The Hill of Venus
Francesco found his tongue at last.
"Beauty should always have precedence over departed souls," he said
with a smile. "Is it your pleasure to land and to enliven this
solitude?"
"No, but to lure you out upon the waters," said the woman who had
spoken.
Francesco, carried away by the spirit of the moment, ran down the
marble steps of the terrace and leaped lightly into the boat.
"Violetta made a wager that you would not come,--Petronella that you
would," said a third. "As for myself--I was neutral. But my fears were
with Violetta."
As the sun sank lower, the wind dropped, and the men bent singing to
their oars.
"We were playing a game, Messere," said the Countess Violetta. "We are
trying to decide who is the fairest lady of this court, exclusive, of
course,--of us three. If we can agree, we shall plan a surprise for
that most lovely one!"
"My vote," said Messer Romano Vivaldi, "is for Madonna Ghisola. The
dusk of her hair is as soft as that of the thickest smoke of Vesuvius,
and, as in the smoke, there are red reflections in it!"
"Beware of the volcano," laughed Petronella. "A merry beauty for me,"
she improvised, speaking half verse, half prose like the others.
"Rose-white as asphodel blossom, and fragrant as the cyclamen of the
hills. What say you to the Contessa Leonora? Who can hear her laugh
without remembering what some one has said: 'Laughter is the radiance
of the soul?'"
"To my mind," said one of the cavaliers, who had not yet spoken, "the
Countess Ilaria Frangipani is the fairest woman of the court."
The eyes of Stefano Maconi flashed emphatic assent.
"She is too sad," objected Violetta, who was the youngest of the
party.
"So was the sea beneath the clouds of dawn," said the cavalier. "It
sighed of sorrows without end. The clouds melted, and the gray waters
brightened to turquoise, but whether under clouds or sun, the sea is a
mystery."
"She has the grace of the swaying wave," assented Petronella.
"And its light in her eyes," added Camilla.
"The lady is fair," acknowledged Messer Romano, "but too
unapproachable for me!"
Startled, Francesco saw, or fancied he saw, a complacent smile flit
across the countenance of Stefano Maconi.
"What thinks Messer Francesco of her beauty?" asked
Violetta. "I believe that each new age sees men and women fairer than
the last."
"I think, that cannot be," said the Countess Petronella, naively. "Was
never woman so fair as Madama Elena of Troy, and she lived before the
coming of our Saviour."
"I agree with Madonna Violetta," said Francesco dreamily. "Gazing at
Madonna Ilaria I think there is come into the world something strange
and new, revealed to us to our joy and our undoing!"
The sun had set. The boatmen were singing together.
"Non senti mai Achille,
Per Pulisena bella,
Le cocenti faville
Quant' io senti per quella.
"Udendo sua favella
Angelica e venozza,
Parlar si amorosa
In su la fresca erbetta."
"The beauty of this coast," said Francesco, speaking low, "is as the
beauty of woman. It transcends all I have imagined, yet is it ever
alien. I have felt it in Rome, but not so strongly. In Umbria, in
Tuscany all is more pure, more distant, yet more clear. The eye is
drawn afar to where earth meets sky; here it seeks to draw all to
itself. It is a beauty unhallowed: The triumph of the Pagan World!"
"Is there a city in Italy more Catholic than Naples?" protested
Violetta, while the others joined in a chorus of protestation.
"Where in Europe shall you find more priests?" asked Stefano Maconi,
shrugging his shoulders. "Where shall you find more churches?"
Francesco had been musing. Now the spirit of contradiction was upon
him.
"Even in your churches," he said suddenly, turning to Camilla, "I find
something strange. They are sumptuous indeed; yet there steals over me
a fearsome feeling, as if the worship were given not to the Deity that
is, but to deities long dead,--or worse than dead!"
A slight shudder ran over one or two of the hearers; the boatmen were
singing softly.
The stars were out, the boat was nearing the shore. And still the
boatmen were singing, as the moon shed her spectral light over the
crooning, murmuring waves.
"We are all agreed, are we not, that the Countess Ilaria Frangipani is
the fairest?" asked Camilla, as they prepared to land.
"Allow me," said Stefano Maconi, "to be responsible for the proposed
surprise. It shall, with your pleasure, take the form of a Festa in
the groves of Circe!"
"It will be fair weather to-morrow!" said Violetta. "We shall all be
there!"
After they had departed Francesco passed swiftly to and fro along the
terrace.
Strange feelings were at work within him. Love, hatred, jealousy were
contending for the mastery. He hated the oily cavalier with the
smooth, pleasant temper; he hated the man who dared aspire to Ilaria's
love. To Raniero he gave not even a thought. He had never felt jealous
of the Frangipani. But now Ilaria's name was on the wind! The sea
shouted it; the flowers exhaled it. It floated on the night-air; the
moon and the stars seemed to whisper it. Ilaria! Ilaria! He was once
more abandoned to the older gods!
"I shall not be there!" he murmured to himself, thinking of the Festa.
Yet, when the morning came, he was among the first to arrive.
CHAPTER IV
THE HILL OF VENUS
Some by land, and some by sea, the revellers took their morning way
along the coast towards the ruins of ancient Baiae. Francesco was on
horseback, a friend having furnished him with an excellent mount. As
he cantered on, the road continually revealed the far-sparkling sea. A
flock of brilliant butterflies dipped and poised on the
waters,--pleasure boats bound for the tryst. Ilaria! Ilaria! She and
he were moving by different ways to the same goal.
