Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the window-sill beneath it and begged: “Come to me! come and give me your hand.”
“No.”
When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:
“Good-by, Mogens!”
He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on: “And a girl like that still believes in love!—no, she does not!”
The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a little, the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by thousands of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged restlessly at their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to nod, and on the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and fro. Towards the land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the young clover trembled on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and fell in heavy billows; the roofs groaned, the mill creaked, its wings swung about, the smoke was driven back into the chimneys, and the window-panes became covered with moisture.
There was a swishing of wind in the gable-windows, in the poplars of the manor-house; the wind whistled through tattered bushes on the green hill of Bredbjerg. Mogens lay up there, and gazed out over the dark earth. The moon was beginning to acquire radiance, and mists were drifting down on the meadow. Everything was very sad, all of life, all of life, empty behind him, dark before him. But such was life. Those who were happy were also blind. Through misfortune he had learned to see; everything was full of injustice and lies, the entire earth was a huge, rotting lie; faith, friendship, mercy, a lie it was, a lie was each and everything; but that which was called love, it was the hollowest of all hollow things, it was lust, flaming lust, glimmering lust, smoldering lust, but lust and nothing else. Why had he to know this? Why had he not been permitted to hold fast to his faith in all these gilded lies? Why was he compelled to see while the others remained blind? He had a right to blindness, he had believed in everything in which it was possible to believe.
Down in the village the lights were being lit.
Down there home stood beside home. My home! my home! And my childhood’s belief in everything beautiful in the world.—And what if they were right, the others! If the world were full of beating hearts and the heavens full of a loving God! But why do I not know that, why do I know something different? And I do know something different, cutting, bitter, true...
He rose; fields and meadows lay before him bathed in moonlight. He went down into the village, along the way past the garden of the manor-house; he went and looked over the stone-wall. Within on a grass-plot in the garden stood a silver poplar, the moonlight fell sharply on the quivering leaves; sometimes they showed their dark side, sometimes their white. He placed his elbows on the wall and stared at the tree; it looked as if the leaves were running in a fine rain down the limbs. He believed, that he was hearing the sound which the foliage produced. Suddenly the lovely voice of a woman became audible quite near by:
“Flower in dew! Flower in dew!Whisper to me thy dreams, thine own.Does in them lie the same strange airThe same wonderful elfin air,As in mine own?Are they filled with whispers and sobbing and sighingAmid radiance slumbering and fragrances dying,Amid trembling ringing, amid rising singing:In longing,In longing,I live.”
Then silence fell again. Mogens drew a long breath and listened intently: no more singing; up in the house a door was heard. Now he clearly heard the sound from the leaves of the silver poplar. He bowed his head in his arms and wept.
The next day was one of those in which late summer is rich. A day with a brisk, cool wind, with many large swiftly flying clouds, with everlasting alternations of darkness and light, according as the clouds drift past the sun. Mogens had gone up to the cemetery, the garden of the manor abutted on it. Up there it looked rather barren, the grass had recently been cut; behind an old quadrangular iron-fence stood a wide-spreading, low elder with waving foliage. Some of the graves had wooden frames around them, most were only low, quadrangular hills; a few of them had metal-pieces with inscriptions on them, others wooden crosses from which the colors had peeled, others had wax wreaths, the greater number had nothing at all. Mogens wandered about hunting for a sheltered place, but the wind seemed to blow on all sides of the church. He threw himself down near the embankment, drew a book out of his pocket; but he did not get on with his reading; every time when a cloud went past the sun, it seemed to him as though it were growing chilly, and he thought of getting up, but then the light came again and he remained lying. A young girl came slowly along the way, a greyhound and a pointer ran playfully ahead of her. She stopped and it seemed as if she wanted to sit down, but when she saw Mogens she continued her walk diagonally across the cemetery out through the gate. Mogens rose and looked after her; she walked down on the main road, the dogs still played. Then he began reading the inscription on one of the graves; it quickly made him smile. Suddenly a shadow fell across the grave and remained lying there, Mogens looked sideways. A tanned, young man stood there, one hand in his game-bag, in the other he held his gun.
“It isn’t really half bad,” he said, indicating the inscription.
“No,” said Mogens and straightened up from his bent position.
