THE PASSING OF CONRADINO

DAYS and weeks in the cloisters of Monte Cassino sufficed to convince Francesco that he was not destined to find any friendships there. The elder Villani had not seen fit, in an age of implied indulgence, to keep secret the nature of his transgression, and the curious and unfriendly glances that met him on every turn had soon proclaimed this fact to the newcomer, who writhed inwardly, but endured in silence. The changeless, endless rounds endured by many thousands of human souls for all years of their lives, added new torture; he felt like the stray leaf blown from its stem on the sheltering branch; would his ever be the prayerless peace for evermore?

Thus month passed after month,—in dire, changeless monotony.—

It was a stifling afternoon late in summer.

Few of the monks felt energy enough to go about their usual half-hearted pastimes, and nearly all had retired to their cells in comatose languor. Francesco had gone up with the rest; but the sun streamed brilliantly into his little cell through the western window and from without there came to his ears the myriad droning of ephemeral insect life. His mind was weighted with many thoughts that clamored for analysis.

Gradually he felt immersed in a morbid train of reflections concerning as ever, the utter emptiness of his own existence, now really more exiled in loneliness than ever before. For months now he had been in the cloisters, and not one single word from the outer world concerning his future had come to him. The time was fast approaching when he must take the final vows. Had the Pontiff forgotten him? Had his emissary deceived his father on his death-bed? Or—it was unthinkable—had his father deceived him, to make him pliable to his wishes? Was he doomed to remain here till the end of time, severed from the world,—forgotten?

The very thought was unendurable. These conjectures were worse than immediate annihilation. No matter which it was to be,—he, the monk, was utterly powerless. It were far better not to yield himself to these unwise fears. The Prior had been invisible to him for days. He alone might, by word or hint, have alleviated his fears; but he had not spoken.

After brooding over these matters till he thought his brain would burst, Francesco determined to shake off the oppression of his cell and to seek solace under the azure vault of Heaven.

Suiting the action to the impulse, he opened the door noiselessly and stepped into the corridor without.

About him there was absolute silence. He stood at the farthest corner of the western wing. Nearly all the cells immediately about him were untenanted. For a moment or two he tarried, undecided. Then, following an irresistible impulse, he stepped on to the trellised walk without and decided to ascend the top of the mountain.

Escaping from the court and the cloisters, all hushed in dream-like stillness, he climbed a green knoll which several ancient pines marked strangely with their shadows. There, leaning against one of the trunks, he raised his eyes to the barrier of encircling mountains, discovered by the quivering sunlight falling directly on the forests which fringed their acclivities.

The vast woods, the steep descents, the precipices and torrents all lay extended beneath, softened by a pale-blue haze that alleviated in a measure the stern prospects of the rocky promontories above. The sky was of the deepest azure. The hoarse roar of torrents, throwing themselves from distant wildernesses into the gloomy vales below, mingled with the chant from remote convents.

How long he had stood there, endeavoring to fix some purpose in his life, something that would fill out the emptiness of his existence and give him the strength to bear up under the burden of his destiny, Francesco could not have told, when a vague glittering movement on the opposite mountain slopes attracted his gaze, a glitter that told of an armed array marching and riding among the hills. Even the woods seemed peopled with shadowy forms, slowly emerging into the bright light of high-noon, while out of the stillness there leaped the cry of a horn, hawberks glimmered and armor shone. Beyond the armed array the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed as with aureoles of lambent flame. The horsemen came from the North; there was a swirl of thought in Francesco's brain, then his hand went to his heart: Conradino and his iron hosts were marching on Rome!

And he, who had dreamed of espousing at some day the cause of the last of the Hohenstauffen, who had hoped, by some great effort, to win the crown of life and Ilaria's love, stood here on the summit of Monte Cassino, separated by mountains, chasms and torrents from the glistening throng, which wound in one long, sinuous line towards the ravines of Camaldoli, separated by a whole world from the realization of the hopes nurtured in his childhood. He was the bondsman of the Church,—the bondsman of the Pope.

It was an indisputable fact; he was being caught in constantly ever narrowing circles.

