CHAPTER XXI
THE DEAD CAPUCHIN
The dead monk was clad, as when alive, in the brown woollen frock ofthe Capuchins, with the hood drawn over his head, but so as to leave thefeatures and a portion of the beard uncovered. His rosary and cross hungat his side; his hands were folded over his breast; his feet (he was ofa barefooted order in his lifetime, and continued so in death) protrudedfrom beneath his habit, stiff and stark, with a more waxen look thaneven his face. They were tied together at the ankles with a blackribbon.
The countenance, as we have already said, was fully displayed. It had apurplish hue upon it, unlike the paleness of an ordinary corpse, butas little resembling the flush of natural life. The eyelids werebut partially drawn down, and showed the eyeballs beneath; as if thedeceased friar were stealing a glimpse at the bystanders, to watchwhether they were duly impressed with the solemnity of his obsequies.The shaggy eyebrows gave sternness to the look. Miriam passed betweentwo of the lighted candles, and stood close beside the bier.
"My God!" murmured she. "What is this?"
She grasped Donatello's hand, and, at the same instant, felt him give aconvulsive shudder, which she knew to have been caused by a suddenand terrible throb of the heart. His hand, by an instantaneous change,became like ice within hers, which likewise grew so icy that theirinsensible fingers might have rattled, one against the other. No wonderthat their blood curdled; no wonder that their hearts leaped and paused!The dead face of the monk, gazing at them beneath its half-closedeyelids, was the same visage that had glared upon their naked souls, thepast midnight, as Donatello flung him over the precipice.
The sculptor was standing at the foot of the bier, and had not yet seenthe monk's features.
"Those naked feet!" said he. "I know not why, but they affect mestrangely. They have walked to and fro over the hard pavements of Rome,and through a hundred other rough ways of this life, where the monk wentbegging for his brotherhood; along the cloisters and dreary corridorsof his convent, too, from his youth upward! It is a suggestive idea, totrack those worn feet backward through all the paths they have trodden,ever since they were the tender and rosy little feet of a baby, and(cold as they now are) were kept warm in his mother's hand."
As his companions, whom the sculptor supposed to be close by him, madeno response to his fanciful musing, he looked up, and saw them at thehead of the bier. He advanced thither himself.
"Ha!" exclaimed he.
He cast a horror-stricken and bewildered glance at Miriam, but withdrewit immediately. Not that he had any definite suspicion, or, it may be,even a remote idea, that she could be held responsible in the leastdegree for this man's sudden death. In truth, it seemed too wild athought to connect, in reality, Miriam's persecutor of many past monthsand the vagabond of the preceding night, with the dead Capuchinof to-day. It resembled one of those unaccountable changes andinterminglings of identity, which so often occur among the personagesof a dream. But Kenyon, as befitted the professor of an imaginative art,was endowed with an exceedingly quick sensibility, which was apt to givehim intimations of the true state of matters that lay beyond his actualvision. There was a whisper in his ear; it said, "Hush!" Without askinghimself wherefore, he resolved to be silent as regarded the mysteriousdiscovery which he had made, and to leave any remark or exclamationto be voluntarily offered by Miriam. If she never spoke, then let theriddle be unsolved.
And now occurred a circumstance that would seem too fantastic to betold, if it had not actually happened, precisely as we set it down. Asthe three friends stood by the bier, they saw that a little stream ofblood had begun to ooze from the dead monk's nostrils; it crept slowlytowards the thicket of his beard, where, in the course of a moment ortwo, it hid itself.
"How strange!" ejaculated Kenyon. "The monk died of apoplexy, I suppose,or by some sudden accident, and the blood has not yet congealed."
"Do you consider that a sufficient explanation?" asked Miriam, with asmile from which the sculptor involuntarily turned away his eyes. "Doesit satisfy you?"
"And why not?" he inquired.
"Of course, you know the old superstition about this phenomenon of bloodflowing from a dead body," she rejoined. "How can we tell but that themurderer of this monk (or, possibly, it may be only that privilegedmurderer, his physician) may have just entered the church?"
"I cannot jest about it," said Kenyon. "It is an ugly sight!"
"True, true; horrible to see, or dream of!" she replied, with one ofthose long, tremulous sighs, which so often betray a sick heart byescaping unexpectedly. "We will not look at it any more. Come away,Donatello. Let us escape from this dismal church. The sunshine will doyou good."