“Tell me,” continued the hunter, and looked to the side, as if seeking something, “you have been here for a couple of days, and I have been going about wondering about you, but up to the present didn’t come near you. You go and drift about so alone, why haven’t you looked in on us? And what in the world do you do to kill the time? For you haven’t any business in the neighborhood, have you?”
“No, I am staying here for pleasure.”
“There isn’t much of that here,” the stranger exclaimed and laughed, “don’t you shoot? Wouldn’t you like to come with me? Meanwhile I have to go down to the inn and get some small shot, and while you are getting ready, I can go over, and call down the blacksmith. Well! Will you join?”
“Yes, with pleasure.”
“Oh, by the way,—Thora! haven’t you seen a girl?” he jumped up on the embankment.
“Yes, there she is, she is my cousin, I can’t introduce you to her, but come along, let us follow her; we made a wager, now you can he the judge. She was to be in the cemetery with the dogs and I was to pass with gun and game-bag, but was not to call or to whistle, and if the dogs nevertheless went with me she would lose; now we will see.”
After a little while they overtook the lady; the hunter looked straight ahead, but could not help smiling; Mogens bowed when they passed. The dogs looked in surprise after the hunter and growled a bit; then they looked up at the lady and barked, she wanted to pat them, but indifferently they walked away from her and barked after the hunter. Step by step they drew further and further away from her, squinted at her, and then suddenly darted off after the hunter. And when they reached him, they were quite out of control; they jumped up on him and rushed off in every direction and back again.
“You lose,” he called out to her; she nodded smilingly, turned round and went on.
They hunted till late in the afternoon. Mogens and William got along famously and Mogens had to promise that he would come to the manor-house in the evening. This he did, and later he came almost every day, but in spite of all the cordial invitations he continued living at the inn.
Now came a restless period for Mogens. At first Thora’s proximity brought back to life all his sad and gloomy memories. Often he had suddenly to begin a conversation with one of the others or leave, so that his emotion might not completely master him. She was not at all like Camilla, and yet he heard and saw only Camilla. Thora was small, delicate, and slender, roused easily to laughter, easily to tears, and easily to enthusiasm. If for a longer time she spoke seriously with some one, it was not like a drawing near, but rather as if she disappeared within her own self. If some one explained something to her or developed an idea, her face, her whole figure expressed the most intimate trust and now and again, perhaps, also expectancy. William and his little sister did not treat her quite like a comrade, but yet not like a stranger either. The uncle and the aunt, the farm-hands, the maid-servants, and the peasants of the neighborhood all paid court to her, but very carefully, and almost timidly. In respect to her they were almost like a wanderer in the forest, who sees close beside him one of those tiny, graceful song-birds with very clear eyes and light, captivating movements. He is enraptured by this tiny, living creature, he would so much like to have it come closer and closer, but he does not care to move, scarcely to take breath, lest it may be frightened and fly away.
As Mogens saw Thora more and more frequently, memories came more and more rarely, and he began to see her as she was. It was a time of peace and happiness when he was with her, full of silent longing and quiet sadness when he did not see her. Later he told her of Camilla and of his past life, and it was almost with surprise that he looked back upon himself. Sometimes it seemed inconceivable to him that it was he who had thought, felt, and done all the strange things of which he told.
On an evening he and Thora stood on a height in the garden, and watched the sunset. William and his little sister were playing hide-and-seek around the hill. There were thousands of light, delicate colors, hundreds of strong radiant ones. Mogens turned away from them and looked at the dark figure by his side. How insignificant it looked in comparison with all this glowing splendor; he sighed, and looked up again at the gorgeously colored clouds. It was not like a real thought, but it came vague and fleeting, existed for a second and disappeared; it was as if it had been the eye that thought it.
“The elves in the green hill are happy now that the sun has gone down,” said Thora.
“Oh—are they?”
“Don’t you know that elves love darkness?”
Mogens smiled.
“You don’t believe in elves, but you should. It is beautiful to believe in all that, in gnomes and elves. I believe in mermaids too, and elder-women, but goblins! What can one do with goblins and three-legged horses? Old Mary gets angry when I tell her this; for to believe what I believe, she says is not God-fearing. Such things have nothing to do with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel, too. What do you say?”
