Part 12

The chant from various chapels now poured down the aisles its torrents of melody, the vast multitudes joining in the Gloria in Excelsis. Eckhardt's remote station had not permitted him to witness all that had happened. His gaze was still riveted on the friar, who was now staggering from the pulpit, when a terrific event turned and absorbed his attention.

The great bell of the Basilica was tolling and the vibration produced by so many sounds shook the vast and ancient pile so violently that a prodigious mass of iron, which formed one of the clappers of the bell, fell from the belfry in the airy spire and dashing with irresistible force through every obstruction, reached the floor at the very feet of the Pontiff, crushing a deep hole in the pavement and throwing a million pieces of shattered marble over him and his retinue.

The vast assembly was for a moment motionless with terror and surprise, expecting little less than universal destruction in the downfall of the whole edifice on their heads, with all its ponderous mass of iron and stone. A cry arose that the Pontiff had been killed, which was echoed in a thousand varying voices, according as men's fears or hopes prevailed. But in the first moment of panic, when it was doubtful whether or not the entire center of the Basilica would crumble upon the assembly, Eckhardt had rushed from the comparative safety of his own station to the side of the Pontiff as if to shield him, when with the majesty of a prophet interposing between offended heaven and the object of its wrath, Gerbert of Aurillac uttered with deep fervour and amid profound silence a De Profundis. The multitudes were stilled from their panic, which might have been attended with far more serious consequences than the accident itself. There was a solemn pause, broken only by a sea-like response of "Amen"--and a universal sigh of relief, which sounded like the soughing of the wind in a great forest.

All distinctions of rank seemed blotted out in that supreme moment. Then the voice of Nilus was heard thundering above the breathless calm, while he held aloft an ebony crucifix, in which he always carried the host:

"The summits of St. Peter still stand! When they too fall, pilgrims of the world--even so shall Christendom fall with them."

At a sign from the Pontiff his attendants raised aloft the canopy, under which he had entered. But he refused to mount the chair and heading the bishops and cardinals, he left the church on foot. The Datary gave one look of hopeless despair, as the masses crowded out of the Basilica, and abandoned all hope of restoring order. In an incredibly short time the vast area was emptied, Crescentius being one of the last to remain in its deepening shadows. With a degree of vacancy he gazed after the vanishing crowds, more gorgeous in their broken and mingled pomp, as they passed out of the high portals, than when marshalled in due rank and order.

He too was about to leave, when he discerned a monk who stood gazing, as it were, incredulously at the shattered altar-pavement and the mass of iron deeply embedded in it. Hastily he advanced towards him, but as he approached he was struck by observing the monk raise his eyes, sparkling with mad fury, to the lighted dome above and clench his hands as if in defiance of its glory.

"Thou seemest to hold thy life rather as a burden than a blessing, monk, since thus thou repayest thy salvation," Crescentius addressed the friar, somewhat staggered by his attitude.

"Ay! If I have done Heaven a temporal injury,--be comforted, ye saints--for ye have wrought me an eternal one!" growled the monk between clenched teeth.

"Heaven?" questioned Crescentius, almost tempted to the conclusion that the monk, whoever he was, was out of his senses.

"Even Heaven," replied the monk. "One cubit nearer the altar,--I thought the struggle over in my soul between the dark angel and the bright--I had strung my soul to its mighty task,--yet I shrank from it, a second, and more cowardly Judas."

Crescentius gazed at the friar without grasping his meaning.

"Take thy superior out of the church, he is mad and blasphemes," he turned to the monk's companion who listened stolidly to his raving.

"Ay!" spoke the strange monk, gnashing his teeth and shaking his fist towards heaven, "even the church shall anon be rent in twain and form a chasm, down which countless generations shall tumble into the abyss--'twere just retribution!"

"Tell me but this, monk, how could Heaven itself throw obstacles in the way of thine intent?" questioned Crescentius, perceiving that the monk had turned to depart and more convinced than ever that he was speaking to a madman.

"How? How? Oh, thou slow of understanding,--how?"

And the monk pointed downward, to the crushed and shattered marble of the pavement, in which the iron clapper of the bell lay embedded.

