A wild laugh resounded in the chamber. Its echoes seemed to mock those

two, who faced each other, trembling, colourless.

"That was Benilo's advice."

Like a knife-thrust the words from Stephania's lips pierced the heart of

the Senator of Rome.

Stephania stared at him in such bewilderment, as if she thought him mad.

But when he remained silent, when she read in his downcast eyes the mute

confirmation of his speech, she sprang from her couch, facing him in the

whole splendour of her beauty.

"Surely you are jesting, my lord, or else you rave, you are mad?" she

cried. "Or can it be, that my ears tinkle with some mockery of the

fiend? Speak! You have not said it! You did not! You dared not."

She removed a stray lock of hair from her snow white brow, while her

eyes burnt into those of Crescentius, like two orbs of living fire.

"Your ears did not belie you, Stephania," the Senator said at last. "I

said you are the one--the only one."

With these words he took her hands in his and attempted to draw her down

beside him, but she tore them from his grasp, while her face alternately

paled and flushed.

"Nay," she spoke with cutting irony, "the Senator of Rome is a model

husband. He disdains the dagger and poison phial, instead he barters

his wife. You have an admirable code of morality, my lord! 'Tis a pity

I do not share your views, else the fiend might teach me how to profit

by your suggestion."

Crescentius did not interrupt the flow of her indignation, but his face

betrayed a keenness of anguish which did not escape Stephania's

penetrating gaze. She approached him and laying her hands on his

shoulders bade him look her in the eye.

"How could you say this to me?" she spoke in softer, yet reproachful

tones. "How could you? Has it come to the pass where Rome can but be

saved by the arts of a wanton? If so, then let Rome perish,--and we

ourselves be buried under her ruins."

Her eyes reflected her noble, undaunted spirit and never had Stephania

appeared more beautiful to the Senator, her husband.

"Your words are the seal of loyalty upon your soul, Stephania,"

Crescentius replied. "Think you, I would cast away my jewel, cast it

before these barbarians? But you do not understand. I will be more

plain. It was not that part you were to assume."

Stephania resumed her seat by his side. Her bosom heaved and her eyes

peered dimly through a mist of tears.

"Of all the hosts who crossed the Alps with him," Crescentius spoke with

a voice, unsteady at first, but gradually gaining the strength of his

own convictions, "none shares the emperor's dreams, none his hopes of

reconstruction. An embassy from the Palatinate is even now on the way,

to demand his return.--Not he! But there is one, the twin of his mind

and soul--Gregory the Pontiff, who will soon have his hands full with a

refractory Conclave, and will not be able to succour his friend in the

realization of his fantastic dreams. He must be encouraged,--his

watchfulness beguiled until we are strong enough to strike the final

blow. Only an intellect equal to his own dares assail the task. He

must be led by a firm hand, by a hand which he trusts--but by a hand

never forgetful of its purpose, a hand closed to bribery of chattel or

soul. He must be ruled by a mind that grasps all the strange

excrescences of his own diseased brain. Let him build up his fantastic

dream-empire, while Rome rallies her forces for a final reckoning, then

let the mirage dissolve. This is the part I had assigned to you. I can

entrust it to none else. Our hopes hang upon the fulfilment. Thus, his

hosts dissatisfied, the electors muttering beyond the Alps, the Romans

awakening to their own disgrace, the king at odds with his leaders and

himself, the pontiff menaced by the hostile Cardinals, there is one hope

left to us, to crush the invaders--our last. If it miscarries,--there

will not be gibbets enough in the Campagna for the heads that will

swing."

Stephania had gradually regained her composure. Raising her eyes to

those of Crescentius, she said with hesitation:

"There is truth in your words, but I like not the task. I hate Otto

with all my Roman heart; with all my soul do I hate that boy whose lofty

aims shame our depravity. 'Tis an ill time for masks and mummeries.

Why not entrust the task to the one so eminently fitted for it,--Benilo,

the glittering snake?"

"There will be work enough for all of us," Crescentius replied

evasively. Somehow he hated to admit even to his wife, that he

mistrusted the Chamberlain's serpent wisdom. He had gone too far. He

dared not recede without betraying his own misgivings.

Stephania heaved a deep sigh.

"What would you have me do?"

"You have so far studiously avoided the king. You have not even

permitted him to feast his eyes on the most beautiful woman in all Rome.

Be gracious to him, enter into his vagaries, point out to him old

temples and forgotten tombs, newly dug-up friezes and musty crypts!

Tell him of our legends and lead him back into the past, from whose

labyrinth no Ariadne will guide him back to the present hour,--It is for

Rome I ask."

"Truly, were I a man, I would not trap my foe by woman's wiles, as long

as I could grip mace or lance. Is there no man among all these Romans

of yours treacherous enough for the task?"

"It is even their treachery I dread," replied Crescentius. "Ambition or

the lust of gain may at the last moment carry victory from the field.

My maxim, you know: Trust none--Fear none! These festivities are to

dazzle the aim of suspicion, to attach the people once more to our cause

and to give you the desired opportunity to spread your nets. Then lead

him step for step away from life, until he shall himself become but a

spectre of the past."

"It is a game unworthy of you and me," Stephania replied after a long

pause. "To beguile a trusting foe--but the end? What is it to be?"

"Once in the councils of the king, you will lull his suspicions to

slumber! You will counteract the pressure of his flaxen-haired leaders!

You will make him a puppet in your hands, that has no will save yours.

Then sound the watchword: Rome and Crescentius!"

"I too love glory," Stephania spoke almost inaudibly. "Glory achieved by

valour, not intrigue. Give me time, my lord. As yet I hardly know if I

am fitted for the high mission you have laid out for me. Give me but

time."

"There shall be no further mention of this matter between us,"

Crescentius replied. "You will be worthy of your self and of Rome,

whose fates I have laid into your hands. The task is grave, but great

will be the reward. Where will the present state lead to? Is there to

be no limit to humiliation? Is every rebellion unlawful? Has Fate

stamped on our brow, Suffer and be silent?"

"For whom then is this comedy to be enacted?"

Crescentius shrugged his shoulders.

"Say for ourselves if you will. Deem you, Stephania, I would put my

head in the sling for that howling mob down yonder in their hovels? For

the rabble which would stone him, who gives them bread? Or for the

barons of Rome, who have encroached upon our sovereignty? If Fate will

but grant me victory, their robber dens shall crumble into dust, as if

an earthquake had levelled them. For this I have planned this Comedy of

Love--for this alone."

Stephania slowly rose from her seat beside the Senator. Every vestige of

colour had faded from her face.

"Surely I have not heard aright," she said. "Did you say 'Comedy of

Love'?"

Crescentius laughed, a low but nervous laugh.

"Why stare you so, Stephania, as if I bade you in all truth to betray

me? Is it so hard to feign a little affection for this wingless cherub

whom you are to mould to your fancies? The choice is his,--until--"

"Until it is his no longer," Stephania muttered under her breath, which

quickly came and went.

There was a pause of some duration, during which the Senator of Rome

restlessly paced the apartment. Stephania had resumed her former

station and seemed lost in deep rumination. From without no sounds were

audible. The city slept. The evening star burnt low down in the

horizon. The moon sickle slept on the crests of the mountains of Albano.

At last Stephania rose and laid her white arm on the shoulder of the

Senator of Rome.

"I will do your bidding," she said slowly, looking straight into his

eyes, "for the glory of Rome and your own!"

"For our glory," Crescentius replied with a deep sigh of relief. "I

knew you would not fail me in this hour of need."

Stephania raised her hand, as if deprecating the reward.

"For your glory alone, my lord,--it will suffice for both of us," she

replied hurriedly, as her arms sank down by her side.

"Be it so, since you so wish it," Crescentius replied. "I thank you,

Stephania! And now farewell. It waxes late and grave matters of state

require my instant attention. Await not my return to-night."

And kissing her brow, Crescentius hurriedly left his wife's apartment

and ascended a spiral stairway, leading to the chamber of his

astrologer. Suddenly he staggered, as if he had seen his own ghost and

turned sick at heart.

"What have I done!" he gasped, grasping his forehead with both hands.

"What have I done!"

Was it a presentiment that suddenly rushed over Him, prompting him to

retrace his steps, prompting him to take back his request? For a moment

he wavered. His pride and his love struggled for supremacy,--but pride

conquered. He would not have Stephania think that he feared a rival on

earth. He would not have her believe that he questioned her love.

After Crescentius had departed from the chamber, Stephania gazed long

and wistfully into the starlit night without, so calm and so serene.

Then a laugh, wild and shrill, broke from her lips, and sinking back

among her cushions, a shower of tears came to her relief.

*CHAPTER IX*

*THE SERMON IN THE GHETTO*

The Contubernium Hebraeorum, as it is loftily styled in the pontifical

edicts of the time, the Roman Ghetto, was a district of considerable

extent, reclaimed originally from the swamps of the Tiber at the foot of

the Capitoline Hill, and surrounded either by lofty walls, or houses

which were not permitted to have even a loop-hole to the exterior. Five

massive gates, guarded by the halberdiers of the Roman magistrate were

opened at sun-rise and closed at sun-set to emit and to receive back

their jealously guarded inmates, objects of unutterable contempt and

loathing with the populace, into whose heart the Catholic Church of the

Middle Ages had infused a veneration and love for the person of the

Redeemer rather than for his attributes, and whose passions and

devotions were as yet unalloyed by the skepticism and indifference which

began to pervade the higher ranks of society in the century of the

Renaissance.

Three or four times a year, a grand attempt at conversion was made, the

Pope appointing the most renowned ecclesiastics to deliver the sermons.

On the occasion about to be described towards the end of the year 999,

the Jews had good reason to expect a more than commonly devout throng in

the train of the pontifical delegate. They had prepared accordingly.

Upon entering the gates of the Ghetto the beholder was struck with the

dreary and melancholy aspect of the houses and the emptiness of the

little shops which appeared like holes in the walls. Such precious

wares as they possessed had been as carefully concealed as those they

had abstracted on the eve of their departure from Egypt. The exceeding

narrowness of the streets, which were in some parts scarcely wide enough

to allow two persons to walk abreast, and seemed in a manner arched,

in-as-much as one story extended above the others, increased the

disagreeable effect. Noisome smells greeted the nostrils on every turn

and the flutter of rags from numerous dark lattices seemed to testify to

the poverty within.

Such the Roman Ghetto appeared on the eve of the great harangue for

which the reigning Pontiff, Gregory V, had, in accordance with the

tradition of the Holy See, delegated the most renowned light of the

church. Not a Jew was to be seen, much less a Jewess, throughout the

whole line of march from the gates of the Ghetto to the large open

square where they held their markets, and where they had been summoned

to assemble in mass. The long narrow and intricate windings misled many

who did not keep pace with the Pope's delegate and his attendants, but

the greater part of the rabble rushed into the square like a mountain

stream, leaping over opposing boulders, shouting, laughing, yelling and

crushing one another, as if they were taking possession of a conquered

city.

The square itself was paved with volcanic tufa, very unevenly laid. In

the center was a great fountain of granite without the least ornament,

intended exclusively for the use of the inmates of this dreary quarter.

Into this square radiated numberless streets and alleys giving its

disordered architecture the appearance of being reft and split into

chasms, some of the houses being doubtfully propped with timbers.

Round the fountain stone benches had been arranged with tables of

similar crude material, at which usually sat the Elders, who decided all

disputes, regulated the market and governed this inner empire partly by

the maxims of common sense and justice, partly by the laws prescribed by

their sacred books, severe indeed and executed with rigour, without

provoking a thought of appeal to the milder and often opposing Christian

judicature.

But now this Sanhedrim was installed in its place of honour for a

different purpose; to hear with outward complacency and inner abhorrence

their ancient law denounced and its abolition or reform advocated. For

this purpose a movable pulpit, which resembled a bronze caldron on a

tripod, carried by four Jewish converts, was duly planted under the

supreme direction of the companion friar of the pontifical delegate, who

ordered its position reversed several times, ere it seemed to suit his

fancy.

