The Sorceress of Rome. Gallizier Nathan

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СКАЧАТЬ voice of Eckhardt now sounded curt and distinct, as he addressed Archbishop Heribert of Cologne, Chancellor of the Holy Roman Empire.

      "If the God to whom you pray or your patron-saint, has endowed you with the divine gift of persuasion, – use it now to prompt your king to leave this accursed land and to return beyond the Alps. Roman wiles and Roman fever had well-nigh claimed another victim. My resignation lies in the hands of the King. My mission here is ended. I place your sovereign in your hands. Keep him safe. I return to the Eastern March."

      Exclamations of surprise, chiefly from the German element, the Romans listening in sullen silence, rose round the commander, like a sullen squall.

      Eckhardt waved them back with uplifted arm.

      "The king requires my services no longer. He refuses to listen to my counsel! He despises his own country. His sun rises and sets in Rome. I no longer have his ear. His counsellors are Romans! The war is ended. My sword has grown rusty. Let another bear the burden! – I return to the Eastern March!"

      During Eckhardt's speech, whose curtness barely cloaked the grief of the commander over a step, which he deemed irrevocable, the pallor in the features of the Grand Chamberlain had deepened and a strange light shone in his eyes, as, remote from the general's scrutiny, he watched and listened.

      The German contingent, however, was not to be so easily reconciled to Eckhardt's declaration. Bernhardt, the Saxon duke, Duke Burkhardt of Suabia, Count Tassilo of Bavaria and Count Ludeger of the Palatinate united their protests against a step so fatal in its remotest consequences, with the result that the Margrave turned abruptly upon his heels, strode from the hall of audience, and, passing through the rank and file of the imperial guard, found himself on the crest of Mount Aventine.

      Evening was falling. A solemn hush held enthralled the pulses of the universe. A dazzling glow of gold swept the western heavens, and the chimes of the Angelus rang out from untold cloisters and convents. To southward, the towering summits of Soracté glowed in sunset gold. The dazzling sheen reflected from the marble city on the Palatine proved almost too blinding for Eckhardt's gaze, and with quick, determined step, he began his descent towards the city.

      At the base of the hill his progress suffered a sudden check.

      A procession, weird, strange and terrible, hymning dirge-like the words of some solemn chant, with the eternal refrain "Miserere! Miserere!" wound round the shores of the Tiber. Four files of masked, black spectres, their heads engulfed in black hoods, wooden crucifixes dangling from their necks, carrying torches of resin, from which escaped floods of reddish light, at times obscured by thick black smoke, marched solemnly behind a monk, whose features could but vaguely be discerned in the tawny glare of the funereal light. No phantom procession at midnight could have inspired the popular mind with a terror so great as did this brotherhood of Death, more terrifying than the later monks and ascetics of Zurbaran, who so paraded the frightfulness of nocturnal visions in the pure, unobscured light of the sun. In numbers there were approximately four hundred. Their superior, a tall, gaunt and terrible monk, escorted by his acolytes, held aloft a large black crucifix. A fanatic of the iron type, whose austerity had won him a wide ascendency, the monk Cyprianus, his cowl drawn deeply over his face, strode before the brotherhood. The dense smoke of their torches, hanging motionless in the still air of high noon, soon obscured the monks from view, even before the last echoes of their sombre chant had died away.

      Without a fixed purpose in his mind, save that of observing the temper of the populace, Eckhardt permitted himself to be swept along with the crowds. Idlers mostly and inquisitive gapers, they constituted the characteristic Roman mob, always swarming wherever there was anything to be seen, however trifling the cause and insignificant the attraction. They were those who, not choosing to work, lived by brawls and sedition, the descendants of that uproarious mob, which in the latter days of the empire filled the upper rows in theatre and circus, the descendants of the rabble, whose suffrage no Cæsar was too proud to court in the struggle against the free and freedom-loving remnants of the aristocracy.

      But there were foreign elements which lent life and contrast to the picture, elements which in equal number and profusion no other city of the time, save Constantinople, could offer to the bewildered gaze of the spectator.

      Moors from the Western Caliphate of Cordova, Saracens from the Sicilian conquest, mingled with white-robed Bedouins from the desert; Greeks from the Morea, Byzantines, Epirotes, Albanians, Jews, Danes, Poles, Slavs and Magyars, Lombards, Burgundians and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans and Venetians, heightened by the contrast of speech, manner and garb the dazzling kaleidoscopic effect of the scene, while the powerful Northern veterans of the German king thrust their way with brutal contempt through the dregs of Romulus.

      After having extricated himself from the motley throngs, Eckhardt, continuing his course to southward and following the Leonine wall, soon found himself in the barren solitudes of Trastevere. Here he slackened his pace, and, entering a cypress avenue, seated himself on a marble bench, a relic of antiquity, offering at once shade and repose.

      Here he fell into meditation.

      Three years had elapsed since the death of a young and beloved wife, who had gone from him after a brief but mysterious illness, baffling the skill of the physicians. In the ensuing solitude he had acquired grave habits of reflection. This day he was in a more thoughtful mood than common. This day more than ever, he felt the void which nothing on earth could fill. What availed his toils, his love of country, his endurance of hardships? What was he the better now, in that he had marched and watched and bled and twice conquered Rome for the empire? What was this ambition, leading him up the steepest paths, by the brinks of fatal precipices? He scarcely knew now, it was so long ago. Had Ginevra lived, he would indeed have prized honour and renown and a name, that was on all men's lips. And Eckhardt fell to thinking of the bright days, when the very skies seemed fairer for her presence. Time, who heals all sorrows, had not alleviated his grief. At his urgent request he had been relieved of his Roman command. The very name of the city was odious to him since her death. Appointed to the office of Great Warden of the East and entrusted with the defence of the Eastern border lands against the ever-recurring invasions of Bulgarians and Magyars, the formidable name of the conqueror of Rome had in time faded to a mere memory.

      Not so in the camp. Men said he bore a charmed existence, and indeed his counsels showed the forethought and caution of the skilled leader, while his personal conduct was remarkable for a reckless disregard of danger. It was observed, though, that a deep and abiding melancholy had taken possession of the once free and easy commander. Only under the pressure of imminent danger did he seem to brighten into his former self. At other times he was silent, preoccupied. But the Germans loved their leader. They discussed him by their watch-fires; they marvelled how one so ready on the field was so sparing with the wine cup, how the general who could stop to fill his helmet from the running stream under a storm of arrows and javelins and drink composedly with a jest and a smile could be so backward at the revels.

      In the year 996, Crescentius, the Senator of Rome raised the standards of revolt, expelled Gregory the Fifth and nominated a rival pontiff in the infamous John the Sixteenth. Otto, then a mere youth of sixteen summers, had summoned his hosts to the rescue of his friend, the rightful pontiff. Reluctantly, and only moved by the tears of the Empress Theophano, who placed the child king in his care and charge, Eckhardt had resumed the command of the invading army. Twice had he put down the rebellion of the Romans, reducing Crescentius to the state of a vassal, and meting out terrible punishment to the hapless usurper of the tiara. After recrossing the Alps, he had once more turned his attention to the bleak, sombre forests of the North, when the imperial youth was seized with an unconquerable desire to make Rome the capital of the empire. Neither prayers nor persuasions, neither the threats of the Saxon dukes nor the protests of the electors could shake Otto's indomitable will. Eckhardt was again recalled from the wilds of Poland to lead the German host across the Alps.

      Meanwhile increasing rumours of the СКАЧАТЬ