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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44827 ***
+
+Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and
+bold text by =equal signs=.
+
+
+
+
+
+  Under the Witches' Moon
+
+  THE ROMANCES
+  OF
+  NATHAN GALLIZIER
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  _Each, one volume, 12mo, cloth, illustrated.
+  Net $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_
+
+  Castel del Monte
+  The Sorceress of Rome
+  The Court of Lucifer
+  The Hill of Venus
+  The Crimson Gondola
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  Under the Witches' Moon
+
+  _12mo, cloth, illustrated. Net $1.50;
+  carriage paid, $1.65_
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+  THE PAGE COMPANY
+  53 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.
+
+[Illustration: "It was that of a man coming towards her" (_See page
+143_)]
+
+
+
+
+
+  Under the
+  Witches' Moon
+
+  A Romantic Tale
+  _of_ Mediaeval Rome
+
+  _BY
+  Nathan Gallizier_
+
+  Author of "The Crimson Gondola," "The Hill of Venus,"
+  "The Court of Lucifer," "The Sorceress of Rome,"
+  "Castel del Monte," Etc.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  THE PAGE COMPANY
+  BOSTON      MDCCCCXVII
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1917,_
+  BY THE PAGE COMPANY
+
+  _All rights reserved_
+
+  First Impression, October, 1917
+
+  THE COLONIAL PRESS
+  C. H. SIMONDS CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
+
+
+  _"To some Love comes so splendid and so soon,
+    With such wide wings and steps so royally,
+  That they, like sleepers wakened suddenly,
+    Expecting dawn, are blinded by his noon.
+
+  "To some Love comes so silently and late,
+    That all unheard he is, and passes by,
+  Leaving no gift but a remembered sigh,
+    While they stand watching at another gate.
+
+  "But some know Love at the enchanted hour,
+    They hear him singing like a bird afar,
+  They see him coming like a falling star,
+    They meet his eyes--and all their world's in flower."
+
+                                      ETHEL CLIFFORD_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  BOOK THE FIRST
+
+  Chapter                              Page
+
+     I. The Fires of St. John             3
+
+    II. The Weaving of the Spell         13
+
+   III. The Dream Lady of Avalon         20
+
+    IV. The Way of the Cross             30
+
+     V. On the Aventine                  38
+
+    VI. The Coup                         46
+
+   VII. Masks and Mummers                60
+
+  VIII. The Shrine of Hekaté             67
+
+    IX. The Game of Love                 79
+
+     X. A Spirit Pageant                 90
+
+    XI. The Denunciation                 97
+
+   XII. The Confession                  102
+
+
+  BOOK THE SECOND
+
+     I. The Grand Chamberlain           115
+
+    II. The Call of Eblis               128
+
+   III. The Crystal Sphere              134
+
+    IV. Persephoné                      146
+
+     V. Magic Glooms                    152
+
+    VI. The Lure of the Abyss           160
+
+   VII. The Face in the Panel           167
+
+  VIII. The Shadow of Asrael            173
+
+    IX. The Feast of Theodora           187
+
+     X. The Chalice of Oblivion         204
+
+
+  BOOK THE THIRD
+
+     I. Wolfsbane                       221
+
+    II. Under the Saffron Scarf         230
+
+   III. Dark Plottings                  240
+
+    IV. Face to Face                    250
+
+     V. The Cressets of Doom            259
+
+    VI. A Meeting of Ghosts             269
+
+   VII. A Bower of Eden                 279
+
+  VIII. An Italian Night                289
+
+    IX. The Net of the Fowler           299
+
+     X. Devil Worship                   307
+
+    XI. By Lethe's Shores               314
+
+   XII. The Death Watch                 323
+
+  XIII. The Convent in Trastevere       335
+
+   XIV. The Phantom of the Lateran      341
+
+
+  BOOK THE FOURTH
+
+     I. The Return of the Moor          351
+
+    II. The Escape from San Angelo      356
+
+   III. The Lure                        367
+
+    IV. A Lying Oracle                  377
+
+     V. Bitter Waters                   384
+
+    VI. From Dream to Dream             389
+
+   VII. A Roman Medea                   402
+
+  VIII. In Tenebris                     413
+
+    IX. The Conspiracy                  419
+
+     X. The Broken Spell                427
+
+    XI. The Black Mass                  440
+
+   XII. Sunrise                         453
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                                  Page
+
+  "It was that of a man coming towards her." (_See page 143_)
+
+                                                          _Frontispiece_
+
+  "A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes"                      83
+
+  "Pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion"                   192
+
+  "Thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth"              236
+
+  BOOK THE FIRST
+
+
+
+
+UNDER THE WITCHES' MOON
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE FIRES OF ST. JOHN
+
+
+It was the eve of St. John in the year of our Lord Nine Hundred
+Thirty-Five.
+
+High on the cypress-clad hills of the Eternal City the evening sun had
+flamed valediction, and the last lights of the dying day were fading
+away on the waves of the Tiber whose changeless tide has rolled down
+through centuries of victory and defeat, of pride and shame, of glory
+and disgrace.
+
+The purple dusk began to weave its phantom veil over the ancient
+capital of the Cæsars and a round blood-red moon was climbing slowly
+above the misty crests of the Alban Hills, draining the sky of its
+crimson sunset hues.
+
+The silvery chimes of the Angelus, pealing from churches and convents,
+from Santa Maria in Trastevere to Santa Maria of the Aventine, began to
+sing their message of peace into the heart of nature and of man.
+
+As the hours of the night advanced and the moon rose higher in the
+star-embroidered canopy of the heavens, a vast concourse of people
+began to pour from shadowy lanes and thoroughfares, from sanctuaries
+and hostelries, into the Piazza Navona. Romans and peasants from the
+Campagna, folk from Tivoli, Velletri, Corneto and Terracina, pilgrims
+from every land of the then known world, Africans and Greeks, Lombards
+and Franks, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Syrians and Kopts, Spaniards and
+Saxons, men from the frozen coast of Thulé and the burning sands of
+Arabia, traders from the Levant, sorcerers from the banks of the Nile,
+conjurers from the mythical shores of the Ganges, adventurers from the
+Barbary coast, gypsies from the plains of Sarmatia, monks from the
+Thebaide, Normans, Gascons and folk from Aquitaine.
+
+In the Piazza Navona booths and stalls had been erected for the sale of
+figs and honey, and the fragrant products of the Roman osterié.
+
+Strings of colored lanterns danced and quivered in the air. The fitful
+light from the torches, sending spiral columns of resinous smoke into
+the night-blue ether, shed a lurid glow over the motley, fantastic
+crowd that increased with every moment, recruited from fishermen,
+flower girls, water-carriers and herdsmen from the Roman Campagna.
+
+Ensconced in the shadow of a roofless portico, a relic of the ancient
+Circus Agonalis, which at one time occupied the site of the Piazza
+Navona, and regarding the bewildering spectacle which presented itself
+to his gaze, with the air of one unaccustomed to such scenes, stood
+a stranger whose countenance revealed little of the joy of life that
+should be the heritage of early manhood.
+
+His sombre and austere bearing, the abstracted mood and far-away look
+of the eyes would have marked him a dreamer in a society of men who had
+long been strangers to dreams. For stern reality ruled the world and
+the lives of a race untouched alike by the glories of the past and the
+dawn of the Pre-Renaissance.
+
+He wore the customary pilgrim's habit, almost colorless from the
+effects of wind and weather. Now and then a chance passer-by would
+cast shy glances at the lone stranger, endeavoring to reconcile his age
+and his garb, and wondering at the nature of the transgression that
+weighed so heavily upon one apparently so young in years.
+
+And well might his countenance give rise to speculation, were it but
+for the determined and stolid air of aloofness which seemed to render
+futile every endeavor to entice him into the seething maelstrom of
+humanity on the part of those who took note of his dark and austere
+form as they crossed the Piazza.
+
+Tristan of Avalon was in his thirtieth year, though the hardships
+of a long and tedious journey, consummated entirely afoot, made him
+appear of maturer age. The face, long exposed to the relentless rays
+of the sun, had taken on the darker tints of the Southland. The nose
+was straight, the grey eyes tinged with melancholy, the hair was of
+chestnut brown, the forehead high and lofty. The ensemble was that of
+one who, unaccustomed to the pilgrim's garb, moves uneasily among his
+kind. Yet the atmosphere of frivolity, while irritating and jarring
+upon his senses, did not permit him to avert his gaze from the orgy of
+color, the pandemonium of jollity, that whirled and piped and roared
+about him as the flow of mighty waters.
+
+One of many strange wayfarers bound upon business of one sort or
+another to the ancient seat of empire, whose worldly sceptre had long
+passed from her palsied grip to the distant shores of the Bosporus,
+Tristan had arrived during the early hours of the day in the feudal and
+turbulent witches' cauldron of the Rome of the Millennium.
+
+And with him constituents of many peoples, from far and near, had
+reached the Leonine quarter from the Tiburtine road, after months of
+tedious travel, to worship at the holy shrines, to do penance and to
+obtain absolution for real or imaginary transgressions.
+
+From Bosnia, from Servia and Hungary, from Negropont and the islands
+of the Greek Archipelago, from Trebizond and the Crimea it came
+endlessly floating to the former capital of the Cæsars, a waste drift
+of palaces and temples and antique civilizations, for the End of Time
+was said to be nigh, and the dread of impending judgment lay heavily
+upon the tottering world of the Millennium.
+
+A grotesque and motley crowd it was, that sought and found a temporary
+haven in the lowly taverns, erected for the accommodation of perennial
+pilgrims, chiefly mean ill-favored dwellings of clay and timber,
+divided into racial colonies, so that pilgrims of the same land and
+creed might dwell together.
+
+A very Babel of voices assailed Tristan's ear, for the ancient sonorous
+tongue had long degenerated into the lingua Franca of bad Latin, though
+there were some who could still, though in a broken and barbarous
+fashion, make themselves understood, when all other modes of expression
+failed them.
+
+All about him throbbed the strange, weird music of zitherns and lutes
+and the thrumming of the Egyptian Sistrum. The air of the summer night
+was heavy with the odor of incense, garlic and roses. The higher
+risen moon gleamed pale as an alabaster lamp in the dark azure of
+the heavens, trembling luminously on the waters of a fountain which
+occupied the centre of the Piazza Navona.
+
+Here lolled some scattered groups of the populace, discussing the
+events of the day, jesting, gesticulating, drinking or love-making.
+Others roamed about, engaged in conversation or enjoying the antics of
+two Smyrniote tumblers, whose contortions elicited storms of applause
+from an appreciative audience.
+
+A crowd of maskers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and the uncommon
+spectacle at last drew Tristan from his point of vantage and caused
+him to mingle with the crowds, which increased with every moment,
+their shouts and gibes and the clatter of their tongues becoming
+quite deafening to his ears. Richly decorated chariots, drawn by
+spirited steeds, rolled past in a continuous procession. The cries of
+the wine-venders and fruit-sellers mingled with the acclaim of the
+multitudes. Now and then was heard the fanfare of a company of horsemen
+who clattered past, bound upon some feudal adventure.
+
+Weary of walking, distracted by the ever increasing clamor, oppressed
+with a sense of loneliness amidst the surging crowds, whose festal
+spirit he did not share, Tristan made his way towards the fountain and,
+seating himself on the margin, regardless of the chattering groups,
+which intermittently clustered about it, he felt his mood gradually
+calm in the monotony of the gurgling flow of the water, which spurted
+from the grotesque mouths of lions and dolphins.
