Chapter 1.XII. The Strange Adventures that Befel Walter de Montreal.
It was upon that same evening, and while the earlier stars yet shone over
the city, that Walter de Montreal, returning, alone, to the convent then
associated with the church of Santa Maria del Priorata (both of which
belonged to the Knights of the Hospital, and in the first of which Montreal
had taken his lodgment), paused amidst the ruins and desolation which lay
around his path. Thou little skilled in the classic memories and
associations of the spot, he could not but be impressed with the
surrounding witnesses of departed empire; the vast skeleton, as it were, of
the dead giantess.
"Now," thought he, as he gazed around upon the roofless columns and
shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the starlight shone,
ghastly and transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses of
the Frangipani, half hid by the dark foliage that sprung up amidst the very
fanes and palaces of old - Nature exulting over the frailer Art; "now,"
thought he, "bookmen would be inspired, by this scene, with fantastic and
dreaming visions of the past. But to me these monuments of high ambition
and royal splendour create only images of the future. Rome may yet be,
with her seven-hilled diadem, as Rome has been before, the prize of the
strongest hand and the boldest warrior, - revived, not by her own
degenerate sons, but the infused blood of a new race. William the Bastard
could scarce have found the hardy Englishers so easy a conquest as Walter
the Well-born may find these eunuch Romans. And which conquest were the
more glorious, - the barbarous Isle, or the Metropolis of the World? Short
step from the general to the podesta - shorter step from the podesta to the
king!"
While thus revolving his wild, yet not altogether chimerical ambition, a
quick light step was heard amidst the long herbage, and, looking up,
Montreal perceived the figure of a tall female descending from that part of
the hill then covered by many convents, towards the base of the Aventine.
She supported her steps with a long staff, and moved with such elasticity
and erectness, that now, as her face became visible by the starlight, it
was surprising to perceive that it was the face of one advanced in years, -
a harsh, proud countenance, withered, and deeply wrinkled, but not without
a certain regularity of outline.
"Merciful Virgin!" cried Montreal, starting back as that face gleamed upon
him: "is it possible? It is she: - it is - "
He sprung forward, and stood right before the old woman, who seemed equally
surprised, though more dismayed, at the sight of Montreal.
"I have sought thee for years," said the Knight, first breaking the
silence; "years, long years, - thy conscience can tell thee why."
"Mine, man of blood!" cried the female, trembling with rage or fear;
"darest thou talk of conscience? Thou, the dishonourer - the robber - the
professed homicide! Thou, disgrace to knighthood and to birth! Thou, with
the cross of chastity and of peace upon thy breast! Thou talk of
conscience, hypocrite! - thou?"
"Lady - lady!" said Montreal, deprecatingly, and almost quailing beneath
the fiery passion of that feeble woman, "I have sinned against thee and
thine. But remember all my excuses! - early love - fatal obstacles - rash
vow - irresistible temptation! Perhaps," he added, in a more haughty tone,
"perhaps, yet, I may have the power to atone my error, and wring, with
mailed hand, from the successor of St Peter, who hath power to loose as to
bind - "
"Perjured and abandoned!" interrupted the female; "dost thou dream that
violence can purchase absolution, or that thou canst ever atone the past? -
a noble name disgraced, a father's broken heart and dying curse! Yes, that
curse, I hear it now! it rings upon me thrillingly, as when I watched the
expiring clay! it cleaves to thee - it pursues thee - it shall pierce thee
through thy corselet - it shall smite thee in the meridian of thy power!
Genius wasted - ambition blasted - penitence deferred - a life of brawls,
and a death of shame - thy destruction the offspring of thy crime! - To
this, to this, an old man's curse hath doomed thee! - AND THOU ART DOOMED!"
These words were rather shrieked than spoken: and the flashing eye, the
lifted hand, the dilated form of the speaker - the hour - the solitude of
the ruins around - all conspired to give to the fearful execration the
character of prophecy. The warrior, against whose undaunted breast a
hundred spears had shivered in vain, fell appalled and humbled to the
ground. He seized the hem of his fierce denouncer's robe, and cried, in a
choked and hollow voice, "Spare me! spare me!"
"Spare thee!" said the unrelenting crone; "hast thou ever spared man in thy
hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust! - crouch - crouch! -
wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the
unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour; -
crouch, that the foot of the old and impotent may spurn thee!"
"Hag!" cried Montreal, in the reaction of sudden fury and maddened pride,
springing up to the full height of his stature. "Hag! thou hast passed the
limits to which, remembering who thou art, my forbearance gave thee
licence. I had well-nigh forgot that thou hadst assumed my part - I am the
Accuser! Woman! - the boy! - shrink not! equivocate not! lie not! - thou
wert the thief!"
