Chapter III: Part 3

Those who watched the expression on the face of the Queen of the Groves marvelled alike at Benilo's audacity and the startling absence of a passionate outburst on the part of the woman. And though the blood seethed through Theodora's veins, the sudden change of front on Benilo's part seemed to stagger her for a moment. It was a novel sensation to see the man who had heretofore been like clay in the moulder's hands now daring to flout her openly and to hold up her wounded pride as a target for the jests of those present. It was a novel sensation, to find herself publicly berated, but the shaft sank deep. Theodora's eyes flashed scorn and there was something cruel in her glances. Benilo felt its sting like a whiplash. His nerves quivered and he breathed hard. But he had gone too far to recede. His spirit had risen in arms against the disdain of the woman he loved,--loved with a passion that seemed to have slept in a tomb for ages and suddenly gathered new strength, like a fire kindled anew over dead ashes.

Acting on a sudden impulse, he raised his head and looked at her with a fearlessness which for the moment appeared to startle her self-possession, for a deep flush coloured the fairness of her face and, fading, left it pale as marble. Still Theodora did not speak and the breathless silence which had succeeded Benilo's last taunt resembled the ominous hush of the heated atmosphere before a thunder-clap. No one dared speak and the Chamberlain, apparently struck by the sudden stillness, looked round from the tumbled cushions where he reclined.

"You do not answer my question, fair Theodora," he spoke at last, an undertone of mockery ringing through his speech. "I grant you power over some weak fools," and Benilo glanced round the assembly, little caring for the mutter which his words raised, "but you will at least admit that there is one man in Rome at this very hour, on whom all your charms and blandishments would be wasted as a caress on cold marble."

Another deep and death-like pause ensued; then Theodora's silvery cold tones smote the profound silence with sharp retort, as goaded at last beyond forbearance by his scoffing tone she sprang to her feet.

"There is not a man in Rome," she hissed into Benilo's face, "not in Italy, not in all the world, whom I could not bend to the force of my will. Where I choose, I conquer!"

A sardonic laugh broke from Benilo's lips.

"And by what means?"

"Benilo," she flashed forth in withering contempt, "I know not what your object is in taunting me--and I care not--but by Lucifer, you go too far! Name to me a man in Rome, name whom you will, and if I fail to win him in one month--"

"What then?"

For a moment she hesitated.

"Name the wager yourself!"

An ominous smile curved Benilo's lips.

"All the wealth I possess against you--as my wife!"

She laughed scornfully and shuddered, but did not reply.

"Are you afraid?" he cried, tauntingly.

"What a fate!" she replied with trepidation in her tone. "But I accept it, even it!"

She turned her back on him after a look of such withering contempt as one might cast on some reptile, and took her former seat, when again she was startled by his voice. Its mock caressing tones caused her to clench her firm white hands and bend forward as if tempted to strangle the viper, that had dared to place its glittering coils in her path.

"It now remains but to name the champion, just to prevent the wrong bird from fluttering into the nest," said Benilo, addressing the company.

"The champion! The champion!" they shouted, breathing more freely, since the expected lightning did not strike.

"Fill the goblets!" Benilo exclaimed, and in a moment the wine was poured, the guests arose and gathered round the central figures.

Benilo raised his goblet and turned to Theodora, wincing under her look of contempt.

"The champion is to be my choice and to be accepted unconditionally?" he questioned.

"Not so!" she flashed forth, half rising from her seat, her eyes flaming with wrath. "I would not have my words distorted by so foul a thing as you! It is to be the rescuer of the girl, he before whom the lord Vitelozzo slunk away like a whipped cur! You have taunted me with my lack of power face to face with that one--and that one alone, the only man among a crowd of curs!"

Benilo paused, then he said with a hard, cold smile:

"Agreed!" And he placed the goblet to his lips. The guests did likewise and drank the singular toast, as if it had not implied a glaring insult to each present, including the one who reechoed it.

"And now for his name!" Benilo continued. "Just to prevent a mischance."

The irony of his words and the implied insult cut Theodora to the quick. With hands tightly clenched as If she would strangle her tormentor, she sprang to her feet.

"I object!" she gasped, almost choked with rage, while her startled listeners seemed to lack even voice to vent their curiosity before this new and unexpected outburst.

