The Hill of Venus
She had apparently not noted Francesco's presence, though his eyes had
been riveted upon her from under the cowl, and his face was deadly
pale. Hemmed in as he was by the crowds, he could not have receded,
had he wished to;--thus he stood, looking upon the face of the woman
he loved better than anything on earth, forgetting heaven and earth in
doing so.
Stooping, she filled the cup once more and looked up at her companions
with a smile.
"Who shall drink after me?" she laughed merrily.
Many a merry voice called out, as they eagerly crowded about her.
"Who but myself?" exclaimed Raniero Frangipani with a laugh, brushing
the others away with perhaps a little more decision than was needed.
But suddenly Ilaria turned and deliberately advanced to the spot where
Francesco stood, his cowl drawn deeply over his face.
"All men do my bidding to-day," she said in her low, vibrant voice,
offering him the cup, while her eyes flung him a glittering challenge.
It was her most winsome self that looked at him, as she said:
"Drink to me!"
Dazed, he took the cup from her. In doing so, he touched her soft,
white skin. The cold draught seemed to burn like fire as he sipped the
clear water. Then, surprised by impulse, he flashed the drops upward,
as he had seen her do.
Her laughter sounded shrill and high as broken glass, as the
dislocated cowl revealed Francesco's features.
But she immediately regained her composure, and, without a hint in her
voice of the taunt in the dells of Vallombrosa, she said, nodding, as
if well pleased, and as if for his ear alone:
"The White Lady is well pleased. Is not this her altar?" But another
had recognized the monk, when for a moment his cowl fell away from
his face; and Raniero Frangipani was regarding him with dark malice.
As if to leave a sting in the memory of their meeting, Ilaria,
returning to Raniero's side, gave the latter a smile so bewitching
that his scowl vanished. Remounting with his help, she signalled for
the cavalcade to proceed.
The pain in Francesco's heart rose, suffocating, once more as the
procession swept onward.
How he had loved her! How he loved her now!
How shall a man be sure of what is hidden in his heart? He was a
monk,--and she the wife of Raniero Frangipani.
How wondrous fair she was, glowing as a rose in the first flush of
spring-time! How her sweet eyes had gleamed into his, with their
subdued fire, half hidden under the long silken lashes!
For a moment he saw and heard nothing.
All sense of the present seemed to have vanished while the cavalcade
faded from sight.
Now, from the gates beyond St. John Lateran, there burst forth the
pomp and panoply of the North, with a flourish of trumpets, a gleaming
of chain-mail, a sparkling of pennons.
Two heralds, on snow-white chargers, rode slowly through the gate,
sounding their fanfares, their standards and particolored garbs
displaying the Sun-Soaring Eagle of Hohenstauffen.
Then, on a black stallion, docile to the hand and impatient of the
spur, Conradino of Swabia hove into sight, beside the friend of his
youth, Frederick of Austria.
They rode in advance of the elite of the army, some two thousand men
in gleaming chain-mail. Conrad and Marino Capece followed hard on
their heels with one thousand heavy infantry and a company of Saracen
archers. Then came Galvano Lancia with the heavy armament, men from
the North, carrying huge battle-axes in addition to their other
weapons.
As they slowly advanced through the great square fronting the ancient
Basilica, a great shout arose from the thousands who lined the
thoroughfares, a counter-blast to the clangor of the clarions.
Then the whole host shouted, tossed up shield and lance, while
trumpets and horns shrieked above the din.
On the steps of houses and churches, in casements, doors and windows,
women waved kerchiefs and scarfs, their shrill acclaim mingling with
the sounds of horn and bugle.
The tramping of thousands of steeds smote the bright air; shields and
surcoats shone and shimmered under the sun-fraught Roman sky.
All the streets through which the armament passed were hung with
garlands and tapestries, blazing with banners, festooned with flowers
and gorgeous ornaments, re-echoing with peals of laughter and ribaldry
and roaring music.
For the fickle Romans gave free rein to their joy of being rid of
Anjou's presence, and the sober and pedantic Northmen viewed with
amaze this manifestation of the Southern temperament, the reflex, as
it were, of a clime which had lured to perdition so many of their own,
who had not withstood the blandishments of the Sorceress.
And the Romans, revelling in their own exuberant gaiety, forgetful of
yesterday, unmindful of the morrow, hailed with delight the
iron-serried cohorts from beyond the Alps,--till the disappearing
menace within their own walls would cause them to turn on their
deliverers.
From the summits of his castle on the well-nigh impregnable heights of
Viterbo, Pope Clement IV had witnessed the passing of the Swabian
host, and his eyes, undimmed by age, had marked the persons and the
quality of the leaders. And, turning to one of his attendants, who
leaned by his side over the ramparts to scan more minutely the
Northern armament, he had spoken the memorable words: "Truly, like two
lambs, wreathed for the sacrifice, they are journeying towards their
fate."--
To the casual observer,--if, indeed, there was such a one in the Rome
of those days,--it must indeed have appeared a strange phenomenon that
Conradino was surrounded almost entirely by Italians, with the
exception of one or two leaders whose contingents the narrow and
parsimonious policy of Duke Goerz of the Tyrol had not been able to
shake in their loyalty, when he recalled his own contingents for want
of pay.
