Agnes of Sorrento
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"Well, child," said old Elsie, "you must have slept well; you look fresh as a lark."
"The air of this holy place revives me," said Agnes, with enthusiasm.
"I wish I could say as much," said Elsie. "My bones ache yet with the tramp, and I suppose nothing will do but we must go out now to all the holy places, up and down and hither and yon, to everything that goes on. I saw enough of it all years ago when I lived here."
"Dear grandmother, if you are tired, why should you not rest? I can go forth alone in this holy city. No harm can possibly befall me here. I can join any of the pilgrims who are going to the holy places where I long to worship."
"A likely story!" said Elsie. "I know more about old Rome than you do, and I tell you, child, that you do not stir out a step without me; so if you must go, I must go too, – and like enough it's for my soul's health. I suppose it is," she added, after a reflective pause.
"How beautiful it was that we were welcomed so last night!" said Agnes; "that dear lady was so kind to me!"
"Ay, ay, and well she might be!" said Elsie, nodding her head. "But there's no truth in the kindness of the nobles to us, child. They don't do it because they love us, but because they expect to buy heaven by washing our feet and giving us what little they can clip and snip off from their abundance."
"Oh, grandmother," said Agnes, "how can you say so? Certainly, if any one ever spoke and looked lovingly, it was that dear lady."
"Yes, and she rolls away in her carriage, well content, and leaves you with a pair of new shoes and stockings, – you, as worthy of a carriage and a palace as she."
"No, grandmamma; she said she should send for me to talk more with her."
"She said she should send for you?" said Elsie. "Well, well, that is strange, to be sure! – that is wonderful!" she added, reflectively. "But come, child, we must hasten through our breakfast and prayers, and go to see the Pope, and all the great birds with fine feathers that fly after him."
"Yes, indeed!" said Agnes, joyfully. "Oh, grandmamma, what a blessed sight it will be!"
"Yes, child, and a fine sight enough he makes with his great canopy and his plumes and his servants and his trumpeters; – there isn't a king in Christendom that goes so proudly as he."
"No other king is worthy of it," said Agnes. "The Lord reigns in him."
"Much you know about it!" said Elsie, between her teeth, as they started out.
The streets of Rome through which they walked were damp and cellar-like, filthy and ill-paved; but Agnes neither saw nor felt anything of inconvenience in this: had they been floored, like those of the New Jerusalem, with translucent gold, her faith could not have been more fervent.
Rome is at all times a forest of quaint costumes, a pantomime of shifting scenic effects of religious ceremonies. Nothing there, however singular, strikes the eye as out-of-the-way or unexpected, since no one knows precisely to what religious order it may belong, or what individual vow or purpose it may represent. Neither Agnes nor Elsie, therefore, was surprised, when they passed through the doorway to the street, at the apparition of a man covered from head to foot in a long robe of white serge, with a high-peaked cap of the same material drawn completely down over his head and face. Two round holes cut in this ghostly head-gear revealed simply two black glittering eyes, which shone with that singular elfish effect which belongs to the human eye when removed from its appropriate and natural accessories. As they passed out, the figure rattled a box on which was painted an image of despairing souls raising imploring hands from very red tongues of flame, by which it was understood at once that he sought aid for souls in Purgatory. Agnes and her grandmother each dropped therein a small coin and went on their way; but the figure followed them at a little distance behind, keeping carefully within sight of them.
By means of energetic pushing and striving, Elsie contrived to secure for herself and her grandchild stations in the piazza in front of the church, in the very front rank, where the procession was to pass. A motley assemblage it was, this crowd, comprising every variety of costume of rank and station and ecclesiastical profession, – cowls and hoods of Franciscan and Dominican, – picturesque head dresses of peasant-women of different districts, – plumes and ruffs of more aspiring gentility, – mixed with every quaint phase of foreign costume belonging to the strangers from different parts of the earth; – for, like the old Jewish Passover, this celebration of Holy Week had its assemblage of Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia, Cretes, and Arabians, all blending in one common memorial.
Amid the strange variety of persons among whom they were crowded, Elsie remarked the stranger in the white sack, who had followed them, and who had stationed himself behind them, – but it did not occur to her that his presence there was other than merely accidental.
