THE WHITE LADY
THEPiazza 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 FrederickII, 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 himselffrom 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 coloredpennons 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.
She had apparently not noted Francesco's presence, though his eyes had been riveted upon her from under the cowl, andhis 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 momenthis 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 élite of the army, some two thousand men in gleaming chain-mail. Conrad and Marino Capecé 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.
THE FEAST AT THE CAPITOL
WHENdarkness 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, Gaëtani, 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 Capecé, 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 theprivilege 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 massive head. The eyes were bead-like, bright as polished steel. The brows met in a straight black line over the nose.
"My Lord Frangipani—"
The Lord of Astura turned. Don Enrico presented him to the King of the Germans. Conradino extended his hand.
"We are well pleased to count you among our loyal friends and adherents, my Lord Frangipani," Conradino said with warmth. "Our illustrious grandsire himself has bestowed upon you the insignia of knighthood; it is a tie which should bind us for aye and ever!"
The Frangipani grasped the proffered hand, bending low as he replied:
"I count it great honor that King Conradino acknowledges the bonds which bind the house of Frangipani to the house of Swabia. May I be afforded the opportunity to prove my devotion towards the grandson of my glorious emperor!"
While Conradino's gaze was resting upon the Lord of Astura, there came to him a sensation, strange as it was fleeting.
He felt singularly repelled by the voice and glance of the baron, notwithstanding the latter having received his schooling at the brilliant court of Emperor Frederick at Castel Fiorentino.
In order to overcome this sensation, Conradino turned to the Roman.
"You are the Lord of Astura," he said. "I have been told your castello defends the coast!"—
"Some fifty leagues to southward, Astura rises sea-washed upon its impregnable rock!" Giovanni Frangipani replied, not without self-conscious pride. "Corsairs and Saracens have dashed themselves in vain against its granite walls. The bulwark of Terra di Lavoro, I hold castello and port as hereditary fief of Emperor Frederick!"
"A port and castello near Rome!" Conradino said with a quick lift of speech. "My imperial grandsire did well to entrust them to so faithful a subject. Who knows but that at some day I too shall embark at Astura?"
He spoke the fateful words and shivered.
It was as if the cold air of a burial vault had fanned his cheeks.—
Impelled hither by a force beyond his control, Francesco instinctively shrank from mingling with the festive crowds. The one desire of his life fulfilled, to see face to face Conradino, the idol of his youthful dreams, he would take his weary feet away and continue upon his journey towards an unknown destiny.
Opposing thoughts were flying towards contrary poles of his horizon.
On the one hand, the old longing for the world, a world of action, had risen strangely from forgotten depths. Was this perchance the goal to which his present life was leading? In the midst of his ruminations he heard the silvery mirth of Ilaria from the depths of the gardens, and the pain itself seemed to guide his steps towards her. He had always thought her the most beautiful of all beautiful women, though with them Italy blossomed as a garden.
He again remembered the night he first saw her, how the exquisite purity of her face distinguished her from the glittering throng among which she moved. He even rememberednow in what graceful folds her white robe fell from the square cut neck to her feet, how the over-sleeves hung open from the shoulders, revealing the snowy whiteness of her arms.
He remembered how that night he had refused to go singing carnival songs with the youths of the court; how they, heated with wine, had jeered and taunted him, asking if, perchance, he was turning into a pious monk.
Suddenly in his waking dream he found himself at Monte Cassino in the cell of the Prior. And the Prior talked and talked about the sins of the world, and the lust of the flesh, and of prayers and penances. How, as he sat there in grim silence, the Prior thought he was listening, instead of thinking of a smile of divine sweetness, and a fairer face than that of the Virgin looking out at him from the mural painting of Masaccio. And how the Prior would have crossed himself and implored protection from the snares of Satan, had he known that Francesco's thoughts were of a woman. How, when he went to his own cell that night, when he lay down on the bare hard boards, that served for bed and pillow, a swift revulsion of feeling had come over him.
At that moment Francesco felt that, wherever he went, he would bear his shadow with him none the less surely, because its presence might be hidden by the general negative of that sunlight, which so inexorably illumined every detail of the road that lay before him.
The shadow!
Was he indeed a living soul created in the image of his Maker, or an echo merely shouted by some fiend in derision, destined to wander forever disconsolate among the waste places, seeking and finding not?—
Now he saw Ilaria come up the moonlit path.
