THE ADORER
"_Ave rosa speciosa!_"
Innocent III.
I. Blood Red
Sainte Napolitaine aux mains pleines de feux,
Rose au coeur violet, fleur de sainte Gudule,
As-tu trouvé ta croix dans le désert des cieux?
Gérard de Nerval, _les Chimères_.
The night entered through the loophole--the end of a day of horror. He
had been forgotten; he had not been given his daily walk. Perhaps he
was going to perish here, without seeing the Novella again.
Morning, noon or evening, according to the arabesques of his fancy.
Veltro, his jailor, opened the door with a violent turn of the key:
"To the tower!" Delia Preda obediently climbed the few steps of the
narrow and dim stairway; he climbed slowly, as if to perform a duty
to which no exception could be taken, for he knew that these daily
moments of apparent liberty in the open air were given to intensify the
horrors of his cell and to prevent him from losing the notion of time
and the duration of his torment. It is to reach this end rationally,
without doubt, that the modern, rigid philanthropists instituted
strict regulations in the new prisons. In 1489 the chief constables of
Naples already knew the means of preventing these abuses of confidence
by which the condemned person transmutes his punishment into an evil
dream; but this was reserved for the prisoners of distinction. Guido
della Preda, Count of Santa-Maria, was accused of having conspired,
some said against the security of the State, others against the queen's
honor. Because he was a gentleman, they had not hanged him; they had
not beheaded him because he was innocent; a special punishment had
fallen to his lot, for in a royal jail a difference must be established
between prisoners who are guilty and those who are not.
He was in solitary confinement; the consciousness of the injustice he
suffered might have led him into attempts at escape or revolt, and his
intelligence would have made him the chief of the rascals sprawling
all together on the straw of the common dungeon; and it is not fitting
that a prisoner leave the prison through the window or that a jailer
be strangled in a scuffle: it sets a very bad example and is liable to
discredit prisons. There was yet another reason for this refinement, a
privilege discussed and accorded by the State Council at the request
of the Holy Office (for Della Preda was one of the thirteen peers of
royalty): "Our Guido is innocent according to laws of this world, but
who can boast of being so according to eternal laws? Let him, then,
suffer in advance the punishment which God reserves for him upon
his entry into the other life! Let him suffer more than the others,
since he is less guilty! Let each hour of his mortal life be a painful
preparatory measure leading to liberating death, through which eternity
opens! Ah! What a good fortune for him to have been implicated in this
action!"
The nineteenth hour sounded, seven o'clock according to our mode of
reckoning time; by habit, Della Preda lifted his eyes towards the space
framed by the high walls, and then towards the beginning of the arch,
but he only beheld the night. This clock indicated the time for him by
ringings violent as trumpets, and truly the pious desires of the Holy
Office were being accomplished: the mortal hours of his mortal life
fell one by one on his head, like leaden balls.
But all had not been foreseen! What holy monk could divine that within
himself the prisoner would find joys and torments which not even the
venomous Parthenope could have aroused in any heart.
The Tower of the Cross (_Torre della Croce_), so called at that time
and for the past four hundred years the Tower of the Prey (_Torre
della Preda_), dominates with its battlements all the vulgar quarters
of Naples. It rears itself at the extreme end of a mass of old ruins
still serving as a prison, through custom, and to which the people have
given the name of Prison of the Blood-Hound (_Carcer delle Veltro_).
At the end of the fifteenth century, these ruins, of a somewhat recent
reconstruction, had the appearance of a fortress, and a space of a
hundred and fifty feet was free between the walls, flanked by moats,
and the first low houses of the outskirts.
At the center of the platform where Della Preda was daily led, a guard
house was built which divided it in two, save for narrow passages, and
limited the view on the side of the country. As he placed his foot on
the last step, the prisoner had opposite him, to his left, the town
which stood out in the distance, full of square belfries and domes; to
the right was the blue gulf.
A church with flying buttresses, heavy and in ruins, first draws the
unaccustomed glance and fixes it by the splendor of its brilliantly
ornamented madonna. When the setting sun sank to the end of the pointed
niche and bathed her with rays, the rubies and chrysolites of her
tiara, the lepidolites and topazes of her starred aureola reflected the
brilliance of luminaries and the faced adorned with diamond eyes looked
rapturous.
The first time that Guido climbed to the tower was an evening when
the sun was setting. He saw neither the flashing town with its green
terraces, nor the blue bay with its white sails; but, uttering a cry,
he asked:
"Down there! Down there! Who is that lady?"
"That lady? What lady?" repeated Veltro, with an astonished, already
uneasy eye.
"Yes, that lady in front of the church of the Orphans?"
"Ah! you mean above the portal? That's the Novella, my lord," Veltro
replied, baring his head as he pronounced the name, "a blessed and
benevolent madonna. You can hardly see her well from below, the street
is too narrow, but everybody knows that she is there, and that is
enough."
"What an agreeable woman!" answered Guido. "O Novella! Protect me and
love me!"
