For three days, the fatal three days, did Adrian remain bereft of
strength and sense. But he was not smitten by the scourge which
his devoted and generous nurse had anticipated. It was a fierce and
dangerous fever, brought on by the great fatigue, restlessness, and
terrible agitation he had undergone.
No professional mediciner could be found to attend him; but a good
friar, better perhaps skilled in the healing art than many who claimed
its monopoly, visited him daily. And in the long and frequent absences
to which his other and numerous duties compelled the monk, there was one
ever at hand to smooth the pillow, to wipe the brow, to listen to the
moan, to watch the sleep. And even in that dismal office, when, in
the frenzy of the sufferer, her name, coupled with terms of passionate
endearment, broke from his lips, a thrill of strange pleasure crossed
the heart of the betrothed, which she chid as if it were a crime. But
even the most unearthly love is selfish in the rapture of being loved!
Words cannot tell, heart cannot divine, the mingled emotions that broke
over her when, in some of these incoherent ravings, she dimly understood
that for her the city had been sought, the death dared, the danger
incurred. And as then bending passionately to kiss that burning brow,
her tears fell fast over the idol of her youth, the fountains from which
they gushed were those, fathomless and countless, which a life could not
weep away. Not an impulse of the human and the woman heart that was not
stirred; the adoring gratitude, the meek wonder thus to be loved, while
deeming it so simple a merit thus to love;--as if all sacrifice in her
were a thing of course,--to her, a virtue nature could not paragon,
worlds could not repay! And there he lay, the victim to his own fearless
faith, helpless--dependent upon her--a thing between life and death,
to thank, to serve--to be proud of, yet protect, to compassionate, yet
revere--the saver, to be saved! Never seemed one object to demand at
once from a single heart so many and so profound emotions; the romantic
enthusiasm of the girl--the fond idolatry of the bride--the watchful
providence of the mother over her child.
And strange to say, with all the excitement of that lonely watch,
scarcely stirring from his side, taking food only that her strength
might not fail her,--unable to close her eyes,--though, from the same
cause, she would fain have taken rest, when slumber fell upon her
charge--with all such wear and tear of frame and heart, she seemed
wonderfully supported. And the holy man marvelled, in each visit, to see
the cheek of the nurse still fresh, and her eye still bright. In her
own superstition she thought and felt that Heaven gifted her with a
preternatural power to be true to so sacred a charge; and in this fancy
she did not wholly err:--for Heaven did gift her with that diviner
power, when it planted in so soft a heart the enduring might and energy
of Affection! The friar had visited the sick man late on the third
night, and administered to him a strong sedative. “This night,” said he
to Irene, “will be the crisis: should he awaken, as I trust he may, with
a returning consciousness, and a calm pulse, he will live; if not, young
daughter, prepare for the worst. But should you note any turn in the
disease, that may excite alarm, or require my attendance, this scroll
will inform you where I am, if God spare me still, at each hour of the
night and morning.”
The monk retired, and Irene resumed her watch.
The sleep of Adrian was at first broken and interrupted--his features,
his exclamations, his gestures, all evinced great agony, whether mental
or bodily: it seemed, as perhaps it was, a fierce and doubtful struggle
between life and death for the conquest of the sleeper. Patient, silent,
breathing but by long-drawn gasps, Irene sate at the bed-head. The lamp
was removed to the further end of the chamber, and its ray, shaded by
the draperies, did not suffice to give to her gaze more than the outline
of the countenance she watched. In that awful suspense, all the thoughts
that hitherto had stirred her mind lay hushed and mute. She was only
sensible to that unutterable fear which few of us have been happy enough
not to know. That crushing weight under which we can scarcely breathe
or move, the avalanche over us, freezing and suspended, which we
cannot escape from, beneath which, every moment, we may be buried and
overwhelmed. The whole destiny of life was in the chances of that single
night! It was just as Adrian at last seemed to glide into a deeper
and serener slumber, that the bells of the death-cart broke with their
boding knell the palpable silence of the streets. Now hushed, now
revived, as the cart stopped for its gloomy passengers, and coming
nearer and nearer after every pause. At length she heard the heavy
wheels stop under the very casement, and a voice deep and muffled
calling aloud, “Bring out the dead!” She rose, and with a noiseless
step, passed to secure the door, when the dull lamp gleamed upon the
dark and shrouded forms of the Becchini.
