The Hill of Venus

by Nathan Gallizier

WITH the first pulse of dawn in the East, Francesco was up and astir with the zest of the hour. The woods were full of golden vapor, of dew and the chanting of birds. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool. A blue sky glimmered above the glistening tree-tops; the dwindling wood-ways quivered with the multitudinous madrigals of the dawn.

A strange calm encompassed him, as he rode down the castle hill into a wood of ilex where the dawn freshness still lingered. The rebellious temper of his mood sank like a sea beneath the benediction of a god. His was not a soul that bartered through carven screens for penitence and peace. His face caught a radiance from the vaultings of the trees.

Around him ran wooded hills, streams and pastures, dusted thick with flowers. The odors of dawn burdened the breeze. In the distance the purple heights of Viterbo faded into the azure of the sky.

Southward he rode, towards Circé's land. The far heights bristled with woodlands, shimmering with magic mystery under the rising sun. The forest spires were smitten with a glamor of gold. Precipice and wooded heights were solitary as the sea itself.

Francesco had left Viterbo exalted, liberated, glad. The prospect of high endeavor had lifted him out of his melancholy. His mind, overawed by the spirit, was for the time set free from that intellectual restlessness and moral incertitude, which against his will had grown up in him in the atmosphere wherein he moved.

He was the messenger of the Church, bound for the Neapolitan court on a mission aiming to restore the Southern Italian cities to the control of him who was the Vicar of Christ on earth. For a moment even the paradox did not distress him. Enough that he was under marching orders, that the walls of Monte Cassino lay far behind him. Surely the time was coming when loyalty to Church and country would be as one! If he might only meet some great outward test, he mused, some great trial, in which, to his own mind, as to the world, his convictions might shine forth!

All he saw and heard confirmed the dark insinuations of the Duca di Spoleto; yet the fact of decision had soothed his bewilderment, and there was hope of action ahead. Meantime he allowed himself to react passively on the impressions of the way. He was entertained with making acquaintances all along the route. Nothing in his graceful aspect betrayed the religious, and people, not suspecting his errand talked to him with the frankness to which excited times give birth. On all lips there was the same tale; the cause of the League of Italian cities against the Pope was filling young and old with chivalric passion. From the lower undulations of Tuscany, through the valleys of the Apennines, in the levels of Emilia, everywhere waved the Florentine banner, blood red, with its flashing motto: "Libertas." It fanned the fire of a patriotism which he was compelled to recognize as pure, of that proud spirit of independence and hatred of oppression which has created the free cities of Italy. Not for the last time united protest against foreign tyranny was stilling petty strife and evoking the national consciousness, which even Dante was vainly to long for. And Francesco's spirit was swift to respond to the call. How otherwise? Was he not young? Was he not, too, a man, to whom country and race were dear?

But as he continued upon his way, as with his steady advance the forests gradually thinned and he began the descent into the plains of the Campagna, the image of Ilaria was constantly before him. Where was she? What was she doing? The thought brought with it a troubled bewilderment. Possessed like himself of a love of beauty, like himself consumed by a restlessness tremulous for something not quite clearly understood, this fine and beautiful creature would be ill at ease in the rough life of the feudal castle. That in the one case the restlessness might be reaching upwards, in the other, downwards. Francesco was too loyal to surmise. What good days they had known, he and she! Together they had watched the play of light on the mountain slopes, or over the great faint-gleaming lands within the soft curve of whose farthest blue they could divine the sea; together the two dark heads had bent over some vellum roll of Lariella's favorite poet.

And again she stood before him; the perfectly arched eyebrows, the wide forehead, the sweet curves that had dimpled in girlish days beneath a shadowy crown, greeted him from a dusky frame. With the increased perfection of her person went, he soon perceived, a trained and practised instinct for all the graces of life. As she had appeared to him in Rome, she had been more charming than ever before.