  Are you blind,
King Otto?  Can you not see the game?  You alone—of
all?  Deem you the proud, merciless Stephania, the consort
of the Senator, who hates us Teutons more than he does the
fiend himself,—would meet you here in this secluded spot,
with her husband's knowledge,—with her husband's
connivance,—simply to listen to your dreams and vagaries?
Can you not see that you are but her dupe?  King Otto, you
have refused to listen to my warnings:—there is sedition rife
in Rome.  Retire to the Aventine, bar the gates to every one,—I
have despatched my fleetest messenger to Tivoli to recall our
contingents,—before dawn my Saxons shall hammer at the
gates of Rome!"

Otto gazed at the speaker as if the latter addressed him in
some unknown tongue.

"Sedition in Rome?" he replied like one wrapt in a dream.
"You are mad!  The Romans love me!  Even as I do them!
I will not stir an inch!  I remain!"

Eckhardt breathed hard.  He must carry his point; he felt
oppressed by the sense of a great danger.

"And thus it befalls," he said laughing aloud with the
excess of bitterness, "that to this hour I owe the achievement of
knowing the cause why you have declined the demands of the
Electors; that I can bear to them the answer to their
importunities; that in this hour I have learned the true reason
of your refusing to listen to your German subjects, who crave
your return, who love you and your glorious house!  You say
you will remain!  Revel then in your Eden, until she is weary
of you and Crescentius spares her the pains of the finish."

"What are you raving?" exclaimed Otto furiously.

"You are mad for love, King Otto, and a frenzied lover is
the worst of fools!"

The King blushed, with the consciousness either of his
innocence or guilt.

"Since you accuse me," he spoke more calmly, but a strange
fire burning in his eyes, "I do not deny it,—Stephania
requested a meeting on matters pertaining to Rome, and I have
come!  And here," Otto continued, inflexible determination
ringing in his tones—"and here I will await her, if all hell
or the swords of Rome barred the way.  Do you hear me,
Eckhardt?  Too long have I been the puppet of the Electors.
Too long have I suffered your tyranny.  My will is
supreme,—and who so defies it, is a traitor!"

Eckhardt gazed fixedly into his sovereign's eyes.

"King Otto!  Is it possible that you beguile yourself with
these specious pretexts?  That you assail the honour of those
who have followed you hither, who have twice conquered
Rome for you?  Ay,—no one so blind as he who will not see!
I tell you, Stephania is luring you into the betrayal of your
honour,—perhaps that of the Senator,—who knows?  I
tell you she is deceiving you!  Or,—if she pretends to love,
it is to betray you!  You cannot resist her magic,—it is not in
humanity to do so, were it thrice subdued by years of fasting.
If you repel her now, your victory will be bought with your
destruction!  Her undying hatred will mark you her own!
But if you succumb you are lost,—the Virgin herself could
not save you!  You shall not remain!  You shall not meet
her,—not as long as the light of these eyes can watch over your
credulous heart!"

Otto had advanced a step.  Vainly groping for words to vent
his wrath, he paced up and down before the trusted leader
of his hosts.

At last he paused directly before him.

"My Lord Eckhardt," he said, "it might content you to
rake amidst the slime of the city for matter, with which to
asperse a pure and beautiful woman,—as for myself, while
my hand can clutch the hilt of a sword, you shall not!" he
exclaimed, yielding at last to the voice of his fiery nature.

"Strike then," Eckhardt replied, raising his arms.  "I
have no weapon against my King!"

Otto pushed the half drawn sword back into the scabbard.

"For this," he said, "you shall abide a reckoning."

"Then let it be now!" Eckhardt exclaimed in a wild jeering
tone.  "Go and bid Stephania arm her champion, one against
whom I may enter the lists, and I swear to you, that from his
false breast I will tear the truth, which you refuse to accept,
coming from your friends!  But I am not in a mood to be
trifled with.  You shall not remain, King Otto, and I swear
by these spurs, I will rather kill your paramour, than to see
you betrayed to the doom which awaits you."

"Are life and death so absolutely in the hands of the
Margrave of Meissen?" replied Otto in a towering rage.  "In
the face of your defiance I will tarry here and abide my
fortune."

And clutching Eckhardt's mantle, in his wrath, his eye met
the eye of the fearless general.

With a jerk the latter freed himself from Otto's grasp.

"A fool in love: A thing that men spurn and women deride."

Otto's face turned deadly pale.

"You dare?  This to your King?"

"I dare everything to save you—everything!  Otto—the
Romans mistrust you!  They love you no longer!  They are
ripe for a change!  The longer you tarry, the fiercer will be
the strife.  Crescentius would rather destroy the whole city
than let it be permanently wrested from his power.  You have
been his dupe,—hark—do you hear those voices?"

"Of all my enemies he is the one sincere."

"Then he were the more dangerous!  A fanatic is always
more powerful than a knave.  Do you hear these voices, King
Otto?"

Otto was pacing the terrace with feverish impatience.

"I hear nothing!  I hear nothing!  Go—and leave me!"

"And know you sold,—betrayed,—by that—"

A shadow crossed his path, noiseless on the velvety turf.

Before them stood Stephania.

"Finish your words, my Lord Eckhardt," she said facing
the Margrave.  "Pray, let not my presence mellow your
speech."

"And it shall not!" retorted Eckhardt hotly.

"And it shall!" thundered Otto rushing upon him.  "Upon
your life, Eckhardt, one insult and—"

Stephania laid a tranquillizing finger on Otto's arm.

"I have heard all," she said, pale as marble, but smiling.
"And I forgive."

"You have heard his accusation—and you forgive, Stephania?"
cried Otto, gazing incredulously into her eyes.

"You had faith in me—I thank you—Otto!" she replied
softly, and sweeping by Eckhardt, she extended both hands to
the King.  He grasped them tightly within his own and, bending
over them, pressed his fevered lips upon them.

Suddenly all three raised their heads and listened.

A sound not unlike a distant trumpet blast, rent the stillness
of night, seemed to swell with the echoes from the hills, then
died away.

"What is this?" the German leader questioned, puzzled.

"The monks are holding processions,—the streets are
swarming with the cassocks,—their chants can be heard
everywhere."

Stephania gazed at Otto, as she answered Eckhardt's question.

The Margrave scrutinized her intently.

"I knew not the Senator loved the black crows so well, as
to furnish music to their march," he replied slowly.  Then he
turned to the woman.

"Hear me, Stephania!  You see me here, but you know
not that I have ordered all my men-at-arms to attend me at
the gates below!  If the King's foolish passion and blind trust
have been the means to execute your hellish design, know
that with my own hand I will avenge your remorseless treachery,
for I will slay you if aught befall him in this night, and
hang your lord, the Senator of Rome, from the ramparts of
Castel San Angelo,—I swear it by the Five Wounds!"

For a moment Stephania stood petrified with terror and
unable to utter a single word in response.  Then she turned
to Otto.

"This man is mad!  Order him begone,—or I will go myself.
He frightens me!"

She made a movement as if to depart, but Otto, divining her
intention, barred the way.

"Stephania—remain!" he entreated.  "Our general is
but prompted by an over great zeal for our welfare," he
concluded, restraining himself with an effort.  Then breathing
hard, he extended his arm, and with flaming eyes spoke to
Eckhardt:

"Go!"

"I go!" the general replied with heavy heart.  "If anything
unusual happens in this night, King Otto, remember my
words—remember my warning.  My men are stationed at the wicket,
through which you came.  There is no other exit,—save to
perdition.  I leave you—may the Saints keep you till we meet
again!"

With these words Eckhardt gathered his mantle about him
and stalked away, leisurely at first, as if to lull to sleep every
inkling of suspicion in Stephania, then faster and faster, and
at last he fairly flew up the winding road of Aventine.  Those
whom he met shied out of his path, as if the fiend himself was
coming towards them and shaking their heads in grave wonder
and fear, muttered an Ave and told their beads.

Strange noises were in the air.  The chants of the monks
were intermingled with the fierce howls and shrieks of a mob,
harangued by some demagogue, who fed their discontentment
with arguments after their own heart.  Everywhere Eckhardt
met skulking countenances, scowling faces, while half-suppressed
oaths fell on his ear.  Arrived on the Aventine he immediately
ordered Haco, Captain of the Imperial Guards, to his
presence.

"Bridle your charger and ride to Tivoli as if ten thousand
devils were on your heels," he said, handing the young officer
an order he had hurriedly and barbarously scratched on a
fragment of parchment.  "Pass through the Tiburtine gate and
return with sunrise,—life and death depend upon your speed!"

Withdrawing immediately, Haco saddled his charger and
soon the echoes of his horse's hoofs died away in the distance,
while Eckhardt hurriedly entered the palace.

After he had vanished from the labyrinth of the Minotaurus,
Otto and Stephania faced each other for a moment in silence.
The Southern night was very still.  The noises from the city
had died down.  By countless thousands the stars shone in
the deep, fathomless heavens.

It was Otto who first broke the heavy silence.

"Stephania," he said, "why are you here to-night?"

"What a strange question," she replied, "and from you."

"Yes—from me!  From me to you.  Is it because—"

He paused as if oppressed by some great dread.  He dared
not trust himself to speak those words in her hearing.

"Is it because I love you?" she complemented the sentence,
drawing him down beside her.  But the seed of doubt
Eckhardt had planted in his heart had taken root.

"Stephania," he said with a strange voice, without replying
directly to her question.  "I have trusted in you and I will
continue to trust in you, even despite the whisperings of the
fiend,—until with my own eyes I behold you faithless.
Eckhardt has been with me all day," he continued with unsteady
voice, "he has warned me against you, he has warned me to
place no trust in your words, that you are but the instrument
of Crescentius; that he has organized a mutiny; that he but
awaits your signal for my destruction.  He has warned me
that you have planned my seizure and selected this spot, to
prevent intervention.  Stephania, answer me—is it so?"

For a moment the woman gazed at him in dread silence,
unable to speak.

"Did you believe?" she faltered at last with averted gaze,
very pale.

"I am here!" he replied.

Stephania laughed nervously.

"I had forgotten!" she stammered.  "How good of you!"

Otto regarded her with silent wonder, not unmingled with
fear, for her countenance betrayed an anxiety he had never
read in it before.  And indeed her restlessness and terror
seemed to increase with every moment.  She answered Otto's
questions evidently without knowing what she said, and her
gaze turned frequently and with a devouring expression of
anxiety and dread toward Castel San Angelo.  Maddened
and desperate with her own perfidy, she began to ruminate
the most violent extremities, without perceiving one exit from
the labyrinth of guile.  The significance of Otto's question,
his earnestness and his faith in herself put the crown on her
misery.  Her eyes grew dim and her senses were failing.
Her limbs quaked and for a moment she was unable to speak.
Otto bent over her in positive fear.  The pale face looked
so deathlike that his heart quailed at the thought of
life,—life without her.

"I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it," he muttered, holding
her hands in his tight grasp.

It seemed as if she had read his inmost, unspoken thoughts.

"And yet it must come at last!" she replied softly, as from
the depths of a dream.  "What is this short span of life for
such love as ours?  And,—had we even everything we
could crave, all the world can give,—would there not be a
sting in each moment of happiness at the thought—"

She paused.  Her head drooped.

"My happiness is to be with you," he stammered.  "I
cannot count the cost!"

"Think you that I would count the cost?" she said.  "And
you love me despite of all those dreadful things, which
he—Eckhardt—has poured into your ear?" she continued with
low, purring voice.

"Love you—love you!" he repeated wildly.  "Oh, I have
loved you all my life, even before I saw you,—are you not the
embodied form of all those vague dreams of beauty, which
haunted my earliest childhood?  That beauty, which I sought
yearningly, but oh! so vainly in all things, that breathe the divine
essence: the lustrous darkness of night, the glories of sunset,
the subtle perfume of the rose, the all-reflecting ocean of
poetry in which the Universe mirrors itself?  In all have I
found the same deep void, which only love can fill.  Not love
you," he continued covering both hands he held in his with
fevered kisses, "oh, Stephania, I love you better than
myself,—better than all things,—here and hereafter."

Almost paralyzed with fear she listened to his mad pleading.

"And can nothing—nothing,—destroy this love you have
for me?" she faltered.

He took her yielding form in his arms.  He drew her closer
and closer to his heart.

"Nothing,—nothing,—nothing."

"I love you—Otto—" she whispered deliriously.

"To the end, dearest,—to the end!"

From a tavern at the foot of the hill the sounds of high
revelry were borne up to them.  The air was filled with
the odour of dead leaves and dying creation, that subtle
premonition of the end to come.

"And you have anxiously waited my coming?" she said,
hiding her face in his arms.

"Oh, Stephania!  The hour-glass, with which passion
measures a lover's impatience, is a burning torch to his heart."

Supreme stillness intervened again.

Stephania raised her head like a deer in covert, listening
for the hunters, listening for the baying of the hounds, coming
nearer and nearer.  Gladly at this moment would she have
given her life to undo what she had done.  But it was too late.
Even this expiation would not avail!  There was nothing now
to do, but to nerve herself for that supreme moment, when all
would be severed between them for aye and ever; when she
would stand before him the embodiment of deception; when
he would spurn her as one spurns the reptile, that repays the
caressing hand with its deadly sting; when he would curse her
perhaps,—cast from him for ever the woman who had cut
the thread of the life he had laid at her feet—and all, for
what?

That Johannes Crescentius, the Senator of Rome might
again come into his own, that he might again lord the
rabble which now skulked through the streets to avenge some
imaginary wrong on the head of the youth, whose love for
them was to be the pass word for his destruction.

And Johannes Crescentius was her husband and lord.  He
loved her with as great a love as his nature was capable of,
and whatever faults might be laid at the door of his regime,
if faults they could even be termed in a lawless, feudal age,
that knew no right save might,—to her he had never been
untrue.

Stephania endeavoured to persuade herself that, what she
had done, she had done for the good of Rome.  Monstrous
deception!  She despised the mongrel rabble too heartily to
even have raised a finger in its behalf.  If they starved, would
Crescentius give them bread?  If they froze—would
Crescentius clothe them?  Then there remained but the question,
should a Roman govern Rome, or the alien,—the foreigner.
Was it for her to decide?  How unworthy the cause of the
sacrifice she was about to bring on the altar of her happiness.
But which ever way the tongue of the scales inclined,—it was
too late!

Otto had buried his head on Stephania's bosom.  She had
encircled it with her arms and with gentle fingers that sent a
delirium through his brain, she stroked his soft brown hair,
while the cry of Delilah hovered on her lips.

He looked up into her eyes.

"Stephania,—why are you here to-night?" he whispered
again, and he felt the tremor which quivered through her body.

"I came to bring you the answer which you craved at our
last meeting," she replied softly.  "Can you guess it?"

"Then you have chosen," he gasped, as if he were suddenly
confronted with the crisis in his existence, when that which he
held dearest must either slip away from him for ever or remain
his through all eternity.

"I have chosen!" she whispered, her arms tightening
round him, as if she would protect him against all the world.

"Kiss me," she moaned.

One delirious moment their lips met.  They remained locked
in tight embrace, lip to lip, heart to heart.

There was a brief breathless silence.

Suddenly the great bell of the Capitol rolled in solemn and
majestic sounds upon the air, and was answered from all the
belfries of Rome.  But louder than the pealing tocsin, above
the wild screaming and clanging of the bells rose the piercing
cry:

"Death to the Saxon!  Death to the King!"

They both raised their heads and listened.  With wild-eyed
wonder Otto gazed into Stephania's eyes.  The marble statues
around them were hardly as white as her features.

"What is this?" he questioned.

There was a stir in the depths of the streets below.  Shouts
and jeers of strident voices were broken by authoritative
commands.  The tramp of mailed feet was remotely audible, but
above all the hubbub and din rose the cry:

"Death to the Saxon!  Death to the King!"

When the first peals of the great bell quivered on the silent
night air, Stephania had, with a low wail, encircled Otto's
head with her arms, pressed him closely to her, as if to shield
him from harm.  Then, as louder and wilder the iron tongues
shrieked defiance through the air, as, turning her head, she
saw the fatal spear points of the Albanians gleaming through
the thicket, she suddenly shook him off.  With a stifled outcry,
she rose to her feet; so abruptly that Otto staggered and would
have fallen, had he not in time caught himself with the aid of
a branch.

To the King it gave the impression of a wild hideous dream.
Like one dazed, he stared first at the woman, then down the
declivity.

Directly beneath where he stood a scribe was haranguing
the crowds, descanting on the ancient glory of the Romans
and exhorting his listeners to exterminate all foreigners.  From
Castel San Angelo came an incessant sound of trumpets, which,
mingling with the brazen roar of bells seemed to shake the
earth.  Torches lighted the streets with their smoky crimson
glare.  People hurried hither and thither, jostling, pushing,
trampling upon each other like black shadows, like living
phantoms.  The fiery glow, the voices of the angry mob, the
pealing of the bells,—they all struck Stephania's heart with
a thousand talons of remorse and shame.  Fearstruck
and trembling, she gazed into the pale face of Theophano's
son.

Otto was watching the distant pandemonium as one would
gaze upon some strange, hideous ceremonial of occult
meaning,—then he turned slowly to Stephania.

For a moment they faced each other in silence, then he
stroked the disordered hair from his forehead like one waking
from a dream.

"You have betrayed me."

Her lips were tightly compressed; she made no reply.

The next moment he was on his knees before her.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he faltered, "I knew not what
I said!"

She breathed hard.  For a moment she closed her eyes in
mortal anguish.

"Then you still believe in me?"  She spoke hardly above
a whisper.

"With all my heart," he replied, grasping her hands and
covering them with kisses.  For a moment she suffered him
to exhaust his endearments, then she jerked them away from him.

"Then bid your hopes and dreams farewell and scatter your
faith to the winds," she shrieked, almost beside herself with the
memory of her vow and its consequences.  "You are betrayed,—and
I have betrayed you!"

Otto had staggered to his feet and gazed upon the beautiful
apparition who faced him like some avenging fury, as if he
thought that she had gone suddenly mad.  For a moment she
paused, as if summoning supreme energy for the execution of
her task, as if to lash herself into a paroxysm sufficient to make
her forget those accusing eyes and his all-mastering love.

"I have betrayed you, Kong Otto!  I, Stephania, a woman!
Ah!  You believed my words!  You were vain enough to
imagine that the wife of the Senator of Rome could love
you,—you,—her greatest foe, you, the Saxon, the alien, the intruder,
who came here to rob us of our own, to wrest the sceptre from
the rightful lord of the Seven Hills.  You hoped Stephania
would aid you to realize your mad dreams!  How unsophisticated,
how deliciously innocent is the King of the Germans!
Know then that I have lied to you, when I feigned interest in
your cause, know that I have lied to you when I professed to
love you!  Love you," she cried, while her heart was breaking
with every word she hurled against him, who listened to her
speech in frozen terror.  "Love you!  Fool!  And you were
mad enough to believe it!  Do you hear those bells?  Do you
hear the great tocsin from the Capitol?  Do you hear the
alarums from the ramparts of Castel San Angelo?  They are
calling the Romans to arms!  They are summoning the Romans
to revolt!  Do you hear those shouts?  Death to the Germans?
They are for you,—for you,—for you!"

Again she paused, breathing hard, collecting all her woman's
strength to finish what she had begun.

The end had come,—her task must be finished.

Her voice now assumed its natural tones, the more dreadful
in their import, as she spoke in the old deep, soulful accents.

"I have lulled you to sleep," she continued, breaking the
bridge, which led back into the past, span by span,—"that
the Senator of Rome may once again come into his own!  I
have pretended interest in your monkish fancies, that Rome
may once more shake off the invader's accursed yoke.  I am
a Roman, King Otto,—and I hate you,—hate you with every
beat of my heart, that beats for Rome.  King Otto, you are
doomed."