+
+The stars sparkled in subdued lustre above the dark, towering cypresses
+which crowned the adjacent eminence of Monte Testaccio, and the
+distant palaces and ruins stood forth in distinctness of splendor and
+desolation beneath the luminous brightness of the moonlit heavens.
+White shreds of mist, like sorrowing spirits, floated above the winding
+course of the Tiber, and enveloped in a diaphanous haze the cloisters
+upon St. Bartholomew's Island at the base of Mount Aventine.
+
+For a time Tristan's eyes roamed over the kaleidoscopic confusion which
+met his gaze on every turn. His ear was assailed by the droning sound
+of many voices that filled the air about him, when he was startled by
+the approach of two men, who, but for their halting gait, might have
+passed unheeded in the rolling sea of humanity that ebbed and flowed
+over the Piazza.
+
+Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, was endowed with the elegance of the
+effeminate Roman noble of his time. Supple as an eel, he nevertheless
+suggested great physical strength. The skin was of a deep olive tinge.
+The black, beady eyes were a marked feature of the countenance.
+Inscrutable and steadfast in regard, with a hint of mockery and
+cynicism, coupled with an abiding alertness, they seemed to penetrate
+the very core of matter.
+
+He wore a black mantle reaching almost to his feet. Of his features,
+shaded by a hood, little was to be seen, save his glittering minx-eyes.
+These he kept alternately fixed upon the crowds that surged around him
+and on his companion, a hunchback garbed entirely in black, from the
+Spanish hat, which he wore slouched over his face, to the black hose
+and sandals that encased his feet. A large red scar across the low
+forehead heightened the repulsiveness of his countenance. There was
+something strangely sinister in his sunken, cadaverous cheeks, the low
+brow, the inflamed eyelids, and his limping gait.
+
+Without perceiving or heeding the presence of Tristan they paused as by
+some preconcerted signal.
+
+As the taller of the two pushed back the hood of his pilgrim garb, as
+if to cool his brow in the night breeze, Tristan peered into a face not
+lacking in sensuous refinement. Dark supercilious eyes roved from one
+object to another, without dwelling long on any particular one. There
+was somewhat of a cynical look in the downward curve of the eyebrows,
+the thin straight lips and the slightly aquiline nose, which seemed to
+imbue him with an air of recklessness and daring, that ill consorted
+with his monkish garb.
+
+Their discourse was at first almost unintelligible to Tristan. The
+language of the common people had, at this period of the history of
+Rome, not only lost its form, but almost the very echo of the Latin
+tongue.
+
+After a time, however, Tristan distinguished a name, and, upon
+listening more attentively, the burden of the message began to unfold
+itself.
+
+"Why then have you ventured out of your hell-hole of iniquity, when
+discovery means death or worse?" said Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. "Do
+the keeps and dungeons of the Emperor's Tomb so allure you? Or do you
+trust in some miraculous delivery from its vermin-haunted vaults?"
+
+At these words Rome's most dreaded bravo, Il Gobbo of the Catacombs,
+snarled contemptuously.
+
+"You are needlessly alarmed, my lord. They will not look for Il Gobbo
+in this company, though even a mole may walk in the shadow of a saint."
+
+Basil regarded the speaker with mingled pity and contempt.
+
+"There is room for all the world in Rome and the devil to boot."
+
+Il Gobbo chuckled unpleasantly.
+
+"Besides--folk about here show a great reverence for a holy garb--"
+
+"Always with fitting reservations," interposed the Grand Chamberlain
+sardonically. "I have had it in mind at some time or other to relieve
+the Grand Penitentiary. The good man's lungs must be well nigh bursting
+with the foul air down there by the Tomb of the Apostle. He will
+welcome a rest!"
+
+"Requiescat," chanted the bravo, imitating the nasal tone of the clergy.
+
+Basil nodded approval.
+
+"He at one time did me the honor of showing some concern in my
+spiritual welfare. Know you what I replied?"--
+
+The bravo gave a shrug.
+
+"'Father,' I said, when he urged me to confess, 'pray shrive some one
+worthier than myself. But--if you must needs have a confession--I shall
+whisper into your holy ear so many interesting little episodes, so many
+spicy peccadillos, and--to enhance their interest--mention some names
+so high in the grace of God--'"
+
+"And the reverend father?"
+
+"Looked anathema and vanished"--
+
+Basil paused for a moment, after which he continued with a sigh:
+
+"It is too late! The Church is to be purified. Not even the pale shade
+of Marozia will henceforth be permitted to haunt the crypts of Castel
+San Angelo--merely for the sake of decorum. There is nothing less well
+bred than memory!"
+
+For a moment they relapsed into silence, watching the shifting crowds,
+then Basil continued:
+
+"Compared with this virtuous boredom the last days of Ugo of Tuscany
+were a carnival. One could at least speed the travails of some one who
+required swift absolution."
+
+"Can you contrive to bring about this happy state?" queried Il Gobbo.
+
+"It is always the unexpurgated that happens," Basil replied
+sardonically.
+
+"I hope to advance in your school," Il Gobbo interposed with a smile.
+
+"I have long had you in mind. If you are in favor with yourself you
+will become an apt pupil. Remember! He who is dead is dead and long
+live the survivor."
+
+"In very truth, my lord, breath is the first and last thing we draw--"
+rejoined the bravo, evidently not relishing the thought that death
+might be standing unseen at his elbow.
+
+"Who would end one's days in odious immaculacy," Basil interposed
+grandiloquently, "even though you will not incur that reproach from
+those who know you from report, or who have visited your haunts? But
+to the point. There are certain forces at work in Rome which make
+breathing in this fetid air a rather cumbersome process."
+
+"I doubt me if they could teach your lordship any new tricks," Il Gobbo
+replied, somewhat dubiously.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain smiled darkly.
+
+"Good Il Gobbo, the darkest of my tricks you have not yet fathomed."
+
+"Perchance then the gust of rumor blows true about my lord's palace on
+the Pincian Hill?"
+
+"What say they about my palatial abode?" Basil turned suavely to the
+speaker.
+
+There was something in the gleam of his interrogator's eyes that caused
+Il Gobbo to hesitate. But his native insolence came to the rescue of
+his failing courage.
+
+"Ask rather, what do they not say of it, my lord! It would require less
+time to recite--"
+
+"Nevertheless, I am just now in a frame of mind to shudder soundly.
+These Roman nights, with their garlic and incense, are apt to befuddle
+the brain,--rob it of its power to plot. Perchance the recital of these
+mysteries would bring to mind something I have omitted."
+
+The bravo regarded the speaker with a look of awe.
+
+"They whisper of torture chambers, where knife and screw and pulley
+never rest--of horrors that make the blood freeze in the veins--of
+phantoms of fair women that haunt the silent galleries--strange wails
+of anguish that sound nightly from the subterranean vaults--"
+
+"A goodly account that ought vastly to interest the Grand
+Penitentiary--were it--with proper decorum--whispered in his ear. It
+would make him forget--for the time at least--the dirty Roman gossip.
+Deem you not, good Il Gobbo?"
+
+"I am not versed in such matters, my lord," replied the bravo, ill at
+ease. "Perhaps your lordship will now tell me why this fondness for my
+society?"
+
+"To confess truth, good Il Gobbo, I did not join you merely to meditate
+upon the pleasant things of life. Rather to be inspired to some
+extraordinary adventure such as my hungry soul yearns for. As for the
+nature thereof, I shall leave that to the notoriously wicked fertility
+of your imagination."
+
+The lurid tone of the speaker startled the bravo.
+
+"My lord, you would not lay hands on the Lord's anointed?"
+
+Il Gobbo met a glance that made the blood freeze in his veins.
+
+"Is it the thing you call your conscience that ails you, or some sudden
+indigestion? Or is the bribe not large enough?"
+
+The bravo doggedly shook his head.
+
+"Courage lieth not always in bulk," he growled. "May my soul burn to
+a crisp in the everlasting flames if I draw steel against the Lord's
+anointed."
+
+"Silence, fool! What you do in my service shall not burden your soul!
+Have you forgotten our compact?"
+
+"That I have not, my lord! But since the Senator of Rome has favored me
+with his especial attention, I too have something to lose, which some
+folk hereabout call their honor."
+
+"Your honor!" sneered the Grand Chamberlain. "It is like the skin of an
+onion. Peel off one, there's another beneath."
+
+"My skin then--" the bravo growled doggedly. "However--if the lord
+Basil will confide in me--"
+
+"Pray lustily to your patron saint and frequent the chapel of the
+Grand Penitentiary," replied Basil suavely, beckoning to Il Gobbo to
+follow him. "But beware, lest in your zeal to confess you mistake my
+peccadillos for your own."
+
+With these words the two worthies slowly retraced their steps in the
+direction of Mount Aventine and were soon lost to sight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE WEAVING OF THE SPELL
+
+
+After they had disappeared Tristan stood at gaze,
+puzzled where to turn, for the spectacle had suddenly changed.
+
+New bands of revellers had invaded the Piazza Navona, and it seemed
+indeed as if the Eve of St. John were assuming the character of the
+ancient Lupercalia, for the endless variety of costumes displayed
+by a multitude assembled from every corner of Italy, Spain, Greece,
+Africa, and the countries of the North, was now exaggerated by a wild
+fancifulness and grotesque variety of design.
+
+Tristan himself did not escape the merry intruders. He was immediately
+beset by importunate revellers, and not being able to make himself
+understood, they questioned and lured him on, imploring his good
+offices with the Enemy of Mankind.
+
+Satyrs, fauns and other sylvan creatures accosted him, diverting
+their antics, when they found themselves but ill repaid for their
+efforts, and leaving the solitary stranger pondering the expediency of
+remaining, or wending his steps toward the Inn of the Golden Shield,
+where he had taken lodging upon his arrival.
+
+These doubts were to be speedily dispelled by a spectacle which
+attracted the crowds that thronged the Piazza, causing them to give
+way before a splendid procession that had entered the Navona from the
+region of Mount Aventine.
+
+Down the Navona came a train of chariots, preceded by a throng of
+persons, clad in rich and fantastic Oriental costumes, leaping, dancing
+and making the air resound with tambourines, bells, cymbals and gongs.
+They kept up an incessant jingle, which sounded weirdly above the
+droning chant of distant processions of pilgrims, hermits and monks,
+traversing the city from sanctuary to sanctuary.
+
+The occupants of these chariots consisted of a number of young women in
+the flower of youth and beauty, whose scant apparel left little to the
+imagination either as regarded their person or the trade they plied.
+The charioteers were youths, scarcely arrived at the age of puberty,
+but skilled in their profession in the highest degree.
+
+The first chariot, drawn by two milk-white steeds of the Berber breed,
+was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with gilded spokes and trappings that
+glistened in the light of a thousand colored lanterns and torches, like
+a vehicle from fairyland. The reins were in the hands of a youth hardly
+over sixteen years of age, garbed in a snow white tunic, but the skill
+with which he drove the shell-shaped car through the surging crowds
+argued for uncommon dexterity.
+
+Tristan, from his station by the fountain, was enabled to take in
+every detail of the strange pageant which moved swiftly towards him, a
+glittering, fantastic procession, as if drawn out of dreamland; and so
+enthralled were his senses that he did not note the terrible silence
+which had suddenly fallen upon the multitude.
