The Hill of Venus

Without stating the reasons of his presence, he requested to be forthwith conducted into the presence of the Prior, and the monk, after having cared for Francesco's steed, and attended to his behest, returned after a short time and bade him follow. Arrived at the Prior's apartment, his guide knocked for admission. The door swung inward and Francesco entered alone.

The Prior had just finished a special devotion in a small oratory adjoining his chamber and was now seated before a massive oaken table, on which there lay a curiously illuminated parchment, from whose azure and golden initials Francesco's eyes turned shudderingly to the form of Romuald, Prior of Monte Cassino.

His great and powerful frame was so worn with vigils and fasts that it seemed like that of a huge skeleton. He regarded the youth, whose courtly garb and manners would not have remained unremarked even in the most brilliant assembly, with an air of austerity mingled with apathy, which age and long solitude might well have engendered and, after a few brief words of welcome such as took little from Francesco's sense of forlornness, he bade the youth be seated.

Without attempt at delay or circumlocution the son of the Grand Master placed his father's letter in the Prior's hands, while he turned his face from this living Memento Mori in the garb which henceforth must be evermore his own.

Francesco seated himself upon a settle, while the Prior weighed the letter absently in his hand as one undecided whether or not to acquaint himself with its contents. At last he broke the seal and, with the aid of a torch whose flickering light drew Francesco's attention towards the open door of an oratory, Romuald slowly began to read. While thus engrossed, Francesco's gaze wandered down the dim vistas of corridors revealed beyond Romuald's chamber, which in the half-light presented an exceedingly gloomy aspect, reposing in the uncertain glimmer of stone lamps fixed in niches upon the walls. These corridors were at intervals crossed by archways, marking the termination of many flights of stairs leading by galleries to the upper chambers of the cloisters. A pulpit, supported on a pillar fixed in the wall, was revealed by the light of five or six stone lamps, which seemed to intensify rather than to dispel the gloom beyond.

During the reading of Gregorio Villani's letter a sudden change had come over the Prior's face. Francesco noted it not, engrossed as he was in scanning his surroundings, silently wondering if he would be able to strip off the gladness of earth, the joy of youth, the yearning of the flesh, to become the image of that spiritualized abnegation which the Prior represented; if his strength would support his resolve.

Suddenly a scowl darkened Romuald's brow, and from the letter in his trembling hands his dimmed eyes flashed upon the youth. Francesco wondered. It was not long before he learned.

Romuald, supporting his right arm on the table, turned to the youth.

"You then are the son of Gregorio Villani! And you think to live here amongst us, to enjoy the peace and the solitude of these cloisters, whose life-long enemy your father has been!"

At the Prior's words Francesco had started.

"I know nothing of my father's quarrels, nothing of the quarrels of the monks," he said.

The Prior nodded absently.

"You were raised at the Court of Avellino?"

"Such was my father's will!"

Romuald looked up at him curiously.

"And now, his will is to make of you a monk, to do penance for his own transgressions!"

Francesco's head sank.

"The burden is mine to bear!"

A strange light shone in the Prior's eyes.

"Then it is not your own desire?"

Every vestige of color had left Francesco's face.

"It is my wish!" —

There was a brief pause.

"You are loyal to the memory of him who gave you life but to destroy it," nodded the Prior, as unconsciously he picked up the letter from the table. Signs of deeper inward emotion were revealed upon his face as, after regarding the youth with a gloomy interest, he said at last:

"For one raised at court you will find the life of the cloister arduous enough."

A flood of memories rushed with these words over Francesco.

They left his countenance paler than before,

"I shall learn to bear it."

A sudden gleam of pity seemed to beam from Romuald's passionless eyes.

"It is a brave beginning of the new life, – for I doubt not you must stay. The word of His Holiness is law. To-night, since collation is over in the refectory, you will sup with me. To-morrow you shall exchange this garb for the simpler one."

Sick at heart, Francesco nodded silent acquiescence.