He had listened to her words with wide, wondering eyes,
his heart frozen with terror and anguish, his face pale as that
of a corpse, returned from its grave.  He heard voices in the
distance and the tread of armed feet coming nearer and nearer.
Yet he stirred not.  His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.
There were strange rushing sounds in his ears, like mocking
echoes of Stephania's words.

At last his lips moved, while with a desperate effort he tried
to shake off the spell.

"May God forgive you, Stephania," he gasped like a drowning
man, reeled and caught himself, gazing upon her with
delirious, burning eyes.

Closer and closer came the tramp of mailed feet.

Terror struck, Stephania gazed into Otto's face.  The
fiercest denunciation would not have so completely unnerved
her as the simple words of the youth.  She almost succumbed
under the weight of her anguish.

"Fly,—King Otto,—fly,—save yourself," she gasped,
staggering toward him in the endeavour to shake off the fatal
torpor which had seized his limbs.  But he saw her not, he
heard not her warning.  Listlessly he gazed into space.

But had those who rushed down the avenue been his enemies
and death his certain lot, there would not have been time for
flight.

Stephania heaved a sigh of relief as in their leader she
recognized the Margrave of Meissen, followed by a score or
more of the Saxon guard.

Her own fate she never gave a thought.

"Do you hear those sounds?" thundered the gaunt
German leader, rushing with drawn sword upon the scene and
pausing breathlessly before Stephania's victim.  "Do you hear
the great bell of the Capitol, King Otto?  All Rome is in
revolt!  Did I not warn you against the wiles of the accursed
sorceress, who, like a vampire fed on your heart's blood?
But by the Almighty God, she shall not live to enjoy the fruits
of her hellish treason."

And suiting the action to the word, Eckhardt rushed upon
Stephania, who stood calmly awaiting his onslaught and
seemed to invite the stroke which threatened her life, for
her lips curled in haughty disdain and her gaze met Eckhardt's
in lofty scorn.

The sight of her peril accomplished what Stephania's efforts
had failed to do.  Swift as thought Otto had hurled himself
between Eckhardt and his intended victim.

"Back," he thundered with flaming eyes.  "Only over my
dead body lies the way to her!"

Eckhardt's arm dropped, while a wrathful laugh broke
from his lips.

"You are magnificent, King Otto!  Defend the woman
who has foully betrayed you!  Be it so!  We have no time for
argument.  Her life is forfeited and by the Eternal God,
Eckhardt never broke his oath.  Follow me!  We must reach the
Aventine, ere the Roman rabble bar the way.  We are not
strong enough to break through their numbers and they swarm
like ants."

Otto stirred not.

Calmly he gazed at the Margrave, as if the danger did in no
wise concern him.  And while Eckhardt stamped his feet in
impotent rage, mingling a score or more pagan imprecations
with the very unchristian oaths he muttered between his
clenched teeth, Otto turned to Stephania.  His voice was calm
and passionless as one's who has emerged from a terrible
ordeal and has nothing more to lose, nothing more to fear.

"What will you do?" he said.  "The streets are no safe
thoroughfare for you in this night."

"I know not,—I care not," she replied with dead voice,
from which all its bewitching tones had faded.

"Then you must come with us!" he said.  "My men shall
safely conduct you to Castel San Angelo.  You have the word
of their King!"

"By the flames of purgatory!  Are you stark mad, King
Otto?" roared Eckhardt, almost beside himself with rage.
"Come with us she shall, but as hostage for Crescentius,—and
eye for eye,—tooth for tooth!"

He did not finish.  Otto waved his hand petulantly.

"The King of the Germans has pledged his word for
Stephania's safe conduct, and the King of the Germans will be
obeyed," he spoke, his voice the only calm and passionless
thing in all the storm and uproar, which assailed them on all
sides.  "Through the secret passage lies her only safety.
She cannot go as she came!"

Eckhardt's eyes fairly blazed with rage.

"Secret passage!" he roared, nervously gripping the hilt
of his enormous sword.  "Secret passage?  Are you raving,
King Otto?  What secret passage?"

But vainly did the Margrave endeavour to make his gestures
explain his denial.  Otto cared not, if indeed he noted them at
all.

He beckoned to Stephania.

"Come with us!" he spoke in the same apathetic, listless
tone.  "Fear nothing.  You have the word of the German
King,—he has never broken it!"

Whether the terrible reproach implied in his words increased
the stifling anguish in her heart, whether she dared not trust
herself to speak, Stephania silently turned to go.  But divining
her intent, Otto caught at her mantle.

"Now by all the fiends!" shouted Eckhardt, unable longer
to restrain himself, dashing between Stephania and the King
and severing the latter's hold on the woman—"Since your
heart is set upon it, I will not harm the—"

He paused involuntarily.

For from Otto's eyes there flashed upon him such a
terrible look that even the old, practiced warrior stepped back
abashed.

"Speak the word and I will slay you with my own hands!"
spoke the son of Theophano, and for a moment subject and
king faced each other in the dread silence with flaming eyes,
and faces from which every trace of colour had faded.

Eckhardt lowered his weapon.

His countenance betrayed untold anxiety.

"You invite certain destruction, King Otto," he remonstrated
with subdued voice.  "What matters it, if her countrymen
do slay her?  One serpent the less in Rome!  Your mercy
leads you to perdition,—-what mercy has she shown to you?"

Otto had relapsed into his former state of apathy.

"She goes with us," he said like an automaton, that knows
but one speech.  "Through the secret passage lies her only
safety."

"She will betray it and you and all of us," growled the
German leader, whose very beard seemed to bristle with wrath
at Otto's obstinacy.

Otto shrugged his shoulders.

"I have spoken!"

"Guards, close round!" thundered Eckhardt.  "And
every dog of a Roman who approaches upon any pretext
whatsoever,—strike him dead without word or parley!"

The Saxon spearmen who had guarded the approach to the
avenue gathered hurriedly round them.  For at that moment
the great bell of the Capitol, whose tolling had ceased for a
time, began its clamour anew and the shouts of the masses,
subdued and hushed during the interval, rose with increased
fury.  They drowned the great sob of anguish, which had
welled up from Stephania's heart, but when Otto, his attention
distracted for the nonce by the uproar, turned round, the
woman had gone.

Nor did Eckhardt, inwardly rejoicing over the revelation,
grant him one moment's respite.  Surrounded by his trusty
Saxon spears, Otto felt himself hurried along towards the gates
of his palace, which they reached in safety, the insurrection
having not yet spread to that region.

Vainly had he strained his gaze into the haze of the moonlit
night.  The end had come,—Stephania had gone.

When he reached his chamber, Otto sank senseless on the floor.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE STORM OF CASTEL SAN ANGELO`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE STORM OF CASTEL SAN ANGELO

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The sun of autumn hung
a bloody circle over Rome, but
seemed to give neither light nor
warmth.  The city itself
presented a seething cauldron of
rebellion.  The gates had been
closed against the advancing
Germans and when, with the
first streak of dawn, Haco had
arrived under the Marian
hill with the contingents from Tivoli, they found
themselves before a city, which had to be reconquered ere they
could even join the comparatively weak garrison on the
Aventine, where Otto was a prisoner in his own palace.  During
the night Eckhardt had assayed to reach a place of concealment
on the Tiburtine road, where he awaited the arrival of his
forces, which he had immediately marshalled in their respective
positions.  Castel San Angelo rested on an impregnable rock,
but Eckhardt had sworn a terrible oath, that he would scale
its walls before the sun of another day rose behind the Alban
hills; and although a rain of arrows and bolts, so dense and
deadly that it threatened to break the line of the assailants,
was poured into the German ranks, it did not stay their
determined advance.

The first line of assault consisted of heavy-armed
foot-soldiers with round bucklers, short swords and massive
battle-axes.  Forming in close phalanx, these men of gigantic size,
in hauberks and round helmets, fixed shield to shield like an
iron wall, advanced in dense array to the charge.  They were
led on the right wing by the imperial guard, whose huge
statures, fair long hair and gleaming halberds formed a strange
contrast to the lighter arms and the more pliant forms of the
defenders of Castel San Angelo.

The Roman army, which the Senator had stationed round
the base of his formidable stronghold, could not withstand the
shock of this tremendous phalanx, so far heavier in arms and
numbers, and with all their courage and skill they wavered
and broke into flight.  Many were precipitated into the Tiber
and drowned miserably within sight of their helpless comrades;
most of them were mowed down by the pursuing German
cavalry or shot by the German archers.

After the terrible defeat of the Senator's army by the first
line of Eckhardt's battle-array, the squadrons of the second
line of battle spread over the plain, preparatory to the last and
final assault.  The vast stronghold of the Senator looked as
proud and menacing as ever; reared upon its almost impenetrable
granite-foundation it formed even at this date one of
the most powerful fortresses of Western Europe.  Its huge
battlements were defended with a long chain of covered towers,
from which Albanian bowmen shot down every living thing,
that approached the circuit of its walls.  Every attempt to
scale the lofty stronghold with ladders had during former
sieges been beaten off with fearful loss, after desperate
combats at all hours of day and night.  Although he had twice
stormed the walls of Rome, Eckhardt had never succeeded in
capturing the fortress, which he must call his own, who would
be master of the Seven Hills.  But the wrath of the Margrave
defied every obstacle, laughed to scorn every impediment
which might retard his vengeance upon the cursed rabble of
Rome, those mongrel curs, with whom rebellion was a pastime
and for whom oaths existed but to be broken.  All day long
the Germans had hurled themselves against the massive
walls, sustaining terrible losses, while those within the city
were equally severe.  All day long they had plied their huge
catapults, which hurled masses of rock and iron into the city
and fortress, keeping up an incessant bombardment.  They also
used the balista, an immense fixed cross-bar, which shot bolts
with extraordinary force and precision upon the battlements,
whereon nothing living could stand exposed without certain
destruction.

Seated motionless on his coal-black charger, like some dark
spirit of revenge, plainly visible from the ramparts of Castel
San Angelo, Eckhardt directed the assault of his army at this
point, or that, according as the situation required.  Many an
arrow and stone struck the ground close by his side, but he
seemed to bear a charmed existence and never stirred an inch
from his chosen vantage ground.  Already had a breach been
made in one or two places in the base of the walls, yet had he
not given the order to break into the city, but seemed to watch
for some weak spot in the defences.  It was verging towards
evening.  The besiegers could hear the cries and the rage of
those within the walls, who dared not remain in the streets
during the terrific rain of iron and stones hurled by the German
machines.  Despite their strenuous efforts, Castel San Angelo
hurled defiance into the teeth of the Margrave, who demanded
its surrender, and the task of capturing the stronghold,
otherwise than by starving the garrison, seemed to hold out smaller
promise with every moment, as the sun hurried on his western
course.  The sky became overcast and the night bade fair to be
stormy.

During the assaults of the day, Eckhardt had many times
strained his gaze towards the road leading to Tivoli, as if he
expected some succour from that direction, when, as the sun
was sinking in a crimson haze, a cloud of dust met the general's
gaze and at the same moment a thunderous shout rose from
the imperial hosts.  Drawn by twelve oxen, there appeared at
the edge of the plain a new engine of assault, which Eckhardt
had ordered constructed, anticipating an emergency, such as
the present.  It had remained with the host in Tivoli, and despite
the comparatively short distance, it had required almost
twenty-four hours to draw it over the sloping ground to Rome.
It was a tower of three stages, constructed of massive beams,
protected by frames and hides and crowned with a stout roof.
It was now being rolled forward on broad heavy wheels to
afford means of scaling the walls.  As it slowly approached the
ramparts of Castel San Angelo, the assault of the Germans,
renewed on the whole line of the walls with redoubled fury,
presented a terrific sight.  The catapults and balistae were
pouring stones, bolts and arrows on the defenders; the whizzing
of the missiles, the shouts of the assailants, answered by furious
yells from the walls, the roar of the flames, as here and there
a house near the city walls caught fire from burning pitch,
made a truly infernal din.

"The turret is within twenty feet of the walls,—on a level
with the ramparts,—fifteen,—ten feet,—-down with the
scaling bridge!" shouted Haco, who was standing by the side
of Eckhardt.  Crashing, the gang-way went from the front
of the pent house.  But as he spoke, the soft earth, whereon
the turret stood, gave way.  The gang-way fell short, the turret
toppled and split.  The besieged hurled on it bolts, rocks,
boiling pitch and fire balls, and presently it collapsed with a
sudden crash and fell in a heap, mangling and burying the men
inside it and beneath it, and at once it blazed up, a mass of
burning timber.

"It is, as I feared," said Eckhardt.  "No turret lofty enough
to overtop these walls can be brought up to work on ground
like this.  We must resort to the catapults!  Let all be brought
into action at once!"

The destruction of the great, movable turret, on the success
of which such hopes and fears had been placed, caused the
ranks of assailants and defenders to pause for a space, while
both were watching the spectacle of the blazing pile.  A lull
ensued in the storm of battle, during which Eckhardt, while
he seemed to direct his men towards a certain point near the
walls, never released his gaze from Castel San Angelo.  Then
he gave a whispered order to Haco, who set off at once on its
execution.  An appalling crash rent the sky, as the German
machines began their simultaneous attack on the walls of
Rome, while a storming-column, forming under their protection,
rushed forth towards the gates of the city.  The strain on
the mind of Eckhardt, who alone knew the intense crisis of
that moment, was almost unbearable.  He must succeed this
very night; for on the morrow the peremptory order of the
Electors would recall his forces beyond the Alps.  There would
be no respite; there could be no resistance.  His only
salvation lay in their undaunted courage and their ignorance
of the impending decree.

The evening grew more and more sultry.

At intervals a gust came flying, raising the white dust
and rustling in the dying leaves.  It passed by, leaving the
stillness on the Aventine more still than before.  Nothing
was to be heard, save the dull, seemingly subterranean
growls of thunder, and against this low threatening and sullen
roar the pounding of Eckhardt's catapults against the walls.
At times a flash broke across the clouds; then all stood out
sharp and clear against the increasing darkness.  Only the
watchfires of Castel San Angelo were reflected in the sluggish
tide of the Tiber, from which rose noisome odours of
backwater, rotting fern leaves and decaying wood.

The Piazza of St. Peter meanwhile presented a singular
spectacle, congested as it was with a multitude, which, in the
glare of the lightning, resembled one waving mass of heads,—a
cornfield before it has been swept by a tornado.  It was an
infuriated mob, which listened to the harangue of Benilo,
interrupting the same ever and ever with the hysterical
shout: "Death to the Saxon!  Death to the Emperor!"

"Blood of St. John!" exclaimed an individual in the coarse
brown garb of a smith, "Why do we bellow here?  Let us
to the Aventine—to the Aventine!"

His eye met that of Il Gobbo the grave-digger.  He
pounced upon him like an eagle on his prey, shaking him by
the shoulder.

"Gobbo!  Dog!  Assassin!  Art deaf to good news!  I
tell thee, there is strife in the city,—some new sedition!  It
may be that our friends have conquered—down with the
tyrant and oppressor!  Down with the Saxon!  Down with
everything!"

And he laughed—a hoarse, mad laughter.

"We Romans shall yet be free,—think of it, thou villain,—a
thousand curses on thee!"

The artisan had correctly interpreted the temper of the
Romans, when he raised his shout: To the Aventine!  To the
Aventine!

"Romans!  We give our enemies red war!  War to the
knife!" screamed the speaker at the conclusion of his harangue.

"Death to the Saxons!  Death to the King!" came the
answering yell.

In the midst of all this some partisan of the King ventured
to reason with the mob.  It was impossible to distinguish in
the ensuing mêlée, but in the distance a man was being tossed
and torn by the mob.  For a moment his white face rose above
the sea of heads, with all the despair which a drowning man
shows, when it rises for the last time above the waves, then
it sank back and something mangled and shapeless was flung
out into the great Piazza, where it lay still.

"To the Aventine!  To the Aventine!" shouted the mob,
and armed with all sorts of rude weapons they trooped off,
brandishing their clubs and staves and shouting confused
maledictions.

Count Ludeger of the Palatinate, to whom Eckhardt had
entrusted the King's safety, had made sure that all approaches
were locked and barred, while he had disposed his spearmen
and archers in such a manner as to make it appear, in the
case of assault, that he commanded a much superior number,
than were actually at his disposal.

The warlike Count Palatine, who, aroused on an alarm, had
instantly equipped himself with casque and sword, stood listening
to what was passing outside, sniffing the air and rolling
his eyes as if he desired nothing better than a conflict.
Arranging his archers round the barred gate, with the order to
hold their bows in readiness, he descended to the entrance
which was surrounded by a howling mob, who demanded
admittance or, if denied, declared they would enter by force.
After having surveyed the assailants through a wicket, and
having convinced himself that they were of the baser class,
he demanded to speak with the leader of the mob.  A surly
individual, armed with a club, came boldly forward and
demanded to see the King.

"For what purpose?" asked the Count Palatine.

"That is,—as we choose!" replied the ruffian.

By this time the archers had mounted the roof of the palace,
while Count Ludeger stood in the foreground.  To him the
routing of such a rabble seemed a task not worth speaking of,
and it was not his intention to parley.  He dared not open the
gates until he was prepared to act, therefore mounting a
balcony in the upper story of the palace, which looked over
the entrance, he stood fully visible from where the invaders
stood, whose numbers swelled with every moment.  Then
advancing to the parapet, he made a signal, demanding silence,
and spoke in a voice audible to every ear in the throng:

"Dogs!  You came hither thinking the palace was defenceless.
You wish to see the King.  Off!  Away with your foul
odours and your yelping throats!  And if when you have turned
tail, any cur among you dares bark back, he shall pay for it
with an arrow through his chine!  Away with you!"

The crowd seemed to waver and to look for their leader,
but the Count Palatine gave them little time.  Raising his
hand he waved a signal to the archers.  The low growling and
snarling of the mob swelled to a yell of terror, as three score
or more of their number fell under the hail of arrows.  At the
same moment the gate of the palace was thrown open and the
guards charged the Roman mob with drawn swords, mowing
down all that were in their path.  Back fell the first rank of
the rioters, pressing against those in the rear, and with an
outcry of terror the crowd scattered in flight.

From the balcony of his palace, Otto had witnessed the
scene which had just come to a close.  He saw hatred and
vengeance around him in the eyes of the populace.  He knew
himself to be hated, deserted, betrayed, most unjustly, most
cruelly, despite all he had done for the state and the people.
After the mob had departed, he retreated to his chamber.
Here his strength seemed utterly to forsake him.  Calling his
attendants, they took from him his cloak, his diadem, and
his sword of state, they unlaced the imperial buskins and gilt
mail, in which he was encased.  He seemed eager to fling from
him his gilded trappings, while his attendants watched him in
perplexity and fear.  He spoke not, nor gave any sign.

At length Count Ludeger, presuming on his high office,
broke the silence.

"By the Mother of God, we pray you, shake off this grief
and take heed of the manifold perils which surround your
throne and life.  You are surrounded with traitors, intrigues
and plots!  And the one—once nearest to your heart is your
greatest foe!"

Otto raised his head and glared at the speaker like a lion
at bay, but spoke not, and again covered his face and sank
upon the couch.

The storm clouds gathering over Rome were scarce as dark
as those on Count Ludeger's brow.  For a time intense silence
prevailed.  At last, carried away by Otto's mute despair, the
Curopalates ventured to approach the King and whispered a
word in his ear.

Otto looked up, pale, staring.

Count Ludeger advanced and knelt before the emperor.

"My liege—what shall I say to the Electors?"

There was a breathless silence.

Then Otto raised himself erect on his couch.

"Say to them,—that I will die in Rome—in Rome—"

He checked himself and looked round.

"Leave me!  Begone all of you!" he said.  "Set double
guards at the doors of this chamber and admit no one on pain
of death.—I choose to be alone to-night!"

"And may not I even share my sovereign's solitude?"
questioned Benilo with a look of feigned concern in his eyes.