“You have not marked the door, nor set out the body,” said one gruffly;
“but this is the third night! He is ready for us.”
“Hush, he sleeps--away, quick, it is not the Plague that seized him.”
“Not the Plague?” growled the Becchino in a disappointed tone;
“I thought no other illness dared encroach upon the rights of the
gavocciolo!”
“Go--here’s money; leave us.”
And the grisly carrier sullenly withdrew. The cart moved on, the bell
renewed its summons, till slowly and faintly the dreadful larum died in
the distance.
Shading the lamp with her hand, Irene stole to the bed side, fearful
that the sound and the intrusion had disturbed the slumberer. But his
face was still locked, as in a vice, with that iron sleep. He stirred
not--the breath scarcely passed his lips--she felt his pulse, as the
wan hand lay on the coverlid--there was a slight beat--she was
contented--removed the light, and, retiring to a corner of the room,
placed the little cross suspended round her neck upon the table, and
prayed, in her intense suffering, to Him who had known death, and
who--Son of Heaven though he was, and Sovereign of the Seraphim--had
also prayed, in his earthly travail, that the cup might pass away.
The Morning broke, not, as in the North, slowly and through shadow,
but with the sudden glory with which in those climates Day leaps
upon earth--like a giant from his sleep. A sudden smile--a burnished
glow--and night had vanished. Adrian still slept; not a muscle seemed to
have stirred; the sleep was even heavier than before; the silence became
a burthen upon the air. Now, in that exceeding torpor so like unto
death, the solitary watcher became alarmed and terrified. Time
passed--morning glided to noon--still not a sound nor motion. The
sun was midway in Heaven--the Friar came not. And now again touching
Adrian’s pulse, she felt no flutter--she gazed on him, appalled and
confounded; surely nought living could be so still and pale. “Was it
indeed sleep, might it not be--” She turned away, sick and frozen; her
tongue clove to her lips. Why did the father tarry?--she would go to
him--she would learn the worst--she could forbear no longer. She glanced
over the scroll the Monk had left her: “From sunrise,” it said, “I shall
be at the Convent of the Dominicans. Death has stricken many of the
brethren.” The Convent was at some distance, but she knew the spot, and
fear would wing her steps. She gave one wistful look at the sleeper and
rushed from the house. “I shall see thee again presently,” she murmured.
Alas! what hope can calculate beyond the moment? And who shall claim the
tenure of ‘The Again?’
It was not many minutes after Irene had left the room, ere, with a long
sigh, Adrian opened his eyes--an altered and another man; the fever was
gone, the reviving pulse beat low indeed, but calm. His mind was once
more master of his body, and, though weak and feeble, the danger was
past, and life and intellect regained.
“I have slept long,” he muttered; “and oh, such dreams! And methought
I saw Irene, but could not speak to her, and while I attempted to grasp
her, her face changed, her form dilated, and I was in the clutch of
the foul gravedigger. It is late--the sun is high--I must be up and
stirring. Irene is in Lombardy. No, no; that was a lie, a wicked lie;
she is at Florence, I must renew my search.”
As this duty came to his remembrance, he rose from the bed--he was
amazed at his own debility: at first he could not stand without support
from the wall; by degrees, however, he so far regained the mastery of
his limbs as to walk, though with effort and pain. A ravening hunger
preyed upon him, he found some scanty and light food in the chamber,
which he devoured eagerly. And with scarce less eagerness laved his
enfeebled form and haggard face with the water that stood at hand. He
now felt refreshed and invigorated, and began to indue his garments,
which he found thrown on a heap beside the bed. He gazed with surprise
and a kind of self-compassion upon his emaciated hands and shrunken
limbs, and began now to comprehend that he must have had some severe but
unconscious illness. “Alone, too,” thought he; “no one near to tend me!
