THE CRISIS
Agnes was so entirely exhausted with bodily fatigue and mental
agitation that she slept soundly till awakened by the beams of the
morning sun. Her first glance up at the gold-embroidered curtains of
her bed occasioned a bewildered surprise;--she raised herself and
looked around, slowly recovering her consciousness and the memory of
the strange event which had placed her where she was. She rose hastily
and went to the window to look out. This window was in a kind of
circular tower projecting from the side of the building, such as one
often sees in old Norman architecture;--it overhung not only a wall of
dizzy height, but a precipice with a sheer descent of some thousand
feet; and far below, spread out like a map in the distance, lay a
prospect of enchanting richness. The eye might wander over orchards
of silvery olives, plantations with their rows of mulberry-trees
supporting the vines, now in the first tender spring green, scarlet
fields of clover, and patches where the young corn was just showing
its waving blades above the brown soil. Here and there rose tufts
of stone-pines with their dark umbrella-tops towering above all
other foliage, while far off in the blue distance a silvery belt of
glittering spangles showed where the sea closed in the horizon-line.
So high was the perch, so distant and dreamy the prospect, that Agnes
felt a sensation of giddiness, as if she were suspended over it in the
air,--and turned away from the window, to look again at what seemed to
her the surprising and unheard-of splendors of the apartment. There
lay her simple peasant garb on the rich velvet couch,--a strange sight
in the midst of so much luxury. Having dressed herself, she sat down,
and, covering her face with her hands, tried to reflect calmly on the
position in which she was placed.
With the education she had received, she could look on this strange
interruption of her pilgrimage only as a special assault upon her
faith, instigated by those evil spirits that are ever setting
themselves in conflict with the just. Such trials had befallen saints
of whom she had read. They had been assailed by visions of worldly ease
and luxury suddenly presented before them, for which they were tempted
to deny their faith and sell their souls. Was it not, perhaps, as a
punishment for having admitted the love of an excommunicated heretic
into her heart, that this sore trial had been permitted to come upon
her? And if she should fail? She shuddered, when she recalled the
severe and terrible manner in which Father Francesco had warned her
against yielding to the solicitations of an earthly love. To her it
seemed as if that holy man must have been inspired with a prophetic
foresight of her present position, and warned her against it. Those
awful words came burning into her mind as when they seemed to issue
like the voice of a spirit from the depths of the confessional: "_If
ever you should yield to his love, and turn back from this heavenly
marriage to follow him, you will accomplish his damnation and your
own._"
Agnes trembled in an agony of real belief, and with a vivid terror of
the world to come such as belonged to the almost physical certainty
with which the religious teaching of her time presented it to the
popular mind. Was she, indeed, the cause of such awful danger to his
soul? Might a false step now, a faltering human weakness, indeed plunge
that soul, so dear, into a fiery abyss without bottom or shore? Should
she forever hear his shrieks of torture and despair, his curses on
the hour he had first known her? Her very blood curdled, her nerves
froze, as she thought of it, and she threw herself on her knees and
prayed with an anguish that brought the sweat in beaded drops to her
forehead,--strange dew for so frail a lily!--and her prayer rose
above all intercession of saints, above the seat even of the Virgin
Mother herself, to the heart of her Redeemer, to Him who some divine
instinct told her was alone mighty to save. We of the present day may
look on her distress as unreal, as the result of a misguided sense
of religious obligation; but the great Hearer of Prayer regards each
heart in its own scope of vision, and helps not less the mistaken than
the enlightened distress. And for that matter, who is enlightened? who
carries to God's throne a trouble or a temptation in which there is not
somewhere a misconception or a mistake?
And so it came to pass. Agnes rose from prayer with an experience
which has been common to the members of the True Invisible Church,
whether Catholic, Greek, or Protestant. "In the day when I cried Thou
answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul." She
had that vivid sense of the sustaining presence and sympathy of an
Almighty Saviour which is the substance of which all religious forms
and appliances are the shadows; her soul was stayed on God, and was at
peace, as truly as if she had been the veriest Puritan maiden that ever
worshiped in a New England meeting-house. She felt a calm superiority
to all things earthly,--a profound reliance on that invisible aid which
comes from God alone.
She was standing at her window, deep in thought, when Giulietta
entered, fresh and blooming, bearing the breakfast-tray.
"Come, my little princess, here I am," she said, "with your breakfast!