"I wish to be alone!" Otto replied, then he beckoned
Count Ludeger to his side.  After all had departed, the King
turned to the Count Palatine.

"Can we hold out?"

The Count's visage reflected deep gloom.

"All Rome is in the throes of revolt!  All day Eckhardt has
been pounding the walls of Castel San Angelo—to no avail!"

"He will storm the traitor's lair," Otto replied, "but then?"
he questioned as one dream-lost.

Ludeger pointed to Northward.  With a deep moan Otto's
head drooped and the scalding tears streamed down between
his fingers.  Betrayed—betrayed!  Not by Crescentius, his
natural, his hereditary foe, but by the woman whom he had
loved, whom he had worshipped, whom he still loved above
all else on earth.  What was the possession of Rome, the rule
of the universe, to him without her?  He could picture to
himself no happiness away from her.

When Otto looked up, Count Ludeger was gone.

For a time there was stillness, deep, intense.

A dazzling flash of light, succeeded by a deafening peal of
thunder, that was like the wrath of a mighty God,—then came
darkness, the howling of the storm, the sobbing of bells tossed
and broken by the hurricane, into a wraith of dirge,—and
now, as by some fantastic freak of nature, as the wind rose
higher and higher, the iron tongue of the bell from the Capitol
came wrangling and discordant through the air, as if tortured
by some demon of despair.  But the howlings and the tempest
and the roar of the thunder had a third, most terrible ally to make
that night memorable in Rome.  It was the wrath of Eckhardt,
the Margrave, as he marshalled his hosts to the assault.
Terror-stricken the cowardly Romans scattered before the iron
avalanches that swept down upon them.  The scythe of the
enraged mower made wide gaps in their lists and the dead and
dying strewed the field in every direction.  Little did Eckhardt
care how many he mangled and maimed under the hoofs of
his iron-shod charger.  Had all Rome been but one huge
funeral pyre, he would have exulted.  Rome had not been kind
to him and the hour of vengeance was at hand at last!

The broken clangour of the bells of Rome, the bellowing of
the thunder through the valleys, the howling of the storm—and
the shouts of the storming files of his Germans struck
Otto's ear in fitful pauses.

For this then he had journeyed to Rome!  This was to be
the end of the dream!—The man he had trusted was a
traitor!  The woman whose kisses still burnt upon his lips
had sold, betrayed him.  The candle sank lower and the
shadows deepened; but the tempest howled like a legion of
demons over the seven-hilled city of Rome.

What caused him to raise his head after a period of brooding,
Otto knew not, nor why the opposite wall with its drear flitting
shadows held his gaze spellbound.  To his utter discomfiture
and amazement he saw the Venus panel noiselessly open, a
shadow glided into the chamber and the panel closed behind it.

Ere Otto could utter a word, Stephania stood before him.

He rose and receded before her, as one would before a
spectre.  Hungrily, madly his eyes gazed into her pale face,
despairingly.  A strange fire was alight in her orbs, as once
more she stood face to face with the youth, whose soul she had
absorbed as the vampire the soul of his victim.

With fingers tightly interlaced she stood before him, then,
as he would not speak, she said with a strange smile:

"You see,—I have come back."

He made no reply, but receded from her as some evil spirit
to the farthest nook of the chamber.

For a time she seemed at a loss how to proceed; when she
spoke again, there was a strange, jarring tone in her voice.

"Fear nothing!" she said, a great sadness vibrating in her
speech.  "I came not hither to renew old scenes.  What has
been is past for ever!  Strange, that I had to come into your
life, King Otto, or that you had to cross the line of mine,—who
is to blame?  You have once told me that you believe in
a Force, called Fate.  You have convinced me now,—even
if my own suffering had not."

"How came you here?" Otto spoke, hardly above a whisper.

Stephania pointed below.

"Through the secret passage!"

Otto started.

"Mother of Christ!" he exclaimed.  "Had they seen you
they would have killed you."

A smile of disdain curved her lips.

"I should have welcomed the release."

"But what do you want here—and at this hour?"

"Your Saxons are storming Castel San Angelo.  By a
feigned attack they lured its defenders to a part of the ramparts,
where no real danger threatened, but to scale the walls on their
rear.  Send a messenger to Eckhardt to desist.  Crescentius
is ready to treat for honourable terms."

If there was indeed truth in her words, the message was lost
on him, to whom it was conveyed.  His heart was dead to the
voice of gladness, as it was dead to any added pang of misery.

"Thrice the Senator of Rome has broken his word!  His fate
lies with himself!" he replied with a shrug.

Stephania's pallor deepened.

She stared at Otto out of large fear-struck eyes.

"You would not give him over to your Saxons?" she
spoke impulsively.

"They will take him without that!"

"Castel San Angelo has never been taken,—it shall never
be taken!  King Otto!  Think how many of your best soldiers
will be crushed and mangled in the assault,—be merciful!"

"Has Crescentius been merciful to me?  I came not hither
to deprive him of his own.—I have not struck at the root of
his life.—He has taken from me the faith in all that is
human and divine,—and through you!  A noble game you
have played for my soul!  You have won, Stephania!  But the
blood of Crescentius be on his own head!"

There was a lull in the uproar of the elements without;
but new banks of threatening clouds were hurrying from the
West, gathering like armies of vengeful spirits over the
Seven-Hilled City, and shutting off every breath of air.

An oppression throbbing with nameless fears was upon
them,—a hush, as if life had ceased.

Stephania, urged by a strange dread, had stepped to the
high oval window whence a view of Castel San Angelo was to
be obtained.  And as she gazed out into the night with wildly
throbbing heart, she grew faint and wide-eyed for terror.  A
dull roar, like muffled thunder, ceaselessly recurring, the
terrible shouts of Eckhardt's Saxons reached her ear.

Would the walls withstand their assault, ere she returned,
or would the defenders yield under the terrible hail of iron and
leave the Senator of Rome to his doom?  Like knells of destiny
boom upon boom resounded through the wail of the rising gale.

She pressed her hands despairingly against her temples, as
if to calm their tempestuous throbbing, and her lips muttered
a prayer, while broken voices came through the storm,—
fragments of a chant from near-by cloisters:

"Ave Maria—Gratia Plena—Summa parens clementiae—Nocte
surgentes—"

Otto had tiptoed to the doors of the chamber and after
carefully listening had locked them.  The order he had given
to admit no one would secure for him a few moments of
immunity from interruption from without.  Supporting
himself against a casement he endeavoured to master the awful
agony, which upheaved his soul at the sight of the woman who
had played with his holiest affections; he tried to speak once,
twice, but his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.  He
thought he would choke.

The brazen blast of a trumpet from the battlements of
Castel San Angelo caused him to approach and to step behind
Stephania.  In the now almost continuous glare of the lightning
troops could be seen moving slowly along the walls and
base of the fortress.  The air pealed with acclamations.  A
thousand arrows from Frisian bowmen swept the defenders
from the walls.  The battlements were left naked; ladders
were raised, ropes were slung, axes were brandished; of every
crevice and projection of the wall the assailants availed
themselves; they climbed on each other's shoulders, they leaped
from point to point; torches without number were now
showered on every thing that was combustible.  At length a
stockade near the central defence took fire.

They fought no longer in darkness.  The flames rolled
sheet on sheet upon their heads, mingling their glare with that
of the blazing horizon.  But the issue was no longer doubtful.
Castel San Angelo was doomed.  No longer it vindicated its
claim to being impregnable.  The defenders, reduced in
number, exhausted by the ever and ever renewed and desperate
attacks, staring in the face of certain defeat, were becoming
visibly disheartened.

Spellbound, both viewed the spectacle, which unfolded
itself to their awe-struck gaze.  But there was no flush of
victory in Otto's face, no gladness in his eyes as, sick at the
sight, he turned away.  His eyes returned to the woman
whose half-averted face shone out in the glow of the
conflagration.  Never had it seemed to him so mystic, so unearthly,
so fair.

The storm was drawing nearer; the thunder bellowed
louder through the heavens, the lightning flashes grew ever
brighter; the great bell from the Capitol, the lesser bells of
Rome, still shrieked forth their insistent clamour on the sultry
air.

She silently drew near him, fixing him with her wondrous eyes.

At that moment the lightning rent the clouds and flashed
on her pale face.  A peal of thunder, now quite overhead,
shook earth and sky, rolling through the air in majestic
reverberations.  Slowly it died away into the great silence,
now again rent and broken by the German catapults, by the
renewed shouts of the defenders and assailants.  Up to this
moment Stephania had still hoped that Castel San Angelo
would defy the united assaults of the storming Saxons;
suddenly, however, a shriek broke from her lips, she turned away
from the window and hid her face in her hands.  Then she
rushed to where Otto was witnessing the progress of the assault
and fell on her knees before him.

"Save him!" she moaned, raising her white clasped
hands in despairing entreaty.  "Save him!  Save him!"

He raised her and, looking into her face, he read therein
remorse and helpless entreaty.  He knew that the moment
was irrevocable for both, final and solemn as death.  He felt
he must break the pregnant silence, yet no word came to his
lips.  The more he forced his will, to find a solution, the more
conscious he became of his own powerlessness and the depth
of the abyss which must divide them for ever more.

"Save him, Otto—save him!" she moaned, stretching
out her arms towards him,—"You alone can—you alone."

He receded from her.

"I could not save him, even if I would!"

But the woman became frantic in her fear.

The consciousness of the terrible wrong which Crescentius
had suffered at her hands, though the most subtle scrutiny of
her heart failed to accuse her of a deed, unworthy herself,
the unwitting instrument of Fate, added to her despair.  She
must save the Senator of Rome, even if she should herself pay
the penalty of the crime of high treason, of which he stood
accused.

"You will not have it said that you crushed your foe under
your heels," she cried.  "You are too kind, too generous,—Otto!
The Senator's resistance is broken.  He could not rise
a fourth time, if he would—you have conquered.  Otto,—for
my sake,—by the memory of the past—"

He raised his arms.  Now he was himself.

"Stop!" he said.  "Why conjure up that memory which
you have so cruelly poisoned and defiled?  There was
nothing,—even to life itself,—that I would not have given to you
in exchange for your love—"

"But that it was not mine to give!" she moaned.  "Can
you not see?"

"You should have remembered that, ere you slowly but
surely wove your net of deception round my heart.  I loved
you!  Foe of mine, as I knew you to be, I trusted you!  See,
how you have requited this trust!  See, what you have made
of me!  You but entered my life to wreck it!  Once I loved
the hours and the days and the nights and the stars, now my
heart is a burnt-out volcano.  And you who have taken all
my life from me, now come to me crying for mercy for him, who
showed such wondrous mercy for me!  And you too—you!
Did no pity ever enter your heart, when you saw that you were
mercilessly chaining my life to despair?  And after you
revealed yourself his instrument,—Stephania, are you so mad
as to think, that I would save the man who insidiously wrecked
my life?"

Almost frozen with horror Stephania had listened to the voice
she loved so well.  The card she had played, the appeal to his
generous nature, had lost.  She might have foreseen it.  But
her wondrous beauty still exercised its fatal spell.  The moments
were flying.  She must save Crescentius from Eckhardt's wrath.

"You once told me that you loved me," she spoke with
choked, dry throat.  "You accuse me of having deceived
you—ah! how little versed you are in reading a woman's heart!"

And approaching him as of old, she took his hands into hers.

"What do you mean?" Otto replied, while her touch sent
the hot blood hurtling through his veins.  "Some new conceit,
to gain your end?"

She shook her head, while she gazed despairingly toward the
Senator's last defence.

"This is not the time," she gasped.  "On every moment
hangs a life!  Otto, save him!  Save him for my sake!  Can
you not see that I love you?  Think you, else I should be
here?  Can you not see that this is my last atonement?  Oh,
do not let me be guilty of this too!  Save him,—save him,
ere it is too late!" she moaned, kneeling without releasing his
hands, on which she rested her head.  "Save him,—save
him, King Otto—or his blood be on your head!"

"On my head?  On my head?" exclaimed Otto.  "Heaven
that has witnessed your unfathomable treachery can never
ratify this invocation!  Never!  Never!"

She glanced up despairingly.

"Otto—he knows all!  All!  I saw it in his looks—though
he never spoke.—He knows—that—I love you!"

"Then you do love me?" Otto replied with large wondering
eyes.

"Ask your own heart,—it will answer for mine!"

"Then if you love me,—be mine,—my wife,—my queen!"

"How can I answer you at this moment, how can I?
Look yonder,—the stockades are afire,—your Saxons are
scaling the walls,—-Otto,—will you have it said that you
killed him to possess me?"

He snatched his hands away from her.

"But how can I save him, Stephania?—Collect your
woman's wit!  How can I?"

"Oh, how they swarm on the parapets!" she moaned.
"Mercy, King Otto,—ere it be too late!"

"Let not the King know the mercy in Otto's heart," he
replied between irresolution and resentment.  "But how can
I reach Eckhardt?  And think you my messenger would move
him?  Think you, he would listen to me?"

"You are the sovereign!  The King!  Have you none that
you can send, that you can trust?  None, fleet of foot and
discreet?"

Otto pondered.

Stephania's gaze was riveted on his face, as the eye of
the criminal about to be condemned, hangs on the countenance
of his judge, who speaks the sentence.  At this moment loud
shouts came through the storm.  The Germans were hoisting
new ladders for the assault.  In the glare of the conflagration
and the incessant lightning they could be discerned swarming
like ants.

Castel San Angelo appeared doomed indeed.

Otto pushed Stephania into a recess, then he made one
bound towards the door.  In the anteroom sat Benilo, the
Chamberlain.  His usually placid countenance seemed in the
throes of a tremendous strain.  Which way would the scales
sink in the balance?  A straw might turn the tide of Fate.
Benilo waited.  He held the last card in the great game.  He
would only play it at the last moment.

As Otto appeared on the threshold, he glanced up, then arose
hurriedly.

"Victory is crowning your arms, King Otto!" he fawned,
pointing in the region of the assault.  "Soon your hereditary
foe will be a myth—a—"

Otto waved his hand impatiently.

"Hasten to Castel San Angelo,—take the secret passage!—You
may yet arrive in time to place this order in
Eckhardt's hands!—Hurry—on every moment hangs a life."

"A life," gasped the Chamberlain.  "Whose life?"

"The Senator's!"

"Ah!  It is the order for his execution!" Benilo extended
his hand, to receive the scroll, while a strange fire gleamed
in his eyes.  He had waited wisely.

"It is the order for Eckhardt,—to spare him!  Hasten!
Lose not a moment!  Through the secret passage!"

Benilo stared in Otto's face as if he thought he had gone
mad.

"Spare Crescentius?  Your enemy?  Spare the viper, that
has thrice stung you with its poison fang?"

"I implore you by our friendship,—go!—I will explain
all to you at a fitter hour;—now there is not time."

"Spare Crescentius!" Benilo repeated as if he were still
unable to grasp the meaning.

"The Senator's men will lay no impediment in your way,—and
to my Germans you are known.—You will,—you must—arrive
in time—I pray you hasten—be gone—"

A sudden light of understanding seemed to flash athwart
Benilo's pale features.  Through the open door he had seen a
woman's gown.

Snatching up his skull-cap, he placed the order intrusted
to him inside his doublet.

"I hasten," he spoke.  "Not a moment shall be lost!"

And rushing out of the chamber, he disappeared.

Stephania had listened in awestruck wonder.  What was
the friend of the Senator, the man who had counselled the
uprising, doing in the imperial ante-chamber at this hour?
But,—perchance this was but another mesh in the great
web of intrigue, which the Romans had spun round their
unsuspecting foes.  Perhaps,—she trembled, as she thought
out the thought,—he was to seize the King, if Crescentius
was victorious.  He had never left the youth.—Had the
Chamberlain become his sovereign's jailer?  The ideas rushed
confusedly through her brain, where but the one faint hope
still glimmered, that Crescentius would escape his doom.

When Otto entered, she held out both hands to him.

"How can I thank you!"

He warded them off, and stepped to the window, whence the
progress of the assault could be watched in the intermittent
flashes of lightning.  The raging storm had temporarily
drowned the signals and cries of the combatants, but though
the clouds hung low and heavily freighted over the city, not
a drop of rain fell.  The lightning became more incessant;
soon it seemed as if the entire horizon was ablaze and the
thunder bellowed in one continuous roar over the Seven Hills.

Stephania had stepped to Otto's side.

"I must go," she said with indescribable mournfulness in
her tones.  "My place is by his side!  Living—or dead!
Farewell, King Otto, and forgive—if you can!"

She stretched out her hands towards him.  It seemed to
him, as if a dark veil was suddenly drawn before his eyes.
Despite the lightning there was nothing but a great darkness
around him.  His victory would cause a wider, more abysmal
gulf between them than his defeat.

If she went from him in this hour, he knew they would never
meet on earth again.

At her words he turned and vainly endeavouring to steady
his voice, he spoke.

"Stephania,—I cannot let you go!  Remain here, until
the worst is over!  It would mean certain death to you, if my
men discovered you,—and perhaps you would hardly escape
a similar fate at the hands of your own countrymen."

She shook her head.

"My place is by his side,—no matter what befall!  If I
am killed,—never was death more welcome!  Farewell,
Otto—farewell—"

Her voice broke.  She covered her face with her hands and
sobbed piteously.

He drew them down with gentle force.

"It is not my purpose to detain you here!  All I ask of you,
is to wait, until my order has had time to reach Eckhardt.
After the Senator has yielded,—you may go to him,—I will
then myself have you escorted to Castel San Angelo.  For the
sake of the past,—wait!"

"The past!  The past!  That can never, never be revived!"
she moaned.  "Oh, that I were dead, that I were dead!"

He took her in his arms.

"My love,—my own,—I cannot hear you speak thus—take
courage!  I have long forgiven you!"

Her head rested on his shoulders.  For a moment they seemed
to have forgotten the world and all around them.

Suddenly the rush of mailed feet resounded in the ante-room.
The door of the chamber was unceremoniously thrust open
and Haco, captain of the imperial guard, entered the apartment,
recoiling almost as quickly as he had done so, at the unexpected
sight which met his gaze.

"How dare you?" Otto accosted him with flaming eyes,
while Stephania had retreated into the shadows, covering her
face, which was pale as death, with her hands.

Eckhardt's envoy prostrated himself before the King.

"I crave the King's pardon—it was my Lord Eckhardt's
command to carry straight and unannounced the tidings to
the King's ear—your hosts have stormed Castel San Angelo!
Your enemy is no more!"

"Rise!" thundered Otto, while Stephania had rushed with
a pitiful moan of anguish from her retreat, and was gazing at
the messenger, as if life and death sat on his lips.  "What
do you mean?"

But ere the man could answer, a terrible shriek by his side
caused Otto to start.  Stephania had rushed to the window.
Following the direction of her gaze, his heart sank within him
with the weight of his own despair.

A body was seen swinging from the ramparts,—it needed
neither soothsayer nor prophet to explain what had befallen.

Eckhardt had kept his oath.

"When the imperial Chamberlain told him that you were
here with the King," Haco addressed the woman, who stared
with wide-eyed despair from one to the other, "Crescentius
charged in person the invading hosts.  Struck down twice,
he staggered again to his feet, fighting like a madman in the
face of certain death and against fearful odds.  When he fell
the third time, Eckhardt ordered him suspended from the
battlements—to save him the trouble of rising again!" the
captain concluded in grim humour.

"What of my pardon for the Senator?" gasped Otto.

"I know of no pardon," replied Haco.

"The pardon of which Benilo was the bearer," Otto repeated.

Haco stared at the King, as if he thought him demented.

"It was the order for the Senator's execution, which the
Chamberlain placed in Eckhardt's hand," he replied, "to take
place immediately upon his capture."

"Ah!  This is your work then!" Stephania broke the
terrible silence, which hung over them like suspended
destinies,—creeping towards Otto and pointing to the ramparts
of Castel San Angelo, on which the imperial standard was
being hoisted.  "This you have done to me!—You have
lied to me, detaining me here when I should have been
with him,—whose dying hour I have filled with a despair
that all eternity cannot alleviate,—let me go—I tell you, let
me go!  Fiend! traitor,—let me go!"

