It was upon that same evening, and while the earlier stars yet shone
over the city, that Walter de Montreal, returning, alone, to the convent
then associated with the church of Santa Maria del Priorata (both of
which belonged to the Knights of the Hospital, and in the first of which
Montreal had taken his lodgment), paused amidst the ruins and desolation
which lay around his path. Thou little skilled in the classic memories
and associations of the spot, he could not but be impressed with the
surrounding witnesses of departed empire; the vast skeleton, as it were,
of the dead giantess.
“Now,” thought he, as he gazed around upon the roofless columns and
shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the starlight shone,
ghastly and transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses
of the Frangipani, half hid by the dark foliage that sprung up amidst
the very fanes and palaces of old--Nature exulting over the frailer
Art; “now,” thought he, “bookmen would be inspired, by this scene, with
fantastic and dreaming visions of the past. But to me these monuments of
high ambition and royal splendour create only images of the future. Rome
may yet be, with her seven-hilled diadem, as Rome has been before, the
prize of the strongest hand and the boldest warrior,--revived, not by
her own degenerate sons, but the infused blood of a new race. William
the Bastard could scarce have found the hardy Englishers so easy a
conquest as Walter the Well-born may find these eunuch Romans. And which
conquest were the more glorious,--the barbarous Isle, or the Metropolis
of the World? Short step from the general to the podesta--shorter step
from the podesta to the king!”
While thus revolving his wild, yet not altogether chimerical ambition,
a quick light step was heard amidst the long herbage, and, looking up,
Montreal perceived the figure of a tall female descending from that
part of the hill then covered by many convents, towards the base of the
Aventine. She supported her steps with a long staff, and moved with such
elasticity and erectness, that now, as her face became visible by the
starlight, it was surprising to perceive that it was the face of one
advanced in years,--a harsh, proud countenance, withered, and deeply
wrinkled, but not without a certain regularity of outline.
“Merciful Virgin!” cried Montreal, starting back as that face gleamed
upon him: “is it possible? It is she:--it is--”
He sprung forward, and stood right before the old woman, who seemed
equally surprised, though more dismayed, at the sight of Montreal.
“I have sought thee for years,” said the Knight, first breaking the
silence; “years, long years,--thy conscience can tell thee why.”
“Mine, man of blood!” cried the female, trembling with rage or fear;
“darest thou talk of conscience? Thou, the dishonourer--the robber--the
professed homicide! Thou, disgrace to knighthood and to birth! Thou,
with the cross of chastity and of peace upon thy breast! Thou talk of
conscience, hypocrite!--thou?”
“Lady--lady!” said Montreal, deprecatingly, and almost quailing beneath
the fiery passion of that feeble woman, “I have sinned against thee and
thine. But remember all my excuses!--early love--fatal obstacles--rash
vow--irresistible temptation! Perhaps,” he added, in a more haughty
tone, “perhaps, yet, I may have the power to atone my error, and wring,
with mailed hand, from the successor of St Peter, who hath power to
loose as to bind--”
“Perjured and abandoned!” interrupted the female; “dost thou dream that
violence can purchase absolution, or that thou canst ever atone the
past?--a noble name disgraced, a father’s broken heart and dying curse!
Yes, that curse, I hear it now! it rings upon me thrillingly, as when I
watched the expiring clay! it cleaves to thee--it pursues thee--it shall
pierce thee through thy corselet--it shall smite thee in the meridian of
thy power! Genius wasted--ambition blasted--penitence deferred--a life
of brawls, and a death of shame--thy destruction the offspring of thy
crime!--To this, to this, an old man’s curse hath doomed thee!--AND THOU
ART DOOMED!”
These words were rather shrieked than spoken: and the flashing eye, the
lifted hand, the dilated form of the speaker--the hour--the solitude of
the ruins around--all conspired to give to the fearful execration the
character of prophecy. The warrior, against whose undaunted breast a
hundred spears had shivered in vain, fell appalled and humbled to the
ground. He seized the hem of his fierce denouncer’s robe, and cried, in
a choked and hollow voice, “Spare me! spare me!”
“Spare thee!” said the unrelenting crone; “hast thou ever spared
man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the
dust!--crouch--crouch!--wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and
beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that
rend, and the grinders that devour;--crouch, that the foot of the old
and impotent may spurn thee!”