+
+As a half-slumbering man may note a sudden brilliant gleam of sunshine
+flashing on the walls of his chamber, Tristan gazed in confused
+bewilderment, when suddenly his stupefied senses were aroused to hot
+life and pulsation, as he fixed his straining gaze on the supreme fair
+form of the woman in the first car, standing erect like a queen,
+surveying her subjects.
+
+In the silence of a great multitude there is always something ominous.
+But Tristan noted it not. Indeed he was deaf and blind to everything,
+save the apparition in the shell-shaped car, as it bounded lightly over
+the unevenly laid tufa of the Navona.
+
+Was it a woman, or a goddess? A rainbow flame in mortal shape, a spirit
+of earth, air, water or fire?
+
+He saw before him a woman combining the charm of the girl with the
+maturity of the thirties, dark-haired, exquisitely proportioned, with
+clear-cut features and dark slumbrous eyes.
+
+She wore a diaphanous robe of pale silk gauze. Her wonderful arms,
+white as the fallen snow, were encircled by triple serpentine coils
+of gold. Else, she was unadorned, save for a circlet of rubies which
+crowned the dusky head.
+
+Her sombre eyes rested drowsily on the swarming crowds, while a smile
+of disdain curved the small red mouth, as her chariot proceeded through
+the frozen silence.
+
+Suddenly her eye caught the admiring gaze of Tristan, who had indeed
+forgotten heaven and earth in the contemplation of this supremest
+handiwork of the Creator. A word to the charioteer and the chariot came
+to a stop.
+
+Tristan and the woman faced each other in silence, the man with an
+ill-concealed air of uneasiness, such as one may experience who finds
+himself face to face with some unknown danger.
+
+With utter disregard for the gaping crowds which had gathered around
+the fountain she bent her gaze upon him, surveying him from head to
+foot.
+
+"Who are you?" she spoke at last, and he, confused, bewildered,
+trembling, gazed into the woman's supremely fair face and stammered:
+
+"A pilgrim!"
+
+Her lips parted in a smile that revealed two rows of small white, even
+teeth. There was something unutterable in that smile which brought the
+color to Tristan's brow.
+
+"A Roman?"
+
+"From the North!"
+
+"Why are you here?"
+
+"For the salvation of my soul!"
+
+He blushed as he spoke.
+
+Again the strange smile curved the woman's lips, again the inscrutable
+look shone in her eyes.
+
+"For the salvation of your soul!" she repeated slowly after him. "And
+you so young and fair. Ah! You have done some little wickedness, no
+doubt?"
+
+He started to reply, but she checked him with a wave of her hand.
+
+"I do not wish to be told. Do you repent?"
+
+Tristan's throat was dry. His lips refused utterance. He nodded
+awkwardly.
+
+"So much the worse! These little peccadillos are the spice of life!
+What is your name?"
+
+She repeated it lingeringly after him.
+
+"From the North--you say--to do penance in Rome!"
+
+She watched him with an expression of amusement. When he started back
+from her, a strange fear in his heart, a wave of her hand checked him.
+
+"Let me whisper a secret to you!" she said with a smile.
+
+He felt her perfumed breath upon his cheek.
+
+Inclining his ear he staggered away from her dizzy, bewildered.
+
+Presently, with a dazzling smile, she extended one white hand and
+Tristan, trembling as one under a spell, bent over and kissed it. He
+felt the soft pressure of her fingers and his pulse throbbed with a
+strange, insidious fire, as reluctantly he released it at last.
+
+Raising his eyes, he now met her gaze, absorbing into his innermost
+soul the mesmeric spell of her beauty, drinking in the warmth of those
+dark, sleepy orbs that flashed on him half resentfully, half mockingly.
+Then the charioteer jerked up the reins, the chariot began to move.
+Like a dream the pageant vanished--and slowly, like far-away thunder,
+the voice of the multitudes began to return, as they regarded the lone
+pilgrim with mingled doubt, fear and disdain.
+
+With a start Tristan looked about. He was as one bewitched. He felt he
+must follow her at all risks, ascertain her name, her abode.
+
+Dashing through the crowds that gave way before him, wondering and
+commenting upon the unseemly haste of one wearing so austere a garb,
+Tristan caught a last glimpse of the procession as it entered the
+narrow gorge that lies between Mount Testaccio and Mount Aventine.
+
+With a sense of great disappointment he slowly retraced his steps,
+walking as in the thrall of a strange dream, and, after inquiring the
+direction of his inn of some wayfarers he chanced to meet, he at last
+reached the Inn of the Golden Shield, situated near the Flaminian Gate,
+and entered the great guest-chamber.
+
+The troubled light of a melancholy dusk was enhanced by the glimmer of
+stone lamps suspended from the low and dirty ceiling.
+
+Notwithstanding the late hour, the smoky precincts were crowded with
+guests from many lands, who were discussing the events of the day. If
+Tristan's wakeful ear had been alive to the gossip of the tavern he
+might have heard the incident in the Navona, in which he played so
+prominent a part, discussed in varied terms of wonder and condemnation.
+
+Tristan took his seat near an alcove usually reserved for guests of
+state. The unaccustomed scene began to exercise a singular fascination
+upon him, stranger as he was among strangers from all the earth, their
+faces dark against the darker background of the room. Brooding over
+a tankard of Falernian of the hue of bronze, which his oily host had
+placed before him, he continued to absorb every detail of the animated
+picture, while the memory of his strange adventure dominated his mind.
+
+Tristan's meagre fund of information was to be enriched by tidings of
+an ominous nature. He learned that the Pontiff, John XI, was imprisoned
+in the Lateran Palace, by his step-brother Alberic, the Senator of Rome.
+
+While this information came to him, a loyal son of the Church, as a
+distinct shock, Tristan felt, nevertheless, strangely impressed with
+the atmosphere of the place. Even in the period of her greatest decay,
+Rome seemed still the centre of the universe.
+
+Thus he sat brooding for hours.
+
+When, with a start, he roused himself at last, he found the vast
+guest-chamber well-nigh deserted. The pilgrims had retired to their
+respective quarters, small, dingy cells, teeming with evil odors, heat
+and mosquitoes, and the oily Calabrian host was making ready for the
+morrow.
+
+The warmth of the Roman night and the fatigue engendered after many
+leagues of tedious travel on a dusty road, under the scorching rays of
+an Italian sky, at last asserted itself and, wishing a fair rest to his
+host, who was far from displeased to see his guest-chamber cleared for
+the night, Tristan climbed the crooked and creaking stairs leading to
+the chamber assigned to him, which looked out upon the gate of Castello
+and the Tiber, where it is spanned by the Bridge of San Angelo.
+
+The window stood open to the night air, on which floated the perfumes
+from oleander and almond groves. The roofs of the Eternal City formed a
+dark, shadowy mass in the deep blue dusk, and the cylindrical masonry
+of the Flavian Emperor's Tomb rose ominously against the deep turquoise
+of the night sky.
+
+Soon the events of the day and the scenes of the evening began to melt
+into faint and indistinct memories.
+
+Sleep, deep and tranquil, encompassed Tristan's weary limbs, but in his
+dreams the events of the evening were obliterated before scenes of the
+past.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE DREAM LADY OF AVALON
+
+
+Like a disk of glowing gold the sun had set upon hill
+and dale. The gardens of Avalon lay wrapt in the mists of evening. Like
+flowers seemed the fair women who thronged the winding paths. From
+fragrant bosquets, borne on the wings of the night wind came the faint
+sounds of zitherns and lutes.
+
+He, too, was there, mingling joyous, carefree, with the rest, gathering
+the white roses for the one he loved. Dimly he recalled his delight, as
+he saw her approach in the waning light through the dim ilex avenue, an
+apparition wondrous fair in the crimson haze of slowly departing day,
+entering his garden of dreams. With strangely aching heart he saw them
+throng about her in homage and admiration.
+
+At last he knelt before her, kissing the white hand that lay passive
+within his own.
+
+How wonderful she was! Never had he seen anything like her, not even
+in this land of flowers and of beautiful women. Her hair was warm
+as if the sun had entered into it. Her skin had the tints of ivory.
+The violet eyes with the long drooping lashes seemed to hold the
+memories of a thousand love thoughts. And the small, crimson mouth, so
+witch-like, so alluring, seemed to hold out promise of fulfilment of
+dizzy hopes and desires.
+
+"It is our golden hour," she smiled down at him, and the white fingers
+twined the rose in her hair, wove a girdle of blossoms round her
+exquisite, girlish form.
+
+To Tristan she seemed an enchantment, an embodied rose. Never had he
+seen her so fair, so beautiful. On her lips quivered a smile, yet there
+was a strange light in her eyes, that gave him pause, a light he had
+never seen therein before.
+
+She beckoned him away from the throng. "Come where the moonlight
+dreams."
+
+Her smile and her wonderful eyes were his beacon light. He rose to his
+feet and took her hand. And away they strayed from the rest of the
+crowd, far away over green lawns, emerald in the moonlight, with, here
+and there, the dark shadow of a cypress falling across the silvery
+brightness of their path. Little by little the gardens were deserted.
+Fainter and fainter came the sounds of lutes and harps. The shadows of
+the grove now encompassed them, as silently they strode side by side.
+
+"This is my Buen Retiro," she spoke at last. "Here we may rest--for
+awhile--far from the world."
+
+They entered the rose-bower, a wilderness, blossoming with roses and
+hyacinths and fragrant shrubs--a very paradise for lovers.--
+
+The bells of a remote convent began to chime. They smote the silence
+with their silvery peals. The castle of Avalon lay dark in the
+distance, shadowy against the deep azure of the night sky.
+
+When the chimes of the Angelus had died away, she spoke.
+
+"How wonderful is this peace!"
+
+Her tone brought a sudden chill to his heart.
+
+As she moved forward, he dropped his wealth of flowers and held out his
+hands entreatingly.
+
+"Dearest Hellayne," he said, "tarry but a little longer--"
+
+She seemed to start at his words, and leaned over the back of the stone
+bench, which was covered with climbing roses. And suddenly under this
+new light, sad and silent, she seemed no longer his fair companion of
+the afternoon, all youth, all beauty, all light. Motionless, as if
+shadowed by some dire foreboding, she stood there and he dared not
+approach. Once he raised his hand to take her own. But something in her
+eyes caused the hand to fall as with its own weight.
+
+He could not understand what stayed him, what stayed the one supreme
+impulse of his heart. He did not understand what checked the words that
+hovered on his lips. Was it the clear pure light of the eyes he loved
+so well? Was it some dark power he wot not of?
+
+At last he broke through his restraint.
+
+"Hellayne--" he whispered low. "Hellayne--I love you!"
+
+She did not move.
+
+There was a deep silence.
+
+Then she answered.
+
+"Oh, why have you said the word!"
+
+What did she mean? He cried, trembling, within himself. And now he was
+no longer in the moonlit rose-bower in the gardens of Avalon, but in a
+dense forest. The trees meeting overhead made a night so black, that he
+saw nothing, not even their gnarled trunks.
+
+Hellayne was standing beside him. A pale moonbeam flickered through the
+interwoven branches.
+
+She pointed to the castle of Avalon, dim in the distance. He made a
+quick forward step to see her face. Her eyes were very calm.
+
+"Let us go, Tristan!" she said.
+
+"My answer first," he insisted, gazing longingly, wistfully into the
+eyes that held a night of mystery.
+
+"You have it," she said calmly.