She fought him in wild despair.

Otto had barred her way.  Releasing her, he looked straight
into her eyes.

"Your own heart tells you, Stephania, this is the work of
a traitor,—not mine!"

She gazed at him one moment.  She knew his words to be
true.  But she would not listen to the voice of reason, when
her conscience doubly smote her.

"Let me go!" she shrieked.  "Let me go!  My place is
by the side of him you have foully slain,—murdered—after
luring me away from him in his dying hour."

"You know not what you say, Stephania.  Your grief has
maddened you!  Is not the word of the King assurance enough,
that he himself is the victim of some as yet unfathomable
deceit?  By the memory of my mother I swear to you—I
never wrote that order!  Remain here until I hear from
Eckhardt,—your safety—"

"Who tells you that I wish to be saved?" she cried like a
lioness at bay.  "Remain here with you, whose hands are
stained with his blood?  Not another moment!  You have
no claim on Stephania!  A crimson gulf has swallowed up
the past and his shade divides us in death as it has divided
us in life!  You shall never boast that you have conquered the
wife of the Senator of Rome!"

"Stephania."

He raised his arms entreatingly.

She sprang at him to gain the entrance to the Venus panel,
which he covered with his person.  For a moment he held her
at bay, then she pushed him aside, rushed past him and
disappeared in the dark passage, the door of which closed
behind her with a sharp clang.  She vanished in the
subterranean gloom.

Haco had silently witnessed the scene.

Otto seemed to have forgotten his presence, when turning
he found himself face to face with the trusty Saxon.

"Did you say—execution?" he addressed the man, his
brain whirling.

"Signed by the King!" came the laconic reply.

"You may go!  Bid Eckhardt repair hither at the earliest!"

Haco departed.  Broken in mind and spirit Otto remained
alone.  Victory had crowned his cause,—but Death reigned
in his heart.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FORFEIT`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FORFEIT

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: C
   :image: images/img-cap-c.jpg
   :lines: 5

Crescentius was dead.
Stephania's fate was left to the
surmise of the victors.  Since
she had parted from Otto in that
eventful night, no one had seen
the beautiful wife of the luckless
Lord of Castel San Angelo.
Eckhardt was gloomier than
ever.  The storm of the ancient
mausoleum had been accomplished
with a terrible loss to the victors.  The Romans, awed
for a time into submission, showed ever new symptoms of
dissatisfaction, and it was evident that in the event of a new
outbreak, the small band constituting the emperor's bodyguard
would not be able to hold out against the enmity of the
conquered.  The monkish processions continued day and night,
and as the Millennium drew nearer and nearer the frenzied
fervour of the masses rose to fever height.  Fear and
apprehension increased with the impending hour, the hour that
should witness the End of Time and the final judgment of God.
Since the storm of Castel San Angelo, Otto had locked himself
in his chamber in the palace on the Aventine.  No one save
Benilo, Eckhardt and Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff, had
access to his person.  Benilo had so far succeeded in purging
himself from the stain of treason, which clung to him since the
summary execution of Crescentius, that he had been entirely
restored into Otto's confidence and favour.  It was not difficult
for one, gifted with his consummate art of dissimulation, to
convince Otto, that in the heat of combat, the passions inflamed
to fever-heat, his general had mistaken the order; and Eckhardt,
when questioned thereon, exhibited such unequivocal
disgust, even to the point of flatly refusing to discuss the matter,
that Benilo appeared in a manner justified, the more so, as
the order itself could not be produced against him, Eckhardt
having cast it into the flames.  His vengeance had not however
been satisfied with the death of Crescentius alone, for on the
morning after the capture of the fortress, eleven bodies were to
be seen swinging from the gibbets on Monte Malo, the carcasses
of those who in a fatal hour had pledged themselves to the
Senator's support.

So far the Chamberlain's victory seemed complete.

Crescentius and the barons inimical to his schemes were
destroyed.  There now remained but Otto and Eckhardt, and
a handful of Saxons; for the main body of the army had
marched Northward with Count Ludeger of the Palatinate, who
had exhausted every effort to induce Otto to follow him.  Had
Crescentius beaten off Eckhardt's assault, Benilo would in that
fatal night have consigned his imperial friend to the dungeons
of Castel San Angelo.  For this he had assiduously watched in
the ante-chamber.  At a signal a chosen body of men stationed
in the gardens below were to seize the German King and hurry
him through the secret passage to Hadrian's tomb.

There now remained but one problem to deal with.  With
the removal of the last impediment, arrived on the last stepping
stone to the realization of his ambition, Benilo could offer
Theodora what in the delirium of anticipated possession he
had promised, with no intention of fulfilling.  He had not
then reckoned with the woman's terrible temper, he had not
reckoned with the blood of Marozia.  She had by stages roused
her discarded lover's jealousy to a delirium, which had vented
itself in the mad wager, which he must win—or perish.

But one day remained until the full of the moon, but one
day within which Theodora might make good her boast.
Benilo, who had her carefully watched, knew that Eckhardt had
not revisited the groves, he had even reason to believe that
Theodora had abandoned every effort to that end.  Was she at
last convinced of the futility of her endeavour?  Or had she
some other scheme in mind, which she kept carefully concealed?
The Chamberlain felt ill at ease.

As for Eckhardt, he should never leave the groves a living
man.  Victor or vanquished, he was doomed.  Then Otto was
at his mercy.  He would deal with the youth according to
the dictates of the hour.

When Benilo had on that morning parted from Otto in the
peristyle of the "Golden House" on the Aventine, he knew
that sombre exultation, which follows upon triumph in evil.
Hesitancies were now at an end.  No longer could he be
distracted between two desires.  In his eye, at the memory of
the woman, for whom he had damned himself, there glowed
the fire of a fiendish joy.  Not without inner detriment had
Benilo accustomed himself for years to wear a double face.
Even had his purposes been pure, the habit of assiduous
perfidy, of elaborate falsehood, could not leave his countenance
untainted.  A traitor for his own ends, he found himself
moving in no unfamiliar element, and all his energies now
centred themselves upon the achievement of his crime, to
him a crime no longer from the instant that he had irresistibly
willed it.

On fire to his finger-tips, he could yet reason with the
coldest clarity of thought.  Having betrayed his imperial
friend so far, he must needs betray him to the extremity of
traitorhood.  He must lead Eckhardt on to the fatal brink,
then deliver the decisive blow which should destroy both.
But a blacker thought than any he had yet nurtured began
to stir in his mind, raising its head like a viper.  Could he
but discover Stephania!  Then indeed his triumph would be
complete!

On that point alone Otto had maintained a silence as of the
grave even towards the Chamberlain, to whom he was wont
to lay bare the innermost recesses of his soul.  Never in his
presence had he even breathed Stephania's name.  Yet Benilo
had seen the wife of the Senator in the King's chamber in the
eventful night of the storm of Castel San Angelo, and his
serpent-wisdom was not to be decoyed with pretexts, regarding
the true cause of Otto's illness and devouring grief.

But lust-bitten to madness, the thoughts uppermost in
Benilo's mind reverted ever to the wager,—to the woman.
Theodora must be his, at any, at every cost.  But one day
now remained till the hour;—he winced at the thought.
Vainly he reminded himself that even therein lay the greater
chance.  How much might happen in the brief eternity of one
day; how much, if the opportunities were but turned to
proper account.  But was it wise to wait the fatal hour?
He had not had speech with Theodora since she had laid the
whip-lash on his cheek.  The blow still smarted and the memory
of the deadly insult stung him to immediate action.  Once
more he would bend his steps to her presence; once more he
would try what persuasion might do; then, should fortune
smile upon him, should the woman relent, he would have
removed from his path the greater peril, and be prepared to
deal with every emergency.

How he lived through the day he knew not.  Hour after
hour crawled by, an eternity of harrowing suspense.  And
even while wishing for the day's end, he dreaded the coming
of the night.

While Benilo was thus weighing the chances of success,
Theodora sat in her gilded chamber brooding with wildly
beating heart over what the future held in its tightly closed
hand.  The hour was approaching, when she must win the
fatal wager, else—she dared not think out the thought.
Would the memory of Eckhardt sleep in the cradle of a darker
memory, which she herself must leave behind?  As in response
to her unspoken query a shout of laughter rose from the groves
and Theodora listened whitening to the lips.  She knew the
hated sound of Roxané's voice; with a gesture of profound
irritation and disgust, she rose and fled to the safety of her
remotest chamber, where she dropped upon an ottoman in
utter weariness.  Oh! not to have to listen to these sounds
on this evening of all,—on this evening on which hung the
fate of her life!  Her mind was made up.  She could stand
the terrible strain no longer.  One by one she had seen those
vanish, whom in a moment of senseless folly she had called
her friends.  Only one would not vanish; one who seemed to
emerge hale from every trap, which the hunter had laid,—her
betrayer,—her tormentor, he who on this very eve would
feast his eyes on her vanquished pride, he, who hoped to fold
her this very night in his odious embrace.  The very thought
was worse than death.  To what a life had his villainy, his
treachery consigned her!  Days of anguish and fear, nights
of dread and remorse!  Her life had been a curse.  She had
brought misfortune and disaster upon the heads of all, who
had loved her; the accursed wanton blood of Marozia, which
coursed through her veins, had tainted her even before her
birth.  There was but one atonement—Death!  She had
abandoned the wager.  But she had despatched her strange
counsellor, Hezilo, to seek out Eckhardt and to conduct him
this very night to her presence.  How he accomplished it, she
cared not, little guessing the bait he possessed in a knowledge
she did not suspect.  She would confess everything to him,—her
life would pay the forfeit;—she would be at rest, where
she might nevermore behold the devilish face of her tormentor.

With a fixed, almost vacant stare, her eyes were riveted on
the door, as if every moment she expected to see the one man
enter, whom she most feared in this hour and for whom she
most longed.

"This then is the end!  This the end!" she sobbed convulsively,
setting her teeth deep into the cushions in which
she hid her face, while a torrent of scalding tears, the
first she had shed in years, rushed from her half-closed
eyelids.

From the path she had chosen, there led no way back into
the world.

She had played the great game of life and she had lost.

She might have worn its choicest crown in the love of the
man whom she had deceived, discarded, betrayed, and now it
was too late.

But if Eckhardt should not come?

If the harper should not succeed?

Again she relapsed into her reverie.  She almost wished his
mission would fail.  She almost wished that Eckhardt would
refuse to again accompany him to the groves.  Again she
relived the scene of that night, when he had laid bare her arm
in the search for the fatal birth-mark.  The terrible expression
which had passed into his eyes had haunted her night and day.
A deadly fear of him seized her.

She dared not remain.  She dared not face him again.  The
very ground she trod seemed to scorch her feet.  She must
away.

The morrow should find her far from Rome.

The thought seemed to imbue her with new energy and
strength.  How she wished this night were ended!  Again the
shouts and laughter from the gardens beneath her window
broke on her ear.  She closed the blinds to exclude the sounds.
But they would not be excluded.  Ever and ever they continued
to mock her.  The air was hot and sultry even to suffocation:
still she must prepare the most necessary things for her journey,
all the precious gems and stones which would be considered a
welcome offering at any cloister.  These she concealed in a
mantle in which she would escape unheeded and unnoticed
from these halls, over which she had lorded with her dire, evil
beauty.

She had scarcely completed her preparations when the sound
of footsteps behind the curtain caused her to start with a low
outcry of fear.  Everything was an object of terror to her now
and she had barely regained her self-possession when the
parting draperies revealed the hated presence of Benilo.

For a moment they faced each other in silence.

With a withering smile on his thin, compressed lips, the
Chamberlain bowed.

"I was informed you were awaiting some one," he said with
ill-concealed mockery in his tones.  "I am here to witness
your conquest, to pay my forfeit,—or to claim it."

Theodora with difficulty retained her composure; yet she
endeavoured to appear unconcerned and to conceal her
purpose.  Her eyelids narrowed as she regarded the man who
had destroyed her life.  Then she replied:

"There is no wager."

Benilo started.

"What do you mean?"

"There was once a man who betrayed his master for thirty
pieces of silver.  But when his master was taken, he cast the
money on the floor of the temple, went forth and hanged
himself."

"I do not understand you."

A look of unutterable loathing passed into her eyes.

"Enough that I might have reconquered the man,—the
love I once despised, had I wished to enter again into his life,
the vile thing I am—"

Benilo leered upon her with an evil smile.

"How like Ginevra of old," he sneered.  "Scruples of
conscience, that make the devils laugh."

She did not heed him.  One thought alone held uppermost
sway in her mind.

"To-morrow," she said, "I leave Rome for ever."

With a stifled curse the Chamberlain started up.

"With him?  Never!"

"I did not say with him."

"No!" he retorted venomously.  "But for once the truth
had trapped the falsehood on your tongue."

She ignored his brutal speech.  He watched her narrowly.
As she made no reply he continued:

"Deem you that I would let you go back to him, even if
he did not spurn you, the thing you are?  You think to deceive
me by telling me that the hot blood of Marozia has been
chilled to that of a nun?  A lie!  A thousand lies!  Your virtue!
This for the virtue of such as you," and he snapped his fingers
into her white face.  "The virtue of a serpent,—of a wanton—"

There was a dangerous glitter in her eyes.

Her voice sounded hardly above a whisper as she turned upon him.

"Monster, you—who have wrecked my life, destroyed
its holiest ties and glory in the deed!  Monster, who made
my days a torture and my nights a curse!  I could slay you with
my own hands!"

He laughed; a harsh grating laugh.

"What a charming Mary of Magdala!"

Her voice was cold as steel.

"Benilo,—I warn you—stop!"

But his rage, at finding himself baffled at the last moment,
caused the Chamberlain to overstep the last limits of prudence
and reserve.  With the stealthy step of the tiger he drew nearer.

"You tell me in that lying, fawning voice of yours that
to-morrow you will leave Rome,—to go to him?  To give him
the love which is mine,—mine—by the redeemed gauge of
the sepulchre?  And I tell you, you shall not!  Mine you
are,—and mine you shall remain!  Though," he concluded,
breathing hard, "you shall be meek enough, when, learning
from my own lips what manner of saint you are, he has cast
you forth in the street, among your kind!  And I swear by the
host, I will go to him and tell him!"

She advanced a step towards him, her eyes glowing with a
feverish lustre.  Her white hands were upon her bosom as if
to calm its tempestuous heaving.

He heeded it not, feasting his eyes on her great beauty with
the inflamed lust of the libertine.

"I will save you the trouble," she said calmly, "I will
tell him myself."

"And what will you tell him?  That he has espoused one
of the harlot brood of Marozia, one, who has sold his
honour—defiled his bed—"

"And slain the fiend who betrayed her!"

A wild shriek, a tussle,—a choked outcry,—she struck—once,
twice, thrice:—for a moment his hands wildly beat the
air, then he reeled backward, lurched and fell, his head striking
the hard marble floor.

The bloody weapon fell from Theodora's trembling hands.

"Avenged!" she gasped, staring with terrible fascination at
the spot where he lay.

Benilo had raised himself upon his arm, filing his wild
bloodshot eyes on the woman.  He attempted to rise,—another
moment, and the death rattle was in his throat.  He fell back
and expired.

There was no pity in Theodora's eyes, only a great, nameless
fear as she looked down upon him where he lay.  It had grown
dark in the chamber.  The blue moon-mist poured in through
the narrow casement, and with it came the chimes from remote
cloisters, floating as it were on the silence of night, cleaving
the darkness, as it is cloven by a falling star.  Theodora's
heart was beating, as if it must break.  Lighting a candle she
softly opened the door and made her way through a labyrinth of
passages and corridors in which her steps re-echoed from the
high vaulted ceilings.  Farther and farther she wandered away
from the inhabited part of the building, when her ear suddenly
caught a metallic sound, sharp, like the striking of a gong.

For a moment she remained rooted to the spot, staring
straight before her as one dazed.  Then she retraced her steps
towards the Pavilion, whence came singing voices and sounds
of high revels.

Sometime after she had left her chamber, two Africans
entered it, picked up the lifeless body of the Chamberlain, and,
after carrying it to a remote part of the building, flung it into
the river.

The yellow Tiber hissed in white foam over the spot, where
Benilo sank.  The mad current dragged his body down to the
slime of the river-bed, picked it up again in its swirl, tossed it
in mocking sport from one foam-crested wave to another, and
finally flung it, to rot, on some lonely bank, where the gulls
screamed above it and the gray foxes of the Maremmas gnawed
and snapped and snarled over the bleached bones in the moonlight.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`NEMESIS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   NEMESIS

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: W
   :image: images/img-cap-w.jpg
   :lines: 5

While these events, so closely
touching his own life,
transpired in the Groves of Theodora,
while a triple traitor met his
long-deferred doom, and a
trembling woman cowered
fear-struck and tortured by terrible
forebodings in her chambers,
Eckhardt sat in the shaded
loggia of his palace, brooding
over the great mystery of his life and its impending solution;
meditating upon his course in the final act of the weird drama.
But one resolution stood out clearly defined in all the chaos
of his thoughts.  He would not leave Rome ere he had broken
down behind him every bridge leading back into the past.

It had been a day such as the oldest inhabitants of Rome
remembered none at this late season.  The very heavens
seemed to smoke with heat.  The grass in the gardens was dry
and brittle, as if it had been scorched by passing flames.  A
singularly profound stillness reigned everywhere, there being
not the slightest breeze to stir the faintest rustle among the
dry foliage.

How long Eckhardt had thus been lost in vague speculations
on the impending crisis of his life he scarcely knew,
when the sound of footsteps approaching over the gravel path
caused him to shake off the spell which was heavy upon him,
and to peer through the interstices of the vines in quest of the
new-comer who wore the garb of a monk, the cowl drawn over
his face either for protection against the heat, or to evade
recognition.  Yet no sooner had he set foot in the vineshaded
loggia, than Eckhardt arose from his seat, eager, breathless.

"At last!" he gasped, extending his hand, which the other
grasped in silence.  "At last!"

"At last!" said Hezilo.

The word seemed fraught with destinies.

"Is the time at hand?" queried Eckhardt.

"To-night!"

A groan broke from the Margrave's lips.

"To-night!"

Then he beckoned his visitor to a seat.

"I have come to fulfil my promise," spoke Hezilo.

"Tell me all!"

Hezilo nodded; yet he seemed at a loss how to commence.
After a pause he began his tale in a voice strangely void of
inflection, like that of an automaton gifted with speech.

Dwelling briefly on the events of his own life from the time
of his arrival in Rome with the motherless girl Angiola, on
her chance meeting with Benilo and the latter's pretence of
interest in his child, Hezilo touched upon the Chamberlain's
clandestine visits at the convent, where he had placed her,
upon the girl's strange fascination for the courtier, the latter's
promises and advances, culminating in Angiola's abduction.
After having betrayed his credulous victim, the Chamberlain
had revealed himself the fiend he was by causing her to be
concealed in an old ruin, and, to secure immunity for himself,
he had her deprived of the sight of her eyes.  In a voice resonant
with the echoes of despair, Hezilo described the long and
fruitless hunt for his lost child, of whose whereabouts the
disconsolate nuns at the convent disclaimed all knowledge, till
chance had guided him to the place of Angiola's concealment,
in the person of an old crone, whom he had surprised among
the ruins of the ill-famed temple of Isis, whither she carried
food to the blind girl at certain hours of the day.  At the point of
his dagger he had forced a confession and by a sufficiently
large bribe purchased her silence regarding his discovery.
The rest was known to Eckhardt, who had witnessed Angiola's
rescue from her dismal prison, as he had been present in her
dying hour.