“Hag!” cried Montreal, in the reaction of sudden fury and maddened
pride, springing up to the full height of his stature. “Hag! thou hast
passed the limits to which, remembering who thou art, my forbearance
gave thee licence. I had well-nigh forgot that thou hadst assumed my
part--I am the Accuser! Woman!--the boy!--shrink not! equivocate not!
lie not!--thou wert the thief!”
“I was. Thou taughtest me the lesson how to steal a--”
“Render--restore him!” interrupted Montreal, stamping on the ground with
such force that the splinters of the marble fragments on which he stood
shivered under his armed heel.
The woman little heeded a violence at which the fiercest warrior of
Italy might have trembled; but she did not make an immediate answer. The
character of her countenance altered from passion into an expression
of grave, intent, and melancholy thought. At length she replied to
Montreal; whose hand had wandered to his dagger-hilt, with the instinct
of long habit, whenever enraged or thwarted, rather than from any design
of blood; which, stern and vindictive as he was, he would have been
incapable of forming against any woman,--much less against the one then
before him.
“Walter de Montreal,” said she, in a voice so calm that it almost
sounded like that of compassion, “the boy, I think, has never known
brother or sister: the only child of a once haughty and lordly race, on
both sides, though now on both dishonoured--nay, why so impatient? thou
wilt soon learn the worst--the boy is dead!”
“Dead!” repeated Montreal, recoiling and growing pale; “dead!--no,
no--say not that! He has a mother,--you know he has!--a fond,
meekhearted, anxious, hoping mother!--no!--no, he is not dead!”
“Thou canst feel, then, for a mother?” said the old woman, seemingly
touched by the tone of the Provencal. “Yet, bethink thee; is it not
better that the grave should save him from a life of riot, of bloodshed,
and of crime? Better to sleep with God than to wake with the fiends!”
“Dead!” echoed Montreal; “dead!--the pretty one!--so young!--those
eyes--the mother’s eyes--closed so soon?”
“Hast thou aught else to say? Thy sight scares my very womanhood from my
soul!--let me be gone.”
“Dead!--may I believe thee? or dost thou mock me? Thou hast uttered thy
curse, hearken to my warning:--If thou hast lied in this, thy last hour
shall dismay thee, and thy death-bed shall be the death-bed of despair!”
“Thy lips,” replied the female, with a scornful smile, “are better
adapted for lewd vows to unhappy maidens, than for the denunciations
which sound solemn only when coming from the good. Farewell!”
“Stay! inexorable woman! stay!--where sleeps he? Masses shall be sung!
priests shall pray!--the sins of the father shall not be visited on that
young head!”
“At Florence!” returned the woman, hastily. “But no stone records the
departed one!--The dead boy had no name!”
Waiting for no further questionings, the woman now passed on,--pursued
her way;--and the long herbage, and the winding descent, soon snatched
her ill-omened apparition from the desolate landscape.
Montreal, thus alone, sunk with a deep and heavy sigh upon the ground,
covered his face with his hands, and burst into an agony of grief; his
chest heaved, his whole frame trembled, and he wept and sobbed aloud,
with all the fearful vehemence of a man whose passions are strong and
fierce, but to whom the violence of grief alone is novel and unfamiliar.
He remained thus, prostrate and unmanned, for a considerable time,
growing slowly and gradually more calm as tears relieved his emotion;
and, at length, rather indulging a gloomy reverie than a passionate
grief. The moon was high and the hour late when he arose, and then few
traces of the past excitement remained upon his countenance; for Walter
de Montreal was not of that mould in which woe can force a settlement,
or to which any affliction can bring the continued and habitual
melancholy that darkens those who feel more enduringly, though with
emotions less stormy. His were the elements of the true Franc character,
though carried to excess: his sternest and his deepest qualities
were mingled with fickleness and caprice; his profound sagacity often
frustrated by a whim; his towering ambition deserted for some frivolous
temptation; and his elastic, sanguine, and high-spirited nature,
faithful only to the desire of military glory, to the poetry of a daring
and stormy life, and to the susceptibilities of that tender passion
without whose colourings no portrait of chivalry is complete, and in
which he was capable of a sentiment, a tenderness, and a loyal devotion,
which could hardly have been supposed compatible with his reckless
levity and his undisciplined career.
“Well,” said he, as he rose slowly, folded his mantle round him, and
resumed his way, “it was not for myself I grieved thus. But the pang is
past, and the worst is known. Now, then, back to those things that never
die--restless projects and daring schemes. That hag’s curse keeps my
blood cold still, and this solitude has something in it weird and awful.
Ha!--what sudden light is that?”