At this moment a monk entered, carrying a platter which he placed upon a table and, after arranging it according to the Prior's direction, left the latter alone with his guest.

The collation was by no means traditionally meagre. In truth, it seemed to Francesco far above what his fancy about monastic life had led him to expect.

At last when everything upon the trenchers, together with the last flagon of wine, had been done ample justice to, Francesco, after due thanksgiving, arose.

Romuald's gaze had never relinquished the youth during the repast.

"Now to St. Benedict's chapel, wherein already the bell is calling," he said, rising slowly. "After compline you shall be conducted to your cell, – one for yourself within the dormitory overhead. This is the way."

A small door at one side of the Prior's room opened upon a narrow passage, along which they walked side by side in semi-darkness, till the light from the chapter house met their eyes. Through this large room they passed, entering from it the great Church itself, the further end of which opened into a beautiful chapel consecrated many years ago to the founder of the cloister, St. Benedict of Nursia.

When the Prior and his companion entered here, the monks were already assembled. There was many a curious glance cast towards Francesco as he strode along the kneeling company by the side of the Prior.

So occupied was the newcomer with the novelty of the scene, that the old and familiar worship, witnessed among different surroundings, did not pall upon him here.

Mechanically his lips moved, while his eyes wandered over the white carven screen before the altar and the pillar that rose above it out of the range of candle-light, to mingle with the shadows above.

Then, by a slight turn of the head, he could see the black, well-like entrance to the large church, where one or two distant lamps, lighted by penitent monks before special shrines, flashed like infinitesimal stars through the gloom. As for the long rows of kneeling monks about him, they seemed to Francesco to differ not at all from those he had known and met in the monasteries of Apulia, or those he had seen in the Augustinian monastery of San Cataldo. They were the same unsympathetic forms, the same shorn pates, the same dull faces, for whom the world outside the gates of the cloister was but a country unredeemed. These were part of the hosts that formed the great army of the Church, with the aid of which she had slowly but surely obtained her hold on the heritage of Emperor Frederick the Second; these were the sentinels of the crusading host of Anjou. They knew no will, save that of an irate, fanatical pontiff who looked about in vain for means to rid himself of his dearly beloved son and his rapacious hordes. Of these he was henceforth to be a part, their loves his loves, their hates his hates. In vain did he look about for a face idealized by the life of the cloister, and, as he looked and wondered, the last prayer was concluded.

In irregular groups, amid a low murmur of conversation, the monks left their devotions, now ended for another day. Francesco followed them as they moved down the corridor.

Suddenly a hand was laid upon his shoulder. He turned about and gazed into the face of the Prior.

"Fra Ambrogio will conduct you to your cell," said Romuald, beckoning to a long, lean monk who stared awkwardly at the newcomer. "The last – in the western wing," was the Prior's laconic order, and Francesco bowed in silence and followed his spectral guide.

He was too weary to care to talk; even to inquire about his horse.

In a short while the son of the Grand Master was alone in his dimly lighted cell. It was larger than he had anticipated and far more worthily furnished.

Upon a table had been placed the bundle which held his belongings. This he unrolled carelessly, intending to take from it only his tunic for the night. With the movement something from the bundle fell out upon the stone floor. He stooped to pick it up. It was the little steel dagger which his hand had gripped on the fatal night of his return from San Cataldo. Thinking nothing of the omen, he slipped the forbidden weapon between the leaves of a Missal which he placed on the table, and there it remained for many a long day.

Then he sat down upon his bed, covering his face with his hands.

Ilaria's name rang in his ears; Ilaria's image filled every atom of his soul. In the paroxysm of grief which convulsed his frame, he shook like a storm-swept reed; it was in vain he tried to compose his mind to the proper attitude for prayer.

The crucifix above his bed swam in a misty cloud before his eyes. It was only after a long litany, mechanically repeated, that Francesco succeeded in recalling his wandering imagination to the mystery of the atonement. At last sheer physical weariness conquered the feverish agitation of his nerves and he lay down.