+
+"It was no answer," he pleaded, "from lover to lover--"
+
+"Ah!" she replied, in her voice a great weariness which he had never
+noted before. "But here are neither loves nor lovers.--Look!"
+
+And he looked.
+
+Before them lay a colorless and lifeless sea, under the arch of a
+threatening sky. Across that sky dark clouds, with ever-changing
+shapes, rolled slowly, and presently condensed into a vague shadowy
+form, while the torpid waves droned a muffled and unearthly dirge.
+
+He covered his eyes, overcome by a mastering fear of that dread shape
+which he knew, yet knew not.
+
+He knelt before her, took the hands he loved so well into his own and
+pressed upon them his fevered lips.
+
+"I do not understand--" he moaned.
+
+She regarded him fixedly.
+
+"I am another's wife--"
+
+His head drooped.
+
+"When my eyes first met yours they begged that my love for you might
+find response in your heart," he said, still holding on to those
+marvellous white hands. "Did you not accept my worship?"
+
+She neither encouraged nor repulsed him by word or gesture. And he
+covered her hands with burning kisses. After his passionate outburst
+had died to silence she spoke quietly, tremulously.
+
+"Tristan," she began, and paused as if she were summoning courage to do
+that which she must. "Tristan, this may not be."
+
+"I love you," he sobbed. "I love you! This is all I know! All I shall
+ever know. How can I support life without you? heart of my heart--soul
+of my soul?--What must I do, to win you for my own--to give you
+happiness?"
+
+A negative gesture came in response.
+
+"Is sin ever happiness?"
+
+"The priests say not! And yet--our love is not sinful--"
+
+"The priests say truth." Hellayne interposed calmly.
+
+He felt as if an immense darkness, the chaos of a thousand spheres,
+suddenly encompassed him, threatening to plunge him into a bottomless
+abyss of despair.
+
+Then he made a quick forward step. Her face was close to his. Wide eyes
+fastened upon him in a compelling gaze.
+
+"Tell me!" he urged, his own eyes lost in those unfathomable
+wells of dreams. "When love is with you--does aught matter? Does
+sin--discovery--God himself--matter?"
+
+With a frightened cry she drew back.
+
+But those steady, questioning eyes, sombre, yet aflame, compelled the
+shifting violet orbs.
+
+"Tell me!" he urged again, his face very close to her face.
+
+"Naught matters," she whispered faintly, as if under a spell.
+
+Then her gaze relinquished his, as she looked dreamily out upon the
+woods. There was absolute silence, lasting apace. It was the stillness
+of a forest where no birds sing, no breezes stir. Then a twig snapped
+beneath Hellayne's foot. He had taken her to his heart and, his strong
+arms about her, kissed her eyes, her mouth, her hair. She suffered his
+caresses dreamily, passively, her white arms encircling his neck.
+
+Suddenly he stiffened. His form was as that of one turned to stone.
+
+In the shadow of the forest beneath a great oak, hooded, motionless,
+stood a man. His eyes seemed like glowing coals, as they stared at
+them. Hellayne did not see them, but she felt the tremor that passed
+through Tristan's frame. The mantle's hood was pulled far down over the
+man's face. No features were visible.
+
+And yet Tristan knew that cowled and muffled form. He knew the eyes
+that had surprised their tryst.
+
+It was Count Roger de Laval.
+
+The muffled shadow was gone as quickly as it had come.
+
+It was growing ever darker in the forest, and when he looked up again
+he saw that Hellayne's white roses were scattered on the ground. Her
+scarf of blue samite had fallen heedlessly beside them. He lifted it
+and pressed it to his lips.
+
+"Will you give it to me?" he said tremulously. "That it may be with me
+always--"
+
+There was no immediate response.
+
+At last she said slowly:
+
+"You shall have it--a parting gift--"
+
+He seized her hands. They lay passively within his own.
+
+There was a great fear in his eyes.
+
+"I do not understand--"
+
+She loosened the roses from her hair and garb before she made reply.
+Silently, like dead leaves in autumn, the fragrant petals dropped one
+by one to earth. Hellayne watched them with weary eyes as they drifted
+to their sleep, then, as she held the last spray in her hand, gazing
+upon it she said:
+
+"When you gave them to me, Tristan, they were sweet and fresh, the
+fairest you could find. Now they have faded, perished, died--"
+
+He started to plead, to protest, to silence her, but she continued:
+
+"Ah! Can you not see? Can you not understand? Perchance," she added
+bitterly, "I was created to adorn the fleeting June afternoon of your
+life, and when this scarf is torn and faded as these flowers, let the
+wind carry it away,--like these dead petals at our feet--"
+
+She let fall the withered spray, but he snatched it ere it touched the
+ground.
+
+"I love you," he stammered passionately. "I love you! Love you as no
+woman was ever loved. You are my world--my fate-- Hellayne! Hellayne!
+Know you what you say?"--
+
+She gazed at him, with eyes from which all life had fled.
+
+"I am another's," she said slowly. "I have sinned in loving you, in
+giving to you my soul. And even as you stood there and held me in your
+arms, it flashed upon me, like lightning in a dark stormy night--I saw
+the abyss, at the brink of which we stand, both, you and I."--
+
+"But we have done no wrong--we have not sinned," he protested wildly.
+
+She silenced him with a gesture of her beautiful hands.
+
+"Who may command the waters of the cataract, go here,--or go there?
+Who may tell them to return to their lawful bed? I have neither power
+nor strength, to resist your pleading. You have been life and love to
+me, all,--all,--and all this you are to-day. And therefore must we
+part,--part, ere it be too late--" she concluded with a wild cry of
+anguish, "ere we are both engulfed in the darkness."--
+
+And he fell at her feet as if stunned by a thunderbolt.
+
+"Do not send me away--" he pleaded, his voice choked with anguish. "Do
+not send me from you."
+
+"You will go," she said softly, deaf to his prayers. "It is the supreme
+test of your love, great as I know it is."
+
+"But I cannot leave you, I cannot go, never to see you more--" and he
+grasped the cool white hands of the woman as a drowning man will grasp
+a straw.
+
+She did not attempt, for the time, to take them from him. She looked
+down upon him wistfully.
+
+"Would you make me the mock of Avalon?" she said. "Once my lord
+suspects we are lost. And, I fear, he does even now. For his gaze has
+been dark and troubled. And I cannot, will not, expose you to his
+cruelty. You know him not as I do--"
+
+"Even therefore will I not leave you," he interposed, looking into
+the sweet face. "He has not been kind to you. His pride was flattered
+by your ready surrender, and your great beauty is but one of the many
+dishes that go to satiate his varied appetites. Of the others you know
+naught--"
+
+She gave a shrug.
+
+"If it be so," she said wearily, "so let it be. Nevertheless, I know
+whereof I speak. This thing has stolen over us like a madness. And,
+like a madness, it will hurl us to our doom."
+
+Though he had seen the dark, glowering face among the branches, he
+said nothing, not to alarm her, not to cause her fear and misgiving.
+He loved her spotless purity as dearly as herself. To him they were
+inseparable.
+
+His head fell forward on her hands. Her fingers played in his soft
+brown hair.
+
+"What would you have me do?" he said, his voice choked by his anguish.
+
+"Go on a pilgrimage to Rome, to obtain forgiveness, as I shall visit
+the holy shrines of Mont Beliard and do likewise," she said, steadying
+her voice with an effort. "Let us forget that we have ever met--that we
+have ever loved,--or remember that we loved--a dream."--
+
+"Can love forget so readily?" he said, bitter anguish and reproach in
+his tones.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"It is my fate,--for better--or worse--no matter what befall. As for
+you--life lies before you. Love another, happier woman, one that is
+free to give--and to receive. As for me--"
+
+She paused and covered her face with her hands.
+
+"What will you do?" he cried in his over-mastering anguish.
+
+A faint, far-off voice made reply.
+
+"I shall do that which I must!"
+
+He staggered away from her. She should not see the scalding tears that
+coursed down his cheeks. But, as he turned, he again saw the dark and
+glowering face, the brow gloomy as a thunder-cloud, of the Count
+de Laval. But again it was not he. It was the black-garbed, lithe
+stranger, the companion of the hunchback, who was regarding Hellayne
+with evil, leering eyes.
+
+He wanted to cry out, warn her, entreat her to fly.--
+
+But it was too late.
+
+Like a bird that watches spellbound the approach of the snake, Hellayne
+stood pale and trembling--her cheeks white as death--her eyes riveted
+on the evil shape that seemed the fiend. But he, Tristan, also was
+encompassed by the same spell. He could not move--he could not cry out.
+With a bound, swift and noiseless as the panther's, he saw the sinewy
+stranger hurl himself upon Hellayne, picking her up like a feather and
+disappear in the gloom of the forest.
+
+With a cry of horror, bathed from head to foot in perspiration, Tristan
+started from his slumber.
+
+The moonbeams flooded the chamber. The soft breeze of the summer night
+stole through the open casement.
+
+With a moan as of mortal pain he sat up and looked about.
+
+Was he indeed in Rome?
+
+Had it been but a dream, this echo of the past, this visualized parting
+from the woman he had loved better than life?
+
+Was he indeed in Rome, to do as she had bid him do, not in the misty,
+flower-scented rose-gardens of Avalon in far Provence?--
+
+And she--Hellayne--where was she at this hour?
+
+Tristan stroked his clammy brow with a hot, dry hand. For a moment the
+memories evoked by the magic wand of the God of Sleep seemed to banish
+all consciousness of the present. He cast a fleeting, bewildered glance
+at the dim, distant housetops, then fell back among his cushions,
+his lips muttering the name of her who had filled his dream with her
+never-to-be-forgotten presence, wondering and questioning if they
+would ever meet again. Thus he tossed and tossed.
+
+After a time he became still.
+
+Once again consciousness was blotted out and the dream realm reigned
+supreme.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WAY OF THE CROSS
+
+
+It was late on the following morning when Tristan
+waked. The sun was high in the heavens and the perfumes from a thousand
+gardens were wafted to his nostrils. He looked about bewildered. The
+dream phantoms of the night still held his senses captive, and it was
+some time ere he came to a realization of the present. In the dream of
+the night he had lived over a scene in the past, conjuring back the
+memory of one who had sent him on the Way of the Cross. The pitiless
+rays of the Roman sun, which began to envelop the white houses and
+walls, brought with them the realization of the present hour. He had
+come to Rome to do penance, to start life anew and to forget. So she
+had bade him do on that never-to-be forgotten eve of their parting. So
+she had willed it, and he had obeyed.
+
+How it all flooded back to him again in waves of anguish, the memory of
+those days when the turrets of Avalon had faded from his aching sight,
+when, together with a motley pilgrims' throng, he had tramped the dusty
+sun-baked road, dead to all about him save the love that was cushioned
+in his heart. How that parting from Hellayne still dominated all other
+events, even though life and the world had fallen away from him and he
+had only prayer for oblivion, for obliteration.
+
+Yet even Hellayne's inexorable decree would not have availed to speed
+him on a pilgrimage so fraught with hopelessness, that during all
+that long journey Tristan hardly exchanged word or greeting with his
+fellow pilgrims. It was her resolve, unfalteringly avowed, to leave the
+world and enter a convent, if he refused to obey, which had eventually
+compelled. Her own self-imposed penance should henceforth be to live,
+lonely and heartbroken, by the side of an unbeloved consort, while
+Tristan atoned far away, in the city of the popes, at the shrines of
+the saints.