For a moment he wavered, trembling in every limb. Then the memory of their meeting at the fountain swept over himin a mighty wave. He called to mind the sweet smile of long ago, the touch of her hands.
No longer master of his feelings, he took a step forward, his eyes, straining into the night, riveted upon her. There was a hint of melancholy in the curve about the mouth and the farseeing eyes.
Another moment and he found himself face to face with Ilaria Caselli.
As she noted the shadow across her path, she paused sharply, then, as their eyes met, he saw the flowing motion of her figure stiffening into curves that lent a suggestion of resistance. He caught the momentary impatience of her brow and the start of resentment in her eyes.
His purpose vanquished, he stood mute in the face of the striking chill of her pride.
For a moment they regarded each other in silence, a silence that resembled the settling waters after the plunging of a stone.
Her face was very white, and her eyes, as they met his, shone with an almost supernatural lustre.
Yet this silence was putting the two asunder, contrasting them vividly, balancing them one against the other.
The repose and the self-confidence ran all towards the woman.
Her face waited.
She seemed to look down from above on Francesco the monk.
A moment ago he had had so much to say, and now his own voicelessness begot anger and rebellion.
Ilaria was looking at him, as if she saw something, and nothing, and Francesco felt that her eyes called him a fool. Her air of aloofness, as of standing above some utterly impersonal matter, put the man under her feet.
She could not have trampled upon him more victoriouslythan by displaying the utter indifference with which she seemed to rediscover his existence.
For a moment, that seemed interminable, they stood at gaze, as if some hidden hand had been laid upon them, arresting every movement.
Then her lips parted slightly.
"Faithless!"
Then she was gone.—
How long Francesco remained rooted to the spot, he did not know.
He felt as one who has walked into a place, where all the doors were closed, where calm, contemptuous faces were watching him from the windows.
His chief desire now was to get away from Rome as quickly as possible. The Pontiff was at Viterbo. Thither he would travel with the dawn. He was tired of humiliations. Restless and baffled though he felt in his effort to conform his thoughts to the life he was henceforth to lead, he resented even compassion.
The moon had risen higher and the sky was sprinkled with myriads of stars.
Francesco stood leaning against the fountain, and heard the bells on distant Aventine tolling through the night. Their music filled the air. He tried to hush the anxiety of his heart by prayer. It was in vain.
He felt the love for the friends of his youth turning slowly into hate. Once again he had proved himself, once again he had been crucified on the altar of Duty!
Let the stormy billows of life then sweep him onward to whatever destiny a dark fate had consigned him! Since loyalty had proved his undoing, why cling to outward show?—
How perfect was the night!
The distant hillsides were hushed. The very leaves were still. The olive woods shone silvery in the moonlight!
The splashing of the fountains came clear to him in the intense stillness. In the moonlight the roses were nodding to each other and the perfume of magnolias permeated the balmy night air. Farther in the shade he could see the Lucciola, in whose heart were hidden the love-words caught from lovers' lips,—what a mission for a flower! On the highroad he heard the tramp of horses' feet. They came nearer, stopped, then died away in the distance.
Afraid even to move Francesco peered through the leaves.
But the only sound he could hear was the beating of his own heart.
He stood alone in the garden.
Love seemed to have died out of the eyes of life, and the world seemed to shiver in disillusionment.
A great weariness came to him, a weariness of the heart, spreading with the swiftness of poison in the blood. His head drooped, as if the moonlight had wilted the strong neck. His eyes lost their lustre of haughtiness and fell into a vague, brooding stare. He was dull and weary; but yesterday he had thought well of the world; there seemed nor valor, nor pity, anywhere.—
Yet Francesco felt that this state could not endure.
Purposeless he had drifted on the waves of destiny, the blind victim of another's will. Prayers and penances had not availed to rouse him to the acceptance of his fate.
There must be something to fill out his life, some great palpable purpose to which he would devote himself, some high mission, in the fulfilment of which the consciousness of a false existence would become gradually blurred, and eventually wiped out.
His whole nature craved for action; the still life of the cloister, far from extinguishing the smouldering fire, had kept it alive with the fuel of dead hopes and broken ambitions.
What mattered it in the end in whose cause he fought andbled, so he came out from under the dreary cloud of passive endurance, a slow paralysis of all that was best of him?