How do you find yourself, this morning?"
Agnes came towards her.
"Bless us, how grave we are!" said Giulietta. "What has come over us?"
"Giulietta, have you seen poor grandmamma this morning?"
"Poor grandmamma!" said Giulietta, mimicking the sad tone in which
Agnes spoke, "to be sure I have. I left her making a hearty breakfast.
So fall to, and do the same, for you don't know who may come to see you
this morning."
"Giulietta, is he here?"
"He!" said Giulietta, laughing. "Do hear the little bird! It begins to
chirp already! No, he is not here yet; but Pietro says he will come
soon, and Pietro knows all his movements."
"Pietro is your husband?" said Agnes, inquiringly.
"Yes, to be sure,--and a pretty good one, too, as men go," said
Giulietta. "They are sorry bargains, the best of them. But you'll get a
prize, if you play your cards well. Do you know that the King of Naples
and the King of France have both sent messages to our captain? Our men
hold all the passes between Rome and Naples, and so every one sees the
sense of gaining our captain's favor. But eat your breakfast, little
one, while I go and see to Pietro and the men."
So saying, she bustled out of the room, locking the door behind her.
Agnes took a little bread and water, resolved to fast and pray, as the
only defense against the danger in which she stood.
After breakfasting, she retired into the inner room, and opening the
window, sat down and looked out on the prospect, and then, in a low
voice, began singing a hymn of Savonarola's, which had been taught
her by her uncle. It was entitled "Christ's Call to the Soul." The
words were conceived in that tender spirit of mystical devotion which
characterizes all this class of productions.
"Fair soul, created in the primal hour,
Once pure and grand,
And for whose sake I left my throne and power
At God's right hand,
By this sad heart pierced through because I loved thee,
Let love and mercy to contrition move thee!
"Cast off the sins thy holy beauty veiling,
Spirit divine!
Vain against thee the hosts of hell assailing:
My strength is thine!
Drink from my side the cup of life immortal,
And love will lead thee back to heaven's portal!
"I, for thy sake, was pierced with many sorrows,
And bore the cross,
Yet heeded not the galling of the arrows,
The shame and loss.
So faint not thou, whate'er the burden be:
But bear it bravely, even to Calvary!"
While Agnes was singing, the door of the outer room was slowly opened,
and Agostino Sarelli entered. He had just returned from Florence,
having ridden day and night to meet her whom he expected to find within
the walls of his fastness.
He entered so softly that Agnes did not hear his approach, and he
stood listening to her singing. He had come back with his mind burning
with indignation against the Pope and the whole hierarchy then ruling
in Rome; but conversation with Father Antonio and the scenes he had
witnessed at San Marco had converted the blind sense of personal wrong
into a fixed principle of moral indignation and opposition. He no
longer found himself checked by the pleading of his early religious
recollections; for now he had a leader who realized in his own person
all his conceptions of those primitive apostles and holy bishops who
first fed the flock of the Lord in Italy. He had heard from his lips
the fearless declaration, "If Rome is against me, know that it is
not contrary to me, but to Christ, and its controversy is with God:
doubt not that God will conquer;" and he embraced the cause with all
the enthusiasm of patriotism and knighthood. In his view, the most
holy place of his religion had been taken by a robber, who reigned in
the name of Christ only to disgrace it; and he felt called to pledge
his sword, his life, his knightly honor to do battle against him.
He had urged his uncle in Milan to make interest for the cause of
Savonarola with the King of France; and his uncle, with that crafty
diplomacy which in those days formed the staple of what was called
statesmanship, had seemed to listen favorably to his views, intending,
however, no more by his apparent assent than to withdraw his nephew
from the dangers in which he stood in Italy, and bring him under his
own influence and guardianship in the court of France. But the wily
diplomate had sent Agostino Sarelli from his presence with the highest
possible expectations of his influence both with the King of France and
the Emperor of Germany in the present religious crisis in Italy.
And now the time was come, Agostino thought, to break the spell under
which Agnes was held,--to show her the true character of the men
whom she was beholding through a mist of veneration arising entirely
from the dewy freshness of ignorant innocence. All the way home from
Florence he had urged his horse onward, burning to meet her, to tell
her all that he knew and felt, to claim her as his own, and to take her
into the sphere of light and liberty in which he himself moved. He did
not doubt his power, when she should once be where he could speak with
her freely, without fear of interruption. Hers was a soul too good and
pure, he said, to be kept in chains of slavish ignorance any longer.
