The Hill of Venus

In the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's at least there was peace. The white-haired priests solemnly officiated day by day, morning and noon, and at Vespers more than a hundred voices sang the Vesper psalms in the Gregorian chant. Slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in spiral clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting upon the antique floor.

Here, at least, as in many a cloister of the world, the Church was still herself, as she was and is and always will be; words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned that had been familiar to the lips of the apostles.

But they brought no consolation to Francesco's heart; his soul was not relieved by the solemn ceremony. With the rest of the worshippers he knelt unconsciously in the old cathedral; with the rest of the worshippers he chanted the responses and breathed anew the incense-laden air, which was to encompass him to his life's end.

Refreshed neither in body nor soul, he returned to the inn late at night. But he could not sleep. Opening wide the wooden shutters of his window, he looked out upon the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor, at the tide of the Tiber, which gleamed and eddied in the moonlight.

Life rose before him in a mystery, a mystery for him to solve by deeds. For a moment he felt that he must rise above his fate, that he was not idly to dream away his years, and the long dormant instinct of his race bade him defy the yoke which was about to be imposed upon him, not to evade it. Then his heart beat faster; his blood surged to his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the other as he leaned over the stone sill, and drew the night air sharply between his closed teeth.

And as a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the willows by the river brink, in it seemed to float a host of spirit armies, ghostly knights and fairy-maidens and the forecast shadows of things to come. Once before during the evening had this sensation gripped his soul, as with a solitary monk whom he chanced to meet, he had traversed the desolate regions of the Aventine in the sun's afterglow. And then, as now, there had come the rude awakening.

But from the monk he had learned that the Pontiff had fled from Rome before the approaching hosts of Conradino, and had betaken himself to Viterbo, while his champion, Charles of Anjou, had marched to southward, leaving the city to the Ghibellines and the imperial party of the Colonna.

End of Book the Second

Book the Third

THE BONDAGE

CHAPTER I

THE WHITE LADY

THE Piazza of St. John Lateran was alive with the rush and roar of a vast multitude, which congested the spacious square from the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme to the distant Esquiline hill, occupying every point of vantage, thronging the adjacent thoroughfares, crowding the long Via Merulana, and filling the ruins of temples, the interstices of fallen walls and roofless porticoes as far as the eye could reach.

All Rome seemed to be astir, all Rome seemed to have assembled to welcome the advent of the Swabian host, and in the keen delight of beholding Conradino, the fair-haired Hohenstauffen come to claim the fair lands of Constanzia, all petty-strife, contentions and party-rivalry seemed for the nonce to have been forgotten.

In reality, however, such was not the case.

So sudden had been Conradino's descent upon Rome that the Pontiff and his minion, Charles of Anjou, had precipitately fled from the city, ere the first German spear-points gleamed above the heights of Tivoli.

The Roman Ghibellines, at their head the great and powerful house of the Colonna, hated the Vulture of Provence as intensely as did the Pontiff, his one time champion, and welcomed with open arms the grandson of the Emperor Frederick II, their deliverer from an insufferable yoke, which had been as a blight upon Southern Italy.

Yet, notwithstanding the absence of the pontifical court, the absence of the Church militant, the institution which, when Europe was over-run with barbarian hordes, had preserved the ancient civilization, the power of the city was in evidence even though huddled affrighted amidst the majesty of imperial ruins. A memory, a dream, yet the power of a dream outlasting the ages, Rome still remained the mystic centre of civilization. —

With a sickly sense of curiosity not unmingled with awe, Francesco had mingled with the crowds.

The dream of his early youth was about to be realized: face to face he would behold the golden-haired Hohenstauffen, – yet at the thought his heart sank with a sense of dread. Dull misery had him in its grip. The keen pain of a false life, resentment of a fate imposed upon him by another's will, permeated every fibre of his being. In his dreams he would see the friends of his youth, pointing to him, the renegade; he would see Ilaria, standing off motionless, spiritless, regarding him from afar. If she at least had kept her faith! He felt himself encompassed by the folding wings of a great demon of despair.

This feeling pervaded him with a sickening gloom, in which he walked with drooping head and uncertain footsteps, – yet with the resolve to conquer in the end!