The light which caught Montreal’s eye broke forth almost like a star,
scarcely larger, indeed, but more red and intense in its ray. Of itself
it was nothing uncommon, and might have shone either from convent or
cottage. But it streamed from a part of the Aventine which contained
no habitations of the living, but only the empty ruins and shattered
porticoes, of which even the names and memories of the ancient
inhabitants were dead. Aware of this, Montreal felt a slight awe (as the
beam threw its steady light over the dreary landscape); for he was
not without the knightly superstitions of the age, and it was now the
witching hour consecrated to ghost and spirit. But fear, whether of
this world or the next, could not long daunt the mind of the hardy
freebooter; and, after a short hesitation, he resolved to make a
digression from his way, and ascertain the cause of the phenomenon.
Unconsciously, the martial tread of the barbarian passed over the site
of the famed, or infamous, Temple of Isis, which had once witnessed
those wildest orgies commemorated by Juvenal; and came at last to a
thick and dark copse, from an opening in the centre of which gleamed the
mysterious light. Penetrating the gloomy foliage, the Knight now found
himself before a large ruin, grey and roofless, from within which came,
indistinct and muffled, the sound of voices. Through a rent in the wall,
forming a kind of casement, and about ten feet from the ground, the
light now broke over the matted and rank soil, embedded, as it were, in
vast masses of shade, and streaming through a mouldering portico hard at
hand. The Provencal stood, though he knew it not, on the very place once
consecrated by the Temple: the Portico and the Library of Liberty (the
first public library instituted in Rome). The wall of the ruin was
covered with innumerable creepers and wild brushwood, and it required
but little agility on the part of Montreal, by the help of these, to
raise himself to the height of the aperture, and, concealed by the
luxuriant foliage, to gaze within. He saw a table, lighted with tapers,
in the centre of which was a crucifix; a dagger, unsheathed; an open
scroll, which the event proved to be of sacred character; and a brazen
bowl. About a hundred men, in cloaks, and with black vizards, stood
motionless around; and one, taller than the rest, without disguise or
mask--whose pale brow and stern features seemed by that light yet
paler and yet more stern--appeared to be concluding some address to his
companions.
“Yes,” said he, “in the church of the Lateran I will make the last
appeal to the people. Supported by the Vicar of the Pope, myself an
officer of the Pontiff, it will be seen that Religion and Liberty--the
heroes and the martyrs--are united in one cause. After that time, words
are idle; action must begin. By this crucifix I pledge my faith, on this
blade I devote my life, to the regeneration of Rome! And you (then no
need for mask or mantle!), when the solitary trump is heard, when the
solitary horseman is seen,--you, swear to rally round the standard of
the Republic, and resist--with heart and hand, with life and soul,
in defiance of death, and in hope of redemption--the arms of the
oppressor!”
“We swear--we swear!” exclaimed every voice: and, crowding toward cross
and weapon, the tapers were obscured by the intervening throng, and
Montreal could not perceive the ceremony, nor hear the muttered
formula of the oath: but he could guess that the rite then common to
conspiracies--and which required each conspirator to shed some drops
of his own blood, in token that life itself was devoted to the
enterprise--had not been omitted, when, the group again receding, the
same figure as before had addressed the meeting, holding on high the
bowl with both hands,--while from the left arm, which was bared,
the blood weltered slowly, and trickled, drop by drop, upon the
ground,--said, in a solemn voice and upturned eyes:
“Amidst the ruins of thy temple, O Liberty! we, Romans, dedicate to
thee this libation! We, befriended and inspired by no unreal and fabled
idols, but by the Lord of Hosts, and Him who, descending to earth,
appealed not to emperors and to princes, but to the fisherman and the
peasant,--giving to the lowly and the poor the mission of Revelation.”
Then, turning suddenly to his companions, as his features, singularly
varying in their character and expression, brightened, from solemn awe,
into a martial and kindling enthusiasm, he cried aloud, “Death to
the Tyranny! Life to the Republic!” The effect of the transition was
startling. Each man, as by an involuntary and irresistible impulse, laid
his hand upon his sword, as he echoed the sentiment; some, indeed, drew
forth their blades, as if for instant action.
“I have seen enow: they will break up anon,” said Montreal to himself:
“and I would rather face an army of thousands, than even half-a-dozen
enthusiasts, so inflamed,--and I thus detected.” And, with this thought,
he dropped on the ground, and glided away, as, once again, through the
still midnight air, broke upon his ear the muffled shout--“DEATH TO THE
TYRANNY!--LIFE TO THE REPUBLIC!”