“I, oh, I don’t know—what do you really mean?”
“You surely don’t love nature?”
“But, quite the contrary.”
“I don’t mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like a set scene, but nature every day, always.”
“Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light, every shadow. There isn’t a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square, nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with it.”
“But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don’t imagine that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don’t you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep, deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for instance, is there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you don’t imagine, that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and sigh when the sun rises, but begin to dance and play with their beautiful treasure-troves, as soon as evening comes.”
“How wonderfully beautiful that is! And you see that?”
“But you?”
“Yes, I can’t explain it, but there is something in the color, in the movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in them; in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain that make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in the showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I cannot understand this at all, when I am to explain it.”
“And that is enough for you?”
“Oh, more than enough sometimes—much too much! And when shape and color and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world lies behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can express all this in voice and song, then you feel so lonely, that you cannot come closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and burdensome.”
“No, no, you must not think of your fiancee in that way.”
“Oh, I am not thinking of her.”
William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into the house.
On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not yet been. It was a rather long, but not very high hothouse. The sun sparkled and played over the glass-roof. They entered, the air was warm and moist, and had a peculiar heavy aromatic odor as of earth that has just been turned. The beautiful incised leaves and the heavy dewy grapes were resplendent and luminous under the sunlight. They spread out beneath the glass-cover in a great green field of blessedness. Thora stood there and happily looked upward; Mogens was restless and stared now and then unhappily at her, and then up into the foliage.
“Listen,” Thora said gayly, “I think, I am now beginning to understand what you said the other day on the hill about form and color.”
“And you understood nothing besides?” Mogens asked softly and seriously.
“No,” she whispered, looked quickly at him, dropped the glance, and grew red, “not then.”
“Not then,” Mogens repeated softly and kneeled down before her, “but now, Thora?” She bent down toward him, gave him one of her hands, and covered her eyes with the other and wept. Mogens pressed the hand against his breast, as he rose; she lifted her head, and he kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him with radiant, moist eyes, smiled and whispered: “Heaven be praised!”
Mogens stayed another week. The arrangement was that the wedding was to take place in midsummer. Then he left, and winter came with dark days, long nights, and a snowstorm of letters.
All the windows of the manor-house were lighted, leaves and flowers were above every door, friends and acquaintances in a dense crowd stood on the large stone stairway, all looking out into the dusk.—Mogens had driven off with his bride.
The carriage rumbled and rumbled. The closed windows rattled. Thora sat and looked out of one of them, at the ditch of the highway, at the smith’s hill where primroses blossomed in spring, at Bertel Nielsen’s huge elderberry bushes, at the mill and the miller’s geese, and the hill of Dalum where not many years ago she and William slid down on sleighs, at the Dalum meadows, at the long, unnatural shadows of the horses that rushed over the gravel-heaps, over the turf-pits and rye-field. She sat there and wept very softly; from time to time when wiping the dew from the pane, she looked stealthily over towards Mogens. He sat bowed forward, his traveling-cloak was open, his hat lay and rocked on the front seat; his hands he held in front of his face. All the things he had to think of! It had almost robbed him of his courage. She had had to say good-by to all her relatives and friends and to an infinity of places, where memories lay ranged in strata, one above the other, right up to the sky, and all this so that she might go away with him. And was he the right sort of a man to place all one’s trust in, he with his past of brutalities and debaucheries! It was not even certain that all this was merely his past. He had changed, it is true, and he found it difficult to understand what he himself had been. But one never can wholly escape from one’s self, and what had been surely still was there. And now this innocent child had been given him to guard and protect. He had managed to get himself into the mire till over his head, and doubtless he would easily succeed in drawing her down into it too. No, no, it shall not be thus—no, she is to go on living her clear, bright girl’s life in spite of him. And the carriage rattled and rattled. Darkness had set in, and here and there he saw through the thickly covered panes, lights in the houses and yards past which they drove. Thora slumbered. Toward morning they came to their new home, an