Chapter I The Meeting
ot many days after, in the still noontide of mellow autumn, a small band of horsemen drew towards Rome. They rode along the Via Appia, between the ancient tombs; all about them, undulant to the far horizon, stretched a brown wilderness dotted with ruins. Ruins of villas, of farms, of temples, with here and there a church or a monastery, that told of the newer time. Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a speck of tilled soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and awful silence, but rarely did a human figure meet the eye. Marshy ground and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing them to glance sadly at those great aqueducts, which had in bygone ages carried water from the hills into Rome.
They rode in silence, tired with their journey, occupied with heavy or anxious thoughts. Otto, King of the Germans, impatient to arrive, was generally a little ahead of the rest of the company. The pallor of his smooth and classic face was enhanced by the coarse military cloak, dark and travel-stained, which covered his imperial vestments. A lingering expression of sadness was revealed in his eyes, and his lips were tightly compressed in wordless grief, for the tidings of the untimely death of the Pontiff, the friend of his youth and his boyhood days, had reached him just after his departure from the shrines of St. Michael in Apulia. Dark hints had been contained in the message, which Sylvester II, Gregory’s chosen successor and Otto’s former teacher, had despatched to the ruler of the Roman world, urging his immediate return,—for the temper of the Romans brooked no trifling, their leaders being ever on the alert for mischief.
Earthworks and buildings of military purpose presently appeared, recalling the late blockade; churches and oratories told them they were passing the sacred ground of the Catacombs, then they trotted along a hollow way and saw before them the Appian gate. Only two soldiers were on guard; these, not recognizing the German king, took a careless view of the travellers, then let them pass without speaking.
At the base of the Aventine the cavalcade somewhat slackened its pace. Slowly they ascended the winding road, until they reached the old wall of Servius Tullius. Here Otto reined in his charger, pausing, for a moment, to observe the view. To the west and south-west stretched the brown expanse of the Campagna, merging into the distant gray of the Roman Maremma, while beyond that point a clear blue line marked the Ionian Sea. Beneath them the Tiber wound its coils round St. Bartholomew’s Island, the yellow water of the river, stirred into faint ripples by the breeze, looking from the distance like hammered brass. Beyond the Tiber rose the Janiculan Mount, behind which the top of the Vatican hill was just visible. To southward the view was bounded by the Church of Santa Prisca above them and far off rose the snow-capped cone of Soracté. Northeast and east lay the Palatine and Esquiline with the Campaniles of Santa Maria Maggiore and San Pietro in Vincoli. Over the Caelian Mount they could see the heights of the Sabine hills, and running their eyes along the Appian way, they could almost descry the Alban lake. At a sign from their sovereign the cavalcade slowly set in motion. Passing the monastery of St. Jerome and its dependencies, the three churches of the Aventine, Santa Sabina, Santa Maria Aventina and St. Alexius, the imperial cavalcade at last drew rein before the gates of Otto’s Golden Palace on the Aventine.
Again in his beloved Rome, Otto’s first visit was to Bruno’s grave. He had dismissed his attendants, wishing to be alone in his hour of grief. Long he knelt in tears and silent prayers before the spot, which seemed to contain half his young life, then he directed his steps towards the Basilica of St. Peter, there to conclude his devotions.
It was now the hour of Vespers.
The area of St. Peters was filled with a vast and silent crowd, flowing in and out of the Confessor’s station, which was in the subterranean chapel, that contains the Apostle’s tomb, the very lode-stone of devotion throughout the Christian word.
After having finished his devotions, Otto was seized with the desire to seek the confessor, in order to obtain relief from the strange oppression which hovered over him like a presentiment of evil. Taking his station in line with a number of penitents, in the dusky passage leading to the confessional, the scene within was now and then revealed to his gaze for the short space of a moment, when the bronze gates opened for the entrance or exit of some heavily burdened sinner. The tomb was stripped of all its costly ornaments, and lighted only by the torches of some monks, whose office it was to interpret the Penitentiarius, whenever occasion arose. These torches shed a mournful glow over the dusk, suiting the place of sepulchre of martyred saints. On the tomb itself stood an urn of black marble, beneath which was an alabaster tablet, on which was engraved the prophecy concerning the Millennium and the second coming of Christ, and the conditions of penance and prayer, which were to enable the faithful to share in and obtain its benefits. Only now and then, when the curtain waved aside, the person of the Grand Penitentiarius became visible, his hands rigidly clasped, and his usually pale and stern visage overspread with even a darker haze of its habitual gloom.
While Otto was anxiously waiting his turn to be admitted to the presence of the Confessor, the gates of the confessional suddenly swung open and a woman glided out. She was closely veiled and in his mental absorption Otto might scarcely have noticed her at all, but for the singular intensity of the gaze, with which the monk followed her retreating form.