"I appeal to the company assembled, who has witnessed the wager between the Queen of Love and her faithful and obedient lover," Benilo sneered, looking round among the guests. "How know we, what is concealed under a vizor, beneath a rusty suit of armour? Security lies but in the name of the unconscious victim of Theodora's magic, is it not so?"

The smile on the Chamberlain's countenance caused him to appear more repulsive than his former expression of wildest rage. But, prompted by an invincible curiosity, the guests unanimously assented.

"Be it so!" gasped Theodora, sinking back in her seat. "I care not."

Benilo watched her closely, and as he did so he almost repented of his hasty wager. Just at that moment his gaze met that of the harper, who stood like some dark phantom behind the throne of the Queen of the Groves, and the Chamberlain stifled the misgivings, which had risen within him. And though smiling in anticipation of the blow he was about to deliver, a blow which should prove the sweetest balm for the misery she had caused him by her disdain, he still wavered, as if to torment her to the extremest limits. Then, with a voice audible in the remotest parts of the great hall, he spoke, his eye in that of Theodora, slowly emphasizing each title and name:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts!"

There was the silence of death in the hall.

For a moment Theodora stared fixed and immobile as a marble statue, her face pale as death, while a thin stream of purple wine, spilled from her trembling goblet, trickled down her white, uplifted arm. Then she rushed upon him, and knocking the goblet out of his hand, causing it to fall with a splintering crash at Benilo's feet, she shrieked till the very walls re-echoed the words:

"You lie! You lie!"

Benilo crossed his arms over his chest, and, looking squarely into the woman's eyes, he repeated in the same accents of defiance:

"Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, Commander-in-chief of the German hosts."

"Again I tell you you lie! You lie!" shrieked the woman, now almost beside herself. "Is there no one among all this scum here assembled, to chastise this viper? Hear me!" she cried as, affrighted, the guests shrank back from her blazing eyes and panting breath, while with all the superhuman beauty of a second Medusa she stood among them, and if her gaze could have killed, none would have survived the hour. "Hear me! Benilo has lied to you, as time and again he has lied to me! He, of whom he speaks, is dead,--has died--long ago!"

Benilo breathed hard. "Then he has arisen from the dead and returned to earth,--to Rome--" he spoke with biting irony in his tones. "A strange hereditary disease affecting the members of his house."

When he saw the deadly pallor which covered the woman's face, and the terror reflected in her eyes, Benilo continued:

"And deem you in all truth, O sagacious Theodora, that a word from the lips of any other man would have caused Vitelozzo to release his prey? Deem you not in your undoubted wisdom that it required a reason, even weightier than the blow of a gauntleted hand, to accomplish this marvellous feat? And,--since you are dumb in the face of these arguments,--will you not enlighten us all why Theodora, the beautiful, the chaste, would deprive him of the plume, to whom it rightfully belongs,--the German commander, Margrave Eckhardt of Meissen, who risked his life to save that of our beautiful queen?"

Theodora turned upon her tormenter like an animal at bay.

"I have heard enough! I will not! The wager is off!"

And rising she prepared to leave the hall without another word.

It would have been difficult for the most profound physiognomist to analyze Benilo's feelings, when he saw his purpose, his revenge, foiled. Looking up he met the enigmatic gaze of the harper resting upon him with a strange mixture of derision and disdain.

"Stay!" Benilo cried to Theodora as she grasped the curtain in the act of pushing it aside. He knew if she passed beyond it, he had lost beyond retrieve. But she paused and turned, mute inquiry and defiance in her look.

"The Queen of the Groves has made a wager before you all," the Chamberlain shouted, lashing himself into the rage needful to make him carry out his design unflinchingly. "After being informed of the person of the champion she has repudiated it! The reasons are plain,--the champion is beyond her reach! The Queen of the Groves is too politic to play a losing game, especially when she knows that she is sure to lose! The charms of our Goddess are great, but alas! There is one man in Rome whom she dare not challenge!"

He paused to study the effect of his words upon her.

She regarded him with her icy stare.

"It is not a question of power--but of my will!"

"So be it!" retorted Benilo. "But since the Queen of Love has refused my wager for reasons no doubt good and efficient, perhaps there is in this company one less pure, one less scrupulous, one of beauty as great, who might win, where Theodora shuns the risk! Will you take up the gauntlet, fair Roxane, and lure to the Groves, Eckhardt, the general?"

