"After all," said Elsie, "these are not such bad people, and I have been right well entertained among them. They are of ourselves,—they do not prey on the poor, but only on our enemies, the princes and nobles, who look on us as sheep to be shorn and slaughtered for their wearing and eating. These men are none such, but pitiful to poor peasants and old widows, whom they feed and clothe out of the spoils of the rich. As to their captain,—would you believe it?—he is the same handsome gentleman who once gave you a ring,—you may have forgotten him, as you never think of such things, but I knew him in a moment,—and such a religious man, that no sooner did he find that we were pilgrims on a holy errand, than he gave orders to have us set free with all honor, and a band of the best of them to escort us through the mountains; and the people of the town are all moved to do us reverence, and coming with garlands and flowers to wish us well and ask our prayers. So let us set forth immediately."
Agnes followed her grandmother through the long passages and down the dark, mouldy stairway to the court-yard, where two horses were standing caparisoned for them. A troop of men in high peaked hats, cloaked and plumed, were preparing also to mount, while a throng of women and children stood pressing around. When Agnes appeared, enthusiastic cries were heard: "Viva Jesù!" "Viva Maria!" "Viva! viva Jesù! nostro Re!" and showers of myrtle-branches and garlands fell around. "Pray for us!" "Pray for us, holy pilgrims!" was uttered eagerly by one and another. Mothers held up their children; and beggars and cripples, aged and sick,—never absent in an Italian town,—joined with loud cries in the general enthusiasm. Agnes stood amid it all, pale and serene, with that elevated expression of heavenly calm on her features which is often the clear shining of the soul after the wrench and torture of some great interior conflict. She felt that the last earthly chain was broken, and that now she belonged to Heaven alone. She scarcely saw or heard what was around her, wrapt in the calm of inward prayer.
"Look at her! she is beautiful as the Madonna!" said one and another. "She is divine as Santa Catarina!" said others. "She might have been the wife of our chief, who is a nobleman of the oldest blood, but she chose to be the bride of the Lord," said others: for Giulietta, with a woman's love of romancing, had not failed to make the most among her companions of the love-adventures of Agnes.
Agnes meanwhile was seated on her palfrey, and the whole train passed out of the court-yard into the dim, narrow street,—men, women, and children following. On reaching the public square, they halted a moment by the side of the antique fountain to water their horses. The groups that surrounded it at this time were such as a painter would have delighted to copy. The women and girls of this obscure mountain-town had all that peculiar beauty of form and attitude which appears in the studies of the antique; and as they poised on their heads their copper water-jars of the old Etruscan pattern, they seemed as if they might be statues of golden bronze, had not the warm tints of their complexion, the brilliancy of their large eyes, and the bright picturesque colors of their attire given the richness of painting to their classic outlines. Then, too, the men, with their finely-moulded limbs, their figures so straight and strong and elastic, their graceful attitudes, and their well-fitting, showy costumes, formed a no less imposing feature in the scene. Among them all sat Agnes waiting on her palfrey, seeming scarcely conscious of the enthusiasm which surrounded her. Some admiring friend had placed in her hand a large bough of blossoming hawthorn, which she held unconsciously, as, with a sort of childlike simplicity, she turned from right to left, to make reply to the request for prayers, or to return thanks for the offered benediction of some one in the crowd.
When all the preparations were at last finished, the procession of mounted horsemen, with a confused gathering of the population, passed down the streets to the gates of the city, and as they passed they sang the words of the Crusaders' Hymn, which had fluttered back into the traditionary memory of Europe from the knights going to redeem the Holy Sepulchre.
"Fairest Lord Jesus,
Ruler of all Nature,
O Thou of God and man the Son!
Thee will I honor,
Thee will I cherish,
Thou, my soul's glory, joy, and crown!
"Fair are the meadows,
Fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the pleasing garb of spring:
Jesus shines fairer,
Jesus is purer
Who makes the woful heart to sing!
"Fair is the sunshine,
Fairer still the moonlight,
And all the twinkling starry host:
Jesus shines fairer,
Jesus is purer,
Than all the angels heaven can boast!"
They were singing the second verse, as, emerging from the dark old gateway of the town, all the distant landscape of silvery olive-orchards, crimson clover-fields, blossoming almond-trees, fig-trees, and grapevines, just in the tender green of spring, burst upon their view. Agnes felt a kind of inspiration. From the high mountain elevation she could discern the far-off brightness of the sea,—all between one vision of beauty,—and the religious enthusiasm which possessed all around her had in her eye all the value of the most solid and reasonable faith. With us, who may look on it from a colder and more distant point of view, doubts may be suggested whether this naïve impressibility to religious influences, this simple, whole-hearted abandonment to their expression, had any real practical value. The fact that any or all of the actors might before night rob or stab or lie quite as freely as if it had not occurred may well give reason for such a question. Be this as it may, the phenomenon is not confined to Italy or the religion of the Middle Ages, but exhibits itself in many a prayer-meeting and camp-meeting of modern days. For our own part, we hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more devout element of man's nature than never to have any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and he fall again.
In all this scene Agostino Sarelli took no part. He had simply given orders for the safe-conduct of Agnes, and then retired to his own room. From a window, however, he watched the procession as it passed through the gates of the city, and his resolution was immediately taken to proceed at once by a secret path to the place where the pilgrims should emerge upon the high-road.