As she passed the German King in the narrow passage, her veil became entangled and she paused to adjust it. As she did so, her features were for the brief space of a moment revealed to Otto, and with such an air of bewilderment did he stare at her, that she almost unconsciously raised her eyes to his. For a moment both faced each other, motionless, eye in eye—then the woman quickened her steps and hastened out. After she had disappeared, Otto touched his forehead like one waking from a trance. Never, even in this city of beautiful women, had he seen the like of her, never had his eyes met such perfection, such exquisite beauty and loveliness. She combined the stately majesty of a Juno with the seductive charms of Aphrodite. In dark ringlets the silken hair caressed the oval of her exquisite face, a face of the soft tint of Parian marble, and the dark lustrous eyes gave life to the classic features of this Goddess of Mediæval Rome. Before she vanished from sight, the woman, seemingly obeying an impulse not her own, turned her head in the direction of Otto. This was due perhaps to the strange discrepancy between his face and his attire, or to the presence of one so young and of appearance so distinguished among the throngs which habitually crowded the confessional.
How long he stood thus entranced, Otto knew not, nor did he heed the curious gaze of those who passed him on entering and leaving the confessional. At last he roused himself, and, oblivious of his station and rank, flew down the dark, vaulted passage at such a speed as almost to knock down those who encountered him in his headlong pursuit of the fair confessionist. It was more than a matter of idle curiosity to him to discover, if possible, her station and name, and after having attracted to himself much unwelcome attention by his rash and precipitate act, he gradually fell into a slower pace. He reached the end of the dark passage in time to see what he believed to be her retreating form vanish down a corridor and disappear in one of the numerous side-chapels. Concluding that she had entered to perform some special devotion, he resolved to await her return.
Considerable time elapsed. At last, growing impatient, Otto entered the chapel. He found it draped throughout with black, an altar in the center, dimly illumined. Some monks were chanting a Requiem, and before the altar there knelt a veiled woman, apparently under the spell of some deep emotion, for Otto heard her sob when she attempted to articulate the responses to the solemn and pathetic litany, which the Catholic church consecrates to her dead.
But the German King’s observation suffered an immediate check.
A verger came forward on those soundless shoes, which all vergers seem to have, and little guessing the person or quality of the intruder informed him of the woman’s desire, that none should be admitted during the celebration of the mass. Otto stared his informant in the face, as if he were at a loss to comprehend his meaning, and the latter repeated his request somewhat more slowly, under the impression that the stranger’s seeming lack of understanding was due to his unfamiliarity with the speaker’s barbarous jargon.
Otto slowly retreated and deferring his intended visit to the chapel of the Confessor to an hour more opportune, left the Basilica. As he recalled to himself, trace after trace, line upon line, that exquisite face, whose creamy pallor was enhanced by the dark silken wealth of her hair, and from whose perfect oval two eyes had looked into his own, which had caused his heart-beats to stop and his brain to whirl, he could hardly await the moment when he should learn her name, and perhaps be favoured with the assurance that her visit on that evening was not likely to have been her last to the Confessor’s shrine.
Imbued with this hope, he slowly traversed the streets of Rome, experiencing a restful, even animating contentment in breathing once more the atmosphere of the thronging city, of being once more in a great center of humanity. At a familiar corner sat an old man with an iron tripod, over which, by a slow fire, he roasted his chestnuts, a sight well remembered, for often had he passed him. He threw him some coins and continued upon his way. Beyond, at his shop-door stood a baker, deep in altercation with his patrons. From an alley came a wine-vender with his heavy terra-cotta jars. Before an osteria a group of pifferari piped their pastoral strains. A few women of the sturdy, low-browed Contadini-type hastened, basket-laden, homeward. A patrol of men-at-arms marched down the Navona, while up a narrow tortuous lane flitted a company of white-robed monks, bearing to some death-bed the last consolation of the church.
Otto had partaken of no food since morning and nature began to assert her rights. Finding himself at the doorway of an inn for wayfarers, with a pretentious coat-of-arms over the entrance, he entered unceremoniously, and seated himself apart from the rather questionable company which patronized the Inn of the Mermaid. Here the landlord, a burly Calabrian, served his unknown guest with a most questionable beverage, faintly suggestive of the product of the vintage, and viands so strongly seasoned that they might have undertaken a pilgrimage on their own account.
For these commodities, making due allowance for his guest’s abstracted state of mind, the uncertainty of the times and the crowded state of the city, the host of the Mermaid only demanded a sum equal to five times the customary charge, which Otto paid without remonstrance, whereupon the worthy host of the Mermaid called to witness all the saints of the calendar, that he deserved to spend the remainder of his life in a pig-sty, for having been so moderate in his reckoning.
As one walking in a dream, Otto returned to his palace on the Aventine. Had he wavered in the morning, had the dictates of reason still ventured to assert themselves—the past hour had silenced them for ever. Before his gaze floated the image of her who had passed him in the Basilica. At the thought of her he could hear the beating of his own heart. Rome—the dominion of the earth—with that one to share it—delirium of ecstasy! Would it ever be realized! Then indeed the dream of an earthly paradise would be no mere fable!