Chapter 6.IV. We Obtain What We Seek, and Know it Not.
In the fiercest heat of the day, and on foot, Adrian returned to Florence.
As he approached the city, all that festive and gallant scene he had
quitted seemed to him like a dream; a vision of the gardens and bowers of
an enchantress, from which he woke abruptly as a criminal may wake on the
morning of his doom to see the scaffold and the deathsman; - so much did
each silent and lonely step into the funeral city bring back his bewildered
thoughts at once to life and to death. The parting words of Mariana
sounded like a knell at his heart. And now as he passed on - the heat of
the day, the lurid atmosphere, long fatigue, alternate exhaustion and
excitement, combining with the sickness of disappointment, the fretting
consciousness of precious moments irretrievably lost, and his utter despair
of forming any systematic mode of search - fever began rapidly to burn
through his veins. His temples felt oppressed as with the weight of a
mountain; his lips parched with intolerable thirst; his strength seemed
suddenly to desert him; and it was with pain and labour that he dragged one
languid limb after the other.
"I feel it," thought he, with the loathing nausea and shivering dread with
which nature struggles ever against death; "I feel it upon me - the
Devouring and the Viewless - I shall perish, and without saving her; nor
shall even one grave contain us!"
But these thoughts served rapidly to augment the disease which began to
prey upon him; and ere he reached the interior of the city, even thought
itself forsook him. The images of men and houses grew indistinct and
shadowy before his eyes; the burning pavement became unsteady and reeling
beneath his feet; delirium gathered over him, and he went on his way
muttering broken and incoherent words; the few who met fled from him in
dismay. Even the monks, still continuing their solemn and sad processions,
passed with a murmured bene vobis to the other side from that on which his
steps swerved and faltered. And from a booth at the corner of a street,
four Becchini, drinking together, fixed upon him from their black masks the
gaze that vultures fix upon some dying wanderer of the desert. Still he
crept on, stretching out his arms like a man in the dark, and seeking with
the vague sense that yet struggled against the gathering delirium, to find
out the mansion in which he had fixed his home; though many as fair to
live, and as meet to die in, stood with open portals before and beside his
path.
"Irene, Irene!" he cried, sometimes in a muttered and low tone, sometimes
in a wild and piercing shriek, "where art thou? Where? I come to snatch
thee from them; they shall not have thee, the foul and ugly fiends! Pah!
how the air smells of dead flesh! Irene, Irene! we will away to mine own
palace and the heavenly lake - Irene!"
While thus benighted, and thus exclaiming, two females suddenly emerged
from a neighbouring house, masked and mantled.
"Vain wisdom!" said the taller and slighter of the two, whose mantle, it is
here necessary to observe, was of a deep blue, richly broidered with
silver, of a shape and a colour not common in Florence, but usual in Rome,
where the dress of ladies of the higher rank was singularly bright in hue
and ample in fold - thus differing from the simpler and more slender
draperies of the Tuscan fashion - "Vain wisdom, to fly a relentless and
certain doom!"
"Why, thou wouldst not have us hold the same home with three of the dead in
the next chamber - strangers too to us - when Florence has so many empty
halls? Trust me, we shall not walk far ere we suit ourselves with a safer
lodgment."
"Hitherto, indeed, we have been miraculously preserved," sighed the other,
whose voice and shape were those of extreme youth; "yet would that we knew
where to fly - what mount, what wood, what cavern, held my brother and his
faithful Nina! I am sick with horrors!"
"Irene, Irene! Well then, if thou art at Milan or some Lombard town, why
do I linger here? To horse, to horse! Oh, no! no! - not the horse with
the bells! not the death-cart." With a cry, a shriek, louder than the
loudest of the sick man's, broke that young female away from her companion.
It seemed as if a single step took her to the side of Adrian. She caught
his arm - she looked in his face - she met his unconscious eyes bright with
a fearful fire. "It has seized him!" - (she then said in a deep but calm
tone) - "the Plague!"