The long night passed in unbroken blackness and silence. In the utter void and absence of all external impressions Francesco gradually lost consciousness of time. The blackness of night seemed an illimitable thing with no beginning and no ending; but, when at early dawn he waked, there were tears in his eyes and the name of Ilaria on his lips.

CHAPTER II

THE PASSING OF CONRADINO

DAYS and weeks in the cloisters of Monte Cassino sufficed to convince Francesco that he was not destined to find any friendships there. The elder Villani had not seen fit, in an age of implied indulgence, to keep secret the nature of his transgression, and the curious and unfriendly glances that met him on every turn had soon proclaimed this fact to the newcomer, who writhed inwardly, but endured in silence. The changeless, endless rounds endured by many thousands of human souls for all years of their lives, added new torture; he felt like the stray leaf blown from its stem on the sheltering branch; would his ever be the prayerless peace for evermore?

Thus month passed after month, – in dire, changeless monotony. —

It was a stifling afternoon late in summer.

Few of the monks felt energy enough to go about their usual half-hearted pastimes, and nearly all had retired to their cells in comatose languor. Francesco had gone up with the rest; but the sun streamed brilliantly into his little cell through the western window and from without there came to his ears the myriad droning of ephemeral insect life. His mind was weighted with many thoughts that clamored for analysis.

Gradually he felt immersed in a morbid train of reflections concerning as ever, the utter emptiness of his own existence, now really more exiled in loneliness than ever before. For months now he had been in the cloisters, and not one single word from the outer world concerning his future had come to him. The time was fast approaching when he must take the final vows. Had the Pontiff forgotten him? Had his emissary deceived his father on his death-bed? Or – it was unthinkable – had his father deceived him, to make him pliable to his wishes? Was he doomed to remain here till the end of time, severed from the world, – forgotten?

The very thought was unendurable. These conjectures were worse than immediate annihilation. No matter which it was to be, – he, the monk, was utterly powerless. It were far better not to yield himself to these unwise fears. The Prior had been invisible to him for days. He alone might, by word or hint, have alleviated his fears; but he had not spoken.

After brooding over these matters till he thought his brain would burst, Francesco determined to shake off the oppression of his cell and to seek solace under the azure vault of Heaven.

Suiting the action to the impulse, he opened the door noiselessly and stepped into the corridor without.

About him there was absolute silence. He stood at the farthest corner of the western wing. Nearly all the cells immediately about him were untenanted. For a moment or two he tarried, undecided. Then, following an irresistible impulse, he stepped on to the trellised walk without and decided to ascend the top of the mountain.

Escaping from the court and the cloisters, all hushed in dream-like stillness, he climbed a green knoll which several ancient pines marked strangely with their shadows. There, leaning against one of the trunks, he raised his eyes to the barrier of encircling mountains, discovered by the quivering sunlight falling directly on the forests which fringed their acclivities.

The vast woods, the steep descents, the precipices and torrents all lay extended beneath, softened by a pale-blue haze that alleviated in a measure the stern prospects of the rocky promontories above. The sky was of the deepest azure. The hoarse roar of torrents, throwing themselves from distant wildernesses into the gloomy vales below, mingled with the chant from remote convents.

How long he had stood there, endeavoring to fix some purpose in his life, something that would fill out the emptiness of his existence and give him the strength to bear up under the burden of his destiny, Francesco could not have told, when a vague glittering movement on the opposite mountain slopes attracted his gaze, a glitter that told of an armed array marching and riding among the hills. Even the woods seemed peopled with shadowy forms, slowly emerging into the bright light of high-noon, while out of the stillness there leaped the cry of a horn, hawberks glimmered and armor shone. Beyond the armed array the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed as with aureoles of lambent flame. The horsemen came from the North; there was a swirl of thought in Francesco's brain, then his hand went to his heart: Conradino and his iron hosts were marching on Rome!