Crescentius receded involuntarily before the fierce, insane gleam in the monk's eyes, while the terrible import of his speech suddenly flashed upon his understanding. Crossing himself, he left the strange friar to himself and passed swiftly through the motley crowds which were waiting their turn of admission to the subterranean chapel of the Grand Penitentiarius.

Another had remained in the dense gloom of the Basilica, though he had not witnessed the scene which had just come to a close. After the Pontiff's departure, Eckhardt had retired to the shrine of Saint Michael, where he knelt in silent prayer. His mind was filled with fantastic imaginings, inspired chiefly by his recent pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano. The deep void within him made itself doubly felt in this hour and more than ever he felt the need of divine interposition in order to retain that consciousness of purpose which was to guide his future course.

At last he arose. A remote chant fell upon his ears, and he saw a procession moving slowly from the refectory into the nave of the Basilica. By the dusky glare of the torches, which they carried, Eckhardt distinguished a number of penitent friars, bearing aloft the banner, destined in after-generations to become the standard of the Holy Inquisition, a Red Cross in a black field with the motto: "In Hoc Signo Vinces." Among them and seemingly the chief personage, strode the strange friar. With down-cast head and eyes he walked, eyes which, while they seemed fixed on the ground in self-abasement, stealthily scanned the features of those he passed.

"I marvel the holy saints think it worth while to trouble themselves about the soul of every putrid, garlic-chewing knave," said an old beggar on the steps of the Cathedral to an individual with whose brief review Eckhardt was much struck. He was a man past the middle-age, with the sallow complexion peculiar to the peasants of the marshes. His broad hat, garnished with many coloured ribbons, was drawn over his visage, though not sufficiently so, to conceal the ghastly scars, with which it was disfigured. His lurking, suspicious eye and the peculiar manner with which, from habit, he carried his short cloak drawn over his breast, as if to conceal the naked stiletto, convinced Eckhardt that, whatsoever that worthy might assume to be, he was one of those blackest of the scourges of Italy, which the license of the times had rendered fearfully numerous, the banditti and bravi.

"Whether the saints care or no," that individual returned, "the monk is competent to convert the fiend himself. What an honour for the brotherhood to have produced such a saint."

Scarcely bestowing more than a thought upon so usual an evidence of social disorder, which neither pontifical nor imperial edicts had been able to correct, Eckhardt passed out, without noticing that he had himself attracted at least equal attention from the worthy described, who after having satisfied his curiosity, slunk back among the crowds and was lost to sight.

*CHAPTER XII*

*RED FALERNIAN*

The palace of Theodora resounded with merriment, though it was long past midnight.

Round a long oval table in the great hall sat a score or more of belated revellers, their Patrician garbs in disorder, and soiled with wine, their faces inflamed, their eyes red and fiery, their tongues heavy and beyond the bounds of control. Here and there a vacant or overturned chair showed where a guest had fallen in the debauch, and had been permitted to remain on his self-chosen bed of repose. A band of players hidden in a remote gallery still continued to fill up the pauses in the riotous clamour with their barbaric strains.

At the head of the table, first in place as in rank sat Benilo, the Chamberlain. He seemed to take little interest in the conversation, for, resting his head on his hands, he stared into his untouched goblet, as if he endeavoured to cast some augury from the rising and vanishing bubbles of the wine.

Next to him sat Pandulph, Lord of Spoleto and Beneventum. His low, though well-set figure, dark hair, keen, black eyes and swarthy features bespoke his semi-barbaric extraction. His countenance was far from comely, when in repose, even ugly and repulsive, but in his eyes lay the force of a powerful will and a depth and subtlety of intellect, that made men fear, when they could not love him. On the right of the Count sat the Lord of Civitella, a large, sensual man, with twinkling grey eyes, thick nose and full red lips. His broad face, flushed with wine, glowed like the harvest moon rising above the horizon. Opposite him sat the Patricius Ziazo, crafty and unscrupulous, a parasite who flattered whosoever ministered to his pleasure. The Patricius was conversing with an individual who outshone Pandulph in rapine, the Lord of Civitella in coarseness and himself in sycophancy, Guido of Vanossa, an arrogant libertine, whose pinched features and cunning leer formed the true index to his character. The Lords of Sinigaglia, Torre del Grecco, Bracciano, Cavallo and Caetano swelled the roll of infamy on the boards of Theodora,--worthy predecessors of the Orsini and Savelli, who were to oppress the city in after time.

