The Hill of Venus. Gallizier Nathan
catching at his throat like a drowning man.
"The flesh is weak and temptation ever near," – the strange friar spoke in the elder Villani's stead, as he picked up the pen with a sidelong glance at the sick man. There was to be no hesitation, no wavering now. The moment lost might never again return!
"You must sign the pledge," the sick man, turning to his son, interposed tremulously. His own misgivings ran apace with those of the strange monk.
Snatching the pen from the latter's hand, Francesco bent over the scroll and scratched his name barbarously under the pledge. Then, from his nerveless fingers, it dropped anew upon the floor.
The older man, who had been watching him narrowly, heaved a sigh of relief.
"You have assured my eternal salvation and your own," he said in a weak, toneless voice. "Retire now, my son, that this holy friar and I may arrange the details of your going."
A hot flush suffused Francesco's face as he straightened himself to his full height.
"Of my going?" he said slowly. "Surely I am not yet to go! Am I not to wait at least until – "
"My death?" finished the elder Villani, looking at him with piercing intentness. "You shall not have to wait long. I shall never see the light of another day!"
Francesco struggled to suppress a moan which rose to his lips. Then he covered his face with both hands. His nerves were giving way. Further resistance was impossible. Mentally and physically worn, he was encountering a will, pitiless, uncompromising. He felt further argument to be useless. And the strange friar, noting his condition, knew that the victory was theirs.
He placed a scroll in the elder Villani's hands.
"The absolution from His Holiness," he said, with a low, solemn voice, intended, nevertheless, to be heard by Francesco. "The conditions are fulfilled."
Francesco glanced from one to the other: he understood.
He had been sold; his youth, his life bartered away, like the life of a slave.
Fearing an outburst, the elder Villani turned to his son.
"You had best retire and seek your rest, Francesco," he said in a voice strangely mingled with concern and dread. "Fra Girolamo and I will arrange these matters between us. Leave us in good faith. You will depart on the morrow! I wish I knew you safe in the cloister even now! Go, my son, – and peace be with you!" —
Francesco turned silently to leave the room. Presently something, a quiver of feeling, stopped him. He hesitated for a moment, then he returned to the bedside, bending over it and gazing sadly into his father's face.
"I shall see you again in the morning?" he asked gently.
"By the will of God," the sick man replied with feeble voice.
His head had sunk upon his breast. Francesco crossed the room and was gone. A moment after they heard a loud, jarring laugh without. Then all was still.
The elder Villani and the monk exchanged looks in silence. For some time neither spoke. When the silence was broken at last, it was in a way which revealed the close touch between the minds of these two.
"Was the struggle great?" questioned the monk.
"Great as the sacrifice demanded," replied the sick man. "And yet, not as fierce as I had apprehended. Francesco is my own flesh and blood! Ah! At times my heart reproaches me for what I have done!"
"A weakness you will overcome! In giving back to the Church the boy who was in a fair way to become her enemy, who had been reared in the camp of her mortal foes, who had been fed on the milk of heresy and apostasy, you have but done your duty. He will soon have forgotten that other life, which would have consigned him to tortures eternal, and will gladly accept what is required of him for the repose of your soul and his own!"
There was a brief pause, during which the elder Villani seemed to collect his waning energies. The monk's speech had roused in him a spirit of resistance, of defiance. Who were they that would dispose of the life of his own flesh and blood? It was too late, to undo what he had done. But it should not pass without a protest.
"Monk, you know not whereof you speak," the sick man said hoarsely. "The rioting blood of youth cannot suddenly be stemmed in the veins, and congealed to ice at the command of a priest! I too was young and happy once, – long ago, and how happy! God who knows of my transgression, alone knows! I have paid the penalty with my own flesh and blood. Tell His Holiness, he may be satisfied!"
"His Holiness could demand no less," interposed the monk. "Your sin was mortal: you added to it by placing the offspring of a forbidden love at the court of the arch-heretic, thrice under ban of excommunication."
"That was my real sin, – that other would have been forgiven," replied the elder Villani bitterly, as if musing aloud. "Let those who are undefiled, cast the first stone. How beautiful she was, – how heavenly sweet! And with dying breath, as if the impending dissolution of the body had imbued her with the faculty to look into the future, she piteously begged me, as if she apprehended my weakness after her spirit had fled: – 'Do not make a monk of my boy!'"
He paused with a sob, then he continued:
"Will the repose of my soul, which I have purchased with this immeasurable sacrifice, insure her own in the great beyond? What will she say to me, when we meet in the realm of shadows, when the plaint of her child is wafted to her in the fumes of the incense, while his trembling hands swing the censer and he curses the day when he saw the light of life?"
"She will rather bless you, knowing from what temptations of the flesh you have removed him," replied the monk, peering anxiously from his cowl down to where the sick man lay.
This, at least, must be no enforced sacrifice. Gregorio Villani must stand acknowledged to himself and the world for the greater glory of the Church. He, the one time friend of Frederick, the Emperor, by whose side he had entered the gates of Antioch in the face of the fierce defence of the Saracens, he, the Ghibelline Emperor's right hand in the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre, must now and forever sever his cause from that of the arch-enemy of papacy, and die in the fold of the Church.
The monk had calculated on the sick man's waning strength, and the ebbing tide of life proved his mightiest ally.
The stricken man lay still for a time, then he heaved a sigh.
"God grant that your words be true, – that I have not cast him in the way of temptation instead."
Raising himself with difficulty upon his pillows, he glanced significantly at the envoy from Rome. Then, with voice needlessly hushed, for there was no one present to hear him, he added:
"He must depart at once! He must not return to Avellino!"
The monk pondered a while, then shook his head.
"It were hardly wise. Francesco has signed the pledge and will not break his oath. He must himself inform the Apulian court of his decision, of his choice."
And inwardly he thought: Thus only will the sacrifice be complete and the triumph of the Church!
"Might he not inform them from wherever he goes?"
There was a strange dread in the elder Villani's eyes, which remained not unobserved by the other.
"You would not have Francesco, flesh of your flesh, blood of your blood, appear a coward who fears to proclaim his own free will?"
The monk laid stress on the last words.
The elder Villani was startled. Yet he understood.
"His own free will," he repeated as in a dream. "The boy is proud. He will never proclaim his father's shame!"
The monk smiled, – a subtle, inward smile.
Francesco's extraction was an open secret, though no one had ever alluded to it in his presence. Yet the Pope's delegate judged the youth correctly. Besides, the elder Villani's suggestion would have upset his own and his master's plans. The Church could be wholly triumphant only if Francesco openly denounced the friends, the loves of his boyhood, his youth. A stealthy flight from the court to the cloister would scarcely have added to the