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Other documents randomly have
different content
arms, uplifted to warn back intruders. He stood before the
churchyard of San Pancrazio.
Pausing for a moment irresolutely before its gloomy portals
Eckhardt seemed to waver before entering the burial ground.
Hushing his footsteps, as from a sense of awe, he then followed the
well-known path. The black foliage drooped heavily over him; it
seemed to draw him in and close him out of sight, and although
there was scarcely any breeze, the dying leaves above rustled
mysteriously, like voices whispering some awful secret, known to
them alone. A strange mystery seemed to pervade the silence of
their sylvan shadows, a mystery, dread, unfathomable, and guessed
by none. With a dreary sense of oppression, yet drawn onward by
some mysterious force, Eckhardt followed the path, which here and
there was over-grown with grass and weeds. Uneasily he lifted the
overhanging branches and peered between the dense and luminous
foliage. Up and down he wistfully gazed, now towards the winding
path, lined by old gravestones, leading to the cloister; now into the
shadowy depths of the shrubbery. At times he paused to listen.
Never surely was there such a silence anywhere as here. The
murmur of the distant stream was lost. The leaves seemed to nod
drowsily, as out of the depths of a dream and the impressive
stillness of the place seemed a silent protest against the solitary
intruder, a protest from the dead, whose slumber the muffled echo
of his footsteps disturbed.
For the first time Eckhardt repented of his nocturnal visit to the
abode of the dead. Seized with a strange fear, his presence in the
churchyard at this hour seemed to him an intrusion, and after a
moment or two of silent musing he turned back, finding it impossible
to proceed. Absently he gazed at the decaying flowers, which turned
their faces up to him in apparent wonderment; the ferns seemed to
nod and every separate leaf and blade of grass seemed to question
him silently on the errand of his visit. Surely no one, watching
Eckhardt at this place and at this hour, if there was such a one near
by chance, would have recognized in him the stern soldier who had
twice stormed the walls of Rome.
Onward he walked as in the memory of a dream, a strange
dream, which had visited him on the preceding night, and which
now suddenly waked in his memory. It was a vague haunting thing,
a vision of a great altar, of many candles, of himself in a gown of
sack-cloth, striving to light them and failing again and again, yet still
seeing their elusive glare in a continual flicker before his eyes. And
as he mused upon his dream his heart grew heavy in his breast. He
had grown cowardly of pity and renewed grief.
Following a winding path, so overgrown with moss that his
footsteps made no sound upon it, which he believed would lead him
out of the churchyard, Eckhardt was staggered by the discovery that
he had walked in a circle, for almost directly before him rose the
grassy knoll tufted with palms, between which shone the granite
monument over Ginevra's grave. Believing at this moment more than
ever in his life in signs and portents, Eckhardt slowly ascended the
sloping ground, now oblivious alike to sight and sound, and lost in
the depths of his own thoughts. Bitter thoughts they were and
dreamily vague, such as fever and nightmare bring to us.
Relentlessly all the long-fought misery swept over him again, burying
him beneath waves so vast, that time and space seemed alike to
vanish. He knelt at the grave and with a fervour such as is born of a
mind completely lost in the depths of mysticism, he prayed that he
might once more behold Ginevra, as her image lived in his memory.
The vague deep-rooted misery in his heart was concentrated in this
greatest desire of his life, the desire to look once more upon her,
who had gone from him for ever.
After having exhausted all the pent-up fervour of his soul
Eckhardt was about to rise, little strengthened and less convinced of
the efficacy of his prayer, when his eyes were fixed upon the tall
apparition of a woman, who stood in the shadow of the cypress
trees and seemed to regard him with a strange mixture of awe and
mournfulness. With parted lips and rigid features, the life's blood
frozen in his veins, Eckhardt stared at the apparition, his face
covered with a pallor more deadly than that of the phantom, if
phantom indeed it was. A long white shroud fell in straight folds
from her head to her feet, but the face was exposed, and as he
gazed upon it, at once so calm and so passionate, so cold and yet so
replete with life,—he knew it was Ginevra who stood before him. Her
eyes, strangely undimmed by death, burnt into his very soul, and his
heart began to palpitate with a mad longing. Spreading out his arms
in voiceless entreaty, the half-choken outcry: "Ginevra! Ginevra!"
came from his lips, a cry in which was mingled at once the most
supreme anguish and the most supreme love.