The delegate of the Pope himself, surrounded by the pontifical guards,

was still kneeling in silent prayer, when a stranger, who had followed

the procession from afar, entered the Ghetto, unremarked in the general

tumult and ensconced himself out of observation in a dark doorway. From

his point of vantage, Eckhardt had leisure to survey the whole

pandemonium. On his left there rose an irregular pile of wood-work,

built not without some pretentions to architecture, with quaint carvings

and devices of birds and beasts on the exposed joints and window-frames,

but in a state of ruinous decay. About midheight sloped a pent-house

with a narrow balcony, supported like many of the other buildings by

props of timber, set against it from the ground. The lower part of the

house was closed and barred and had the appearance of having been

forsaken for decades.

While, himself unseen Eckhardt surveyed every detail of his

surroundings; the preparations for the sermon continued. Beyond the

seats of the Elders was assembled the great mass of those who were to

profit by the exhortation, remarkable for their long unkempt beards,

their glittering eyes and their peculiar physiognomies.

Beyond the circle of these compelled neophytes a tumultuous mob

struggled for the possession of every point, whence a view of the

proceedings could be obtained, quarrelling, scoffing and buffeting the

unresisting Jews, whose policy it was not to offer the least pretext for

pillage and general massacre, which on these occasions hovered over

their heads by a finer thread than that to which hung the sword of

Damocles. Without expostulations they submitted to the rude swaying of

the mob, to their blows and revilings, opposing to their tormentors a

seemingly inexhaustible endurance. But the horror, anxiety, and rage

which glowed in their bosoms were strongly reflected in their faces,

peering through the smoky glare of innumerable torches, which they were

compelled to exhibit at all the windows of their houses. Engaged in

this office only now and then a woman appeared for a brief instant, for

the most part withered and old, or veiled and muffled with more than

Turkish scrupulousness.

At last the pulpit was duly hoisted and placed to the satisfaction of

the attending friar. The Pope's delegate having concluded his prayer

arose and two of the Elders advanced, to present him with a copy of the

Old Testament, for from their own laws were they to be refuted. They

offered it with a deep Oriental bend and the humble request, that the

representative of his Holiness, their sovereign, would be pleased to

deliver his message. The monk replied briefly that it was not the

message of any earthly power which he was there to deliver and then

mounted the pulpit by a ladder, which his humbler associate held for

him. The attendant friar then sprinkled a lustration round the pulpit

with a bunch of hyssop, which he had dipped in an urn of holy water.

This he showered liberally upon the Elders who dared not resent it, and

ground their teeth in impotent rage.

Strangely interested, as Eckhardt found himself in the scene about to be

enacted, watching the rolling human sea under the dark blue night-sky,

he found his own curiosity shared by a second personage, who had taken

his position immediately below the door-way, in which he stood

concealed. This worthy wore a large hat, slouched over his face, which

gave him the appearance of a peasant from the marshes; but his dirty

gray mantle and crooked staff denoted him a pilgrim. Of his features

very little was to be seen, save his glittering minx-eyes. These he

kept fixed on the balcony of the ruined house, which had also attracted

Eckhardt's attention. At other times that worthy's gaze searched the

shadows beneath the gloomy structure with something of mingled scrutiny

and scorn.

"Surely this boasted steel-hearted knave of yours means to play us

false? Where is the rogue? He keeps us waiting long."

These words, as Eckhardt perceived, were addressed to an individual,

who, to judge from the mask he wore, did not wish to be recognized.

"Were it against the fiend, I would warrant him," answered a hushed

voice. "But folks here have a great reverence for this holy man, who

goes to comfort a plague-stricken patient more cheerfully than another

visits his lady-love. And, if he needs must die, were it not wiser to

venture the deed in some of the lonely places he haunts, than here in

the midst of thousands?"

"Nay," replied his companion in an undertone, every word of which was

understood by his unseen listener. "Here alone can a tumult be raised

without much danger, and as easily quelled. I do not set forests on

fire, to warm my feet. Here they will lay the mischief to the

Jews--elsewhere, suspicion would be quickly aroused, for what bravo

would deem it worth his while to slay a wretched monk?"

Again the pseudo-pilgrim's associate peered into the shadows. Then he

plucked his companion by the sleeve of his mantle.

"Yonder he comes--and by all my sins--streaming like a water-dog! Raise

your staff, but no--he sees us," concluded the masked individual,

shrinking back into the shadows.

Presently a third individual joined the pilgrim and his friend.

"Don Giovan! Thou dog! How long hast kept me gaping for thee!" the

principal speaker hissed into the bravo's face as he limping approached.

"But, by the mass,--who baptized thee so late in life?"

There was something demoniacal in the sunken, cadaverous countenance of

John of the Catacombs, as he peered into the speaker's eyes. His

ashen-pale face with the low brow and inflamed eyelids, never more

fittingly illustrated a living sepulchre. He growled some inarticulate

response, half stifled by impotent rage and therefore lost upon his

listener. For at this moment the voice of the preacher was heard above

all the confused noise and din in the large square, reading a Hebrew

text, which he subsequently translated into Latin. It was the powerful

voice of the speaker, which prevented Eckhardt from distinctly hearing

the account which the bravo gave of his forced immersion. But towards

the conclusion of his talk, the pilgrim drew the bravo deeper into the

shadows of the overhanging balcony and now their conversation became

more distinct.

"Dog of a villain!" he addressed John of the Catacombs. "How dare you

say that you will fail me in this? Have you forgotten our compact?"

"That I have not, my lord," replied the bravo, shuddering with fear and

the cold of his dripping garments. "But an angel was sent for the

prevention of the deed! No man would have braved John of the Catacombs

and lived."

"Thou needest not proclaim my rank before all this rabble," growled the

pseudo-pilgrim. "Have I not warned thee, idiot? Deemest thou an angel

would have touched thee, without blasting thee? What had thine

assailant to do to stir up the muddy waves? An angel! Coward? Is the

bribe not large enough? Name thine own hire then!"

"A pyramid of gold shall not bribe me to it," replied the bravo

doggedly. "But I am a true man and will keep no hire which I have not

earned. So come with me to the catacombs, and I will restore all I have

received of your gold. But the saints protect that holy man--I will not

touch him!"

The pilgrim regarded the speaker with ill-repressed rage.

"Holy--maybe--," he sneered, "holy, according to thy country's proverb:

'La Cruz en los pechos, el diablo en los hechos.' Thou superstitious

slave! What has one like thou to fear from either angel or devil?"

"May my soul never see paradise, if I lift steel against that holy man!"

persisted the bravo.

"Fool! Coward! Beast!" snarled the pilgrim, gnashing his teeth like a

baffled tiger. "You refuse, when this monk's destruction will set the

mob in such roaring mutiny as will give your noble associates, whom I

see swarming from afar, a chance to commence a work that will enrich you

for ever?"

"For ever?" repeated the bravo, somewhat dubiously. "But--it is

impossible. See you not he is surrounded by the naked swords of the

guards? I thought he would have come darkling through some narrow lane,

according to his wont, else I should never--moreover I have taken an

oath, my lord, and a man would not willingly damn himself!"

"Will you ever and ever forget my injunction and how much depends upon

its observance?" snarled the disguised pilgrim, looking cautiously

around. "I warn you again, not to proclaim my rank before all your

cut-throats! You swore," he then continued more sedately, "not to lift

steel against him! But have I not seen you bring down an eagle's flight

with your cross-bow? Where is it?"

"I have sold it to some foreign lord, from beyond the Alps, where they

love such distant fowling," the bravo replied guardedly. "I for my part

prefer to steal my game with a club, or a dagger."

"You have no choice! Wait! I think I can yet provide you with a weapon

such as you require! I have for some time observed yonder worthy,

whoever he may be, staring at that old bower, as if it contained some

enchanted princess," said the pilgrim, emerging slightly from under the

shadows of the doorway and beckoning John of the Catacombs to his side.

This movement brought the two--for the third seemed to be engaged in a

look-out for probable danger--closer to Eckhardt, but luckily without

coming in contact with him, for it may be conjectured that he had no

desire to expose himself to a conflict in the dark, with three such

opponents.

The personage indicated by the disguised pilgrim had indeed for some

time been engaged in scrutinizing the form of a young girl, who,

seemingly attracted by the novelty of the scene below had appeared

behind a window of the apparently deserted house, vainly soliciting her

attentions with gestures and smiles. He was of middling height, but

very stout and burly of frame, a kind of brutal good humour and

joviality being not entirely unmingled with his harsher traits.

"By the mass!" the disguised pilgrim turned to the object of his

scrutiny, in whom we recognize no lesser a personage than Gian

Vitelozzo, as he cautiously approached and saluted him. "I see your

eyes are caught too!"

He winked at the window which seemed to hold the fascination for the

other, then nodded approval.

"Saw you ever a prettier piece of flesh and blood?"

"Yet she looks more like a waxen image than a woman of the stuff you

mention, Sir Pilgrim," returned the nobleman in a barbarous jargon of

tenth century Latin.

"She is poisoned by the stench amid which she lives, and it were charity

to take her out of it," replied the pilgrim, with a swift glance at the

cross-bow slung over the other's shoulders.

"Ay, by the mass! You speak truth!" affirmed Vitelozzo, while a fourth

personage, whom he had not heretofore observed, had during their

discourse emerged from the shadows and had silently joined the survey.

"Would the whole Ghetto were put to plunder!" sighed the baron, turning

to the pilgrim, "but I am under severe penance now by order of the Vicar

of the Church."

"You must indeed have wrought some special deed of grace, to need his

intercession," the pilgrim sneered with disgusting familiarity.

Vitelozzo peered into the face of his interlocutor, doubtful whether to

resent the pleasantry or to feel flattered. Then he shrugged his

shoulders.

"'Twas but for relieving an old man of some few evil days of pains and

aches," he then replied carelessly. "But since we are at

questioning,--what merit is yours to travel so far with the

cockle-shells? Surely 'twas not just to witness the crumbling of this

planet into its primeval dust?"

"They say--I killed my brother," replied the disguised pilgrim coldly.

"Mine was but my uncle," said Vitelozzo eagerly, as if rejoicing in the

comparative inferiority of his crime. "'Tis true he had pampered me,

when a child, but who can wait for ever for an inheritance?"

"Ay--and old men never die," replied the pseudo-pilgrim gloomily. "You

are a bold fellow and no doubt a soldier too," he continued, simulating

ignorance of the other's rank, in order to gain his point. "I have been

a good part of mine a silly monk. As you see, I am still in the weeds.

Yet I will wager, that I dare do the very thing, which you are even now

but daring to think."

"What am I thinking then? I pray your worship enlighten my poor

understanding," replied the nobleman sarcastically.

"You are marking how conveniently those timbers are set to the balcony

of yonder crow's nest, for a man to climb up unobserved, and that you

would be glad if you could summon the courage to scale it to the scorn

of this circumcized mob," said the pilgrim.

Vitelozzo laughed scornfully.

"For the fear of it? I have clambered up many a strong wall with only

my dagger's aid, when boiling lead poured down among us like melting

snow and the devil himself would have kept his foot from the ladder.

But," he concluded as if remembering that it behooved not his own

dignity to continue parley with the pilgrim, "who are you, that you dare

bandy words with me?"

The pilgrim considered it neither opportune nor discreet to introduce

himself.

"My staff against your cross-bow," he replied boastfully instead. "You

dare not attempt it and I will succeed in it!"

"By the foul fiend! Not until I have failed," replied Vitelozzo,

colouring. "Hold my cross-bow while I climb. But if you mean mischief

or deceit, know better than to practise it, for I am not what I seem,

but a great lord, who would as soon crack your empty pate as an egg!"

