The Hill of Venus
Southern Italy, and Europe, in motion on its way to Rome, moved
incessantly through its streets. The image of Rome, in her desolation,
recurred, vague as a ghost, to Francesco's mind and vanished before
this city of the present, unhaunted as yet by memories, rising radiant
in the morning air.
Treading the streets, the life which he for the past weeks had so
eagerly accepted, suddenly seemed alien to the whole old order of
thoughts and feelings which Francesco represented.
Mechanically almost he dropped on his knees before an altar, gazing at
the pictured face of a kneeling woman whose eyes were filled with pure
compassion. Nevertheless, he allowed himself to be diverted by the
interest of his surroundings, while moving towards the presence of the
head of Christendom.
Pope Clement IV gave audience in a high apartment, overlooking the
winding road to Rome. The sunlight, streaming through the window arch,
revealed the man with much distinctness.
The Pontiff was slight and delicate of build. His face bore the stamp
of a high order of intellect; his features were those of an
aristocrat. Disease of body was plainly portrayed by his shadowy
cheeks, much lined for his fifty-odd years. Disease of soul showed
none the less plainly in a troubled lift of the eyebrows, that
imparted to the face a look of search, expecting yet perhaps desiring
no answer. The countenance withal was unmistakably of the legal cast,
self-contained, alert, studious. On the whole, Francesco's first
impression upon being conducted into the presence of the Father of
Christendom, was of the unconscious dignity of high place, blended
with something too complex for analysis.
Many cardinals and princes of the Church, many orders of
monks, noblemen and foreign ambassadors were assembled in the
audience-chamber of the Pontiff. There was a restlessness among them,
which immediately impressed itself upon the newcomer.
Surrounding the pontifical dais were Antonio Pignatello, Cardinal of
Cosenza and private secretary to His Holiness; Don Stefano, General of
the Carthusians, Master Raimondo, General of the Dominicans, and an
individual who was incessantly fingering his beads, whose bent
countenance, sallow features, sunken eyes, thin lips and claw-like
talons revealed a combination of hypocrisy and cunning, such as but
one man could lay claim to, and he the champion of Pope Clement IV,
Charles of Anjou, brother of King Louis of France.
"Yet--notwithstanding your plea, you have not yet seen the towers of
the Holy City established on earth among the children of men," the
Pontiff turned to the Provencal.
"I have had no visions," replied the latter with a quick lift of the
eyes.
"Nor I, beloved son," said the Pontiff, "save as the spectacle of life
is an ever changing vision. Have you any conception, I wonder, of its
interest and significance in these latter days?"
"Let me remind you, Holy Father, Benevento lies behind us," snarled
the champion of the Church. "Would your black crows have carried the
day without the chivalry of Provence?"
The Pontiff ignored the insolence of the speech.
"Truly--Benevento lies behind us," he said. "Nevertheless I may not
say, here is the hand of God, and there it is withheld. The schism has
widened; the way of the truth is more obscure than ever; the Church
has grown to be the very scorn of men, because of the instruments she
employs,--she is forced to employ!"
The Pontiff's tone had grown hard and there was a steely glitter in
his gray eyes.
Charles of Anjou fingered his beads more swiftly, while his thin lips
stretched into a hard, straight line.
"'The end justifies the means!' has long been the maxim of the princes
of the Church," he said, while his eyes seemed to rest on the tips of
his buskins, protruding from under the monkish garb he affected.
The Pontiff hastened to explain.
"One may not cleanse a pigsty with a silver fork. Yet--shall the
Patrimony of St. Peter be sacked and burned in the name of the Cross?
Shall violence, cunning and greed reign unchecked, that the Beast may
be glorified?"
"Yet the Beast may not gird its loins without drink or food,--and the
Halo makes but a thin mantle!" snarled the Pontiff's crusader.
Clement raised a thin, emaciated hand.
"What a mass of falsehoods and hypocritical phrases have again
assailed our ear! Our dearly beloved son in Christ boasts of his love
and veneration for the Church, while those under his command are
pillaging the sanctuaries!"
The beads passed nervously through Anjou's fingers.
"These reproaches, Holy Father," he said with a sepulchral voice,
"touch me very deeply. The host must be fed, and their zeal for the
cause of Holy Church may lead them to mistake the cornfields of the
righteous!"
The Pontiff bowed.
"Your crusades against the infidels seem to have blurred your vision,
beloved son!"
"You speak of my youthful glories, Holy Father," replied Charles of
Anjou with a leer. "Many years have since gone by, and they sleep with
my youthful sins!"
"That must be a wide berth that enables them to find place side by
side," retorted the Pontiff.
Then, with a nameless shrug, he turned to the Cardinal of Cosenza.
"Has the messenger returned from Astura?"
Instead of the Cardinal, Anjou made reply.
"Wherein would treason benefit the Frangipani? They hold their castle
as fief of the Empire, and the coffers of the Church are dolefully
empty."
The Pontiff turned to the speaker.
"Treason,--beloved son? A harsh word indeed! Were breaking with a
sinful past to be stigmatized in such wise, our indulgences would
indeed go begging and St. Peter tire at his watch!"
Charles of Anjou gave a significant shrug.
"Will the Frangipani exchange a distant master for one hovering over
their rock?"
The Pontiff waved the question aside.