His love for Ilaria had remained with him, had haunted him all these long and weary months. He felt it would remain with him forever, even though he banished her image from his heart. And banish it he must! He must shake off the dreamer, he must look life in the face. Boldly he must enter the arena in the unequal fight.
"Ave Domina, morituri te salutant!"—
The thought seemed to give him back some of his former elasticity. All wavering was at an end. The road seemed dark. Yet there must be a way.
Could he but accomplish some great deed, could he but make a name for himself, but prove himself worthy of the love she bore him once,—that, at least, would be atonement!
A higher light gleamed in Francesco's eyes, and he heaved a great sigh as he was about to step into the clearing, when the sound of approaching footsteps caused him to pause and listen.
They seemed to come in his direction.
In the brilliant moonlight he recognized Conradino and Frederick of Austria, Conrad Capecé and the brothers Lancia. They had been making the rounds of the gardens and were returning to the palace. In the gaunt warrior who followed in their wake he recognized the Count Palatine.
Where the glistening gravel paths branched off, leading into different parts of the blossoming wilderness, they were joined by another group. Francesco recognized among them Raniero Frangipani, and the ground began to burn under his feet.
A thousand invisible eyes seemed to peer at him in his concealment; a thousand invisible fingers seemed to point towards him,—the renegade.
They were coming nearer. Now he could hear the sound of their voices. There was no further doubt; they were coming in his direction.
It was too late to retrace his steps. If he remained where he stood, they might pass him unheeded, unseen. At this moment Francesco dreaded even the sound of a human voice, the sight of a human face. On the pinnacle of a high resolve he but craved to escape unnoticed, unseen, to be spared further humiliation.
Following a strange, inexplicable impulse, or seized with a sudden irresistible panic, which mocked his intentions to scorn, he started to retreat in an opposite direction, when a treacherous moonbeam revealed him to the eye of Raniero Frangipani.
Two mighty bounds brought him to his side, and ere Francesco knew what was happening, he found himself dragged over the greensward and stood pale and trembling before the assembled company.
Conradino had paused precipitately, as if some bird of evil omen had crossed his path. The others immediately surrounded Francesco, who was writhing in the futile endeavor to release himself from the grip which was upon him. In the struggle the cowl had dropped back, revealing Francesco's features, set and deadly pale, and the cry: "A monk!" was not for the cloth, but him it covered.
Two men had uttered it as with one voice, the Viceroy of Apulia and the Count Palatine, while in the faces of their companions Francesco read only loathing and hatred, such as any traitor would inspire.
The Frangipani released his victim with a reluctant scowl.
Conrad Capecé seized Francesco by the shoulders and looked into his face.
He felt moved despite himself by the expression of petrified grief which he read in the face of the youth, who, unable longerto endure the glances of hatred which he instinctively felt resting upon him, had dropped his gaze.
"What is your purpose here?" the Apulian queried sternly.
Twice, in the thrall of conflicting emotions, Francesco started to reply, a hot wave of shame chasing the pallor from his cheeks.
The words died on his lips.
At last, with a supreme effort, throwing back his head as in mute defiance, he replied:
"My business is with the Pontiff!"
"The business of a traitor,—a spy!"
It was the voice of Raniero Frangipani that had fallen sharply on his ear.
Francesco made no reply. Only he seemed to grow a shade more gray.
In his stead spoke Don Enrico, the Senator of Rome, who had stepped to the Viceroy's side.
"It must have been known to you that the Pontiff has abandoned the city and has fled to Viterbo. Do not try to deceive us! We shall find means to learn the truth!"
The threatening tenor of the Spaniard's voice recalled Francesco to himself. He turned to Capecé who was regarding him gloomily.
"My lord, I have never spoken a falsehood. I arrived in Rome but yesterday from Monte Cassino. Of the state of the city I knew nothing. My business is with the Pontiff."
"Then why did you not depart on learning that Clement and the Provencals have fled?"
A choking sensation came to Francesco. His hand went to his throat.
The Viceroy saw and understood.
With a sweep of the hand he bade the others stand aside.
"Go!"—The command was tinged with scorn and contempt.
"I vouch for this monk!" Francesco heard him address theSenator of Rome, as with head bowed down he walked slowly away. But with a sharp pang another voice smote his unwittingly listening ear.