"Benilo--beware!"

Shrill, sharp like breaking glass, like the cry of a wounded animal maddened with rage and agony, the outcry seemed wrenched from Theodora's white, drawn lips. Her large, splendid eyes flashed unutterable scorn upon the Chamberlain and her lithe form swayed and crouched as that of a tigress about to spring.

"Will Roxane take the wager?" Benilo repeated defiantly.

The anticipation of the on-coming contest caused Roxane's cheek to blanch. But not to be thought deficient in courage, to meet her rival, she replied:

"Since the Queen of the Groves shuns the test, perhaps I might succeed, where--"

She did not finish the sentence.

Like a lightning flash Theodora turned from the man, who had roused her ire, to the woman who had stung her pride with ill-veiled mockery, and while she slowly crept towards her opponent, her low voice, tremulous with scorn, stung as a needle would the naked flesh.

"And do you dream that Eckhardt of Meissen has aught to fear from you, fair Roxane? Deem you, that the proud Roxane with all her charms, could cause the general of the German host to make one step against his will?"

For a moment the two women stood face to face, measuring each other with deadly looks.

"And what if I would?" flashed Roxane.

Two white hands slowly but firmly encircled her throat.

"I would strangle you!" hissed Theodora, her face deadly pale.

Roxane's cheeks too had lost their colour. She knew her opponent and she instinctively felt she had reached the limit. She gave a little nervous laugh as she drew Theodora's reluctant hands from the marble whiteness of her throat, where their touch had left a rosy imprint.

"I do not wish your Saxon bear," she said. "If you can tame him, we come to his skin!"

"By Lucifer!" replied the Queen of the Groves, "did I but choose to, I would make him forget heaven and hell and bring him to my feet!"

"How dramatic!" sneered Benilo. "Words are air! We want proofs!"

She whirled upon him.

"And what will become of the snake, when the hunter appears?"

Benilo paled. For a moment his arrogance deserted him. Then he said with an ominous scowl:

"Let the hunter beware!"

She regarded him with icy contempt. Then she turned to the revellers.

"Since Benilo has dared to cross swords with me," she cried, "though I despise him and all of you, I accept the challenge, if there is one in this company who will confirm that it was Eckhardt who discomfited Vitelozzo."

From the background of the hall, where he had sat a silent listener, there came forward an individual in the gaudy attire of a Roman nobleman. He was robust and above the middle height, and the lineaments of his coarse face betrayed predominance of brute instincts over every nobler sentiment.

"Vitelozzo! Vitelozzo!" the guests shouted half amazed, half amused.

The robber-baron nodded as he faced Theodora on the edge of the circle.

"I have listened to your discourse," he snarled curtly. "For your opinions I care not. And as for the skullion to whom I gave in,--out of sheer good will,--ha, ha!--may the devil pull the boots from his legs!--'twas no meaner a person than he, at whose cradle the fiend stood sponsor, Eckhardt--the general--but I will yet have the girl, I'll have her yet!"

And with a vigorous nod Vitelozzo took up a brimming decanter and transported himself into the background whence he had arisen.

His word had decided the question.

For a moment there was an intense hush. Then Theodora spoke:

"Eckhardt of Meissen, the commander of the German hosts, shall come to my court! He shall be as one of yourselves, a whimpering slave to my evil beauty! I will it,--and so it shall be!"

For a moment she glanced at Benilo and the blood froze in his veins. Heaven and earth would he have given now to have recalled the fateful challenge. But it was too late. For a time he trembled like an aspen. No one knew what he had read in Theodora's Medusa-like face.

Some of the revellers, believing the great tension relieved, now pushed eagerly forward, surrounding the Queen of the Groves and plying her with questions. They were all eager to witness a triumph so difficult to achieve, as they imagined, that even Theodora, though conscious of her invincible charms, had winced at the task.

But the Queen of Love seemed to have exchanged the attributes of her trade for those of a Fury, for she turned upon them like an animal wounded to death, that sees the hounds upon its track and cannot escape.

"Back! All of you!" she hissed, raising her arms and sweeping them aside. "What is it after all? Is he not a man, like--no! Not like you, not like you!--Why should I care for him?--Perhaps he has wife and child at home:--the devils will laugh the louder!"