Nature my only nurse! But alas! alas! how long a time may thus have
been wasted, and my adored Irene--quick, quick, not a moment more will I
lose.”
He soon found himself in the open street; the air revived him; and that
morning had sprung up the blessed breeze, the first known for weeks. He
wandered on very slowly and feebly till he came to a broad square,
from which, in the vista, might be seen one of the principal gates of
Florence, and the fig-trees and olive-groves beyond, it was then that
a Pilgrim of tall stature approached towards him as from the gate; his
hood was thrown back, and gave to view a countenance of great but
sad command; a face, in whose high features, massive brow, and proud,
unshrinking gaze, shaded by an expression of melancholy more stern than
soft, Nature seemed to have written majesty, and Fate disaster. As in
that silent and dreary place, these two, the only tenants of the street,
now encountered, Adrian stopped abruptly, and said in a startled and
doubting voice: “Do I dream still, or do I behold Rienzi?”
The Pilgrim paused also, as he heard the name, and gazing long on the
attenuated features of the young lord, said: “I am he that was Rienzi!
and you, pale shadow, is it in this grave of Italy that I meet with the
gay and high Colonna? Alas, young friend,” he added, in a more relaxed
and kindly voice, “hath the Plague not spared the flower of the Roman
nobles? Come, I, the cruel and the harsh Tribune, I will be thy nurse:
he who might have been my brother, shall yet claim from me a brother’s
care.”
With these words he wound his arm tenderly round Adrian; and the young
noble, touched by his compassion, and agitated by the surprise, leaned
upon Rienzi’s breast in silence.
“Poor youth,” resumed the Tribune, for so, since rather fallen than
deposed, he may yet be called; “I ever loved the young, (my brother died
young;) and you more than most. What fatality brought thee hither?”
“Irene!” replied Adrian, falteringly.
“Is it so, really? Art thou a Colonna, and yet prize the fallen? The
same duty has brought me also to the city of Death. From the furthest
south--over the mountains of the robber--through the fastnesses of my
foes--through towns in which the herald proclaimed in my ear the price
of my head--I have passed hither, on foot and alone, safe under the
wings of the Almighty One. Young man, thou shouldst have left this task
to one who bears a wizard’s life, and whom Heaven and Earth yet reserve
for an appointed end!”
The Tribune said this in a deep and inward voice; and in his raised eye
and solemn brow might be seen how much his reverses had deepened his
fanaticism, and added even to the sanguineness of his hopes.
“But,” asked Adrian, withdrawing gently from Rienzi’s arm, “thou
knowest, then, where Irene is to be found; let us go together. Lose not
a moment in this talk; time is of inestimable value, and a moment in
this city is often but the border to eternity.”
“Right,” said Rienzi, awakening to his object. “But fear not, I have
dreamt that I shall save her, the gem and darling of my house. Fear not,
I have no fear.”
“Know you where to seek?” said Adrian, impatiently; “the Convent holds
far other guests.”
“Ha! so said my dream!”
“Talk not now of dreams,” said the lover; “but if you have no other
guide, let us part at once in quest of her. I will take yonder street,
you take the opposite, and at sunset let us meet in the same spot.”
“Rash man!” said the Tribune, with great solemnity; “scoff not at the
visions which Heaven makes a parable to its Chosen. Thou seekest counsel
of thy human wisdom; I, less presumptuous, follow the hand of the
mysterious Providence, moving even now before my gaze as a pillar of
light through the wilderness of dread. Ay, meet we here at sunset, and
prove whose guide is the most unerring. If my dream tell me true, I
shall see my sister living, ere the sun reach yonder hill, and by a
church dedicated to St. Mark.”
The grave earnestness with which Rienzi spoke impressed Adrian with a
hope which his reason would not acknowledge. He saw him depart with that
proud and stately step to which his sweeping garments gave a yet more
imposing dignity, and then passed up the street to the right hand.
He had not got half way when he felt himself pulled by the mantle. He
turned, and saw the shapeless mask of a Becchino.