Life was no mere existence with Francesco. He loved light and air and freedom. To be in the great, real world, to feel its joys, its sunshine, to chafe under no conventional, no restraint, to know the fascination of recklessness, – that to him was life!

And about him it surged in blinding iridescence.

Notwithstanding the months of monastic life which lay behind him, he had not in any formal sense severed himself from the world. His renunciation of the joys of the senses had been not primary, as with the Franciscans, but, as always with those under Dominican influence, incidental on a choice of higher interests.

But the conscious choice of a beautiful existence was ever with him, and here, among the thousands giving vent to their joy, restrained by no dogma from voicing their gladness, loneliness crept cold among his heart-strings.

The scenes in which he, half absently, half resentfully, mingled, afforded a fine opportunity to study sacerdotal types. Now and then a scholarly countenance detached itself with startling effect from the coarser elements; now and then among the keen lines of such a countenance played the hovering, unmistakable light of a personal sanctity. There were men of the noblest, gentlest blood, from whom came the example of courtly manners, of polished speech and refined taste. Through the years of desolation and ruin, which war brought in its wake, they preserved art, literature and religion and infused into civilization the principles of self-sacrifice, charity and chastity. They declared a message that protested against violence and injustice. Francesco saw men among the priests, whose broad shoulders, singularly brilliant dark faces and magnificent poise formed a striking contrast to those upon whose features had settled the beautiful, soft calm of spotless seclusion.

Yet Francesco felt no need of such a refuge.

The espousals of piety and poverty, the inexplicable mysteries, martyrdoms, ascetic faces and haggard figures, which he had encountered upon entering the monastic life, the morbid enthusiasm and spiritual frenzy were repellent to him now, as they had been then. Sad-visaged penitents, men scourging themselves, prostrate in prayer, wrestling with demons, waked no responsive chord in his breast.

A splendid procession, with its gay dresses and colored pennons gleaming like a rainbow among the sombre garbs of monks and artisans, at this moment emerged from under the frowning portals of a sombre palace and swept into the sunlit square of St. John Lateran.

The cavalcade was headed by a cavalier superb in white velvet, riding abreast of a woman, tall and stately. They were followed by a company of young nobles, arrayed in festal splendor. The piazza resounded with the echo of their shouts and mirth, and the multitudes congested on the steps of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme shouted loud acclaim, as they passed on their cantering steeds.

What were those stabbing pangs in Francesco's heart beneath the noonday brightness of the sky? Why did he wish, almost insanely, that he had not set foot in Rome?

The banners of the Frangipani waved proudly in the sun-fraught air, revealing their emblem of "The Broken Loaf," amidst velvet, gilt and tinsel.

As the cavalcade approached, every word, every tone, every accent was ringing perversely in his ears. The piazza with its maelstrom of humanity seemed to whirl and to scintillate about him, and the acclaim of the crowd surged in his ears like the dull roar of distant billows, as the procession came to a sudden stop at the fountain whence he had viewed its approach.

Shrinking beneath his cowl, yet unable to avert his gaze, Francesco stood leaning on the rim of the fountain.

He heard the voice of Ilaria as, dismounting without the aid of her companion, she requested a cup, having taken a sudden fancy to drink of the sparkling water.

The cup having been brought, she put her lips to it, then swiftly tossed the bright drops towards the sky, singing a little melody as she did so.

She had apparently not noted Francesco's presence, though his eyes had been riveted upon her from under the cowl, and his face was deadly pale. Hemmed in as he was by the crowds, he could not have receded, had he wished to; – thus he stood, looking upon the face of the woman he loved better than anything on earth, forgetting heaven and earth in doing so.

Stooping, she filled the cup once more and looked up at her companions with a smile.

"Who shall drink after me?" she laughed merrily.

Many a merry voice called out, as they eagerly crowded about her.

"Who but myself?" exclaimed Raniero Frangipani with a laugh, brushing the others away with perhaps a little more decision than was needed.

But suddenly Ilaria turned and deliberately advanced to the spot where Francesco stood, his cowl drawn deeply over his face.

"All men do my bidding to-day," she said in her low, vibrant voice, offering him the cup, while her eyes flung him a glittering challenge.

It was her most winsome self that looked at him, as she said:

"Drink to me!"

Dazed, he took the cup from her. In doing so, he touched her soft, white skin. The cold draught seemed to burn like fire as he sipped the clear water. Then, surprised by impulse, he flashed the drops upward, as he had seen her do.