And now came sweeping up the grand procession, brilliant with scarlet and gold, waving with plumes, sparkling with gems, – it seemed as if earth had been ransacked and human invention taxed to express the ultimatum of all that could dazzle and bewilder, – and, with a rustle like that of ripe grain before a swaying wind, all the multitude went down on their knees as the cortege passed. Agnes knelt, too, with clasped hands, adoring the sacred vision enshrined in her soul; and as she knelt with upraised eyes, her cheeks flushed with enthusiasm, her beauty attracted the attention of more than one in the procession.
"There is the model which our master has been looking for," said a young and handsome man in a rich dress of black velvet, who, by his costume, appeared to hold the rank of first chamberlain in the Papal suite.
The young man to whom he spoke gave a bold glance at Agnes and answered, —
"Pretty little rogue, how well she does the saint!"
"One can see that with judicious arrangement she might make a nymph as well as a saint," said the first speaker.
"A Daphne, for example," said the other, laughing.
"And she wouldn't turn into a laurel, either," said the first. "Well, we must keep our eye on her." And as they were passing into the church-door, he beckoned to a servant in waiting and whispered something, indicating Agnes with a backward movement of his hand.
The servant, after this, kept cautiously within observing distance of her, as she with the crowd pressed into the church to assist at the devotions.
Long and dazzling were those ceremonies, when, raised on high like an enthroned God, Pope Alexander VI. received the homage of bended knee from the ambassadors of every Christian nation, from heads of all ecclesiastical orders, and from generals and chiefs and princes and nobles, who, robed and plumed and gemmed in all the brightest and proudest that earth could give, bowed the knee humbly and kissed his foot in return for the palm-branch which he presented. Meanwhile, voices of invisible singers chanted the simple event which all this splendor was commemorating, – how of old Jesus came into Jerusalem meek and lowly, riding on an ass, – how His disciples cast their garments in the way, and the multitude took branches of palm-trees to come forth and meet Him, – how He was seized, tried, condemned to a cruel death, – and the crowd, with dazzled and wondering eyes following the gorgeous ceremonial, reflected little how great was the satire of the contrast, how different the coming of that meek and lowly One to suffer and to die from this triumphant display of worldly pomp and splendor in His professed representative.
But to the pure all things are pure, and Agnes thought only of the enthronement of all virtues, of all celestial charities and unworldly purities in that splendid ceremonial, and longed within herself to approach so near as to touch the hem of those wondrous and sacred garments. It was to her enthusiastic imagination like the unclosing of celestial doors, where the kings and priests of an eternal and heavenly temple move to and fro in music, with the many-colored glories of rainbows and sunset clouds. Her whole nature was wrought upon by the sights and sounds of that gorgeous worship, – she seemed to burn and brighten like an altar-coal, her figure appeared to dilate, her eyes grew deeper and shone with a starry light, and the color of her cheeks flushed up with a vivid glow; nor was she aware how often eyes were turned upon her, nor how murmurs of admiration followed all her absorbed, unconscious movements. "Ecco! Eccola!" was often repeated from mouth to mouth around her, but she heard it not.
When at last the ceremony was finished, the crowd rushed again out of the church to see the departure of various dignitaries. There was a perfect whirl of dazzling equipages, and glittering lackeys, and prancing horses, crusted with gold, flaming in scarlet and purple, retinues of cardinals and princes and nobles and ambassadors all in one splendid confused jostle of noise and brightness.
Suddenly a servant in a gorgeous scarlet livery touched Agnes on the shoulder, and said, in a tone of authority, —
"Young maiden, your presence is commanded."
"Who commands it?" said Elsie, laying her hand on her grandchild's shoulder fiercely.
"Are you mad?" whispered two or three women of the lower orders to Elsie at once; "don't you know who that is? Hush, for your life!"
"I shall go with you, Agnes," said Elsie, resolutely.
"No, you will not," said the attendant, insolently. "This maiden is commanded, and none else."
"He belongs to the Pope's nephew," whispered a voice in Elsie's ear. "You had better have your tongue torn out than say another word." Whereupon, Elsie found herself actually borne backward by three or four stout women.