When she ceased singing, he spoke from the outer apartment, "Agnes!"
The name was uttered in the softest tone, but it sent the blood to her
heart, as if it were the summons of doom. Everything seemed to swim
before her, and grow dark for a moment; but by a strong effort she
lifted her heart in prayer, and, rising, came towards him.
Agostino had figured her to himself in all that soft and sacred
innocence and freshness of bloom in which he had left her, a fair angel
child, looking through sad, innocent eyes on a life whose sins and
sorrows, and deeper loves and hates, she scarcely comprehended,--one
that he might fold in his arms with protecting tenderness, while he
gently reasoned with her fears and prejudices; but the figure that
stood there in the curtained arch, with its solemn, calm, transparent
paleness of face, its large, intense dark eyes, now vivid with some
mysterious and concentrated resolve, struck a strange chill over him.
Was it Agnes or a disembodied spirit that stood before him? For a few
moments there fell such a pause between them as the intensity of some
unexpressed feeling often brings with it, and which seems like a spell.
"Agnes! Agnes! is it you?" at last said the knight, in a low,
hesitating tone. "Oh, my love, what has changed you so? Speak!--do
speak! Are you angry with me? Are you angry that I brought you here?"
"My Lord, I am not angry," said Agnes, speaking in a cold, sad tone;
"but you have committed a great sin in turning aside those vowed to a
holy pilgrimage, and you tempt me to sin by this conversation, which
ought not to be between us."
"Why not?" said Agostino. "You would not see me at Sorrento. I sought
to warn you of the dangers of this pilgrimage,--to tell you that Rome
is not what you think it is,--that it is not the seat of Christ, but
a foul cage of unclean birds, a den of wickedness,--that he they call
Pope is a vile impostor"--
"My Lord," said Agnes, speaking with a touch of something even
commanding in her tone, "you have me at advantage, it is true, but
you ought not to use it in trying to ruin my soul by blaspheming holy
things." And then she added, in a tone of indescribable sadness, "Alas,
that so noble and beautiful a soul should be in rebellion against the
only True Church! Have you forgotten that good mother you spoke of?
What must she feel to know that her son is an infidel!"
"I am not an infidel, Agnes; I am a true knight of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, and a believer in the One True, Holy Church."
"How can that be?" said Agnes. "Ah, seek not to deceive me! My Lord,
such a poor little girl as I am is not worth the pains."
"By the Holy Mother, Agnes, by the Holy Cross, I do not seek to deceive
you! I speak on my honor as a knight and gentleman. I love you truly
and honorably, and seek you among all women as my spotless wife, and
would I lie to _you_?"
"My Lord, you have spoken words which it is a sin for me to hear, a
peril to your soul to say; and if you had not, you must not seek me as
a wife. Holy vows are upon me. I must be the wife of no man here; it is
a sin even to think of it."
"Impossible, Agnes!" said Agostino, with a start. "You have not taken
the veil already? If you had"--
"No, my Lord, I have not. I have only promised and vowed in my heart to
do so when the Lord shall open the way."
"But such vows, dear Agnes, are often dispensed; they may be loosed
by the priest. Now hear me,--only hear me. I believe as your uncle
believes,--your good, pious uncle, whom you love so much. I have taken
the sacrament from his hand; he has blessed me as a son. I believe
as Jerome Savonarola believes. He it is, that holy prophet, who has
proclaimed this Pope and his crew to be vile usurpers, reigning in the
name of Christ."
"My Lord! my Lord! I must not hear more! I must not,--I cannot,--I will
not!" said Agnes, becoming violently agitated, as she found herself
listening with interest to the pleadings of her lover.
"Oh, Agnes, what has turned your heart against me? I thought you
promised to love me a little?"
"Oh, hush! hush! don't plead with me!" she said, with a wild,
affrighted look.
He sought to come towards her, and she sprang forward and threw herself
at his feet.
"Oh, my Lord, for mercy's sake let me go! Let us go on our way! We will
pray for you always,--yes, always!" And she looked up at him in an
agony of earnestness.
"Am I so hateful to you, then, Agnes?"
"Hateful? Oh, no, no! God knows you are--I--I--yes, I love you too
well, and you have too much power over me; but, oh, do not use it! If
I hear you talk I shall yield,--I surely shall, and we shall be lost,
both of us! Oh, my God! I shall be the means of your damnation!"