But the popular enthusiasm swept everything before it, and Conradino's
march to the Capitol, where he was to be tendered the keys of the city
by the Senator of Rome, Prince Enrico of Castile, was one continuous
triumph.--
As one in a dream, Francesco continued to gaze after the imperial
cavalcade as it swept past with its gold and glitter and tinsel and
the thunderous hoof-beats of a thousand steeds. As one in a dream, he
kept gazing at the gold-embroidered mantles, the flash of
dagger-hilts, the gleam of chain-mail, the waving plumes, the prancing
steeds.
The procession swept by him, as the phantasmagoria of a dream; but,
after it had passed, one apparition continued to stand forth.
He never forgot that face.
To him it was all that was beautiful and regal, framed in its soft,
golden hair, with its tender blue eyes, its smiling lips. A slender
youth, barely eighteen years of age, with the eyes of a dreamer,
Conradino was possessed of an exaltation which blinded him to the
perils of the situation, intoxicating his ambition,--a quaint
combination of the mystic lore of his tunes, of which Francesco felt
himself to be his other Ego.
The crowds had dispersed by degrees, sweeping in the wake of the
Swabian host towards the Capitol.
And Francesco stared motionless into space.
Was he indeed cast out from the communion of the world, from the
contact of the living?
Had a mocking fate but cast him on the shores of life, that he might
stand idly by, watching the waves bounding, leaping over each other?
He felt as one enslaved, his will-power paralyzed.
Yonder, where the setting sun spun golden vapors round the summits of
the Capitoline Hill, there was the trend of a high, self-conscious
purpose, as revealed in the impending death-struggle for the highest
ideals of mankind.
What had he to oppose it?
What great aim atoned for the agony of his transformation?
The restitution of papacy? The glory of the Church? The vindication of
a crime? The toleration of a despot?
Francesco's passionate nature might have been guided aright by a
controlling affection, such as he could nevermore find in his present
estate.
Slowly, as one wrapped in a dream, gazing neither right nor left, he
permitted himself to be swept along with the crowds, past monuments,
tombs and the desolate grandeur of the Forum, and as one enthralled,
began the ascent of the Capitoline Hill.
CHAPTER II
THE FEAST AT THE CAPITOL
When darkness had fallen on the Capitoline Hill, the old palace of the
Caesars seemed to waken to a semblance of new life. In the gorgeous
reception hall a splendid spectacle awaited the guests. The richly
dressed crowds buzzed like swarms of bees. Their attires were
iridescent, gorgeous in the fashions borrowed from many lands. The
enslavement of Italy and the invasion of foreigners could be read in
the garbs of the Romans. The robes of the women, a slavish imitation
of the Byzantine fashion, hung straight as tapestries, stiff with gold
brocades.
Prince Enrico of Castile, the Senator of Rome, had arranged a festival
in honor of Conradino, such as the deserted halls of the imperial
palace on the Capitoline had not witnessed in centuries.
It was a festival hitherto unequalled in Rome.
The walls of the great reception hall were decorated with garlands and
festoons of flowers; the soft lustre of the candelabra was reflected
in tall Venetian mirrors, brought from Murano for this occasion.
Niches filled with orange-trees, artificial grottoes adorned with
shells, in the midst of which fountains sent their iridescent spray
into the branches of tall cypress-trees and oleanders, met the gaze on
every turn.
But the central part of the festival was the gigantic hall, over which
the girandoles diffused a sea of light. Costly Oriental carpets
covered the mosaic floor, and the ceiling represented the
thousand-starred arch of heaven. Here, too, as in the garden, niches
and grottoes were everywhere to be found, where one, in the midst of
the constantly moving crowd, could enjoy quiet and repose.
In the great hall there were assembled the first Ghibelline families
in Rome, the Colonna, Cavalli, Gaetani, the Massimi and Stefaneschi;
the Frangipani of Astura, the Pierleoni, the Savelli, and the
Annibaldi, whose chief had fallen side by side with Manfred in the
fateful battle of Benevento.--
A loud fanfare of trumpets and horns announced at last the arrival of
Conradino, and his bearing, as he entered the ancient halls of the
Caesars, was indeed that of one coming into his own.
He was surrounded by Giordano and Galvano Lancia, Conrad and Marino
Capece, John de Pietro, John of Procida, who had come expressly from
Palermo to offer homage to the son of his emperor; Count Hirnsius,
Gerhardt Donoratico of Pisa, Thomas Aquino, Count Meinhardt of
Castanea, Frederick of Austria, Prince Raymond of Montferrat,
Frederick of Antioch and Dom Pietro Loria, Grand Admiral of King Peter
of Aragon. The Viceroy of Apulia and the Apulian barons followed
closely in their wake.--
Six senators, headed by Don Enrico of Castile, now advanced, carrying
between them on a purple velvet cushion the keys of the city.
In a kneeling position they presented them to Conradino, who in turn
gave them in charge of the commander-in-chief of his army, while loud
acclaim shook the foundations of the rock, unmoved by the assaults of
centuries.
After the banquet had been served and the guests had arisen from the
festal board, Prince Enrico of Castile claimed the privilege of
conducting the exalted guest through the halls of the Capitoline
palace.
They had not advanced very far when the quick eye of the Senator of
Rome lighted upon an individual who had been watching their advance
from his concealment among the shrubbery.
It was a man, tall, lean, with prominent shoulders, glittering eyes
and a thin, straight mouth. The black hair was cropped close to the