There was a long silence between them.  Then Hezilo
continued his account.  Step for step he had fastened himself
to the heels of the betrayer of his child, whose name the crone
had revealed to him.  Again and again he might have destroyed
the libertine, had he not reserved him for a more summary
and terrible execution.  He had discovered Benilo's illicit
amour with one Theodora, a woman of great beauty but of
mysterious origin, who had established her wanton court at
Rome.  As a wandering minstrel Hezilo had found there a
ready welcome, and had in time gained her confidence and ear.

Eckhardt's senses began to reel as he listened to the
revelations now poured into his ears.  Much, which the confession
of the dying wretch in the rock-caves under the Gemonian
stairs had left obscure, was now illumined, as a dark landscape
by lightnings from a distant cloud-bank.  Ginevra's smouldering
discontent with Eckhardt's seeming lack of ambition, her
inordinate desire for power,—the Chamberlain's covert
advances and veiled promises, aided by his chance discovery
of her descent from Marozia; their conspiracy, culminating
in the woman's simulated illness and death; the substitution
of a strange body in the coffin, which had been sealed under
pretence of premature decay,—Ginevra's flight to a convent,
where she remained concealed till after Eckhardt's departure
from Rome:—from stage to stage Hezilo proceeded in his
strange unimpassioned tale, a tale which caused his listener's
brain to spin and his senses to reel.

The monk conducting the last rites, having chanced upon the
fraud, had been promised nothing less than the Triple Tiara
of St. Peter as reward for his silence and complicity, as soon as
Ginevra should have come into her own.  Continuing, Hezilo
touched upon Ginevra's reappearance in Rome under the name
of Theodora; on the Chamberlain's betrayal of the woman.
He dwelt on the events leading up to the wager and the forfeit,
the woman's share in luring Eckhardt from the Basilica, and
Benilo's attempt to poison him at the fateful meeting in the
Grotto.  He concluded by pointing out the Chamberlain's utter
desperation and the woman's mortal fear,—and Eckhardt
listened as one dazed.

Then Hezilo briefly outlined his plans for the night.

Eckhardt's destruction had been decreed by the Chamberlain
and nothing short of a miracle could save him.  The
utmost caution and secrecy were required.  Benilo, whose
attention would be divided between Theodora and Eckhardt,
was to be dealt with by himself.  The blood of his child cried
for vengeance.  Thus Eckhardt would be free to settle last
accounts with the woman.

Burying his head in his hands the strong man wept like a
disconsolate child, his whole frame shaken by convulsive sobs,
and it was some time, ere he regained sufficient composure to
face Hezilo.

"It will require all your courage," said the harper, rising to
depart.  "Steel your heart against hope or mercy!  I will
await you at sunset at the Church of the Hermits."

And without waiting the Margrave's reply, Hezilo was gone.

Eckhardt felt like one waking from a terrible dream, the
oppression of which remains after its phantoms have vanished.
The suspense of waiting till dusk seemed almost unendurable.
Now that the hour seemed so nigh, the dread hour of final
reckoning, there was a tightening agony at Eckhardt's heart,
an agony that made him long to cry out, to weep, to fling
himself on his knees and pray, pray for deliverance, for oblivion,
for absolute annihilation.  Walking up and down the vineshaded
loggia, he paused now and then to steal a look at the
flaming disk of the sun, that seemed to stand still in the heavens,
while at other times he stared absently into the gnarled stems,
in whose hollow shelter the birds slept and the butterflies
drowsed.

Even as the parted spirit of the dead might ruthfully hover
over the grave of its perished mortal clay, so Eckhardt reviewed
his own forlorn estate, torturing his brain with all manner of
vain solutions.

This night, then,—the night which quenched the light of
this agonizing day, must for ever quench his doubts and fears.
He drew a long breath.  A great weariness weighed down his
spirit.  An irresistible desire for rest came over him.  The late
rebellion, brief but fierce, the constant watch at the palace on
the Aventine, the alarming state of the young King, who was
dying of a broken heart, the futility of all counsel to prevail
upon him to leave this accursed city, the lack of a friend, to
whom he might confide his own misgivings without fear of
betrayal,—all these had broken down his physical strength,
which no amount of bodily exertion would have been able to
accomplish.

After a time he resumed his seat, burying his head in his hands.

The air of the late summer day was heavy and fragrant
with the peculiar odour of decaying leaves, and the splashing
of the fountain, which sent its crystal stream down towards
Santa Maria del Monte, seemed like a lullaby to Eckhardt's
overwrought senses.  Night after night he had not slept at all;
he had not dared to abandon the watch on Aventine for even a
moment.  Now nature asserted her rights.

Lower and lower drooped his aching lids and slowly he was
beginning to slip away into blissful unconsciousness.  How
long he had remained in this state, he scarcely knew, when he
was startled, as by some unknown presence.

Rousing himself with an effort and looking up, he was filled
with a strange awe at the phenomenon which met his gaze.
Right across the horizon that glistened with pale green hues
like newly frozen water, there reposed a cloud-bank, risen
from the Tyrrhene Sea, black as the blackest midnight, heavy
and motionless like an enormous shadow fringed with
tremulous lines of gold.

This cloud-bank seemed absolutely stirless, as if it had
been thrown, a ponderous weight, into the azure vault of
heaven.  Ever and anon silvery veins of lightning shot luridly
through its surface, while poised, as it were immediately above
it, was the sun, looking like a great scarlet seal, a ball of
crimson fire, destitute of rays.

For a time Eckhardt stood lost in the contemplation of this
fantastic sky-phenomenon.  As he did so, the sun plunged
into the engulfing darkness.  Lowering purple shadows crept
across the heavens, but the huge cloud, palpitating with
lightnings, moved not, stirred not, nor changed its shape by
so much as a hair's breadth.

It appeared like a vast pall, spread out in readiness for the
state burial of the world, the solemn and terrible moment:
The End of Time.

Fascinated by an aspect, which in so weird a manner reflected
his own feelings, Eckhardt looked upon the threatening
cloud-bank as an evil omen.  A strange sensation seized him,
as with a hesitating fear not unmingled with wonder, he watched
the lightnings come and go.

A shudder ran through his frame as he paced up and down
the white-pillared Loggia, garlanded with climbing vines,
roses and passion flowers, dying or decayed.

"Would the night were passed," he muttered to himself,
and the man who had stormed the impregnable stronghold
of Crescentius quailed before the impending issue as a child
trembles in the dark.

At the hour appointed he traversed the solitary region of
the Trastevere.  The vast silence, the vast night, were full of
solemn weirdness.  The moon, at her full, soared higher and
higher in the balconies of the East, firing the lofty solitudes of
the heavens with her silver-beams.  But immobile in the
purple cavity of the western horizon there lay that ominous
cloud, nerved as it were with living lightnings, which leaped
incessantly from its centre, like a thousand swords, drawn from
a thousand scabbards.

The deep booming noise of a bell now smote heavily on the
silence.  Oppressed by the weight of unutterable forebodings,
Eckhardt welcomed the sound with a vague sense of relief.
At the Church of the Hermits he was joined by the harper
and together they rapidly traversed the region leading to the
Groves.  In the supervening stillness their ears caught the sound
of harptones, floating through the silent autumnal night.

The higher rising moon outlined with huge angles of light
and shadow the marble palaces, which stood out in strong
relief against a transparent background and the Tiber, wherein
her reflections were lengthened into a glittering column,
was frosted with silvery ripples.

At last they reached the entrance of the groves.

"Be calm!" said Eckhardt's guide.  "Let nothing that you
may see or hear draw you from the path of caution.  Think
that, whatever you may suffer, there are others who may
suffer more!  Silence!  No questions now!  Remember—here
are only foes!"

The harper spoke with a certain harsh impatience, as if he
were himself suffering under a great nervous strain, and
Eckhardt, observing this, made no effort to engage him in
conversation, aside from promising to be guided by his counsel.
He felt ill at ease, however, as one entering a labyrinth from
whose intricate maze he relies only on the firm guidance of
a friend to release him.

They now entered the vast garden, fraught with so many
fatal memories.  At the end of the avenue there appeared the
well-remembered pavilion, and, avoiding the main entrance,
the harper guided Eckhardt through a narrow corridor into
the great hall.

A faint mist seemed to cloud the circle of seats and the
high-pitched voices of the revellers seemed lost in infinite
distance.  In no mood to note particulars, Eckhardt's gaze
penetrated the dizzy glare, in which ever new zones of light
seemed to uprear themselves, leaping from wall to wall like
sparkling cascades.  As in the throes of a terrible nightmare
he stood riveted to the spot, for at that very moment his eyes
encountered a picture which froze the very life-blood in his
veins.

In the background, revealed by the parting draperies there
stood, leaning against one of the rose-marble columns, the
image of Ginevra.  Her robe of crimson fell in two superb folds
from the peaks of her bosom to her feet.  The marble pallor
of her face formed a striking contrast to the consuming fire
of her eyes, which seemed to rove anxiously, restlessly over
the diminished circle of her guests.  The most execrable villain
of them all,—Benilo,—had at her hands met his long-deferred
doom.  Those on whom she had chiefly relied for the
realization of her strange ambition now swung from the gibbets
on Monte Malo,—their executioner Eckhardt.  Strange
irony of fate!  From those remaining, who polluted the hall
with their noisome presence, she had nothing to hope, nothing
to fear.

And this then was the end!

It required Hezilo's almost superhuman efforts to restrain
Eckhardt from committing a deed disastrous in its remotest
consequences to himself and their common purpose.  For in
the contemplation of the woman who had wrecked his life,
a tide of such measureless despair swept through Eckhardt's
heart, that every thought, every desire was drowned in the
mad longing to visit instant retribution on the woman's guilty
head and also to close his own account with life.  But the mood
did not endure.  A strange delirium seized him; the woman's
siren-beauty entranced and intoxicated him like the subtle
perfume of some rare exotic; mingled love and hate surged
up in his heart; he dared not trust himself, for even though
he resented, he could not resist the fatal spell of former days.
The absence of Benilo, of whose doom he was ignorant,
inspired the harper with dire misgivings.  After peering with
ill-concealed apprehension through the shadowy vistas of
remote galleries, he at last whispered to Eckhardt, to follow
him, and they were entering a dimly lighted corridor, leading
into the fateful Grotto, which Eckhardt had visited on that
well-remembered night, when a terrific event arrested their
steps, and caused them to remain rooted to the spot.

A blinding, circular sweep of lightning blazed through the
windows of the pavilion, illumining it from end to end with a
brilliant blue glare, accompanied by a deafening crash and
terrific peal of thunder which shook the very earth beneath.
A flash of time,—an instant of black, horrid eclipse,—then,
with an appalling roar, as of the splitting of huge rocks, the
murky gloom was rent, devoured and swept away by the
sudden bursting forth of fire.  From twenty different parts of
the great hall it seemed at once to spring aloft in spiral coils.
With a wild cry of terror those of the revellers who had not
outright been struck dead by the fiery bolt, rushed towards the
doors, clambering in frenzied fear over the dead, trampling
on the scorched disfigured faces of the dancing girls, on whose
graceful pantomime they had feasted their eyes so short a time
ago.

There was no safety in the pavilion, which a moment had
transformed into a seething furnace.  Volumes of smoke
rolled up in thick, suffocating clouds, and the crimson glare
of the flames illumined the dark night-sky far over the Aventine.

Half mad with fear from the shrieks and groans of the
dying, which resounded everywhere about her, Theodora
stood rooted to the spot, still clinging to the great column.
Over her face swept a strange expression of loathing and
exultation.  Her eyes wandered to the red-tongued flames,
that leaped in eddying rings round the great marble pillars,
creeping every second nearer to the place where she stood,
and in that one glance she seemed to recognize the entire
hopelessness of rescue and the certainty of death.

For a moment the thought seemed terrifying beyond
expression.  None had thought of her,—all had sought
their own safety!  She laughed a laugh of uttermost, bitter
scorn.

At last she seemed to regain her presence of mind.  Turning,
she started to the back of the great pavilion, with the
manifest object of reaching some private way of egress, known
but to herself.  But her intention was foiled.  No sooner had
she gone back than she returned—this exit too was a roaring
furnace.  In terrible reverberations the thunder bellowed
through the heavens, which seemed one vast ocean of flame;
the elements seemed to join hands in the effort at her
destruction:—So be it!  It would extinguish a life of dishonour,
disgrace and despair.

A haughty acceptance of her fate manifested itself in her
stonily determined face.  It would be atonement—though
the end was terrible!

Suddenly she heard a rush close by her side.  Looking up,
she beheld the one she dreaded most on earth to meet, saw
Eckhardt rushing blindly towards her through smoke and
flames, crying frantically:

"Save her!  Save her!"

Her wistful gaze, like that of a fascinated bird, was fixed on
the Margrave's towering stature.

She tarried but a moment.

At the terrible crisis, on one side a roaring furnace,—on
the other the man whom of all mortals she had wronged
past forgiveness, her courage failed her.  Remembering a
secret door, leading to a tower, connected with a remote wing
of the pavilion, where she might yet find safety, she dashed
swift as thought through the panel, which receded at her touch,
and vanished in the dark corridor beyond.  Without heeding
the dangers which might beset his path, Eckhardt flew after her
through the gloom, till he found himself before a spiral
stairway, at the terminus of the passage.  A faint glimmer of light
from above penetrated the gloom, and following it, he was
startled by a faint outcry of terror, as on the last landing, to
which he madly leaped, he found himself once more face to
face with the woman, whom even at this moment he loved
more in the certainty of having lost her, than ever in the pride
and ecstasy of possession.

Seemingly hemmed in by an obstacle, the nature, which he
knew not, she stood before him paralyzed with horror.  As
his hand went out towards her, the gesture seemed to break the
spell, and uttering a despairing shriek, she sprang towards a
door behind the landing and rushed out.

Eckhardt's breath stopped.

A moment,—he heard an outcry of inexpressible horror,—a
struggle, then a hollow dash.  Hardly conscious of his own
actions he uttered a shrill whistle, when the door of the tower
was broken down, and the stairs were suddenly crowded with
the soldiers of the imperial guard, whom the conflagration had
brought to the scene.

"What woman was that?" exclaimed their leader, pointing
to the place whence Theodora had made the fatal leap.

"Whoever she is—she must be dashed to pieces," replied
his companion, rushing up the stairs to the trap-door and
throwing his lighted torch down the murky depths.  But the
light was soon lost in the profound gloom.

"A rope!  A rope!  She must not, she shall not die thus!"
cried Eckhardt in mad, heart-rending despair.

"Here is one, but it is not long enough!" exclaimed the
captain of the guard, hardly able to conceal his mortification
at finding himself face to face with his general.

"Hark!  She groans!  Help!  Help me!" exclaimed Eckhardt,
and tearing his cloak into strips, he fastened them
together.  The work was swiftly completed.  These strips
fastened to the rope and securely knotted, Eckhardt tied around
his waist, and though the leader of the men-at-arms sought to
dissuade him from his desperate purpose, he started down,
clinging and swinging over a dreadful depth.

The captain of the guard swung the torch down after him as
far as possible, but soon the light grew misty, the voices above
indistinct, and it seemed to Eckhardt as if he were encompassed
by a black mist.  Still he continued his descent.  His next
sensation was that of an intolerable stench and a burning
heat in the hand, caused no doubt by friction with the rope.
A difficulty in breathing, increased darkness and singing
noises in his ears were successive sensations; he began to feel
dizzy and a dread assailed him, that he was about to swoon and
abandon his hold.  Suddenly he felt the last notch of the rope
and, not knowing what depth remained, argued that any further
effort was in vain.  Extending first one arm, then another, he
groped wildly about, striving to shout for light; but his voice
died in the gloom.  Gasping and almost stifled as he was, he
made one last desperate effort, when suddenly his groping hand
grasped something, which appeared to him either like hair or
weeds.  At this critical moment the captain of the guard
sent down a lamp, which he had procured.  It fell hissing
in the mire, but it afforded him sufficient light to see that the
object of his search lay buried in the slime, and that she was
gasping convulsively.  Eckhardt's strength was now almost
spent, but this sight seemed to restore it all.  Noting a
projecting ledge of stone lower down, he leaped upon it and was thus
obliged to abandon his hold on the rope.  Eckhardt seized the
woman by the gown, dragged her from the mire and making
a desperate leap, regained the ledge, then signalled to those
above to draw him up by jerking the rope.

Motionless she lay on his arm and it was only by twisting
it in a peculiar manner round the rope, that he was enabled
to support the terrible burden.  For a time they hung
suspended over the abyss, yet they were gradually nearing the
top.  If he could only endure the agony of his twisted limbs
a little longer, both were safe.  He could not shout, for he felt
that suffocation must ensue; his eyes and ears seemed bursting
as from some stunning weight; and a deadly faintness seemed
to benumb his limbs.  Suddenly, as by some miracle, the
burden seemed lightened, though he felt it still reclining in his
arms.  A wonderful support seemed to raise up his own
sinking frame, then all grew bright and numerous faces
strained down on him.  In a few moments he was on a level with
the floor and many arms stretched out, to help him land.
Heedless of the roaring sea of fire in the pavilion, they carried
the wretched woman to the landing, where they laid her on
the floor, attempting, for a time in vain, to restore her.  She
seemed suffering from some severe internal injury and her lips
bubbled with gore.  At length she opened her eyes and with a
shriek of agony made signs that she was suffocating and
desired to be raised.  Eckhardt, who stood beside her, raised her,
and as he did so, she regarded him with a wild and piteous
gaze and murmured his name in a tone which went to the heart
of all.

As he bent over her, she made a convulsive effort to rise.

"I have slain the fiend, who came between us—forgive
me if you can—" she muttered, then gasping: "Heaven
have mercy on my soul!" she fell back into Eckhardt's arms.

At a sign from the Margrave the men-at-arms withdrew,
leaving him alone with his gruesome burden.

After they had descended, he bent over the prostrate form,
he had loved so well, touching with gentle fingers the soft, dark
hair, which lay against his breast.  Once,—he recalled the
mad delirium of holding her thus close to his heart.  Now
there was something dreary, weird, and terrible in what
would under other conditions have been unspeakable rapture.
A chill as of death ran through him as he supported the dying
woman in his arms.  Her silken robe, her perfumed hair, the
cold contact of the gems about her,—all these repelled him
strangely; his soul was groaning under the anguish, his brain
began to reel with a nameless, dizzy horror.

At last she stirred.  Her body quivered in his hold, consciousness
returned for a brief moment, and, with a heavy sigh, she
whispered as from the depths of a dream:

"Eckhardt!"

A fierce pang convulsed the heart of the unhappy man.
He started so abruptly, that he almost let her drop from his
supporting arms.  But his voice was choked; he could not
speak.

A groan,—a convulsive shudder,—a last sigh,—and
Theodora's spirit had flown from the lacerated flesh.

In silent anguish Eckhardt knelt beside the body of the
woman, heedless of the hurricane which raged without, heedless
of the flames, which, creeping closer and closer, began to lick
the tower with their crimson tongues.  At last, aroused by the
warning cries of the men-at-arms below, Eckhardt staggered
to his feet with the dead body, and scarcely had he emerged
from the tower, when a terrible roar, a deafening crash struck
his ear.  The roof and walls of the great pavilion had
fallen in and millions of sparks hissed up into the flaming
ether.

For a moment Eckhardt paused, stupefied by the sheer horror
of the scene.  The pavilion was now but a hissing, shrieking
pyramid of flames; the hot and blinding glare almost too much
for human eyes to endure.  Yet so fascinated was he with the
sublime terror of the spectacle that he could scarcely turn
away from it.  A host of spectral faces seemed to rise out of
the flames and beckon to him, to return,—when a tremendous
peal of thunder, rolling in eddying vibrations through the
heavens, recalled him to the realization of the moment, and
gave the needful spur to his flagging energies.  Raising his
aching eyes, Eckhardt saw straight before him a gloomy
archway, appearing like the solemn portal of some funeral
vault, dark and ominous, yet promising relief for the moment.
Stumbling over the dead bodies of Roxané and Roffredo and
several other corpses strewn among fallen blocks of marble,
and every now and then looking back in irresistible fascination
on the fiery furnace in his rear, he carried his lifeless burden
to the nearest shelter.  He dared not think of the beauty of
that dead face, of its subtle slumbrous charm, and stung to a
new sense of desperation he plunged recklessly into the dark
aperture, which seemed to engulf him like the gateway of some
magic cavern.  He found himself in a circular, roofless court,
paved with marble, long discoloured by climate and age.
Here he tenderly laid his burden down, and kneeling by
Ginevra's side, bid his face in his hands.