He knelt, bending his head, and when he stood up, after the last words
of his supplicating _ave_, the _Novella_ was smiling, full of grace and
tenderness.
"So you accept my prayer? Thanks, madonna! Deign to receive me as your
worshiper, let my breathing be a praise to your immaculate tenderness,
to your sovereign grace. Open your goodness to the irrevocable gift of
my life. Let me be to you as the pupil to the eye which moves it as it
wills. Trample me with the blessed weight of the adorable feet which
crushed the serpent! Let my flesh, for love of you, be withered, my
bones broken, my blood shed. Ah! I love you, I Novella, blessed and
benevolent madonna!"
The madonna accepted the pact: a sign denoted her wish, her choice and
her pleasure. Three times her eyelids drooped over her eyes and three
times they were raised. Then night fell and it seemed to Guido that a
most notable miracle had suspended, for several instants, the sun at
the horizon's edge.
"He is guilty, quite guilty," Veltro reflected, "but he has piety, he
regrets his crimes. May the madonna listen to him!"
"Listen to me, my lord," added the jailor, "and know that there is no
better recourse in the world than to implore the _Novella_. You see
it is not for nothing that she is called the Madonna of the Orphans!
Her arms always are open and she does not carry a babe because all
God's creatures are her children. She is the only one, at least to my
knowledge. _Santa Madonna degli Orfani, ora pro nobis_."
During the two months that the Novella had been Guido's mistress, she
had given him only happiness, charming and adorable happiness. He
loved her and she smiled upon his love, except on certain days when a
light cloud made ashen the pure face or the clear eyes of the beloved.
He loved and, absorbed in his worship, felt himself loved. At first
apprehensive, his tenderness now grew daring. The gentle but eternal
smile no longer sufficed. The lover felt passion's boldness grow in his
heart, like an imprisoned rose impelled by its sap to throw the living
treasure of its purple to the broad day-light. The hour was approaching
when the timid adorer would demand some tokens from the silent adored
one, oh! the merest tokens of an adoration that was shared; the hour
was approaching, the hour of communion, the spiritual hour which takes
its sister by the hand, the hour of serious and tender eyes, the hour
of strong caresses--the carnal hour.
The dark day which he passed under the hammer strokes of the pitiless
clock was all the more painful to Guido since he had chosen it for
definite questionings. Like all others, like lovers, he wished to know
how matters stood, when it is simple to direct one's own questions and
answers: but that is perhaps what he did, and why do anything else?
Veltro explained. It had been the fête of San Gaetano, the country
his wife came from, about two leagues from Naples. He had received
permission, had left, like a mad-cap, without informing the valet
charged with his duties. "Would his lord the prisoner be good enough to
forgive him?"
"Yes, Veltro, I pardon you. You are not bad and I believe you will not
let it occur again, when I tell you that I have suffered greatly."
He slowly mounted, as to a certain joy, half shutting his eyes under
the prolonged caresses of desire, counting the steps, trembling at the
approach of the last and thirty-third.
A sudden alarm arrested his customary transport as he reached the
battlements: he advanced hesitatingly, with gestures of astonishment
and deception.
"Yet it is she, it is really she, and I do not recognize her."
"Set your mind at rest, my lord, there is nothing the matter, quite the
contrary. They have put on her summer robe, that's all. The Novella
changes her attire each season. And then there was a holiday, as well.
Ah! if I had known! But how beautiful she is! She is beautiful as a
queen."
Yes, she was beautiful. But Guido paused a moment before admitting
this transmutation in which he had not at all participated. He sadly
regarded the new Woman, sadly and with reproachful eyes:
"Are there seasons for my love? Are there days, are there hours? I
loved the sky-colored robe which you had put on for our first meeting?
Why then have you doffed it? Was it intended for me, at least? Did you
wish to surprise me with a richer vesture that would more nobly become
your serene beauty? Ah! queen, this too comely cloak does not bring my
heart nearer to your heart, nor your lips to my lips; then, to what
avail? You were blue like the sky and the sea, blue like the dream,
blue like love--why this bleeding purple? In what stream of blood have
you dipped your grace? Had I not offered you the torrent of my veins?
Queen, you have betrayed me! You still smile at me, but your smile is
cruel, you scoff, you scorn! An unfriendly day was that one in which,
far from my tears, you permitted barbarous hands to profane the limbs I
adore! It was I who should have divested you, it was I who should have
covered you, divine and nude, in the sacred cloak of my effusions! Ah!
you make me weep, Novella! What! you too weep, dear Passion, so you
do yet love me? Oh! weep not! Pardon, pardon, I am the wicked one, I
am the inclement one, and, moreover, I was mad. It is conceivable: I
thought I had lost you. But no, it is not so? You are mine, more than
ever, only mine! Let me be truly happy! No? Heed me, I love you! Not
yet? It is true, I did doubt you; it is necessary to suffer, I wish to
suffer."