When had ever a woman such a trial to sustain as this! By no possiblesupposition could Miriam explain the identity of the dead Capuchin,quietly and decorously laid out in the nave of his convent church, withthat of her murdered persecutor, flung heedlessly at the foot of theprecipice. The effect upon her imagination was as if a strange andunknown corpse had miraculously, while she was gazing at it, assumed thelikeness of that face, so terrible henceforth in her remembrance. It wasa symbol, perhaps, of the deadly iteration with which she was doomedto behold the image of her crime reflected back upon her in a thousandways, and converting the great, calm face of Nature, in the whole, andin its innumerable details, into a manifold reminiscence of that onedead visage.
No sooner had Miriam turned away from the bier, and gone a few steps,than she fancied the likeness altogether an illusion, which would vanishat a closer and colder view. She must look at it again, therefore, andat once; or else the grave would close over the face, and leave theawful fantasy that had connected itself therewith fixed ineffaceably inher brain.
"Wait for me, one moment!" she said to her companions. "Only a moment!"
So she went back, and gazed once more at the corpse. Yes; these werethe features that Miriam had known so well; this was the visage that sheremembered from a far longer date than the most intimate of her friendssuspected; this form of clay had held the evil spirit which blasted hersweet youth, and compelled her, as it were, to stain her womanhoodwith crime. But, whether it were the majesty of death, or somethingoriginally noble and lofty in the character of the dead, which the soulhad stamped upon the features, as it left them; so it was that Miriamnow quailed and shook, not for the vulgar horror of the spectacle, butfor the severe, reproachful glance that seemed to come from betweenthose half-closed lids. True, there had been nothing, in his lifetime,viler than this man. She knew it; there was no other fact within herconsciousness that she felt to be so certain; and yet, because herpersecutor found himself safe and irrefutable in death, he frowned uponhis victim, and threw back the blame on her!
"Is it thou, indeed?" she murmured, under her breath. "Then thou hastno right to scowl upon me so! But art thou real, or a vision?" She bentdown over the dead monk, till one of her rich curls brushed against hisforehead. She touched one of his folded hands with her finger.
"It is he," said Miriam. "There is the scar, that I know so well, on hisbrow. And it is no vision he is palpable to my touch! I will questionthe fact no longer, but deal with it as I best can."
It was wonderful to see how the crisis developed in Miriam its ownproper strength, and the faculty of sustaining the demands which it madeupon her fortitude. She ceased to tremble; the beautiful woman gazedsternly at her dead enemy, endeavoring to meet and quell the look ofaccusation that he threw from between his half-closed eyelids.
"No; thou shalt not scowl me down!" said she. "Neither now, nor whenwe stand together at the judgment-seat. I fear not to meet thee there.Farewell, till that next encounter!"
Haughtily waving her hand, Miriam rejoined her friends, who wereawaiting her at the door of the church. As they went out, the sacristanstopped them, and proposed to show the cemetery of the convent, wherethe deceased members of the fraternity are laid to rest in sacred earth,brought long ago from Jerusalem.
"And will yonder monk be buried there?" she asked.
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"Brother Antonio?" exclaimed the sacristan.
"Surely, our good brother will be put to bed there! His grave is alreadydug, and the last occupant has made room for him. Will you look at it,signorina?"
"I will!" said Miriam.
"Then excuse me," observed Kenyon "for I shall leave you. One dead monkhas more than sufficed me; and I am not bold enough to face the wholemortality of the convent."
It was easy to see, by Donatello's looks, that he, as well as thesculptor, would gladly have escaped a visit to the famous cemetery ofthe Cappuccini. But Miriam's nerves were strained to such a pitch, thatshe anticipated a certain solace and absolute relief in passing fromone ghastly spectacle to another of long-accumulated ugliness; and therewas, besides, a singular sense of duty which impelled her to look atthe final resting-place of the being whose fate had been so disastrouslyinvolved with her own. She therefore followed the sacristan's guidance,and drew her companion along with her, whispering encouragement as theywent.