Agnes looked round and smiled on her, – a smile full of innocent trust, – and then, turning, followed the servant into the finest of the equipages, where she was lost to view.
Elsie was almost wild with fear and impotent rage; but a low, impressive voice now spoke in her ear. It came from the white figure which had followed them in the morning.
"Listen," it said, "and be quiet; don't turn your head, but hear what I tell you. Your child is followed by those who will save her. Go your ways whence you came. Wait till the hour after the Ave Maria, then come to the Porta San Sebastiano, and all will be well."
When Elsie turned to look she saw no one, but caught a distant glimpse of a white figure vanishing in the crowd. She returned to her asylum, wondering and disconsolate, and the first person whom she saw was old Mona.
"Well, good-morrow, sister!" she said. "Know that I am here on a strange errand. The Princess has taken such a liking to you that nothing will do but we must fetch you and your little one out to her villa. I looked everywhere for you in church this morning. Where have you hid yourselves?"
"We were there," said Elsie, confused, and hesitating whether to speak of what had happened.
"Well, where is the little one? Get her ready; we have horses in waiting. It is a good bit out of the city."
"Alack!" said Elsie, "I know not where she is."
"Holy Virgin!" said Mona, "how is this?"
Elsie, moved by the necessity which makes it a relief to open the heart to some one, sat down on the steps of the church and poured forth the whole story into the listening ear of Mona.
"Well, well, well!" said the old servant, "in our days, one does not wonder at anything, one never knows one day what may come the next, – but this is bad enough!"
"Do you think," said Elsie, "there is any hope in that strange promise?"
"One can but try it," said Mona.
"If you could but be there then," said Elsie, "and take us to your mistress."
"Well, I will wait, for my mistress has taken an especial fancy to your little one, more particularly since this morning, when a holy Capuchin came to our house and held a long conference with her, and after he was gone I found my lady almost in a faint, and she would have it that we should start directly to bring her out here, and I had much ado to let her see that the child would do quite as well after services were over. I tired myself looking about for you in the crowd."
The two women then digressed upon various gossiping particulars, as they sat on the old mossy, grass-grown steps, looking up over house-tops yellow with lichen, into the blue spring air, where flocks of white pigeons were soaring and careering in the soft, warm sunshine. Brightness and warmth and flowers seemed to be the only idea natural to that charming weather, and Elsie, sad-hearted and foreboding as she was, felt the benign influence. Rome, which had been so fatal a place to her peace, yet had for her, as it has for every one, potent spells of a lulling and soothing power. Where is the grief or anxiety that can resist the enchantment of one of Rome's bright, soft, spring days?
CHAPTER XXIX
THE NIGHT-RIDE
The villa of the Princess Paulina was one of those soft, idyllic paradises which lie like so many fairy-lands around the dreamy solitudes of Rome. They are so fair, so wild, so still, these villas! Nature in them seems to run in such gentle sympathy with Art, that one feels as if they had not been so much the product of human skill as some indigenous growth of Arcadian ages. There are quaint terraces shadowed by clipped ilex-trees, whose branches make twilight even in the sultriest noon; there are long-drawn paths, through wildernesses where cyclamens blossom in crimson clouds among crushed fragments of sculptured marble green with the moss of ages, and glossy-leaved myrtles put forth their pale blue stars in constellations under the leafy shadows. Everywhere is the voice of water, ever lulling, ever babbling, and taught by Art to run in many a quaint caprice, – here to rush down marble steps slippery with sedgy green, there to spout up in silvery spray, and anon to spread into a cool, waveless lake, whose mirror reflects trees and flowers far down in some visionary underworld. Then there are wide lawns, where the grass in spring is a perfect rainbow of anemones, white, rose, crimson, purple, mottled, streaked, and dappled with ever varying shade of sunset clouds. There are soft, moist banks where purple and white violets grow large and fair, and trees all interlaced with ivy, which runs and twines everywhere, intermingling its dark, graceful leaves and vivid young shoots with the bloom and leafage of all shadowy places.
