Gregory's face was grave and to a close observer it would have appeared to withhold approval from that which added greater glory to the Church, as if anticipating proportionately greater detriment for the state. As Eckhardt knelt in silent prayer, all but entranced in religious ecstasy, he noted not the nearness of Benilo, who watched him like a tiger from the half gloom of his station. The hush in the Basilica was well-nigh oppressive. The Romans, who had flocked hither to witness the uncommon sight of a victorious leader abandoning the life at a court for the cassock of a monk, and perhaps inwardly calculating the immense consequences of a step so grave, waited breathlessly until that step should be accomplished. Those whose sympathies lay with the imperial party were filled with grave misgivings, for if Eckhardt's example found imitators in the German host, the cause of the emperor would grow weaker in proportion as the prestige of the Romans and the monks increased.
The benediction had been pronounced. The Communion in both kind had been partaken. The palms of Eckhardt had been anointed with consecrated oil, and finally the celebration of the Holy Rite had been offered up in company with the officiating Cardinal.
It was done. There remained little more than the cutting of the tonsure, and from the world, which had once claimed him—from the world to which he still unconsciously clung with fevered pulses,—Eckhardt was to vanish for ever. As the officiating Cardinal of San Gregorio approached the kneeling general, the latter chanced to raise his head. A deadly pallor overspread his features as his eyes gazed beyond the ecclesiastic at one of the great stone pillars, half of which was wrapt in dense gloom. The ceremony, so splendid a moment ago, seemed to fade before the aspect of those terrible eyes, which peered into his own from a woman's face, pale as death. Throughout the church darkness seemed suddenly to reign, The candles paled in their sconces of gold before the glare of those eyes, calculated to make or mar the destinies of man.
Against the incense saturated gloom, her beauty shone out like a heavenly revelation; she seemed herself the fountain of light, to give it rather than to receive it. For a moment Eckhardt lowered his gaze, little doubting but that the apparition was some new temptation of the fiend, to make him waver at the decisive moment. The ceremony proceeded. But when after a few moments, not being able to withstand the lure, he looked up again, he saw her glittering in a bright penumbra, which dazzled him like the burning disk of the sun. And as he gazed upon the strange apparition, tall with the carriage of a goddess, her eyes darting rays like stars, winging straight for his heart—and she the very image of his dead wife, just as she had appeared to him on that memorable night in the churchyard of San Pancrazio,—he hardly knew whether the flame that lighted those orbs came from heaven to strengthen his resolve, or from hell, to foil it. But from devil or angel assuredly it came.
Her white teeth shone in the terrible smile, with which she regarded him. The smooth alabaster skin of her throat glistened with a pearly sheen. Her white robe, falling from her head to her feet, straight as the winding sheet of death, matched the marble pallor of her complexion, and her hands, seemingly holding the shroud in place, were as white as fresh fallen snow.
As Eckhardt continued to gaze upon her, he felt the floodgates of his memory re-open; he felt the portals of the past, which had seemed locked and barred, swing back upon their hinges, grating deep down in his soul. And with the sight of the phantom standing before him, so life-like, so beautiful, all the mad longing bounded back into his heart. Gripped by a terrible pain, he heard neither the chant, nor the words of the Cardinal. Everything around him seemed to fade, but the terrible being still held his gaze with those deep and marvellous eyes, that had all the brightness and life of the sapphire seas.
Eckhardt felt he was being carried far from the sphere of the cloister into a world at whose gates new desires were knocking. While he mechanically muttered the responses to the queries, which the Cardinal put to him, his whole soul began to rise in arms against the words his tongue was uttering. A secret force seemed to drag them from him, he felt the gaze of the thousands weighing upon him like a cope of lead. Yet it seemed that no one in all that vast assembly heeded the strange apparition, and if there appeared any hesitancy in Eckhardt's responses, or a strange restlessness in his demeanour, it was charged to the consciousness of the momentous change, the responsibility of the irrevocable step, crushing life, ambition and hope.
But the countenance of the mysterious apparition did not change as the ceremony progressed. Steadfastly, with tender and caressing gaze she seemed to regard him, her whole soul in her straining eyes. With an effort, which might have moved a mountain, Eckhardt strove to cry out, that he would never be a monk. It was in vain. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Not even by sign could he resist. Wide awake, he seemed to be in the throes of one of those nightmares, wherein one cannot utter the words on which life itself depends. The apparition seemed instinctively to read and to comprehend the torture, which racked Eckhardt's breast. And the glance she cast upon him seemed so fraught with the echoes of despair, that it froze his heart to the core.
Was it indeed but an apparition?
Was this terrible semblance to his dead wife more than a mere accident?