estate that Mogens had bought. The horses steamed in the chill morning air; the sparrows twittered on the huge linden in the court, and the smoke rose slowly from the chimneys. Thora looked smiling and contented at all this after Mogens had helped her out of the carriage; but there was no other way about, she was sleepy and too tired to conceal it. Mogens took her to her room and then went into the garden, sat down on a bench, and imagined that he was watching the sunrise, but he nodded too violently to keep up the deception. About noon he and Thora met again, happy and refreshed. They had to look at things and express their surprise; they consulted and made decisions; they made the absurdest suggestions; and how Thora struggled to look wise and interested when the cows were introduced to her; and how difficult it was not to be all too unpractically enthusiastic over a small shaggy young dog; and how Mogens talked of drainage and the price of grain, while he stood there and in his heart wondered how Thora would look with red poppies in her hair! And in the evening, when they sat in their conservatory and the moon so clearly drew the outline of the windows on the floor, what a comedy they played, he on his part seriously representing to her that she should go to sleep, really go to sleep, since she must be tired, the while he continued to hold her hand in his; and she on her part, when she declared he was disagreeable and wanted to be rid of her, that he regretted having taken a wife. Then a reconciliation, of course, followed, and they laughed, and the hour grew late. Finally Thora went to her room, but Mogens remained sitting in the conservatory, miserable that she had gone. He drew black imaginings for himself, that she was dead and gone, and that he was sitting here all alone in the world and weeping over her, and then he really wept. At length he became angry at himself and stalked up and down the floor, and wanted to be sensible. There was a love, pure and noble, without any coarse, earthly passion; yes, there was, and if there was not, there was going to be one. Passion spoiled everything, and it was very ugly and unhuman. How he hated everything in human nature that was not tender and pure, fine and gentle! He had been subjugated, weighed down, tormented, by this ugly and powerful force; it had lain in his eyes and ears, it had poisoned all his thoughts.
He went to his room. He intended to read and took a book; he read, but had not the slightest notion what—could anything have happened to her! No, how could it? But nevertheless he was afraid, possibly there might have—no, he could no longer stand it. He stole softly to her door; no, everything was still and peaceful. When he listened intently it seemed as if he could hear her breathing—how his heart throbbed, it seemed, he could hear it too. He went back to his room and his book. He closed his eyes; how vividly he saw her; he heard her voice, she bent down toward him and whispered—how he loved her, loved her, loved her! It was like a song within him; it seemed as if his thoughts took on rhythmic form, and how clearly he could see everything of which he thought! Still and silent she lay and slept, her arm beneath the neck, her hair loosened, her eyes were closed, she breathed very softly—the air trembled within, it was red like the reflection of roses. Like a clumsy faun, imitating the dance of the nymphs, so the bed-cover with its awkward folds outlined her delicate form. No, no, he did not want to think of her, not in that way, for nothing in all the world, no; and now it all came back again, it could not be kept away, but he would keep it away, away! And it came and went, came and went, until sleep seized him, and the night passed.
When the sun had set on the evening of the next day, they walked about together in the garden. Arm in arm they walked very slowly and very silently up one path and down the other, out of the fragrance of mignonettes through that of roses into that of jasmine. A few moths fluttered past them; out in the grain-field a wild duck called, otherwise most of the sounds came from Thora’s silk dress.
“How silent we can be,” exclaimed Thora.
“And how we can walk!” Mogens continued, “we must have walked about four miles by now.”
Then they walked again for a while and were silent.
“Of what are you thinking now?” she asked.
“I am thinking of myself.”
“That’s just what I am doing.”
“Are you also thinking of yourself?”
“No, of yourself—of you, Mogens.”
He drew her closer. They were going up to the conservatory. The door was open; it was very light in there, and the table with the snowy-white cloth, the silver dish with the dark red strawberries, the shining silver pot and the chandelier gave quite a festive impression.
“It is as in the fairy-tale, where Hansel and Gretel come to the cake-house out in the wood,” Thora said.
“Do you want to go in?”
“Oh, you quite forget, that in there dwells a witch, who wants to put us unhappy little children into an oven and eat us. No, it is much better that we resist the sugar-panes and the pancake-roof, take each other by the hand, and go back into the dark, dark wood.”
They walked away from the conservatory. She leaned closely toward Mogens and continued: “It may also be the palace of the Grand Turk and you are the Arab from the desert who wants to carry me off, and the guard is pursuing us; the curved sabers flash, and we run and run, but they have taken your horse, and then they take us along and put us into a big bag, and we are in it together and are drowned in the sea.—Let me see, or might it be...?”
