The Hill of Venus
and those who knelt to hear mass in a church, knelt with their backs
to the wall.
At his inn, too, he had noted every one lived in a state of armed
defence, against every one, including the host and other guests. And
reasons were not lacking therefor, for Rome was in the throes of
political convulsions and its walls resounded the battle-cry of Guelph
and Ghibelline.
Howling and singing, a mob filled the streets southward to the
Capitol, or even to the distant Lateran, where Marcus Aurelius on his
bronze horse watched the ages go by. Across the ancient Aelian bridge
Francesco stalked, under the haunted battlements of Castel San Angelo,
where the ghost of Theodora was said to walk on autumn nights, when
the south wind blew, and through the long wreck of the fair portico
that had once extended from the bridge to the Basilica, till he saw
glistening in the distance the broad flight of steps leading to the
walled garden court of St. Peter's.
Here he rested among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze
pine-cone and the great brass peacocks, which Symmachus had brought
thither from the ruins of Agrippa's baths, in which the family of the
Crescentii had fortified themselves during more than a hundred years.
For a long time Francesco sat there in mournful silence, drinking in
the sun-steeped air of evening, and the scent of the flowers that grew
here with the profusion of spring-time.
An indescribable sense of desolation came over him, as he thought of
his happy childhood with its joys and griefs, as he thought of the
spring-time of life, the days of Avellino, and of Ilaria. He sat here
an outcast, an exile, one who had no further claim on the joys of the
living, guiltless himself, the victim of another's sin. The soul of
Rome, the Rome of Innocent and Clement, had taken hold of his soul,
and, for a time, he dreamed himself away from the bleak present and
the bleaker future. The past, with his father's sins, his own sorrows,
the friendship of the Viceroy, the love of Ilaria, were now all
infinitely far removed and dim. The future, whose magic mirror had
once dazzled his senses, had faded like a departing vision into the
blue Roman sky. Only the present remained, only the hour was his, the
dreamy half-narcotic present with its mazy charms which enmeshed him,
far from the reality, the Rome as it existed, where the Church was the
World, and Rome herself meant some seven or eight thousand ruffians,
eager always for a change, because it seemed that no change could be
for the worse.
In the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's at least there was peace. The
white-haired priests solemnly officiated day by day, morning and noon,
and at Vespers more than a hundred voices sang the Vesper psalms in
the Gregorian chant. Slim youths in violet and white swung silver
censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in spiral
clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting upon the antique floor.
Here, at least, as in many a cloister of the world, the Church was
still herself, as she was and is and always will be; words were spoken
and solemn prayers intoned that had been familiar to the lips of the
apostles.
But they brought no consolation to Francesco's heart; his soul was not
relieved by the solemn ceremony. With the rest of the worshippers he
knelt unconsciously in the old cathedral; with the rest of the
worshippers he chanted the responses and breathed anew the
incense-laden air, which was to encompass him to his life's end.
Refreshed neither in body nor soul, he returned to the inn late at
night. But he could not sleep. Opening wide the wooden shutters of his
window, he looked out upon the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor, at
the tide of the Tiber, which gleamed and eddied in the moonlight.
Life rose before him in a mystery, a mystery for him to solve by
deeds. For a moment he felt that he must rise above his fate, that he
was not idly to dream away his years, and the long dormant instinct of
his race bade him defy the yoke which was about to be imposed upon
him, not to evade it. Then his heart beat faster; his blood surged to
his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the other as he leaned
over the stone sill, and drew the night air sharply between his closed
teeth.
And as a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the willows by the
river brink, in it seemed to float a host of spirit armies, ghostly
knights and fairy-maidens and the forecast shadows of things to come.
Once before during the evening had this sensation gripped his soul, as
with a solitary monk whom he chanced to meet, he had traversed the
desolate regions of the Aventine in the sun's afterglow. And then, as
now, there had come the rude awakening.
But from the monk he had learned that the Pontiff had fled from Rome
before the approaching hosts of Conradino, and had betaken himself to
Viterbo, while his champion, Charles of Anjou, had marched to
southward, leaving the city to the Ghibellines and the imperial party
of the Colonna.
End of Book the Second.
Book the Third
THE BONDAGE
CHAPTER I
THE WHITE LADY
The Piazza of St. John Lateran was alive with the rush and roar of a
vast multitude, which congested the spacious square from the Church of
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme to the distant Esquiline hill, occupying
every point of vantage, thronging the adjacent thoroughfares, crowding
the long Via Merulana, and filling the ruins of temples, the
interstices of fallen walls and roofless porticoes as far as the eye
could reach.
All Rome seemed to be astir, all Rome seemed to have assembled to
welcome the advent of the Swabian host, and in the keen delight of
beholding Conradino, the fair-haired Hohenstauffen come to claim the
fair lands of Constanzia, all petty-strife, contentions and
party-rivalry seemed for the nonce to have been forgotten.
In reality, however, such was not the case.