But as the sound of his voice died away, the apparition had
vanished, and seemed to have melted into air. Only a lizard sped
over the stone in the moonlight and in the branches of the cypress
trees above resounded the scream of some startled night-bird. Then
everything faded in vague unconsciousness, across which flitted lurid
lights and a face that suddenly grew dim in the strange and
tumultuous upheaval of his senses. The single moment had seemed
an hour, so fraught with strange and weird impressions.
Dazed, half-mad, his brow bathed in cold dew, Eckhardt
staggered to his feet and glanced round like one waking from a
dream. The churchyard of San Pancrazio was deserted. Not another
human being was to be seen. Surely his senses, strangely
overwrought though they were, had not deceived him. Here,—close
beside him,—the apparition had stood but a moment ago; with his
own eyes he had seen her, yet no human foot had trampled the
fantastic tangle of creepers, that lay in straggling length upon the
emerald turf. He lingered no longer to reason. His brain was in a
fiery whirl. Like one demented, Eckhardt rushed from the church-
yard. There was at this moment in his heart such a pitiful tumult of
broken passions, hopelessness and despair, that the acute,
unendurable pain came later.
As yet, half of him refused to accept the revelation. The very
thought crushed him with a weight of rocks. Amid the deceitful
shadows of night he had fallen prey to that fear from which the
bravest are not exempt in such surroundings. The distinctness of his
perception forbade him to doubt the testimony of his senses. Yet,
what he had seen, was altogether contrary to reason. A thousand
thoughts and surmises, one wilder than the other, whirled confusedly
through his brain. A great benumbing agony gnawed at his heart.
That, which he in reason should have regarded as a great boon
began to affect him like a mortal injury. By fate or some mysterious
agency he had been permitted to see her once more, but the
yearning had increased, for not a word had the apparition
vouchsafed him, and from his arms, extended in passionate entreaty,
it had fled into the night, whence it had arisen.
Accustomed to the windings of the churchyard, Eckhardt
experienced little difficulty in finding his way out. He paced through
the wastes of Campo Marzio at a reckless speed, like a madman
escaped from his guards. His brain was aflame; his cheeks, though
deadly pale, burned as from the hidden fires of a fever. The
phenomenon had dazzled his eyes like the keen zigzag of a lightning
flash. Even now he saw her floating before him, as in a luminous
whirlwind, and he felt, that never to his life's end could he banish
her image from his heart. His love for the dead had grown to
vastness like those plants, which open their blossoms with a thunder
clap. He felt no longer master of himself, but like one whose chariot
is carried by terrified and uncontrollable steeds towards some steep
rock bristling precipice.
Gradually, thanks to the freshness of the night-air, Eckhardt
became a little more calm. Feeling now but half convinced of the
reality of the vision, he sought by the authentication of minor details
to convince himself that he was not the victim of some strange
hallucination. But he felt, to his dismay, that every natural
explanation tell short of the truth, and his own argumentation was
anything but convincing.
In the climax of wonderment Eckhardt had questioned himself,
whether he might not actually be walking in a dream; he even
seriously asked himself whether madness was not parading its
phantoms before his eyes. But he soon felt constrained to admit,
that he was neither asleep nor mad. Thus he began gradually to
accept the fact of Ginevra's presence, as in a dream we never
question the intervention of persons actually long dead, but who
nevertheless seem to act like living people.
The moon was sinking through the azure when Eckhardt passed
the Church of the Hermits on Mount Aventine. The portals were
open; the ulterior dimly lighted. The spirit of repentance burned at
fever heat in the souls of the Romans. From day-break till midnight,
and from midnight till day-break, there rose under the high vaulted
arches an incessant hum of prayer. The penitential cells, the vaults
underneath the chapels, were never empty. The crowds which
poured into the city from all the world were ever increasing, and the
myriad churches, chapels and chantries rang night and day with
Kyrie Eleison litanies and sermons, purporting to portray the
catastrophe, the hail of brimstone and fire, until the terrified
listeners dashed away amid shrieks and yells, shaken to the inmost
depths of their hearts with the fear that was upon them.
