The Sorceress of Rome. Gallizier Nathan

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ themselves in the wilderness of crumbling arches and porticoes.

      At last Eckhardt spoke, a strange mixture of mirth and irony in his tones.

      "But your own presence among these ruins? Has Benilo, the Grand Chamberlain become a recluse, dwelling among flitter mice and jack-daws?"

      "I have not sipped from the fount of the mystics," Benilo replied. "But often at the hour of dusk I seek the solitudes of the Palatine, which chime so strangely with my weird fancies. Here I may roam at will and without restraint, – here I may revel in the desolation, enlivened only now and then by the shrill tones of a shepherd's pipe; here I may ramble undisturbed among the ruins of antiquity, pondering over the ancient greatness of Rome, pondering over the mighty that have fallen. – I have just completed an Ode – all but the final stanzas. It is to greet Otto upon his return. The Archbishop of Cologne announced the welcome tidings of the king's convalescence – truly, a miracle of the saint!"

      Eckhardt had listened attentively, then he remarked drily:

      "Let each man take his own wisdom and see whither it will lead him. Otto is still pursuing a mocking phantom under the ruins of crumbled empires, but to find the bleached bones of some long-forgotten Cæsar! Truly, a worthy cause, in which to brave the danger of Alpine snows and avalanches – and the fever of the Maremmas."

      "We both try to serve the King – each in his way," Benilo replied, contritely.

      Eckhardt extended his hand.

      "You are a poet and a philosopher. I am a soldier and a German. – I have wronged you in thought – forgive and forget!"

      Benilo readily placed his hand in that of his companion. After a pause Eckhardt continued:

      "My business in Rome touches neither emperor nor pope. Once, I too, wooed the fair Siren Rome. But the Siren proved a Vampire. – Rome is a enamel house. – Her caress is Death."

      There was a brief silence.

      "'Tis three years since last we strode these walks," Eckhardt spoke again. "What changes time has wrought!"

      "Have the dead brought you too back to Rome?" queried Benilo with averted gaze.

      "Even so," Eckhardt replied, as he strode by Benilo's side. "The dead! Soon I too shall exchange the garb of the world for that of the cloister."

      The Chamberlain stared aghast at his companion.

      "You are not serious?" he stammered, with well-feigned surprise.

      Eckhardt nodded.

      "The past is known to you!" he replied with a heavy sigh. "Since she has gone from me to the dark beyond, I have striven for peace and oblivion in every form, – in the turmoil of battle, before the shrines of the Saints. – In vain! I have striven to tame this wild passion for one dead and in her grave. But this love cannot be strangled as a lion is strangled, and the skill of the mightiest athlete avails nothing in such a struggle. The point of the arrow has remained in the wound. Madness, to wander for ever about a grave, to think eternally, fatefully of one who cannot see you, cannot hear you, one who has left earth in all the beauty and splendour of youth."

      A pause ensued, during which neither spoke.

      They walked for some time in silence among the gigantic ruins of the Palatine. Like an alabaster lamp the moon hung in the luminous vault of heaven. How peacefully fair beneath the star-sprinkled violet sky was this deserted region, bordered afar by tall, spectral cypress-trees whose dark outlines were clearly defined against the mellow luminance of the ether. At last Eckhardt and his companion seated themselves on the ruins of a shattered portico, which had once formed the entrance to a temple of Saturnus.

      Each seemed to be occupied with his own thoughts, when Eckhardt raised his head and gazed inquiringly at his companion, who had likewise assumed a listening attitude. Through the limpid air of the autumnal night, like faint echoes from dream-land, there came softly vibrating harp-tones, mingled with the clash of tinkling cymbals, borne aloft from distant groves. Faint ringing chimes, as of silver bells, succeeded these broken harmonies, followed by another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then dying away on the evanescent breezes.

      A strange, stifling sensation oppressed Eckhardt's heart, as he listened to these bells. They seemed to remind him of things which had long passed out of his life, the peaceful village-chimes in his far-away Saxon land, the brief dream of the happy days now for ever gone. But hark! had he not heard these sounds before? Had they not caressed his ears on the night, when accompanying the king from Aix-la-Chapelle to Merséburg, they passed the fateful Hoerselberg in Thuringia?

      Eckhardt made the sign of the cross, but the question rising to his lips was anticipated by Benilo, who pointed towards a remote region of the Aventine, just as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by distance into indistinct tremulous harmonies, and the clarion clearness of the cymbals again smote the stillness with their strangely luring clangour.

      "Yonder lies the palace of Theodora," Benilo remarked indifferently.

      Eckhardt listened with a strange sensation.

      He remembered the pageant he had witnessed in the Navona, the pageant, from whose more minute contemplation he had been drawn by the incident with Gian Vitelozzo.

      "Who is the woman?" he questioned with some show of interest.

      "Regarding that matter there is considerable speculation," replied Benilo.

      "Have you any theory of your own?"

      The Chamberlain shrugged his shoulders.

      "Heard you ever of a remote descendant of Marozia, still living in Italy?"

      "I thought they had all been strangled long ago."

      "But if there were one, deem you, that the harlot-blood which flowed in the veins of her mother and all the women of her house would be sanctified by time, a damp convent-cell, and a rosary?"

      "I know nothing of a surviving limb of that lightning-blasted trunk."

      "Did not the direct line of Marozia end with John XI, whom she succeeded in placing in the chair of St. Peter, ere she herself was banished to a convent, where she died?" questioned Benilo.

      "So it is reported! And this woman's name is?"

      "Theodora!"

      "You know her?"

      Benilo met Eckhardt's gaze unflinchingly.

      "I have visited her circle," he replied indifferently.

      Eckhardt nodded. He understood.

      Dexterously changing the subject Benilo continued after a pause.

      "If you had but some heart-felt passion, to relieve your melancholy; if you could but love somebody or something," he spoke sympathetically. "Truly, it was never destined for the glorious career of Eckhardt to end behind the bleak walls of a cloister."

      Eckhardt bowed his head.

      "Philosophy is useless. Strange ailments require strange cures."

      For some time they gazed in silence into the moonlit night. Around them towered colossal relics of ancient grandeur, shattered walls, naked porticoes. Wildernesses of broken arches stretched interminably into the bluish haze, СКАЧАТЬ