[CHAPTER IV]
THE PAWN OF THE CHURCH
WHEN Francesco arrived on the height it was the hour of the closing of the city-gates and he took lodging at an inn situated near the city walls.
He caught his breath the next morning at the imposing aspect of the place.
In the young sunshine its many towers were no longer phantom intruders on the sky, but a dominant fact. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern outlines of the fortress-palace of the pope, rose proudly impregnable in the air.
On the broad highways from Umbria, Tuscany and Romagna, even at this early hour, an almost endless stream of humanity was moving. Many a clerk and prelate was there, superbly arrayed, mounted on steeds gay with princely trappings. Fair women took in the freshness of the day. Pilgrims with staff and shell trudged merrily or wearily on. Jewish merchants, serious of face, bore packs containing valuable merchandise. For Viterbo lay on the highway, linking Northern and Southern Italy, and Europe, in motion on its way to Rome, moved incessantly through its streets. The image of Rome, in her desolation, recurred, vague as a ghost, to Francesco's mind and vanished before this city of the present, unhaunted as yet by memories, rising radiant in the morning air.