So sudden had been Conradino's descent upon Rome that the Pontiff and
his minion, Charles of Anjou, had precipitately fled from the city,
ere the first German spear-points gleamed above the heights of Tivoli.
The Roman Ghibellines, at their head the great and powerful house of
the Colonna, hated the Vulture of Provence as intensely as did the
Pontiff, his one time champion, and welcomed with open arms the
grandson of the Emperor Frederick II, their deliverer from an
insufferable yoke, which had been as a blight upon Southern Italy.
Yet, notwithstanding the absence of the pontifical court, the absence
of the Church militant, the institution which, when Europe was
over-run with barbarian hordes, had preserved the ancient
civilization, the power of the city was in evidence even though
huddled affrighted amidst the majesty of imperial ruins. A memory, a
dream, yet the power of a dream outlasting the ages, Rome still
remained the mystic centre of civilization.--
With a sickly sense of curiosity not unmingled with awe, Francesco had
mingled with the crowds.
The dream of his early youth was about to be realized: face to face he
would behold the golden-haired Hohenstauffen,--yet at the thought his
heart sank with a sense of dread. Dull misery had him in its grip. The
keen pain of a false life, resentment of a fate imposed upon him by
another's will, permeated every fibre of his being. In his dreams he
would see the friends of his youth, pointing to him, the renegade; he
would see Ilaria, standing off motionless, spiritless, regarding him
from afar. If she at least had kept her faith! He felt himself
encompassed by the folding wings of a great demon of despair.
This feeling pervaded him with a sickening gloom, in which he walked
with drooping head and uncertain footsteps,--yet with the resolve to
conquer in the end!
Life was no mere existence with Francesco. He loved light and air and
freedom. To be in the great, real world, to feel its joys, its
sunshine, to chafe under no conventional, no restraint, to know the
fascination of recklessness,--that to him was life!
And about him it surged in blinding iridescence.
Notwithstanding the months of monastic life which lay behind him, he
had not in any formal sense severed himself from the world. His
renunciation of the joys of the senses had been not primary, as with
the Franciscans, but, as always with those under Dominican influence,
incidental on a choice of higher interests.
But the conscious choice of a beautiful existence was ever with him,
and here, among the thousands giving vent to their joy, restrained by
no dogma from voicing their gladness, loneliness crept cold among his
heart-strings.
The scenes in which he, half absently, half resentfully, mingled,
afforded a fine opportunity to study sacerdotal types. Now and then a
scholarly countenance detached itself with startling effect from the
coarser elements; now and then among the keen lines of such a
countenance played the hovering, unmistakable light of a personal
sanctity. There were men of the noblest, gentlest blood, from whom
came the example of courtly manners, of polished speech and refined
taste. Through the years of desolation and ruin, which war brought in
its wake, they preserved art, literature and religion and infused into
civilization the principles of self-sacrifice, charity and chastity.
They declared a message that protested against violence and injustice.
Francesco saw men among the priests, whose broad shoulders, singularly
brilliant dark faces and magnificent poise formed a striking contrast
to those upon whose features had settled the beautiful, soft calm of
spotless seclusion.
Yet Francesco felt no need of such a refuge.
The espousals of piety and poverty, the inexplicable mysteries,
martyrdoms, ascetic faces and haggard figures, which he had
encountered upon entering the monastic life, the morbid enthusiasm and
spiritual frenzy were repellent to him now, as they had been then.
Sad-visaged penitents, men scourging themselves, prostrate in prayer,
wrestling with demons, waked no responsive chord in his breast.
A splendid procession, with its gay dresses and colored pennons
gleaming like a rainbow among the sombre garbs of monks and artisans,
at this moment emerged from under the frowning portals of a sombre
palace and swept into the sunlit square of St. John Lateran.
The cavalcade was headed by a cavalier superb in white velvet, riding
abreast of a woman, tall and stately. They were followed by a company
of young nobles, arrayed in festal splendor. The piazza resounded with
the echo of their shouts and mirth, and the multitudes congested on
the steps of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme shouted loud
acclaim, as they passed on their cantering steeds.
What were those stabbing pangs in Francesco's heart beneath the
noonday brightness of the sky? Why did he wish, almost insanely, that
he had not set foot in Rome?
The banners of the Frangipani waved proudly in the sun-fraught air,
revealing their emblem of "The Broken Loaf," amidst velvet, gilt and
tinsel.
As the cavalcade approached, every word, every tone, every accent was
ringing perversely in his ears. The piazza with its maelstrom of
humanity seemed to whirl and to scintillate about him, and the acclaim
of the crowd surged in his ears like the dull roar of distant billows,
as the procession came to a sudden stop at the fountain whence he had
viewed its approach.
Shrinking beneath his cowl, yet unable to avert his gaze, Francesco
stood leaning on the rim of the fountain.
He heard the voice of Ilaria as, dismounting without the aid of her
companion, she requested a cup, having taken a sudden fancy to drink
of the sparkling water.
The cup having been brought, she put her lips to it, then swiftly
tossed the bright drops towards the sky, singing a little melody as
she did so.