She paused a moment, drawing a deep breath. Then she slowly turned towards the cringing Chamberlain. Her voice was slow and distinct and every word struck him as the blow from a whip.

"I accept your wager," she said, "and I warn you that I will win! Win, with all the world, with all your villainy, with the Devil himself against me. Eckhardt shall come to the Groves! But," she continued with terrible distinctness, "if aught befall him, ere we have stood face to face, I shall know the hand that struck the blow, were it covered by the deepest midnight that ever blushed at your foulness, and by the devil,--I will avenge it!"

After these words Theodora faced those assembled with her splendid height in all the glory of her beauty. Another moment she was gone.

For a time deep silence succeeded.

Never had such a scene been witnessed in the Groves. Never had the Queen of Love shown herself in so terrible a mood. Never had mortal dared to brave her anger, to challenge her wrath. Truly, the end of time must be nigh when her worshippers would dare defy the Goddess of the Shrine.

But after Theodora had disappeared, the strain gradually relaxed and soon wore away entirely. With all, save Benilo. His calm outward demeanour concealed only with an effort his terrible apprehensions, as he mixed freely, to divert suspicion, with the revellers. These thought the moments too precious to waste with idle speculations and soon the orgy roared anew through the great hall.

Benilo alone had retreated to its extreme end, where he allowed himself to drop into a divan, which had just been deserted by a couple, who had been swept away by the whirling Bacchanale. Here he sat for some time, his face buried in his hands, when looking up suddenly he found himself face to face with Hezilo.

"I have done it," he muttered, "and I fear I have gone too far!"

He paused, scanning the harper's face for approval. Its expression he could not see, but there was no shade of reproof in the voice which answered:

"At best you have but erred in the means."

"I wished to break her pride, to humble her, and now the tables are turned; it is I, who am grovelling in the dust."

"No woman was by such means ever wooed or won," the harper replied after a brief pause. "Theodora will win the wager. But whether she win or lose, she will despise you for ever more!"

Benilo pressed his hands against his burning temples.

"My heart is on fire! The woman maddens me with her devilish charms, until I am on the verge of delirium."

"You have been too pliant! You have become her slave! Her foot is on your neck! You have lost yourself! Better a monstrous villain, than a simpering idiot, who whines love-ditties under his lady's bower and bellows his shame to the enduring stars! Dare to be a man,--despite yourself!"

So absorbed was Benilo in his own thoughts, that the biting irony of the other's speech was lost upon him.

He extended his hand to his strange counsellor.

"It shall be as you say: The Rubicon is passed. I have no choice."

The stranger nodded, but he did not touch the proffered hand.

At last the Chamberlain rose to leave the hall.

The sounds of lutes and harps quivered through the Groves of Theodora; flutes and cymbals, sistrum and tympani mingled their harmonies with the tempest of sound that hovered over the great orgy, which was now at its height. The banquet-hall whirled round him like a vast architectural nightmare. Through the dizzy glare he beheld perspectives and seemingly endless colonnades. Everything sparkled, glittered, and beamed in the light of prismatic irises, that crossed and shattered each other in the air. Viewed through that burning haze even the inanimate objects seemed to have waked to some fantastic representation of life.--But through it all he saw one face, supremely fair in its marble cold disdain,--and unable to endure the sight longer Benilo the Chamberlain rushed out into the open.

In the distance resounded the chant of pilgrims traversing the city and imploring the mercy and clemency of heaven.

*CHAPTER VI*

*JOHN OF THE CATACOMBS*

Once outside of the pavillion, Benilo uttered a sigh of relief. He had resolved to act without delay. Ere dawn he would be assured that he held in his grasp the threads of the web. There was no time to be lost. Onward he hurried, the phantom of the murdered girl floating before his eyes in a purple haze.

While bearing himself ostensibly in the character of a mere man of pleasure, Benilo the Chamberlain lost no opportunity of ingratiating himself with the many desperate spirits who were to be found in the city ready and willing to assist at any enterprise, which should tend to complicate the machine of government. While he rushed into every extravagance and pleasure, surpassing the companions of his own rank in his orgies, he suffered no symptoms of a deeper feeling to escape him, than that of excellence in trifling, the wine cup, the pageant, the passing show. It may have been a strain of mongrel blood, filtering through his veins, which tempered his endurance with the pliancy essential to intrigue, a strain that was apparent in the sculptured regularity of his features. His movements had the pliant ease, the stealthy freedom of the tiger. Had he been caught like Milo, he would have writhed himself out of the trap with the sinuous persistency of the snake. There was something snake-like in the small, glittering eyes, the clear smoothness of the skin. With all its brightness no woman worthy of the name but would have winced with womanly instincts of aversion and repugnance from his glances. With all its beauty, none, save Otto alone, had ever looked confidingly into his face. Men turned indeed to scan him approvingly as he passed, but they owned no sympathy with the smooth, set brow, the ever present smile in the lips of Benilo the Chamberlain.