“Why might it not be, what it is?”
“Well, it might be that, but it is not enough.... If you knew how I love you, but I am so unhappy—I don’t know what it is—there is such a great distance between us—no—”
She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately and pressed her burning cheek against his:
“I don’t know how it is, but sometimes I almost wish that you beat me—I know it is childish, and that I am very happy, very happy, and yet I feel so unhappy!”
She laid her head on his breast and wept, and then she began while her tears were still streaming, to sing, at first very gently, but then louder and louder:
“In longingIn longing! live!”
“My own little wife!” and he lifted her up in his arms and carried her in.
In the morning he stood beside her bed. The light came faintly and subdued through the drawn blinds. It softened all the lines in the room and made all the colors seem sated and peaceful. It seemed to Mogens as if the air rose and fell with her bosom in gentle rarifications. Her head rested a little sidewise on the pillow, her hair fell over her white brow, one of her cheeks was a brighter red than the other, now and then there was a faint quivering in the calmly-arched eyelids, and the lines of her mouth undulated imperceptibly between unconscious seriousness and slumbering smiles. Mogens stood for a long time and looked at her, happy and quiet. The last shadow of his past had disappeared. Then he stole away softly and sat down in the living-room and waited for her in silence. He had sat there for a while, when he felt her head on his shoulder and her cheek against his.
They went out together into the freshness of the morning. The sunlight was jubilant above the earth, the dew sparkled, flowers that had awakened early gleamed, a lark sang high up beneath the sky, swallows flew swiftly through the air. He and she walked across the green field toward the hill with the ripening rye; they followed the footpath which led over there. She went ahead, very slowly and looked back over her shoulder toward him, and they talked and laughed. The further they descended the hill, the more the grain intervened, soon they could no longer be seen.
Old Bergamo lay on the summit of a low mountain, hedged in by walls and gates, and New Bergamo lay at the foot of the mountain, exposed to all winds.
One day the plague broke out in the new town and spread at a terrific speed; a multitude of people died and the others fled across the plains to all four corners of the world. And the citizens in Old Bergamo set fire to the deserted town in order to purify the air, but it did no good. People began dying up there too, at first one a day, then five, then ten, then twenty, and when the plague had reached its height, a great many more.
And they could not flee as those had done, who lived in the new town.
There were some, who tried it, but they led the life of a hunted animal, hid in ditches and sewers, under hedges, and in the green fields; for the peasants, into whose homes in many places the first fugitives had brought the plague, stoned every stranger they came across, drove him from their lands, or struck him down like a mad dog without mercy or pity, in justifiable self-defense, as they believed.
The people of Old Bergamo had to stay where they were, and day by day it grew hotter; and day by day the gruesome disease became more voracious and more grasping. Terror grew to madness. What there had been of order and good government was as if the earth had swallowed it, and what was worst in human nature came in its stead.
At the very beginning when the plague broke out people worked together in harmony and concord. They took care that the corpses were duly and properly buried, and every day saw to it that big bonfires were lighted in squares and open places so that the healthful smoke might drift through the streets. Juniper and vinegar were distributed among the poor, and above all else, the people sought the churches early and late, alone and in processions. Every day they went with their prayers before God and every day when the sun was setting behind the mountains, all the churchbells called wailingly towards heaven from hundreds of swinging throats. Fasts were ordered and every day holy relics were set out on the altars.
At last one day when they did not know what else to do, from the balcony of the town hall, amid the sound of trumpets and horns, they proclaimed the Holy Virgin, podesta or lordmayor of the town now and forever.
But all this did not help; there was nothing that helped.
And when the people felt this and the belief grew stronger that heaven either would not or could not help, they not only let their hands lie idly in the lap, saying, “Let there come what may.” Nay, it seemed, as if sin had grown from a secret, stealthy disease into a wicked, open, raging plague, which hand in hand with the physical contagion sought to slay the soul as the other strove to destroy the body, so incredible were their deeds, so enormous their depravity! The air was filled with blasphemy and impiety, with the groans of the gluttons and the howling of drunkards. The wildest night hid not greater debauchery than was here committed in broad daylight.