"A renegade!"
It was the voice of Raniero Frangipani.—
On that night, when Francesco returned to the inn and had repaired to his chamber, he lay on his bed without moving, without even thinking.
He had passed into a strange, half-apathetic state, in which his own misery was hardly more to him than a dull and mechanical weight, pressing on some wooden thing that had forgotten to be a soul.
In truth, it seemed of little consequence how all ended. The one thing that mattered to any sentient being, was to be spared the unbearable pain.
It seemed to him as if he had left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room. He sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up, lest he should see the phantom presence of his other self.
At last the pain worked as its own anaesthetic.
Francesco's eyelids drooped and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.
QUAINT WAYFARERS
EARLYon the following morning Francesco left Rome through the ancient Flaminian gate and started upon his journey towards Viterbo.
It was a fair morning, golden and light.
Over the Campagna hung white mists, that hovered longest where the Tiber rolled; but over the green mountains of Rocca Romana the woods were alight with sunbeams and the glancing streams ran sparkling through meadows, starred with dragon-flower and cyclamen, and shaded with heavy boughs of beach and chestnut.
In lieu of following the Via Aurelia, where it wound towards the coast by Santa Marinella and Santa Severa and mediaeval Palo, and the volcanic soil and the steep ravines by Cervetri, where the long avenues of cliff sepulchres are all that remain to show the site of ancient Caeré, Francesco pursued the beaten cattle-tracks, avoiding the Maccarese marshes and following the course of the Aeroné as far as the high cliffs, up by forsaken Galera. And soon the downs and moors, the tumuli and tombs and the heaving expanse of the Roman Campagna lay behind him, and with them the fear of encountering roving companies of Provencals, which might still remain in these regions.
It was a morning such as is only seen in Southern climes,and on similar elevations; the air so pure and bright that every object appeared translucent.
The valley into which Francesco descended, although partially veiled in mists, began to disclose its variety and richness, contrasting strangely with the undulating monotony of the Campagna, which lay behind him. Little villages appeared, nestling on the craggy bases of the mountains, castles and watch-towers rose on remote pinnacles; forests of oak and pine waved freshly in the morning wind; pastures of brightest emerald bordered the river; every rock displayed in its nooks and crevices wild-flowers of brilliant hues; every breath wafted across the vale brought new intoxicating odors.
The very cataract in the distance, though lost in snowy mists, wore a diadem, a rainbow of palest pink and azure, like a semi-circular spectral bridge.
Francesco chose the wider path, and lost himself in a tangled underbrush of myrtle, stunted vines and high weeds, while the loftier forest-trees continually showered their golden dew upon him, as he passed under their odorous, lightly-swaying branches.
If the life at Monte Cassino had seemed hard and uneventful, these few days in the larger, wider world had crowded experiences upon Francesco with an impetuosity that had left him a little bewildered. Hungry for a heart, his soul, bleeding under the leash of Fate, looked down upon life as from an isolation, and found it as desolate and empty as the most ascetic soul might have desired.
Heartening himself, he tried to see some reasonable purpose linking all these happenings. He was being tempted and ill-used for the sake of a finer patience and stronger discipline, serving his novitiate in a rougher and more riotous house, meeting winds that had not reached him behind the walls of Monte Cassino.
He had taken his discipline, his schooling and his vows as amatter that was inevitable. But the lure of the outer world, combined with the memories of the past, had thrummed incessantly and insistently against the armor of his cowl.
And as, with the silence of a great resolve, he pushed slowly along his solitary path, he wondered vaguely at the ultimate goal.
He had been taught that a monk should accept all the ordinances and ask no questions, clasping an austere docility like a girdle about his loins.
Nevertheless, his eyes lost their lustre, as he remembered the scenes of the past night, and they fell into a vague brooding stare.
Yet he no longer felt angry with those who had turned from him in disdain. For a time the fire in his heart had sunk too low even for anger. He was dull and weary and a little stunned by the night's bafflings, and the collapse of his resolves.
He was fighting against destiny, and the wave was mightier than the vessel that had ventured upon it.
Francesco had started out before dawn, brushing the dew from the meadow-grass and following the misty twilight track of a brook that traced its serpentine course through the forest glades. The songs of birds went throbbing through the woodland.