The pseudo-pilgrim replied apparently with some warmth, but as the

preacher's tone now rose above the surrounding buzz only the conclusion

of his speech was audible, wherein he declared that he would restore the

noble's cross-bow or rouse his friends to his assistance in the event of

danger. This compact concluded Eckhardt noted that the Roman baron gave

his helmet, cross-bow and other accoutrements, which were likely to

prove an impediment, into the care of the pilgrim, and prepared to

accomplish his insolent purpose.

The disguised pilgrim, whose identity Eckhardt had vainly endeavoured to

establish, now retired instantly and rejoined his companions, who had

been eagerly listening in their concealment under the doorway. The

newcomer, who had for a time swelled their number, had retreated

unobserved after having concluded his observations, as it seemed, to his

satisfaction, for Eckhardt saw him nod to himself ere he vanished from

sight.

"Here then is a weapon, Don Giovan, if you would not rather have the

point in your own skull," the pilgrim said, handing the bravo a small

bow of peculiar construction which Vitelozzo was wont to carry on his

fowling expeditions, as he styled his nightly excursions.

"Moreover," the pilgrim continued encouragingly, noting the manifest

reluctance on the part of the bravo, "I have caused you a pretty

diversion. When the tumult, which this villain will raise, shall begin,

you have but to adjust the arrow and watch the monk's associate. When

he raises his hand--let fly!"

John of the Catacombs shivered, but did not reply, while Eckhardt

scrutinized the monk indicated by the pilgrim, as well as the glare of

the torches and their delusive light would permit. But his face being

averted, he again turned his attention to the trio in the shadows below.

The pontifical delegate meanwhile continued his sermon as unconcerned as

if his deadliest enemy did not stand close beside him ready to imprint

on his brow the pernicious kiss of Judas.

"Fear you aught for your foul carcass and the thing you call your soul?"

the pilgrim snarled, seemingly exasperated by the reluctance of the

instrument to obey the master's behest. "Fear you for your salvation,

when so black a wretch as Vitelozzo--for I know the ruffian, who slew

his benefactor,--hazards both for a fool's frolic? The monk is a fair

mark! Look but at him perched in the pulpit yonder, with his arms spread

out as if he would fly straightway to heaven!"

"He looks like a black crucifixion," muttered the bravo with a shudder.

"Tush, fool! You can easily conceal yourself in these shadows, for the

blame will fall on the Jews and the uproar which I will raise at

different extremities of the crowd will divert all attention from the

perpetrator of the deed!"

John of the Catacombs seemed to yield gradually to the force of the

other's arguments. The deed accomplished, it had been agreed that they

would dive into the very midst of the congested throngs and urge the

inflamed minds to the extermination of the hated race of the Ghetto.

Eckhardt's consternation upon listening to this devilish plot was so

great, that for a time he lost sight of the would-be assailant of the

young girl, whom he was unable to see from his concealment almost

directly beneath the balcony. Again he was staggered by the dilemma

confronting him, how best to direct his energies for the prevention of

the double crime. To rush forth and, giving a signal to the pontifical

guards, to proclaim the intended treachery, would perhaps in any other

country, age or place have been sufficient to counteract the plot. But

in this case it was most likely to secure the triumph of the offenders.

It was far from improbable, that the projectors of this deed of

darkness, upon finding their sinister designs baffled, would fall

combined upon whosoever dared to cross their path, and silence him for

ever ere he had time to reveal their real purpose. In the rancorous

irritation and mutually suspicious state of men's minds the least spark

might kindle a universal blaze. The fears and hatred of both parties

would probably interpret the first flash of steel into a signal for

preconcerted massacre and the very consequences sought to be averted

would inevitably follow.

A further circumstance which baffled Eckhardt was the cause of the

implacable hatred, which the moving spirit of the trio seemed to bear

the pontifical delegate. But the sagacious intellect of the man into

whose hands fate had so opportunely placed a lever for preventing a

crime, whose consequences it was difficult to even surmise, suggested

these dangers and their remedies almost simultaneously. Thus he

patiently awaited the separation of the colleagues on their several

enterprises, regarding the monk with renewed interest in this new and

appalling light.

His tall and commanding form was to be seen from every point. The

austerity and gloom of the speaker's countenance only seemed to aid in

displaying more brilliantly the irradiations of the mind which illumined

it. His harangue seemed imbued with something of supernatural

inspiration and dark as had appeared to Eckhardt the motive for the

contemplated crime, the probable reason suddenly flashed through his

mind. For in the pulpit stood Gerbert of Aurillac, Archbishop of

Rheims, Bishop of Ravenna, the teacher of the Emperor, the friend of the

Pontiff, he who was so soon as Sylvester II to be crowned with the

Triple Tiara of St. Peter.

But there was no time for musing if the double crime was to be

prevented. For John of the Catacombs, who had now turned his back on

the crowds, had possessed himself of Vitelozzo's cross-bow and was

tightening the bow-strings. With equal caution, to avoid betraying his

presence, Eckhardt unsheathed his sword. But the jar of the blade

against the scabbard, though ever so slight, startled the outlaw's

attention. He paused for a moment, listening and glancing furtively

about. Then he muttered to himself: "A rat," and resumed his

occupation, while Eckhardt slowly stepped from his concealment, taking

his station directly behind the kneeling bravo, unseen by the pilgrim

and the latter's silent companion.

A brilliant glow, emanating from some mysterious source near the monk

and which many afterwards contended as having proceeded directly from

his person, suddenly illumined not only the square, the pontifical

delegate, and the monk, who held his arms aloft as if imploring a

benediction, but likewise the towering form of Eckhardt, leaning on his

bare and glittering brand.

With a yell as if he had seen a wild beast crouching for its deadly

spring, John of the Catacombs sprang up, only to be instantly struck

down by a mighty blow from the commander's gauntleted hand. He lay

senseless on the ground, covered with blood. The bow had fallen from

his grasp. Setting his foot on the outlaw's breast, Eckhardt hesitated

for a moment whether to rid Rome of so monstrous a villain, or spare

him, in order to learn the real instigators of the crime, when a

piercing shriek from above convinced him that while the bravo had

failed, the high-born ruffian had been more successful.

There was no time for parley.

Trampling with his crushing weight over the bravo's breast Eckhardt

turned towards the spot whence the cry of distress had come. An intense

hush fraught with doubts and fears had fallen upon the monk's audience

at the ominous outcry,--a cry which might have been but the signal for

some preconcerted outrage, and the hush deepened when the tall powerful

form of the German leader was seen stalking toward the deserted house

and entering it through a door, which Gian Vitelozzo had forced, the

obstacle which had luckily prevented him from reaching before his

unsuspecting victim. The ruffian could be seen from below, holding in

his arms on the balcony the shrieking and struggling girl, disregarding

in his brutal eagerness all that passed below. Suddenly his shoulder

was grasped as in the teeth of a lion, and so powerful was the pressure

that the noble's arms were benumbed and dropped powerlessly by his side.

Before he recovered from his surprise and could make one single effort

at resistance, Eckhardt had seized him round the waist and hurled him

down on the square amidst a roaring thunder of applause mingled with

howls of derision and rage. Those immediately beneath the balcony,

consisting chiefly of the scum and rabble, who cared little for the

monk's arguments, rejoiced at the prompt retribution meted out to one of

their oppressors, though the discomfiture of the hapless victim had left

them utterly indifferent. Why should they carry their skin to market to

right another's wrong?

Thus they offered neither obstacle nor assistance when the Roman baron,

in no wise hurt by his fall, as the balcony was at no great height from

the ground, rose in a towering rage and challenged his assailant to

descend and to meet him in mortal combat. But by this time the

disturbance had reached the monk's ears, and at once perceiving the

cause from his lofty point of vantage, Gerbert shouted to his audience

to secure the brawler in the name of God and the Church. The mob

obeyed, though swayed by reluctance and doubts, while the pontifical

guards closed round the offending noble to cut off his escape. But Gian

Vitelozzo seemed to possess sovereign reasons for dreading to find

himself in the custody of the Vicar of the Church and promptly took to

flight.

Overthrowing the first who opposed him, the rest offering no serious

resistance, he forced his way to one of the narrow passages of the

Ghetto, fled through it, relinquishing his accoutrements and vanished in

the shadows, which haunted this dismal region by day and by night. But

Gerbert of Aurillac was not to be so easily baffled. He had recognized

the Roman baron despite his demeaning attire. With a voice of thunder

he ordered his entire following to the ruffian's pursuit, and noting the

direction in which Vitelozzo had disappeared, he leaped, despite his

advanced years, from his pulpit and waving a cross high in the air, led

the pursuit in person, which inaugurated a general stampede of nobles,

Jews, pilgrims, monks and the ever-present rabble of Rome.

This unforeseen incident having drawn off the crowd, which had invaded

the Ghetto, in the preacher's wake, the great square was quickly

deserted and the torches in the high windows were extinguished as if a

sudden wind-storm had snuffed out their glowing radiance.

*CHAPTER X*

*THE SICILIAN DANCER*

After a fruitless search for the hapless victim of the Roman baron's

licentiousness, in order to restore her in safety to her kindred or

friends, Eckhardt concluded at last that she had found a haven of

security and turned his back upon the Ghetto and its panic-stricken

inmates without bestowing another thought upon an incident, in itself

not uncommon and but an evidence of the deep-rooted social disorder of

the times. His thoughts reverted rather to the attempt upon the life of

the pontifical delegate, which some happy chance had permitted him to

frustrate, but in vain did he try to fathom the reasons prompting a

deed, the accomplishment of which seemed to hold out such meagre promise

of reward to its perpetrators, whose persons were enshrouded in a veil

of mystery. Eckhardt could only assign personal reasons to an attempt,

which, if successful, could not enrich the moving spirits of the plot, a

consideration always uppermost in men's minds, and pondering thus over

the strange events, the commander aimlessly pursued his way in a

direction opposite to the one the monk and his following had chosen for

the pursuit of the baron. How long he had thus strolled onward, he knew

not, when he found himself in the space before the Capitol. The moon

gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of the heavens,

trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain which flowed from

beneath the Capitoline rock.

Here some scattered groups of the populace sat or lolled on the ground,

discussing the events of the day, jesting, laughing or love-making.

Others paraded up and down, engaged in conversation and enjoying the

balmy night air, tinged with the breath of departing summer.

Wearied with thought, Eckhardt made his way to the fountain, and, seated

on the margin regardless of the chattering groups which continually

clustered round it and dispersed, he felt his spirits grow calm in the

monotony of the gurgling flow of the water, which was streaming down the

rock and spurting from several grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins.

The stars sparkled over the dark, towering cypresses, which crowned the

surrounding eminences, and the palaces and ruins upon them stood forth

in distinctness of splendour or desolation against the luminous

brightness of the moonlit sky.

Eckhardt's ruminations were interrupted by the sound of a tambourine,

and looking up from his reverie, he perceived that the populace were

gathering in a wide circle before the fountain, attracted by the sound

of the instrument. In the background, kept thus remote by the vigilance

of an old woman and two half-savage Calabrians, who seemed to be the

proprietors of the show, stood a young woman in the garb of a Sicilian,

apparently just preparing to dance. She seemed to belong to a class of

damsels who were ordained under severe penalties to go masked during all

religious festivals, to protect the pilgrims from the influence of their

baleful charms. Else there could be no reason why an itinerant female

juggler or minstrel who employed the talents, which the harmonious

climate of Italy lavishes on its poorest children, to enable them to

earn a scant living from the rude populace, should affect the modesty or

precaution of a mask. But her tall, voluptuous form as she stood

collecting her audience with the ringing chimes of her tambourine,

garbed as she was in that graceful Sicilian costume, which still retains

the elegance of its Greek original, proved allurement enough despite her

mask. While thus unconsciously diverting his disturbed fancies,

Eckhardt became aware, that he had himself attracted the notice of the

dancer, for he encountered her gaze beaming on him from the depths of

her green-speckled mask, which its ordainer had intended to represent

the corruption of disease, but which the humour of the populace had

transmuted into a more pleasant association, by calling them, "Cardinal

melons."

