The Hill of Venus

by Nathan Gallizier

Here he rested among the cypresses, wondering at the vast bronze pine-cone and the great brass peacocks, which Symmachus had brought thither from the ruins of Agrippa's baths, in which the family of the Crescentii had fortified themselves during more than a hundred years.

For a long time Francesco sat there in mournful silence, drinking in the sun-steeped air of evening, and the scent of the flowers that grew here with the profusion of spring-time.

An indescribable sense of desolation came over him, as he thought of his happy childhood with its joys and griefs, as he thought of the spring-time of life, the days of Avellino, and of Ilaria. He sat here an outcast, an exile, one who had no further claim on the joys of the living, guiltless himself, the victim of another's sin. The soul of Rome, the Rome of Innocent and Clement, had taken hold of his soul, and, for a time, he dreamed himself away from the bleak present and the bleaker future. The past, with his father's sins, his own sorrows, the friendship of the Viceroy, the love of Ilaria, were now all infinitely far removed and dim. The future, whose magic mirror had once dazzled his senses, had faded like a departing vision into the blue Roman sky. Only the present remained, only the hour was his, the dreamy half-narcotic present with its mazy charms which enmeshed him, far from the reality, the Rome as it existed, where the Church was the World, and Rome herself meant some seven or eight thousand ruffians, eager always for a change, because it seemed that no change could be for the worse.

In the ancient Basilica of St. Peter's at least there was peace. The white-haired priests solemnly officiated day by day, morning and noon, and at Vespers more than a hundred voices sang the Vesper psalms in the Gregorian chant. Slim youths in violet and white swung silver censers before the high altar, and the incense floated in spiral clouds upon the sunbeams that fell slanting upon the antique floor.

Here, at least, as in many a cloister of the world, the Church was still herself, as she was and is and always will be; words were spoken and solemn prayers intoned that had been familiar to the lips of the apostles.

But they brought no consolation to Francesco's heart; his soul was not relieved by the solemn ceremony. With the rest of the worshippers he knelt unconsciously in the old cathedral; with the rest of the worshippers he chanted the responses and breathed anew the incense-laden air, which was to encompass him to his life's end.

Refreshed neither in body nor soul, he returned to the inn late at night. But he could not sleep. Opening wide the wooden shutters of his window, he looked out upon the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor, at the tide of the Tiber, which gleamed and eddied in the moonlight.

Life rose before him in a mystery, a mystery for him to solve by deeds. For a moment he felt that he must rise above his fate, that he was not idly to dream away his years, and the long dormant instinct of his race bade him defy the yoke which was about to be imposed upon him, not to evade it. Then his heart beat faster; his blood surged to his throat, and his hands hardened one upon the other as he leaned over the stone sill, and drew the night air sharply between his closed teeth.

And as a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the willows by the river brink, in it seemed to float a host of spirit armies, ghostly knights and fairy-maidens and the forecast shadows of things to come. Once before during the evening had this sensation gripped his soul, as with a solitary monk whom he chanced to meet, he had traversed the desolate regions of the Aventine in the sun's afterglow. And then, as now, there had come the rude awakening.

But from the monk he had learned that the Pontiff had fled from Rome before the approaching hosts of Conradino, and had betaken himself to Viterbo, while his champion, Charles of Anjou, had marched to southward, leaving the city to the Ghibellines and the imperial party of the Colonna.