*CHAPTER XII.*
The old Duke of Umbria was dying. He lay clothed, as he had once saidto Inglesant, in the "Angelica Vestis," the sacred wafer in his mouth.Below in the Palace Chapel, in the great Duomo, in Rome itself, masseswere being said day by day, and the ineffable Host raised to heaven, inintercessory prayer for this man's soul. If any deserved an unruffledpassage over the dark river, he did. He had sought long and earnestlyto find a more excellent way, and had shrunk from no effort nor painfulmortification if he might at last walk in it when found. He hadresigned himself and all that he possessed in implicit obedience to thedoctrine and the See of Rome. He had crowned a blameless and beneficentlife by acts of unparalleled devotion and piety; nevertheless, anunruffled passage he did not have. The future was dark and full ofdread, and he suffered all the terrors of the grave with a troubledmind. Lying thus in dull misery of body, and in mental apprehension andunrest, he bethought himself of Inglesant. Having surrendered himself,soul and body, into the hands of those who stood about his bed, he knewthat it was useless to let his mind wander after any of thoseunauthorized teachers from whom in past days he had sought instruction;but in Inglesant he had, for the first time, met a man who, walking toall appearance in the straitest paths of the Catholic Church, seemed topossess a freedom of spirit greater than the Sectaries themselves couldboast. Even when suffering the rebukes of an accusing conscience, andthe bewilderment of a disordered brain, there was in Inglesant anunfettered possession of the things of this life, and even of the lifeto come, which had astonished the old man, who, unaccused by his ownconscience, was yet so confined and hampered in this world, and in suchcontinual dread of that other which was shortly to be revealed to him.
He expressed to his director a wish that Inglesant might be sent for.It was impossible to deny him this request, even had it been thoughtdesirable. Inglesant was a trusted confidant of the dominant Society ofRome, a favourite of the new Pope, and had, besides, been influential,as was believed, in obtaining that crowning triumph--the cession of theDuchy to the Papal See. A messenger was therefore despatched to Romerequesting his immediate presence. The summons found him with Laurettaand her father, engaged in preparations for his speedy marriage.
This connection was regarded with great favour by Don Agostino and mostof his friends; but was looked upon, as far as they condescended tonotice it at all, with suspicion by the heads of the Jesuit Society.
They were beginning to dread the influence of Molinos, and Inglesant hadalready incurred some suspicion by his intimacy with the Spaniard. ThePope was supposed to be not altogether opposed to the new doctrine, andthe Jesuits were unwilling to lose an obedient servant, who might beuseful to them. There was, however, no sufficient reason in this why heshould be forbidden to visit the old Duke, who was certainly dying, andtherefore beyond the reach of dangerous influence; and Inglesant,remembering the interest he had felt in the Duke, and the favours whichhe had lavished upon him, hastened to set out.
When he arrived in Umbria he found the Duke had rallied a little, and hereceived him with the warmest expressions of delight. He was nevercontent save when he was in the room, and his very presence seemed torestore strength and life to the exhausted old man. Those who watchedabout his bed in the interests of Rome, if they had felt anyapprehensions of the result of Inglesant's visit, were speedilyreassured, for the Duke did not seem desirous of conversing uponreligious matters with him, and, indeed, rather avoided them. He seemedto cling to Inglesant as to the only remaining link to that world whichhe was so soon to leave, and to take a strange pleasure in furnishinghim with those appliances of earthly enjoyment which had until now longceased to be of interest to himself. Among other gifts he insisted onhis accepting a suit of superb armour which had been made expressly forhis idolized son. In this suit, in which he caused Inglesant to bearrayed, he declared that he well represented the patron saint of hisnation, St. George of England, and pleased himself with the reflectionthat the fief with which he had endowed Inglesant bore the name of thesame saint.
"You are il Cavaliere di San Georgio," he said to his favourite, as hestood by his couch, sheathed in the superb but useless and fantasticarmour of the seventeenth century, with cuirass, greaves, and cuisses ofpolished and jewelled metal, worn over the ordinary dress, and combinedwith the lace and velvet which ornamented the whole. It is true thatthe steel plates were covered with silver and gold chasing of arabesquesnot of the most Christian type, and the perfect sword-blade was engravedwith hieroglyphics not of the most saintly kind; nevertheless Inglesant,as he stood, did certainly resemble somewhat closely a splendidrenaissance St. George.
"You are il Cavaliere di San Georgio," said the Duke, "and you must wearthat armour when you go to meet your bride. I have arranged a trainworthy of so illustrious a bridegroom."