Many questions would hourly assail him, questions like the hill-towns of Umbria, built on the brink of precipices, walled round with barriers of unhewn rock, seeming so near from the ravine below, where the wanderer sees every roof, every cypress tree, every pillared balcony, but which he cannot approach by scaling the unscalable, sheer precipice, but must slowly wind round from below, circling up and down endless undulations of vineyard and oakwood, coming forever upon a tantalizing glimpse of towers and walls, forever seemingly close to the heights above him, yet forever equally distant, till, at last, by a sharp unexpected turn of the gradually winding road, he stands before the gates.

Thus was it with his own isolated soul, a soul unaffected by any other, unlinked in any work, or feeling, or suffering with any any other soul,—nay even with any physical thing.

Thus it stood between himself and Ilaria. Thus they would forever remain alone, never move, never change, never cease absorbing through all eternity that which the eye cannot see.

A soul purged perchance, of every human desire or will, isolated from all human affection, raised above the limits of time and space, hovering in a limbo of endless desire, twisting mystical half reasoning away from the peace-hungry soul!

What a fate was his! What a vortex of passions he had been thrust into!

In the streets of Rome, Guelphs and Ghibellines were fighting. To southward the Provencals ravaged the land. All over Italy the free-lance companies lay waste and burned. The coarse religion of the cloister had no uplifting tendency. It was rather a perpetual smart. The first fervor of the great Franciscan and Dominican movements had long been spent. Nothing, save the ill-regulated enthusiasm of heretical sects, had arisen to take its place. In monasteries and convents scandals were almost the order of the day. It was true, the torch of Franciscan faith still passed privately from hand to hand. Some of the ablest men of the Church were discussing the daring tenets of direct Franciscan inspiration. Representatives of all phases of mediaeval thought mingled with the adherents of a mystic Oriental trend.

Nevertheless, Francesco, in the dead of night, found himself waking to the sense of a dreadful loss and loneliness. He had entered a hushed world, where human and earthly values alike were ignored or forgotten, and the drama of the soul was all in all. The demon of disillusionment which had beset him ever since he had ascended the heights of Monte Cassino began to unfold his gloomy wings over the far horizon of his soul.

No one knew, save himself and perhaps he not fully, how deep a yearning for guidance underlay his sensitive distaste for the control of men. His was a nature that craved to follow, as others craved to lead, but which submitted itself reluctantly, and never at the call of convention.

Devastated Italy rose before his eyes,—nay, the whole world opened to the inner vision, one great battle-field. Unconsciously his eyes followed the direction of the horsemen. Their vanguard had long disappeared in the dusk of distant forest-aisles; still Swabia's iron-serried ranks were pouring from the sheltering boughs of the oaks above San Geminiano.—

Evening drew on apace.

A procession, with its gay dresses and colored tapers gleaming like a rainbow against the verdant hills along the curving, climbing road from San Vitale, attracted Francesco's gaze, and with it a sudden dull pain contracted his heart as he strained his eyes towards the valley.

It seemed like a bridal procession in its pomp, its splendor. A woman bestriding a palfrey rode gaily by the side of a man conspicuous in dark velvet. Directly beneath where he stood, she suddenly raised her head, as if she had divined his presence and desired a witness to her glory.

With a low cry of pain Francesco drew back.

At that moment, notwithstanding the height, he had recognized the magically fair features of Ilaria Caselli.

Like an animal hunted to death, that wishes to die in its lair, he was about to withdraw, when he faced what appeared to be a peasant who had come with provisions to the cloister.

As he saw the young monk he paused with a salutation, then, approaching him, he whispered:

"Have you heard the news? Messer Raniero Frangipani and Madonna Ilaria Caselli are passing on their bridal journey to Rome!"

Francesco's face was so pale that no earthly tint seemed to have remained in it. Only the large eyes gave evidence of life.

"You come to me from her?" he questioned to the peasant.

"She bade me tell you that from no motive of coercion,—but of her own free will and choice, the Frangipani's proposal had been accepted!"

Francesco gave a sudden cry like one who leaps over a precipice, and, falling on his knees, buried his face in his hands.

When he roused himself from the stupor which benumbed his limbs the peasant had disappeared, with him the bridal procession and the Swabian contingents of Conradino.

The full moon gazed down upon him through the great silence of the mountain-world, and a thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the stars.