Steeds proved swifter than sails that morning; the horsemen arrived
half an hour before the boats. The place was a lonely wonder. The
sloping hillsides, broken by the green hollows of an ancient
amphitheatre, rose gently from the beach. From the turf, strewn with
wild hyacinth, cyclamen, Star of Bethlehem and tiny fleurs-de-lys,
great columns, half embedded in the ground, raised ivy-mantled shafts,
now broken, now crowned with Corinthian capitals, which peered through
trailing vines. Choice marbles, their rose or white mellowed to gold,
lay scattered here and there, the surfaces, fluted or bevelled, still
gleaming with the polish of by-gone centuries. Below and above the
amphitheatre mysterious masonry broke the climbing slope. The ruins
extended to the very verge of the sea.
Francesco ran down the bank as the first boat drew near. Under an
awning of silk, shot with green and blue and gold, sat Ilaria, the
Countess Violetta and Stefano Maconi. Violetta was rippling with
joyous laughter. Ilaria smiled and the beauty of the day found its
meaning. She had thrown aside the misty veil, with which she was wont
to envelop herself. Her gown, or so Francesco thought, was the same
which Proserpina had worn, in the "Triumph of Amor." At least, the
same strange broideries shone among its folds.
She stepped lightly ashore. Her fingers rested on Francesco's hand and
her eyes accepted his adoring look with a strange inscrutable
expression.
"We have been sailing over marvels," cried Violetta wide-eyed. "Below
the clear green waves rise palaces! We saw great white columns and a
pavement of mosaics. Did we not, Madonna Ilaria?"
"Yes," said Ilaria, dreamily. "Had they not quivered in the light, we
could have traced the pattern!"
"The palaces of the sea ladies," Violetta exclaimed gleefully. "I
thought I saw one, but she turned out to be a fish!"
"The home of strange beings, at any rate," mused Ilaria,--"of flowers
that are alive! Did you see that long blue ribbon sway and beckon to
us?"
Ilaria's gravity and pallor seemed to have vanished with the mists of
morning. She was flushed and gay,--almost too gay, Francesco thought.
A startled quietude, as of one expectant, was upon her.
"I have bidden you to a land of enchantment," laughed Stefano Maconi
as they climbed upwards. "We are still within the power of the sea, as
you perceive," he added, when the company paused by the half-buried
columns below the amphitheatre.
"It is true," said Francesco, pausing by a half-buried shaft. "The
stone is fretted by the waves. See the clustered barnacles and tiny
shells clinging half-way up!"
A party of cavaliers and their ladies met them on this spot.
As they exchanged greetings, all studied the strange sight.
"Probably," reflected a young page of the court, "it was the doing of
Messer Vergilio."
"He had great power hereabout," asserted Andrea Ravignano, "and was a
mighty clerk of necromancy. Perhaps it was he who built all these
marvels!"
"It was the old Roman folk that built them, ages ago," said another.
"A city rose here once, a marvel indeed, as these ruins tell. For
their pleasure men built it, and here they lived and throve. And evil
livers were they all, and slaves to the foul fiends, their gods!"
"But how did the city sink into the sea?" asked Violetta.
"That was the work of Messer Saint Paul," replied the other. "He
landed here and preached the Cross of our Saviour, and when men would
not heed but spat upon the cross and defied it, he laid the land under
a curse, and it sank to the depths of the sea!"
"And when the waves had done their work,"--it was Ilaria, speaking
dreamily, "they flowed back, and the ruins rested on a gentle hill.
But forever and ever do they remember the sea!"
She sighed a little.
"The slope on which we sit is hollow within," ventured the youthful
page. "Behind us is many a love-grotto, tunnelled deep and far. The
country folk, when they run the harrow, find great walls. And so none
dare come here of nights: strange things are seen!"
"Perhaps the waters will rise again some day and swallow Naples and
the court, and we shall turn into sea-folk all," Ilaria said, laughing
a little wildly. "Subjects of Lady Venus we should be. She was Queen
of the Sea, I've heard!"
"Though Terce is hardly passed, such talk is not wise," said some
one.
And two or three crossed themselves.
But as the light words drifted on, dim vistas of thought, at the end
of which immemorial things were gleaming, had opened to Francesco.
Violetta had been deftly weaving a green garland of ivy.
"Dream no more, fairest," she turned smiling to Ilaria. "Tell me
rather what flowers to weave into your chaplet. Of no strange blooms
of the sea shall it be wrought, but, at your will, of roses or the
small fior-da-lisa!"
"He who, as I, loves best the sea, loves best the rose," replied
Ilaria smiling. "While he who climbs the height adores the lily!"
She glanced, as she spoke at Francesco, whose gaze had never for a
moment abandoned her. Never had she seemed so fair to him, so utterly
adorable, stirring in his soul the slumbering fires of desire.
Violetta quickly finished her wreath of eglantine, and dropped it
lightly on Ilaria's brow.
"Why fear we ghosts in this radiant air?" laughed she.
"Perhaps we are the ghosts,--ghosts of our former selves," suggested
Ilaria.
"No phantom heart beats in my bosom," laughed Stefano Maconi.
And a look of meaning, or so Francesco felt, passed between them.
"Fair phantom, let us tread a measure!" pleaded Violetta. "What was
this green level made for, if not for the beating of gentle feet?"
"And when the measure is over," said Francesco in an undertone, as
they rose, "perhaps Madonna Ilaria will graciously vouchsafe me a few
moments?"
She nodded assent; but he could see her eyelids quiver, and her breath
came fast. The measure finished, Stefano Maconi at once proposed a new