After deliberating upon the course he was about to pursue Benilo approached the shores of the Tiber. Under the cypress avenues it was dark, and the air came up chill and damp from the stream. A sombre blue over-arched the labyrinth of pillars and ruins, of friezes and statues, of groves and glades which lay dreaming in the pale light of the moon. No other light, save the moist glimmer of the stars whose mist-veiled brightness heralded the approach of a tempest, fell on the chaos of undefined forms. Utter solitude, utter silence prevailed. More and more Benilo lost himself in the wilderness of this ill-favoured region.

The shortest way to the haunts of John of the Catacombs, of whom he was in immediate search, lay across the ancient Alta Semita, where now the Via di Porta Pia winds round the Quirinal hill. But for reasons of his own the Chamberlain chose to make a detour, preferring streets whose deserted character would not be likely to bring him into contact with some unwelcome, nocturnal rambler. Wrapping himself more closely in his cloak and looking cautiously about, he hastened along the North Western declivity of the Quirinal hill, until he reached the remains of a wall built, so tradition has it, by Servius Tullius. This quarter had ever since the time of the emperors enjoyed the worst reputation in all Rome. The streets were tortuous, the houses, squalid, the whole surroundings evil. Benilo moved cautiously along the wall, for a few drinking shops were still open and frequented by a motley throng, with whom it was not safe to mingle, for to provoke a brawl, might engender grave consequences. Wretched women plied their shameful trade by the light of flickering clay-lamps; and watery-eyed hags, the outcasts of all nations, mingled with sailors, bandits and bravi. Drunken men lay snoring under tables and coarse songs were shouted from hoarse throats, half drowned by the uproarious clamour of two fellows who were playing at dice. Suddenly there was a commotion followed by piercing shrieks. The gamblers had fallen out over their pretty stakes. After a short squabble one had drawn his knife on the other and stabbed him in the side. The wounded man fell howling on the ground and the assassin took to his heels. The dancers of the establishment, heedless of the catastrophe, began at once to rattle their castagnettes and sway and whirl in disgraceful pantomime.

After Benilo had passed the shameful den and reached the end of the alley he found himself once more in one of the waste regions of the city. Truly many an emperor was more easily discovered than John of the Catacombs. The region had the appearance as if an earthquake had shattered into dust the splendid temples and porticoes of antiquity, so great was the destruction, which confronted him on every turn. High in the air could be heard the hoarse cry of the vulture, wheeling home from some feast of carnage; in the near-by marshes the croaking of the frogs alternated with the dismal cry of the whippoorwill.

Suddenly the Chamberlain paused and for a moment even his stout heart stopped beating, and his face turned a ghastly pallor. For directly before him there arose out of the underbrush, with back apparently turned towards him, some formless apparition in the dark habit of a monk, the cowl drawn over his head. But when he attained his natural height, he faced Benilo, although the latter would have sworn that he did not see him turn.

It was with some degree of fascination that Benilo watched the person and the movements of this human monster. What appeared of his head from under the cowl seemed to have become green with cadaverous tints. One might say that the mustiness of the sepulchre already covered the bluish down of his skin. His eyes, with their strong gaze sparkled from beneath a large yellowish bruise, and his drooping jaws were joined to the skin by two lines as straight as the lines of a triangle. The bravo's trembling hands, the colour of yellow wax, were only a net-work of veins and nerves. His sleeves fluttered on his fleshless arms like a streamer on a pole. His robe fell from his shoulders to his heels perfectly straight without a single fold, as rigid as the drapery in the later pictures of Cimabue or Orcagna. There appeared to be nothing but a shadow under the brown cowl and out of that shadow stared two stony eyes. John of the Catacombs looked like a corpse returned to earth, to write his memoirs.