Francesco had come to a place where four ways met, with a stone cross standing on a hillock, when out of the dusk of the forest aisles rode the portly bulk of a man, who was hardly astir so early in order to admire the beauties of the dawn, for he came along the greensward with the gait of one who combines caution with alertness.
No sooner had the Duke of Spoleto laid eyes upon Francesco than he broke out into a glad roar.
"Whither are you bound so lone and so early?" he bellowed after mutual greeting. "Has the soil of Rome ignited under your holy feet?"
"I am bound for Viterbo," Francesco replied, glad to have the monotony of the journey and the trend of his ruminations relieved by one who had, at one time, been of such signal service to him.
"And whither do you travel?" he asked in turn.
"Every road leads to Rome, or the devil," the duke roared sagaciously, "though three days of knight-errantry have brought nothing but petticoats. The world is overburdened with women!"
Francesco nodded, although he was not sure of the fact.
Enlarging on the subject, as they rode side by side, the Duke of Spoleto opined that women were capable of giving a deal of trouble.
Francesco considered the suggestion with due seriousness without venturing an expression on the subject.
"You come from Rome?" the duke queried at last.
"The Ghibellines are in possession of the town," Francesco replied with heavy heart.
The duke laughed.
"The spirit of chivalry runs counter to the growlings of the fathers," he said, then paused dramatically. "Anjou's name is a great and stinking sore. The whole country holds its nose because of its stench. As for him who succeeded the Cobbler's son in the chair of St. Peter:—he has yet to learn that self-righteousness but needs the devil's kiss on the forehead."
Francesco made no reply.
The Duke of Spoleto struck his fist into his palm.
"Meat, drink and the love of woman,—these things matter more than Heaven and Hell and the solemn ravings of an ascetic though," he added meditatively, "the holy fathers of the Church teach that woman is the seed and core of all evil. Perchance we find therein the reason of their own pitiable estate!"
Francesco remained silent for a space, and the duke gave him a queer puzzled look.
"Look you," he said at last, picturesquely, "you seem not like other monks, fit but to be made a mock of by sluts who are ready to laugh at an ass' hind legs. That gentry I hate,—a mad medley of the devil."
The duke spat with emphasis and rubbed his palms.
Francesco ventured to enlighten the lord of the forests.
"Yet—may not one be as one standing on the threshold, with a light in one's hand, illumining the path of others, yet remaining himself in the gloom?"
The duke shrugged.
"Sophistry is the devil's pastime," he said dubiously. "Many an old-established ghost there is, who has never seen such a thing as an honest monk. And there is nothing that ghosts love as they do novelties!"
Francesco pondered over the wisdom of his companion, but did not feel called upon to enlarge upon it. He was even now far from convinced of his own sincerity and steadfastness of purpose. He was as a man shipwrecked on a stormy sea, ever rocking with the waves, with no beacon-light beckoning him to shore.
"You have seen Conradino?" the duke said after a pause.
It might have been a statement, it might have been a question.
Francesco nodded.
"Rome is as Ghibelline at this hour as if the Pope had lived forever at Viterbo!"
The Duke of Spoleto shrugged.
"A passing fever! Many a one's soul is in sympathy with one's snout!"
"You do not love the cowl," Francesco ventured, with a sidelong glance at his companion, whose nose was in the air as if he sniffed countless monasteries and convents.
After a time the Duke of Spoleto growled.
"If the world were so perilous a place, were it not more manly to go out and conquer it than to hide from it like a girl that bars the door of the room? What if Christ and the apostles had shut themselves up in stone cells, the grim silence, the half-starved sanctity of the cloister? What has it done for the world? Men make a patchwork quilt of life and call the patchwork religion and law!"
He threw the challenge into the balance of his discontent.
Knitting his brows, he continued:
"Speak not of the Church to me! We are bidden to perceive therein the body of the Lord Christ! But what is it we see? The most complete mechanism for controlling men, manipulated by human intelligence! You bid me regard the monks in Italy as holy people in the midst of an evil world?"
He paused with a dramatic gesture.
"Rank heresy!" he bellowed, answering his own question. "A Church with no lust of temporal power is unthinkable. The Church requires a statesman for a leader, not a saint! Behold your saintly Clement at Viterbo, invoking the divine wrath upon the heads of the just claimants of these realms! Cast off the garb which disgraces your manhood! Mount a steed, challenge the devil, and slay dragons!"