And he, who had dreamed of espousing at some day the cause of the last of the Hohenstauffen, who had hoped, by some great effort, to win the crown of life and Ilaria's love, stood here on the summit of Monte Cassino, separated by mountains, chasms and torrents from the glistening throng, which wound in one long, sinuous line towards the ravines of Camaldoli, separated by a whole world from the realization of the hopes nurtured in his childhood. He was the bondsman of the Church, – the bondsman of the Pope.

It was an indisputable fact; he was being caught in constantly ever narrowing circles.

Many questions would hourly assail him, questions like the hill-towns of Umbria, built on the brink of precipices, walled round with barriers of unhewn rock, seeming so near from the ravine below, where the wanderer sees every roof, every cypress tree, every pillared balcony, but which he cannot approach by scaling the unscalable, sheer precipice, but must slowly wind round from below, circling up and down endless undulations of vineyard and oakwood, coming forever upon a tantalizing glimpse of towers and walls, forever seemingly close to the heights above him, yet forever equally distant, till, at last, by a sharp unexpected turn of the gradually winding road, he stands before the gates.

Thus was it with his own isolated soul, a soul unaffected by any other, unlinked in any work, or feeling, or suffering with any any other soul, – nay even with any physical thing.

Thus it stood between himself and Ilaria. Thus they would forever remain alone, never move, never change, never cease absorbing through all eternity that which the eye cannot see.

A soul purged perchance, of every human desire or will, isolated from all human affection, raised above the limits of time and space, hovering in a limbo of endless desire, twisting mystical half reasoning away from the peace-hungry soul!

What a fate was his! What a vortex of passions he had been thrust into!

In the streets of Rome, Guelphs and Ghibellines were fighting. To southward the Provencals ravaged the land. All over Italy the free-lance companies lay waste and burned. The coarse religion of the cloister had no uplifting tendency. It was rather a perpetual smart. The first fervor of the great Franciscan and Dominican movements had long been spent. Nothing, save the ill-regulated enthusiasm of heretical sects, had arisen to take its place. In monasteries and convents scandals were almost the order of the day. It was true, the torch of Franciscan faith still passed privately from hand to hand. Some of the ablest men of the Church were discussing the daring tenets of direct Franciscan inspiration. Representatives of all phases of mediaeval thought mingled with the adherents of a mystic Oriental trend.

Nevertheless, Francesco, in the dead of night, found himself waking to the sense of a dreadful loss and loneliness. He had entered a hushed world, where human and earthly values alike were ignored or forgotten, and the drama of the soul was all in all. The demon of disillusionment which had beset him ever since he had ascended the heights of Monte Cassino began to unfold his gloomy wings over the far horizon of his soul.

No one knew, save himself and perhaps he not fully, how deep a yearning for guidance underlay his sensitive distaste for the control of men. His was a nature that craved to follow, as others craved to lead, but which submitted itself reluctantly, and never at the call of convention.

Devastated Italy rose before his eyes, – nay, the whole world opened to the inner vision, one great battle-field. Unconsciously his eyes followed the direction of the horsemen. Their vanguard had long disappeared in the dusk of distant forest-aisles; still Swabia's iron-serried ranks were pouring from the sheltering boughs of the oaks above San Geminiano. —

Evening drew on apace.

A procession, with its gay dresses and colored tapers gleaming like a rainbow against the verdant hills along the curving, climbing road from San Vitale, attracted Francesco's gaze, and with it a sudden dull pain contracted his heart as he strained his eyes towards the valley.

It seemed like a bridal procession in its pomp, its splendor. A woman bestriding a palfrey rode gaily by the side of a man conspicuous in dark velvet. Directly beneath where he stood, she suddenly raised her head, as if she had divined his presence and desired a witness to her glory.

With a low cry of pain Francesco drew back.

At that moment, notwithstanding the height, he had recognized the magically fair features of Ilaria Caselli.

Like an animal hunted to death, that wishes to die in its lair, he was about to withdraw, when he faced what appeared to be a peasant who had come with provisions to the cloister.