Among those who had marked the beginning of the evening by more than ordinary gaiety, Benilo had by his splendid dissipation excited the general envy and admiration among his fellow revellers. His face was inflamed, his dark eyes were glittering with the adder tongues of the serpent wine, and his countenance showed traces of unlimited debauchery. It seemed to those present, as if the ghost of the girl Nelida, whom he had killed in this very hall, was haunting him, so madly did he respond to the challenges from all around, to drink. But as the wine began to flood every brain, as the hall presented a scene of riotous debauch, his former reckless mood seemed for the nonce to have changed to its very opposite. Through the fumes of wine the dead girl seemed to regard him with sad, mournful eyes.

"Fill the goblets," cried Pandulph, with a loud and still clear voice. "The lying clock says it is day. But neither cock-crows nor clock change the purple night to dawn in the Groves of Theodora, save at the will of the Goddess herself. Fill up, companions! The lamp-light in the wine cup is brighter than the clearest sun that ever shone."

"Well spoken, Pandulph! Name the toast and we will pledge it, till the seven stars count fourteen and the seven hills but one," said the Cavallo looking up. "I see four hour glasses even now and every one of them lies, if it says it is dawn."

"You shall have my toast," said Pandulph, raising his goblet. "We have drunk it twenty times already, but we will drink it twenty times more:--the best prologue to wine ever devised by wit of man--Woman."

A shadow moved in the dusky background and peered unseen into the hall.

"And the best epilogue," replied the Lord of Civitella, visibly drunk. "But the toast--my cup is waiting."

"To the health--wealth--and love by stealth of Theodora!" yelled Pandulph, gulping down the contents of his goblet.

Benilo's face turned ashen pale, but he smiled.

"To Theodora!"

Every tongue repeated the name, the goblets were drained.

"My Lord, it is your turn now," said Pandulph, turning to the Lord of Civitella. "The good folks of Urbino have not yet rung the fire-bells against you, but some say they soon will. Who shall it be?"

The Lord of Civitella filled up his cup with unsteady hand, until it was running over and propping his body against the table as he stood up, he said:

"A toast to Roxane! And as for my foragers--they sweep clean."

The toast was drunk with rapturous applause.

"Right you are," bellowed the Cavallo. "Better brooms were never made on the Posilippo,--not a straw lies in your way."

"Did you accomplish it without fight?" sneered the Lord of Bracciano.

"Fight? Why fight? The burghers never resist a noble! We conjure the devil down with that. When we skin our eels, we don't begin at the tail."

"Better to steal the honey, than to kill the bees that make it."

"But what became of the women and children after this swoop of your foragers?" asked the Lord of Bracciano, who appeared to entertain some few isolated ideas of honour floating on the top of the wine he had gulped down.

"The women and children?" replied the Lord of Civitella with a mocking air, crossing his thumbs, like the peasants of Lugano, when they wish to inspire belief in their words. "They can breakfast by gaping! They can eat wind, like the Tarentines,--it will make them spit clear."

The Lord of Bracciano, irritated at the mocking sign and proverbial allusion to the gaping propensities of the people round the Lago, started up in wrath and struck his clenched fist on the table.

"My Lord of Civitella," he cried, "do not cross your damned thumbs at me, else I will cut them off! The people of Bracciano have still corn in plenty, until your thieving bands scorch their fingers in the attempt to steal it."

Andrea Cavallo interposed to stop the rising quarrel.

"Do not mind the Lord of Civitella," he whispered to Bracciano. "He is drunk!"

"The rake! The ingrate!" growled Bracciano, "after my men opened the traps, in which the Vicar of the Church had caught him."

"Nay! If you gape at man's ingratitude, your mouth will be wide enough, ere you die, my lord," spoke Pandulph with a sardonic laugh. "And men in our day stand no more on precedence in plots than in love affairs,--do they, my lord Benilo?"

