It was at the Vesper hour that this waking came to Francesco. Sunset light filled the gloom of the high-vaulted room. A distant silver gleam had filled him with strange comfort and strange sorrow. Ilaria had left him in care of the leech, a little Greek with restless, ever-shifting eyes. Through the casement the evening star looked in. Beyond Castel del Ovo he divined the far-trembling sea, quieted to a pure colorless memory of the day that had died, yet brighter than the darkening skies.—
Lying peacefully convalescent, Francesco looked back as from a still haven on the storms that had shaken him since his departure from Avellino. Had a great enfranchisement or a great imprisonment befallen him? Life, the master, would show him in good time. Certainly the entrance into fresh intellectual regions which had intoxicated him for the time, seemed less important now. For one thing, he perceived the passion for novelty, as synonymous with progress, to be a mere delusion of the arch-wizard, Time. And, in a flash, he saw that it was but the old uncertainty in a new sphere. Was the Church the visible expression of Life? Must he remain forever under the yoke, to atone for his own existence, hungering after that which other men freely enjoyed? And suddenly, like a flash, a phase of his dream leaped into his wakeful state. He closed his eyes and groaned.
What was there between Ilaria Caselli and Stefano Maconi?
[CHAPTER VI]
THE CRIMSON NIGHT
IT had been a day of driving wind and rain. The sound of the sea beat weirdly through the streets of Naples. The great street of the Provencals leading from Castel del Ovo to Castel Nuovo was covered with spray. Within the palace of the Regent there was singing and feasting. Distant strains of music wandered out towards the night to Francesco's chamber. They seemed to whisper of things that were not for him, and he set his teeth with a smothered groan.
Ilaria was there, and Stefano Maconi! He, the monk, had not been bidden to the feast.