In our day, these lovely places have their dark shadow ever haunting their loveliness: the malaria, like an unseen demon, lies hid in their sweetness. And in the time we are speaking of, a curse not less deadly poisoned the beauties of the Princess's villa, – the malaria of fear.
The graveled terrace in front of the villa commanded, through the clipped arches of the ilex-trees, the Campagna with its soft, undulating bands of many-colored green, and the distant city of Rome, whose bells were always filling the air between with a tremulous vibration. Here, during the long sunny afternoon while Elsie and Monica were crooning together on the steps of the church, the Princess Paulina walked restlessly up and down, looking forth on the way towards the city for the travelers whom she expected.
Father Francesco had been there that morning and communicated to her the dying message of the aged Capuchin, from which it appeared that the child who had so much interested her was her near kinswoman. Perhaps, had her house remained at the height of its power and splendor, she might have rejected with scorn the idea of a kinswoman whose existence had been owing to a mésalliance; but a member of an exiled and disinherited family, deriving her only comfort from unworldly sources, she regarded this event as an opportunity afforded her to make expiation for one of the sins of her house. The beauty and winning graces of her young kinswoman were not without their influence in attracting a lonely heart deprived of the support of natural ties. The Princess longed for something to love, and the discovery of a legitimate object of family affection was an event in the weary monotony of her life; and therefore it was that the hours of the afternoon seemed long while she looked forth towards Rome, listening to the ceaseless chiming of its bells, and wondering why no one appeared along the road.
The sun went down, and all the wide plain seemed like the sea at twilight, lying in rosy and lilac and purple shadowy bands, out of which rose the old city, solemn and lonely as some enchanted island of dreamland, with a flush of radiance behind it and a tolling of weird music filling all the air around. Now they are chanting the Ave Maria in hundreds of churches, and the Princess worships in distant accord, and tries to still the anxieties of her heart with many a prayer. Twilight fades and fades, the Campagna becomes a black sea, and the distant city looms up like a dark rock against the glimmering sky, and the Princess goes within and walks restlessly through the wide halls, stopping first at one open window and then at another to listen. Beneath her feet she treads a cool mosaic pavement where laughing Cupids are dancing. Above, from the ceiling, Aurora and the Hours look down in many-colored clouds of brightness. The sound of the fountains without is so clear in the intense stillness that the peculiar voice of each one can be told. That is the swaying noise of the great jet that rises from marble shells and falls into a wide basin, where silvery swans swim round and round in enchanted circles; and the other slenderer sound is the smaller jet that rains down its spray into the violet-borders deep in the shrubbery; and that other, the shallow babble of the waters that go down the marble steps to the lake. How dreamlike and plaintive they all sound in the night stillness! The nightingale sings from the dark shadows of the wilderness; and the musky odors of the cyclamen come floating ever and anon through the casement, in that strange, cloudy way in which flower scents seem to come and go in the air in the night season.
At last the Princess fancies she hears the distant tramp of horses' feet, and her heart beats so that she can scarcely listen: now she hears it, – and now a rising wind, sweeping across the Campagna, seems to bear it moaning away. She goes to a door and looks out into the darkness. Yes, she hears it now, quick and regular, – the beat of many horses' feet coming in hot haste along the road. Surely the few servants whom she has sent cannot make all this noise! and she trembles with vague affright. Perhaps it is a tyrannical message, bringing imprisonment and death. She calls a maid, and bids her bring lights into the reception-hall. A few moments more, and there is a confused stamping of horses' feet approaching the house, and she hears the voices of her servants. She runs into the piazza, and sees dismounting a knight who carries Agnes in his arms pale and fainting. Old Elsie and Monica, too, dismount, with the Princess's men-servants; but, wonderful to tell, there seems besides them to be a train of some hundred armed horsemen.
The timid Princess was so fluttered and bewildered that she lost all presence of mind, and stood in uncomprehending wonder, while Monica pushed authoritatively into the house, and beckoned the knight to bring Agnes and lay her on a sofa, when she and old Elsie busied themselves vigorously with restoratives.
The Lady Paulina, as soon as she could collect her scattered senses, recognized in Agostino the banished lord of the Sarelli family, a race who had shared with her own the hatred and cruelty of the Borgia tribe; and he in turn had recognized a daughter of the Colonnas. He drew her aside into a small boudoir adjoining the apartment.