A second crash, that seemed to rend the very heavens,
caused Eckhardt at last to wake from his apathy of despair.
A terrible spectacle met his eyes.  The east wall of the tower,
in which Ginevra had sought refuge and found death, had
fallen out; the victorious fire roared loudly round its summit,
enveloping the whole structure in clouds of smoke and jets of
flame; whose lurid lights crimsoned the murky air like a wide
Aurora Borealis.  But on the platform of the tower there stood
a solitary human being, cut off from retreat, enveloped by the
roaring element, by a sea of flame!

With a groan of anguish, Eckhardt fixed his straining eyes
on the dark form of Hezilo the harper, whom no human
intervention could save from his terrible doom.  Whether his
eagerness, to avenge his dead child or her betrayer, had carried
him too far, whether in his fruitless search for the Chamberlain
he had grown oblivious of the perils besetting his path,
whether too late he had thought of retreat,—clearly defined
against the lurid, flame-swept horizon his tall dark form stood
out on the crest of the tower;—another moment of breathless
horrid suspense and the tower collapsed with a deafening
crash, carrying its lonely occupant to his perhaps self-elected
doom.

All that night Eckhardt knelt by the dead body of his wife.
When the bleak, gray dawn of the rising day broke over the
crest of the Sabine hills he rose, and went away.  Soon after a
company of monks appeared and carried Theodora's remains
to the mortuary chapel of San Pancrazio, where they were to
be laid to their last and eternal rest.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VALE ROMA`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   VALE ROMA

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i.jpg
   :lines: 5

It was the eve of All Souls Day
in the year nine hundred ninety
nine,—the day so fitly recalling
the fleeting glories of summer,
of youth, of life, a day of
memories and tributes offered
up to the departed.

Afar to westward the sun,
red as a buckler fallen from
Vulcan, still cast his burning
reflections.  On the horizon with changing sunset tints glowed
the departing orb, brightening the crimson and russet foliage
on terrace and garden walls.  At last the burning disk
disappeared amid a mass of opalescent clouds, which had risen
in the west; the fading sunset hues swooned to the gray of
twilight and the breath of scanty flowers, the odour of dead
leaves touched the air with perfume faint as the remembered
pathos of autumn.  No breeze stirred the dead leaves still
clinging to their branches, no sound broke the silence, save
from a cloister the hum of many droning voices.  Now and
then the air was touched with the fragrance of hayfields,
reclaimed here and there upon the Campagna, and mists were
slowly descending upon the snow-capped peak of Soracté.
In the dim purple haze of the distance the circle of walls,
a last vestige of the defence of the ancient world, stood
a sun-browned line of watch-towers against the horizon.
From their crenelated ramparts at long distances, a sentinel
looked wearily upon the undulating stretch of vacant, fading
green.

In the portico of the imperial palace on the Aventine sat
Eckhardt, staring straight before him.  Since the terrible
night, which had culminated in the crisis of his life, the then
mature man seemed to have aged decades.  The lines in his
face had grown deeper, the furrows on his brow lowered over
the painfully contracted eyebrows.  No one had ventured to
speak to him, no one to break in upon his solitude.  The world
around him seemed to have vanished.  He heard nothing, he
saw nothing.  His heart within him seemed to be a thing dead
to all the world,—to have died with Ginevra.  Only now and
then he gazed with longing, wistful glances towards the
far-off northern horizon, where the Alps raised their glittering
crests,—a boundary line, not to be transgressed with impunity.
Would he ever again see the green, waving forests of his
Saxon-land, would his foot ever again tread the mysterious dusk of
the glades over which pines and oaks wove their waving
shadows, those glades once sacred to Odhin and the Gods of the
Northland?  Those glades undefiled by the poison-stench of
Rome?  How he longed for that purer sphere, where he might
forget—forget?  Can we forget the fleeting ray of sunlight,
that has brightened our existence, and departing has left sorrow
and anguish and gloom?

Eckhardt's heart was heavy to breaking.

As evening wore on, it was evident, that there was some new,
great commotion in the city.  From every quarter pillars of
dun smoke rose up in huge columns which, spreading fan-like,
hung sullenly in the yellow of the sunset.  Houses were burning.
Swords were out.  In the distance straggling parties could be
seen, hurrying hither and thither.

"There is a devil's carnival brewing, or I am forsworn,"
muttered the Margrave as he arose and entered the palace.
There he ordered every gate to be closed and barricaded.  He
knew Roman treachery, and he knew the weakness of the
garrison.

The roar of the populace grew louder and nearer, minute by
minute.  Eckhardt had hardly reached the imperial
antechamber, ere the crest of the Aventine fairly swarmed with a
rebellious mob, whose numbers were steadily increasing.
Already they outnumbered the imperial guard a hundred to one.

It soon became evident, that their clamour could not be
appeased by peaceful persuasion.  Disregarding Eckhardt's
protests, Otto had made one last effort to try the spell of his
person upon the Romans;—but hootings and revilings had
been the only reply vouchsafed by the rabble of Rome to the
son of Theophano.

"Where is Benilo?  We will speak to Benilo,—the friend
of the people!" they shouted, and when he failed to appear,
they cried: "They have slain him, as they slew Crescentius,"
and a shower of stones hailed against the walls of the palace.

Otto escaped unscathed.  Once more in his chamber he
broke down.  His powers were waning; his resistance spent.
The death of Crescentius,—the loss of Stephania filled him
with unutterable despair.  He thought of the mysterious death
of Benilo, whose gashed body some fisherman had discovered
in the Tiber, and whose real character Eckhardt's account of
his crimes and misdeeds had at last revealed to him.  He knew
now that he had been the dupe of a traitor, who had
systematically undermined the lofty structure of his dreams, whose
fall was to bury under its ruins the last of the glorious Saxon
dynasty,—a traitor, who had deliberately set about to break
the heart whose unspoken secret he had read.  And this was
the end!

"Hark!  The Romans are battering at the gates!" Haco,
the captain of the guard, addressed Eckhardt, entering
breathlessly and unannounced.

"Where they shall batter long enough," Eckhardt growled
fiercely.  "The gates are triple brass and bolted!  Hold the
yelping curs in check, till we are ready!"

Haco departed and Eckhardt now prepared Otto for the
necessity of flight.  All Rome was in arms against them!  This
time it was not the Senator.  The people themselves were bent
upon Otto's capture or death.  Resistance was madness.
Without a word Otto yielded.  Sick, body and soul, he cared no
longer.  A slow fever seemed to consume him, since Stephania
had gone from him.  The malady was past cure,—for he
wished to die.  The mute grief of the stricken youth went to
Eckhardt's heart.  Of his own despair he dared not even think
at this hour, when the destinies of a dynasty weighed upon his
shoulders, weighed him down:—he must get Otto safely out
of Rome—at any, at every cost.

"Hark, below!"

An uproar of voices and heavy blows against the portals
rang up to their ears.

Eckhardt seized a torch and, sword in hand, opened the
secret panel.

"The back way,—the garden,—'tis for our lives!" he
whispered to Otto, who had hastily thrown a dark mantle over
his person which might serve to evade detention in case they
met some chance straggler.  The panel closed behind them and
Eckhardt locked every door in the long corridor, through
which they passed, to delay pursuit.  They descended a flight
of stairs, and found themselves in a hall, which through a
ruined portico, terminated in a garden.  Here Eckhardt
extinguished the torch and they paused and listened.

Before them lay a deserted garden with marble statues
and weed-grown terraces.  The gravel walks were strewn with
tiny twigs and leaves of faded summer, and stained in places
with a dark green mould.  There was the soft splash of
water trickling from huge mossy vases, and here and there
through a break in the foliage, peered an arrowy shaft of
moonlight.

Here they were to await the arrival of Haco and his men.
Suddenly the glint of a halberd beyond the wall caught
Eckhardt's ever watchful eye; he counted three in succession on
the other side of the wall.  The Romans seemed bent to deprive
them of their only way of flight.  Eckhardt glanced about.
The wall on the western side seemed unguarded.  Here
the Aventine fell in a steep declivity towards the Tiber.
Eckhardt perceived there was but one course and took it
instantly.

At this moment Haco and his men-at-arms emerged with
drawn swords from the laurel thickets, in whose concealment
they had awaited their leader and King.  Motioning to Otto
and his companions to imitate his movements, Eckhardt
crouched down and stole cautiously along the edge of the wall.
Meanwhile the tumult without was increased by the hoarse
braying of a horn.  Men could be seen rushing about with
drawn swords or any other weapons close at hand, staves,
clubs and sticks, shouting and yelling in direst confusion.

Amidst this uproar the small band reached the edge of the
Tiber and their repeated signals caused a boat rowed by a
gigantic fellow to approach.  The oarsman, however, insisted
on his pay before he would take them across.

After they had safely reached the opposite shore they bound
and gagged the owner of the craft, to insure his secrecy.  Then
the party sped up a narrow lane and paused before a ruinous
house which, to judge from its black and crumbling beams,
seemed to have been recently destroyed by fire.  Here they
waited until one of the party secured their steeds.

During all this time Otto had not spoken a word.

Now that he was about to mount the steed, which was to
bear him from Rome for ever, he turned with one last
heart-breaking look toward the city.

A desire, fierce as that of hunger, wearing as that of sleep,
filled him,—the desire of death.

At last he rode away with the others.

The night grew darker.  The sky was full of clouds and the
wind shrieked through the spectral branches of the pines.
The travellers pursued their way along the well beaten tracks
of the Flaminian Way, keeping a constant look-out for
surprises.  They re-crossed the Tiber at a ford above the city,
and then only they brought their steeds to a more leisurely gait.

Gradually the ground began to ascend.

A turn in the road brought them to a high plateau.  Its
rising knolls were crowned with broad and ancient plane-trees,
in the midst of which towered a gibbet, from which
swung the bodies of two malefactors, recently executed.  Otto
shuddered at the omen.  Death on every turn,—death at
every step.  The moon at fitful intervals cast from between
the rifts in the clouds a feeble radiance upon desolate fields.
A company of hungry crows rose at the approach of the
horsemen from the stubble, filled the air with their cawing and
flapped their way swiftly out of sight.  At that moment a
horseman galloped past with great rapidity, seeming eagerly to
scan the cavalcade.  He was closely muffled and had vanished
in the night, ere he could be hailed or recognized.

Rome swiftly vanished behind them.  After passing the
last scattered houses on the outskirts, they finally reached the
open Campagna.  The darkness increased and the night wore
every appearance of proving a dismal one.  The wind was high
and swept the clouds wildly over the face of the moon.

In silence they proceeded on their way, until they espied a
low range of hills, white on the summits with lightning.  A
dense wood skirted the road on the left for several miles.  But
as far as the eye could penetrate the murky twilight, no human
being, no human habitation appeared.

In the ruins of an old monastery they spent the night, and
for the first in three, Otto slept.  But his sleep did not refresh
him, nor restore his strength.  Throughout his fitful slumbers,
he saw the pale face of Stephania, the face, which with so mad
a longing he had dreamed into his heart, the heart she had
broken, but which loved her still.

Gloomily the morning light of the succeeding day broke
upon the Roman Campagna.  The sun was hidden behind a
lowering sky and fitful gusts of wind swept the great, barren
expanse.  Undaunted, though their hearts were filled with
dire misgivings, the small band continued their march,
northward, ever northward,—towards the goal of their journey,
the Castel of Paterno, perched on the distant slopes of
Soracté.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PATERNO`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   Book the Third

.. class:: center xx-large bold white-space-pre-line

   Our Lady
   of Death

.. vspace:: 4

..

   |    "As I came through the desert, thus it was,
   |  As I came through the desert: From the right
   |  A shape came slowly with a ruddy light,
   |  A woman with a red lamp in her hand,
   |  Bareheaded and barefooted on that strand.
   |  A large black sign was on her breast that bowed,
   |  A broad black band ran down her snow-white shroud.
   |  That lamp she held, was her own burning heart,
   |  Whose blood-drops trickled step by step apart."
   |                                        —*James Thomson*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

PATERNO

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The sun was nigh the horizon,
and the whole west glowed with
exquisite colour, reflected in the
watery moors of the Campagna,
as a troop of horsemen
approached the high tableland
skirting the Cimminian
foothills.  Not a human being was
visible for many miles around;
only a few wild fowl fluttered
over the pools and reedy islets of the marshes and the lake of
Bolsena gleamed crimson in the haze of the sunset.

The boundless, undulant plain spread before them, its farms,
villas and aqueducts no less eloquent of death than the tombs
they had passed on the silent Via Appia.  The still air and the
deep hush seemed to speak to man's soul as with the voice of
eternity.  On the left of the horsemen yawned a deep ravine,
from which arose towering cliffs, crowned with monasteries
and convents.  On their right lay the mountain chains of the
Abruzzi, resembling dark and troubled sea-waves, and to
southward the view was bounded by the billowy lines of the
Sabine hills, rolling infinitely away.  Beyond they saw the
villages scattered through the gray Campagna and in the
farthest distance the mountain shadows began to darken over
the roofs of ancient Tusculum and that second Alba which
rises in desolate neglect above the vanished palaces of Pompey
and Domitian.

It was the day on which is observed the poetic Festa dell'
Ottobrata, a festival of pagan significance, with the archaic
dance and garlanded processions of harvest and vintage, when
the townsfolk go out into the country, to look upon the mellow
tints of autumn, to walk in the vineyards, to taste the purple
grapes, and to breathe the fragrance, filling the air with odours
finer than the flavour of wine.  The fields were mellowed to
yellow stubble and the creepers touched by the first chill of
autumn hung in crimson garlands along the russet hedges.
Here and there, among the stately poplars loomed up farmhouses
with thatched roofs, which from afar resembled pointed
haystacks on the horizon.  At intervals among the crimson and
russet leafage rose a spectral cypress, like a sombre shadow.
In the haze of the distance crooked olive-trees raised their
branches in tints of silver-gray.  The air was still, but for an
occasional hum of insect life.  The faint, white outlines of the
Apennines shone brilliant and glistening in the evening glow.
The travellers passed Camaldoli with its convents reared upon
high, almost inaccessible cliffs; the cloisters of Monte Cassino
had vanished behind them in silvery haze.  They approached
Paterno by a road skirted with villas and gardens, with ancient
statues and shady alleys.  The proximity of the mountains
made the air chill; here and there a ray of sunlight filtered
through the branches of the plane-trees.

High Paterno towered above, among its rocks and steeps.

Ever since their flight from Rome, Otto had been in the
throes of a benumbing lethargy, which had deprived him of
interest in everything, even life itself.  Vain had been his
companions' effort to rouse him from his brooding state,
vainly had they pointed out to him the beauties of the
landscape.  Was it the ghost of Johannes Crescentius, the Senator
of Rome, that was haunting the son of Theophano?

After having crossed a swinging bridge, which swayed to
and fro under the weight of their iron mail, they arrived at a
narrow causeway, above which, like some contemplative
spirit above the conflicting problems of life, rose the cloisters,
environing the ancient Castel of Paterno.  Eckhardt knocked
at the barred gate with the hilt of his sword, whereupon a
monk appeared at the window of a tower above the portcullis,
and after reconnoitring, set some machinery in motion, by
which the portcullis was raised.  They then found themselves
in a long, narrow causeway cut in the rock.  The monk who
had admitted them disappeared; another ushered them into
the great hall of the cloister.  The air was full of the lingering
haze of License, and traces of devotional paintings on the
weather-beaten walls appeared like fragments of prayers in a
world-worn mind.

The hall had been made from a natural cavern and was of
an exceedingly gloomy aspect, being of great extent, with deep
windows only on one side, hewn in the solid granite.  It was
at intervals crossed by arches, marking the termination of
several galleries leading to remoter parts of the monastery.
In the centre was a long stone table, hewn from the rock; a
pulpit, supported on a pillar was similarly sculptured in the
wall.  Five or six pine-wood torches, stuck at far intervals
in the granite, shed a dismal illumination through the gloom,
enhanced rather than diminished by the glow of red embers
on a vast hearth at the farthest extremity of the hall.

Eckhardt was about to prefer his request to the monk, who
had conducted them hither, when he was interrupted by the
entrance of the abbot and a long train of monks from their
devotions.  The monks advanced in solemn silence, their
heads sunk humbly on their breasts; their superior so worn
with vigils and fasts, that his gaunt and powerful frame
resembled a huge skeleton.  He was the only one of the group
who uttered a word of welcome to his guests.

After having ordered Haco to attend to the wants of his
lord, Eckhardt sought a conference with the abbot on matters
which lay close to his heart.  For his sovereign was ill—and
his illness seemed to defy human skill.  The abbot listened to
Eckhardt's recital of the past events, but his diagnosis was far
from quieting the latter's fears.

"You learn to speak and think very dismally among these
great, sprawling pine forests," Eckhardt said moodily, at the
conclusion of the conference.

"We learn to die!" replied the monk with melancholy austerity.

Consideration for his sovereign's safety, however, prompted
Eckhardt, who had been informed that straggling bands of
their pursuers had followed them to the base of the hill, to
continue that same night under guidance of a monk, the
ascent to the almost impregnable heighths of Castel Paterno.
Here Otto and his small band were welcomed by Count
Tammus, the commander, who placed himself and his men-at-arms
at the disposal of the German King.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`MEMORIES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   MEMORIES

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: O
   :image: images/img-cap-o.jpg
   :lines: 5

Otto found himself in a state
chamber, whose gloomy
vastness was lighted, or rather
darkened by one single taper.
Through the high oval windows
in the deep recess of the wall
peered an errant ray of
moonlight, which illumined the quaint
monastic paintings on the walls,
and crossing the yellow candle-light,
imbued them with a strange ghostly glare.

When his host had ministered to his comfort and served
him with the frugal fare of the cloister, Otto hinted his desire
for sleep, and his trusty Saxons entered on their watch
before their sovereign's chamber.

At last, left alone, Otto listened with a heavy heart to the
monotonous tread of the sentries.  It seemed to him as if he
could now take a survey of the events of his life, and pass
sentence upon it with the impartiality of the future chronicler.
Recollection roused up recollection; and as in a panorama,
the scenes of his short, but eventful career passed in review
before his inner eye.  He thought of what he was, contrasting
it painfully with all he might have been.  The image of the one
being, for whom his soul yearned in its desolation, with the
blinding hunger of man for woman and woman's love, rose up
before his eyes, and for the first time he thought of
death,—death,—in its full and ghastly actuality.

What was it, this death?  Was it a sleep?  Merely the
absence, not the privation of those powers and senses, called
life?  What sort of passage must the thinking particle pass
through, whatever it may be,—ere it stood naked of its clay?
The breaking of the eyes in darkness,—what then succeeded?
Would the thinking atom survive,—would it become the
nothing that it was?

The aspect of the chamber was not one to dispel the gloomy
visions that haunted him.  It was scantily furnished in the
crude style of the tenth century, with massive tables and
chairs.  A curious tapestry of eastern origin, representing some
legend of the martyrs, divided it from an adjoining cabinet
serving at once as an oratory and sleeping apartment.  A low
fire, burning in the chimney to dispel the miasmas of the
marshes, shed a crimson glow over the chamber and its lonely
inmate.

