CHAPTER XIV.
Already two days and two nights had Francesco passed in a state of raging delirium. On the third day, when he, as if petrified, and motionless like a statue, was standing before the picture, the door of his chamber opened, and there was a rustling behind him as if of female garments. He turned round, and beheld a very beautiful woman, whom he recognized at once as the original of his picture.
His astonishment was now beyond all description when he beheld that form, which he had so long contemplated as a marble statue, living, breathing, and blooming, before him. Nay, he was seized with a kind of mysterious terror, when he looked from his beautiful visitant back to the picture, of which the resemblance was so accurate, that it appeared like the reflection of her features in a mirror.
He felt the fullest conviction, that this event was the effect of supernatural agency; he could not utter a word, but, overcome by his fears, fell on his knees before the strange lady, whom he scarcely believed to be more than an aerial phantom.
This living Venus raised him up, however, and immediately proceeded to relate to him her own history.
She had seen Francesco at the time when he was yet a pupil in the school of Leonardo di Rovino. She was then but very young, but had conceived for him a passion so ardent, that it had never lost possession of her heart; and at last she had determined on leaving her parents and friends, who resided in the country, and wandering away to find him in Rome, as an inward voice had told her that he loved her very much; and that, merely from the force of that attachment, had been led to paint her portrait, which warning she now found to have been strictly true.
Francesco now believed all that she told him. He became persuaded that a secret mental sympathy existed between himself and this stranger, which had given rise to the passion by which he had so long been haunted. He forgot the statue, and gave himself no trouble with inquiries as to how the resemblance betwixt it and his new visitor had been produced. Indeed such questions would have been very needless, as they admitted not of any satisfactory answer.
The consequence of this visit was the solemnization (not by Christian, but by heathen rites) of a marriage betwixt the strange woman and Francesco, which was attended by all his libertine friends and associates. As it was found that his bride had brought with her a casket filled with jewels and ready money, he immediately hired servants, and purchased a house, where they lived in great splendour and luxury for many months.
At the close of this period the paramour of Francesco gave birth to a son, which event was followed by her death, attended by circumstances so mysterious and horrible, that Francesco was obliged to fly from Rome, being accused of sorcery and witchcraft, also of divers other crimes peculiarly odious and abhorrent to the spirit and laws of the Christian religion. In consequence of all this, he was obliged to make his escape suddenly during the night, taking with him his child; and, as if endowed with supernatural energies, he made his way onwards to a wild and mountainous district of country, which he had before visited in his days of extravagance and pleasure, and where he knew that there was a cavern cut in the rock, in which he was now glad to take refuge with the child from a violent thunder storm.