“To-day we shall eat, for to-morrow we die!”—It was as if they had set these words to music, and played on manifold instruments a never-ending hellish concert. Yea, if all sins had not already been invented, they would have been invented here, for there was no road they would not have followed in their wickedness. The most unnatural vices flourished among them, and even such rare sins as necromancy, magic, and exorcism were familiar to them, for there were many who hoped to obtain from the powers of evil the protection which heaven had not vouchsafed them.
Whatever had to do with mutual assistance or pity had vanished from their minds; each one had thoughts only for himself. He who was sick was looked upon as a common foe, and if it happened that any one was unfortunate enough to fall down on the street, exhausted by the first fever-paroxysm of the plague, there was no door that opened to him, but with lance-pricks and the casting of stones they forced him to drag himself out of the way of those who were still healthy.
And day by day the plague increased, the summer’s sun blazed down upon the town, not a drop of rain fell, not the faintest breeze stirred. From corpses that lay rotting in the houses and from corpses that were only half-buried in the earth, there was engendered a suffocating stench which mingled with the stagnant air of the streets and attracted swarms and clouds of ravens and crows until the walls and roofs were black with them. And round about the wall encircling the town sat strange, large, outlandish birds from far away with beaks eager for spoil and expectantly crooked claws; and they sat there and looked down with their tranquil greedy eyes as if only waiting for the unfortunate town to turn into one huge carrion-pit.
It was just eleven weeks since the plague had broken out, when the watchman in the tower and other people who were standing in high places saw a strange procession wind from the plain into the streets of the new town between the smoke-blackened stone walls and the black ash-heaps of the wooden houses. A multitude of people! At least, six hundred or more, men and women, old and young, and they carried big black crosses between them and above their heads floated wide banners, red as fire and blood. They sing as they are moving onward and heartrending notes of despair rise up into the silent sultry air.
Brown, gray, and black are their clothes, but all wear a red badge on their breast. A cross it proves to be, as they draw nearer. For all the time they are drawing nearer. They press upward along the steep road, flanked by walls, which leads up to the old town. It is a throng of white faces; they carry scourges in their hands. On their red banners a rain of fire is pictured. And the black crosses sway from one side to the other in the crowd.
From the dense mass there rises a smell of sweat, of ashes, of the dust of the roadway, and of stale incense.
They no longer sing, neither do they speak, nothing is audible but the tramping, herd-like sound of their naked feet.
Face after face plunges into the darkness of the tower-gate, and emerges into the light on the other side with a dazed, tired expression and half-closed lids.
Then the singing begins again: a miserere; they grasp their scourges more firmly and walk with a brisker step as if to a war-song.
They look as if they came from a famished city, their cheeks are hollow, their bones stand out, their lips are bloodless, and they have dark rings beneath their eyes.
The people of Bergamo have flocked together and watch them with amazement—and uneasiness. Red dissipated faces stand contrasted with these pale white ones; dull glances exhausted by debauchery are lowered before these piercing, flaming eyes; mocking blasphemers stand open-mouthed before these hymns.
And there is blood on their scourges.
A feeling of strange uneasiness filled the people at the sight of these strangers.
But it did not take long, however, before they shook off this impression. Some of them recognized a half-crazy shoemaker from Brescia among those who bore crosses, and immediately the whole mob through him became a laughingstock. Anyhow, it was something new, a distraction amid the everyday, and when the strangers marched toward the cathedral, everybody followed behind as they would have followed a band of jugglers or a tame bear.
But as they pushed their way forward they became embittered; they felt so matter-of-fact in comparison with the solemnity of these people. They understood very well, that those shoemakers and tailors had come here to convert them, to pray for them, and to utter the words which they did not wish to hear. There were two lean, gray-haired philosophers who had elaborated impiety into a system; they incited the people, and out of the malice of their hearts stirred their passions, so that with each step as they neared the church the attitude of the crowd became more threatening and their cries of anger wilder. It would not have taken much to have made them lay violent hands on those unknown flagellants. Not a hundred steps from the church entrance, the door of a tavern was thrown open, and a whole flock of carousers tumbled out, one on top of the other. They placed themselves at the head of the procession and led the way, singing and bellowing with grotesquely solemn gestures—all except one who turned handsprings right up the grass-grown stones of the church-steps. This, of course, caused laughter, and so all entered peacefully into the sanctuary.