There were still some belated worshippers within, and as
Eckhardt ascended the stone steps, he was seized with an
incontrollable desire to have speech with Nilus, the hermit of Gaëta,
who, he had been told, was holding forth in the Church of the
Hermits. To him he would confess all, that sorely troubled his mind,
seeking his counsel and advice. The immense blackness within the
Basilica stretched vastly upward into its great arching roof, giving to
him who stood pigmy-like within it, an oppression of enormity. Black
was the centre of the Nave and unutterably still. A few torches in
remote shrines threw their lugubrious light down the aisles. The pale
faces of kneeling monks came now and then into full relief, when the
scant illumination shifted, stirred by ever so faint a breath of air,
heavy with the scent of flowers and incense.
 Almost succumbing under the strain of superstitious awe,
exhausted in body and mind by the strange malady, which had
seized his soul, his senses reeling under the fumes of incense and
the funereal chant of the monks, his eyes burning with the fires of
unshed tears, Eckhardt sank down before the image of the Mother
of God, striving in vain to form a coherent prayer.
How long he had thus remained he knew not. The sound of
footsteps in the direction of the North transept roused him after a
time to the purpose of his presence. Following the direction
indicated to him by one of the sacristans, Eckhardt groped his way
through the dismal gloom towards the enclosure where Nilus of
Gaëta was supposed to hold his dark sessions. By the dim light of a
lamp he perceived in the confessional the shadowy form of a monk,
and approaching the wicket, he greeted the occupant with a humble
bend of the head. But, what was visible of the monk's countenance
was little calculated to relieve the oppression which burdened
Eckhardt's soul.
From the mask of the converted cynic peered the eyes of a
fanatic. The face was one, which might have suggested to Luca
Signorelli the traits of his Anti-Christ in the Capella Nuova at Orvieto.
In the deep penetrating eyes was reflected the final remorse of the
wisdom, which had renounced its maker. The face was evil. Yet it
was a face of infinite grief, as if mourning the eternal fall of man.
Despite the advanced hour of night the monk was still in his
seat of confession, and the mighty leader of the German host, wrapt
in his long military cloak, knelt before the emaciated anchorite, his
face, manner and voice all betraying a great weariness of mind. A
look of almost bodily pain appeared in Eckhardt's stern countenance
as, at the request of the monk, who had receded within the gloom
of the confessional, he recounted the phenomena of the night, after
having previously acquainted him with the burden of his grief.
The monk listened attentively to the weird tale and shook his
head.
"I am most strangely in my senses," Eckhardt urged, noting the
monk's gesture. "I have seen her,—whether in the body, or the spirit,
I know not,—but I have seen her."
"I have listened, my son," said the monk after a pause, in his
low sepulchral voice.—"Ginevra loved you,—so you say. What could
have wrought a change in her, such as you hint? For if she loved you
in life, she loves you in death. Why should she—supposing her
present—flee from your outstretched arms? If your love could
compel her to return from the beyond,—why should it lack the
power to make the phantom give response?"
"Could I but fathom that mystery,—could I but fathom it!"
"Did you not speak to her?"
"My lips but uttered her name!"
"I am little versed in matters of this kind," the monk replied in a
strange tone. "'Tis but the natural law, which may not be
transgressed with impunity. Is your faith so small, that you would
rather uproot the holiest ties, than deem yourself the victim of some
hallucination, mayhap some jeer of the fiend? Dare you raise
yourself on a pedestal, which takes from her her defenceless virtue,
cold and silent as her lips are in death?"
Every word of the monk struck Eckhardt's heart with a thousand
pangs. A deep groan broke from his lips.
 "Madman that I was," he muttered at last, "to think that such a
tale was fit for mortal ears."
Then he turned to the monk.
"Have you no solace to give to me, no light upon the dark path,
I am about to enter upon,—the life of the cloister, where I shall end
my days?"
There was a long pause. Surprise seemed to have struck the
monk dumb. Eckhardt's heart beat stormily in anticipation of the
anchorite's reply.