"The bait were hardly tempting!"
The small eyes of Anjou met those of the Pontiff.
"What is the bribe?" he queried brutally.
Clement raised his hands in abhorrence. A lawyer and a diplomat, the
Frenchman's brutal frankness jarred on his nerves.
"What of Astura as his own--to have and to hold?" he said at last with
bated breath.
A sudden sinister gleam from Anjou's eyes betokened his understanding.
"The dead are all immortal," he said with a shrug.
A sudden commotion, the sound of voices in the antechamber, produced a
momentary lull in the conversation, and at the beck of the Pontiff the
Cardinal of Cosenza rose to inquire into the cause of the disturbance.
After a time he returned and whispered some words into Clement's ears.
The Pontiff was seen to start; and to look from one to the other of
those present. Then he nodded and, through the door of the
audience-chamber, Francesco was ushered into the august presence of
the Father of Christendom.
He was received with a courteous quiet, the Pontiff and those about
him regarding him curiously.
Francesco advanced at a signal from the Cardinal of Cosenza, who acted
as master of ceremonies, knelt and kissed the Pontiff's feet. He felt
somewhat dazed by the unwonted presence and awaited in silence the
Pontiff's question. In a fleeting glance he had taken in his
surroundings, but as, when he rose from his kneeling position, his
gaze encountered that of the Pontiff's minion, there swept over him
such a wave of rage, horror and shame, that all the color left his
face, and his hands were clenched, as if he would spring at the cowled
form by the Pontiff's side and strangle him. He restrained himself
with an effort, but the gesture had not passed unremarked by Anjou,
who was engaged in sedulously counting his beads and fingering the
Leaden Lamb about his neck, while he drew the cowl somewhat deeper
over his face.
Francesco, turning to the Pontiff, was struck by the reticent
shrewdness in Clement's eyes, the expression of his face, the calm,
unmoved poise of body and head.
It crossed his consciousness in a flash that it was possible for this
man to impress his will upon a world, no matter if that world
rebelled.
"Your name?" the Pontiff spoke at last.
"Francesco Villani," came the reply, given with bated breath.
Clement stared into space as one endeavoring to recall a memory.
"Villani,--Villani--" he muttered to himself with an absent air.
"Where have we heard the name before?"
The Cardinal of Cosenza leaned forward, his lips at Clement's ear.
The Pontiff nodded.
"We remember,--we remember,--the illegitimate offspring of Gregorio
Villani, Grand Master of the Knights of the Hospital!"
The words had been spoken with intent of being heard by all present.
Francesco straightened himself to his full height.
His eyes blazed as he faced the Pontiff.
"Your Holiness need not proclaim my father's shame to the ears of
Christendom! Let it suffice, that I am atoning for his fault,--if
fault it was!"
There was a heavy silence, during which the Pontiff and Charles of
Anjou exchanged significant glances.
They had not remained unremarked by Francesco, and the spark of
rebellion which had slumbered in his soul all these long and weary
months was fanned to devouring flame, as with inexpressible loathing
his gaze rested upon the man who was the abomination of Christendom,
the instrument of the Pontiff.
"What proof have we that you are atoning for the transgressions of one
who passed from earth in mortal sin?" the Pontiff queried after a
pause, while a fatuous smile played about Anjou's lips.
"The garb I wear," Francesco flashed. "The garb your Holiness has
imposed!"
The Pontiff regarded him quizzically.
"You have served your novitiate?"
"At Monte Cassino!"
"How fares the Prior? It is many moons since we have visited his
mountain-heights!"
Francesco gave a brief account of his life at the cloister, up to the
time when he had received the summons to Rome.
Clement listened warily, the lawyer in his expression uppermost.
"You come from Rome?"
Francesco shivered at the memory.
"From Rome!" he replied curtly.
"What of the city?"
"King Conradino lords the Capitol!"
"You have seen the Pretender?"
"We have stood face to face."
"What is he like?"
Francesco gazed from Clement to Anjou
"A man!"
The Pontiff nodded, as if he approved the observation.
In the man Francesco had long discovered the judicial mind, and the
discreet intelligence of the trained statesman.
From the shadows the Pontiff was warily regarding the sun-steeped
features of the young monk.
At last, his voice sinking down to its accustomed calm, he said, as if
feeling his ground:
"Does the new life satisfy your soul?"
The restless, ceaseless pain of longing again knocked at Francesco's
heart, and with it returned the old spirit of rebellion, which had
possessed him in the days of his novitiate at Monte Cassino. And,
unconsciously, he repeated the words of the Duke of Spoleto:
"Men make a patchwork quilt of life, and call the patchwork religion
and law."
An audible gasp was wafted to his ears.
Clement opened his hand and dropped the little crucifix, which he had
been fingering during their talk, with a gesture of rejection, on the
floor behind him. The palm of the hand, still stretched and open, bore
sharp red marks. The point of the cross had evidently just been
pressed into it with convulsive energy.
"Obedience is holiness," the Pontiff said at last, with a sweep of his
hand.
Francesco discovered himself unwittingly gazing in the direction of
Anjou. The Pontiff intercepted the look. Perhaps there was a reason
for his question which Francesco was far from guessing, as he suavely
said:
"You do not conceive, my son, that the Church can err in the choice of
her instruments?"
"I have heard of some striking instances of the readiness of the