The Sorceress of Rome. Gallizier Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ sun, and beyond the horizon of ancient Portus, torpid, waveless and suffused in a flood of dazzling brightness, the Tyrrhene Sea stretched toward the cloudless horizon which closed the sun-bright view.

      How long the Grand Chamberlain had thus abstractedly gazed out upon the seven-hilled city gradually sinking into the repose of evening, he was scarcely conscious, when a slight knock, which seemed to come from the wall, caused him to start. After a brief interval it was repeated. Benilo drew the curtains closer, gave another glance at the sand-clock, nodded to himself, then, approaching the opposite wall, decorated with scenes from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, touched a hidden spring. Noiselessly a panel receded and, from the chasm thus revealed, something like a shadow passed swiftly into the cabinet, the panel closing noiselessly behind it.

      Benilo had reseated himself at the table, and beckoned his strange visitor to a chair, which he declined. He was tall and lean and wore the gray habit of the Penitent friars, the cowl drawn over his face, concealing his features.

      For some minutes neither the Grand Chamberlain nor his visitor spoke. At last Benilo broke the silence.

      "You are the bearer of a message?"

      The monk nodded.

      "Tell me the worst! Bad news is like decaying fruit. It becomes the more rotten with the keeping."

      "The worst may be told quickly enough," said the monk with a voice which caused the Chamberlain to start.

      "The Saxon dynasty is resting on two eyes."

      Benilo nodded.

      "On two eyes," he repeated, straining his gaze towards the monk.

      "They will soon be closed for ever!"

      The Chamberlain started from his seat.

      "I do not understand."

      "The fever does not temporize."

      "'Tis the nature of the raven to croak. Let thine improvising damn thyself."

      "Fate and the grave are relentless. I am the messenger of both!"

      "King Otto dying?" the Chamberlain muttered to himself. "Away from Rome, – the Fata Morgana of his dreams?"

      A gesture of the monk interrupted the speaker.

      "When a knight makes a vow to a lady, he does not thereby become her betrothed. She oftener marries another."

      "Yet the Saint may work a miracle. The Holy Father is praying so earnestly for his deliverance, that Saint Michael may fear for his prestige, did he not succour him."

      "Your heart is tenderer than I had guessed."

      "And joined by the prayers of such as you – "

      The monk raised his hand.

      "Nay, – I am not holy enough."

      "I thought they were all saints at San Zeno."

      "That is for Rome to say."

      There was a brief pause during which Benilo gazed into space. The monk heard him mutter the word "Dying – dying" as if therein lay condensed the essence of all his life.

      Reseating himself the Chamberlain seemed at last to remember the presence of his visitor, who scrutinized him stealthily from under his cowl. Pointing to a parchment on the table before him, he said dismissing the subject:

      "You are reported as one in whom I may place full trust, in whom I may implicitly confide. I hate the black cassocks. A monk and misfortune are seldom apart. You see I dissemble not."

      The Grand Chamberlain's visitor nodded.

      "A viper's friend must needs be a viper, – like to like!"

      "'Tis not the devil's policy to show the cloven hoof."

      "Yet an eavesdropper is best equipped for a prophet."

      Again the Chamberlain started.

      Straining his gaze towards the monk, who stood immobile as a phantom, he said:

      "It is reported that you are about to render a great service to Rome."

      The monk nodded.

      "A country without a king is bad! But to carry the matter just a trifle farther, – to dream of Christendom without a Pope – "

      "You would not dare!" exclaimed Benilo with real or feigned surprise, "you would not dare! In the presence of the whole Christian world? Rome can do nothing without the Sun, – nothing without the Pope. Take away his benediction: 'Urbi et Orbi' – What would prosper?"

      "You are a poet and a Roman. I am a monk and a native of Aragon."

      Benilo shrugged his shoulders.

      "'Tis but the old question: Cui bono? How many pontiffs have, within the memory of man, defiled the chair of Saint Peter? Who are your reformers? Libertines and gossipers in the taverns of the Suburra, among fried fish, painted women, and garlic; in prosperity proud, in adversity cowards, but infamous ever! The fifth Gregory alone soars so high above the earth, he sees not the vermin, the mire beneath."

      "Perhaps they wished to let the mire accumulate, to furnish work for the iron broom of your tramontane saint! Are not his shoulders bent in holy contemplation, like the moon in the first quarter? Is he not shocked at the sight of misery and of dishevelled despair? His sensitive nerves would see them with the hair dressed and bound like that of an antique statue."

      "Ay! And the feudal barons stick in his palate like the hook in the mouth of the dog fish."

      "We want no more martyrs! The light of the glow-worm continues to shine after the death of the insect."

      "It was a conclave, that disposed of the usurper, John XVI."

      "Ay! And the bravo, when he discovered his error, paid for three candles for the pontiff's soul, and the monk who officiated at the last rites praised the departed so loudly, that the corpse sat up and laughed. And now he is immortal and possesses the secret of eternal life," the monk concluded with downcast eyes.

      "Yet there is one I fear, – one who seems to enlist a special providence in his cause."

      "Gerbert of Cluny – "

      "The monk of Aurillac!"

      "They say that he is leagued with the devil; that in his closet he has a brazen head, which answers all questions, and through which the devil has assured him that he shall not die, till he has said mass in Jerusalem."

      "He is competent to convert a brimstone lake."

      "Yet a true soldier seeks for weak spots in the armour."

      "I am answered. But the time and the place?"

      "In the Ghetto at sunset."

      "And the reward?"

      "The halo of a Saint."

      "What of your conscience's peace?"

      "May not a man and his conscience, like ill-mated consorts, be on something СКАЧАТЬ