Inglesant's marriage had taken a great hold in the imagination of thedying man, and his mind, to the surprise of those who had known himlongest, seemed to dwell entirely upon nuptials and festivals. Thestrain and terror which his spirit had suffered for so long had probablydone their work, and, like as on a harpsichord with a snapped string,the set purpose and composure was lost, and nothing but fragments offantasias could be played. That magic influence of the wonderful ducalpalace which Inglesant had been conscious of at his first visit, and ofwhich the Duke had seemed hitherto altogether regardless, at the lastmoments of his life appeared to assert its power and force; and what toothers seemed mere dotage appeared to Inglesant like a wintry gleam ofmysterious light that might be the earnest of a happier time,--a returnfrom the dark regions of superstitious fear to the simple delights ofcommon human life. The sway of this strange house was as powerful overInglesant himself as it had been before; but he now stood upon higherground than he had done formerly. The events which had occurred in themeantime had not been entirely without effect. His triumph over thetemptation of the flesh in the forest pavilion had secured to him ahigher place in the spiritual walk, and the escape from the assassin'sdagger had sobered his spirit and indescribably touched his heart. The"Kings' Courts," of which this house was but a type,--the Italian worldin which he had lived so long,--had, therefore, now less power than everto crush Inglesant's religious instinct; but it gave it a certaincolour, a sort of renaissance Christianity, which bore a likeness to thecharacter of the art-world in which it had grown up,--a Christianity offlorid ornament and of somewhat fantastic issues.
As the Duke gradually became weaker, and seemed every day to be on thepoint of death, he became the more anxious that Inglesant's marriageshould be completed, and at last insisted upon his delaying his returnto Rome no longer. Inglesant, who expected almost hour by hour theDuke's decease, would have been content to wait; but the dying man wouldtake no denial. He pleased himself with giving orders for Inglesant'strain, and ordered his favourite page, an Austrian boy, to accompanyhim, and to return immediately when the marriage was celebrated, that hemight receive the fullest description of the particulars of the event.
It was long before sunrise that Inglesant set out, accompanied by histrain, hoping to cross the mountains before the heat began. His companyconsisted of several men-at-arms, with their grooms and horse boys, andthe Austrian page. They ascended the mountains in the earlier part ofthe night, and towards dawn they reached a flat plain. The night hadbeen too dark to allow them to see the steep and narrow defiles, full ofoaks and beech; and as they passed over the dreary plain in the whitemist, their figures seemed vast and indistinct in the dim light; butnow, as the streaks of the dawn grew brighter in the east behind them,they could see the fir trees clothing the distant slopes, and here andthere one of the higher summits still covered with white snow. Thescene was cold and dead and dreary as the grave. A heavy mist hung overthe mountain plain, and an icy lake lay black and cold beneath themorning sky. As they reached the crest of the hill the mist rose,stirred by a little breeze at sunrise, and the gorges of the descent layclear before them. The sun arose
behind them, gilding the mountaintops, and tracing streaks and shades of colour on the rising mistsparkling with glittering dew-drops; while dark and solemn beneath themlay the pine-clothed ravines and sloping valleys, with here and there arocky peak; and farther down still the woods and hills gave place atlast to the plain of the Tiber, at present dark and indistinguishable inthe night.
As the sun arose behind them one by one the pine ravines became lighted,and the snowy summits, soft and pink with radiant light, stood outagainst the sky, which became every instant of a deeper blue. Thesunlight, stealing down the defiles and calling forth into distinctshape and vision tree and rock and flashing stream, spread itself overthe oak woods in the valleys, and shone at last upon the plain, embossedand radiant with wood and green meadow, and marble towers and glisteringwater--the waters of the Tiber running onwards towards Rome. Mysteriousforms and waves of light, the creatures of the morning and of the mist,floated before the sight, and from the dark fir trees murmurs andmutterings of ethereal life fell upon the ear. Sudden and passionateflushes of colour tinted the pine woods and were gone, and beneath thebranches and across the paths fairy lights played for a moment andpassed away.
The party halted more than once, but it was necessary to make the longdescent before the heat began, and they commenced carefully to picktheir way down the stony mountain road, which wound down the ravines inwild unequal paths. The track now precipitous, now almost level, tookthem round corners and masses of rock sometimes hanging above theirheads, revealing continually new reaches of valley, and new defilesclothed with fir and oak. Mountain flowers and trailing ivy andcreeping plants hung in festoons on every side, lizards ran across thepath, birds fluttered above them or darted into the dark recesses wherethe mountain brooks were heard; everything sang the morning psalm oflife, with which, from field and mountain solitudes, the free childrenof nature salute the day.
The Austrian boy felt the beauty of the scene, and broke out intosinging.
"When the northern gods," he said to Inglesant, "rode on theirchevisance they went down into the deep valleys singing magic songs.Let us into this dark valley, singing magic songs, also go down; whoknows what strange and hidden deity, since the old pagan times lost andforgotten, we may find among the dark fir dingles and the laurelshades?"
And he began to sing some love ditty.