"I was. Thou taughtest me the lesson how to steal a - "
"Render - restore him!" interrupted Montreal, stamping on the ground with
such force that the splinters of the marble fragments on which he stood
shivered under his armed heel.
The woman little heeded a violence at which the fiercest warrior of Italy
might have trembled; but she did not make an immediate answer. The
character of her countenance altered from passion into an expression of
grave, intent, and melancholy thought. At length she replied to Montreal;
whose hand had wandered to his dagger-hilt, with the instinct of long
habit, whenever enraged or thwarted, rather than from any design of blood;
which, stern and vindictive as he was, he would have been incapable of
forming against any woman, - much less against the one then before him.
"Walter de Montreal," said she, in a voice so calm that it almost sounded
like that of compassion, "the boy, I think, has never known brother or
sister: the only child of a once haughty and lordly race, on both sides,
though now on both dishonoured - nay, why so impatient? thou wilt soon
learn the worst - the boy is dead!"
"Dead!" repeated Montreal, recoiling and growing pale; "dead! - no, no -
say not that! He has a mother, - you know he has! - a fond, meekhearted,
anxious, hoping mother! - no! - no, he is not dead!"
"Thou canst feel, then, for a mother?" said the old woman, seemingly
touched by the tone of the Provencal. "Yet, bethink thee; is it not better
that the grave should save him from a life of riot, of bloodshed, and of
crime? Better to sleep with God than to wake with the fiends!"
"Dead!" echoed Montreal; "dead! - the pretty one! - so young! - those eyes
- the mother's eyes - closed so soon?"
"Hast thou aught else to say? Thy sight scares my very womanhood from my
soul! - let me be gone."
"Dead! - may I believe thee? or dost thou mock me? Thou hast uttered thy
curse, hearken to my warning: - If thou hast lied in this, thy last hour
shall dismay thee, and thy death-bed shall be the death-bed of despair!"
"Thy lips," replied the female, with a scornful smile, "are better adapted
for lewd vows to unhappy maidens, than for the denunciations which sound
solemn only when coming from the good. Farewell!"
"Stay! inexorable woman! stay! - where sleeps he? Masses shall be sung!
priests shall pray! - the sins of the father shall not be visited on that
young head!"
"At Florence!" returned the woman, hastily. "But no stone records the
departed one! - The dead boy had no name!"
Waiting for no further questionings, the woman now passed on, - pursued her
way; - and the long herbage, and the winding descent, soon snatched her
ill-omened apparition from the desolate landscape.
Montreal, thus alone, sunk with a deep and heavy sigh upon the ground,
covered his face with his hands, and burst into an agony of grief; his
chest heaved, his whole frame trembled, and he wept and sobbed aloud, with
all the fearful vehemence of a man whose passions are strong and fierce,
but to whom the violence of grief alone is novel and unfamiliar.
He remained thus, prostrate and unmanned, for a considerable time, growing
slowly and gradually more calm as tears relieved his emotion; and, at
length, rather indulging a gloomy reverie than a passionate grief. The
moon was high and the hour late when he arose, and then few traces of the
past excitement remained upon his countenance; for Walter de Montreal was
not of that mould in which woe can force a settlement, or to which any
affliction can bring the continued and habitual melancholy that darkens
those who feel more enduringly, though with emotions less stormy. His were
the elements of the true Franc character, though carried to excess: his
sternest and his deepest qualities were mingled with fickleness and
caprice; his profound sagacity often frustrated by a whim; his towering
ambition deserted for some frivolous temptation; and his elastic, sanguine,
and high-spirited nature, faithful only to the desire of military glory, to
the poetry of a daring and stormy life, and to the susceptibilities of that
tender passion without whose colourings no portrait of chivalry is
complete, and in which he was capable of a sentiment, a tenderness, and a
loyal devotion, which could hardly have been supposed compatible with his
reckless levity and his undisciplined career.
"Well," said he, as he rose slowly, folded his mantle round him, and
resumed his way, "it was not for myself I grieved thus. But the pang is
past, and the worst is known. Now, then, back to those things that never
die - restless projects and daring schemes. That hag's curse keeps my
blood cold still, and this solitude has something in it weird and awful.
Ha! - what sudden light is that?"
The light which caught Montreal's eye broke forth almost like a star,
scarcely larger, indeed, but more red and intense in its ray. Of itself it
was nothing uncommon, and might have shone either from convent or cottage.
