As the Cardinal finished his announcement a monk in the grey habit of the Penitent friars was seen to pale and to totter, as if he were about to fall. Declining the aid of those endeavouring to assist him he staggered through the crowds, covering his face with his arms and was soon lost to sight.
The thunderous applause at the welcome tidings was followed by sighs of relief, as the people retired to their houses and hovels. The place, where a few minutes before a nation seemed collected, was again deserted, save for a few groups, composed of such whom curiosity might detain or others who, residing in the immediate neighbourhood, were less eager to depart. Even these imperceptibly diminished, and when the hour of eight was repeated from cloisters and convents, the lights in the houses gradually disappeared, save in one window of the Vatican, whence a lamp still shed its fitful light through the nocturnal gloom.
Book the Second
The Sorceress
"As I came through the desert, thus it was
As I came through the desert: I was twain;
Two selves distinct, that cannot join again.
One stood apart and knew but could not stir,
And watched the other stark in swoon and her;
And she came on and never turned aside,
Between such sun and moon and roaring tide:
And as she came more near,
My soul grew mad with fear."
—James Thomson.
CHAPTER I
THE MEETING
ot many days after, in the still noontide of mellow autumn, a small band of horsemen drew towards Rome. They rode along the Via Appia, between the ancient tombs; all about them, undulant to the far horizon, stretched a brown wilderness dotted with ruins. Ruins of villas, of farms, of temples, with here and there a church or a monastery, that told of the newer time. Olives in scant patches, a lost vineyard, a speck of tilled soil, proved that men still laboured amid this vast and awful silence, but rarely did a human figure meet the eye. Marshy ground and stagnant pools lay on either hand, causing them to glance sadly at those great aqueducts, which had in bygone ages carried water from the hills into Rome.
They rode in silence, tired with their journey, occupied with heavy or anxious thoughts. Otto, King of the Germans, impatient to arrive, was generally a little ahead of the rest of the company. The pallor of his smooth and classic face was enhanced by the coarse military cloak, dark and travel-stained, which covered his imperial vestments. A lingering expression of sadness was revealed in his eyes, and his lips were tightly compressed in wordless grief, for the tidings of the untimely death of the Pontiff, the friend of his youth and his boyhood days, had reached him just after his departure from the shrines of St. Michael in Apulia. Dark hints had been contained in the message, which Sylvester II, Gregory's chosen successor and Otto's former teacher, had despatched to the ruler of the Roman world, urging his immediate return,—for the temper of the Romans brooked no trifling, their leaders being ever on the alert for mischief.