Francesco felt heavy at heart.
An inner voice had long apprised him that the duke had recognized the man beneath the garb, and that he was addressing his confidences to the ghost of Francesco's self.
Now and then he surprised a sidelong glance, directed towards himself, as if his burly companion were appraising his manhood, his muscles and his strides.
His surmise fell not far short of the mark, for after a brief silence the lord of the woods spat vigorously.
"And howsoever did you happen into the cloth?" he blurted with a blunt directness, as if eager to dispose of the question.
"That is a long story," Francesco replied. "He, however, who suffered the most thereby, was least concerned in the cause!"—
The duke nodded, as if the matter were perfectly clear to him.
"You were promised special rewards and dispensations?"
Francesco's look of surprise informed the duke of the nature of the answer before he spoke.
"He who would sup with the Devil must needs have a long spoon!" the duke roared sententiously, and apparently well pleased with his own penetration.
They now travelled upon a more densely populated tract; they passed wayfarers and pilgrims; great folk on horseback with little folk licking their stirrup.
They passed an old crone at the roadside, eating her meagre meal out of a basket. Her fingers were like claws; her eyes were half-shut and she had wisps of hair on her chin. When she saw the twain, she scratched her chin with a talon and begged Francesco for a blessing, which the latter gave, while the duke shouted:
"Shave your chin, old fool! Shave your chin!"
Two hairy beggars, brandishing cudgels, emerged from the thicket.
No sooner did they lay eyes on the duke, than they bounded down the road and out of sight.
The Duke of Spoleto smote his thighs and laughed like a woodpecker.
They passed two howl-women, making for a near-by castle and practising their doleful chants.
The duke greeted them with a grotesque bow.
"Why so joyful, fascinating graces?" he bellowed through his auburn bristles. "Is the fiend assembling a chorus in these regions, to lead it in procession to hell? I commend his taste!"
The howl-women gibbered some inarticulate response and blew down the road, to the great delight of the duke.
A fat reeve with heavy saddle-bags and a fiery face whipped a mouse-colored nag right about and departed the way he came, as soon as he spied the duke in the distance.
The duke's mirth increased as the mud-sticker, as he called him, took to flight. He seemed vastly pleased with the respect he inspired.
At last, at a cross-road, they came upon two women in red cloaks and gaudy tunics, seated on the greensward, with a certain dubious alertness about the eyes, that glimmered between hunger and discontent. By their side in the grass lay a viol; they seemed to have chosen the spot to rest.
As the duke and his companion approached, the twain watched them with a peculiar, hard-eyed intentness, glanced at each other, and smiled.
"Whither away, my dear?" said the taller of the two. "It is fair weather for a journey!"—
The duke bowed profusely.
"Fair weather for a good thirst," he replied, nodding at the stone bottle which reposed in the capacious lap of the speaker.
"You carry a lusty belly," replied the dame, whose eyes had a hungry boldness, while she offered the bottle to her interlocutor.
The duke took a liberal draught. Francesco frowned.
Then the three chaffered with obvious good humor, touching upon many topics, which sounded strange to Francesco's ears.
They touched upon the wonders of the swamps, wild beasts, wolves and bears; they conversed of the outlaws of Arezzo, whose leader was said to be a woman; of the stone that bled on Passion Sunday, of the mysterious almond-tree at Treviso, that bore fruit showing the impress of the face of the Christ.
The duke seemed remarkably well versed in all matterspertaining to Church or state. When he stopped for a pull at the stone bottle, the two women laughed, taking alternate bites from an apple and munching the pulp with a voracious movement of the jaws.
Francesco thought them queer wayfarers, for they in turn stared at him, then at each other and laughed, looking at Francesco's grave face as if it were the quaintest thing on earth.
"Saints! What a sweet gentleman!" said the taller of the two, "and to see such a one in the spider's web!"
And as she sighed, her eyes discoursed to Francesco something that savored not of the Church.
The fat vagrant offered him the bottle, while her companion's eyes sent him a tentative offer of friendliness, half timid, half bold.
Francesco passed it by with a flash of the eyes to the horizon, and a straight setting of the chin.
After having parted from the two rowdies in the fantastic cloaks, the duke and Francesco continued upon their way.