The dancer started from her somewhat listless attitude into one of

gayety and animation, when she saw how earnestly the dark stranger

scrutinized her, and tripping across the intervening space, she paused

before him and said in a voice whose music flowed to his heart in its

mingled humility and tenderness:

"Sainted Stranger! Will you disdain dancing the Tarantella with a poor

Sicilian sinner for the love of Santa Rosalia?"

"Thou art like to make many for the love of thyself," replied Eckhardt.

"But it were little seemly to behold a sinner in my weeds join in the

dance with one in thine."

As he spoke, he peered so intently into the masked visage of the

Sicilian dancer, that she precipitately retreated.

"Nay--then I must use my spells," she replied after a moment's thought,

and glancing round the circle, which was constantly increasing, she

added slowly, "my spells to raise the dead, since love and passion are

dead in your consecrated breast! Mother--my mandolin!"

The smile of her lips seemed to gleam even through her mask as she threw

her tambourine by its silver chain over her shoulders, taking instead

the instrument, which one of the Calabrians handed to her. Tuning her

mandolin she again turned to Eckhardt.

"But first you must fairly answer a question, else I shall not know

which of my spells to use: for with some memory alone avails,--with

others hope."

And without waiting his reply, she began to sing in a voice of

indescribable sweetness. After the second stanza she paused, apparently

to await the reply to her question, while a murmur of delight ran

through the ranks of her listeners. The first sound of her voice had

fixed Eckhardt's attention, not alone for its exquisite purity and

sweetness, but the strange, mysterious air which hovered round her,

despite her demeaning attire.

Yet his reply partook of the asperity of his Northern forests.

"Deem you such gossamer subtleties were likely to find anchorage in this

restless breast, which, you hear, I strike and it answers with the sound

of steel?"

"Nay, then so much the worse for you," replied the dancer. "For where

the pure spirit comes not,--the dark one will," and she continued her

song in a voice of still more mellow and alluring sweetness.

Suddenly she approached him again, her air more mysterious than ever.

"Ah!" she whispered. "And I could teach you even a sweeter lesson,--but

you men will never learn it, as long as women have been trying to teach

it on earth."

"Wherefore then wear you this mask?" questioned Eckhardt with a severity

in his tone, which seemed to stagger the girl.

"To please one greater than myself," the dancer replied with a mock bow,

which produced a general outburst of laughter.

"Well then,--what do you want with me? Why do you shrink away?"

"Nay,--if you will not dance with me, I must look for another partner,

for my mother grows impatient, as you may see by the twirling of her

girdle," replied the girl pettishly. "I never cared who it was

before,--and now simply because I like you, you hate me."

"You know it is the bite of the poison spider, for which the Tarantella

is the antidote," spoke Eckhardt sternly.

Without replying the girl began her dance anew, flitting before her

indifferent spectator in a maze of serpentine movements, at once

alluring and bewildering to the eye. And to complete her mockery of his

apathy, she continued to sing even during all the vagaries of her dance.

The crowd looked on with constantly increasing delight testifying its

enthusiasm with occasional outbursts of joyful acclamation. Showers of

silver, even gold, which fell in the circle, showed that the motley

audience had not exhausted its resources in pious contributions, and the

coins were greedily gathered in by the old woman and her comrades, while

several nobles who had joined the concourse whispered to the hag, gave

her rings and other rich pledges, all of which she accepted, repaying

the donors with the less substantial coin of promise.

Suddenly the relentless fair one concluded her mazy circles by forming

one with her nude arms over Eckhardt's head and inclining herself

towards him, she whispered a few words into his ear. A lightning change

seemed to come over the commander's countenance, intensifying its

pallor, and struck with the impression she had produced, the Sicilian

continued her importunities, nodding towards the old hag in the

background, until Eckhardt half reluctantly, half wrathfully permitted

himself to be drawn towards the group, of which the old woman formed the

center. Pausing before her and whispering a few words into her ear,

which caused the hag to glance up with a scowling leer, the girl took a

small bronze mirror of oval shape from beneath her tunic and after

breathing upon the surface, requested the old woman to proceed with the

spell. The two Calabrians hurriedly gathered some dried leaves, which

they stuffed under a tripod, that seemed to constitute the entire

stock-in-trade of the group. After placing thereon a copper brazier, on

which the old woman scattered some spices, the latter commanded the girl

to hold the mirror over the fumes, which began to rise, after the two

Calabrians had set the leaves on fire. The flames, which greedily

licked them up, cast a strange illumination over the scene. The crowds

attracted by the uncommon spectacle pushed nearer and nearer, while

Eckhardt watched the process with an air of ill-disguised impatience and

annoyance leaning upon his huge brand.

The old woman was mumbling some words in a strange unintelligible jargon

and the Calabrians were replenishing the consumed leaves with a new

supply they had gathered up, when Eckhardt's strange companion drawing

closer, whispered to him:

"Now your wish! Think it--but do not speak!"

Eckhardt nodded, half indifferently, half irritated, when the girl

suddenly held the bronze mirror before his eyes and bade him look. But

no sooner had he obeyed her behest, than with an outcry of amazement he

darted forward and fairly captured his unsuspecting tormentor.

"Who are you?" he questioned breathlessly, "to read men's thoughts and

the silent wish of their heart?"

But in his eagerness he probably hurt the girl against the iron scales,

of whose jangling he had boasted, for she uttered a cry and called in

great terror: "Rescue--Rescue!"

Before the words were well uttered the two Calabrians rushed towards

them with drawn daggers. The mob also raised a shout and seemed to

meditate interference. This uproar changed the nature of the dancer's

alarm.

"In our Holy Mother's name--forbear--" she addressed the two Calabrians,

and the mob, and turning to her captor, she muttered in a tone of almost

abject entreaty:

"Release me--noble stranger! Indeed I am not what I seem, and to be

recognized here would be my ruin. Nay--look not so incredulous! I have

but played this trick on you, to learn if you indeed hated all

woman-kind. You think me beautiful,--ah! Could you but see my

mistress! You would surely forget these poor charms of mine."

"And who is your mistress?" questioned Eckhardt persisting in his

endeavour to remove her mask, and still under the spell of the strange

and to him inexplicable vision in the bronze mirror.

[Illustration: Persisting in his endeavour to remove her mask.]

"Mercy--mercy! You know it is a grievous offence to be seen without my

Cardinal melon," pleaded the girl with a return of the wiling witchery

in her tones and attempting, but in vain, to release herself from

Eckhardt's determined grasp.

"Who is your mistress?" insisted the Margrave. "And who are you?"

"Release the wanton! How dare you, a soldier of the church, break the

commands of the Apostolic lieutenant?" exclaimed a husky voice and a

strong arm grasped Eckhardt's shoulder. Turning round, the latter saw

himself confronted by the towering form of the monk Nilus, who seemed

ignorant of the person and rank of him he was addressing and whose

countenance flamed with fanatic wrath.

"Ay! And it hath come to my turn to rescue damsels, and moreover to

serve the church," added another speaker in a bantering tone and

Eckhardt instantly recognized the Lord Vitelozzo, who having eluded the

pursuit of the monk of Cluny, held a mace he had secured in lieu of his

cross-bow high and menacingly in the air.

"Friar, look to your ally, if such he be, lest I do what I should have

done before and make a very harmless rogue of him," said Eckhardt,

holding the girl with one hand while with the other he unsheathed his

sword.

"Peace, fool!" the monk addressed his would-be ally, drawing him back

forcibly. "The church needs not the aid of one rogue to subdue another.

Let the girl go, my son!" he then turned to the Margrave.

"Nay, father--by these bruises, which still ache, I will retrieve my

wrong and rescue the wench," insisted the Roman, again raising his

massive weapon, but the monk and some bystanders wedged themselves

between Eckhardt and his opponent.

"Nay, then, now we are like to have good sport," exclaimed a fourth. "A

monk, a woman and a soldier,--it requires not more to set the world

ablaze."

"Stranger,--I implore you, release me," whispered Eckhardt's captive

with frantic entreaty amidst the ever increasing tumult of the

bystanders, who appeared to be divided, some favouring the monk, while

others sided with the girl's captor, whose intentions they sorely

misconstrued. "I would not stand revealed to yonder monk for all the

world!" concluded the girl in fear-struck tones.

At this moment a cry among the bystanders warned Eckhardt that

Vitelozzo's wrath had at length mastered every effort to restrain him,

and, whirling round, to defend himself he was compelled to release the

girl. But instead of making the use she might have been expected to do

of her liberty, she called to the monk, to part the combatants in the

name of the saints.

But it required no expostulation on the part of the friar, for when

Eckhardt turned fully upon him, Vitelozzo, for the first time

recognizing his antagonist, beat a precipitate retreat, but at some

distance he turned, shouting derisively:

"An olive for a fig! Your dove has flown!" and when Eckhardt,

recovering from his surprise, wheeled about, he found, much to his

chagrin, the Roman's words confirmed by the absence of the girl as well

as of her associates, who managed to make their escape at the moment

when the impending encounter had momentarily drawn off the attention of

the crowd.

"The devil can speak truth, they say, though I believed it not till

now," muttered Eckhardt to himself as, vexed and mystified beyond

measure, he strode through the scattering crowds.

Had it been some jeer of the fiend? Had he been made the victim of some

monstrous deceit?

Who was the Sicilian dancer, whose manners and golden language belied

her demeaning attire, whose strange eyes had penetrated into the

darkness of his soul, whose voice had thrilled him with the echoes of

one long silent and forever?

The magic mirror in which, as in a haze, he had seen the one face he

most longed to see,--the strange and sudden fulfillment of the unspoken

wish of his heart,--the dancer's marked persistence in the face of his

declared abhorrence,--her mask and her incongruous companions,--her fear

of the monk and concern for himself,--all these incidents, which one by

one floated on the mirror of his memory, rose ever and anon before his

inner gaze--each time more mystifying and bewildering.

In deep rumination Eckhardt pursued his way, gazing absently upon the

roofless columns and shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the

star-light shone--ghostly and transparent, backed by the frowning and

embattled fortresses of the Cavalli, half hidden by the dark foliage

that sprang up amidst the very fanes and palaces of old. Now and then

he paused with a deep and heavy sigh, as he pondered over the dark and

desolate path upon which he was about to enter, over the lack of a

guiding hand in which he might trust, over the uncertainty of the step,

which, once taken was beyond recall.

Suddenly a light caught the solitary rambler's eye, a light 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 from either convent

or cottage. But it streamed from a part of the Aventine, which

contained no habitations of the living, only deserted ruins and

shattered porticoes of which even the names and memories of their former

inhabitants had been long forgotten. Aware of this, Eckhardt felt a

slight awe, as the light threw its unsteady beam over the dreary

landscape; for he was by no means free from the superstition of the age

and it was near the hour consecrated to witches and ghosts.

But fear, whether of this world or the next, could not long daunt the

mind of the Margrave; and after a brief hesitation he resolved to make a

digression from his way, to discover the cause of the phenomenon.

Unconsciously Eckhardt's tread passed over the site of the ill-famed

temple of Isis which had at one time witnessed those wildest of orgies

commemorated by the pen of Juvenal. At last he came to a dense and dark

copse from an opening in the center of which gleamed the mysterious

light. Penetrating the gloomy foliage Eckhardt found himself before a

large ruin, grey and roofless. Through a rift in the wall, forming a

kind of casement and about ten feet from the ground, the light gleamed

over the matted and rank soil, embedded, as it were, in vast masses of

shade. Without knowing it, Eckhardt stood on the very spot once

consecrated to the cult of the Egyptian goddess, and now shunned as an

abode of evil spirits. The walls of the ruin were covered with a dense

growth of creepers, which entwined even the crumbled portico to an

extent that made it almost impossible to penetrate into its intricate

labyrinth of corridors.