“I feared you were sped, and that another had cheated me of my office,”
said the gravedigger, “seeing that you returned not to the old Prince’s
palace. You don’t know me from the rest of us I see, but I am the one
you told to seek--”
“Irene!”
“Yes, Irene di Gabrini; you promised ample reward.”
“You shall have it.”
“Follow me.”
The Becchino strode on, and soon arrived at a mansion. He knocked twice
at the porter’s entrance, an old woman cautiously opened the door. “Fear
not, good aunt,” said the gravedigger; “this is the young Lord I spoke
to thee of. Thou sayest thou hadst two ladies in the palace, who alone
survived of all the lodgers, and their names were Bianca de Medici,
and--what was the other?”
“Irene di Gabrini, a Roman lady. But I told thee this was the fourth day
they left the house, terrified by the deaths within it.”
“Thou didst so: and was there anything remarkable in the dress of the
Signora di Gabrini?”
“Yes, I have told thee: a blue mantle, such as I have rarely seen,
wrought with silver.”
“Was the broidery that of stars, silver stars,” exclaimed Adrian, “with
a sun in the centre?”
“It was.”
“Alas! alas! the arms of the Tribune’s family! I remember how I
praised the mantle the first day she wore it--the day on which we were
betrothed!” And the lover at once conjectured the secret sentiment
which had induced Irene to retain thus carefully a robe so endeared by
association.
“You know no more of your lodgers?”
“Nothing.”
“And is this all you have learned, knave?” cried Adrian.
“Patience. I must bring you from proof to proof, and link to link, in
order to win my reward. Follow, Signor.”
The Becchino then passing through the several lanes and streets, arrived
at another house of less magnificent size and architecture. Again
he tapped thrice at the parlour door, and this time came forth a man
withered, old, and palsied, whom death seemed to disdain to strike.
“Signor Astuccio,” said the Becchino, “pardon me; but I told thee I
might trouble thee again. This is the gentleman who wants to know, what
is often best unknown--but that’s not my affair. Did a lady--young and
beautiful--with dark hair, and of a slender form, enter this house,
stricken with the first symptom of the Plague, three days since?”
“Ay, thou knowest that well enough; and thou knowest still better, that
she has departed these two days: it was quick work with her, quicker
than with most!”
“Did she wear anything remarkable?”
“Yes, troublesome man: a blue cloak, with stars of silver.”
“Couldst thou guess aught of her previous circumstances?”
“No, save that she raved much about the nunnery of Santa Maria de’
Pazzi, and bravos, and sacrilege.”
“Are you satisfied, Signor?” asked the gravedigger, with an air of
triumph, turning to Adrian. “But no, I will satisfy thee better, if thou
hast courage. Wilt thou follow?”
“I comprehend thee; lead on. Courage! What is there on earth now to
fear?”
Muttering to himself, “Ay, leave me alone. I have a head worth
something; I ask no gentleman to go by my word; I will make his own eyes
the judge of what my trouble is worth,” the gravedigger now led the way
through one of the gates a little out of the city. And here, under a
shed, sat six of his ghastly and ill-omened brethren, with spades and
pick-axes at their feet.
His guide now turned round to Adrian, whose face was set, and resolute
in despair.
“Fair Signor,” said he, with some touch of lingering compassion,
“wouldst thou really convince thine own eyes and heart?--the sight may
appal, the contagion may destroy, thee,--if, indeed, as it seems to me,
Death has not already written ‘mine’ upon thee.”
“Raven of bode and woe!” answered Adrian, “seest thou not that all
I shrink from is thy voice and aspect? Show me her I seek, living or
dead.”
“I will show her to you, then,” said the Becchino, sullenly, “such as
two nights since she was committed to my charge. Line and lineament may
already be swept away, for the Plague hath a rapid besom; but I have
left that upon her by which you will know the Becchino is no liar. Bring
hither the torches, comrades, and lift the door. Never stare; it’s the
gentleman’s whim, and he’ll pay it well.”
