Another moment, and she sank lifeless into his embrace.
The setting moon once more shone out from behind the clouds, and as the pallid crimson of her light faded behind the world's dark rim, there came from the distance the morning cry of the cock. Slowly, through the air, came the sound of a bell, and at this sound the frightened witches, swarm after swarm, streamed away from the mountain. He of the Leaden Lamb again became the great He-Goat, and sank lamentably bleating with his beautiful victim through the earth, leaving a stifling stench of sulphur behind.—
With a moan of intense agony Francesco awoke. His head was like lead, his body broken with weariness. A sharp odor of fog greeted his nostrils. He looked about for a moment, unable to determine where he was. A violent jerk, as he tried to move his arms, informed him of his condition, and with a groan he sank back, striking his head against the stone with a sharp pang. Again he closed his eyes, as if still haunted by the phantoms of the Witches' Sabbat. Had it been but a dream indeed? Vivid it stood before his soul, and out of the whole ghostly hubbub the pure face of Ilaria Caselli shone white as marble against a storm-cloud. Then, with the memory of her he loved dearer than life, with the memory of her whom he was to renounce forever, there returned the consciousness of his impending fate. Would she ever know why he had not returned,—and knowing, would her love for him endure?
The bell of Sta. Redegonda was tolling heavily and monotonously. Outside some one was knocking insistently, some one who had already knocked more than once. There was a brief pause, then the turning of a key in the lock grated unpleasantly on Francesco's ear.
As the door of his prison swung back, the dull morning light fell on the form of a monk, who had slowly entered in advance of some five or six men-at-arms, but paused almost instantly, as if looking for the object in quest of which he had come.
The import of the monk's presence at this hour was not lost upon Francesco. It was no hideous dream then, it was terrible reality; he was to die. To die without having committed a crime, without an offence with which he might charge his conscience; to die without a hearing,—without a trial. For a moment all that could render death terrible, and death in the form in which he was to meet it, most terrible of all, rushed through his mind. The love of life, despite the gloomy future it held out to him, re-asserted itself and, as a drowning man sees all the scenes of the past condensed into one last conscious moment, so before Francesco's inner gaze the pageant of his childhood, the sunny days at the Court of Avellino rushed past, as in the fleeting phantasmagoria of a dream. An hour hence, and his eyes would no longer gaze upon the scenes once dear to him as his youth;—he would have followed him, who would have consigned him to a living death;—he would have been gathered into annihilation's waste.
The monk had walked up slowly to the human heap he saw dimly writhing on the ground, and, bending over Francesco, exhorted him to think of the salvation of his soul, to which end, in consideration of his youth, the clemency of his judge had permitted him to receive the last rites of the Church.
At the sound of the monk's voice Francesco gave a start, but, as he made no reply, the friar bent over him anew, in an endeavor to scan the features of one so obdurate as to refuse his ministrations.
A mutual outcry of surprise broke the intense stillness. They had recognized each other, the monk who had carried to Gregorio Villani the Pontiff's conditional absolution, and the youth whom that decree had consigned to a living death.
To the monk's amazed question as to the cause of his terrible plight, Francesco wearily and brokenly replied that he knew of nothing. He had been insulted, overpowered and condemned.