"Noble lady," he said, "we are companions in misfortune, and so, I trust, you will pardon what seems a tumultuous intrusion on your privacy. I and my men came to Rome in disguise, that we might watch over and protect this poor innocent, who now finds asylum with you."
"My Lord," said the Princess, "I see in this event the wonderful working of the good God. I have but just learned that this young person is my near kinswoman; it was only this morning that the fact was certified to me on the dying confession of a holy Capuchin, who privately united my brother to her mother. The marriage was an indiscretion of his youth; but afterwards he fell into more grievous sin in denying the holy sacrament, and leaving his wife to die in misery and dishonor, and perhaps for this fault such great judgments fell upon him. I wish to make atonement in such sort as is yet possible by acting as a mother to this child."
"The times are so troublous and uncertain," said Agostino, "that she must have stronger protection than that of any woman. She is of a most holy and religious nature, but as ignorant of sin as an angel who never has seen anything out of heaven; and so the Borgias enticed her into their impure den, from which, God helping, I have saved her. I tried all I could to prevent her coming to Rome, and to convince her of the vileness that ruled here; but the poor little one could not believe me, and thought me a heretic only for saying what she now knows from her own senses."
The Lady Paulina shuddered with fear.
"Is it possible that you have come into collision with the dreadful Borgias? What will become of us?"
"I brought a hundred men into Rome in different disguises," said Agostino, "and we gained over a servant in their household, through whom I entered and carried her off. Their men pursued us, and we had a fight in the streets, but for the moment we mustered more than they. Some of them chased us a good distance. But it will not do for us to remain here. As soon as she is revived enough, we must retreat towards one of our fastnesses in the mountains, whence, when rested, we shall go northward to Florence, where I have powerful friends, and she has also an uncle, a holy man, by whose counsels she is much guided."
"You must take me with you," said the Princess, in a tremor of anxiety. "Not for the world would I stay, if it be known you have taken refuge here. For a long time their spies have been watching about me; they only wait for some occasion to seize upon my villa, as they have on the possessions of all my father's house. Let me flee with you. I have a brother-in-law in Florence who hath often urged me to escape to him till times mend, – for, surely, God will not allow the wicked to bear rule forever."
"Willingly, noble lady, will we give you our escort, – the more so that this poor child will then have a friend with her beseeming her father's rank. Believe me, lady, she will do no discredit to her lineage. She was trained in a convent, and her soul is a flower of marvelous beauty. I must declare to you here that I have wooed her honorably to be my wife, and she would willingly be so, had not some scruples of a religious vocation taken hold on her, to dispel which I look for the aid of the holy father, her uncle."
"It would be a most fit and proper thing," said the Princess, "thus to ally our houses, in hope of some good time to come which shall restore their former standing and possessions. Of course some holy man must judge of the obstacle interposed by her vocation; but I doubt not the Church will be an indulgent mother in a case where the issue seems so desirable."
"If I be married to her," said Agostino, "I can take her out of all these strifes and confusions which now agitate our Italy to the court of France, where I have an uncle high in favor with the King, and who will use all his influence to compose these troubles in Italy, and bring about a better day."
While this conversation was going on, bountiful refreshments had been provided for the whole party, and the attendants of the Princess received orders to pack all her jewels and valuable effects for a sudden journey.
As soon as preparations could be made, the whole party left the villa of the Princess for a retreat in the Alban Mountains, where Agostino and his band had one of their rendezvous. Only the immediate female attendants of the Princess, and one or two men-servants, left with her. The silver plate, and all objects of particular value, were buried in the garden. This being done, the keys of the house were intrusted to a gray-headed servant, who with his wife had grown old in the family.
It was midnight before everything was ready for starting. The moon cast silver gleams through the ilex-avenues, and caused the jet of the great fountain to look like a wavering pillar of cloudy brightness, when the Princess led forth Agnes upon the wide veranda. Two gentle, yet spirited little animals from the Princess's stables were there awaiting them, and they were lifted into their saddles by Agostino.