THE ADORER
"Ave rosa speciosa!"
Innocent III.
I. Blood Red
Sainte Napolitaine aux mains pleines de feux,
Rose au coeur violet, fleur de sainte Gudule,
As-tu trouvé ta croix dans le désert des cieux?
Gérard de Nerval, les Chimères.
The night entered through the loophole—the end of a day of horror. He had been forgotten; he had not been given his daily walk. Perhaps he was going to perish here, without seeing the Novella again.
Morning, noon or evening, according to the arabesques of his fancy. Veltro, his jailor, opened the door with a violent turn of the key: "To the tower!" Delia Preda obediently climbed the few steps of the narrow and dim stairway; he climbed slowly, as if to perform a duty to which no exception could be taken, for he knew that these daily moments of apparent liberty in the open air were given to intensify the horrors of his cell and to prevent him from losing the notion of time and the duration of his torment. It is to reach this end rationally, without doubt, that the modern, rigid philanthropists instituted strict regulations in the new prisons. In 1489 the chief constables of Naples already knew the means of preventing these abuses of confidence by which the condemned person transmutes his punishment into an evil dream; but this was reserved for the prisoners of distinction. Guido della Preda, Count of Santa-Maria, was accused of having conspired, some said against the security of the State, others against the queen's honor. Because he was a gentleman, they had not hanged him; they had not beheaded him because he was innocent; a special punishment had fallen to his lot, for in a royal jail a difference must be established between prisoners who are guilty and those who are not.
He was in solitary confinement; the consciousness of the injustice he suffered might have led him into attempts at escape or revolt, and his intelligence would have made him the chief of the rascals sprawling all together on the straw of the common dungeon; and it is not fitting that a prisoner leave the prison through the window or that a jailer be strangled in a scuffle: it sets a very bad example and is liable to discredit prisons. There was yet another reason for this refinement, a privilege discussed and accorded by the State Council at the request of the Holy Office (for Della Preda was one of the thirteen peers of royalty): "Our Guido is innocent according to laws of this world, but who can boast of being so according to eternal laws? Let him, then, suffer in advance the punishment which God reserves for him upon his entry into the other life! Let him suffer more than the others, since he is less guilty! Let each hour of his mortal life be a painful preparatory measure leading to liberating death, through which eternity opens! Ah! What a good fortune for him to have been implicated in this action!"
The nineteenth hour sounded, seven o'clock according to our mode of reckoning time; by habit, Della Preda lifted his eyes towards the space framed by the high walls, and then towards the beginning of the arch, but he only beheld the night. This clock indicated the time for him by ringings violent as trumpets, and truly the pious desires of the Holy Office were being accomplished: the mortal hours of his mortal life fell one by one on his head, like leaden balls.
But all had not been foreseen! What holy monk could divine that within himself the prisoner would find joys and torments which not even the venomous Parthenope could have aroused in any heart.
The Tower of the Cross (Torre della Croce), so called at that time and for the past four hundred years the Tower of the Prey (Torre della Preda), dominates with its battlements all the vulgar quarters of Naples. It rears itself at the extreme end of a mass of old ruins still serving as a prison, through custom, and to which the people have given the name of Prison of the Blood-Hound (Carcer delle Veltro). At the end of the fifteenth century, these ruins, of a somewhat recent reconstruction, had the appearance of a fortress, and a space of a hundred and fifty feet was free between the walls, flanked by moats, and the first low houses of the outskirts.
At the center of the platform where Della Preda was daily led, a guard house was built which divided it in two, save for narrow passages, and limited the view on the side of the country. As he placed his foot on the last step, the prisoner had opposite him, to his left, the town which stood out in the distance, full of square belfries and domes; to the right was the blue gulf.
A church with flying buttresses, heavy and in ruins, first draws the unaccustomed glance and fixes it by the splendor of its brilliantly ornamented madonna. When the setting sun sank to the end of the pointed niche and bathed her with rays, the rubies and chrysolites of her tiara, the lepidolites and topazes of her starred aureola reflected the brilliance of luminaries and the faced adorned with diamond eyes looked rapturous.
The first time that Guido climbed to the tower was an evening when the sun was setting. He saw neither the flashing town with its green terraces, nor the blue bay with its white sails; but, uttering a cry, he asked:
"Down there! Down there! Who is that lady?"
"That lady? What lady?" repeated Veltro, with an astonished, already uneasy eye.
"Yes, that lady in front of the church of the Orphans?"
"Ah! you mean above the portal? That's the Novella, my lord," Veltro replied, baring his head as he pronounced the name, "a blessed and benevolent madonna. You can hardly see her well from below, the street is too narrow, but everybody knows that she is there, and that is enough."
"What an agreeable woman!" answered Guido. "O Novella! Protect me and love me!"