"Away, away! are you mad?" cried her companion; "hence, hence, - touch me
not now thou hast touched him - go! - here we part!"
"Help me to bear him somewhere, see, he faints, he droops, he falls! - help
me, dear Signora, for pity, for the love of God!"
But, wholly possessed by the selfish fear which overcame all humanity in
that miserable time, the elder woman, though naturally kind, pitiful, and
benevolent, fled rapidly away, and soon vanished. Thus left alone with
Adrian, who had now, in the fierceness of the fever that preyed within him,
fallen on the ground, the strength and nerve of that young girl did not
forsake her. She tore off the heavy mantle which encumbered her arms, and
cast it from her; and then, lifting up the face of her lover - for who but
Irene was that weak woman, thus shrinking not from the contagion of death?
- she supported him on her breast, and called aloud and again for help. At
length the Becchini, in the booth before noticed, (hardened in their
profession, and who, thus hardened, better than the most cautious, escaped
the pestilence,) lazily approached - "Quicker, quicker, for Christ's love!"
said Irene. "I have much gold; I will reward you well: help me to bear
him under the nearest roof."
"Leave him to us, young lady: we have had our eye upon him," said one of
the gravediggers. "We'll do our duty by him, first and last."
"No - no! touch not his head - that is my care. There, I will help you;
so, - now then, - but be gentle!"
Assisted by these portentous officers, Irene, who would not release her
hold, but seemed to watch over the beloved eyes and lips, (set and closed
as they were,) as if to look back the soul from parting, bore Adrian into a
neighbouring house, and laid him on a bed; from which Irene (preserving as
only women do, in such times, the presence of mind and vigilant providence
which make so sublime a contrast with their keen susceptibilities) caused
them first to cast off the draperies and clothing, which might retain
additional infection. She then despatched them for new furniture, and for
whatsoever leech money might yet bribe to a duty, now chiefly abandoned to
those heroic Brotherhoods who, however vilified in modern judgment by the
crimes of some unworthy members, were yet, in the dark times, the best, the
bravest, and the holiest agents, to whom God ever delegated the power to
resist the oppressor - to feed the hungry - to minister to woe; and who,
alone, amidst that fiery Pestilence, (loosed, as it were, a demon from the
abyss, to shiver into atoms all that binds the world to Virtue and to Law,)
seemed to awaken, as by the sound of an angel's trumpet, to that noblest
Chivalry of the Cross - whose faith is the scorn of self - whose hope is
beyond the Lazar-house - whose feet, already winded for immortality,
trample, with a conqueror's march, upon the graves of Death!
While this the ministry and the office of love, - along that street in
which Adrian and Irene had met at last - came singing, reeling, roaring,
the dissolute and abandoned crew who had fixed their quarters in the
Convent of Santa Maria de' Pazzi, their bravo chief at their head, and a
nun (no longer in nun's garments) upon either arm. "A health to the
Plague!" shouted the ruffian: "A health to the Plague!" echoed his frantic
Bacchanals.
"A health to the Plague, may she ever, as now,
Loose the rogue from his chain, and the nun from her vow;
To the gaoler a sword - to the captive a key,
Hurrah for Earth's Curse! 'tis a blessing to me."
"Holla!" cried the chief, stopping; "here, Margherita; here's a brave cloak
for thee, my girl: silver enow on it to fill thy purse, if it ever grow
empty; which it may, if ever the Plague grow slack."
"Nay," said the girl, who, amidst all the havoc of debauch, retained much
of youth and beauty in her form and face; nay, Guidotto; perhaps it has
infection."
"Pooh, child, silver never infects. Clap it on, clap it on. Besides, fate
is fate, and when it is thine hour there will be other means besides the
gavocciolo."
So saying, he seized the mantle, threw it roughly over her shoulders, and
dragged her on as before, half pleased with the finery, half frightened
with the danger; while gradually died away, along the lurid air and the
mournful streets, the chant of that most miserable mirth.