"There is freedom only on the mountain-heights," the duke said, as they arrived at a crossing, marked by a huge stone cross. "If this truth ever dawns upon you, if ever your soul shrinks from the greed and hypocrisy of the world, if you tire of bloodshed in the name of the Cross and of villainy glorified by the name of Christ—the camp of the Duke of Spoleto will receive you, standing face to face with God alone."
With a hearty hand-shake they parted, and Francesco followed the road pointed out to him by his companion of the morning hours.
He had taken reluctant leave of the burly champion of a lost cause, whose very presence seemed to breathe the undefiled air of his great northern forests, undefiled by the trend of human feet, the echoes of human strife.
And as Francesco gave a parting look to the high hills withthe glitter of their birch-trees, he suddenly experienced an unexplainable melting of his resentment against Ilaria.
Something that he could neither describe nor account for, came into his heart, a subtle emotion, that was like a faint perfume, or the sound of music from afar. He had hated her for her cold pride when he left his home; yet, into this tawny cloud of hate flashed the vivid streak of a sudden recollection.
Every faint zephyr reminded him of her charm; transfused itself into the mellow brilliancy of her beauty, and Francesco suddenly surprised himself by taking her part against himself.
And, what was more, he experienced a curiously pleasing sensation in the act, and in this impulse towards tenderness discovered things that were strange and long forgotten.
It was now the drowsy noon of day, and the wood was full of shadows and of stealthy, creeping sunlight.
He rested for a pace, then, refreshed by the siesta, he rode onward, other thoughts beginning to throng his mind.
He was entering a sphere of action.
Hitherto his life had been as that of a recluse. The peace of the cloister had enveloped him as a mighty cloak of safety. It had dominated him even to the point of total paralysis of his energies. Of the purpose of his journey he was still in ignorance. Yet, an inner voice whispered to him that it was the clarion call of the Church Militant that had called him out of his repose.
There could be no further compromise between the warring factions.
The death-struggle between Guelph and Ghibelline had reached its highest crest. Henceforth he would be the soldier of the Church. A chasm, no eternity could bridge, would gape between himself and the friends of his youth. Thus Fate had willed it. Hurled into a seething vortex, he was swept onward by the resistless tide.
Now and again moments of resonant incredulity beat uponhis brain. Why had his guiltless youth been condemned, why had he been sold into bondage?
For a moment he started, retreating precipitately into the shadows.
On the far bank of the river, whose glittering coils wound through the emerald depths of the valley, there, among the aspens, he descried a company of horsemen, waiting, spears erect, helmets glittering, the wind tossing the dark manes of their horses.
After a time they rode onward, and he, too, cautiously pursued his solitary path.
Evening had come.
The rose had faded from the sky; but the horizon was flooded with pale gold, in which shone the pellucid evening star. The air was filled with the sweet chimes of innumerable bells.
A group of towers rising above the distant hills cut sharply into the glory of the sky.
Yonder lay Viterbo amidst her encircling walls: thence those carolling chimes, that so strangely stirred him, were singing their message of peace.
His eyes were fixed afar.
Would he turn back?—
The west was smoking with golden vapors. The forests receding on either hand revealed the hills and summits of the pontifical city. The old Longobard walls curved away on each hand, for a long distance, high and grim, with battlements and towers, bare and menacing.
For a moment Francesco paused; his eyes in the tracks of the sinking sun, his lips tightly set, the nails of his hands driven into his own flesh.
Then with head high and erect, never a muscle betraying the anguish of his soul, he rode into the gates of Viterbo.
THE PAWN OF THE CHURCH
WHENFrancesco arrived on the height it was the hour of the closing of the city-gates and he took lodging at an inn situated near the city walls.
He caught his breath the next morning at the imposing aspect of the place.
In the young sunshine its many towers were no longer phantom intruders on the sky, but a dominant fact. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern outlines of the fortress-palace of the pope, rose proudly impregnable in the air.
On the broad highways from Umbria, Tuscany and Romagna, even at this early hour, an almost endless stream of humanity was moving. Many a clerk and prelate was there, superbly arrayed, mounted on steeds gay with princely trappings. Fair women took in the freshness of the day. Pilgrims with staff and shell trudged merrily or wearily on. Jewish merchants, serious of face, bore packs containing valuable merchandise. For Viterbo lay on the highway, linking Northern and 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 incessantlyfingering 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, ourindulgences 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, whenhe 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.