"But," a voice sounded from the gloom, "have you the patience,
the humility, which it behooves the recluse to possess, and without
which all prayers and penances are in vain?"
"Show me how I can humble myself more, than at this hour,
when I renounce a life of glory, ambition and command. All I want is
peace,—that peace which has forsaken me since her death!"
His last words died in a groan.
"Peace," repeated the monk. "You seek peace in the seclusion of
the cloister, in holy devotions. I thought Eckhardt of too stern a
mould, to be goaded and turned from his duty by a mere whim, a
pale phantom."
A long silence ensued.
"Father," said the Margrave at last, speaking in a low and broken
voice, "I have done no act of wrong. I will do no act of wrong, while
I have control over myself. But the thought of the dead haunts me
night and day. Otto has no further need of me. Rome is pacified. The
life at court is irksome to me. The king loves to surround himself
with perfumed popinjays, discarding the time-honoured customs of
our Northland for the intricate polity of the East.—There is no place
for Eckhardt in that sphere of mummery."
For a few moments the monk meditated in silence.
"It grieves me to the heart," he spoke at last, "to hear a soldier
confess to being tempted into a life of eternal abnegation. I judge it
to be a passing madness, which distance and work alone can cure.
You are not fitted in the sight of God and His Mother for the spiritual
life, for in Mezentian thraldom you have fettered your soul to a
corpse in its grave, a sin as black as if you had been taken in
adultery with the dead. Remain in Rome no longer! Return to your
post on the boundaries of the realm. There,—in your lonely tent,
pray nightly to the Immaculate One for her blessing and pass the
day in the saddle among the scattered outposts of your command!
The monks of Rome shall not be festered by the presence among
them of your fevered soul, and you are sorely needed by God and
His Son for martial life."
"Father, you know not all!" Eckhardt replied after a brief pause,
during which he lay prostrate, writhing in agony and despair. "From
youth up have I lived as a man of war.—To this I was bred by my sire
and grandsire of sainted memory. I have always hoped to die on
some glorious field. But it is all changed. I, who never feared mortal
man, am trembling before a shadow. My love for her, who is no
more, has made me a coward. I tremble to think that I may not find
her in the darkness, whither soon I may be going. To this end alone
I would purchase the peace, which has departed. The thought of her
has haunted me night and day, ever since her death! How often in
the watches of the night, on the tented field, have I lain awake in
silent prayer, once more to behold her face, that I can never more
forget!"
There was another long pause, during which the monk cast a
piercing glance at the prostrate soldier. Slowly at last the voice came
from the shadows.
"Then you still believe yourself thus favoured?"
"So firmly do I believe in the reality of the vision, that I am here
to ask your blessing and your good offices with the Prior of St.
Cosmas in the matter closest to my heart."
"Nay," the monk replied as if speaking to himself, "if you have
indeed been favoured with a vision, then were it indeed
presumptuous in one, the mere interpreter of the will divine, to
oppose your request! You have chosen a strict brotherhood, though,
for when your novitiate is ended, you will not be permitted to ever
again leave the walls of the cloister."
"Such is my choice," replied Eckhardt. "And now your blessing
and intercession, father. Let the time of my novitiate be brief!"
"I will do what I can," replied the monk, then he added slowly
and solemnly:
"Christ accepts your obedience and service! I purge you of your
sins in the name of the Trinity and the Mother of God, into whose
holy keeping I now commit you! Go in peace!"
"I go!" muttered the Margrave, rising exhausted from his long
agony and staggering down the dark aisles of the church.
Eckhardt's footsteps had no sooner died away in the gloom of
the high-vaulted arches, than two shadows emerged from behind a
pillar and moved noiselessly down towards the refectory.
 In the dim circle of light emanating from the tapers round the
altar, they faced each other a moment.
"What ails the Teuton?" muttered the Grand Chamberlain,
peering into the muffled countenance of the pseudo-confessor.
"He upbraids the fiend for cheating him of the smile of a
corpse," the monk Cyprianus replied with strangely jarring voice.
"And yet you fear I will lose my wager?" sneered the
Chamberlain.