It seemed strange to be here again, to pass through this great cool space, in this atmosphere pungent with the smell of old drippings from wax candles—across the sunken flag-stones which their feet knew so well and over these stones whose worn-down designs and bright inscriptions had so often caused their thoughts to grow weary. And while their eyes half-curiously, half-unwillingly sought rest in the gently subdued light underneath the vaults or glided over the dim manifoldness of the gold-dust and smoke-stained colors, or lost themselves in the strange shadows of the altar, there rose in their hearts a longing which could not be suppressed.
In the meantime those from the tavern continued their scandalous behavior upon the high altar. A huge, massive butcher among them, a young man, had taken off his white apron and tied it around his neck, so that it hung down his back like a surplice, and he celebrated mass with the wildest and maddest words, full of obscenity and blasphemy. An oldish little fellow with a fat belly, active and nimble in spite of his weight, with a face like a skinned pumpkin was the sacristan and responded with the most frivolous refrains. He kneeled down and genuflected and turned his back to the altar and rang the bell as though it were a jester’s and swung the censer round like a wheel. The others lay drunk on the steps at full length, bellowing with laughter and hiccoughing with drunkenness.
The whole church laughed and howled and mocked at the strangers. They called out to them to pay close attention so that they might know what the people thought of their God, here in Old Bergamo. For it was not so much their wish to insult God that made them rejoice in the tumult; but they felt satisfaction in knowing that each of their blasphemies was a sting in the hearts of these holy people.
They stopped in the center of the nave and groaned with pain, their hearts boiling with hatred and vengeance. They lifted their eyes and hands to God, and prayed that His vengeance might fall because of the mock done to Him here in His own house. They would gladly go to destruction together with these fool-hardy, if only He would show His might. Joyously they would let themselves be crushed beneath His heel, if only He would triumph, that cries of terror, despair, and repentance, that were too late, might rise up toward Him from these impious lips.
And they struck up a miserere. Every note of it sounded like a cry for the rain of fire that overwhelmed Sodom, for the strength which Samson possessed when he pulled down the columns in the house of the Philistines. They prayed with song and with words; they denuded their shoulders and prayed with their scourges. They lay kneeling row after row, stripped to their waist, and swung the sharp-pointed and knotted cords down on their bleeding backs. Wildly and madly they beat themselves so that the blood clung in drops on their hissing whips. Every blow was a sacrifice to God. Would that they might beat themselves in still another way, would that they might tear themselves into a thousand bloody shreds here before His eyes! This body with which they had sinned against His commandments had to be punished, tortured, annihilated, that He might see how hateful it was to them, that He might see how they became like unto dogs in order to please Him, lower than dogs before His will, the lowliest of vermin that ate the dust beneath the soles of His feet! Blow upon blow—until their arms dropped or until cramps turned them to knots. There they lay row on row with eyes gleaming with madness, with foam round their mouths, the blood trickling down their flesh.
And those who watched this suddenly felt their hearts throb, noticed how hotness rose into their cheeks and how their breathing grew difficult. It seemed as if something cold was growing out beneath their scalps, and their knees grew weak. It seized hold of them; in their brains was a little spot of madness which understood this frenzy.
To feel themselves the slaves of a harsh and powerful deity, to thrust themselves down before His feet; to be His, not in gentle piety, not in the inactivity of silent prayer, but madly, in a frenzy of self-humiliation, in blood, and wailing, beneath wet gleaming scourges—this they were capable of understanding. Even the butcher became silent, and the toothless philosophers lowered their gray heads before the eyes that roved about.
And it became quite still within the church; only a slight wave-like motion swept through the mob.
Then one from among the strangers, a young monk, rose up and spoke. He was pale as a sheet of linen, his black eyes glowed like coals, which are just going to die out, and the gloomy, pain-hardened lines around his mouth were as if carven in wood with a knife, and not like the folds in the face of a human being.
He raised his thin, sickly hands toward heaven in prayer, and the sleeves of his robe slipped down over his lean, white arms.