Her laughter sounded shrill and high as broken glass, as the dislocated cowl revealed Francesco's features.

But she immediately regained her composure, and, without a hint in her voice of the taunt in the dells of Vallombrosa, she said, nodding, as if well pleased, and as if for his ear alone:

"The White Lady is well pleased. Is not this her altar?" But another had recognized the monk, when for a moment his cowl fell away from his face; and Raniero Frangipani was regarding him with dark malice.

As if to leave a sting in the memory of their meeting, Ilaria, returning to Raniero's side, gave the latter a smile so bewitching that his scowl vanished. Remounting with his help, she signalled for the cavalcade to proceed.

The pain in Francesco's heart rose, suffocating, once more as the procession swept onward.

How he had loved her! How he loved her now!

How shall a man be sure of what is hidden in his heart? He was a monk, – and she the wife of Raniero Frangipani.

How wondrous fair she was, glowing as a rose in the first flush of spring-time! How her sweet eyes had gleamed into his, with their subdued fire, half hidden under the long silken lashes!

For a moment he saw and heard nothing.

All sense of the present seemed to have vanished while the cavalcade faded from sight.

Now, from the gates beyond St. John Lateran, there burst forth the pomp and panoply of the North, with a flourish of trumpets, a gleaming of chain-mail, a sparkling of pennons.

Two heralds, on snow-white chargers, rode slowly through the gate, sounding their fanfares, their standards and particolored garbs displaying the Sun-Soaring Eagle of Hohenstauffen.

Then, on a black stallion, docile to the hand and impatient of the spur, Conradino of Swabia hove into sight, beside the friend of his youth, Frederick of Austria.

They rode in advance of the élite of the army, some two thousand men in gleaming chain-mail. Conrad and Marino Capecé followed hard on their heels with one thousand heavy infantry and a company of Saracen archers. Then came Galvano Lancia with the heavy armament, men from the North, carrying huge battle-axes in addition to their other weapons.

As they slowly advanced through the great square fronting the ancient Basilica, a great shout arose from the thousands who lined the thoroughfares, a counter-blast to the clangor of the clarions.

Then the whole host shouted, tossed up shield and lance, while trumpets and horns shrieked above the din.

On the steps of houses and churches, in casements, doors and windows, women waved kerchiefs and scarfs, their shrill acclaim mingling with the sounds of horn and bugle.

The tramping of thousands of steeds smote the bright air; shields and surcoats shone and shimmered under the sun-fraught Roman sky.

All the streets through which the armament passed were hung with garlands and tapestries, blazing with banners, festooned with flowers and gorgeous ornaments, re-echoing with peals of laughter and ribaldry and roaring music.

For the fickle Romans gave free rein to their joy of being rid of Anjou's presence, and the sober and pedantic Northmen viewed with amaze this manifestation of the Southern temperament, the reflex, as it were, of a clime which had lured to perdition so many of their own, who had not withstood the blandishments of the Sorceress.

And the Romans, revelling in their own exuberant gaiety, forgetful of yesterday, unmindful of the morrow, hailed with delight the iron-serried cohorts from beyond the Alps, – till the disappearing menace within their own walls would cause them to turn on their deliverers.

From the summits of his castle on the well-nigh impregnable heights of Viterbo, Pope Clement IV had witnessed the passing of the Swabian host, and his eyes, undimmed by age, had marked the persons and the quality of the leaders. And, turning to one of his attendants, who leaned by his side over the ramparts to scan more minutely the Northern armament, he had spoken the memorable words: "Truly, like two lambs, wreathed for the sacrifice, they are journeying towards their fate." —

To the casual observer, – if, indeed, there was such a one in the Rome of those days, – it must indeed have appeared a strange phenomenon that Conradino was surrounded almost entirely by Italians, with the exception of one or two leaders whose contingents the narrow and parsimonious policy of Duke Goerz of the Tyrol had not been able to shake in their loyalty, when he recalled his own contingents for want of pay.