The monk shrugged his shoulders.
"They have a proverb in Ferrara: 'He who may not eat a peach,
may not smell at it.'"
"And you were not revealed to him, you, for whom he has
scoured the very slime of the Tiber?" Benilo queried, ignoring the
monk's facetiousness.
"'Tis sad to think, what changes time has wrought," replied the
latter with downcast eyes. "Truly it behooves us to think of the end,
—the end of time!"
And without another word the monk passed down the aisles and
his tall form was swallowed in the gloom of the Church of the
Hermits.
"The end!" Benilo muttered to himself as he thoughtfully gazed
after the monk. "Croak thou thine own doom, Cyprianus! One soul
weighs as much as another in the devil's balance!"
With these words Benilo passed through the portals of the
church and was soon lost to sight among the ruins of the Aventine.

CHAPTER VIII
 CASTEL SAN ANGELO

ight had spread her pinions over the ancient capital of

the Cæsars and deepest silence had succeeded the thousand cries
and noises of the day. Few belated strollers still lingered in the
deserted squares. Under the shadows of the Borgo Vecchio slow
moving figures could be seen flitting noiselessly as phantoms
through the marble ruins of antiquity, pausing for a moment under
the high unlighted arches, talking in undertones and vanishing in the
night, while the remote swell of monkish chants, monotonous and
droning, died on the evanescent breezes.
Round Castel San Angelo, rising, a giant Mausoleum, vast and
sombre out of the solitudes of the Flaminian Way, night wove a more
poetic air of mystery and quiet, and but for the tread of the ever
wakeful sentinels on its ramparts, the colossal tomb of the emperor
Hadrian would have appeared a deserted Memento Mori of Imperial
Rome, the possession of which no one cared to dispute with the
shades of the Cæsars or the ghosts of the mangled victims, which
haunted the intricate labyrinth of its subterranean chambers and
vaults.
A pale moon was rising behind the hills of Albano, whose
ghostly rays cast an unsteady glow over the undulating expanse of
the Roman Campagna, and wove a pale silver mounting round the
crest of the imperial tomb, whose towering masses seemed to
stretch interminably into the night, as if oppressed with their own
memories.
What a monstrous melodrama was contained in yonder circular
walls! They wore a comparatively smiling look only in the days when
Castel San Angelo received the dead. Then according to the historian
Procopius, the immense three-storied rotunda, surmounted by a
pyramidal roof had its sides covered with Parian marble, intersected
with columns and surmounted with a ring of Grecian statues. The
first story was a quadrangular basement, decorated with festoons
and tablets of funeral inscriptions, colossal equestrian groups in gilt
bronze at the four corners.
Within the memory of living generation, this pile had been the
theatre of a tragedy, almost unparalleled in the annals of Rome, the
scene of the wildest Saturnalia, that ever stained the history of
mediæval state. An incongruous relic of antique profligacy and the
monstrosities of the lower empire, drawing its fatal power from
feudal institutions, Theodora, a woman illustrious for her beauty and
rank, had at the dawn of the century quartered herself in Castel San
Angelo. From there she exercised over Rome a complete tyranny,
sustained against German influence by an Italian party, which
counted amongst its chiefs Adalbert, Count of Tuscany, the father of
this second Messalina. Her fateful beauty ruled Church and state.
Theodora caused one pontiff after another to be deposed and
nominated eight popes successively. She had a daughter as beautiful
and as powerful as herself and still more depraved. Marozia, as she
was called, reigned supreme in Castel San Angelo and caused the
election of Sergius III, Anastasius III and John X, the latter a
creature of Theodora, who had him appointed to the bishopric of
Ravenna. Intending to deprive Theodora and her lover, the Pope, of
the dominion of Rome, Marozia invaded the Lateran with a band of
ruffians, put to the sword the brother of the Pope, and incarcerated
the pontiff, who died in prison either by poison or otherwise.
Tradition relates that his corpse was placed in Theodora's bed, and
superstition believes that he was strangled by the devil as a
punishment for his sins.
