The Hill of Venus. Gallizier Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ is long!"

      Francesco raised his hands as if in abhorrence of the thought. Then, as he turned towards the bier, he seemed newly overwhelmed at the sight of the lifeless clay before him. The memory of his father's first appearance, as he entered the sick-chamber, the ashen pallor, the traces of cruel pain, now softened or effaced by the majesty of Death, reverted to him.

      He sank down beside the bier.

      But try as he might, he could not pray.

      Thus the monk left him. —

      On that evening, in the presence of the entire chapter of the Cathedral and the monks of San Cataldo, they laid to rest under the great altar of the imposing edifice all that was mortal of Gregorio Villani, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John.

      And on that evening the strange friar, who had brought to the dying man the much craved conditional absolution, departed after a final interview with Francesco, who was to return at once to Avellino to prepare himself for the new life which had been decreed for him.

      CHAPTER III

      VISTAS

      THE morning dawned gray with heat. The air was lifeless. The sun, rolling lazily up the eastern sky, scarcely deigned to permit his beams to penetrate the humid atmosphere. In the night a heavy dew had fallen and the lush turf on the edge of the forest was a sparkling mass of drops. The fragrance of the rose-gardens and poppy-fields environing San Cataldo was stifling. The very worms and insects lay inert about shrubs and foliage. In the west, a falling arch of heavy clouds hung low over the distant mountains. It was an unnatural morning, which presaged a storm.

      The forests of the Murgie were still dark when Francesco Villani entered their cool and fragrant depths. To him the smile of dawn on that morning had been as the mirthless smile of a ghost. For, with to-day, there had been awakened the memories of yesterday, the consciousness of his impending fate.

      Fate! What a future it had prepared for him, a future void of everything which the soul of man may crave, which may delight his heart. The sins of another were to be visited upon his guiltless head, – he was to atone for his own existence.

      Yet even that seemed bearable compared with the hour to come at the Court of Avellino, the hour when he must renounce all he held dear in life, appear an ingrate, a traitor; the hour of parting, a parting for life, for all eternity from the friends and companions of his youth and from one who was all the world to him. At the mere thought, the life blood froze in his veins.

      The forests of the Murgie gradually thinned, and Francesco emerged upon a high level plateau, which to southward sloped into the Apulian plains, and on which the sun poured the whole fervor of his beams, till the earth itself seemed to beat up light. And there was no refuge from the heat in that vast plain, which soon spread on every side with the broad sterility of the African desert. Half blinded, Francesco cantered along, dreading every step that carried him nearer to the gates of his lost paradise.

      A mysterious silence was brooding over the immense expanse, which became more desolate with every step. The wide plains reposed in a melancholy fertility; flowering thistles were swarming with countless butterflies; dry fennel, wild and withered, rioted round the scattered remnants of broken columns, on whose summits wild birds of prey were screaming.

      As the sun rode higher in the heavens, the panorama suddenly changed, as if transformed by the wand of a magician. Colossal plane and carob-trees rose on the horizon, waving fantastic shadows over innumerable old crypts and tombs and the fantastic shapes of the underbrush. To southward the view was unlimited, while in Francesco's rear the snowy cone of Soracté rose defiantly over the plains, its glistening summit towering ruddy in the light of the midday sun against the transparent azure of the sky. Wild expanses of copse alternated with pastures brilliant with flowers. Herds of black and white cattle were browsing on either side, donkeys and half wild horses, and occasionally Francesco passed a large, white masseria, like a fortress glistening in the sun. Here and there vineyards made brown patches in the landscape, and the Casellé had the appearance of thousands of Arab tents, scattered over the undulating plain to the rugged, purple hills of the Basilicata, dimly fading away towards the sun-kissed plains of Calabria.

      Almost unconscious of the change, Francesco rode along with abstracted gaze, his eyes as dead as the Apulian land, – land of the dead.

      The knowledge that there lay before him to southward some fifty miles of solitude nevertheless lightened the heavy burden in Francesco's breast. The oppression of the stone walls of San Cataldo had, in a manner, passed away. This day, at least, was his; this day he was to be alone and free. Yet, as he rode, with the slowly diminishing distance his momentary relief went from him again. He seemed to himself to be passing through a mighty sea of desolate thoughts, whose waves swept over him with resistless power, leaving him utterly exhausted when they had passed. The realization of his impending fate, his present position, again took him by storm. By sharp spasms the picture of his future life and its dreary loneliness rose before his eyes, then departed as suddenly as it had come, leaving behind it a black void. The sensation was almost insufferable. In the periods of mental numbness, when even the desire for struggle seemed to have been swallowed up by the black gulf of his despair, he wondered vaguely if his brain had been turned by the sudden prospect of life's changes. The sunny, care-free days in the Castle of Avellino, the companionship of those of his own age, others whom he loved and esteemed, the hopes and ambitions nurtured and fostered in an untainted heart: – all these he saw slowly vanishing like some Fata Morgana of the desert.

      Now, for the first time, discord had come, and the endless vibration of its echoes was to make his life miserable, perhaps unendurable. Created eminently for the life in the sunny sphere of a court, young, handsome of face and form, easily influenced by friendship, easily fascinated by beauty, all environment suited to the qualities and endowments of nature was suddenly to be snatched away. He was standing utterly alone in a strange land, in a new atmosphere, in which at great distances, dim, unknown figures were eyeing him, invisible, yet terrible walls waiting to enclose him and his youth as in a tomb. His world was gone. The new one was filled with shadows. Yet – why rebel, until the light had broken upon the horizon, until the worst and best of it all was known to him? At least, in obeying the commands of his father, he had done what men would call right, – and more than right.

      So were the miles before him lessened until, with the slowly declining orb of day, he came in sight of the walls and towers of Benevento, in which city he would spend the night, to continue his journey to Avellino on the morrow.

      The bell of Santa Redegonda was wailing through the deep hush of evening, which brooded over the fateful city, when Francesco crossed the bridge spanning the Caloré, the waves of ancient Liris rolling golden towards the tide of the Volturno. As he slowly traversed the fatal field of Grandello, his gaze involuntarily sought the rock pile under which the body of Manfred had lain, until released by the papal legate, yet buried in unconsecrated ground. All life seemed to be extinct as in a plague-ridden town, and the warden nodded drowsily as under the shadows of the grim Longobard fortress Francesco rode through the ponderous city gate, over which, sculptured in the rose-colored granite, the Boar of Benevento showed his tusks.

      After having traversed several thoroughfares, without having met a single human being, Francesco permitted his steed to be its own guide, for the moment strangely fascinated by the aspect of the city, before whose walls the destinies of an empire and an imperial dynasty had been decided. Slowly he rode under the stupendous arch of the Emperor Trajan, which now spans the road to Foggia, as it once did the Via Appia. Far away on the slopes of a mountain shone the white Apulian town of Caiazzo, while Monte Verginé and Monte Vitolano stood out black against the azure sky.

      Traversing an avenue of poplar trees, which intersected the old Norman and Longobard quarters of the town, Francesco was struck with СКАЧАТЬ