Gradually the hour laid its tranquillizing hush upon him. By degrees, with the dim light of the candles, he grew drowsy. His mental images became more and more indistinct, and he gradually drifted away into the land of dreams. After a time he was awakened by a light that shone upon his face. Starting up, Otto was for a moment overcome by a strange sensation of faintness, which vanished as he gazed into the face of Benilo, whom his anxiety had carried to the side of the King after having in vain searched for him among the late revellers on the Capitoline hill.
Otto smiled at the expression of anxiety in the Roman's face.
"'Twas naught, save that I was weary," he replied to Benilo's concerned inquiry. "'Tis many a week since we revelled so late. But perchance you had best leave me now, that I may rest."
Benilo withdrew and Otto fell into a fitful slumber filled with hazy visions, in which the persons of Crescentius and Stephania were strangely mingled, melting rapidly from one into the other.
He slept later than usual on the following day. When the shadows of evening began to fall over the undulating expanse of the Roman Campagna, Otto left the palace on the Aventine by a postern gate. This hour he wished to be free from all affairs of state, from all intrusions and cares. This hour he wished fitly to prepare himself for the great work of his life. In the dreamy solitude he would question his own heart as to his future course with regard to Stephania.
The evening was serene and fair. The brick skeletons of arches, vaults and walls glowed fiery in the rays of the sinking sun. Among olives and acanthus was heard the bleating of sheep and the chirrup of the grasshopper.
Otto descended the tangled foot-path on the northern slope of the Aventine, not far from the gardens of Capranica, and soon reached the foot of the Capitoline hill, the ruins of the temple of Saturnus, the place where in the days of glory had stood the ancient Forum. From the arch of Septimius Severus as far as the Flavian Amphitheatre the Via Sacra was flanked with wretched hovels. Their foundations were formed of fragments of statues, of the limbs and torsos of Olympian gods. For centuries the Forum had been a quarry. Christian churches languished on the ruins of pagan shrines. Still lofty columns soared upward through the desolation, carrying sculptured architraves, last traces of a vanished art. Here a feudal tower leaned against the arch of Titus; beside it a tavern befouled the fallen columns, the marble slabs, the half defaced inscription. Behind it rose the arch, white and pure, less shattered than the remaining monuments. The sunlight streaming through it from the direction of the Capitol lighted up the bas-relief of the Emperor's triumph, the malodorous curls of smoke from the tavern appearing like clouds of incense.
Otto's heart beat fast as, turning once more into the Forum, he heard the dreary jangling of bells from the old church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, sounding the Angelus. It seemed to him like a dirge over the fallen greatness of Rome. Half unconsciously he directed his steps toward the Coliseum. Seating himself on the broken steps of the Amphitheatre, he gazed up at the blue heavens, shining through the gaps in the Coliseum walls.
Sudden flushes of crimson flamed up in the western horizon. Slowly the sun was sinking to rest. A pale yellow moon had sailed up from behind the stupendous arches of Constantine's Basilica, severing with her disk a bed of clouds, transparent and delicately tinted as sea-shells. The three columns in front of Santa Maria Liberatrice shone like phantoms in the waning light of evening. And the bell sounding the Christian Angelus seemed more than ever like a dirge over the forgotten Rome of the past.
Wrapt in deep reveries, Otto continued upon his way. He had lost all sense of life and reality. It was one of those moments when time and the world seem to stand still, drifting away on those delicate imperceptible lines that lie between reality and dream-land. And the solitary rambler gave himself up to the half painful, half delicious sense of being drawn in, absorbed and lost in infinite imaginings, when the intense stillness around him was broken by the peals of distant convent bells, ringing with silvery clearness through the evening calm.