V

The rain was over, and the north wind had banished the clouds. Stars scintillated in the moonless heaven, like little wind-blown lamps. Resin-torches flared and fluttered, scattering sparks. The horsemen took their way by the Via Ricasoli, past San Marco and the serrated gate of San Gallo. Here the sentinels argued and swore, but were too sleepy to perceive what was on foot; and presently egress was secured by a good bribe. Outside the gate, the road followed the deep and narrow valley of the Mugnone. After passing several meagre villages, where the streets were even narrower than those in Florence, and the rough stone houses were as tall as fortresses, the party emerged into an olive-grove owned by the contadini of San Gervaso. Dismounting at the junction of two roads, they walked to the Hill of the Mill, hard by Messer Cipriano's vineyard. Here men awaited them with spades and mattocks; and here, behind the hill, beyond the marsh known as the Humid Hollow, the villa walls showed shadowy white through the darkness of the trees. Tall cypresses stood up black from the summit of the hill, and down below on the Mugnone was the name-giving watermill.

Grillo signified where, to his thinking, they ought to dig; Merula suggested another place; and Strocco, the gardener, swore they must go lower down, much nearer to the Humid Hollow, because the devils always hide themselves nearest to the slough. Cipriano, however, bade dig where Grillo advised; the spades grated, and soon there was an odour of new-dug earth. Giovanni shuddered, for a bat had brushed his face with its weird pinions; but Merula clapped him on the shoulder, crying, 'Fear nothing, little monk! we shall find no devil here. This Grillo is an ass. Thank heaven, it's not the sort of excavation I'm used to. At Rome, in the 45th Olympiad' (Merula scorned the Christian calendar), 'in the days of Pope Innocent VIII., diggers from Lombardy, who were working on the Appian Way close to the tomb of Cæcilia Metella, found an ancient sarcophagus with the inscription, "Julia, daughter of Claudius," and in it a body clothed in wax—a fair maid of fifteen, with the semblance of one asleep. You would have sworn she breathed: the flush of life was on her cheek. Multitudes flocked to the tomb and refused to leave it; for such was Julia's beauty, as to be incredible to those who had not beheld it. But it ill-suited the Pope that his children should adore a dead heathen, and he caused the body to be interred secretly under the Pincian Hill. Do you take me, lad? That was something like excavating!'

And Merula contemptuously kicked the clods which the diggers were throwing up at his feet. Suddenly all the onlookers started, for a jarring sound had come from one of the spades.

'Bones!' said the gardener; 'the ancient burying-place was here.'

At this moment the long-drawn howl of a dog was heard from San Gervaso, and Giovanni thought, 'We are profaning a grave. May it prove nothing worse!'

'Bones of a horse!' cried Strocco contemptuously, and dragged out a mouldered, long-shaped skull.

'Grillo,' said Messer Cipriano anxiously, 'were it not better we tried elsewhere?'

'Did I not say so?' cried Merula; and taking two of the workmen with him he began new operations at the base of the hill. Strocco also had detached a party to dig in the Humid Hollow.

Presently excited shouts were heard from Messer Giorgio.

'Hither all ye simpletons! Did not I know where ye should dig?'

All ran to his side; but again the treasure proved naught; the great man's marble fragment was only an ordinary stone. They had all deserted Grillo, who, openly humiliated, was digging alone by the light of a broken lantern.

The wind had fallen and the air grew warmer: out of the Humid Hollow exhaled a mist. The breath of primroses and violets mingled with the dankness of stagnant water. Dawn was in the sky, and the cocks crowed for the second time, signal of the departing of night.

Suddenly from the depths of the pit in which Grillo was concealed there arose a despairing yell.

'Help! Help! I am falling! The ground has given way!'

His lantern was extinguished, and at first nothing could be seen. He was heard struggling and panting, groaning and moaning. Lights were fetched, and disclosed the roof of a subterranean vault broken through by Grillo's weight. Two lads crept into the hole.

'Eh, Grillo! Where are you? Give us your hand! or are you buried alive, poor fool?'

But Grillo seemed to have lost his voice. Heedless of a sprained arm, he dragged himself along, kicking and struggling most strangely. At last he burst into an ecstasy:—

'An idol! An idol! Hasten, Messer Cipriano! 'tis a magnificent idol!'

'Idiot,' said Strocco, 'you have got the head of another horse.'

'I tell you, No! There is but a hand missing. The rest is perfect—feet, head, shoulders!' shouted Grillo beside himself.

Then the labourers descended into the pit, carefully turning over the brickwork ruins. Giovanni, stretched on the ground, looked down into the vault, from which came the chill of a grave, and the mouldy breath of long-covered damp.

Messer Cipriano bade the men stand aside, and Giovanni could see in the profundity between the walls of ancient red brick, a white and naked body which lay like a corpse upon a bier, yet in the flaring of the torchlight seemed rosy and warm with life.

'Venus!' cried Messer Giorgio: 'As I live, the Venus of Praxiteles! I cry you honour, friend Cipriano! Not the dukedoms of Milan or Genoa could bring you greater felicity!'

As for Grillo, they dug him out; and though his face was clotted with blood, and his arm had swelled into uselessness, in his old eyes shone the pride of a conqueror.

'Grillo! friend! beloved! benefactor! And I scorned you for a fool: and you—you are the cleverest of men!' cried Messer Giorgio, and falling into his arms he kissed him with deep emotion.

'Once,' he continued garrulously, 'Filippo Brunelleschi found a Hermes in just such a vault under his own house. Doubtless the pagans, knowing the value of these statues, hid them from the fury of the Christians, who were exterminating the old worship.'

Grillo listened, smiling beatifically, inattentive to the pipe of the shepherd and the bleating of sheep. He saw not that the sky shone now with a white and watery brilliance, nor knew that from Florence the belfries were exchanging their morning salutation.

'Gently! gently! To the right there! So! Keep it out from the wall!' cried Messer Cipriano. 'Five silver pieces to each, if you can get it out without breakage.'

By this time the stars had all disappeared with the exception of the orb of Venus, which still sparkled like a diamond in the glow of day. And slowly, slowly, with her ineffable smile, the goddess herself arose—as once she had risen from the foam of the sea, so now she ascended from her millennial tomb in the darkness of the earth:—

'Glory to thee, golden-limbed Aphrodite,

Delight of the gods and of mortals ...'

declaimed Merula.

But Giovanni saw her face blanched in the illumination of the white sunlight; and himself paling with terror, the boy murmured, 'La Diavolessa bianca!'

He rose up and would have fled; but wonder overcame his fear. Not though he had known himself guilty of the mortal sin which is punished with eternal fire, could he have torn his gaze from that chaste and naked body, from that countenance flaming with the effulgence of beauty. Never in the days when Aphrodite was queen of the world had any worshipped her with devouter trembling.