Then he spoke.
Of hell he spoke, that it is infinite as heaven is infinite, of the lonely world of torments which each one of the condemned must endure and fill with his wails. Seas of sulphur were there, fields of scorpions, flames that wrap themselves round a person like a cloak, and silent flames that have hardened and plunged into the body like a spear twisted round in a wound.
It was quite still; breathlessly they listened to his words, for he spoke as if he had seen it with his own eyes, and they asked themselves: is he one of the condemned, sent up to us from the caverns of hell to bear witness before us?
Then he preached for a long time concerning the law and the power of the law, that its every title must be fulfilled, and that every transgression of which they were guilty would be counted against them by grain and ounce. “But Christ died for our sins, say ye, and we are no longer subject to the law. But I say unto you, hell will not be cheated of a single one of you, and not a single iron tooth of the torture wheel of hell shall pass beside your flesh. You build upon the cross of Golgotha, come, come! Come and look at it! I shall lead you straight to its foot. It was on a Friday, as you know, that they thrust Him out of one of their gates and laid the heavier end of a cross upon His shoulders. They made Him bear it to a barren and unfruitful hill without the city, and in crowds they followed Him, whirling up the dust with their many feet so that it seemed a red cloud was over the place. And they tore the garments from Him and bared His body, as the lords of the law have a malefactor exposed before the eyes of all, so that all may see the flesh that is to be committed to torture. And they flung Him on the cross and stretched Him out and they drove a nail of iron through each of His resistant hands and a nail through His crossed feet. With clubs they struck the nails till they were in to the heads. And they raised upright the cross in a hole in the ground, but it would not stand firm and straight, and they moved it from one side to the other, and drove wedges and posts all around, and those who did this pulled down the brims of their hats so that the blood from His hands might not drop into their eyes. And He on the cross looked down on the soldiers, who were casting lots for His unstitched garment and down on the whole turbulent mob, for whose sake He suffered, that they might be saved; and in all the multitude there was not one pitiful eye.
“And those below looked up toward Him, who hung there suffering and weak; they looked at the tablet above His head, whereon was written ‘King of the Jews,’ and they reviled Him and called out to Him: ‘Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself. If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.’ Then He, the only begotten Son of God was taken with anger, and saw that they were not worthy of salvation, these mobs that fill the earth. He tore free His feet over the heads of the nails, and He clenched His hands round the nails and tore them out, so that the arms of the cross bent like a bow. Then He leaped down upon the earth and snatched up His garment so that the dice rolled down the slope of Golgotha, and flung it round himself with the wrath of a king and ascended into heaven. And the cross stood empty, and the great work of redemption was never fulfilled. There is no mediator between God and us; there is no Jesus who died for us on the cross; there is no Jesus who died for us on the cross, there is no Jesus who died for us on the cross!”
He was silent.
As he uttered the last words he leaned forward over the multitude and with his lips and hands hurled the last words over their heads. A groan of agony went through the church, and in the corners they had begun to sob.
Then the butcher pushed forward with raised, threatening hands, pale as a corpse, and shouted: “Monk, monk, you must nail Him on the cross again, you must!” and behind him there was a hoarse, hissing sound: “Yea, yea, crucify, crucify Him!” And from all mouths, threatening, beseeching, peremptory, rose a storm of cries up to the vaulted roof: “Crucify, crucify Him!”
And clear and serene a single quivering voice: “Crucify Him!”
But the monk looked down over this wave of outstretched hands, upon these distorted faces with the dark openings of screaming lips, where rows of teeth gleamed white like the teeth of enraged beasts of prey, and in a moment of ecstasy he spread out his arms toward heaven and laughed. Then he stepped down, and his people raised their banners with the rain of fire and their empty black crosses, and crowded their way out of the church and again passed singing across the square and again through the opening of the tower-gate.
And those of Old Bergamo stared after them, as they went down the mountain. The steep road, lined by walls, was misty in the light of the sun setting beyond the plain, but on the red wall encircling the city the shadows of the great crosses which swayed from side to side in the crowd stood out black and sharply outlined.
Further away sounded the singing; one or another of the banners still gleamed red out of the new town’s smoke-blackened void; then they disappeared in the sun-lit plain.