He knelt, bending his head, and when he stood up, after the last words of his supplicating ave, the Novella was smiling, full of grace and tenderness.
"So you accept my prayer? Thanks, madonna! Deign to receive me as your worshiper, let my breathing be a praise to your immaculate tenderness, to your sovereign grace. Open your goodness to the irrevocable gift of my life. Let me be to you as the pupil to the eye which moves it as it wills. Trample me with the blessed weight of the adorable feet which crushed the serpent! Let my flesh, for love of you, be withered, my bones broken, my blood shed. Ah! I love you, I Novella, blessed and benevolent madonna!"
The madonna accepted the pact: a sign denoted her wish, her choice and her pleasure. Three times her eyelids drooped over her eyes and three times they were raised. Then night fell and it seemed to Guido that a most notable miracle had suspended, for several instants, the sun at the horizon's edge.
"He is guilty, quite guilty," Veltro reflected, "but he has piety, he regrets his crimes. May the madonna listen to him!"
"Listen to me, my lord," added the jailor, "and know that there is no better recourse in the world than to implore the Novella. You see it is not for nothing that she is called the Madonna of the Orphans! Her arms always are open and she does not carry a babe because all God's creatures are her children. She is the only one, at least to my knowledge. Santa Madonna degli Orfani, ora pro nobis."
During the two months that the Novella had been Guido's mistress, she had given him only happiness, charming and adorable happiness. He loved her and she smiled upon his love, except on certain days when a light cloud made ashen the pure face or the clear eyes of the beloved. He loved and, absorbed in his worship, felt himself loved. At first apprehensive, his tenderness now grew daring. The gentle but eternal smile no longer sufficed. The lover felt passion's boldness grow in his heart, like an imprisoned rose impelled by its sap to throw the living treasure of its purple to the broad day-light. The hour was approaching when the timid adorer would demand some tokens from the silent adored one, oh! the merest tokens of an adoration that was shared; the hour was approaching, the hour of communion, the spiritual hour which takes its sister by the hand, the hour of serious and tender eyes, the hour of strong caresses—the carnal hour.
The dark day which he passed under the hammer strokes of the pitiless clock was all the more painful to Guido since he had chosen it for definite questionings. Like all others, like lovers, he wished to know how matters stood, when it is simple to direct one's own questions and answers: but that is perhaps what he did, and why do anything else?
Veltro explained. It had been the fête of San Gaetano, the country his wife came from, about two leagues from Naples. He had received permission, had left, like a mad-cap, without informing the valet charged with his duties. "Would his lord the prisoner be good enough to forgive him?"
"Yes, Veltro, I pardon you. You are not bad and I believe you will not let it occur again, when I tell you that I have suffered greatly."
He slowly mounted, as to a certain joy, half shutting his eyes under the prolonged caresses of desire, counting the steps, trembling at the approach of the last and thirty-third.
A sudden alarm arrested his customary transport as he reached the battlements: he advanced hesitatingly, with gestures of astonishment and deception.
"Yet it is she, it is really she, and I do not recognize her."
"Set your mind at rest, my lord, there is nothing the matter, quite the contrary. They have put on her summer robe, that's all. The Novella changes her attire each season. And then there was a holiday, as well. Ah! if I had known! But how beautiful she is! She is beautiful as a queen."
Yes, she was beautiful. But Guido paused a moment before admitting this transmutation in which he had not at all participated. He sadly regarded the new Woman, sadly and with reproachful eyes:
"Are there seasons for my love? Are there days, are there hours? I loved the sky-colored robe which you had put on for our first meeting? Why then have you doffed it? Was it intended for me, at least? Did you wish to surprise me with a richer vesture that would more nobly become your serene beauty? Ah! queen, this too comely cloak does not bring my heart nearer to your heart, nor your lips to my lips; then, to what avail? You were blue like the sky and the sea, blue like the dream, blue like love—why this bleeding purple? In what stream of blood have you dipped your grace? Had I not offered you the torrent of my veins? Queen, you have betrayed me! You still smile at me, but your smile is cruel, you scoff, you scorn! An unfriendly day was that one in which, far from my tears, you permitted barbarous hands to profane the limbs I adore! It was I who should have divested you, it was I who should have covered you, divine and nude, in the sacred cloak of my effusions! Ah! you make me weep, Novella! What! you too weep, dear Passion, so you do yet love me? Oh! weep not! Pardon, pardon, I am the wicked one, I am the inclement one, and, moreover, I was mad. It is conceivable: I thought I had lost you. But no, it is not so? You are mine, more than ever, only mine! Let me be truly happy! No? Heed me, I love you! Not yet? It is true, I did doubt you; it is necessary to suffer, I wish to suffer."