"Nay, I'll dispute no man's right to be hanged or quartered before me--least of all yours, my Lord Pandulph," the Chamberlain replied venomously.

"My lord Benilo," replied Pandulph, "you are, when drunk, the greatest ruffian in Christendom, and the biggest knave when sober. Bring in more tankards, and we will not look for day till midnight booms again on the old tower of San Sebastian! I call for full brimmers, varlets,--bring your largest cups! We will drink another toast five fathoms deep in wine, strong enough to melt Cleopatra's pearls, and to a jollier dame than Egypt's queen."

The servitors flew out and in. In a few moments the table was replenished with huge drinking cups, silver flagons and all the heavy impediments of the army of Bacchus.

"We drink to the Fair Lady of the Groves,--and in her presence, too!" shouted the Lord of Spoleto, raising his goblet anew. "Why is she not among us? They say," he turned to Benilo with a sneer, "that you are so jealous of the charms of your bird of paradise, that you have forbidden her to appear before your friends."

Roaring peals of laughter crowned Pandulph's speech.

Benilo saw the absurdity of anger, but he felt it nevertheless.

"She chooses not to leave her bower even to look on you, my Lord Pandulph. I warrant you, she has not slept all night, listening to your infernal din."

A renewed outburst of mirth was the response.

"Then you will permit us to betake ourselves forthwith to her gilded chamber to implore pardon on our knees for disturbing her rest."

"Well spoken--by the boot of St. Benedict!" roared Guido of Vanossa.

"You may measure my foot and satisfy yourself that I am able to wear it," shouted the Lord of Civitella. "On our knees we will crawl to the Sanctuary of our Goddess,--on our knees!"

"But before we start on our pilgrimage, we will drain a draught long as the bell-rope of the Capitol," bellowed the Lord of Bracciano.

"Fill up the tankards!" exclaimed the Lord of Spoleto. "My goblet is as empty as an honest man's purse,--and one of my eyes is sober yet."

"Do not take it to heart!" spoke Guido of Vanossa, whose eyes were full of tears and wine. "You will not die in the jolly fellow's faith!" And with unsteady voice he began to sing a stanza in dog-Latin:

"Dum Vinum potamus Fratelli cantiamo A Bacco sia Onore! Te Deum laudamus!"

"Would your grace had a better voice, you have a good will!" stammered the lord of Sinigaglia. "'Tis ample time to repent when you can do no better. Besides--if you are damned, it is in rare good company!"

"Ay! Saint and Sinner come to the same end!" gurgled the Lord Pandulph, ogling the purple Falernian.

"Fill up your goblets! Though it be a merry life to lead, I doubt if it will end in so cheery a death!" said Benilo, his eye wandering slowly from one to the other.

"Fill up the goblets!" shouted the Lord of Spoleto, rising and supporting his bulky carcass on the heavy oaken table.

With a sleepy leer he blinked at the guests.

"Down on your knees," he roared suddenly, his former intent reverting to him. "To the Sanctuary of the Goddess! On our knees we will implore her to receive us into her favour."

A strange spirit of recklessness had seized Benilo. Instead of resenting or resisting the proposition, he was the first to get down on all fours. His example had an electrifying effect. Although they swayed to and fro like sail-boats on angry sea-waves, all those still sober enough imitated the Chamberlain amid cheers and grunts, and slowly the singular procession, led by Benilo, set in motion with the expressed purpose of invading Theodora's apartments, which were situated beyond the great hall. The Lord Pandulph resembled some huge bear as on all fours he hobbled across the mosaic floor beside the Lord of Bracciano, who panted, grunted and swore and called on the saints, to witness his self-abasement. Being gouty and stout, he was at one time seized with a cramp in his leg and struck out vigorously with the result of striking the Lord of Civitella squarely in the jaw, whereupon the latter, toppling over, literally flooded the hall with profanity and surplus wine. The other ten hobbled behind the leaders, cursing their own folly, but enjoying to a degree the novelty of the pageant.