For a long time those who watched before his door heard
him walk restlessly up and down.  At last weariness came over
him and he threw himself exhausted into a chair.  Then the
haunting memory of Stephania conjured up before his
half-dreaming senses an alluring, shimmering Fata Morgana—a
castle on one of those far-away Apulian head-lands, with
their purpling hills in the background and the scent of strange
flowers in the air.  On many a summer morning they should
walk hand in hand through the Laburnum groves, and find
their love anew.  But the amber sheen of the landscape faded
into the violet of night.  The vision faded into nothingness.
A peal of thunder reverberated through the heavens,—Otto
started with a moan, rose, and staggered to his couch.

.. _`"The haunting memories of Stephania"`:

.. figure:: images/img-438.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "The haunting memories of Stephania."

   "The haunting memories of Stephania."

He closed his eyes; but sleep would not come.

Where was she now?  Where was Stephania?  Weeks
had passed, since they had last met.  It seemed an eternity
indeed!  He should have remained in Rome, till he was assured
of her fate!  She had left him with words of hatred, of scorn,
bitter and cruel.  And yet!  How gladly he would have saved
the man, his mortal enemy, forsooth, had it lain in his power.
Gladly?—No!  The man who had thrice forsworn, thrice
broken his faith, deserved his doom.  Now he was dead.  But
Rome was lost.  What mattered it?  There was but one
devouring thought in Otto's mind.  Where was Stephania?
The mad longing for her became more intense with every
moment.  Now that the worst had come to pass, now that the
stunning blow had fallen, he must rouse himself, he must
rally.  He must combat this fever, which was slowly consuming
him; he must find her, see her once more on earth, if but
to tell her how he loved her, her and no other woman.  Would
the pale phantom of Crescentius still stand between them,—still
part them as of yore?  Not if their loves were equal.  His
hands were stainless of that blood.  On the morrow he would
despatch Haco to Rome.  Surely some one would have seen
her; surely some one knew where the wife of the Senator of
Rome was hiding her sorrow,—her grief.

The dim light of the ceremonial lamp, which burned with
a dull, veiled flame before an image of the crucified Christ,
flickered, as if fanned by a passing breath.

There was deep silence in the king's bed-chamber, and the
drawn tapestry shut out every sound from without.

Noiselessly a secret panel in the wall opened behind Otto's
couch.  Noiselessly it closed in the gray stone.  Then an
exquisite white hand and arm were thrust through the draperies
and the lovely face of Stephania beamed on the sleeping youth.
She was pale as death, but the transparency of her skin and
the absolute perfection of her form and features made her the
image of an Olympian Goddess.  Her dark hair, bound by a
fillet of gold, enhanced the marble pallor of the exquisite face.

Never had the wonderful eyes of Stephania seemed so full
of fire and of life.  Stooping over the sleeper, she softly
encircled his head with her snowy arms and pressed a long kiss
on the dry, fevered lips.

With a moan Otto opened his eyes.  For a moment he
stared as if he faced an apparition from dream-land.—His
breath stopped, then he uttered a choked outcry of delirious
joy, while his arms tightly encircled the head which bent over
him.

"At last!  At last!  At last!  Oh, how I have longed, how
I have pined for you!  Stephania—my darling—my love—tell
me that you do not hate me—but is it you indeed,—is it
you?  How did you come here—the guards,—Eckhardt,—"

He paused with a terrible fear in his heart, ever and ever
caressing the dark head, the beloved face, whose eyes held his
own with their magnetic spell.  She suffered his kisses and
caresses while stroking his damp brow with soothing hand.
Then with a grave look she enjoined silence and caution,
crept to the door of the adjoining room and locked it from
within.

"They guard you so well, not a ghost could enter," she
said with the sweet smile of by-gone days.

He arose and drew the curtains closer.  Then he sat down
by her side.

"How came you here, Stephania?" he whispered with
renewed fear and dread.  "If you are discovered,—God have
mercy on you,—and me!"

She shook her head.

"I have followed you hither from Rome,—I passed you
on the night of your flight.  Count Tammus, the commander of
Paterno, at one time the friend of the Senator of Rome, has
offered me the hospitality of the castelio.  No one knows of my
presence here, save an old monk, who believes me some
itinerant pilgrim, in search of the End of Time," she whispered
with her far-away look.  "The End of Time."

"They say it is close at hand," Otto replied, holding her
hands tightly in his.  "Oh, Stephania, how beautiful you are!
That which has broken my spirit, seems not to have touched
your life!"

"My life is dead," she replied.  "What remains,—remains
through you.  Therefore time has lacked power.  But
that which has been and is no more, stands immovable before
my soul."

He gazed at her with large fear-struck eyes.

"Then—your heart is no longer mine?"

The grasp of the hands in his own tightened.

"Would I be here, silly dreamer?  I love you—my heart
knows no change.  It loved but once—and you!"

All the happiness, slumbering in the deep eyes of the son of
Theophano, burst forth as in a glorious aureole of light.

"Then you have never—"

She raised her hand forbiddingly.

"I could not give to him who is gone that which I gave to
you!  When we first met I was your foe.  I hated you with all
the hate which a Roman has for the despoiler of his lands.
When I gave you my love,—which, alas, was not mine to
give, I did so, a powerless instrument of Fate.  Side by side
have we trod life's narrow path,—neither of us could turn
to right or left without standing accounted to the other.  It
was not ours to say love this one or that other.  We were
brought together by that same mysterious force, to which it is
vain to cry halt.  We knew,—I knew,—that it must,
sooner or later, carry us to doom and death; but resistlessly
the whirlwind had taken us up in its glistening cloud: Thus
are we lost;—you and I!"

He listened to her with a great fear in his soul.

"How cold your hands are, my love," he whispered.  "Cold
as if the flow of blood had ceased.  Can you feel how it rushes
through my veins,—so hot—so boiling hot?"

"You have the fever!  Therefore my hands appear cold to
you.  But,—you spoke truly,—in my hand is death,—and
death is cold!  Life I have none,—you have taken it from me!"

"Stephania!"

It sounded like the last outcry of a broken heart.

"Why recall that which could not be averted?  Were it
mine to change it, oh, that I could!"

"Do you really wish it?"

"I wish but your happiness.  Can you doubt?"

"I do not doubt.  I love you!"

"Stephania—my darling,—my all!"

And he kissed her eyes, her lips, her hair, and she suffered
his caresses as one wrapt in a blissful dream.

"I learned you were stricken with the fever,—the last
defence left to us by nature against our foes.  I have come, to
watch over you, to care for you,—to nurse you back to
health,—to life—"

"And you braved the dangers that beset your path on every
turn?"

"How should I fear,—with such love in my heart for you!"

"Then you—will remain?" he whispered, his very life in
his eyes.

"For a time," she answered, in a halting tone, which passed
not unremarked.

"And then?" he queried.

Her head sank.

"I know not!"

"Then I will tell you, my own love!  We will return to
Rome together, you and I; Stephania, the empress of the
West,—would not that reconcile your Romans,—appease
their hate?"

Stephania gazed for a moment thoughtfully at Otto, then
she shook her head.

"I fear," she replied after a pause, "we shall nevermore
return to Rome."

As she spoke, her soft fingers stroked caressingly the youth's
head, which rested on her bosom, while her right hand remained
tightly clasped in his.

"I do not understand you," he said with a pained look.

"Do not let us speak of it now," she replied.  "You are
ill;—the fever burns in your blood.  It likes you well, this
Roman fever,—and yet you persist in returning hither ever
and ever,—as to your destiny—"

"You are my destiny, Stephania!  I cannot live without
you!  Had you not come, I should have died!  God, you
cannot know how I love you, how I worship you, how I
worship the very air you breathe.  Stephania!  On that terrible,
never-to-be-forgotten day, when your words planted death in
my heart, he, who of all my Saxons hates you with a hatred
strong and enduring as death, warned me of you!  'Must you
love a Roman,' he said to me—'and of all Romans, Stephania,
the wife of the Senator?  Once in the toils of the Sorceress,
you are lost!  Nothing can save you.'—Can I say to my
heart, you shall love this one,—or you shall not love this one?
Shall I say to my soul, you shall harbour the image of this
one, but that other shall be to you even as a barred Eden,
guarded by the angel with the flaming sword?  I have seen the
maidens of my native land; I have seen the women of Rome;—but
my heart was never touched until we met.  My soul leaped
forth to meet your own, when first we stood face to face in
the chapel of the Confessor.  Stephania,—my love for you
is so great that I fear you."

"And why should you fear me?  Were I here, did I not love you?"

"My life has been a wondrous one," he spoke after a
pause.  "From dazzling sun-kissed heights I have been
hurled into the blackest abyss of despair.  And what is my
crime?  Wherein have I sinned?  I have loved a woman,—a
woman wondrous fair,—Stephania!"

"You have loved the wife of the Senator of Rome!"

His eyes drooped.  For a time neither spoke.

"Thrice have I crossed the Alps, to see, to rule this fabled
land,—and now I want but rest,—peace,—Stephania—"
he said with a heart-breaking smile.

"You are tired, my love," replied the beautiful Roman.
"From this hour, I shall be your leech,—I shall be with you,
to share your solitude,—to watch over you till the dread
fever is broken.  And then—"

"And then?" he repeated with anxious look.

"But will you not weary of me?" she said, avoiding the
question.

He drew her close to him.

"My sweetheart—-my own—"

"And you will not fear, you will trust and obey me?"

"Were you to give me poison with your own hands, I would
drain the goblet without fear or doubt."

Stephania had arisen.  She was pale as death.

"If love were all!" she muttered.  "If love were all!"

Then she drew the curtains closer and extinguished the light.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CONSUMMATION`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CONSUMMATION

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: S
   :image: images/img-cap-s.jpg
   :lines: 5

Some weeks had elapsed since
Otto's arrival at Paterno.  But
the fever which consumed the
son of Theophano had not
yielded to the skill of the
monkish mediciners, though a change
for the better had been noticed
after the first night of the King's
arrival.  But it lasted only a
short time and all the danger
symptoms returned anew.  The monks shook their heads and
the hooded disciples of Aesculapius conversed in hushed
whispers, regarding the strange ailment, which would not
cede before their antidotes.  But they continued their
unavailing efforts to save the life of the last of the glorious
Saxon dynasty, the grandson of the vanquisher of the Magyars,
the son of the vanquisher of the Saracens.

It was a bleak December evening.

At sunset a mist rose from the fields and the clouds grew
heavier with every hour.  The rain-drops hung on the branches
of the plane-trees, until an occasional stir sent them pattering
down.

Otto lay within, asleep.

In the door-way sat Eckhardt, muffled in a cloak.  Near-by,
half recumbent under a blanket, the cowl drawn over his face,
sat the leech, his eyes fixed upon the log-fire on the hearth, as
it sent showers of sparks into the murky darkness.  In their
search for fire-wood the monks had brought from the edge of
a neighbouring mill-pond the debris of a skiff, whose planks
had for years been alternately soaked in water and dried in the
sun.  When tossed upon the blaze of forest branches, these
fragments emitted an odour sweet as oriental spices and their
flames brightened with prismatic tints.  But to the leech's
brooding gaze their lurid embers seemed touched with the
spell of some unholy incantation.

Without the sick-chamber two sentries, chilled and drowsy,
leaned against a column supporting the low vaulting, their
halberds clasped between their folded arms.

After a pause of some duration, Eckhardt arose and entering
Otto's chamber bent over the couch on which he lay.  After
having convinced himself by the youth's regular breathing
that he was resting and did not require his attendance, the
Margrave strode from the sick-chamber.  The fever was
intermittent; now it came, now it left the youth's body.  But the
pale wan face and the sunken eyes gave rise to the gravest fears.

Night came swiftly and with it the intense hush deepened.
Only the pattering of rain-drops broke the stillness.  In the
sick-chamber nothing was to be heard save the regular breathing
of the sleeper.

Thus the hours wore on.  After the monk and Eckhardt had
departed for the night, the secret panel opened noiselessly and
Stephania entered the apartment with a strange expression of
triumph and despair in her look.  She glanced round, but her
eyes passed unheedingly over their surroundings; she saw only
that there was no one in the chamber, that no one had seen
her enter.  There was something utterly desperate in that
glance.  Noiselessly she stepped to the narrow oval window
gazing out into the mist-veiled landscape.

But it seemed without consciousness.

A single thought seemed to have frozen her brain.

She stepped to Otto's couch and for a moment bent over him.

Then she retreated, as if seized with a secret terror.

For a few moments she stood behind him, with closed eyes,
her face almost stony with dread and the fear of something
unknown.

Near the bed there stood a pitcher which the monks
replenished every evening with water cold from a mountain
spring.  Approaching it, she took a powder from her bosom
and shook it into it, every grain.  Then she turned the pitcher
round and round, to mix the fine powder, which stood on the
surface.  Suddenly she started, and set it down, while scalding
tears slowly coursed down her pale cheeks.  Desperate thoughts
crowded thickly on her brain, as her stony gaze was riveted on
the water, whose crystal clearness had not been clouded by
the subtle poison.

"Between us stands the shade of Crescentius," she muttered.
"Still I can not cease to love him,—each bound to each,—together,
yet perpetually divided,—our love a flower that the
hand of death will gather."

Again there was a long, intense hush.  She crept to Otto's
bed and knelt down by his side, hiding her wet face on her
bare arms.

"When he is dead," she continued speaking softly, so as
not to wake him, "the unpardonable sin will be condoned.—Otto,
Otto,—how I love you,—if I loved you less,—you
might live—"

At these words he stirred in the cushions.  A deep sigh
came from his lips, as if the mountain of a heavy dream had
been lifted from his breast.

She drew back terrified, but noting that he did not open his
eyes, she spoke with a moan of weariness:

"How often thus in my dreams have I seen his dead face—"

Again she bent over the sleeper.  Now she could not discern
a breath.  A strange dread seized her, and her face became as
wan and haggard as that of the fever-stricken youth.  Obeying
a sudden impulse she removed the pitcher of water, placing it
in a remote niche.  Then she crept back to Otto's couch.

"Is he dead?" she whispered, as if seized by a strange
delirium.  "Is he dead?  I know not,—yet none knows,—but
I!  None,—but I!"

She gave a start, as if she had discovered a listener, glanced
wildly about the room, at each familiar object in the chamber,
and met Otto's eyes.

She raised herself with a gasp of terror, as he grasped her
hand.

"Who is dead?" he asked.  "And who is it, that alone
knows it?"

She stroked the soft fair hair from his clammy brow.

"You are delirious, my love," she whispered.  "No one is
dead;—you have been dreaming."

"I thought I heard you say so," he replied wearily.

The horror and bewilderment at his awakening at this
moment of all, when she required all her strength for her
purpose, left her dazed for a moment.

The clock struck the second hour after midnight.  The
sound cut the air sharply, like a stern summons.  It seemed to
demand: Who dares to watch at this hour of death?

Otto had again closed his eyes.  Delirium had regained its
sway.  He was whispering, while his fingers scratched on the
cover of his couch, as if he were preparing his own grave.

Again he relapsed into a fitful slumber, filled with dreams
and visions of the past.

He stands at the banks of the Rhine.  The night is still.  The
moon is in her zenith, her yellow radiance reflected in the calm
majestic tide of the river.  He hears the sighing, droning
swish of the waters; the sinuous dream-like murmuring of
the waves resolving into tinkling chimes, far-away and
plaintive, that steal up to him in the moon mists, ravishing his
soul.  In cadenced, languorous rhythm the song of the
Rhine-daughters weeps and wooes through the night; their
shimmering bodies gleam from the waters in a silvery sphere of
light; they seem to beckon to him—to call to him—to
lure him back—

"Home!  Home!" he cries from the depths of his dream;
then his voice becomes inarticulate and sinks into silence.

New phantoms crowded each other, a shifting phantasmagoria
of the very beings who at that dreadful hour were
most vividly fixed in his mind.  And among them stood out
the image of the woman, who was kneeling at his side, the
woman he loved above all women on earth.  Again his lips
moved.  He called her by name, with passionate words of love.

"Let me not die thus, Stephania!  Leave me not in this
dreary abyss!  Oh!  Drive away those infernal spectres that
stare in my face," and his words became wild and confused,
as all these phantoms seemed to rush on him together, forming
lurid groups, flaming and tremulous, like prolonged flashes of
lightning, but growing fainter and fainter as they died away,
when every faculty of the young sufferer seemed utterly
suspended.

Dark clouds passed over the moon.

The wind blew in fierce gusts, howling like an imprisoned
beast between the chinks of the wall.  Then the night relapsed
once more into silence, and in intermittent pauses large drops
of rain could be heard, splashing from the height of the roof
upon the ringing flagstones.  To Stephania's listening ear
it seemed like a dreadful pacing to and fro of spirits meditating
on the past.  She dragged herself to a seat in a recess of the
wall, whence she could watch the sufferer and minister to his
wants.

Another fit of delirium seized Otto.  Restlessly he tossed on
his pillows.  Again a dream murmured his own impending
fate into his ears.

Again he is in Aix-la-Chapelle.  Again he beholds
Charlemagne seated erect in his chair as in that memorable night
when he visited the dead emperor in the crypts.  He touches
the imperial vestments; the crown glitters in the smoky flare
of the torches.  But through the heavy Arabian perfumes of
the emperor's fantastic shroud penetrates the odour of the
corpse.

The night wore on.

Recovering consciousness, Otto knew by the dying candle,
by the strokes of the clocks from adjacent cloisters, that hours
had passed into eternity, and that it was long past midnight.
It was very still.  The tread of the sentries was no longer
heard.  Through the window were seen pale blue flashes of
lightning in a remote cloudbank, as on that memorable night
in the temple of Neptune at Rome.  The dull rumbling of
distant thunder seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.

His head ached, his mouth was parched, thirst tormented
him.  He dimly remembered the pitcher of water.  Who had
removed it?  Why had it been taken away?  He tried to rise,
to drag himself to the wall, but his strength was not equal to
the task.  He fell back in the cushions where for a time he lay
motionless.  Then a moan broke from his lips, which startled
the figure seated by the bed.  Opening his eyes Otto gazed into
the pale face of Stephania.  She started up with a low
cry,—as from a trance.  Waking and watching had benumbed her
senses.

Now from her own suffering she lifted to Otto her face,
wherein was reflected the great love she bore him.

He looked at her with all the love of his soul in his eyes.

"I am dying," he spoke calmly, "I know it."

An outcry of mortal anguish broke from her lips.

"No, no, no!" she moaned, entwining him with her arms.
"Otto, my love—you will live,—live—live—  Can you
fancy us parted," she sobbed, "one from the other for ever?
Or can you go from me and leave me to the great loneliness of
the world?  To me all on earth, but you, seems a fleeting
shadow; but in this hour, I think only of the greater pang of
my own fate, and pray that in another world I may be judged
more mercifully,—even by you."

For some moments they remained locked in close embrace.

"Kiss me!" he whispered hungrily.  "Kiss me, Stephania!"

She drew back.

"My kisses are cold, Otto, cold as those of a dead love."

"Kiss me, Stephania," he moaned, "kiss me, even if your
kisses were death itself."

She breathed hard, as he held to her with all his might.

"A dead hand is drawing me downward, hold me up,
Otto!" she gasped.  "Hold me up!  Do not let me go!  Do
not let me go!"

And she kissed him, until he was almost delirious, drawing
him close to her heart.

"Now you are mine—mine—mine!" she whispered,
kissing him again and again, while his fingers were buried in
the soft, silken wealth of her hair.

"The hour is brief,—life is short and uncertain—oh,
let the hour be ours!  Let us drain the glittering goblet to the
dregs!  Then we may cast it from us and say we have been
happy!  Death has no terror for us!  I am thirsty,
Stephania,—give me the pitcher."

She trembled in every limb.

"Do not let me go!  Hold me, Otto,—do not let me go!"
she almost shrieked, entwining him so tightly with her arms
that he could scarcely breathe.

"I feel the fever returning—the water—Stephania—"

"Do not let me go!" she begged with mortal dread.

