Mantua was girt by a zone of fire and steel. Her villas and homesteads
flamed or smoked; her orchards flared heavenward in a torrent of sparks
or stood black sapless trunks charred to their inmost pith; the promise
of her harvests lay as grey ashes over the land. But her ramparts,
though breached in places, were yet manned by her sons, and their
assailants recoiled pierced by the shafts or stunned by the catapults
of the defence. Kaiser Frederick sat in his tent, giving secret
audience to one who had stolen in disguise over from the city in the
grey of the morning. By the Emperor’s side stood a tall martial figure,
wearing a visor which he never removed.
“Your Majesty,” Leonardo was saying, for it was he, “this madness will
soon pass away. The people will weary of sacrificing themselves for a
dead heathen.”
“And Liberty?” asked the Emperor, “is not that a name dear to those
misguided creatures?”
“So dear, please your Majesty, that if they have but the name they will
perfectly dispense with the thing. I do not advise that your imperial
yoke should be too palpably adjusted to their stiff necks. Leave them
in appearance the choice of their magistrate, but insure its falling
upon one of approved fidelity, certain to execute obsequiously all your
Majesty’s mandates; such an one, in short, as your faithful vassal
Leonardo. It would only be necessary to decapitate that dangerous
revolutionist, Eustachio.”
“And the citizens are really ready for this?”
“All the respectable citizens. All of whom your Majesty need take
account. All men of standing and substance.”
“I rejoice to hear it,” said the Emperor, “and do the more readily
credit thee inasmuch as a most virtuous and honourable citizen hath
already been beforehand with thee, assuring me of the same thing, and
affirming that but one traitor, whose name, methinks, sounded like
thine, stands between me and the subjugation of Mantua.”
And, withdrawing a curtain, he disclosed the figure of Eustachio.
“I thought he was asleep,” muttered Eustachio.
“That noodle to have been beforehand with me!” murmured Leonardo.
“What perplexes me,” continued Frederick, after enjoying the confusion
of the pair for a few moments, “is that our masked friend here will
have it that he is the man for the Dukedom, and offers to open the
gates to me by a method of his own.”
“By fair fighting, an’ please my liege,” observed the visored
personage, “not by these dastardly treacheries.”
“How inhuman!” sighed Eustachio.
“How old-fashioned!” sneered Leonardo.
“The truth is,” continued Frederick, “he gravely doubts whether either
of you possesses the influence which you allege, and has devised a
method of putting this to the proof, which I trust will commend itself
to you.”
Leonardo and Eustachio expressed their readiness to submit their credit
with their fellow-citizens to any reasonable trial.
“He proposes, then,” pursued the Emperor, “that ye, disarmed and bound,
should be placed at the head of the storming column, and in that
situation should, as questionless ye would, exert your entire moral
influence with your fellow-citizens to dissuade them from shooting you.
If the column, thus shielded, enters the city without resistance, ye
will both have earned the Dukedom, and the question who shall have it
may be decided by single combat between yourselves. But should the
people, rather than submit to our clemency, impiously slay their
elected magistrates, it will be apparent that the methods of our
martial friend are the only ones corresponding to the exigency of the
case. Is the storming column ready?”
“All but the first file, please your Majesty,” responded the man in the
visor.
“Let it be equipped,” returned Frederick, and in half-an-hour Eustachio
and Leonardo, their hands tied behind them, were stumbling up the
breach, impelled by pikes in the rear, and confronting the catapults,
_chevaux de frise_, hidden pitfalls, Greek fire, and boiling water
provided by their own direction, and certified to them the preceding
evening as all that could be desired. They had, however, the full use
of their voices, and this they turned to the best account. Never had
Leonardo been so cogent, or Eustachio so pathetic. The Mantuans,
already disorganised by the unaccountable disappearance of the
Executive, were entirely irresolute what to do. As they hesitated the
visored chief incited his followers. All seemed lost, when a tall
female figure appeared among the defenders. It was Manto.
“Fools and cowards!” she exclaimed, “must ye learn your duty from a
woman?”