+
+At night, when Tristan retired, at dawn, when he arose, Hellayne's
+memory was with him, and every league that increased the distance
+between them seemed to heighten his love and his anguish. But human
+endurance has its limits, and at last he was seized by a great torpor,
+a chill indifference that swept away and deadened every other feeling.
+There was no longer a To-day, no longer a Yesterday, no longer a
+To-morrow.
+
+Such was Tristan's state of mind, when from the Tiburtine road he
+first sighted the walls and towers of Rome, without definite purpose
+or aim, drawn along, as it were, towards an uncertain goal by Fate's
+invisible hand. Utterly indifferent as to what might befall among the
+Seven Hills, he was at times dimly conscious of a presentiment that
+ultimately he would end up his own days in one of those silent places
+where all earthly hopes and desires are forever stilled. So much was
+clear to him. Like the rest of the pilgrims who had wended their way to
+St. Peter's seat, he would complete the circuit of the holy shrines,
+kiss the feet of the Father of Christendom, do such penance as the
+Pontiff should impose, and then attach himself to one party or another
+in the pontifical city which held out hope for action, since the return
+to his own native land was barred to him for evermore.
+
+How he would bear up under the ordeal he did not know. How he would
+support life away from Hellayne, without a word, a message, without
+the assurance that all was well with her, whether now, his own fate
+accomplished, others thronged about her in love and adulation,--he knew
+not.
+
+For the nonce he was resolved to let new scenes, new impressions sweep
+away the great void of an aching heart, lighten the despair that filled
+his soul.
+
+In approaching the Eternal City he had felt scarcely any of the
+elevation of spirit which has affected so many devout pilgrims. He
+knew it was the seat of God's earthly Vice-regent, the capital of the
+universal kingdom of the Church. He reminded himself of this and of the
+priceless relics it contained, the tombs of the Apostles St. Peter and
+St. Paul, the tombs of so many other martyrs, pontiffs and saints.
+
+But in spite of all these memories he drew near the place with a
+sinking dread, as if, by some instinct of premonition, he felt himself
+dragged to the Cross on which at last he was to be crucified.
+
+Many a pilgrim may have seen Rome for the first time with an
+involuntary recollection of her past, with the hope that for him, too,
+the future might hold the highest greatness.
+
+Certainly no ambitious fancy cast a halo of romantic hope over the
+great city as Tristan first saw her ancient walls. He felt safe enough
+from any danger of greatness. He had nothing to recommend him. On the
+contrary, something in his character would only serve to isolate him,
+creating neither admiration nor sympathy.
+
+All the weary road to Rome, the Rome he dreaded, had he prayed for
+courage to cast himself at the feet of the Vicar of Christ. He did not
+think then of the Pope, as of one of the great of the earth, but simply
+as of one who stood in the world in God's place. So he would have
+courage to seek him, confess to him and ask him what it was it behooved
+him to do.
+
+Thus he had walked on--with stammering steps, bruising his feet
+against stones, tearing himself through briars--heeding nothing by the
+way.
+
+And now, the journey accomplished, he was here in supreme loneliness,
+without guidance, human or divine, thrown upon himself, not knowing how
+to still the pain, how to fill the void of an aching heart.
+
+Would the light of Truth come to him out of the encompassing realms of
+Doubt?
+
+When Tristan descended into the great guest-chamber he found it almost
+deserted. The pilgrims had set out early in the day to begin their
+devotions before the shrines. The host of the Golden Shield placed
+before his sombre and silent guest such viands as the latter found most
+palatable, consisting of goat's milk, stewed lamb, barley bread and
+figs, and Tristan did ample justice to the savory repast.
+
+The heat of the day being intense, he resolved to wait until the sun
+should be fairly on his downward course before he started out upon his
+own business, a resolution which was strengthened by a suggestion from
+the host, that few ventured abroad in Rome during the Siesta hours, the
+Roman fever respecting neither rank nor garb.
+
+Thus Tristan composed himself to patience, watching the host upon his
+duties, and permitting his gaze to roam now and then through the narrow
+windows upon the object he had first encountered upon his arrival: the
+brown citadel, drowsing unresponsive in the noon-tide glow, a monument
+of mystery and dark deeds, the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor--or, as
+it was styled at the period of our story, the Castle of the Archangel.
+
+From this stronghold, less than a decade ago, a woman had lorded it
+over the city of Rome, as renowned for her evil beauty as for the
+profligacy and licentiousness of her court. In time her regime had been
+swept away, yet there were rumors, dark and sinister, of one who had
+succeeded to her evil estate. None dared openly avow it, but Tristan
+had surprised guarded whispers during his long journey. Some accounted
+her a sorceress, some a thing wholly evil, some the precursor of the
+Anti-Christ. And he had never ceased to wonder at the tales which
+enlivened the camp-fires, the reports of her beauty, her daring, her
+unscrupulous ambition.
+
+On the whole, Tristan's prospects in Rome seemed barren enough. Service
+might perchance be obtained with the Senator, who would doubtlessly
+welcome a stout arm and a true heart. This alternative failing, Tristan
+was utterly at sea as to what he would do, the prescribed rounds of
+obediences before the shrines and the penances accomplished. He felt as
+one who has lost his purpose in life, even before he had been conscious
+of his goal.
+
+The strange incidents of his first night in Rome had gradually faded
+from Tristan's mind with the re-awakening memory of Hellayne, never
+once forgotten, but for the moment drowned in the deluge of strange
+events that had almost swept him off his feet.
+
+As the sun was veering towards the west and the lengthening shadows,
+presaging dusk, began to roll down from the hills it suffered Tristan
+no longer in the Inn of the Golden Shield. He strode out and made for
+the heart of Rome.
+
+The desolate aspect of high-noon had changed materially. Tristan began
+to note the evidences of life in the Pontifical City. Merchants,
+beggars, monks, men-at-arms, condottieri, sbirri,--the followers of the
+great feudal houses, hurried to and fro, bent upon their respective
+pursuits, and above them, silent and fateful in the evening glow,
+towered the Archangel's Castle, the tomb of a former Master of the
+World. It reared its massive honey-colored bulk on the edge of the
+yellow Tiber and beyond rose the dark green cypresses of the Pincian
+Hill. Innumerable spires, domes, pinnacles and towers rose, red-litten
+by the sunset, into the stilly evening air. Bells were softly tolling
+and a distant hum like the bourdon note of a great organ, rose up from
+the other side of the Tiber, where the multitudes of the Eternal City
+trod the dust of the Cæsars into the churches of the Cross.
+
+Interminable processions traversed the city amidst anthems and chants,
+for, on this day, masses were being sung and services offered up in the
+Lateran Basilica, the Mother Church of Rome, in honor of Him who cried
+in the wilderness.
+
+In silent awe and wonder Tristan pursued his way towards the heart of
+the city. And, as he did so, the spectacle which had unfolded itself to
+his gaze became more varied and manifold on every turn.
+
+The lone pilgrim could not but admit that the shadows of worldly
+empire, which had deserted her, still clung to Rome in her ruins, even
+though to him the desolation which dominated all sides had but a vague
+and dreamlike meaning.
+
+Even at this period of deepest darkness and humiliation the world
+still converged upon Rome, and in the very centre of the web sat the
+successor of St. Peter, the appointed guardian of Heaven and Earth.
+
+The chief pagan monuments still existed: the Pantheon of Agrippa and
+the Septizonium of Alexander Severus; the mighty remains of the ancient
+fanes about the Forum and the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum. But
+among them rose the fortress towers of the Roman nobles. Right there,
+before him, dominating the narrow thoroughfare, rose the great fortress
+pile of the Frangipani, behind the Arch of the Seven Candles. Farther
+on the Tomb of Cæcilia Metella presented an aspect at once sinister
+and menacing, transformed as it now was into the stronghold of the
+Cenci, while the Cætani castle on the opposite side attracted a sort of
+wondering attention from him.
+
+This then was the Rome of which he had heard such marvelous tales!
+The city of palaces, basilicas and shrines had sunk to this! Her
+magnificent thoroughfares had become squalid streets, her monuments
+were crumbled and forgotten, or worse, they were abused by every
+lawless wretch who cared to seize upon them and build thereon his
+fortress or palace. A dismal fate indeed to have fallen to the former
+mistress of the world! Far better, he thought, to be deserted and
+forgotten utterly, like many a former seat of empire, far better to
+be overgrown with grass and dock and nettle, to be left to dream and
+oblivion than to survive in low estate as had this city on the banks of
+the Tiber.
+
+With these reflections, engendered no less by the air of desolation
+than by the occasional appearance of armed bands of feudal soldiery who
+hurled defiance at each other, Tristan found himself drawn deeper and
+deeper into the heart of Rome, a hotbed of open and silent rebellion
+against the rule of any one who dared to lord it over the degenerate
+descendants of the former masters of the world. Here representatives
+of the nations of all the earth jostled one another and the poor dregs
+of Romulus; or peoples of wilder aspect from Persia or Egypt, within
+whose mind floated mysterious Oriental wisdom, bequeathed from the dawn
+of Time. And as the scope of Tristan's observation widened, the demon
+of disillusion unfolded gloomy wings over the far horizon of his soul.
+And the Tiber rolled calmly on below, catching in its turbid waves the
+golden sunset glow.
+
+Now and then he encountered the armed retinue of some feudal baron
+clattering along the narrow ill-paved streets, chasing pedestrians into
+adjacent doorways and porticoes and pursuing their precipitate retreat
+with outbursts of banter and mirth.
+
+Unfamiliar as Tristan was with the factions that usurped the dominion
+of the Seven Hills, the escutcheons and coats-of-arms of these
+marauding parties meant little to him. Now and then however it would
+chance that two rival factions clashed, each disputing the other's
+passage. Then, only, did he become alive to the dangers that beset the
+unwary in the city of the Pontiff, and a sudden spirit of recklessness
+and daring, born of the moment, prompted the desire to plunge into
+this seething vortex, if but to purchase temporary oblivion and relief.
+
+He faced the many dangers of the streets, loitering here and there and
+curiously eyeing all things, and would eventually have lost himself,
+when the mantle of night began to fall on the Seven Hills, had he not
+instinctively remarked that the ascending road removed him from the
+river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ON THE AVENTINE
+
+
+When Tristan at last regained his bearings, he found himself among the
+convents and cloisters on Mount Aventine. His eyes rested wearily on
+the eddying gleam of the Tiber as it wound its coils round the base
+of the Mount of Cloisters, thence they roamed among the grass and
+weed-grown ruins of ancient temples and crumbling porticoes, which rose
+on all sides in the silent desolation.
+
+Just then a last gleam of the disappearing sun touched the bronze
+figure of the Archangel on the summit of Castel San Angelo, imbuing
+it for an instant with a weird effect, as though the ghost of some
+departed watchman were waving a lighted torch aloft in the heavens.
+Then the glow faded before a dead grey twilight, which settled solemnly
+over the melancholy landscape.
+
+The full moon was rising slowly. Round and large she hung, like a
+yellow shield, on the dark, dense wall of the heavens. In the distance
+the faint outlines of the Alban Hills and the snow-capped summit of
+Monte Soracté were faintly discernible in the night mists. In the
+background the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple of Isis rose into
+the purple dusk. The Tiber, in the light of the higher rising moon,
+gleamed like a golden ribbon. The gaunt masonry of the Septizonium of
+Alexander Severus was dimly rimmed with light, and streaks of amber
+radiance were wandering up and down the shadowy slopes of the Mount of
+Cloisters, like sorrowing ghosts bound upon some sorrowful errand.