Left as widow by the premature death of the Count of Tusculum
and married to Guido, Prince of Tuscany, Marozia, after the demise
of her second husband, was united by a third marriage to Hugo of
Provence, brother of Guido. Successively she placed on the pontifical
throne Leo VI and Stephen VIII, then she gave the tiara to John XI,
her younger son. One of her numerous offspring imprisoned in the
same dungeon both his mother and his brother, the Pope, and then
destroyed them. Rumour hath it, however, that a remote
descendant, who had inherited Marozia's fatal beauty, had been
mysteriously abducted at an early age and concealed in a convent,
to save her from the contamination and licentiousness, which ran
riot in the blood of the women of her house. She had been heard of
no more and forgotten long ago.
After the changes and vicissitudes of half a century the family of
the Crescentii had taken possession of Castel San Angelo, keeping
their state in the almost impregnable stronghold, without which the
possession of Rome availed but little to any conqueror. It was a
period marked by brutal passions and feudal anarchy. The Romans
had degenerated to the low estate of the barbarian hordes, which
had during the great upheaval extinguished the light of the Western
empire. The Crescentii traced their origin even to that Theodora of
evil fame, who had perished in the dungeons of the formidable keep,
and Johannes Crescentius, the present Senator and Patricius,
seemed wrapt in dark ruminations, as from the window of a
chamber in the third gallery he looked out into the night, gazing
upon the eddying Tiber below, bordered by dreary huts, thinly
interspersed with ilex, and the barren wastes, from which rose
massive watch-towers. Far away to Southward sloped the Alban hills.
From the dark waving greens of Monte Pincio the eye, wandering
along the ridge of the Quirinal, reached to the mammoth arches of
Constantine's Basilica, to the cypress bluffs of Aventine. Almost black
they looked at the base, so deep was their shade, contrasted with
the spectral moon-light, which flooded their eminences.
The chamber in which the Senator of Rome paced to and fro,
was large and exceedingly gloomy, being lighted only by a single
taper which threw all objects it did not touch into deep shadow. This
fiery illumination, casting its uncertain glimmer upon the face of
Crescentius, revealed thereon an expression of deepest gloom and
melancholy and his thoughts seemed to roam far away.
The workings of time, the traces of furious passions, the lines
wrought by care and sorrow were evident in the countenance of the
Senator of Rome and sometimes gave it in the eyes of the
physiognomist an expression of melancholy and devouring gloom.
Only now and then there shot athwart his features, like lightning
through a distant cloud-bank, a look of more strenuous daring—of
almost terrifying keenness, like the edge of a bare and sharpened
sword.
The features of Johannes Crescentius were regular, almost
severe in their classic outlines. It was the Roman type, softened by
centuries of amalgamation with the descendants of the invading
tribes of the North. The Lord of Castel San Angelo was in the prime
of manhood. The dark hair was slightly touched with gray, his
complexion bronzed. The gray eyes with their glow like polished
steel had a Brutus-like expression, grave and impenetrable.
The hour marked the close of a momentous interview. Benilo,
the Grand Chamberlain, had just left the Senator's presence. He had
been the bearer of strange news which, if it proved true, would once
more turn the tide of fortune in the Senator's favour. He had urged
Crescentius to make the best of the opportunity—the moment might
never return again. He had unmasked a plot, the plausibility of which
had even staggered the Senator's sagacious mind. At first
Crescentius had fiercely resented the Chamberlain's suggestions, but
by degrees his resistance had lessened and after his departure the
course outlined by Benilo seemed to hold rut a strange fascination.
After glancing at the sand-clock on the table Crescentius
ascended the narrow winding stairs leading to the upper galleries of
the formidable keep, whose dark, blackened walls were lighted by
tapers in measured intervals, and made his way through a dark
passage, until he reached the door of an apartment at the opposite
end of the corridor. He knocked and receiving no response, entered,
closing the door noiselessly behind him.
On the threshold he paused taking in at a glance the picture
before him.
The apartment was of moderate size. The lamp in the oratory
was turned low. The windows facing the Campagna were open and
the soft breeze of night stole into the flower-scented room. There
was small semblance of luxury about the chamber, which was
flanked on one side by an oratory, on the other, by a sleeping room,
whose open door permitted a glimpse of a great, high bed, hung
with draperies of sarcenet.