"I am burning up."

He struggled in her arms to rise, gasping:

"Water—Water!"

And he pointed to the niche, where he had espied the pitcher.

She almost dropped him, as raising himself he pushed her
from him.  Her head swam giddily and she felt a feebleness in
all her limbs; shudders of icy cold ran through her, followed
by waves of heat, that sickened and suffocated her.  But
she paid little heed to these sensations.  Stephania felt death
in her heart, she strove to sustain herself, but failing in the
effort, fell moaning across his couch.

Otto had fallen back on his pillows with eyes closed.  He
was spared the sight of the terrible agony of the woman he
loved.  At last she clutched the pitcher and staggering feebly
forward, step by step, she pushed back her hair from her
brows and softly called his name.

He opened his eyes, but did not speak.

Trembling in every limb she bent over him and placing one
hand under his head raised him to a sitting posture, glancing
fear-struck round the chamber.  She thought she had heard
the tread of approaching steps.

Greedily Otto grasped the vessel, pressing his hot hands
over the woman's which held it to his lips.  Greedily he drank
the poisoned beverage, while a heart-breaking moan came from
Stephania's lips.  He heard it not.  He sank back into the
cushions, while she knelt down by his side, weeping as if her
heart would break.

The Senator of Rome was avenged.

Avenged?  On whom?  Whose tortures were the greater,
if a spirit still possessed the power to suffer?  Alas!  It was
not the death of her lord and husband she had avenged!  She
had sacrificed the love which filled her heart to the Infernals!

While these reflections were whirling through her maddened
brain, the fatal poison was coursing serpent-like through
Otto's veins, and creeping to his head.  For a time he lay still;
then he began to move uneasily in his pillows, his breathing
became laboured, he beat the covers with his hands.  Then he
moaned, as in the last agony, and Stephania, to whom every
sound of suffering from his lips was as a thousand deaths,
knelt by his side, unable to avert her gaze from the youth,
dying by the hand he loved and trusted.

Fixedly she stared at the inert form on the bed.  Then only
the full realization of her deed seemed to burst upon her brain.
She clutched despairingly at the cover, beneath which lay his
restless form, his face averted, the face she so loved, yet feared,
to see.

"Otto!" she moaned, "Otto!"

Her voice broke.  She suddenly withdrew her hands and
looked at them in horror, those white, beautiful hands, that had
mixed the fatal draught.  Then with a bewildered, vacant
smile she beamed on her victim.

Otto had lost consciousness.  Nothing stirred in the chamber.
Profound silence reigned unbroken, save for the slow chime of
a distant bell, tolling the hour.

Was he dead?  Had the light of the eyes, she loved so well,
gone out for ever?

Her hand hovered fearfully above him, as if to drive away
the grim spectre of death.  At last, nerving herself with a
supreme effort, she touched with trembling hand the cover
that hid him from view.  Lifting it tearfully, she turned it
back softly,—softly, murmuring his name all the time.

Then she stooped down close, and closer yet.  Her red lips
touched the purple ones; she stroked the damp and clammy
brow, and thrust her fingers into his soft hair.  A moan came
from his lips.  Then, fastening her white robe more securely
about her, and stepping heedfully on tip-toe, she passed out
of the chamber.  With uncertain step she glided along the
corridor, a ghostly figure, with a white, spectral face and
fevered eyes.  At the foot of the spiral stairway she paused,
gazing eagerly around.

Stepping to a low casement she peered into the night.
Flickering lights and shadows played without; the late moon
had disappeared, leaving but a silvery trail upon the sky, to
faintly mark her recent passage among the stars.  Everything
was still.  Only the plaintive cry of an owl echoed from afar.
Her sandalled feet sounded on the stone-paved floor, like the
soft pattering of falling leaves in autumn.  Unsteadily she
moved along the gray discoloured wall towards the secret
panel, known but to herself.  Soon her perplexed wandering
gaze found what it sought, and Stephania disappeared, as if
the stones had receded to receive her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE ANGEL OF THE AGONY`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE ANGEL OF THE AGONY

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The morning of the following
day broke hazy and threatening.
But as the hours wore on, the
sky, which had been overcast,
brightened slowly and in that
instant's change the earth
became covered with a radiance
of sunshine and the heavens
seemed filled with ineffable peace.

It was late in the day, when Otto woke from his lethargy.
Hour after hour he had raved without recovering consciousness.
His breathing grew weaker.  He was thought to be in his
last agony.  Little by little the vigour of his youth had reasserted
itself, little by little he had opened his eyes.  His sight had
become dimmed from the effects of the poison, and his reason
seemed to sway and to totter; the fevered flow of blood, the wild
beating of his temples, caused everything around him to scintillate
in a crimson haze and flit before his vision with fitful
dazzling gleams.  But his eyes seemed fixed steadily in a remote
recess of the room.

Those surrounding his couch had believed him nearing
dissolution, and when he opened his eyes, Otto looked upon
the faces of those who had guided his steps ever since he set
his foot upon Italian soil, Eckhardt, Count Tammus, and
Sylvester, the silver-haired pontiff who had come from Rome.
Their faces told him the worst.  He attempted to raise himself
in his cushions, but his strength failed him, and he fell heavily
back.  Anew his ideas became confused and his gaze resumed
its former fixedness.

His lips moved and Eckhardt, who bent over him, to listen,
turned white with rage.

"Again her accursed name," he growled, turning to the
monk by his side.

"Stephania—where is Stephania?" moaned the dying youth.

A voice almost a shriek rent the silence.

"I am here,—Otto,—I am here!"

A shadow passed before the eyes of the amazed visitors in
the sick-chamber, a shadow which seemed to come out of the
wall itself, and the wife of the Senator of Rome staggered
towards Otto's couch, who made a feeble effort to stretch out
his hands toward her.  He could not raise them.  They were
like lead.  She rushed to his side, ere Eckhardt could prevent,
and with a sob fell down before the couch and grasped them
tightly in her own.

The petrified amazement, which had pictured itself in the
features of those assembled, at the unexpected apparition,
gave vent to a flurry of whispers and conjectures during which
Eckhardt, with face drawn and white and haggard, had rushed
through the outer chamber to the door.

"Guards!" he thundered, "Guards!"

Two spearmen appeared in the doorway.

"Seize this woman and throw her over the ramparts!"
the Margrave said with a voice whose calm formed a fearful
contrast to the blazing fury in his eyes.

The men-at-arms approached with hesitation, but Sylvester
barred their progress with uplifted arm.

"Vengeance is the Lord's!" he turned to Eckhardt, whose
eyes, aflame with wrath, seemed the only living thing in his
stony face.

A terrible laugh broke from the Margrave's lips.

"His mad pleadings saved her once!  Now, all the angels
in heaven and demons in hell combined shall not save her
from her doom!" he replied to the Pontiff.  "Seize her, my
men!  She has killed your king!  Over the ramparts with her!"

They dared deny obedience no longer.  Approaching the
couch they laid hands on the kneeling woman.  But the sight
of violence for a moment so incensed the prostrate form in the
cushions, that he started up, as he had done in the vigour of
his health.

With eyes glowing with fever and wrath, Otto leaped from
the bed, planting himself before the prostrate form of the
woman.

"Back!" he cried.  "The first who lays hand on her dies
by my hand, a traitor!  Down on your knees before the
Empress of the Romans!"

Terror and amazement accomplished Stephanie's salvation.

Even Eckhardt was stunned.  He knelt with the rest with
averted face.

"Leave the room!" Otto turned to the men-at-arms, and
with heads bowed down they strode from the sick chamber and
resumed their watch outside.  What did it all mean?  The
presence of the Senator's wife at their sovereign's bedside,
Eckhardt's contradictory demeanour, Otto's strange words;
mystified they shook their heads, glad the terrible task had
been spared them.

Otto's exertion was followed by a complete collapse, and
he fell back in a swoon.  After a time he seemed to rally.
Without assistance he sat up straight and rigid, and turned towards
the woman, whose wan face and sunken eyes made her fatal
beauty all the more terrible.

"Tell me—shall I live till night?" he whispered.

And as she hid her face from him with a sob, he continued:

"Do not deceive me!  I am not afraid!"

His voice broke.  Every one in the room knelt down weeping.
Sylvester tried to answer, but in vain.  Hiding his face in his
hands, the pontiff sobbed aloud.

"Softly—softly—" Otto whispered to Stephania, then
turning towards the sky he whispered:

"How beautiful!"

The morning clouds were growing rosy; the twilight had
become warm and mellow.  The first beam of the sun appeared
over the rim of the horizon.  The dying youth held his face
with closed eyes towards the light.  A faint shiver ran through
his body and with a last effort he stretched out his arms, as if
he would have rushed to meet the rising orb.

Suddenly he was seized by a convulsion; the veins swelled
on neck and temples.

"Water—water!" he gasped choking.

Stephania knew the symptoms.  Pale as death she staggered
to her feet, filled a cup with clear spring water and held
it to his lips.

Otto, grasping her hand with the cup, drank thirstily from
the ice-cold draught.

Then his head fell back.  A last murmur came from his
half-open lips:

"Stephania,—Stephania—"

Then his life went out.  With a moan of heart-rending
anguish she closed his eyes.  The face of the youth,
kissed by the early rays of the December sun, took on
a look as of one sleeping.  His soul, freed from earthly love,
had entered on its eternal repose.

Johannes Crescentius was avenged.

Eckhardt had watched the last moments of his king.  In
the awful presence of Death, he had restrained a new
outburst of passion against the woman, who had so utterly made
that dead youth her own.  But he had sworn a terrible oath
to himself, that she should pay the penalty, if that life went
out,—it would be cancelling the last debt he owed on the
accursed Roman soil.

And no sooner had the light faded from Otto's eyes, no
sooner had they been closed under the soft touch of Stephania's
hand, than Eckhardt rushed anew to the door and the terrible
voice of the Margrave thundered through the stillness of the
death-chamber:

"Guards!  Throw this woman over the ramparts!  She has
killed your King!"

Again the guards rushed into the chamber.  The terrible
denunciation had stirred their zeal.  Stephania, kneeling by
Otto's couch, never stirred, but as the men-at-arms, over-awed
by the spectacle that met their gaze, paused for a moment,
the sound of falling crystal, breaking on the floor, startled the
silver-haired pontiff.

He had seen enough.

Stepping between Stephania and her would-be slayers he
waved them back.

Then he picked up a fragment of the empty flask.

"This phial," he spoke to Eckhardt, "is of the same shape
and size as one discovered in a witch's grave, when they
were digging the foundations for the monastery of St. Jerome!"

And he strode towards the woman and laid his hands on her
head.

"She will soon answer before a higher tribunal," said the
monk of Aurillac.

"Father," she whispered, holding the hands of the corpse
in her own, while her head rested on her arms,—"I cannot
see,—stoop down,—and let me whisper—"

"I am here, daughter, close—quite close to you."

He inclined his ear to her mouth and listened.  But though
her lips moved, no words would come.

After a moment or two of intense stillness, she whispered,
raising her head.

"It is bright again!  They are calling me!  We will go
together to that far, distant land of peace.  I am with you,
Otto—hold me up, I cannot breathe—"

Gently Sylvester lifted her head.

"Otto,—my own love—forgive—" she gasped.  A convulsive
shudder passed through her body and she fell lifeless
over the dead body of her victim.

Stephania's proud spirit had flown.

Sylvester muttered the prayer for the departed, and staggered
to his feet.

Eckhardt pointed to her lifeless clay.  In his livid face burnt
relentless, unforgiving wrath.

"Throw that woman over the ramparts!" he turned to his
men.  "She shall not have Christian burial!"

Anew Sylvester intervened.

"Back!" he commanded the guards.  "Judge not,—that
ye may not be judged.  What has passed between those two—lies
beyond the pale of human ken.  He alone, who has called,
has the right to judge them!  She died absolved.—May God
have mercy on her soul!"

As weeping those present turned to leave the death-chamber,
Eckhardt bent over the still, dead face of Otto.

"I will hold the death-watch," he turned to Sylvester.
"Have the bier prepared!  To-morrow at dawn we start.
We return to our Saxon-land,—we go back across the Alps.
In the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle the grandson of the great
Otto shall rest; he shall sleep by the side of the great emperor,
whom he visited ere he came hither; Charlemagne's phantom
has claimed him at last.  Rome shall not have a lock of his hair!"

"As you say—so shall it be!" replied Sylvester, his gaze
turning from Otto to the lifeless clay of Stephania.

Softly he raised her dead body and laid it side by side with
that of Theophano's son, joining their hands.

"Though they shall sleep apart in distant lands, their souls
are one in the great beyond, that holds no mysteries for the
departed."

From the chapel of the cloister at the foot of the hill, stealing
through the solemn stillness of the December morning, came
the chant of the monks:

   |  "Quando corpus morietur,
   |  Fac ut animae donetur
   |      Paradisi gloria."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`RETURN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   RETURN

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

The Eve of the Millennium
stood upon the threshold of Time.

The veiled sun of midwinter
was rising and his early rays
filled the blue balconies of the
East with curtains of gold.
From the slopes of Paterno a
strange procession was to be
seen winding its way down into
the plains below.  It was the remnant of the German host,
carrying the bier with the body of the third Otto towards its
distant, final resting-place.  Eckhardt and Haco jointly headed
the mournful cortege, which after reaching the plain, entered
the northern road.  Behind them lay Civita Castellana, the
walls of the ancient citadel towering high above the town,
which lay in the centre of a net-work of deep ravines.  To their
right the Sabine hills extended in long, airy lines and the
wooded heights of Pellachio and San Gennaro rose to the
south-east.  Before them Viterbo with her hundred towers lay dark
and frowning inside her bristling walls; and to northward,
surmounted by its mighty cathedral dome, on a conical hill,
above the great lake of Bolsena, the gray town of
Montefiascone rose out of the wintry haze.

Continually harassed by the Romans the small band
hewed their way through their pursuers who abandoned
their onslaughts only when the Germans reached the Nera
and beheld the Campanile of St. Juvenale rising above Narni.

Slowly the imperial cortege passed through the ancient town
and was soon lost in the purple mists, which enshrouded
mountain and valley.

Rome lay behind them, the source of their tears and sorrows.

Onward, ever onward they rode towards the glittering crests
of the Alps, the solemn twilight of the Hercynian forest, towards
the distant banks of the Rhine and the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center medium

   THE END.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   SMILES, A ROSE OF THE CUMBERLANDS

.. class:: center medium bold

   *By Eliot Harlow Robinson*

.. class:: center small

*Author of "Man Proposes"*

.. class:: center small

*Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50*

.. vspace:: 2

Smiles is a girl that is sure to make friends.  Her
real name is Rose, but the rough folk of the
Cumberlands preferred their own way of addressing her, for
her smile was so bright and winning that no other name
suited her so well.

Smiles was not a native of the Cumberlands, and her
parentage is one of the interesting mysteries of the
story.  Young Dr. MacDonald saw more in her than
the mere untamed, untaught child of the mountains
and when, due to the death of her foster parents a
guardian became necessary, he was selected.  Smiles
developed into a charming, serious-minded young woman,
and the doctor's warm friend, Dr. Bently, falls in
love with her.

We do not want to detract from the pleasure of
reading this story by telling you how this situation was
met, either by Smiles or Dr. MacDonald—but there
is a surprise or two for the reader.

*Press opinions on "Man Proposes":*

"Readers will find not only an unusually interesting
story, but one of the most complicated romances
ever dreamed of.  Among other things the story gives
a splendid and realistic picture of high social life in
Newport, where many of the incidents of the plot are
staged in the major part of the book."—*The Bookman*.

"It is well written; the characters are real people and
the whole book has 'go.'"—*Louisville Post*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

TWEEDIE, THE STORY OF A TRUE HEART

.. class:: center medium bold

*By Isla May Mullins*

.. class:: center small

*Author of "The Blossom Shop Stories," etc.*

.. class:: center small

*Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.65*

.. vspace:: 2

In this story Mrs. Mullins has given us another
delightful story of the South.

The Carlton family—lovable old Professor
Carlton, and his rather wilful daughter Ruth—twenty-three
years old and with decided ideas as to her future—decide
to move to the country in order to have more
time to devote to writing.

Many changes come to them while in the country,
the greatest of which is Tweedie—a simple, unpretentious
little body who is an optimist through and
through—but does not know it.  In a subtle, amusing
way Tweedie makes her influence felt.  At first
some people would consider her a pest, but would
finally agree with the Carlton family that she was
"Unselfishness Incarnate."  It is the type of story
that will entertain and amuse both old and young.

The press has commented on Mrs. Mullins' previous
books as follows:

"Frankly and wholly romance is this book, and
lovable—as is a fairy tale properly told.  And the
book's author has a style that's all her own, that
strikes one as praiseworthily original
throughout."—*Chicago Inter-Ocean*.

"A rare and gracious picture of the unfolding of life
for the young girl, told with a delicate sympathy and
understanding that must touch alike the hearts of
young and old."—*Louisville (Ky.) Times*.

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

ONLY HENRIETTA

.. class:: center medium bold

*By Lela Horn Richards*

.. class:: center small

*Author of "Blue Bonnet—Debutante," etc.*

.. class:: center small

*Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.50*

.. vspace:: 2

Henrietta was the victim of circumstances.  It was
not her fault that her father, cut off from his expected
inheritance because of his marriage, was unexpectedly
thrown upon his own resources, nor that he proved to
be a weakling who left his wife and daughter to shift
for themselves, nor that her mother took refuge in
Colorado far away from their New England friends and
acquaintances.  Youth, however, will overcome much,
and when Richard Bently appears in the mountains,
life takes on a new interest for Henrietta.

When her mother dies Henrietta goes to live with
Mrs. Lovell, who knew her father years ago in the
little Vermont town.  Mrs. Lovell determines to do
what she can to secure for Henrietta the place in
society and the inheritance that is rightfully hers.
The means employed and the success attained—but
that's the story.

"Only Henrietta" is written in the happy vein that
has secured for Mrs. Richards a host of friends and
admirers, and is sure to duplicate the earlier
successes achieved for the young people by the Blue
Bonnet Series.

"The chief charm of the book is that it contains so
much of human nature and it is a book that will gladden
the hearts of many girl readers because of its charming
air of comradeship and reality."—*The Churchman,
Detroit, Mich.*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

THE AMBASSADOR'S TRUNK

.. class:: center medium bold

*By George Barton*

.. class:: center small white-space-pre-line

*Author of "The World's Greatest Military Spies and
Secret Service Agents," "The Mystery of the
Red Flame," "The Strange Adventures
of Bromley Barnes," etc.*

.. class:: center small

*Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated, $1.65*

.. vspace:: 2

Bromley Barnes, retired chief of the Secret Service,
an important State document, a green wallet, the
Ambassador's trunk—these are the ingredients, which,
properly mixed, and served in attractive format and
binding, produce a draught that will keep you awake
long past your regular bedtime.

Mr. Barton is master of the mystery story, and in this
absorbing narrative the author has surpassed his best
previous successes.

"It would be difficult to find a collection of more
interesting tales of mystery so well told.  The author
is crisp, incisive and inspiring.  The book is the best
of its kind in recent years and adds to the author's
already high reputation."—*New York Tribune*.

"The story is full of life and movement, and presents
a variety of interesting characters.  It is well
proportioned and subtly strong in its literary aspects and
quality.  This volume adds great weight to the claim
that Mr. Barton is among America's greatest novelists
of the romantic school; and in many ways he is
regarded as one of the most versatile and interesting
writers."—*Boston Post*.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center medium bold white-space-pre-line

THE ROMANCES
OF

.. class:: center large bold

NATHAN GALLIZIER

.. class:: center small

*Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth, illustrated, $2.00*

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Castel del Monte
The Sorceress of Rome
The Court of Lucifer
The Hill of Venus
The Crimson Gondola
Under the Witches' Moon

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center medium

THE PAGE COMPANY

.. class:: center small

53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::