+
+All sense of weariness had suddenly left Tristan. A compelling
+influence, stronger than himself, seemed to urge him on as to the
+fulfillment of some hidden purpose.
+
+Once or twice he paused. As he did so, he became aware of the
+extraordinary, almost terrible stillness, that encompassed him. He felt
+it enclosing him like a thick wall on all sides. Earth and the air
+seemed breathless, as if in the throes of some mysterious excitement.
+The stars, flashing out with the brilliant lustre of the south, were
+as so many living eyes eagerly gazing down on the solitary human being
+whose steps led him into these deserted places. The moon herself seemed
+to stare at him in open wonderment.
+
+At last he found himself before the open portals of the great Church of
+Santa Maria of the Aventine. From the gloom within floated the scent
+of incense and the sound of chanting. He could see tapers gleaming on
+the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and a blind
+beggar sat at the gate.
+
+Moved more by curiosity than the desire for worship, Tristan entered
+and uncovered his head. The Byzantine cupola was painted in vermilion
+and gold. The slender pillars of white marble were banded with silver
+and inlaid with many colored stones. The basins for holy water were of
+black marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colors of the vault.
+Side chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in mystery
+of incense-saturated dusk.
+
+The saints and martyrs in their stiff, golden Byzantine dalmaticas
+seemed to endow each relic with an air of mystery. The beauty and the
+mystery of the place touched Tristan's soul. As in a haze he seemed
+again to see the pomp and splendor of the sanctuaries of far-away,
+dream-lost Avalon.
+
+Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and, setting his
+back to it, looked round the place. There were some women in the
+sanctuary, engaged in prayer. Tristan watched them with vacant eyes.
+
+Suddenly he became conscious that one of these worshippers was not
+wholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. Two watchful eyes seemed to
+consider him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake, and her
+thoughts seemed to be very far from heaven.
+
+Once or twice Tristan started to leave the sanctuary, but some
+invisible hand seemed to detain him as with a magic hold.
+
+In due season the woman finished her devotions and stood with her
+hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had
+gathered about her and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points
+of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she
+swept in state out of the church, her women following her, all save one
+tall girl, who loitered at the door.
+
+Suddenly it flashed upon Tristan, as he stood there with his back
+leaning against the pillar. Was not this the woman he had met by the
+fountain, the woman who had spoken strange words to him in the Navona?
+
+Had she recognized him? Her eyes had challenged him unmistakably when
+first they had met his own, and now again, as she left the church. They
+puzzled Tristan, these same eyes. Far in their depths lurked secrets he
+dreaded to fathom. Her scented garments perfumed the very aisles.
+
+Tristan was roused from his reverie by a woman's hand plucking at his
+sleeve. By his side stood a tall girl. She was very beautiful, but her
+eyes were evil. She looked boldly at Tristan and gave her message.
+
+"Follow my mistress," were her words.
+
+Tristan looked at her, his face almost invisible in the gloom. Only the
+moonlight touched his hair.
+
+"Whom do you serve?" he replied.
+
+"The Lady Theodora!" came the answer.
+
+Tristan's heart froze within him. Theodora--the woman who had succeeded
+to Marozia's dread estate!
+
+In order to conceal his emotions he brought his face closer to the fair
+messenger, forcing his voice to appear calm as he spoke.
+
+"What would your mistress with me?"
+
+The girl glanced up at him, as if she regarded the question strangely
+superfluous.
+
+"You are to come with me!" she persisted, touching his arm.
+
+Tristan's mouth hardened as he considered the message, without
+relinquishing his station by the pillar.
+
+What was he to Theodora--Theodora to him? She was a woman, evil,
+despite her ravishing beauty, so he had gathered during the days of
+his journey. The spell she had cast over him on the previous evening
+had vanished before the memory of Hellayne. Her sudden appearance, her
+witch-like beauty had, for the time, unmanned him. The hardships and
+privations of a long journey had, for the moment, caused his senses
+to run rampant, and almost hurled him into the arms of perdition. Yet
+he had not then known. And now he remembered how they all had fallen
+away from him, as from one bearing on his person the germs of some
+dread disease. The terrible silence in the Navona seemed visualized
+once again in the silence which encompassed him here. Yet she was all
+powerful, so he had heard. She ruled the men and the factions. In some
+vague way, he thought, she might be of service to him.
+
+Tossed between two conflicting impulses, Tristan slowly followed the
+girl from the church and, crossing the great, moonlit court that lay
+without, entered the gardens which seemed to divide the sanctuary from
+some hidden palace. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studded
+with thick, ripening fruit. Weeping ashes glittered in the moonlight.
+Cedars and oaks cast their shade over broad beds of mint and thyme.
+
+The girl watched Tristan closely, as she walked beside him, making no
+effort to conceal her own charms before eyes which she deemed endowed
+with the power of judgment in matters of this kind. Her mistress had
+not put her trust in her in vain. She studied Tristan's race in order
+to determine, whether or not he would waver in his resolve and--she
+began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a simplicity, an
+interest that was well assumed.
+
+"A good beginning indeed!" she said. "You are in favor, my lord! To
+have seen her fair face is no small boast, but to be summoned to her
+presence--I cannot remember her so gracious to any one, since--" she
+paused suddenly, deliberately.
+
+Tristan regarded her slantwise over his shoulder, without making
+response. At last, irritated, he knew not why, he asked curtly: "What
+is your mistress?"
+
+The girl's glance wandered over the great trees and flowers that
+overshadowed the plaisaunce.
+
+"She bears her mother's name," she replied with a shrug, "and, like her
+mother, the blood that flows in her veins is mingled with the fire that
+glitters in the stars in heaven, a fire affording neither light nor
+heat, but serving to dazzle, to bewilder.--I am but a woman, but--had I
+your chance of fortune, my lord, I should think twice, ere I bartered
+it for a vow, an empty dream."
+
+He gave her a swift glance, wondering at her woman's wit, yet resenting
+her speech.
+
+"You would prosper?" she queried tentatively at last, casting about in
+her mind, how she might win his confidence.
+
+"I have business of my own," he replied, evading her question.
+
+She looked up at him, her eyes trembling into his.
+
+"How tall and strong you are! I could almost find it in my heart to
+love you myself!"
+
+The flattery seemed so spontaneous that it would have puzzled one
+possessed of greater guile than Tristan to have uncovered her cunning.
+Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her; for the moment he was
+almost tempted to continue questioning her regarding her mistress.
+
+"You may make your fortune in Rome," the girl said with a meaning smile.
+
+"How so?"
+
+"Are you blind? Do you not know a woman's ways? My mistress loves a
+strong arm. You may serve her."
+
+"That is not possible!"
+
+The girl stared at him and for the moment dropped the mask of innocence.
+
+"What was possible once, is possible again," she said.
+
+Then she added:
+
+"Are you not ambitious?"
+
+"I have a task to perform that may not permit of two masters! Why are
+you so concerned?"
+
+The question came almost abruptly.
+
+"I serve my lady!" she said, edging towards him. "Is it so strange a
+thing to serve a woman?"
+
+They had left the garden and had arrived before a high stone wall that
+skirted the precincts of Theodora's palace. Cypresses and bays raised
+their tops above the stones. Great cedars cast deep shadows. In the
+wall there was a door studded with heavy iron nails. The girl took a
+key that dangled from her girdle, unlocked the door and beckoned to
+Tristan to enter.
+
+Tristan stood and gazed. In the light of the moon which drenched all
+things he saw a garden in which emerald grass plots alternated with
+beds of strange-tinted orchids, flowers purple and red. At the end
+of the plaisaunce there opened an orange thicket and under the trees
+stood a woman clad in crimson, her white arms bare. She wore sandals of
+silver, and her dusky hair was confined in a net of gold.
+
+As Tristan was about to yield to the overmastering temptation the
+memory of Hellayne conquered all other emotions. He turned back from
+the door and looked full into the girl's dark eyes.
+
+"You will speak to your mistress for me," he said to her, casting a
+swift glance into the moonlit garden.
+
+The girl looked at him with a puzzled air, but did not stir.
+
+"What am I to say to her?" she said.
+
+"That I will not enter these gates!"
+
+"You will not?"
+
+"No!" He snapped curtly.
+
+"Fool! How you will regret your speech!"
+
+Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and there was something in
+her eyes too wicked for words.
+
+Without vouchsafing a reply, Tristan turned and lost himself in the
+desolation of Mount Aventine.
+
+The night marched on majestically.
+
+The moon and her sister planets passed through their appointed spheres
+of harmonious light and law, and from all cloisters and convents
+prayers went up to heaven for pity, pardon and blessing on sinful
+humanity that had neither pity, pardon nor blessing for itself, till,
+with magic suddenness, the dense purple skies changed to a pearly grey,
+the moon sank pallidly beneath the earth's dark rim and the stars were
+extinguished one by one.
+
+Morning began to herald its approach in the freshening air.
+
+Tristan still slept on his improvised couch, a marble slab he had
+chosen when he discovered that he had lost his way in the wilderness
+of the Aventine. His head on his arm he lay quite still among the
+flowers, wrapt in a sort of dizzy delirium in which the forms of
+Theodora and Hellayne strangely intermingled, until the riddles of life
+were blotted out together with the riddles of Fate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE COUP
+
+
+Tristan spent the greater part of the day visiting the churches and
+sanctuaries, offering up prayers for oblivion and peace. His heart
+was heavy within him. Like the stray leaf that has been torn from
+its native branch and flutters resistlessly, aimlessly hither and
+thither, at the mercy of the chance breeze, nevermore to return to
+its sheltering bough, so the lone wanderer felt himself tossed about
+by the waves of destiny, a human derelict without a haven where he
+might escape the storms of life. Guiltless in his own conscience of
+an imputed sin, in that his love for Hellayne had been pure and holy,
+Tristan could find little comfort in the enforced penance, while his
+hungry heart cried out for her who had so willed it. And, as with weary
+feet he dragged himself through the streets of the pontifical city, he
+vaguely wondered, if his would ever be the peace of the goal. In the
+darkness in which he walked, in the perturbation of his mind, he longed
+more than ever to open his heart to some one who would understand and
+counsel and guide his steps.
+
+The Pontiff being a prisoner in the Lateran, Tristan's ardent wish to
+confide in the successor of St. Peter had suffered a sudden and a keen
+disappointment. There were but Odo of Cluny, Benedict of Soracté or
+the Grand Penitentiary, holding forth in the subterranean chapel at
+St. Peter's, to whom he might turn for ease of mind, and a natural
+reluctance to lay bare the holiest thoughts man may give to woman,
+restrained him for the nonce from seeking these channels.
+
+Thus three days had sped, yet naught had happened to indicate that
+events would shape the course so ardently desired by Tristan.
+
+It was there, on one of the terraces crowning the splendid heights
+of immortal Rome, with a view of the distant Sabine and Alban hills,
+fading into the evening dusk, that the memory of the golden days of
+Avalon returned to him in waves of anguish that almost mastered his
+resolve to begin life anew under conditions that seemed insupportable.