At the sight of the individual, reputed the greatest scourge in Rome, the Chamberlain could not repress a shudder, and his right hand sought mechanically the hilt of his poniard.

"Why--thou art a merry dog in thy friar's cowl, Don Giovan, though it will hardly save thee from the gallows," exclaimed Benilo, approaching slowly. "Since when dost affect monastic manners?"

"Since the fiend is weary of saints, their cowls go begging," a harsh grating voice replied, while a hideous sneer lit up the almost fleshless skull of the bravo, as with his turbid yellow eyes, resembling those of a dead fish, he stared in Benilo's face.

"And for all that," the denisen of the ruins continued, watching from under inflamed eyelids the effect his person produced on his Maecenas, "and for all that I shall make as good a saint as was ever catalogued in your martyrology."

"The fiend for aught might make the same," replied Benilo. "What is your business here?"

"Watching over dead men's bones," replied the bravo doggedly.

"Never lie to the devil,--you will neither deceive him nor me! Not that I dispute any man's right to be hanged or stabbed--least of all thine, Don Giovan."

"'Tis for another to regulate all such honours," replied the bravo. "And it is an old saying, never trust a horse or a woman!"

Benilo started as if the bravo had read his thoughts.

"You prate in enigmas," he said after a pause. "I will be brief with you and plain. We should not scratch, when we tickle. I am looking for an honest rogue. I need a trusty and discreet varlet, who can keep his tongue between his teeth and forget not only his master's name, but his own likewise. Have you the quality?"

John of the Catacombs stared at the speaker as if at a loss to comprehend his meaning. Instead of answering he glanced uneasily in the direction of the river.

"Speak out, man, my time is brief," urged the Chamberlain, "I have learned to value your services even in the harm you have wrought, and if you will enter my service, you shall some day hang the keys of a nobler tower on your girdle than you ever dreamt of."

The bravo winced, but did not reply. Suddenly he raised his head as if listening. A sound resembling the faint splash of an oar broke the stillness. A yell vibrated through the air, a louder splash was heard, then all was deep silence as before.

"That sounded not like the prayer of a Christian soul departing," Benilo said with an involuntary shudder, noting the grin of satisfaction which passed over the outlaw's face. "What was that?"

"Of my evil brother an evil instrument," replied John of the Catacombs enigmatically.

"I fear you will have to learn manners in my school, Don Giovan," said Benilo in return. "But your answer. Are you ready?"

"This very night?" gasped the bravo, suspecting the offer and fearful of a snare.

"Why not?" demanded the Chamberlain curtly.

"I am bound in another's service!"

"You are an over-punctilious rogue, Don Giovan. To-morrow then!"

"Agreed!" gurgled the bravo, extending a monstrously large hand from under his gown, with a forefinger of extraordinary length, on the end of which there was a wart.

Benilo pretended not to see the proffered member. But before addressing himself further to John of the Catacombs he glanced round cautiously.

"Are we alone?"

The bravo nodded.

"Is my presence here not proof enough?"

The argument prevailed.

"To our business then!" Benilo replied guardedly, seating himself upon a fragment of granite and watching every gesture of the bravo.

"There arrived to-day in Rome, Eckhardt the general. His welfare is very dear to me! I should be disconsolate came he to harm in the exercise of his mission, whatever that be!"

There was a brief pause during which their eyes met.

The outlaw's face twitched strangely. Or was it the play of the moonbeams?

"Being given to roaming at random round the city," Benilo continued, speaking very slowly as if to aid the bravo's comprehension, "for such is their wont in their own wildernesses,--I am fearful he might go astray,--and the Roman temper is uncertain. Yet is Eckhardt so fearless, that he would scorn alike warning or precaution. Therefore I would have you dog his footsteps from afar,--but let him not suspect your presence, if you wish to see the light of another morning. Wear your monk's habit, it becomes you! You look as lean and hungry and wolfish as a hermit of twelve years' halo, who feeds on wild roots and snails. But to me you will each day report the points of interest, which the German leader has visited, that I too may become familiar with their attraction. Do I speak plainly?"

"I will follow him as his shadow," gurgled the bravo.

Benilo held out a purse which John of the Catacombs greedily devoured with his eyes.

"You are a greedy knave," he said at last with a forced laugh. "But since you love gold so dearly, you shall feast your eyes on it till they tire of its sheen. Be ready at my first call and remember--secrecy and despatch!"