The cemetery is beneath the church, but entirely above ground, andlighted by a row of iron-grated windows without glass. A corridor runsalong beside these windows, and gives access to three or four vaultedrecesses, or chapels, of considerable breadth and height, the floor ofwhich consists of the consecrated earth of Jerusalem. It is smootheddecorously over the deceased brethren of the convent, and is keptquite free from grass or weeds, such as would grow even in these gloomyrecesses, if pains were not bestowed to root them up. But, as thecemetery is small, and it is a precious privilege to sleep in holyground, the brotherhood are immemorially accustomed, when one of theirnumber dies, to take the longest buried skeleton out of the oldestgrave, and lay the new slumberer there instead. Thus, each of the goodfriars, in his turn, enjoys the luxury of a consecrated bed, attendedwith the slight drawback of being forced to get up long before daybreak,as it were, and make room for another lodger.
The arrangement of the unearthed skeletons is what makes the specialinterest of the cemetery. The arched and vaulted walls of the burialrecesses are supported by massive pillars and pilasters made ofthigh-bones and skulls; the whole material of the structure appearsto be of a similar kind; and the knobs and embossed ornaments of thisstrange architecture are represented by the joints of the spine, andthe more delicate tracery by the Smaller bones of the human frame. Thesummits of the arches are adorned with entire skeletons, looking as ifthey were wrought most skilfully in bas-relief. There is no possibilityof describing how ugly and grotesque is the effect, combined with acertain artistic merit, nor how much perverted ingenuity has been shownin this queer way, nor what a multitude of dead monks, through how manyhundred years, must have contributed their bony framework to buildup these great arches of mortality. On some of the skulls there areinscriptions, purporting that such a monk, who formerly made use ofthat particular headpiece, died on such a day and year; but vastly thegreater number are piled up indistinguishably into the architecturaldesign, like the many deaths that make up the one glory of a victory.
In the side walls of the vaults are niches where skeleton monks sit orstand, clad in the brown habits that they wore in life, and labelledwith their names and the dates of their decease. Their skulls (somequite bare, and others still covered with yellow skin, and hair thathas known the earth-damps) look out from beneath their hoods, grinninghideously repulsive. One reverend father has his mouth wide open, as ifhe had died in the midst of a howl of terror and remorse, which perhapsis even now screeching through eternity. As a general thing, however,these frocked and hooded skeletons seem to take a more cheerful view oftheir position, and try with ghastly smiles to turn it into a jest. Butthe cemetery of the Capuchins is no place to nourish celestial hopes:the soul sinks forlorn and wretched under all this burden of dustydeath; the holy earth from Jerusalem, so imbued is it with mortality,has grown as barren of the flowers of Paradise as it is of earthly weedsand grass. Thank Heaven for its blue sky; it needs a long, upward gazeto give us back our faith. Not here can we feel ourselves immortal,where the very altars in these chapels of horrible consecration areheaps of human bones.
Yet let us give the cemetery the praise that it deserves. There is nodisagreeable scent, such as might have been expected from the decay ofso many holy persons, in whatever odor of sanctity they may have takentheir departure. The same number of living monks would not smell half sounexceptionably.
Miriam went gloomily along the corridor, from one vaulted Golgotha toanother, until in the farthest recess she beheld an open grave.
"Is that for him who lies yonder in the nave?" she asked.
"Yes, signorina, this is to be the resting-place of Brother Antonio, whocame to his death last night," answered the sacristan; "and in yonderniche, you see, sits a brother who was buried thirty years ago, and hasrisen to give him place."
"It is not a satisfactory idea," observed Miriam, "that you poor friarscannot call even your graves permanently your own. You must lie downin them, methinks, with a nervous anticipation of being disturbed, likeweary men who know that they shall be summoned out of bed at midnight.Is it not possible (if money were to be paid for the privilege) to leaveBrother Antonio--if that be his name--in the occupancy of that narrowgrave till the last trumpet sounds?"
"By no means, signorina; neither is it needful or desirable," answeredthe sacristan. "A quarter of a century's sleep in the sweet earthof Jerusalem is better than a thousand years in any other soil. Ourbrethren find good rest there. No ghost was ever known to steal out ofthis blessed cemetery."
"That is well," responded Miriam; "may he whom you now lay to sleepprove no exception to the rule!"
As they left the cemetery she put money into the sacristan's hand to anamount that made his eyes open wide and glisten, and requested that itmight be expended in masses for the repose of Father Antonio's soul.