"Agnes!"
"It is true! it is true! Oh, do not talk to me, but promise me, promise
me, or I shall die! Have pity on me! have pity on yourself!"
In the agony of her feelings her voice became almost a shriek, and
her wild, affrighted face had a deadly pallor; she looked like one in
a death-agony. Agostino was alarmed, and hastened to soothe her, by
promising whatever she required:
"Agnes, dear Agnes, I submit; only be calm. I promise
anything,--anything in the wide world you can ask."
"Will you let me go?"
"Yes."
"And will you let my poor grandmamma go with me?"
"Yes."
"And you will not talk with me any more?"
"Not if you do not wish it. And now," he said, "that I have submitted
to all these hard conditions, will you suffer me to raise you?"
He took her hands and lifted her up; they were cold, and she was
trembling and shivering. He held them a moment; she tried to withdraw
them, and he let them go.
"Farewell, Agnes!" he said. "I am going."
She raised both her hands and pressed the sharp cross to her bosom, but
made no answer.
"I yield to your will," he continued. "Immediately when I leave you
your grandmother will come to you, and the attendants who brought you
here will conduct you to the high-road. For me, since it is your will,
I part here. Farewell, Agnes!"
He held out his hand, but she stood as before, pale and silent, with
her hands clasped on her breast.
"Do your vows forbid even a farewell to a poor, humble friend?" said
the knight, in a low tone.
"I cannot," said Agnes, speaking at broken intervals, in a suffocating
voice,--"for _your_ sake I cannot! I bear this pain for you,--for
_you_! Oh, repent, and meet me in heaven!"
She gave him her hand; he kneeled and kissed it, pressed it to his
forehead, then rose and left the room.
For a moment after the departure of the cavalier, Agnes felt a bitter
pang,--the pain which one feels on first realizing that a dear friend
is lost forever; and then, rousing herself with a start and a sigh,
she hurried into the inner room and threw herself on her knees, giving
thanks that the dreadful trial was past, and that she had not been left
to fail.
In a few moments she heard the voice of her grandmother in the outer
apartment, and the old wrinkled creature clasped her grandchild in her
arms, and wept with a passionate abandonment of fondness, calling her
by every tender and endearing name which mothers give to their infants.
"After all," said Elsie, "these are not such bad people, and I have
been right well entertained among them. They are of ourselves,--they do
not prey on the poor, but only on our enemies, the princes and nobles,
who look on us as sheep to be shorn and slaughtered for their wearing
and eating. These men are none such, but pitiful to poor peasants and
old widows, whom they feed and clothe out of the spoils of the rich.
As to their captain,--would you believe it?--he is the same handsome
gentleman who once gave you a ring,--you may have forgotten him, as
you never think of such things, but I knew him in a moment,--and such
a religious man, that no sooner did he find that we were pilgrims on a
holy errand, than he gave orders to have us set free with all honor,
and a band of the best of them to escort us through the mountains; and
the people of the town are all moved to do us reverence, and coming
with garlands and flowers to wish us well and ask our prayers. So let
us set forth immediately."
Agnes followed her grandmother through the long passages and down the
dark, mouldy stairway to the court-yard, where two horses were standing
caparisoned for them. A troop of men in high peaked hats, cloaked and
plumed, were preparing also to mount, while a throng of women and
children stood pressing around. When Agnes appeared, enthusiastic cries
were heard: "_Viva Jesù!_" "_Viva Maria!_" "_Viva! viva Jesù! nostro
Re!_" and showers of myrtle-branches and garlands fell around. "Pray
for us!" "Pray for us, holy pilgrims!" was uttered eagerly by one and
another. Mothers held up their children; and beggars and cripples, aged
and sick,--never absent in an Italian town,--joined with loud cries
in the general enthusiasm. Agnes stood amid it all, pale and serene,
with that elevated expression of heavenly calm on her features which
is often the clear shining of the soul after the wrench and torture of
some great interior conflict. She felt that the last earthly chain was
broken, and that now she belonged to Heaven alone. She scarcely saw or
heard what was around her, wrapt in the calm of inward prayer.
"Look at her! she is beautiful as the Madonna!" said one and another.