"When shall it be?" queried the bravo.

"A matter of a day or two at best--no longer! Meanwhile you will improve your antiquarian learning by studying the walks of Rome in company with the German general. But remember your distance, unless you would meet the devil's grandame instead of creeping back to your hovels. And where, by the way, may a pair of good eyes discover John of the Catacombs in case of urgent need?"

The bravo seemed to ponder.

"There is an old inn behind the Forum. It will save your messenger the trouble to seek me in the Catacombs. Have him ask for the lame brother of the Penitents,--but do not write, for I cannot read it."

Benilo nodded.

"If I can trust you, the gain will be yours," he said. "And now--lead the way!"

John of the Catacombs preceded his new patron through the tall weeds which almost concealed him from view, until they reached a clearing not far from the river, whose turbid waves rolled sluggishly towards Ostia. Here they parted, the bravo retracing his steps towards the region whence they had come, while Benilo made for the gorge between Mounts Aventine and Testaccio. It was an ill-famed vale, noted even in remote antiquity for the gross orgies whence it had gained its evil repute, after the cult of Isis had been brought from Egypt to Rome.

The hour was not far from midnight. The moon had passed her zenith and was declining in the horizon. Her pale spectral rays cast an uncertain light over the region and gave the shadows a weird and almost threatening prominence. In this gorge there dwelt one Dom Sabbat, half sorcerer, half madman, towards whose habitation Benilo now directed his steps. He was not long reaching a low structure, half concealed between tall weeds and high boulders. Swiftly approaching, Benilo knocked at the door. After a wait of some duration shuffling foot steps were to be heard within. A door was being unbarred, then the Chamberlain could distinguish the unfastening of chains, accompanied by a low dry cough. At last the low door was cautiously opened and he found himself face to face with an almost shapeless form in the long loose habit of the cloister, ending in a peaked cowl, cut as it seemed out of one cloth, and covering the face as well as the back of the head, barring only two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth. After the uncanny host had, by the light of a lantern, which he could shade at will, peered closely into his visitor's face, he silently nodded, beckoning the other to enter and carefully barred the door behind him. Through a low, narrow corridor, Dom Sabbat led the way to a sort of kitchen, such as an alchemist might use for his experiments and with many grotesque bends bade his visitor be seated, but Benilo declined curtly, for he was ill at ease.

"I have little time to spare," he said, scarcely noticing the alchemist's obeisance, "and less inclination to enter into particulars. Give me what I want and let me be gone out of this atmosphere, which is enough to stifle the lungs of an honest man."

"Hi, hi, my illustrious friend," fawned the other with evident enjoyment of his patron's impatience. "Was the horoscope not right to a minute? Did not the charm work its unpronounced intent?"

"'Tis well you remind me! It required six stabs to finish your bungling work! See to it, that you do not again deceive me!"

"You say six stabs?" replied Dom Sabbat, looking up from the task he was engaged in, of mixing some substances in a mortar. "Yet Mars was in the Cancer and the fourth house of the Sun. But perhaps the gentleman had eaten river-snails with nutmeg or taken a bath in snake skins and stags-antlers?"

"To the devil with your river-snails!" exploded Benilo. "The love-philtre and quickly,--else I will have you smoked out of your devil's lair ere the moon be two hours older!"

The alchemist shook his head, as if pained by his patron's ill temper. Yet he could not abstain from tantalizing him by assuming a misapprehension of his meaning.

"The hour," he mumbled slowly, and with studied hesitation, "is not propitious. Evil planets are in the ascendant and the influence of your good genius is counteracted by antagonistic spells."

"Fool!" growled Benilo, at the same time raising his foot as if to spurn the impostor like a dog. "You keep but one sort of wares such as I require,--let me have the strongest."

Neither the gesture nor the insult were lost on Dom Sabbat, yet he preserved a calm and imperturbable demeanour, while, as if soliloquizing, he continued his irritating inquiries.

"A love-philtre? They are priceless indeed;--even a nun,--three drops of that clear tasteless fluid,--and she were yours."

Again Benilo's lips straightened in a hard, drawn line. Stooping over the alchemist, he whispered two words into his ear, which caused Dom Sabbat to glance up with such an expression of horror that Benilo involuntarily burst into a loud laugh, which sent the other spinning to his task.

