Our party were immediately separated one from another. I saw the priest lifted on a mule and hurried away towards the city, with a horseman on each hand of him. The fiery Cotilius, and one or two more, were compelled to follow, with similar attendance, in the same direction; others, again, had their horses’ heads turned more to the westward—but all departed at speed, and were soon lost to my view among the projections of the tombs. The last that remained to be disposed of were Athanasia and myself, and for a moment I had some hope that we might perhaps be intrusted to the same guards; but this hope was in vain, and after I perceived that it was so, scarcely even was time permitted to me for bidding her farewell. To kiss her hand, and to whisper a single word of parting hope into her ear, was all I could do. A tear rolled from her [pg 221]cheek and fell upon my hand; yet she smiled faintly upon me, and “Hope,” said she—“yes, dear Valerius, Hope and Faith both go with me.” And with that the pale maiden was separated from the arm to which she had trusted, and I saw her also mounted and borne away rapidly. A moment after, I found myself, in like manner, seized and lifted upon a horse, and almost before I could look around me, we had escaped from the flare of the torches, and the crowd of the soldiery, and were stretching at a rapid pace, I knew not whither, although I suspected, from the width of the road, that we had regained the Appian.
But I have forgotten to mention to you, that just at the moment when they were lifting Athanasia upon the mule that was to bear her from my sight, my eye caught a glimpse of the witch Pona, who was sitting at the root of one of the pine-trees, close to the tower. And behind her stood, leaning against the tree, a figure wrapped in a rich red cloak, which I suspected to be a female also, but could not be certain, because the countenance was concealed in the folds of the garment. To this person, whoever it might be, the witch turned round eagerly, while the soldiers were carrying off Athanasia. I saw no more, for, as I have told you, immediately afterwards I also was carried away.
CHAPTER VI.
Our hasty pace had not borne us to any great distance from the place where all these things occurred, ere the sky, which, as ye have heard, had all that night been sufficiently variable, began to exhibit appearances which my two companions interpreted as significant of the approach of one of those nocturnal storms, to which, at that season of the year, the fair heaven of Italy is peculiarly subject. That they apprehended somewhat of this sort, I perceived from their looks, as they stopped for a moment to draw the hoods of their mantles over their brazen helmets; for words they uttered none, either to me or to each other, until our journey drew near its close. For me, however, the numberless agitations through which I had passed in the course of the few preceding hours, had, I suppose, communicated an unnatural measure of ardour to my boyish blood; for neither did I feel the night-breeze chill me as we rushed through it, nor partook, in any sort, of the desire my companions testified to cover themselves from the rain, which seemed to be about to discharge itself out of all those black and lowering clouds now gathered above our heads from every region of the heavens. When, on the contrary, the first heavy drops fell, I bared my [pg 223]forehead with the eagerness of one who, in a parched region, comes suddenly upon the margin of a well-spring. Nor did this sensation subside even after the storm had thickened to the utmost, and the dusty roads had drunk abundantly of the plashing rain. The strong wind blew with redoubled coolness upon my moistened neck—the rain-drops dashed on my hot hands; and I perceived, that, as is the nature of those animals, the thunder which was mustering in the air, filled my horse one moment with dread, and the next with a blind fierceness. At last the thunder shouted over-head, and its echoes spread wide and far on either side, until they seemed to be absorbed to the left in the remote depths of the Appenine, and on the right hand in the measureless bosom of the Western Sea—of which, as we galloped along the hill side, the broad lightning (unless my fancy deceived me) revealed ever and anon a distant and melancholy glimpse.
We had passed a hill covered with towns, villages, and stately mansions, (which I afterwards learned was no other than the famous Alban,) ere the storm subsided beneath the influence of the reddening dawn. Yet even then we slackened not our pace, although the horses were by this time not a little exhausted with the swiftness of their motion, and the weight of their wet riders. On rode we in the growing light of the morning; but I perceived ere long that we had left the wide and magnificent Appian Way, and were pursuing the line of a narrower road, which seemed to carry us more and more westward.
We halted for a moment on the brow of a declivity, where three paths separated; and I perceived that [pg 224]among my guides there was some little uncertainty as to which of these it behoved them to follow. While they were muttering together, I looked and beheld at length the wide sea heaving far below, over what appeared to me to be a forest as mighty as I had ever seen in my native island.
Old hoary oaks leaned on either hand quite over the narrow path-way, into which (after their brief pause of consultation) my conductors directed our course. Here and there, such a shield had those huge leafy boughs extended over the road, that the dust rose from amongst the feet of our horses as if all that night not one drop of rain had fallen there; although elsewhere, in the absence of such mighty trees, the water lying across the path in pools testified abundantly that the tempest had not spared the forest any more than the champaign. Vast waving gulfs of bay and ilex, with here and there some solitary pine raising itself proudly in the midst, seemed to stretch away on either hand between the groves of those gigantic oaks.
The path we followed carried us ever deeper and deeper into the bosom of the woods; and, at length, so buried were we in the windings of their stifling shade, that I had lost all notion of the direction in which I was moving; until, after two or three hot hours, weary man and jaded horse were, I believe, equally delighted with snuffing once more the open current of the air. We reached not the edge of the forest, however, before I could hear distinctly the dashing of the Mediterranean waves; and the last ascent we climbed laid open to my view a long sweep of the rolling waters, and their rocky coast garnished every where with the richness of super[pg 225]incumbent woods. Far, very far, in the distant north, I thought I could recognize some of the stately towers of Ostium, bosomed apparently within the billows over which they presided. All between was one wide waste of wood and rock, save here and there a watch-tower perched on the margin, and whitened half-way up with the foam of the yet uncalmed sea.