Inglesant did not hear him. The beauty of the scene, ethereal andunreal in its loveliness, following upon the long dark mountain ride,his sleepless nights and strange familiarity with approaching death bythe couch of the old Duke, confused his senses, and a presentiment ofimpending fate filled his mind. The recollection of his brother roseagain in his remembrance, distinct and present as in life; and more thanonce he fancied that he heard his voice, as the cry of some mountainbeast or sound of moaning trees came up the pass. No other foreshadowingthan this very imperfect one warned him of the approaching crisis of hislife.
The sun was fully up, and the light already brilliant and intense, whenthey approached a projecting point where the slope of wood ended in atower of rock jutting upon the road. The path by which they approachedit was narrow and ragged, but beyond the rock the ground spread itselfout, and the path was carried inward towards the right, having thesloping hillside on the one hand, covered with scattered oaks, while, onthe other, a slip of ground separated it from the ravine. At theturning of the road, where the opening valley lay before them as theyreached the corner, face to face with Inglesant as he checked his horse,was the Italian, the inquisitive stranger of the theatre at Florence,the intruder into the Conclave, the masque of the Carnival ball, theassassin of the Corso--that Malvolti who had treacherously murdered hisbrother and sought his own life. Alone and weary, his clothes worn andthreadbare, he came toiling up the pass. Inglesant reined in his horsesuddenly, a strange and fierce light in his eyes and face. The Italianstarted back like some wild creature of the forest brought suddenly tobay, a terrified cry broke from him, and he looked wildly round as ifintending flight. The nature of the ground caught him as in a trap; onthe one hand the sloping hillside steep and open, on the other tangledrugged ground, slightly rising between the road and the precipice, cutoff all hope of sudden flight. He looked wildly round for a moment,then, when the horsemen came round the rocky wall and halted behindtheir leader, his eyes came back to Inglesant's face, and he marked thesmile upon his lips and in his eyes, and saw his hand steal downwards tothe hunting piece he carried at the saddle; then with a terrible cry, hethrew himself on his knees before the horse's head, and begged forpity,--pity and life.
Inglesant took his hand from his weapon, and turning slightly to thepage and to the others behind him, he said,--
"This man, messeri, is a murderer and a villain, steeped in every crime;a cruel secret midnight cut-throat and assassin; a lurker in secretcorners to murder the innocent. He took my brother, a noble gentlemanwhom I was proud to follow, treacherously at an advantage, and slew him.I see him now before me lying in his blood. He tried to take mylife,--I, who scarcely even knew him,--in the streets of Rome. Now hebegs for mercy, what say you, gentleman? what is his due?"
"Shoot the dog through the head. Hang him on the nearest tree. Carryhim into Rome and torture him to death."
The Italian still continued on his knees, his hands clasped before him,his face working with terror and agony that could not be disguised.
"Mercy, monsignore," he cried. "Mercy. I cannot, I dare not, I am notfit to die. For the blessed Host, monsignore, have mercy--for the loveof Jesu--for the sake of Jesu."
As he said these last words Inglesant's attitude altered, and the cruellight faded out of his eyes. His hand ceased to finger the carabine athis saddle, and he sat still upon his horse, looking down upon theabject wretch before him, while a man might count fifty. The Italiansaw, or thought he saw, that his judge was inclining to mercy, and herenewed his appeals for pity.
"For the love of the crucifix, monsignore; for the blessed Virgin'ssake."
But Inglesant did not seem to hear him. He turned to the horsemenbehind him, and said,--
"Take him up, one of you, on the crupper. Search him first for arms.Another keep his eye on him, and if he moves or attempts to escape,shoot him dead. You had better come quietly;" he continued, "it is youronly chance for life."
Two of the men-at-arms dismounted and searched the prisoner, but foundno arms upon him. He seemed indeed to be in the greatest distress fromhunger and want, and his clothes were ragged and thin. He was mountedbehind one of the soldiers and closely watched, but he made no attemptto escape, and indeed appeared to have no strength or energy for such aneffort.
They went on down the pass for about an Italian league. The countrybecame more thickly wooded, and here and there on the hillsides patchesof corn appeared, and once or twice in a sheltered spot a few vines. Atlength, on the broad shoulder of the hill round which the path wound,they saw before them a few cottages, and above them, on the hillside, ina position that commanded the distant pass till it opened on the plain,was a Chapel, the bell of which had just ceased ringing for mass.
