Under the Witches' Moon: A Romantic Tale of Mediaeval Rome. Gallizier Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ spot, there was no vestige of a human presence. Basil had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him.

      Possessed by a sudden fear that some harm might be intended the monk and remembering certain veiled threats he had overheard against his life, he proceeded more slowly and cautiously by the dim light of the stars.

      Before long he found himself before a flight of grass grown steps that led up to a series of desolate chambers which, although roofless and choked with rank vegetation, still bore traces of their ancient splendor. These corridors led to a clumsy door, standing half ajar, from beyond which shone the faint glimmer of a light.

      After having reached the threshold Tristan paused.

      High, oval-shaped apertures admitted light and air at once, and the dying embers of a charcoal fire revealed a chamber, singularly void of all the comforts of existence. Almost in the centre of this chamber, before a massive stone table, upon which was spread a huge tome, sat the Monk of Cluny, shading his eyes with his right hand and reading half aloud.

      For a few moments Tristan regarded the recluse breathlessly, as if he dreaded disturbing his meditations, when Odo suddenly raised his eyes and saw the dark form standing in the frame of the door.

      The look which he bestowed upon Tristan convinced the latter immediately of the doubt which the monk harbored regarding the quality of his belated caller, a doubt which he deemed well to disperse before venturing into the monk's retreat.

      Therefore, without abandoning his position, he addressed the inmate of the chamber and, as he spoke, the tone of his voice seemed to carry conviction, that the speaker was sincere.

      "Your pardon, father," Tristan stammered, "for one who is seeking you in an hour of grave doubt and misgiving."

      The monk's ear had caught the accent of a foreign tongue. He beckoned to Tristan to enter, rising from the bench on which he had been seated.

      "You come at a strange hour," he said, not without a note of suspicion, which did not escape Tristan. "Your business must be weighty indeed to embolden one, a stranger on Roman soil, to penetrate the desolate Aventine when the world sleeps and murder stalks abroad."

      "I am here for a singular purpose, father, – having obeyed the impulse of the moment, after listening to your sermon at St. Peter's."

      "But that was hours ago," interposed the monk, resting his hand on the stone table, as he faced his visitor.

      "I lost my way – nor did I meet any one to point it," Tristan replied, as he advanced and kissed the monk's hand reverently.

      "What is your business, my son?" asked the monk.

      Tristan hesitated a moment. At last he spoke.

      "I came to Rome not of my own desire, – but obeying the will of another that imposed the pilgrimage. I have sinned, father – and yet there are moments, when I would almost glory in that which I have done. It was my purpose, while at St. Peter's to confess to the Grand Penitentiary. But – I know not why – I chose you instead, knowing that you would give truth for truth."

      The monk regarded his visitor, wondering what one so young and possessed of so frank a countenance might have done amiss.

      "You are a pilgrim?" he queried at last.

      "For my sins – "

      "Of French descent, yet not a Frenchman – "

      Tristan started at the monk's penetration.

      "From Provence, father," he stammered, "the land of songs and flowers – "

      "And women – " the monk interposed gravely.

      "There are women everywhere, father."

      "There are women and women. Perchance I should say 'Woman.'"

      Tristan bowed his head in silence.

      The monk cast a penetrating glance at his visitor. He understood the gesture and the silence with that quick comprehension that came to him who was to reform Holy Catholic Church from the abuse of decades – as an intuition.

      "But now, my son, speak of yourself," said the monk after a pause.

      "I lived at the court of Avalon, the home of Love and Troubadours."

      "Of Troubadours?" the monk interposed dreamily. "A worldly lot – given to extolling free love and what not – "

      "They may sing of love and passion, father, but their lives are pure and chaste," Tristan ventured to remonstrate.

      "You are a Troubadour?" came the swift query.

      "In my humble way." Tristan replied with bowed head.

      The monk nodded.

      "Go on – go on!"

      "At the court of Avalon I met the consort of Count Roger de Laval. He was much absent, on one business or another, – the chase – feuds with neighboring barons. – He chose me to help the Lady Hellayne to while away the long hours during his absence – "

      "His wife! What folly!"

      "The Count de Laval is one of those men who would tempt the heavens themselves to fall upon him rather than to air himself beneath them. That his fair young wife, doing his will among men given to the chase and drinking bouts, and the society of tainted damsels, should long for something higher, she, whom he regarded with the high air of the lord of creation – that she should dare dream of some intangible something, for which she hungered, and craved and starved – "

      "If you are about to confess, as I conceive, to a wrong you have done to this same lord," interposed the monk, "your sin is not less black if you paint him you have wronged in odious tints."

      "Nevertheless I am most sorry to do so, father," Tristan interposed, "else could I not make you understand to its full extent his folly and conceit by placing me, a creature of emotion, day by day beside so fair a being as his young wife. Therefore I would explain."

      "It needs some explanation truly!" the monk said sternly.

      "The Count de Laval is a man whose conceit is so colossal, father, that he would never think it possible that any one could fail in love and admiration at the shrine which he built for himself. A man of supreme arrogance and self-righteousness."

      "Sad, indeed – " mused the monk.

      "Our thoughts were pagan, drifting back to the days when the world was peopled with sylvan creatures – with the deities of field and stream – "

      "Mere heathen dreams," interposed the monk. "Go on! Go on!"

      "I then felt within myself the impulse to throw forth a minstrelsy prophetic of a new world resembling that old which had vanished. It was not to be a mere chant of wrath or exultation – it was to sound the joy of the earth, of the air, of the sun, of the moon and the stars, – the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers – "

      "Words that have but little meaning left in this stern world wherein we dwell – "

      "They had meaning for me, father. Also for her. They were to both of us a bright and mystical ideal, in the fumes of which we steeped our souls, – our very selves, till our natures seemed to know no hurt, seemed incapable of evil – СКАЧАТЬ