"She is divine as Santa Catarina!" said others. "She might have been
the wife of our chief, who is a nobleman of the oldest blood, but she
chose to be the bride of the Lord," said others: for Giulietta, with a
woman's love of romancing, had not failed to make the most among her
companions of the love-adventures of Agnes.
Agnes meanwhile was seated on her palfrey, and the whole train passed
out of the court-yard into the dim, narrow street,--men, women, and
children following. On reaching the public square, they halted a moment
by the side of the antique fountain to water their horses. The groups
that surrounded it at this time were such as a painter would have
delighted to copy. The women and girls of this obscure mountain-town
had all that peculiar beauty of form and attitude which appears in the
studies of the antique; and as they poised on their heads their copper
water-jars of the old Etruscan pattern, they seemed as if they might be
statues of golden bronze, had not the warm tints of their complexion,
the brilliancy of their large eyes, and the bright picturesque colors
of their attire given the richness of painting to their classic
outlines. Then, too, the men, with their finely-moulded limbs, their
figures so straight and strong and elastic, their graceful attitudes,
and their well-fitting, showy costumes, formed a no less imposing
feature in the scene. Among them all sat Agnes waiting on her palfrey,
seeming scarcely conscious of the enthusiasm which surrounded her. Some
admiring friend had placed in her hand a large bough of blossoming
hawthorn, which she held unconsciously, as, with a sort of childlike
simplicity, she turned from right to left, to make reply to the request
for prayers, or to return thanks for the offered benediction of some
one in the crowd.
When all the preparations were at last finished, the procession of
mounted horsemen, with a confused gathering of the population, passed
down the streets to the gates of the city, and as they passed they sang
the words of the Crusaders' Hymn, which had fluttered back into the
traditionary memory of Europe from the knights going to redeem the Holy
Sepulchre.
"Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all Nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son!
Thee will I honor,
Thee will I cherish,
Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown!
"Fair are the meadows,
Fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the pleasing garb of spring:
Jesus shines fairer,
Jesus is purer
Who makes the woful heart to sing!
"Fair is the sunshine,
Fairer still the moonlight,
And all the twinkling starry host:
Jesus shines fairer,
Jesus is purer,
Than all the angels heaven can boast!"
They were singing the second verse, as, emerging from the dark
old gateway of the town, all the distant landscape of silvery
olive-orchards, crimson clover-fields, blossoming almond-trees,
fig-trees, and grapevines, just in the tender green of spring, burst
upon their view. Agnes felt a kind of inspiration. From the high
mountain elevation she could discern the far-off brightness of the
sea,--all between one vision of beauty,--and the religious enthusiasm
which possessed all around her had in her eye all the value of the
most solid and reasonable faith. With us, who may look on it from a
colder and more distant point of view, doubts may be suggested whether
this _naïve_ impressibility to religious influences, this simple,
whole-hearted abandonment to their expression, had any real practical
value. The fact that any or all of the actors might before night rob
or stab or lie quite as freely as if it had not occurred may well give
reason for such a question. Be this as it may, the phenomenon is not
confined to Italy or the religion of the Middle Ages, but exhibits
itself in many a prayer-meeting and camp-meeting of modern days. For
our own part, we hold it better to have even transient upliftings of
the nobler and more devout element of man's nature than never to have
any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses,
without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration,
is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his
wings be weak and he fall again.
In all this scene Agostino Sarelli took no part. He had simply given
orders for the safe-conduct of Agnes, and then retired to his own room.
From a window, however, he watched the procession as it passed through
the gates of the city, and his resolution was immediately taken to
proceed at once by a secret path to the place where the pilgrims should
emerge upon the high-road.
He had been induced to allow the departure of Agnes from seeing the
utter hopelessness by any argument or persuasion of removing a barrier
that was so vitally interwoven with the most sensitive religious nerves
of her being. He saw in her terrified looks, in the deadly paleness of
her face, how real and unaffected was the anguish which his words gave
her; he saw that the very consciousness of her own love to him produced
a sense of weakness which made her shrink in utter terror from his
arguments.
"There is no remedy," he said, "but to let her go to Rome and see with
her own eyes how utterly false and vain is the vision which she draws
from the purity of her own believing soul. What Christian would not
wish that these fair dreams had any earthly reality? But this gentle
dove must not be left unprotected to fly into that foul, unclean cage
of vultures and harpies. Deadly as the peril may be to me to breathe
the air of Rome, I will be around her invisibly to watch over her."