As he saw the young monk he paused with a salutation, then, approaching him, he whispered:

"Have you heard the news? Messer Raniero Frangipani and Madonna Ilaria Caselli are passing on their bridal journey to Rome!"

Francesco's face was so pale that no earthly tint seemed to have remained in it. Only the large eyes gave evidence of life.

"You come to me from her?" he questioned to the peasant.

"She bade me tell you that from no motive of coercion, – but of her own free will and choice, the Frangipani's proposal had been accepted!"

Francesco gave a sudden cry like one who leaps over a precipice, and, falling on his knees, buried his face in his hands.

When he roused himself from the stupor which benumbed his limbs the peasant had disappeared, with him the bridal procession and the Swabian contingents of Conradino.

The full moon gazed down upon him through the great silence of the mountain-world, and a thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the stars.

CHAPTER III

TONSURE AND THORN

THE following weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the monks but realized it: – putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling upon the stones before the solitary shrine.

Could he have seen himself he would have staggered! How old and emaciated, shrunken and hopeless he looked, as he knelt there in his ungainly garments. The face which had formerly borne an open expression of happiness, was hard now, unreadable and impassive. His hands, once white and well cared for, had become almost transparent. As he held his body straight from the knees upward, it was difficult to perceive how much weaker this body had grown. There was a pathetically haughty poise to the head still; but the skin was colorless.

The love for Ilaria, her witch-like face, her witch-like eyes, had remained with him. He had hoped against hope, that by some human, or divine interposition, the yoke about to be imposed upon him would be shattered, that it would prove but a period of probation, a horrid nightmare forsooth, which would be dispelled by some divine ray, give him back to earth, to life, to love, for which his heart yearned with a feverish longing that was fast sapping his strength. His prayers had been in vain: the moments were fleeting fast towards the consummation of his destiny.

It suffered him no longer in the incense-saturated gloom of the chapel. Escaping from his solitary vigil he traversed the courtyard and almost unconsciously reached the spot whence on the night of his arrival at the cloisters he had looked down upon the mountain world of Central Italy.

Above, space soared. Glancing below, he was seized as with a sudden dizziness. All idea of limitation seemed to have ceased in this infinity, for he looked down upon a firmament of cloud. And even as he looked, it was vanishing dream-wise, revealing in widening rifts the world, that gave it birth. A world, – how flat for all its serrated mountain ranges, how insignificant for all its far horizons, compared with that immensity of the starry vault above.

As he gazed with wide, longing eyes, slowly the consciousness of physical existence seemed to widen, till it extended to the horizon and in the very extension was transfigured. Francesco tried to summon images of devotion. But the images mocked the vast concave. He only saw the deep eyes of Ilaria Caselli. Was not the universe his prayer? Sharp summits, glistening and far, were better cries of the soul than he could use.

Long he stood there on the moon-steeped height and gazed to southward where the winding road led into the plains of Apulia to Avellino, the cradle of his destiny. And as he gazed, thoughts, or impressions rather, began to float through his spirit Heaven, like fleecy clouds which, having withdrawn to the horizon begin to return slowly, wandering as it seemed at random, yet shepherded steadily by the wind towards the central upper deeps of the sky.

Faint, clear, a melody, recalling things long left and lost, throbbed through the silence of the night. He listened, then gazed, spellbound. Below him the swift waters of the Liris were smitten to tawny light. Son of the earth once more, he was once more slave of his thoughts.

Far above a world of compromise, conflict and delusion, a world that was soon to be upheaved by mortal strife, his destiny had lifted him into this high sphere of purity and peace. No purity save in isolation. Yet the mass of men were never meant to climb. Should he take his patient place with the slow, ascending throng, – would not the old story repeat itself, the old turmoil, conflict, failure?

Turning suddenly, Francesco gave a start.

By his side stood the Prior.

He was not slow to read the distress in the face of the youth.

"This great peace of the world above and about us – does it not reconcile your soul?" the Prior spoke with a slow sweep of his hand. "Is there anything greater than isolation above the herd?"