While indulging in a thousand speculations, occasioned by the hour and

the spot, Eckhardt suddenly perceived a shadow in the portico. Only the

head was visible in the moonlight, which bathed the ruin, and it

disappeared almost as quickly as it had been revealed. While meditating

upon the expediency of exploring the mystery which confronted him,

Eckhardt was startled by the sound of footsteps. Straining his gaze

through the haze of the moonlight he beheld emerging from the portico of

the temple the tall form of a man, wrapt in a long black cloak. He wore

a conical hat with sloping brim which entirely shadowed his face and on

his right arm he carried the apparently lifeless body of a girl. With

the object of preventing a probable crime Eckhardt stepped from his

place of concealment just as the stranger was about to pass him with his

mysterious burden and placed his hands arrestingly on the other's

shoulder.

"Who are you? And what is your business here?" he questioned curtly,

attempting to remove the stranger's vizor.

"The one matters little to your business,--the other little to mine,"

the tall individual replied enigmatically while he dexterously resisted

his questioner's effort to gain a glimpse at his face. "But," he added

in a strange oracular tone, which moved Eckhardt despite himself, "if

you value my aid in your hour of trial--assist me now in my hour of

need!"

"Your aid?" echoed Eckhardt, staring amazed at his companion. "Do you

know me? In what can you assist me?"

"You are Eckhardt the Margrave," replied the stranger; then inclining

his head slightly towards him he whispered a word, the effect of which

seemed to paralyze his listener, for his arresting hand fell and he

retreated a step or two, surveying him in speechless wonder.

"Who are you?" he stammered at last.

The stranger raised the long visor of his conical hat. An exclamation

of surprise came from Eckhardt's lips.

"Hezilo, the harper!"

The other replied with a silent nod.

"And we have never met!"

"I seldom go out!" said the harper.

"What know you of Ginevra?" begged the Margrave.

The harper shook his head.

"This is neither the time, nor the place. I must be gone--to shelter my

burden! We shall meet again! If you follow me," he concluded, noting

Eckhardt's persistence, "you will learn nothing and only endanger my

safety and that of this child!"

"Is she dead?" Eckhardt questioned with a shudder.

"Would she were!" replied the stranger mournfully.

"Can I assist you?"

"I thank you! The burden is light. We will meet again."

There was something in the harper's tone which arrested Eckhardt's

desire to ignore his injunction. How long he remained on the site of

the ill-famed ruin, the Margrave hardly knew. When the fresh breeze of

night, blowing from the Campagna, roused him at last from his reverie

the mysterious stranger and his equally mysterious burden had

disappeared in the haze of the moonlit night. Like one walking in a

dream Eckhardt slowly retraced his steps to his palace on the Caelian

Mount, where an imperial order sanctioning his purpose and relieving him

of his command awaited him.

*CHAPTER XI*

*NILUS OF GAETA*

A grand high mass in honour of the pilgrims was on the following eve to

be celebrated in the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's. But vast as was

its extent, only a part of the pilgrims could be contained and the

bronze gates were thrown open to allow the great multitude which filled

the square to share the benefits and some of the glories of the

ceremony.

The Vatican Basilica of the tenth century, far from possessing its

present splendour, was as yet but the old consecrated palace, hallowed

by memories of the olden time, in which Charlemagne enjoyed the

hospitality of Leo III, when at his hands he received the imperial crown

of the West. Similar to the restored church of St. Paul fuori le Mure,

as we now see it, it was some twenty feet longer and considerably wider,

having five naves divided off by four rows of vast monolith columns.

There were ninety-six columns in all, of various marbles, differing in

size and style, for they had been the first hasty spoils of antique

palaces and temples. The walls above the order of columns were

decorated with mosaics such as no Roman hand could then produce or even

restore. A grand arch, such as we see at the older Basilicas to-day,

inlaid with silver and adorned with mosaic, separated the nave from the

chancel, below which was the tribune, an inheritance from the praetor's

court of old. It now contained the high altar and the sedile of the

Vicar of Christ. Before the altar stood the Confession, the vault

wherein lay the bones of St. Peter, with a screen of silver crowned with

images of saints and virgins. And the whole was illumined by a gigantic

candelabrum holding more than a thousand lighted tapers.

The chief attraction, however, was yet wanting, for the pontiff and his

court still tarried in the Vatican receiving the homage of the foreign

pilgrims. While listlessly noting the preparations from his chosen

point of vantage, Eckhardt discovered himself the object of scrutiny on

the part of a monk, who had been listlessly wandering about and who

disappeared no sooner than he had caught the eye of the great leader.

Unwilling to continue the target of observation on the part of those who

recognized him despite his closed visor, Eckhardt entered the Basilica

and took up his station near a remote shrine, whence he could witness

the entrance of the pontifical procession, without attracting undue

attention to his person. When the pontifical train did appear, it seemed

one mass of glitter and sumptuous colour, as it filed down the aisles of

the Basilica. The rich copes of the ecclesiastics, stiff with gold and

gorgeous brocade, the jewelled mantles of the nobles, the polished

breast plates and tasselled spears of the guards passed before his eyes

in a bewildering confusion of splendour. In his gilded chair, under a

superb canopy, Gregory, the youthful pontiff, was borne along,

surrounded by a crowd of bishops, extending his hands in benediction as

he passed the kneeling worshippers.

An infinite array of officials followed. Then came pilgrims of the

highest rank, each order marching in separate divisions, in the

fantastic costumes of their respective countries. In their wake marched

different orders of monks and nuns, the former carrying torches, the

latter lighted tapers, although the westering sun still flamed down the

aisles in cataracts of light. After these fraternities and sisterhoods,

Crescentius, the Senator, was seen to enter with his suite, conspicuous

for the pomp of their attire, the taste of Crescentius being to sombre

colours.

Descending from his elevated station, Gregory proceeded to officiate as

High Priest in the august solemnity. Come with what prejudices one

might, it was not in humanity to resist the impressions of overwhelming

awe, produced by the magnificence of the spectacle and the sublime

recollections with which the solemnity itself in every stage is

associated. Despite his extreme youth, Gregory supported all the

venerableness and dignity of the High Priest of Christendom and when at

the conclusion of the high mass he bestowed his benediction on all

Christendom, Eckhardt was kneeling with the immense multitude, perhaps

more convinced than the most enthusiastic pilgrim, that he was receiving

benediction direct from heaven.

The paroxysm only subsided, when raising his head, he beheld a gaunt

monk in the funereal garb of the brotherhood of Penitent Friars ascend

the chancel. He was tall, lean as a skeleton and from his shrivelled

face two eyes, sunken deep in their sockets, burnt with the fire of the

fanatic. This was the celebrated hermit, Nilus of Gaeta, of whose life

and manners the most wonderful tales were current. He was believed to

be of Greek extraction, perhaps owing to his lengthy residence in

Southern Italy, near the shrines of Monte Gargano in Apulia. In the

pursuit of recondite mysteries of the Moorish and Cabalistical schools,

he had attained such proficiency, that he was seized with a profound

disgust for the world and became a monk. Several years he spent in

remote and pagan lands, spreading the tidings of salvation, until, as it

was whispered, he received an extraordinary call to the effect, as was

more mysteriously hinted, to turn the church from diverse great errors,

into which she had fallen, and which threatened her downfall. Last, not

least, he was to prepare the minds of mortal men for the great

catastrophe of the Millennium,--the End of Time, the end of all earthly

vanity. Special visions had been vouchsafed him, and there was that in

his age, in his appearance and his speech which at once precluded the

imposter. Nilus of Gaeta himself believed what he preached.

There was a brief silence, during which the Romans acquainted their

foreign guests in hurried whispers with the name and renown of the

reputed hermit. The latter stood motionless in the chancel and seemed

to offer up a silent prayer, ere he pronounced his harangue.

His sermon was delivered in Latin, still the common language of Italy,

even in its corrupt state, and its quality was such as to impress at

once the most skeptical with the extraordinary gifts of the preacher.

The monk began with a truly terrific picture of the state of society and

religion throughout the Christian world, which he delineated with such

gloom and horror, that but for his arabesque entanglement and his

gorgeousness of imagery one might have believed him a spirit of hell,

returned to paint the orb of the living with colours borrowed from its

murkiest depths. But with all the fantastic convolutions of his

reasoning the fervour of a real eloquence soon began to overflow the

twisted fountains, in which the scholastic rhetoric of the time usually

confined its displays. These qualities Nilus especially exhibited when

describing the pure dawn of Christianity, in which the pagan gods had

vanished like phantoms of night. He declared that they were once more

deified upon earth and the clear light all but extinguished. And

treating the antique divinities as impersonations of human passions and

lusts, the monk's eloquence suddenly took the most terrible tints, and

considering the nature of some of the crimes which he thus delineated

and anathematized, his audience began to suspect personal allusions of

the most hideous nature.

After this singular exordium, the monk proceeded in his harangue and it

seemed as if his words, like the lava overflow from a volcano, withered

all that was green and flowery in their path. The Universe in his

desponding eloquence seemed but a vast desolation. All the beautiful

illusions which the magic of passion conjures into the human soul died

beneath his touch, changing into the phantoms, which perhaps they are.

The vanity of hope, the shallowness of success, the bitterness which

mingles with the greatest glory, the ecstasy of love,--all these the

monk painted in the most powerful colours, to contrast them with the

marble calm of that drooping form crucified upon the hill of Calvary.

Spellbound, the immense multitude listened to the almost superhuman

eloquence of the friar. As yet his attacks had dealt only in

generalities. The Senator of Rome seemed to listen to his words with a

degree of satisfaction. A singularity remarked in his character by all

his historians, which, by some, has been considered as proof of a nature

not originally evil, was his love of virtue in the abstract. Frequent

resolutions and recommendations to reform were perhaps only overcome by

his violent passions, his ambition and the exigencies of his ambiguous

state between church and empire. But as the monk detailed the crimes

and monstrosities of the age, the calm on the Senator's face changed to

a livid, satirical smile, and occasionally he pointed the invectives of

the friar by nodding to those of his followers who were supposed to be

guilty of the crimes alleged, as if to call upon them to notice that

they were assailed, and many a noble shrank behind his neighbour whose

conscience smote him of one or all the crimes enumerated by Nilus.

In one of his most daring flights the monk suddenly checked himself and

announcing his vision of impending judgment, he bid his listeners

prepare their souls in a prophetic and oracular tone, which was

distinctly audible, amid all the muttering which pervaded the Basilica.

A few moments of devout silence followed. The monk was expected to

kneel, to offer up a prayer for divine mercy. But he stood motionless

in the chancel, and after waiting a short time, Gregory turned to an

attendant:

"Go and see what ails the disciple of Benedict,--we will ourselves say

the Gratias."

After rising, he stepped to the altar with the accustomed retinue of

cardinals and prelates and chanted the benediction. At the conclusion

Crescentius approached the altar alone, demanded permission to make a

duteous offering and emptied a purse of gold on the salver.

"A most princely and regal benefaction," muttered the Pontifical

Datary--"a most illustrious example."

"Charlemagne gave more, but so will I, when like him I come to receive

the crown of the West," muttered the Senator of Rome. His example was

immediately followed, and in a few moments the altar was heaped round

with presents of extraordinary magnificence and bounty. Sacks of gold

and silver were emptied out, jewels, crucifixes, relics, amber,

gold-dust, ivories, pearls and rare spices were heaped up in promiscuous

profusion, and in return each donor received a branch of consecrated

palm from the hand of the Datary, whose keen eyes reflected the

brightness of the treasures whose receipts he thus acknowledged.

The chant from various chapels now poured down the aisles its torrents

of melody, the vast multitudes joining in the Gloria in Excelsis.

Eckhardt's remote station had not permitted him to witness all that had

happened. His gaze was still riveted on the friar, who was now

staggering from the pulpit, when a terrific event turned and absorbed

his attention.

The great bell of the Basilica was tolling and the vibration produced by

so many sounds shook the vast and ancient pile so violently that a

prodigious mass of iron, which formed one of the clappers of the bell,

fell from the belfry in the airy spire and dashing with irresistible

force through every obstruction, reached the floor at the very feet of

the Pontiff, crushing a deep hole in the pavement and throwing a million

pieces of shattered marble over him and his retinue.

