The Headsman; Or, The Abbaye des Vignerons

by James Fenimore Cooper

The path across the Col has been already described. It winds along the margin of the little lake, passing the site of the ancient temple of Jupiter at the distance of a few hundred yards from the convent. Sweeping past the northern extremity of the little basin, where it crosses the frontiers of Piedmont, it cuts the ragged wall of rock, and, after winding en corniche for a short distance by the edge of a fearful ravine, it plunges at once towards the plains of Italy.

As there was a desire to have no unnecessary witnesses of Maso's promised revelations, Conrad and Pippo had been advised to quit the mountain before the rest of the party, and the muleteers were requested to keep a little in the rear. At the point where the path leaves the lake, the whole dismounted, Pierre going ahead with the beasts, with a view to make the first precipitous pitch from the Col on foot. Maso now took the lead. When he reached the spot where the convent is last in view, he stopped and turned to gaze at the venerable and storm-beaten pile.

"Thou hesitated," observed the Baron de Willading, who suspected an intention to escape.

"Signore; the look at even a stone is a melancholy office, when it is known to be the last. I have often climbed to the Col, but I shall never dare do it again; for, though the honorable and worthy châtelain, and the most worthy bailiff, are willing to pay their homage to a Doge of Genoa in his own person, they may be less tender of his honor when he is absent. Addio, caro San Bernardo! Like me, thou art solitary and weather-beaten, and like me, though rude of aspect, thou hast thy uses. We are both beacons--thou to tell the traveller where to seek safety, and I to warn him where danger is to be avoided."

There is a dignity in manly suffering, that commands our sympathies. All who heard this apostrophe to the abode of the Augustines were struck with its simplicity and its moral. They followed the speaker in silence, however, to the point where the path makes its first sudden descent. The spot was favorable to the purpose of Il Maledetto. Though still on the level of the lake, the convent, the Col, and all it contained, with the exception of a short line of its stony path, were shut from their view, by the barrier of intervening rock. The ravine lay beneath, ragged, ferruginous, and riven into a hundred faces by the eternal action of the seasons. All above, beneath, and around, was naked, and chaotic as the elements of the globe before they received the order-giving touch of the Creator. The imagination could scarce picture a scene of greater solitude and desolation.

"Signore," said Maso, respectfully raising his cap, and speaking with calmness, "this confusion of nature resembles my own character. Here everything is torn, sterile, and wild; but patience, charity, and generous love, have been able to change even this rocky height into an abode for those who live for the good of others. There is none so worthless that use may not be made of him. We are types of the earth our mother; useless, and savage, or repaying the labor, that we receive, as we are treated like men, or hunted like beasts. If the great, and the powerful, and the honored, would become the friends and monitors of the weak and ignorant, instead of remaining so many watch-dogs to snarl at and bite all that they fear may encroach on their privileges, raising the cry of the wolf each time that they hear the wail of the timid and bleating lamb, the fairest works of God would not be so often defaced. I have lived, and it is probable that I shall die an outlaw; but the severest pangs I ever know come from the the mockery which accuses my nature of abuses that are the fruits of your own injustice. That stone," kicking a bit of rock from the path into the ravine beneath, "is as much master of its direction after my foot has set its mass in motion, as the poor untaught being who is thrown upon the world, despised, unaided, suspected, and condemned even before he has sinned, has the command of his own course. My mother was fain and good. She wanted only the power to withstand the arts of one, who, honored in the opinions of all around her, undermined her virtue. He was great, noble, and powerful; while she hath little beside her beauty and her weakness. Signori,--the odds against her were too much. I was the punishment of her fault. I came into a world then, in which every man despised me before I had done any act to deserve its scorn,"

"Nay, this is pushing opinions to extremes!" interrupted the Signor Grimaldi, who had scarce breathed, in his eagerness to catch the syllables as they came from the other's tongue.

"We began, Signori, as we have ended; distrustful, and struggling to see which could do the other the most harm. A reverend and holy monk, who knew my history, would have filled a soul with heaven that the wrongs of the world had already driven to, the verge of hell. The experiment failed. Homily and precept," Maso smiled bitterly as he continued, "are but indifferent weapons to fight with against hourly wrongs; instead of becoming a cardinal and the counsellor of the head of the church, I am the man ye see. Signor Grimaldi, the monk who gave me his care was Father Girolamo. He told the truth to thy secretary, for I am the son of poor Annunziata Altieri, who was once thought worthy to attract thy passing notice. The deception of calling myself another of thy children was practised for my own security. The means were offered by an accidental confederacy with one of the instruments of thy formidable enemy and cousin, who furnished the papers that had been taken with the little Gaetano. The truth of what I say shall be delivered to you at Genoa. As for the Signor Sigismondo, it is time we ceased to be rivals. We are brothers, with this difference in our fortunes, that he comes of wedlock, and I of an unexpiated, and almost an unrepented, crime!"

A common cry, in which regret, joy, and surprise were wildly mingled, interrupted the speaker. Adelheid threw herself into her husband's arms, and the pale and conscience-stricken Doge stood with extended arms, an image of contrition, delight, and shame. His friends pressed around him with consolation on their tongues, and the blandishments of affection in their manner, for the regrets of the great rarely pass away unheeded, like the moans of the low.

"Let me have air!" exclaimed the prince; "give me air or I suffocate! Where is the child of Annunziata?--I will at least atone to him for the wrong done his mother!"