+
+Again Hellayne was by his side, as in dream-forgotten Avalon. Again
+side by side they wandered where the shattered columns of old grey
+temples, all that remained of a sunny Greek civilization of which they
+knew nothing, crowned the heights above the lazy lapping waves of the
+tideless Tyrrhenian sea. There, for whole hours would they sit, the air
+full of the scent of orange and myrtle; under almond trees, covered
+with blossoms that sprinkled the emerald ground like rosy snowflakes,
+and watch the white sails of the far feluccas that trailed the waves
+in monotonous rhythm to or from the sunlit shores of Africa. The
+distant headlands looked faint and dreamy, and the sparkling sea broke,
+gurgling, foaming among the rocks at their feet, as it had broken at
+the feet of other lovers who had sat there centuries ago, when those
+shattered columns had been white in their freshness and the temples had
+been wreathed with the garlands of youth. And the eternal waves said to
+them what they had said to the dead and forgotten; and the fickle winds
+sang to them what they had sung to the fair and the nameless, and they
+stretched forth their hands, and saw but the sea and the sun.
+
+And they knew not the deity to whom those temple columns had been
+raised, just as he knew not to whose worship those fallen columns had
+been erected, nor guessed they who had knelt at the holy shrines.
+And as they sat there, the man and the woman, their eyes probing the
+depths of living sapphire, they would watch the restless sea-weed that
+seemed to coil and uncoil like innumerable blue snakes upon a bed of
+bright blue flames, and the luminous mosses that trembled like blue
+stars ceaselessly towards the surface that they never, never reached.
+And down there in the crystal palaces they would fancy that they saw
+faces as of glancing mermen, even as the lovers of older days had seen
+passing Tritons and the scaly children of Poseidon.
+
+And again she would croon those sad melancholy songs that came from
+her lips like faint echoes of Aeolian harps. Now she flung them upon
+the air in bursts of weird music, to the accompaniment of a breaking
+wave, songs so passionate and elemental that they seemed the cry of
+these same radiant waters when churned by the storm into fury. Or they
+might have been such wailings as spirits imprisoned in old sea caves
+would utter to the hollow walls, or which the ghosts of ship-wrecked
+crews might send forth from the rocks where they had perished. Or again
+they might suggest some earthly passion, love, jealousy, the cry of a
+longing heart, till the dirge seemed to wear itself out and the soul of
+the listener seemed to sail out of the tempest into bright and peaceful
+waters like those that skirted dream-lost Avalon, scarcely rippled by
+the faint breeze of summer, breaking in long unfurling waves among the
+rocks at their feet. Thus they used to sit long hours, heart listening
+to heart, soul clinging to soul, while she bared her throat to the
+scent-laden breezes that fanned her and looked out on the dazzling
+horizon--till a lightning flash from the clear azure splintered the
+dream and broke two lives.
+
+For a long time Tristan gazed about, vainly trying to order his
+thoughts. Could he but forget! Would but the present engulf the past!--
+
+His adventure at the Church of Santa Maria of the Aventine and his
+chance meeting with Theodora recurred to him at intervals throughout
+the day, and he could not but admit that the reports of the woman's
+beauty were far from exaggerated. Perchance, if the memory of Hellayne
+had been less firmly rooted in his soul, he, too, might, like many
+another, have sought solace at the forbidden fount. However, he was
+resolved to avoid her, for he had seen something in the swift glance
+she had bestowed upon him that discoursed of matters it behooved him to
+beware of. And yet he wondered how she had received his denial, she,
+whom no man had denied before. Then this memory also faded before the
+exigencies of the hour.
+
+The sun had sunk to rest in a sky of turquoise, crimson and gold, when
+Tristan found himself standing on the eminence where seven decades
+later Crescentius, the Senator of Rome, was to build the Church of
+Santa Maria in Ara Coeli.
+
+Leaning on a broken pillar, Tristan watched the evening light as it
+spread a veil of ethereal splendor over the Seven Hills and there came
+to him a strange feeling of remoteness as to one standing upon some
+hill-set shrine.
+
+Far beneath him lay the Forum. White columns shone roseate in the dying
+light of day.
+
+Wrapt in deep thoughts and meditations, Tristan descended the stairs
+leading from the summit whence in after time the name of Santa Maria in
+Ara Coeli--Holy Mother at the Altar of Heaven--was to ring in the ears
+of thousands like a beautiful rhythmic chant, and after a time he found
+himself in the Piazza fronting the Lateran.
+
+Seized with a sudden impulse he entered the church.
+
+Slowly the worshippers began to assemble. Their numbers increased to
+almost a hundred, though they seemed but as so many shadows in the vast
+nave. There was something in their faces, touched by the uncertain
+glimmer of the tapers and lamps, that filled him with awe, as if he
+were standing among the ghosts of the past.
+
+At last the holy office commenced.
+
+A very old priest, whose features Tristan could not distinguish, began
+to chant the Introitus, in deep long drawn notes. Through the narrow
+windows filtered the light of the rising moon. It did little more
+than stain the dusk. Over the sombre high altar hung the white ivory
+figure of the Christ, bowed, sagged, in the last agony. A few blood-red
+poppies were the only flowers upon the altar. The fumes of incense rose
+in spiral columns to the vaulted ceiling.
+
+The Kyrie had been chanted, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo. Later the Host
+was consecrated and the cup before the kneeling worshippers, and the
+priest was turning to those near him who, as was still the custom in
+those days, were present to communicate in both kinds.
+
+To each came from his lips the solemn words:
+
+"Corpus Domini Nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam ad Vitam
+aeternam!"
+
+He dipped his fingers in the cup, cleansing them with a little wine. He
+consumed the cleansings and turned to read the antiphony with resonant
+voice.
+
+"I saw the heavens opened and Jesus at the right hand of God. Lord
+Jesus receive their spirit and lay not this sin to their charge!"
+
+Then, with hands folded over his breast, he moved towards the altar in
+the centre, touched it with his lips, and, turning once more to the
+people, said:
+
+"Dominus Vobiscum!"
+
+"Et cum spiritu tuo," was not answered.
+
+For at that moment rough shouts were heard and through a side door,
+near a chapel, a body of ruffians rushed into the Basilica, their faces
+vizored and masked.
+
+With shouts and oaths they made their way towards the altar. The
+worshippers scattered, the mail-clad ruffians smiting their way
+through their kneeling ranks up to the altar where stood the form of a
+youth clad in pontifical vestments, pale but calm in the face of the
+impending storm.
+
+It was Pope John XI., held prisoner in the Lateran by Alberic, the
+Senator of Rome. Tristan had not noted his presence during the
+ceremony. Now, like a revelation, the import of the scene flashed upon
+his mind.
+
+Bearing Tristan down by the sheer weight of their numbers, they rushed
+upon the Pontiff, stripped him of his pallium and chasuble, leaving him
+but one sacred vestment, the white albe.
+
+Unable to reach the Pontiff's side, unable to aid him, Tristan stood
+rooted to the spot, an impotent witness of the most heinous sacrilege
+his mind could picture, almost turned to stone.
+
+Before Tristan's very eyes, before the eyes of the worshippers, who
+outnumbered the ruffians ten to one, an outrage was being committed at
+which the fiends themselves would shudder. Violence was being done to
+the Father of Christendom in his own city, and the craven cowards had
+but their own safety in mind.
+
+Just what happened Tristan could not immediately remember. For, as he
+rushed towards the spot where he saw the Pontiff struggling helplessly
+against his assailants, he was violently thrust back and the ruffians
+made their way towards a side chapel with their captive. Thus he found
+himself helplessly borne along in the darkness, and thrust out into the
+night. Tristan fell beneath their feet and was for a moment so utterly
+stunned that he could not rise.
+
+As in a dream he heard the leader of the band give a command to his
+followers. They mounted their steeds which were tethered outside and
+tramped away into the night.
+
+The sudden appearance of an armed band in the sacred precincts of the
+Lateran had so terrified and cowed the crowd of worshippers that even
+when the doors of the Basilica were left unguarded, not one ventured to
+give assistance. Like shadows they fled into the night.
+
+When Tristan regained some sort of consciousness he looked about in
+vain for aid.
+
+Dimly he remembered that the ruffians were mounted, and by the time he
+summoned succor they would have stowed their captive safely away in one
+of their castellated fortresses, where one might search for him in vain
+forever more.
+
+The Piazza in front of the Lateran was deserted. Not a human being was
+to be seen. Tristan pursued his way through waste spaces that offered
+no clue. He rushed through narrow and deserted streets, abandoned of
+the living. He felt like shouting at the top of his voice: "Romans
+awake! They have abducted the Pontiff." But, stranger as he was, and
+dreading lest he might share John's fate or worse, he withstood the
+impulse and at last found himself upon the Bridge of San Angelo before
+the fortress tomb of the former master of the world, dreaming in the
+surrounding desolation. Before the massive bronze gate cowered a
+man-at-arms, drowsing over his pike.
+
+Without a moment's hesitation, Tristan shook the drowsy guardian of the
+Angel's Castle into blaspheming alertness.
+
+"They have abducted the Pontiff!" he shouted, without releasing his
+clutch on the gaping Burgundian. "Sound the alarums! Even now it may be
+too late!"
+
+The man in the brown leather jerkin and steel casque stared
+open-mouthed at the speaker.
+
+"The Lord Alberic is within--" he stammered at last, with an effort to
+shake off the drowsiness that held his senses captive.
+
+"Then rouse him in the devil's name," shouted Tristan.
+
+The last words had their effect upon the stolid Northman. After the
+elapse of some precious moments Alberic himself emerged from the
+Emperor's Tomb and Tristan repeated his account of the outrage, little
+guessing the rank of him with whom he was standing face to face.
+
+But now they were confronted with a dilemma which it seemed would put
+all Tristan's efforts to naught.
+
+Who were the leaders of the party that had abducted the Pontiff? For
+thereon hinged their success of intercepting the outlaws.
+
+Tristan's description of the leader did not seem to make any marked
+impression on the Senator of Rome.
+
+He questioned Tristan with regard to their coat-of-arms or other
+heraldic emblems. But the author of the outrage had shown sufficient
+foresight to avoid a hazardous display. There seemed but one
+alternative; to scour the city of Rome in the uncertain hope of
+intercepting the outlaws, if they were still within the walls.
+
+Tristan attached himself to the senatorial party, joining in the
+pursuit. At first their task seemed hopeless indeed. Those they
+met and questioned had seen no armed band, or, if they had, denied
+all knowledge thereof. The frowning masonry of the Cenci, Savelli,
+Frangipani, and Odescalchi, which they passed in turn, returned but an
+inscrutable reply to their questioning glances.
+
+For a time they continued their fruitless quest. But as if an outrage
+so horrible had ignited the very air about them, they soon found people
+stirring, shutters opening and shadowy figures issuing from dark
+doorways, while folk were running and shouting to one another:
+
+"The Pontiff has been abducted!"
+
+Between cries of rage and shouts of command and indecision on the part
+of the leader, who knew not in which direction to pursue, an hour had
+elapsed, when they suddenly heard the clatter of hoofs. A company of
+horsemen came galloping down the street. Alberic's suspicions that the
+ruffians would prefer carrying their victim by devious byways to one
+or the other of their Roman lairs, rather than attempt to leave the
+city in the teeth of the Senator's guard, seemed realized. Oaths and
+sharp orders broke the silence of the night.
+
+It was amongst a gigantic pile of ruins, apart from all habitations
+of the living, that they came to a halt. To a gaunt brick-built tower
+they drew close, knocking against the iron-studded door, but ere those
+within could open, they were surrounded, outnumbered ten to one.
+
+Tristan was the first to bound in amongst them.
+
+His eyes quivered upon the steel-clad form of the leader of the band.