The vast assembly was for a moment motionless with terror and surprise,

expecting little less than universal destruction in the downfall of the

whole edifice on their heads, with all its ponderous mass of iron and

stone. A cry arose that the Pontiff had been killed, which was echoed

in a thousand varying voices, according as men's fears or hopes

prevailed. But in the first moment of panic, when it was doubtful

whether or not the entire center of the Basilica would crumble upon the

assembly, Eckhardt had rushed from the comparative safety of his own

station to the side of the Pontiff as if to shield him, when with the

majesty of a prophet interposing between offended heaven and the object

of its wrath, Gerbert of Aurillac uttered with deep fervour and amid

profound silence a De Profundis. The multitudes were stilled from their

panic, which might have been attended with far more serious consequences

than the accident itself. There was a solemn pause, broken only by a

sea-like response of "Amen"--and a universal sigh of relief, which

sounded like the soughing of the wind in a great forest.

All distinctions of rank seemed blotted out in that supreme moment.

Then the voice of Nilus was heard thundering above the breathless calm,

while he held aloft an ebony crucifix, in which he always carried the

host:

"The summits of St. Peter still stand! When they too fall, pilgrims of

the world--even so shall Christendom fall with them."

At a sign from the Pontiff his attendants raised aloft the canopy, under

which he had entered. But he refused to mount the chair and heading the

bishops and cardinals, he left the church on foot. The Datary gave one

look of hopeless despair, as the masses crowded out of the Basilica, and

abandoned all hope of restoring order. In an incredibly short time the

vast area was emptied, Crescentius being one of the last to remain in

its deepening shadows. With a degree of vacancy he gazed after the

vanishing crowds, more gorgeous in their broken and mingled pomp, as

they passed out of the high portals, than when marshalled in due rank

and order.

He too was about to leave, when he discerned a monk who stood gazing, as

it were, incredulously at the shattered altar-pavement and the mass of

iron deeply embedded in it. Hastily he advanced towards him, but as he

approached he was struck by observing the monk raise his eyes, sparkling

with mad fury, to the lighted dome above and clench his hands as if in

defiance of its glory.

"Thou seemest to hold thy life rather as a burden than a blessing, monk,

since thus thou repayest thy salvation," Crescentius addressed the

friar, somewhat staggered by his attitude.

"Ay! If I have done Heaven a temporal injury,--be comforted, ye

saints--for ye have wrought me an eternal one!" growled the monk between

clenched teeth.

"Heaven?" questioned Crescentius, almost tempted to the conclusion that

the monk, whoever he was, was out of his senses.

"Even Heaven," replied the monk. "One cubit nearer the altar,--I

thought the struggle over in my soul between the dark angel and the

bright--I had strung my soul to its mighty task,--yet I shrank from it,

a second, and more cowardly Judas."

Crescentius gazed at the friar without grasping his meaning.

"Take thy superior out of the church, he is mad and blasphemes," he

turned to the monk's companion who listened stolidly to his raving.

"Ay!" spoke the strange monk, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fist

towards heaven, "even the church shall anon be rent in twain and form a

chasm, down which countless generations shall tumble into the

abyss--'twere just retribution!"

"Tell me but this, monk, how could Heaven itself throw obstacles in the

way of thine intent?" questioned Crescentius, perceiving that the monk

had turned to depart and more convinced than ever that he was speaking

to a madman.

"How? How? Oh, thou slow of understanding,--how?"

And the monk pointed downward, to the crushed and shattered marble of

the pavement, in which the iron clapper of the bell lay embedded.

Crescentius receded involuntarily before the fierce, insane gleam in the

monk's eyes, while the terrible import of his speech suddenly flashed

upon his understanding. Crossing himself, he left the strange friar to

himself and passed swiftly through the motley crowds which were waiting

their turn of admission to the subterranean chapel of the Grand

Penitentiarius.

Another had remained in the dense gloom of the Basilica, though he had

not witnessed the scene which had just come to a close. After the

Pontiff's departure, Eckhardt had retired to the shrine of Saint

Michael, where he knelt in silent prayer. His mind was filled with

fantastic imaginings, inspired chiefly by his recent pilgrimage to the

shrines of Monte Gargano. The deep void within him made itself doubly

felt in this hour and more than ever he felt the need of divine

interposition in order to retain that consciousness of purpose which was

to guide his future course.

At last he arose. A remote chant fell upon his ears, and he saw a

procession moving slowly from the refectory into the nave of the

Basilica. By the dusky glare of the torches, which they carried,

Eckhardt distinguished a number of penitent friars, bearing aloft the

banner, destined in after-generations to become the standard of the Holy

Inquisition, a Red Cross in a black field with the motto: "In Hoc Signo

Vinces." Among them and seemingly the chief personage, strode the

strange friar. With down-cast head and eyes he walked, eyes which,

while they seemed fixed on the ground in self-abasement, stealthily

scanned the features of those he passed.

"I marvel the holy saints think it worth while to trouble themselves

about the soul of every putrid, garlic-chewing knave," said an old

beggar on the steps of the Cathedral to an individual with whose brief

review Eckhardt was much struck. He was a man past the middle-age, with

the sallow complexion peculiar to the peasants of the marshes. His

broad hat, garnished with many coloured ribbons, was drawn over his

visage, though not sufficiently so, to conceal the ghastly scars, with

which it was disfigured. His lurking, suspicious eye and the peculiar

manner with which, from habit, he carried his short cloak drawn over his

breast, as if to conceal the naked stiletto, convinced Eckhardt that,

whatsoever that worthy might assume to be, he was one of those blackest

of the scourges of Italy, which the license of the times had rendered

fearfully numerous, the banditti and bravi.

"Whether the saints care or no," that individual returned, "the monk is

competent to convert the fiend himself. What an honour for the

brotherhood to have produced such a saint."

Scarcely bestowing more than a thought upon so usual an evidence of

social disorder, which neither pontifical nor imperial edicts had been

able to correct, Eckhardt passed out, without noticing that he had

himself attracted at least equal attention from the worthy described,

who after having satisfied his curiosity, slunk back among the crowds

and was lost to sight.

*CHAPTER XII*

*RED FALERNIAN*

The palace of Theodora resounded with merriment, though it was long past

midnight.

Round a long oval table in the great hall sat a score or more of belated

revellers, their Patrician garbs in disorder, and soiled with wine,

their faces inflamed, their eyes red and fiery, their tongues heavy and

beyond the bounds of control. Here and there a vacant or overturned

chair showed where a guest had fallen in the debauch, and had been

permitted to remain on his self-chosen bed of repose. A band of players

hidden in a remote gallery still continued to fill up the pauses in the

riotous clamour with their barbaric strains.

At the head of the table, first in place as in rank sat Benilo, the

Chamberlain. He seemed to take little interest in the conversation,

for, resting his head on his hands, he stared into his untouched goblet,

as if he endeavoured to cast some augury from the rising and vanishing

bubbles of the wine.

Next to him sat Pandulph, Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum. His low,

though well-set figure, dark hair, keen, black eyes and swarthy features

bespoke his semi-barbaric extraction. His countenance was far from

comely, when in repose, even ugly and repulsive, but in his eyes lay the

force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect, that

made men fear, when they could not love him. On the right of the Count

sat the Lord of Civitella, a large, sensual man, with twinkling grey

eyes, thick nose and full red lips. His broad face, flushed with wine,

glowed like the harvest moon rising above the horizon. Opposite him sat

the Patricius Ziazo, crafty and unscrupulous, a parasite who flattered

whosoever ministered to his pleasure. The Patricius was conversing with

an individual who outshone Pandulph in rapine, the Lord of Civitella in

coarseness and himself in sycophancy, Guido of Vanossa, an arrogant

libertine, whose pinched features and cunning leer formed the true index

to his character. The Lords of Sinigaglia, Torre del Grecco, Bracciano,

Cavallo and Caetano swelled the roll of infamy on the boards of

Theodora,--worthy predecessors of the Orsini and Savelli, who were to

oppress the city in after time.

Among those who had marked the beginning of the evening by more than

ordinary gaiety, Benilo had by his splendid dissipation excited the

general envy and admiration among his fellow revellers. His face was

inflamed, his dark eyes were glittering with the adder tongues of the

serpent wine, and his countenance showed traces of unlimited debauchery.

It seemed to those present, as if the ghost of the girl Nelida, whom he

had killed in this very hall, was haunting him, so madly did he respond

to the challenges from all around, to drink. But as the wine began to

flood every brain, as the hall presented a scene of riotous debauch, his

former reckless mood seemed for the nonce to have changed to its very

opposite. Through the fumes of wine the dead girl seemed to regard him

with sad, mournful eyes.

"Fill the goblets," cried Pandulph, with a loud and still clear voice.

"The lying clock says it is day. But neither cock-crows nor clock

change the purple night to dawn in the Groves of Theodora, save at the

will of the Goddess herself. Fill up, companions! The lamp-light in the

wine cup is brighter than the clearest sun that ever shone."

"Well spoken, Pandulph! Name the toast and we will pledge it, till the

seven stars count fourteen and the seven hills but one," said the

Cavallo looking up. "I see four hour glasses even now and every one of

them lies, if it says it is dawn."

"You shall have my toast," said Pandulph, raising his goblet. "We have

drunk it twenty times already, but we will drink it twenty times

more:--the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of man--Woman."

A shadow moved in the dusky background and peered unseen into the hall.

"And the best epilogue," replied the Lord of Civitella, visibly drunk.

"But the toast--my cup is waiting."

"To the health--wealth--and love by stealth of Theodora!" yelled

Pandulph, gulping down the contents of his goblet.

Benilo's face turned ashen pale, but he smiled.

"To Theodora!"

Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained.

"My Lord, it is your turn now," said Pandulph, turning to the Lord of

Civitella. "The good folks of Urbino have not yet rung the fire-bells

against you, but some say they soon will. Who shall it be?"

The Lord of Civitella filled up his cup with unsteady hand, until it was

running over and propping his body against the table as he stood up, he

said:

"A toast to Roxane! And as for my foragers--they sweep clean."

The toast was drunk with rapturous applause.

"Right you are," bellowed the Cavallo. "Better brooms were never made

on the Posilippo,--not a straw lies in your way."

"Did you accomplish it without fight?" sneered the Lord of Bracciano.

"Fight? Why fight? The burghers never resist a noble! We conjure the

devil down with that. When we skin our eels, we don't begin at the

tail."

"Better to steal the honey, than to kill the bees that make it."

"But what became of the women and children after this swoop of your

foragers?" asked the Lord of Bracciano, who appeared to entertain some

few isolated ideas of honour floating on the top of the wine he had

gulped down.

"The women and children?" replied the Lord of Civitella with a mocking

air, crossing his thumbs, like the peasants of Lugano, when they wish to

inspire belief in their words. "They can breakfast by gaping! They can

eat wind, like the Tarentines,--it will make them spit clear."

The Lord of Bracciano, irritated at the mocking sign and proverbial

allusion to the gaping propensities of the people round the Lago,

started up in wrath and struck his clenched fist on the table.

"My Lord of Civitella," he cried, "do not cross your damned thumbs at

me, else I will cut them off! The people of Bracciano have still corn

in plenty, until your thieving bands scorch their fingers in the attempt

to steal it."

Andrea Cavallo interposed to stop the rising quarrel.

"Do not mind the Lord of Civitella," he whispered to Bracciano. "He is

drunk!"

"The rake! The ingrate!" growled Bracciano, "after my men opened the

traps, in which the Vicar of the Church had caught him."

"Nay! If you gape at man's ingratitude, your mouth will be wide enough,

ere you die, my lord," spoke Pandulph with a sardonic laugh. "And men

in our day stand no more on precedence in plots than in love

affairs,--do they, my lord Benilo?"

"Nay, I'll dispute no man's right to be hanged or quartered before

me--least of all yours, my Lord Pandulph," the Chamberlain replied

venomously.