Turning to the right while Adrian mechanically followed his conductors,
a spectacle whose dire philosophy crushes as with a wheel all the pride
of mortal man--the spectacle of that vault in which earth hides all that
on earth flourished, rejoiced, exulted--awaited his eye!
The Becchini lifted a ponderous grate, lowered their torches (scarcely
needed, for through the aperture rushed, with a hideous glare, the light
of the burning sun,) and motioned to Adrian to advance. He stood upon
the summit of the abyss and gazed below.
It was a large deep and circular space, like the bottom of an exhausted
well. In niches cut into the walls of earth around, lay, duly coffined,
those who had been the earliest victims of the plague, when the
Becchino’s market was not yet glutted, and priest followed, and friend
mourned the dead. But on the floor below, there was the loathsome
horror! Huddled and matted together--some naked, some in shrouds already
black and rotten--lay the later guests, the unshriven and unblest! The
torches, the sun, streamed broad and red over Corruption in all its
stages, from the pale blue tint and swollen shape, to the moistened
undistinguishable mass, or the riddled bones, where yet clung, in strips
and tatters, the black and mangled flesh. In many, the face remained
almost perfect, while the rest of the body was but bone; the long hair,
the human face, surmounting the grisly skeleton. There was the infant,
still on the mother’s breast; there was the lover, stretched across the
dainty limbs of his adored! The rats, (for they clustered in numbers to
that feast,) disturbed, not scared, sate up from their horrid meal as
the light glimmered over them, and thousands of them lay round, stark,
and dead, poisoned by that they fed on! There, too, the wild satire of
the gravediggers had cast, though stripped of their gold and jewels, the
emblems that spoke of departed rank;--the broken wand of the Councillor;
the General’s baton; the Priestly Mitre! The foul and livid exhalations
gathered like flesh itself, fungous and putrid, upon the walls, and
the--
But who shall detail the ineffable and unimaginable horrors that reigned
over the Palace where the Great King received the prisoners whom the
sword of the Pestilence had subdued?
But through all that crowded court--crowded with beauty and with birth,
with the strength of the young and the honours of the old, and the
valour of the brave, and the wisdom of the learned, and the wit of
the scorner, and the piety of the faithful--one only figure attracted
Adrian’s eye. Apart from the rest, a latecomer--the long locks streaming
far and dark over arm and breast--lay a female, the face turned
partially aside, the little seen not recognisable even by the mother
of the dead,--but wrapped round in that fatal mantle, on which, though
blackened and tarnished, was yet visible the starry heraldry assumed by
those who claimed the name of the proud Tribune of Rome. Adrian saw no
more--he fell back in the arms of the gravediggers: when he recovered,
he was still without the gates of Florence--reclined upon a green
mound--his guide stood beside him--holding his steed by the bridle as it
grazed patiently on the neglected grass. The other brethren of the axe
had resumed their seat under the shed.
“So, you have revived! Ah! I thought it was only the effluvia; few stand
it as we do. And so, as your search is over, deeming you would now be
quitting Florence if you have any sense left to you, I went for your
good horse. I have fed him since your departure from the palace. Indeed
I fancied he would be my perquisite, but there are plenty as good. Come,
young sir, mount. I feel a pity for you, I know not why, except that you
are the only one I have met for weeks who seem to care for another
more than for yourself. I hope you are satisfied now that I showed some
brains, eh! in your service; and as I have kept my promise, you’ll keep
yours.”
“Friend,” said Adrian, “here is gold enough to make thee rich; here,
too, is a jewel that merchants will tell thee princes might vie to
purchase. Thou seemest honest, despite thy calling, or thou mightest
have robbed and murdered me long since. Do me one favour more.”
“By my poor mother’s soul, yes.”
“Take yon--yon clay from that fearful place. Inter it in some quiet and
remote spot--apart--alone! You promise me?--you swear it?--it is well!
And now help me on my horse. Farewell Italy, and if I die not with this
stroke, may I die as befits at once honour and despair--with trumpet and
banner round me--in a well-fought field against a worthy foe!--Save a
knightly death, nothing is left to live for!”