Inglesant turned his horse's head up the narrow stony path, and when thegate was reached, he dismounted and entered the Chapel, followed by histrain. The Capella had apparently been built of the remains of sometemple or old Roman house, for many of the stones of the front werecarved in bold relief. It was a small narrow building, and possessed nofurniture save the altar and a rude pulpit built of stones; but behindthe altar, painted on the plaster of the wall, was the rood or crucifix,the size of life. Who the artist had been cannot now be told; it mighthave been the pupil of some great master, who had caught something ofthe master's skill, or, perhaps, in the old time, some artist had comeup the pass from Borgo san Sepolcro, and had painted it for the love ofhis art and of the Blessed Virgin; but, whoever had done it, it was welldone, and it gave a sanctity to the little Chapel, and possessed aninfluence of which the villagers were not unconscious, and of which theywere even proud.
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The mass had commenced some short time as the train entered, and suchfew women and peasants as were present turned in surprise.
Inglesant knelt upon the steps before the altar, and the men-at-armsupon the floor of the Chapel, the two who guarded the prisoner keepingclose behind their leader.
The priest, who was an old and simple-looking countryman, continued hisoffice without stopping; but when he had received the sacred elementshimself, he turned, and, influenced probably by his appearance and byhis position at the altar, he offered Inglesant the Sacrament. He tookit, and the priest, turning again to the altar, finished the mass.
Then Inglesant rose, and when the priest turned again he was standingbefore the altar with his drawn sword held lengthwise across his hands.
"My Father," he said, "I am the Cavaliere di San Georgio, and as I cameacross the mountains this morning on my way to Rome, I met my mortalfoe, the murderer of my brother, a wretch whose life is forfeit by everylaw, either of earth or heaven, a guilty monster steeped in every crime.Him, as soon as I had met him,--sent by this lonely and untrodden way asit seems to me by the Lord's hand,--I thought to crush at once, as Iwould a venomous beast, though he is worse than any beast. But, myFather, he has appealed from me to the adorable Name of Jesus, and Icannot touch him. But he will not escape. I give him over to the Lord.I give up my sword into the Lord's hands, that He may work my vengeanceupon him as it seems to Him good. Henceforth he is safe from earthlyretribution, but the Divine Powers are just. Take this sword, reverendFather, and let it lie upon the altar beneath the Christ Himself; and Iwill make an offering for daily masses for my brother's soul."
The priest took the sword, and kneeling before the altar, placed itthereon like a man acting in a dream.
He was one of those child-like peasant-priests to whom the great worldwas unknown, and to whom his mountain solitudes were peopled as much bythe saints and angels of his breviary as by the peasants who shared withhim the solitudes and the legends that gave to these mountain fastnessesa mysterious awe. To such a man as this it seemed nothing strange thatthe blessed St. George himself, in jewelled armour, should stand beforethe altar in the mystic morning light, his shining sword in his hand.
He turned again to Inglesant, who had knelt down once more.
"It is well done, monsignore," he said, "as all that thou doestdoubtless is most well. The sword shall remain here as thou sayest, andthe Lord doubtless will work His blessed will. But I entreat,monsignore, thy intercession for me, a poor sinful man; and when thoureturnest to thy place, and seest again the Lord Jesus, that thou wiltremind Him of His unworthy priest. Amen."
Inglesant scarcely heard what he said, and certainly did not understandit. His sense was confused by what had happened, and by the suddenovermastering impulse upon which he had acted. He moved as in a dream;nothing seemed to come strange to him, nothing startled him, and he tookslight heed of what passed. He placed his embroidered purse, heavy withgold, in the priest's hand, and in his excitement totally forgot to namehis brother, for whose repose masses were to be said.
He signed to his men to release the prisoner, and, his trumpets soundingto horse before the Chapel gate, he mounted and rode on down the pass.
But his visit was not forgotten, and long afterwards, perhaps even tothe present day, popular tradition took the story up, and related thatonce, when the priest of the mountain Chapel was a very holy man, theblessed St. George himself, in shining armour, came across the mountainsone morning very early, and himself partook of the Sacrament and all histrain; and appealed triumphantly to the magic sword--set with gold andprecious stones--that lay upon the altar from that morning, by virtue ofwhich no harm can befall the village, no storm strike it, and, aboveall, no pillage of armed men or any violence can occur.
The Austrian boy returned to Umbria with his story of the marriage; butthe old Duke never heard it. No sooner had Inglesant left him than hisdepression and despair returned; he loathed the sight of the day, and ofthe costly palace in which he lived; the gay arts and the devisedfancies by which men have sought to lure happiness became intolerable tohim; and, ill as he was, he caused himself to be removed to the CastelDurante, amid the lonely mountain ravines, to abide his end. AsInglesant bowed beneath the care-cloth--the fine linen cloth laid overthe newly-married in the Church,--kneeling till mass was ended, with hisheart full of love and brightness and peace, the last of the house ofRevere--"worn out," says the chronicler, with a burst of unusualcandour, "by priestly torments"--breathed his last, and went to anotherworld, where, it may be hoped, sacrifice and devotion are betterrewarded than they are here, and superstitious terrors are unknown.