"My lord Benilo," replied Pandulph, "you are, when drunk, the greatest

ruffian in Christendom, and the biggest knave when sober. Bring in more

tankards, and we will not look for day till midnight booms again on the

old tower of San Sebastian! I call for full brimmers, varlets,--bring

your largest cups! We will drink another toast five fathoms deep in

wine, strong enough to melt Cleopatra's pearls, and to a jollier dame

than Egypt's queen."

The servitors flew out and in. In a few moments the table was

replenished with huge drinking cups, silver flagons and all the heavy

impediments of the army of Bacchus.

"We drink to the Fair Lady of the Groves,--and in her presence, too!"

shouted the Lord of Spoleto, raising his goblet anew. "Why is she not

among us? They say," he turned to Benilo with a sneer, "that you are so

jealous of the charms of your bird of paradise, that you have forbidden

her to appear before your friends."

Roaring peals of laughter crowned Pandulph's speech.

Benilo saw the absurdity of anger, but he felt it nevertheless.

"She chooses not to leave her bower even to look on you, my Lord

Pandulph. I warrant you, she has not slept all night, listening to your

infernal din."

A renewed outburst of mirth was the response.

"Then you will permit us to betake ourselves forthwith to her gilded

chamber to implore pardon on our knees for disturbing her rest."

"Well spoken--by the boot of St. Benedict!" roared Guido of Vanossa.

"You may measure my foot and satisfy yourself that I am able to wear

it," shouted the Lord of Civitella. "On our knees we will crawl to the

Sanctuary of our Goddess,--on our knees!"

"But before we start on our pilgrimage, we will drain a draught long as

the bell-rope of the Capitol," bellowed the Lord of Bracciano.

"Fill up the tankards!" exclaimed the Lord of Spoleto. "My goblet is as

empty as an honest man's purse,--and one of my eyes is sober yet."

"Do not take it to heart!" spoke Guido of Vanossa, whose eyes were full

of tears and wine. "You will not die in the jolly fellow's faith!" And

with unsteady voice he began to sing a stanza in dog-Latin:

"Dum Vinum potamus

Fratelli cantiamo

A Bacco sia Onore!

Te Deum laudamus!"

"Would your grace had a better voice, you have a good will!" stammered

the lord of Sinigaglia. "'Tis ample time to repent when you can do no

better. Besides--if you are damned, it is in rare good company!"

"Ay! Saint and Sinner come to the same end!" gurgled the Lord Pandulph,

ogling the purple Falernian.

"Fill up your goblets! Though it be a merry life to lead, I doubt if it

will end in so cheery a death!" said Benilo, his eye wandering slowly

from one to the other.

"Fill up the goblets!" shouted the Lord of Spoleto, rising and

supporting his bulky carcass on the heavy oaken table.

With a sleepy leer he blinked at the guests.

"Down on your knees," he roared suddenly, his former intent reverting to

him. "To the Sanctuary of the Goddess! On our knees we will implore her

to receive us into her favour."

A strange spirit of recklessness had seized Benilo. Instead of

resenting or resisting the proposition, he was the first to get down on

all fours. His example had an electrifying effect. Although they swayed

to and fro like sail-boats on angry sea-waves, all those still sober

enough imitated the Chamberlain amid cheers and grunts, and slowly the

singular procession, led by Benilo, set in motion with the expressed

purpose of invading Theodora's apartments, which were situated beyond

the great hall. The Lord Pandulph resembled some huge bear as on all

fours he hobbled across the mosaic floor beside the Lord of Bracciano,

who panted, grunted and swore and called on the saints, to witness his

self-abasement. Being gouty and stout, he was at one time seized with a

cramp in his leg and struck out vigorously with the result of striking

the Lord of Civitella squarely in the jaw, whereupon the latter,

toppling over, literally flooded the hall with profanity and surplus

wine. The other ten hobbled behind the leaders, cursing their own

folly, but enjoying to a degree the novelty of the pageant.

Thus they had traversed the great hall at a speed as great as their

singular mode of locomotion and their intoxicated condition would

permit. The background of the hall was but dimly lighted; the great

curtain strung between the two massive pillars, which guarded the

entrance into Theodora's apartments, excluded the glow of the

multi-coloured lamps, strung in regular intervals in the corridor

beyond.

Benilo was the first to reach the curtain. Resting one hand on the

floor, he raised the other, after the manner of a dog, trying to push

its folds aside, when they suddenly and noiselessly parted. Something

hissed through the air, striking the object of its aim a stinging blow

in the face--a cry of pain and rage, and Benilo, who had sprung to his

feet, stood face to face with Theodora. At the same moment the lights

in the great hall were turned on to a full blaze, revealing in its

entire repelling atrocity the spectacle of the drunken revellers, who,

upon experiencing a sudden check to their further progress, had come to

a sluggish halt, some of them unable to retain their balance and

toppling over in their tracks.

"Beasts! Swine!" hissed the woman, her eyes ablaze with wrath, the whip

which had struck Benilo in the face, still quivering in her infuriated

grasp. "Out with you--out!"

The sound of a silver whistle, which she placed between her lips,

brought some five or six giant Africans to the spot. They were eunuchs,

whose tongues had been torn out, and who, possessing no human weakness,

were ferocious as the wild beasts of their native desert. Theodora gave

them a brief command in their own tongue and ere the amazed revellers

knew what was happening to them, they found themselves picked up by

dusky, muscular arms and unceremoniously ejected from the hall, those

lying in a semi-conscious stupor under the tables sharing the same fate.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*DEAD LEAVES*

While the Nubians set about in cleaning the hall and removing the last

vestiges of the night's debauch, Theodora faced Benilo with such

contempt in her dark eyes, that for a moment the Chamberlain's boasted

insolence almost deserted him, and though seething with rage at the

chastisement inflicted upon him he awaited her speech in silence. She

faced him, leaning against a marble statue, her hands playing nervously

with the whip.

"For once I have discovered you in your true station, the station of the

foul, crouching beast, to which you were born, had not some accident

played into the devil's hands by giving you the glittering semblance of

the snake," she said slowly and with a disdain ringing from her words,

which cut even his debased nature to the core. "I have whipped you, as

one whips a cur: do you still desire me for your wife?"

With lips tightly compressed he looked down, not daring to meet her

fierce gaze of hatred, which was burning into his very brain.

"I see little reason for changing my mind," he replied after a brief

pause, while as he spoke his cheek seemed to burn with shame, where the

whip had struck it, and her evil, terrible beauty, exposed in her airy

night-robe, roused all the wild demoniacal passions in his soul.

The whip trembled in her hands.

"And you call yourself a man!" she said with a withering look of

contempt, under which he winced.

Then she continued in a hard and cheerless voice, wherein spoke more

than simple aversion, a voice that seemed as it were petrified with

grief, with remorse and hatred of the man who had been the cause of her

fall.

"Listen to me, Benilo,--mark well my words. What I have been, you know:

the beloved, the adored wife of a man, who would have carried me through

life's storms under the shelter of his love,--a man, who would have shed

the last drop of his life's blood for Ginevra,--that was. For two years

we lived in happiness. I had begged him never to lift the veil which

shrouded my birth,--a wish he respected, a promise he kept. In the

field and at court he pursued the even tenor of his way,--happy and

content with my love. Then there crept into our home a hypocrite, a

liar, a fiend, who could mock the devils in hell to scorn. He stands

there,--Benilo, his name,--a foul thing, who shrank from nothing to gain

his ends. Some fiend revealed to him the awful secret of Ginevra's

birth, a secret which he used to draw her step by step from the man she

loved, to perpetrate a deceit, the cunning of which would put the devils

to blush. He promised to restore to her what is her own by right of her

birth. He roused in her all the evil which ran riot in her blood, and

when she had given herself to him, he revealed himself the lying fiend

he was. Stung by the furies of remorse, which haunted her night and

day,--in her despair the woman made her love the prize, wherewith to

purchase that for which she had broken the holiest ties. But those she

made happy were beasts,--enjoying her favour, giving nothing in return.

My heart is sick of it,--sick of this sham, sick of this baseness.

Heaven once vouchsafed me a sinner's glimpse of paradise, of a home of

purity and peace where indeed I might have been a queen,--a queen so

different from the one who rules a gilded charnel-house."

Benilo had listened in silent amazement. He failed to sound the drift

of Theodora's speech. The whip-lash burned on his cheek. Her sudden

dejection gave him back some of his former courage.

"I believe Theodora is discovering that she once possessed a

conscience," he said with a sardonic smile. "How does the violent

change agree with you?" he drawled insolently, for the first time

raising his eyes to hers.

She appeared not to heed the question, but nodding wearily she said:

"I am not myself to-night. Despite all which has happened, I stand here

a suppliant before the man who has ruined my life. I have something

else to say."

"Then I fear you have played your game and lost," he said brutally.

Theodore interrupted his speech with a gesture, and when she spoke, a

shade of sadness touched her halting tones.

"Last night he came to me in my dream.--I will never forget the

expression with which he regarded me. I am weary of it all,--weary unto

death."

"Unfortunately our wager does not concern itself with

sleep-walking--though it seems your only chance of luring your

over-scrupulous mate to your bower."

The woman started.

"Surely, you do not mean to hold me to the wager?"

He smiled sardonically.

"Considering the risk I run in this affair--why not? Eckhardt is a man

of action--so is Benilo,--who has performed the rare miracle of

compelling the grave to return to his arms Ginevra, a queen indeed,--of

her kind."

Surely some extraordinary change had taken place in the bosom of the

woman before him. She received the thrust without parrying it.

"I see," he continued after a brief pause, "Eckhardt proves too mighty a

rock, even for Theodora to move!"

"His will is strong--but all night in his lonely cell he called

Ginevra's name."

"You are well informed. Why not take the veil yourself,--since a life

of serene placidity seems so suddenly to your taste?"

"And where is it written that I shall not?" she questioned, looking him

full in the eye. Benilo winced. If she would but quarrel. He felt

insecure in her present mood.

"Here--on the tablets of my memory, where a certain wager is recorded,"

he replied.

She turned upon him angrily.

"It is you who forced me to it against my will.--I took up your

gauntlet, stung by your biting ridicule, goaded by your insults to a

weak and senseless folly."

"Then you acknowledge yourself vanquished?"

"I am not vanquished. What I undertake, I carry through--if I wish to

carry it through."

"It has to my mind ceased to be a matter of choice with you," drawled

the Chamberlain. "In three days Eckhardt's fate will be sealed,--as far

as this world of ours is concerned. You see, your chances are small and

you have no time to lose."

"Day after to-morrow--holy Virgin--so soon?" gasped Theodora.

"You have inadvertently called on one whose calls you have not of late

returned," sneered the Chamberlain, with insolent nonchalance.

"Day after to-morrow," Theodora repeated, stroking her brow with one

white hand. "Day after to-morrow!"

"Do not despair," Benilo drawled sardonically. "Much can happen in two

days."

She did not seem to hear him. Her thoughts seemed to roam far away.

Then they returned to earth. For a moment she studied the man before

her in silence, then dropping the whip, she stretched out her hand to

him.

"Release me from this wager," she pleaded, "and all shall be forgotten

and forgiven."

He did not touch the hand. It fell.

"Theodora," he whispered hoarsely. "You will never know how I love you!

I am not as evil as I seem. But there are moments when I lose control

and madness chokes my better self, in the hopeless hunt for your love.

Theodora--bury the past! Give up this baleful existence--live with me

again."

She laughed a shrill laugh.

"Your concubine! And you have the courage to ask this?"

"You know I love the very ground you tread on."

"Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Is not that enough?"

"No--it is not enough!" she replied with flashing eyes. "Between us

stand the barriers of eternity!"

He paled.

"Do not dismiss me like this. It is far more cruel than you know. If

you kill my hope, you leave me a prey to the devils of jealousy and

madness,--the evil things of your own creation! Come back to me! I

only ask the love you gave me once,--the love you thought you gave

me,--a grain, a crumb."