But it streamed from a part of the Aventine which contained no habitations
of the living, but only the empty ruins and shattered porticoes, of which
even the names and memories of the ancient inhabitants were dead. Aware of
this, Montreal felt a slight awe (as the beam threw its steady light over
the dreary landscape); for he was not without the knightly superstitions of
the age, and it was now the witching hour consecrated to ghost and spirit.
But fear, whether of this world or the next, could not long daunt the mind
of the hardy freebooter; and, after a short hesitation, he resolved to make
a digression from his way, and ascertain the cause of the phenomenon.
Unconsciously, the martial tread of the barbarian passed over the site of
the famed, or infamous, Temple of Isis, which had once witnessed those
wildest orgies commemorated by Juvenal; and came at last to a thick and
dark copse, from an opening in the centre of which gleamed the mysterious
light. Penetrating the gloomy foliage, the Knight now found himself before
a large ruin, grey and roofless, from within which came, indistinct and
muffled, the sound of voices. Through a rent in the wall, forming a kind
of casement, and about ten feet from the ground, the light now broke over
the matted and rank soil, embedded, as it were, in vast masses of shade,
and streaming through a mouldering portico hard at hand. The Provencal
stood, though he knew it not, on the very place once consecrated by the
Temple: the Portico and the Library of Liberty (the first public library
instituted in Rome). The wall of the ruin was covered with innumerable
creepers and wild brushwood, and it required but little agility on the part
of Montreal, by the help of these, to raise himself to the height of the
aperture, and, concealed by the luxuriant foliage, to gaze within. He saw
a table, lighted with tapers, in the centre of which was a crucifix; a
dagger, unsheathed; an open scroll, which the event proved to be of sacred
character; and a brazen bowl. About a hundred men, in cloaks, and with
black vizards, stood motionless around; and one, taller than the rest,
without disguise or mask - whose pale brow and stern features seemed by
that light yet paler and yet more stern - appeared to be concluding some
address to his companions.
"Yes," said he, "in the church of the Lateran I will make the last appeal
to the people. Supported by the Vicar of the Pope, myself an officer of
the Pontiff, it will be seen that Religion and Liberty - the heroes and the
martyrs - are united in one cause. After that time, words are idle; action
must begin. By this crucifix I pledge my faith, on this blade I devote my
life, to the regeneration of Rome! And you (then no need for mask or
mantle!), when the solitary trump is heard, when the solitary horseman is
seen, - you, swear to rally round the standard of the Republic, and resist
- with heart and hand, with life and soul, in defiance of death, and in
hope of redemption - the arms of the oppressor!"
"We swear - we swear!" exclaimed every voice: and, crowding toward cross
and weapon, the tapers were obscured by the intervening throng, and
Montreal could not perceive the ceremony, nor hear the muttered formula of
the oath: but he could guess that the rite then common to conspiracies -
and which required each conspirator to shed some drops of his own blood, in
token that life itself was devoted to the enterprise - had not been
omitted, when, the group again receding, the same figure as before had
addressed the meeting, holding on high the bowl with both hands, - while
from the left arm, which was bared, the blood weltered slowly, and
trickled, drop by drop, upon the ground, - said, in a solemn voice and
upturned eyes:
"Amidst the ruins of thy temple, O Liberty! we, Romans, dedicate to thee
this libation! We, befriended and inspired by no unreal and fabled idols,
but by the Lord of Hosts, and Him who, descending to earth, appealed not to
emperors and to princes, but to the fisherman and the peasant, - giving to
the lowly and the poor the mission of Revelation." Then, turning suddenly
to his companions, as his features, singularly varying in their character
and expression, brightened, from solemn awe, into a martial and kindling
enthusiasm, he cried aloud, "Death to the Tyranny! Life to the Republic!"
The effect of the transition was startling. Each man, as by an involuntary
and irresistible impulse, laid his hand upon his sword, as he echoed the
sentiment; some, indeed, drew forth their blades, as if for instant action.
"I have seen enow: they will break up anon," said Montreal to himself:
"and I would rather face an army of thousands, than even half-a-dozen
enthusiasts, so inflamed, - and I thus detected." And, with this thought,
he dropped on the ground, and glided away, as, once again, through the
still midnight air, broke upon his ear the muffled shout - "DEATH TO THE
TYRANNY! - LIFE TO THE REPUBLIC!"
BOOK II. THE REVOLUTION
"Ogni Lascivia, ogni male, nulla giustizia, nullo freno. Non c'era piu
remedia, ogni persona periva. Allora Cola di Rienzi." &c. - "Vita di Cola
di Rienzi", lib. i. chap. 2.
"Every kind of lewdness, every form of evil; no justice, no restraint.
Remedy there was none; perdition fell on all. Then Cola di Rienzi," &c. -
"Life of Cola di Rienzi".
