A sinking spell had seized the sick man and the monk hastened to call in the attendant mediciners. But the cordial they administered with some difficulty only had the effect of producing more regular breathing.
Gregorio Villani's prophetic words were to be fulfilled.
Francesco meanwhile lay in the guest-chamber, which had been prepared for him. His brain rebelled against further labor and his head had scarcely found its welcome resting-place ere the darkly fringed eyelids drooped heavily, and he slept. Through the remaining hours of the night he lay wrapped in a slumber resembling that of death. Only once or twice he moaned, tossing restlessly on his pillows. The rays of the morning sun, creeping up to his eyes, held in them a drowsy dream of a girl's fair face. The dream brought no awakening, and the sun was high in the heavens, when a hand, cold and thin, was laid upon his white one, which lay listlessly above his head. Instantly he started up, ready to resent the intrusion, when he met the gaze of two sombre eyes, peering down upon him, which recalled him to the place and hour.
Before him stood the shrunken form of Fra Girolamo.
With a deep sigh, he returned to reality.
"How fares my father?" he asked quickly, his memory stirred by the sombre eyes that met his own.
"Requiescat in pace!" said the monk with bowed head.
Francesco sank back upon his cushions and hid his face in his arms. The monk heard him sob and, for a moment, his frame seemed to shake as with convulsions. At last he raised himself with an effort.
"Conduct me to him!" he then said to the friar, who preceded him in silence to the death-chamber.
The rays of the morning sun shone upon the face of Gregorio Villani and imbued the features with a look of peace such as the living had not worn for many a day. The monks had placed his body on a bier, on each side of which two tall wax tapers burned in their sconces.
Francesco knelt down by the side of the bier, burying his head in his hands, while the monk retreated into a remote corner of the room.
When he rose at last, the watcher saw all the young life go out of his face, which suddenly grew old and cold. Light and color seemed simultaneously to depart from eyes and lips, and his limbs seemed hardly able to sustain him upright. After a pause he dared not break, for dread of revealing his sudden feeling, the youth's lifeless voice was raised in the dreary monotone of questioning.
"When will they take him away?"
The monk came nearer.
"He will be laid to rest at night-fall under the great altar of the Cathedral."
A silence fell between them.
Again Francesco spoke.
"The dial points to something like noon?"
The monk nodded.
"When will you ride?"
"At night-fall."
"It is well. You will return to Avellino, that you may bid farewell to your former master and friends. Thence you will proceed to Monte Cassino."
"To Monte Cassino," the youth echoed with a voice dead as his soul.
Then he added:
"I ride alone?"
"Alone!"
"Leave me now! I would spend the last hours here with him!"
"Will you not come to the refectory? You are in need of food, and the day is long!"
Francesco raised his hands as if in abhorrence of the thought. Then, as he turned towards the bier, he seemed newly overwhelmed at the sight of the lifeless clay before him. The memory of his father's first appearance, as he entered the sick-chamber, the ashen pallor, the traces of cruel pain, now softened or effaced by the majesty of Death, reverted to him.
He sank down beside the bier.
But try as he might, he could not pray.
Thus the monk left him. —
On that evening, in the presence of the entire chapter of the Cathedral and the monks of San Cataldo, they laid to rest under the great altar of the imposing edifice all that was mortal of Gregorio Villani, Grand Master of the Knights of St. John.
And on that evening the strange friar, who had brought to the dying man the much craved conditional absolution, departed after a final interview with Francesco, who was to return at once to Avellino to prepare himself for the new life which had been decreed for him.
CHAPTER III
VISTAS
THE morning dawned gray with heat. The air was lifeless. The sun, rolling lazily up the eastern sky, scarcely deigned to permit his beams to penetrate the humid atmosphere. In the night a heavy dew had fallen and the lush turf on the edge of the forest was a sparkling mass of drops. The fragrance of the rose-gardens and poppy-fields environing San Cataldo was stifling. The very worms and insects lay inert about shrubs and foliage. In the west, a falling arch of heavy clouds hung low over the distant mountains. It was an unnatural morning, which presaged a storm.
The forests of the Murgie were still dark when Francesco Villani entered their cool and fragrant depths. To him the smile of dawn on that morning had been as the mirthless smile of a ghost. For, with to-day, there had been awakened the memories of yesterday, the consciousness of his impending fate.
Fate! What a future it had prepared for him, a future void of everything which the soul of man may crave, which may delight his heart. The sins of another were to be visited upon his guiltless head, – he was to atone for his own existence.
Yet even that seemed bearable compared with the hour to come at the Court of Avellino, the hour when he must renounce all he held dear in life, appear an ingrate, a traitor; the hour of parting, a parting for life, for all eternity from the friends and companions of his youth and from one who was all the world to him. At the mere thought, the life blood froze in his veins.
The forests of the Murgie gradually thinned, and Francesco emerged upon a high level plateau, which to southward sloped into the Apulian plains, and on which the sun poured the whole fervor of his beams, till the earth itself seemed to beat up light. And there was no refuge from the heat in that vast plain, which soon spread on every side with the broad sterility of the African desert. Half blinded, Francesco cantered along, dreading every step that carried him nearer to the gates of his lost paradise.
A mysterious silence was brooding over the immense expanse, which became more desolate with every step. The wide plains reposed in a melancholy fertility; flowering thistles were swarming with countless butterflies; dry fennel, wild and withered, rioted round the scattered remnants of broken columns, on whose summits wild birds of prey were screaming.
As the sun rode higher in the heavens, the panorama suddenly changed, as if transformed by the wand of a magician. Colossal plane and carob-trees rose on the horizon, waving fantastic shadows over innumerable old crypts and tombs and the fantastic shapes of the underbrush. To southward the view was unlimited, while in Francesco's rear the snowy cone of Soracté rose defiantly over the plains, its glistening summit towering ruddy in the light of the midday sun against the transparent azure of the sky. Wild expanses of copse alternated with pastures brilliant with flowers. Herds of black and white cattle were browsing on either side, donkeys and half wild horses, and occasionally Francesco passed a large, white masseria, like a fortress glistening in the sun. Here and there vineyards made brown patches in the landscape, and the Casellé had the appearance of thousands of Arab tents, scattered over the undulating plain to the rugged, purple hills of the Basilicata, dimly fading away towards the sun-kissed plains of Calabria.
Almost unconscious of the change, Francesco rode along with abstracted gaze, his eyes as dead as the Apulian land, – land of the dead.
The knowledge that there lay before him to southward some fifty miles of solitude nevertheless lightened the heavy burden in Francesco's breast. The oppression of the stone walls of San Cataldo had, in a manner, passed away. This day, at least, was his; this day he was to be alone and free. Yet, as he rode, with the slowly diminishing distance