Thus they had traversed the great hall at a speed as great as their singular mode of locomotion and their intoxicated condition would permit. The background of the hall was but dimly lighted; the great curtain strung between the two massive pillars, which guarded the entrance into Theodora's apartments, excluded the glow of the multi-coloured lamps, strung in regular intervals in the corridor beyond.

Benilo was the first to reach the curtain. Resting one hand on the floor, he raised the other, after the manner of a dog, trying to push its folds aside, when they suddenly and noiselessly parted. Something hissed through the air, striking the object of its aim a stinging blow in the face--a cry of pain and rage, and Benilo, who had sprung to his feet, stood face to face with Theodora. At the same moment the lights in the great hall were turned on to a full blaze, revealing in its entire repelling atrocity the spectacle of the drunken revellers, who, upon experiencing a sudden check to their further progress, had come to a sluggish halt, some of them unable to retain their balance and toppling over in their tracks.

"Beasts! Swine!" hissed the woman, her eyes ablaze with wrath, the whip which had struck Benilo in the face, still quivering in her infuriated grasp. "Out with you--out!"

The sound of a silver whistle, which she placed between her lips, brought some five or six giant Africans to the spot. They were eunuchs, whose tongues had been torn out, and who, possessing no human weakness, were ferocious as the wild beasts of their native desert. Theodora gave them a brief command in their own tongue and ere the amazed revellers knew what was happening to them, they found themselves picked up by dusky, muscular arms and unceremoniously ejected from the hall, those lying in a semi-conscious stupor under the tables sharing the same fate.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*DEAD LEAVES*

While the Nubians set about in cleaning the hall and removing the last vestiges of the night's debauch, Theodora faced Benilo with such contempt in her dark eyes, that for a moment the Chamberlain's boasted insolence almost deserted him, and though seething with rage at the chastisement inflicted upon him he awaited her speech in silence. She faced him, leaning against a marble statue, her hands playing nervously with the whip.

"For once I have discovered you in your true station, the station of the foul, crouching beast, to which you were born, had not some accident played into the devil's hands by giving you the glittering semblance of the snake," she said slowly and with a disdain ringing from her words, which cut even his debased nature to the core. "I have whipped you, as one whips a cur: do you still desire me for your wife?"

With lips tightly compressed he looked down, not daring to meet her fierce gaze of hatred, which was burning into his very brain.

"I see little reason for changing my mind," he replied after a brief pause, while as he spoke his cheek seemed to burn with shame, where the whip had struck it, and her evil, terrible beauty, exposed in her airy night-robe, roused all the wild demoniacal passions in his soul.

The whip trembled in her hands.

"And you call yourself a man!" she said with a withering look of contempt, under which he winced.

Then she continued in a hard and cheerless voice, wherein spoke more than simple aversion, a voice that seemed as it were petrified with grief, with remorse and hatred of the man who had been the cause of her fall.

"Listen to me, Benilo,--mark well my words. What I have been, you know: the beloved, the adored wife of a man, who would have carried me through life's storms under the shelter of his love,--a man, who would have shed the last drop of his life's blood for Ginevra,--that was. For two years we lived in happiness. I had begged him never to lift the veil which shrouded my birth,--a wish he respected, a promise he kept. In the field and at court he pursued the even tenor of his way,--happy and content with my love. Then there crept into our home a hypocrite, a liar, a fiend, who could mock the devils in hell to scorn. He stands there,--Benilo, his name,--a foul thing, who shrank from nothing to gain his ends. Some fiend revealed to him the awful secret of Ginevra's birth, a secret which he used to draw her step by step from the man she loved, to perpetrate a deceit, the cunning of which would put the devils to blush. He promised to restore to her what is her own by right of her birth. He roused in her all the evil which ran riot in her blood, and when she had given herself to him, he revealed himself the lying fiend he was. Stung by the furies of remorse, which haunted her night and day,--in her despair the woman made her love the prize, wherewith to purchase that for which she had broken the holiest ties. But those she made happy were beasts,--enjoying her favour, giving nothing in return. My heart is sick of it,--sick of this sham, sick of this baseness. Heaven once vouchsafed me a sinner's glimpse of paradise, of a home of purity and peace where indeed I might have been a queen,--a queen so different from the one who rules a gilded charnel-house."