And, seizing a catapult, she discharged a stone which laid the masked
warrior stunned and senseless on the ground. The next instant Eustachio
and Leonardo fell dead, pierced by showers of arrows. The Mantuans
sallied forth. The dismayed Imperialists fled to their camp. The bodies
of the fallen magistrates and of the unconscious chieftain in the mask
were brought into the city. Manto herself undid the fallen man’s visor,
and uttered a fearful shriek as she recognised Benedetto.
“What shall be done with him, mistress?” they asked.
Manto long stood silent, torn by conflicting emotions. At length she
said, in a strange, unnatural voice:
“Put him into the Square Tower.”
“And now, mistress, what further? How to choose the new consuls?”
“Ask me no more,” she said. “I shall never prophesy again. Virtue has
gone away from me.”
The leaders departed, to intrigue for the vacant posts, and devise
tortures for Benedetto. Manto sat on the rampart, still and silent as
its stones. Anon she rose, and roved about as if distraught, reciting
verses from Virgil.
Night had fallen. Benedetto lay wakeful in his cell. A female figure
stood before him bearing a lamp. It was Manto.
“Benedetto,” she said, “I am a wretch, faithless to my country and to
my master. I did but even now open his sacred volume at hazard, and on
what did my eye first fall?
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres. But I can no other.
I am a woman. May Mantua never entrust her fortunes to the like of me
again! Come with me, I will release thee.”
She unlocked his chains; she guided him through the secret passage
under the moat; they stood at the exit, in the open air.
“Fly,” she said, “and never again draw sword against thy mother. I will
return to my house, and do that to myself which it behoved me to have
done ere I released thee.”
“Manto,” exclaimed Benedetto “a truce to this folly! Forsake thy dead
Duke, and that cheat of Liberty more crazy and fantastic still. Wed a
living Duke in me!”
“Never!” exclaimed Manto. “I love thee more than any man living on
earth, and I would not espouse thee if the earth held no other.”
“Thou canst not help thyself,” he rejoined; “thou hast revealed to me
the secret of this passage. I hasten to the camp. I return in an hour
with an army, and wilt thou, wilt thou not, to-morrow’s sun shall
behold thee the partner of my throne!”
Manto wore a poniard. She struck Benedetto to the heart, and he fell
dead. She drew the corpse back into the passage, and hurried to her
home. Opening her master’s volume again, she read:
Tædet coeli convexa tueri.
A few minutes afterwards her father entered the chamber to tell her he
had at last found the philosopher’s stone, but, perceiving his daughter
hanging by her girdle, he forbore to intrude upon her, and returned to
his laboratory.
It was time. A sentinel of the besiegers had marked Benedetto’s fall,
and the disappearance of the body into the earth. A pool of blood
revealed the entrance to the passage. Ere sunrise Mantua was full of
Frederick’s soldiers, full also of burning houses, rifled sanctuaries,
violated damsels, children playing with their dead mothers’ breasts,
especially full of citizens protesting that they had ever longed for
the restoration of the Emperor, and that this was the happiest day of
their lives. Frederick waited till everybody was killed, then entered
the city and proclaimed an amnesty. Virgil’s bust was broken, and his
writings burned with Manto’s body. The flames glowed on the dead face,
which gleamed as it were with pleasure. The old alchemist had been
slain among his crucibles; his scrolls were preserved with jealous
care.
But Manto found another father. She sat at Virgil’s feet in Elysium;
and as he stroked the fair head, now golden with perpetual youth,
listened to his mild reproofs and his cheerful oracles. By her side
stood a bowl filled with the untasted waters of Lethe.
“Woe,” said Virgil—but his manner contradicted his speech—“woe to the
idealist and enthusiast! Woe to them who live in the world to come! Woe
to them who live only for a hope whose fulfilment they will not behold
on earth! Drink not, therefore, of that cup, dear child, lest Duke
Virgil’s day should come, and thou shouldst not know it. For come it
will, and all the sooner for thy tragedy and thy comedy.”