But the popular enthusiasm swept everything before it, and Conradino's march to the Capitol, where he was to be tendered the keys of the city by the Senator of Rome, Prince Enrico of Castile, was one continuous triumph. —

As one in a dream, Francesco continued to gaze after the imperial cavalcade as it swept past with its gold and glitter and tinsel and the thunderous hoof-beats of a thousand steeds. As one in a dream, he kept gazing at the gold-embroidered mantles, the flash of dagger-hilts, the gleam of chain-mail, the waving plumes, the prancing steeds.

The procession swept by him, as the phantasmagoria of a dream; but, after it had passed, one apparition continued to stand forth.

He never forgot that face.

To him it was all that was beautiful and regal, framed in its soft, golden hair, with its tender blue eyes, its smiling lips. A slender youth, barely eighteen years of age, with the eyes of a dreamer, Conradino was possessed of an exaltation which blinded him to the perils of the situation, intoxicating his ambition, – a quaint combination of the mystic lore of his tunes, of which Francesco felt himself to be his other Ego.

The crowds had dispersed by degrees, sweeping in the wake of the Swabian host towards the Capitol.

And Francesco stared motionless into space.

Was he indeed cast out from the communion of the world, from the contact of the living?

Had a mocking fate but cast him on the shores of life, that he might stand idly by, watching the waves bounding, leaping over each other?

He felt as one enslaved, his will-power paralyzed.

Yonder, where the setting sun spun golden vapors round the summits of the Capitoline Hill, there was the trend of a high, self-conscious purpose, as revealed in the impending death-struggle for the highest ideals of mankind.

What had he to oppose it?

What great aim atoned for the agony of his transformation?

The restitution of papacy? The glory of the Church? The vindication of a crime? The toleration of a despot?

Francesco's passionate nature might have been guided aright by a controlling affection, such as he could nevermore find in his present estate.

Slowly, as one wrapped in a dream, gazing neither right nor left, he permitted himself to be swept along with the crowds, past monuments, tombs and the desolate grandeur of the Forum, and as one enthralled, began the ascent of the Capitoline Hill.

CHAPTER II

THE FEAST AT THE CAPITOL

WHEN darkness had fallen on the Capitoline Hill, the old palace of the Caesars seemed to waken to a semblance of new life. In the gorgeous reception hall a splendid spectacle awaited the guests. The richly dressed crowds buzzed like swarms of bees. Their attires were iridescent, gorgeous in the fashions borrowed from many lands. The enslavement of Italy and the invasion of foreigners could be read in the garbs of the Romans. The robes of the women, a slavish imitation of the Byzantine fashion, hung straight as tapestries, stiff with gold brocades.

Prince Enrico of Castile, the Senator of Rome, had arranged a festival in honor of Conradino, such as the deserted halls of the imperial palace on the Capitoline had not witnessed in centuries.

It was a festival hitherto unequalled in Rome.

The walls of the great reception hall were decorated with garlands and festoons of flowers; the soft lustre of the candelabra was reflected in tall Venetian mirrors, brought from Murano for this occasion. Niches filled with orange-trees, artificial grottoes adorned with shells, in the midst of which fountains sent their iridescent spray into the branches of tall cypress-trees and oleanders, met the gaze on every turn.

But the central part of the festival was the gigantic hall, over which the girandoles diffused a sea of light. Costly Oriental carpets covered the mosaic floor, and the ceiling represented the thousand-starred arch of heaven. Here, too, as in the garden, niches and grottoes were everywhere to be found, where one, in the midst of the constantly moving crowd, could enjoy quiet and repose.

In the great hall there were assembled the first Ghibelline families in Rome, the Colonna, Cavalli, Gaëtani, the Massimi and Stefaneschi; the Frangipani of Astura, the Pierleoni, the Savelli, and the Annibaldi, whose chief had fallen side by side with Manfred in the fateful battle of Benevento. —

A loud fanfare of trumpets and horns announced at last the arrival of Conradino, and his bearing, as he entered the ancient halls of the Caesars, was indeed that of one coming into his own.

He was surrounded by Giordano and Galvano Lancia, Conrad and Marino Capecé, John de Pietro, John of Procida, who had come expressly from Palermo to offer homage to the son of his emperor; Count Hirnsius, Gerhardt Donoratico of Pisa, Thomas Aquino, Count Meinhardt of Castanea, Frederick of Austria, Prince Raymond of Montferrat, Frederick of Antioch and Dom Pietro Loria, Grand Admiral of King Peter of Aragon. The Viceroy of Apulia and the Apulian barons followed closely in their wake. —

Six senators, headed by Don Enrico of Castile, now advanced, carrying between them on a purple velvet cushion the keys of the city.