She turned her face away.

"Never again! Never again!"

The fevered blood raced swiftly from his cheek. For a moment he watched

her in silence, his eyes like slits in his hard, pale face, then he

turned on his heel and laughed aloud.

A shudder she could not repress crept over the woman's soft, white skin.

"Benilo!" she called to him. He turned and came slowly back.

"Benilo," she continued nervously, "release me from this wager! I

cannot go on--I cannot. If he is bent upon leaving the world, let him

retire in peace and do not stir the misery which lies couchant in the

hidden depths of his soul. He has suffered enough,--more than

enough,--more than should fall to one man's lot. Do not drive me to

madness,--I cannot do it--I cannot."

"Your thoughts are only for him. For me you have nothing," he replied

fiercely.

"I owe him everything--nothing to you!"

"Then go to him, to release you,--I will not!"

"I cannot do it! Be merciful!"

The Chamberlain bowed and answered mockingly.

"It rests with you!"

"With me?"

"Acknowledge your defeat!"

"What do you mean?" she asked with rising fear.

Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

"We made a wager--the loser pays."

"But the forfeit?" she cried in terror. "You would not claim--you would

not chain me to you for ever?"

He regarded her with a slow triumphant smile and answered cruelly:

"Forever? At one time the thought had less terrors for you!"

She disregarded his sarcasm, continuing in the same plaintive tone of

entreaty, which was music in Benilo's ear.

"But surely--you do not mean it! You would not profit by a woman's

angry folly. I was mad,--insane,--I knew not what I said, what I did!

Benilo, I will admit defeat,--failure,--anything,--only release me from

this fearful wager. I ask you as a man,--have pity on me!"

"What pity have you lavished on me?"

"Were you deserving of pity?"

"My love--"

"Your love! What is your love, but the lust of the wild beast?" she

exclaimed, flying into a passion, but instantly checking herself.

"Think of it, Benilo," she urged in desperation, "I could conquer, if I

would. Once Eckhardt lays eyes on me, I can lead him to my will. Never

can I forget the look he gave me when I faced him before my own tomb in

the churchyard of San Pancrazio. Never will that wild expression of

despair and longing, which spoke to me from his mute eyes, fade from my

memory. Whether he believed that I was a pale, mocking phantom--what he

imagined that I was, I know not--I could win him, if I would."

"Then win him!" snarled Benilo, through his straight thin lips.

"No! No!" she cried piteously. "Eckhardt is noble. He believed in

me,--he trusted me. He believes me dead. He has no inkling of the vile

thing I am! I listened to his prayer to the Virgin--once more he asked

to see the face of the woman he had loved above everything on earth.

And you ask me to tear the veil from his eyes and drag him down into the

sloth and slime of my existence! His faith falls upon me like a knotted

scourge,--his love--a blow upon my guilty head. He gave me life-long

love in payment for a lie; he gave me love unwavering and true beyond

the grave. When I think of it all--I long to die of shame! You caused

me to believe he was dead,--that he had fallen defending the Eastern

March. I thanked Heaven for the message; I envied him his eternal rest.

It was one of your black deceits,--perhaps one of your mildest. Let it

pass! But again to enter into his life--No! no!" she moaned. "By the

God of Love--I will not!"

She gave a wild moan and covered her face with her hands. Benilo looked

on in silence, scarce crediting the proof of sight and sound.

Once--twice he moved his lips, ere speech would flow.

"You have but to choose," he said. "Come to me--my wife or

concubine,--I care not which, and I pledge you my word, he shall die! I

have but spared him until I sounded your humour!"

She shivered, and raised her hands as if to conjure away some

apparition.

"No--no--never!" she gasped. "You would not dare! You would not dare!

You are but frightening me! Have pity on me and let me go!"

"I do not detain you! Go if you will, but remember the wager!"

Her head drooped, while Benilo drew nearer, bending his exultant eyes on

her wilted form, and in the passion which mastered him, he grasped her

wrists and drew her hands apart, then kissed her passionately upon the

lips.

With a hunted cry, she wrenched herself away, and leaping backward,

faced him, her voice choked with panting fury:

"Fool! Devil! Coward! Could you not respect a woman's grief for the

degradation you have forced upon her? Dog! I might have paid your

forfeit had I died of shame! But now--I will not!" She snapped her

fingers in his face. "This for your wager! This for an oath to

you--the vermin of the earth!"

Benilo took a backward step, awed by the flaming madness in her eyes.

"Take care!" he growled threateningly.

"The vermin that crawls in the dust, I say," she reiterated panting,

"the dust--the dust! Better a thousand deaths than the brute love you

offer! Between us it is a duel to the death! I will win him back,--if

I have to barter my evil beauty for eternal damnation,--if our entwined

souls burn to crisp in purgatory,--I will win him back, revealing myself

to him the foul thing I am,--and by way of contrast sing your praises,

my Lord Benilo--believe me,--the devils themselves shall be wroth with

jealousy at my song."

There was something in the woman's eye, which staggered the Chamberlain.

"You would not dare!" he exclaimed aghast.

"I dare everything! You have challenged me and now your coward soul

quails before the issue!--You would have me recede,--go! I've done with

you!"

"Not yet," Benilo replied, with his sinister drawl--edging nearer the

woman. "I have something else to say to you! Your words are but air!

You have measured your strength with mine and failed! Go to your old

time love! Tell him you found a conscience,--tell him where you found

it,--and see if he allows you leisure to confess all your other

peccadilloes, trifling though they be! Still--the risk is equal. I

have a mind to take the chance! Once more, Theodora,--confess yourself

defeated,--acknowledge that the champion is beyond your reach--be

mine--and the wager shall be wiped out!"

She recoiled from him, raising her hands in unfeigned horror and cried:

"Never--never."

Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

"As you will!"

"Then you would have me make him untrue to his vows? You would have me

add this sin too, to my others?"

He laughed sardonically, while he feasted his eyes on her great beauty.

"It will not add much to the burden, I ween."

She gave him one look, in which fear mingled with contempt and turned to

go, when with a spring, stealthy as the panther's, he overtook her, and

pinning down her arms, bent back the proud head and once more pressed

his lips upon the woman's.

With a cry like a wounded animal she released herself, pushed him back

with the strength of her vigorous youth and spat in his face.

"Do you still desire me?" she hissed with flaming eyes.

He sprang at her with a furious oath, but his outstretched fingers

grasped the air. Theodora had vanished. Recoiling from the towering

forms of the Africans, who guarded the corridor leading to her

apartments, Benilo staggered blindly back into the dark deserted halls.

Here he found himself face to face with Hezilo the harper, who seemed to

rise out of the shadows like some ill-omened phantom.

"If you waver now," the harper spoke with his strange unimpassioned

voice,--"you are lost!"

The Chamberlain stopped before the harper's arresting words.

"What can I do?" he groaned with a deep breath. "My soul half sinks

beneath the mighty burden I have heaped upon it, it quails before the

fatal issue."

"You have measured your strength with the woman's," replied the harper.

"She has felt the conquering whip-hand. Onward! Unflinchingly!

Relentlessly! She dare not face the final issue!"

"I need new courage, as the dread hour approaches!" Benilo replied, his

breath coming fast between his set teeth. "And from your words, your

looks, I drink it!"

"Then take it from this also: If now you fail hardly the grave would be

a refuge."

Benilo peered up at his strange counsellor.

"Man or devil,--who are you to read the depths of the soul of man?" he

queried amazed, vainly endeavouring to penetrate the vizor, which shaded

the harper's face.

"Perhaps neither," a voice answered which seemed to come from the

remotest part of the great hall, yet it was Hezilo the harper, who

spoke, "Perchance some spirit, permitted to return to earth to goad man

to his final and greatest fall."

"It shall be as you say!" Benilo spoke, rousing himself. "Onward!

Relentlessly! Unflinchingly!"

He staggered from the hall.

"Perhaps I too should have flagged and failed, had not one thought

whispered hope to me in the long and solitary hours which fill up the

interstices of time," muttered the harper, gazing after the

Chamberlain's vanishing form.

The voices died to silence. The pale light of dawn peered into the

deserted hall.

*CHAPTER XIV*

*THE PHANTOM AT THE SHRINE*

At last the evening had come, when Eckhardt was for ever to retire from

the world, to spend the remainder of his days in prayers and penances,

within the dismal walls of the cloister. The pontiff himself was to

officiate at the high ceremony, which was to close the last chapter in

the great general's life. Daylight was fading fast, and the faint

light, which still glimmered through the western windows of St. Peter's

Basilica had long since lost its sunset ruddiness and was little more

than a pale shadow. The candles, their mighty rival departed, blazed

higher now in merry fitfulness, delighting to play in grotesque imagery

over the monkish faces, which haunted the gloom.

One end of the Basilica was now luminous with the pale glow of

innumerable slender tapers of every length, ranged in gradated order

round the altar. Their mellow radiance drove the gloom a quarter of the

way down the cathedral. The massive bronze doors at the farther end

were still shut and locked. The only way of entering the church was

through the sacristy, by way of the north transepts, to which only the

monks had access. No sound that should ring out within these mighty

walls to-night could reach the ears of those who might be in the streets

without.

Meanwhile the quiescent echoes of the vast Basilica were disturbed by

fitful murmurs from the Sacristy. Far in the distance, from the north

transept, might be distinguished light footfalls. Slowly a double file

of monks entered the church, walking to the rhythm of a subdued

processional chant, which rose through the sombre shadows of the aisles.

At the same time the great portals of the Basilica were thrown open to

the countless throngs, which had been waiting without and which now,

like waters released from the impediment of a dam, rushed into the

immense area, waiting to receive them.

The rumour of Eckhardt's impending consecration had added no little to

the desire of the Romans to be present at a spectacle such as had not

within the memory of man fallen to their lot to behold, and it seemed as

if all Rome had flocked to the ancient Basilica to witness the great and

touching ordeal at which the youthful Pontiff himself was to officiate.

Seemingly interminable processions of monks, bearing huge waxen tapers,

of choristers, acolytes and incense-bearers, with a long array of

crosses and other holy emblems continued to pour into the Basilica. The

priests were in their bright robes of high-ceremony. The choristers

chanted a psalm as they passed on and the incense bearers swung their

silver censers.

The Pontiff's face was a rarely lovely one to look upon; it was that of

a mere youth. His chin was smooth as any woman's and the altar cloth

was not as white as his delicate hands. The halo of golden hair, which

encircled his tonsure, gave him the appearance of a saint.

Marvellously, indeed, did stole, mitre and staff become the delicate

face and figure of Bruno of Carinthia, and if there was some incongruity

between the spun gold of his fair hair and the severity of the mitre,

which surrounded it, there was none in all that assembly to note it.

At the door, awaiting the pontifical train, stood the venerable Gerbert

of Aurillac, impressive in his white and gold dalmatica against the red

robes of the chapter. Preceded by two cardinals the Pontiff mounted the

steps, entering through the great bronze portals of the Basilica, which

poured a wave of music and incense out upon the hushed piazza. Then

they closed again, engulfing the brilliant procession.

The chant ceased and the monks silently ranged themselves in a close

semi-circle about the high-altar. There was a brief and impressive

silence, while the deep, melodious voice of the Archbishop of Rheims was

raised in prayer. The monks chanted the Agnus Dei, then a deep hush of

expectation fell upon the multitudes.

The faint echoes of approaching footsteps now broke the intense silence

which pervaded the immense area of the Basilica. Accompanied by two

monks, Eckhardt slowly strode down the aisle, which the reverential

tread of millions had already worn to unevenness. In an obscured niche

he had waited their signal, racked by doubts and fears, and less

convinced than ever that the final step he was about to take would lead

to the desired goal. From his station he could distinguish faint

silhouettes of the glittering spars in the vaulting, and the sculptured

chancel, twisted and beaten into fantastic shapes and the line of ivory

white Apostles. As he approached the monks gathered closely round the

chancel, where, under the pontifical canopy, stood the golden chair of

the Vicar of Christ.