Agostino came up to the Princess. "Noble Madam," he said, "you will value safety before all things; doubtless the best that can be done here is but poor, but it will give you a few hours for repose where you may be sure of being in perfect safety."
So saying, he assisted her and Agnes to dismount, and Elsie and Monica also alighting, they followed the woman into a dark stone passage and up some rude stone steps. She opened at last the door of a brick-floored room, where beds appeared to have been hastily prepared. There was no furniture of any sort except the beds. The walls were dusty and hung with cobwebs. A smaller apartment opening into this had beds for Elsie and Monica.
The travellers, however, were too much exhausted with their night-ride to be critical, the services of disrobing and preparing for rest were quickly concluded, and in less than an hour all were asleep, while Agostino was busy concerting the means for an immediate journey to Florence.
CHAPTER XXX.
"LET US ALSO GO, THAT WE MAY DIE WITH HIM."
Father Antonio sat alone in his cell in the San Marco in an attitude of deep dejection. The open window looked into the garden of the convent, from which steamed up the fragrance of violet, jasmine, and rose, and the sunshine lay fair on all that was without. On a table beside him were many loose and scattered sketches, and an unfinished page of the Breviary he was executing, rich in quaint tracery of gold and arabesques, seemed to have recently occupied his attention, for his palette was wet and many loose brushes lay strewed around. Upon the table stood a Venetian glass with a narrow neck and a bulb clear and thin as a soap-bubble, containing vines and blossoms of the passion-flower, which he had evidently been using as models in his work.
The page he was illuminating was the prophetic Psalm which describes the ignominy and sufferings of the Redeemer. It was surrounded by a wreathed border of thorn-branches interwoven with the blossoms and tendrils of the passion-flower, and the initial letters of the first two words were formed by a curious combination of the hammer, the nails, the spear, the crown of thorns, the cross, and other instruments of the Passion; and clear, in red letter, gleamed out those wonderful, mysterious words, consecrated by the remembrance of a more than mortal anguish,—"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
The artist-monk had perhaps fled to his palette to assuage the throbbings of his heart, as a mourning mother flies to the cradle of her child; but even there his grief appeared to have overtaken him, for the work lay as if pushed from him in an access of anguish such as comes from the sudden recurrence of some overwhelming recollection. He was leaning forward with his face buried in his hands, sobbing convulsively.
The door opened, and a man advancing stealthily behind laid a hand kindly on his shoulder, saying softly, "So, so, brother!"
Father Antonio looked up, and, dashing his hand hastily across his eyes, grasped that of the new-comer convulsively, and saying only, "Oh, Baccio! Baccio!" hid his face again.