In a kneeling position they presented them to Conradino, who in turn gave them in charge of the commander-in-chief of his army, while loud acclaim shook the foundations of the rock, unmoved by the assaults of centuries.

After the banquet had been served and the guests had arisen from the festal board, Prince Enrico of Castile claimed the privilege of conducting the exalted guest through the halls of the Capitoline palace.

They had not advanced very far when the quick eye of the Senator of Rome lighted upon an individual who had been watching their advance from his concealment among the shrubbery.

It was a man, tall, lean, with prominent shoulders, glittering eyes and a thin, straight mouth. The black hair was cropped close to the massive head. The eyes were bead-like, bright as polished steel. The brows met in a straight black line over the nose.

"My Lord Frangipani – "

The Lord of Astura turned. Don Enrico presented him to the King of the Germans. Conradino extended his hand.

"We are well pleased to count you among our loyal friends and adherents, my Lord Frangipani," Conradino said with warmth. "Our illustrious grandsire himself has bestowed upon you the insignia of knighthood; it is a tie which should bind us for aye and ever!"

The Frangipani grasped the proffered hand, bending low as he replied:

"I count it great honor that King Conradino acknowledges the bonds which bind the house of Frangipani to the house of Swabia. May I be afforded the opportunity to prove my devotion towards the grandson of my glorious emperor!"

While Conradino's gaze was resting upon the Lord of Astura, there came to him a sensation, strange as it was fleeting.

He felt singularly repelled by the voice and glance of the baron, notwithstanding the latter having received his schooling at the brilliant court of Emperor Frederick at Castel Fiorentino.

In order to overcome this sensation, Conradino turned to the Roman.

"You are the Lord of Astura," he said. "I have been told your castello defends the coast!" —

"Some fifty leagues to southward, Astura rises sea-washed upon its impregnable rock!" Giovanni Frangipani replied, not without self-conscious pride. "Corsairs and Saracens have dashed themselves in vain against its granite walls. The bulwark of Terra di Lavoro, I hold castello and port as hereditary fief of Emperor Frederick!"

"A port and castello near Rome!" Conradino said with a quick lift of speech. "My imperial grandsire did well to entrust them to so faithful a subject. Who knows but that at some day I too shall embark at Astura?"

He spoke the fateful words and shivered.

It was as if the cold air of a burial vault had fanned his cheeks. —

Impelled hither by a force beyond his control, Francesco instinctively shrank from mingling with the festive crowds. The one desire of his life fulfilled, to see face to face Conradino, the idol of his youthful dreams, he would take his weary feet away and continue upon his journey towards an unknown destiny.

Opposing thoughts were flying towards contrary poles of his horizon.

On the one hand, the old longing for the world, a world of action, had risen strangely from forgotten depths. Was this perchance the goal to which his present life was leading? In the midst of his ruminations he heard the silvery mirth of Ilaria from the depths of the gardens, and the pain itself seemed to guide his steps towards her. He had always thought her the most beautiful of all beautiful women, though with them Italy blossomed as a garden.

He again remembered the night he first saw her, how the exquisite purity of her face distinguished her from the glittering throng among which she moved. He even remembered now in what graceful folds her white robe fell from the square cut neck to her feet, how the over-sleeves hung open from the shoulders, revealing the snowy whiteness of her arms.

He remembered how that night he had refused to go singing carnival songs with the youths of the court; how they, heated with wine, had jeered and taunted him, asking if, perchance, he was turning into a pious monk.

Suddenly in his waking dream he found himself at Monte Cassino in the cell of the Prior. And the Prior talked and talked about the sins of the world, and the lust of the flesh, and of prayers and penances. How, as he sat there in grim silence, the Prior thought he was listening, instead of thinking of a smile of divine sweetness, and a fairer face than that of the Virgin looking out at him from the mural painting of Masaccio. And how the Prior would have crossed himself and implored protection from the snares of Satan, had he known that Francesco's thoughts were of a woman. How, when he went to his own cell that night, when he lay down on the bare hard boards, that served for bed and pillow, a swift revulsion of feeling had come over him.