Ransacking some remote corner in his devil's kitchen he at last produced a tiny phial, which he wrapped in a thin scroll. This he placed with trembling hands into those eagerly stretched out to grasp it and received therefor a hand full of gold coin, the weight of which seemed to indicate that secrecy was to constitute no small portion of the bargain.

After having conducted his visitor to the entrance, where he took leave of him with many bends of the head and manifold protestations of devotion, Dom Sabbat locked his abode and Benilo hastened towards the city.

As he mentally surveyed the events of the evening even to their remotest consequences, he seemed to have neglected no precaution, nor omitted anything which might eventually prevent him from triumphing over his opponents. But even while reviewing with a degree of satisfaction the business of the night, terrible misgivings, like dream shadows, drooped over his mind. After all it was a foolhardy challenge he had thrown to fate. Maddened by the taunts of a woman, he had arrayed forces against himself which he must annihilate, else they would tear him to pieces. The time for temporizing had passed. He stood on the crater of a volcano, and his ears, trained to the sounds of danger, could hear the fateful rumbling in the depths below.

In that fateful hour there ripened in the brain of Benilo the Chamberlain a thought, destined in its final consequences to subvert a dynasty. After all there was no security for him in Rome, while the Germans held sway in the Patrimony of St. Peter. But--indolent and voluptuous as he was--caring for nothing save the enjoyment of the moment, how was he to wield the thunderbolt for their destruction, how was he to accomplish that, in which Crescentius had failed, backed by forces equal to those of the foreigners and entrenched in his impregnable stronghold?

As Benilo weighed the past against the future, the scales of his crimes sank so deeply to earth that, had Mercy thrown her weight in the balance it would not have changed the ultimate decree of Retribution. Only the utter annihilation of the foreign invaders could save him. Eckhardt's life might be at the mercy of John of the Catacombs. The poison phial might accomplish what the bravo's dagger failed to do,--but one thing stood out clearly and boldly in his mind; the German leader must not live! Theodora dared not win the wager,--but even therein lay the greater peril. The moment she scented an obstacle in her path, she would move all the powers of darkness to remove it and it required little perspicuity to point out the source, whence it proceeded.

At the thought of the humiliation he had received at her hands, Benilo gnashed his teeth in impotent rage. His pride, his vanity, his self-love, had been cruelly stabbed. He might retaliate by rousing her fear. But if she had passed beyond the point of caring?

As, wrapt in dark ruminations, Benilo followed the lonely path, which carried him toward the city, there came to him a thought, swift and sudden, which roused the evil nature within him to its highest tension.

Could his own revenge be more complete than by using his enemies, one for the destruction of the other? And as for the means,--Theodora herself would furnish them. Meanwhile--how would Johannes Crescentius bear the propinquity of his hereditary foe, the emperor? Might not the Senator be goaded towards the fateful brink of rebellion? Then,--Romans and Germans once more engaged in a death grapple,--his own time would come, must come, the time of victory and ultimate triumph.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE VISION OF SAN PANCRAZIO*

Two days had elapsed since Eckhardt's arrival in Rome. At the close of each day, he had met Benilo on the Palatine, each time renewing the topic of their former discourse. Benilo had listened attentively and, with all the eloquence at his command, had tried to dissuade the commander from taking a step so fateful in its remotest consequences. On the evening of the third day the Chamberlain had displayed a strange disquietude and replied to Eckhardt's questions with a wandering mind. Then without disclosing the nature of the business which he professed to have on hand, they parted earlier than had been their wont.

The shades of evening began to droop with phantom swiftness. Over the city brooded the great peace of an autumnal twilight. The last rays of the sun streaming from between a heavy cloud-bank, lay across the landscape in broad zones of brilliancy. In the pale green sky, one by one, the evening stars began to appear, but through the distant cloud-bank quivered summer lightning like the waving of fiery whips.

Feeling that sleep would not come to him in his present wrought up state of mind, Eckhardt resolved to revisit the spot which held the dearest he had possessed on earth. Perhaps, that prayer at the grave of Ginevra would bring peace to his soul and rest to his wearied heart. His feet bore him onward unawares through winding lanes and deserted streets until he reached the gate of San Sebastiano. There, he left the road for a turfy hollow, where groups of black cypress trees stretched out their branches like spectral 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 Gaeta, 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.