On a couch, her head resting on her bare, white arms reclined
Stephania, the consort of the Senator of Rome. Tenderly the night
wind caressed the soft dark curls, which stole down her brow. Her
right hand supported a head exquisitely beautiful, while the fingers
of the left played mechanically with the folds of her robe. Zoë, her
favourite maiden, sat in silence on the floor, holding in her lap a red
and blue bird, which now and then flapped its wings and gave forth
a strange cry. All else was silent within and without.
Stephania's thoughts dwelt in bygone days.
Listless and silent she reclined in her pillows, reviewing the past
in pictures that mocked her soul. Till a few hours ago she had
believed that she had conquered that madness. But something had
inflamed her hatred anew and she felt like a goddess bent upon
punishing the presumption of mortal man.
The memory of her husband holding the emperor's stirrup upon
the latter's entry into Rome had rekindled in her another thought
which she most of all had striven to forget. It alone had, to her
mind, sufficed to make reconciliation to existing conditions
impossible. Shame and hate seethed anew in her soul. She could
have strangled the son of Theophano with her own hands.
But did Crescentius himself wish to break the shackles which
were forever to destroy the prestige of a noble house, that had for
more than a century ruled the city of Rome? Was he content to be
the lackey of that boy, before whom a mighty empire bowed, a
youth truly, imbued with the beauty of body and soul which fall but
rarely to one mortal's lot—but yet a youth, a barbarian, the
descendant of the Nomad tribes of the great upheaval? Was there
no one, worthy of the name of a great Roman, who would cement
the disintegrated states of Italy, plant his standards upon the Capitol
and proclaim himself lord of new Roman world? And he, her
husband, from whom at one time she had expected such great
things, was he not content with his lot? Was he not at this very
moment offering homage to the despised foreigners, kissing the
sandals of a heretical pope, whom a bribed Conclave had placed in
the chair of St. Peter through the armed manifestation of an
emperor's will?
The walls of Castel San Angelo weighed upon her like lead,
since Rome was again defiled by these Northern barbarians, whom
her countrymen were powerless to repulse, whom they dared not
provoke and under whose insolence they smarted. Stephania heaved
a deep sigh. Then everything faded from her vision, like a landscape
shrouded in mist and she relapsed in twilight dreams of a past that
had gone forever.
For a moment Crescentius lingered on the threshold, as if
entranced by the vision of her loveliness. The stern and anxious
look, which his face had worn during the interview with the
Chamberlain, passed off like a summer storm, as he stood before his
adored wife. She started, as his shadow darkened the doorway, but
the next moment he was at her side, and taking both her white
hands in his, he drew her towards him and gazed with love and
scrutiny into the velvet depths of her eyes.
For a moment her manner seemed slightly embarrassed and
there was something in her tone which did not escape the Senator's
trained ear.
"I am glad you came," she said after the usual interchange of
greetings such as lovers indulge in when brought together after a
brief separation. "My lord's time has been greatly occupied in the
emperor's absence."
Crescentius failed not to note the reproach in the tone of his
wife, even through her smile. She seemed more radiantly beautiful
than ever at this moment.
"And what would my queen have?" he asked. "All I have, or
ever shall have, is hers."
"Queen indeed,—queen of a sepulcher, of the Mausoleum of an
emperor," she replied scornfully. "But I ask not for jewels or palaces
—or women's toys. I am my lord's helpmate. I am to take counsel in
affairs of state."
A musing glance broke from the Senator's eyes.
"Affairs of state," he said, with a smile and a sigh. "Alas,—I
hoped when I turned my back on Aventine, there would be love
awaiting me and oblivion—in Stephania's arms. But I have strange
news for you,—has it reached your ear?"
She shook her head. "I know of nothing stranger than the
prevailing state."
He ignored the veiled reproach.
"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, the German commander-in-
chief, is bent upon taking holy orders. I thought it was an idle
rumour, some gossip of the taverns, but within the hour it has been
confirmed to me by a source whose authenticity is above doubt."
"And your informant?"
"Benilo, the Chamberlain."
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