+
+At the next moment a blow from Tristan's fist struck him down and, ere
+he could recover himself, he had been bound, hand and foot, and turned
+over to the Senator's guards.
+
+His followers, despairing of success, made a sudden dash through the
+ranks of the people who had been attracted by the melee, riding down a
+number, injuring and maiming many.
+
+The Senator of Rome ranged his men, now re-inforced by the Prefect's
+guard, round the drooping form of John, while a howling and shouting
+mob, ready to wreak vengeance on the first object it encountered in its
+path, followed in their wake as they made their way towards the Lateran.
+
+An hour later, in a high vaulted, dimly lighted chamber of the
+Archangel's Castle, Tristan, the pilgrim, and Alberic, the Senator of
+Rome, faced each other for the second time.
+
+In the course of the pursuit of the ruffians in which he participated,
+Tristan had been casually informed of the rank of him who led the
+Senatorial guard in person and when, their object accomplished, he
+started to detach himself from the men-at-arms, Alberic had foiled his
+intention by commanding him to accompany him to the fortress-tomb where
+he himself held forth.
+
+Seated opposite each other, each seemed to scan the other's
+countenance before a word was spoken between them.
+
+Alberic's regard of the man who seemed utterly unconscious of the
+importance of the service he had rendered the Senator betokened
+approval, and his eyes dwelt for some moments on the frank and open
+countenance of this stranger, perchance contrasting it inwardly with
+the complex nature of those about his person in whom he could trust but
+so long as he could tempt them with earthly dross, and who would turn
+against him should a higher bidder for their favor appear.
+
+Tristan's first impression of the son of Marozia was that of one born
+to command. Dark piercing eyes were set in a face, stern, haughty, yet
+strangely beautiful. Alberic's tall, slender figure, dressed in black
+velvet, relieved by slashes of red satin, added to the impressiveness
+of his personality. Upon closer scrutiny Tristan could discover a
+marked resemblance between the man before him and his half-brother, the
+ill-fated Pontiff, whom, for political reasons, or considerations of
+his personal safety, he kept prisoner in the pontifical palace.
+
+But there was yet another present, who apparently took little heed
+of the stranger, engaged as he seemed in the perusal of a parchment,
+spread out upon a table before him,--Basil, the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+A whispered conversation had taken place between the Senator and
+his confidential adviser, for this was Basil's true station in the
+senatorial household. In the evil days of Marozia's regime he had
+occupied the same favored position at the Roman court, and, when
+Alberic's revolt had swept the regime of Ugo of Tuscany and Marozia
+from Roman soil, the son had attached to himself the man who had shown
+a marked sagacity and ability in the days that had come to a close.
+
+Basil's complex countenance proved somewhat more of an enigma to the
+silent on-looker than did the Senator's stern, though frank face.
+
+He was garbed in black, a color to which he seemed partial. A flat cap
+of black velvet with a feather curled round the brim, above a doublet
+of black velvet, close fitting, the sleeves slashed, to show the
+crimson tunic underneath. The trunk hose round the muscular legs were
+of black silk and gold thread, woven together and lined with sarsenet.
+His feet were encased in black buskins with silver buckles, and puffed
+silk inserted in the slashings of the leather.
+
+The whole suggestion of the dark, sable figure was odd. It was exotic,
+and the absence of a beard greatly intensified the impression.
+The face, as Tristan saw it by the light of the taper, was
+expressionless--a physical mask.
+
+At last Alberic broke the silence, turning his eyes full upon the man
+who met his gaze without flinching.
+
+"You have--at your own risk--saved Rome and Holy Church from a calamity
+the whole extent of which we may not even surmise, had the Pontiff
+been carried away by the lawless band of Tebaldo Savello. We owe you
+thanks--and we shall not shirk our duty. You are a stranger. Who are
+you and why are you here?"
+
+To the same questions that another had put to him on the memorable
+eve of his arrival, in the Piazza Navona, Tristan replied with equal
+frankness. His words bore the stamp of truth, and Alberic listened to a
+tale passing strange to Roman ears.
+
+And, unseen by Tristan, something began to stir in the dark,
+unfathomable eyes of Basil, as some unknown thing stirs in deep waters,
+and the hidden thing therein, to him who saw, was hidden no longer.
+Some nameless being was looking out of these windows of the soul. One
+looking at him now would have shrank away, cold fear gripping his heart.
+
+For a moment, after Tristan had finished his tale, there was silence.
+Alberic had risen and, seemingly unconscious of the presences in his
+chamber, was perambulating its narrow confines until, of a sudden, he
+stopped directly before Tristan.
+
+"These penances completed, whereof you speak--do you intend returning
+to the land of your birth?"
+
+A blank dismay shone in Tristan's eyes. Not having referred to the
+nature of the transgression, for which he was to do penance, and obtain
+absolution, he found it somewhat difficult to answer Alberic's question.
+
+"This is a matter I had not considered," he replied with some
+hesitancy, which remained not unremarked by the Senator.
+
+Alberic was a man of few words, and he possessed a discernment far
+beyond his years. At the first glance at this stranger whom fate had
+led across his path, he had known that here was one he might trust,
+could he but induce him to become his man.
+
+He held out his hand.
+
+"I am going to be your friend and I mean to requite the service you
+have done the Senator, ere the dawn of another day breaks in the sky.
+There is a vacancy in the Senator's guard. I appoint you captain of
+Castel San Angelo."
+
+Ere Tristan could sufficiently recover from his surprise to make reply,
+another voice was audible, a voice, soft and insinuating--the voice of
+Basil, the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+"My lord--the chain of evidence against Gamba is not completed. In
+fact, later developments seem to point to an intrigue of which he is
+but the unwitting victim--"
+
+Alberic turned to the speaker.
+
+"The proofs, my Lord Basil, are conclusive. Gamba is a traitor
+convicted of having conspired with an emissary of Ugo of Tuscany, to
+deliver the Archangel's Castle into his hands. He is sentenced--he
+shall die--as soon as we discover his abode--"
+
+Basil's face had turned to ashen hues.
+
+"What mean you, my lord? Gamba is awaiting sentence in the dungeon
+where he has been confined, ever since his trial--"
+
+"The cage is still there," Alberic interposed sardonically. "The bird
+has flown."
+
+"Escaped?" stammered the Grand Chamberlain, rising from his seat
+and raising his furtive eyes to those of the Senator. "Then he has
+confederates in our very midst--"
+
+"We shall know more of this anon," came the laconic reply. "Will you
+accept the trust which the Senator of Rome offers you?" Alberic turned
+from the Grand Chamberlain to Tristan.
+
+The latter found his voice at last.
+
+"How shall I thank you, my lord!" he said, grasping the Senator's hand.
+"Grant me but a week, wherein to absolve the business upon which I
+came--and I shall prove myself worthy of the lord Alberic's trust!"
+
+"So be it," the son of Marozia replied. "A long deferred pilgrimage to
+the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano will take me from Rome
+for the space of a month or more. I should like to be assured that this
+keep is in the hands of one who will not fail me in the hour of need!
+My Lord Basil--greet the new captain of Castel San Angelo--"
+
+Approaching almost soundlessly over the tiled floor, the Grand
+Chamberlain extended his hand to Tristan, offering his congratulations
+upon his sudden advancement.
+
+Whatever it was that flashed in Basil's eyes, it was gone as quickly as
+it had come. His thin lips parted in an inscrutable smile as Tristan,
+with a bend of the head, acknowledged the courtesy.
+
+For a moment, following his acceptance, Tristan was startled at his own
+decision. Another would have felt it to be an amazing streak of luck.
+Tristan was frightened, though his misgivings vanished after a time.
+
+Owing to the lateness of the hour and the insecurity of the streets
+Alberic offered Tristan the hospitality of his future abode for the
+night and the latter gladly accepted.
+
+After Basil had departed, he remained closeted with the Senator for the
+space of an hour or more. What transpired between these two remained
+guarded from the outer world, and it was late ere the sentinel on the
+ramparts saw the light in the Senator's chamber extinguished, wondering
+at the nature of the business which detained the lord Alberic and the
+tall stranger in the pilgrim's garb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+MASKS AND MUMMERS
+
+
+Amid the ruin of cities and the din of strife during the tenth century
+darkness closed in upon the Romans, while the figures of strange
+despots emerged from obscurity only to disappear as quickly into the
+night of oblivion. Little of them is known, save that they ruled the
+people and the pope with merciless severity, and that the first one of
+them was a woman.
+
+The beautiful Theodora the older was the wife of Theophylactus, Consul
+and Patricius of Rome, but the permanence of her power seemed to have
+been due entirely to her own charm and personality.
+
+Her daughter Marozia, with even greater beauty, greater fascination
+and greater gift of daring, played even a more conspicuous part in
+the history of her time. She married Alberic, Count of Spoleto, whose
+descendants, the Counts of Tusculum, gave popes and mighty citizens to
+Rome. One of their palaces is said to have adjoined the Church of S. S.
+Apostoli, and came later into the possession of the powerful house of
+Colonna.
+
+Alberic of Spoleto soon died and Marozia, as the chronicles tell
+us, continued as the temporal ruler of the city and the arbitress
+of pontifical elections. She held forth in Castel San Angelo, the
+indomitable stronghold of mediaeval Rome.
+
+In John X. who, in the year 914, had gained the tiara through Theodora,
+she found a man of character, whose aim and ambition were the dominion
+of Rome, the supremacy of the Church.
+
+By the promise of an imperial crown, the pope gained Count Ugo of
+Tuscany to his party, but Marozia outwitted him, by giving her hand to
+his more powerful half-brother Guido, then Margrave of Tuscany.
+
+John X., after trying for two years, in spite of his enemies, to
+maintain his regime from the Lateran, at last fell into their hands and
+was either strangled or starved to death in the dungeons of Castel San
+Angelo.
+
+After the death of Guido, Marozia married his half-brother Ugo. The
+strange wedding took place in the Mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian,
+where a bridal hall and nuptial chamber had been arranged and adorned
+for them.
+
+From the fortress tomb of the Flavian Emperor, Ugo lorded it over the
+city of Rome, earning thereby the hatred of the people and especially
+of young Alberic, his ambitious step-son, the son of Marozia and Count
+Alberic of Spoleto.
+
+The proud youth, forced one day to serve him as a page, with
+intentional awkwardness, splashed some water over him and in return
+received a blow. Mad with fury, Alberic rushed from Castel San Angelo
+and summoned the people to arms. The clarions sounded and the fortress
+tomb was surrounded by a blood-thirsty mob. In no time the actors
+changed places. Ugo escaped by means of a rope from a window in the
+castello and returned to Tuscany, leaving behind him his honor, his
+wife and his imperial crown, while the youth Alberic became master of
+Rome, cast Marozia into a prison in Castel San Angelo and kept his
+half-brother, John XI., a close prisoner in the Lateran.
+
+But the imprisonment of Marozia, and her mysterious disappearance from
+the scenes of her former triumphs and baleful activity did not end the
+story of the woman regime in Rome.
+
+There lived in a palace, built upon the ruins of nameless temples
+and sanctuaries, and embellished with all the barbarous splendor of
+Byzantine and Moorish arts, in the remote wilderness of Mount Aventine,
+a woman, who, in point of physical charms, ambition and daring had not
+her equal in Rome since the death of Marozia. Theodora the younger, as
+she is distinguished from her mother, the wife of Theophylactus, by
+contemporary chroniclers, was the younger sister of Marozia.
+
+The boundless ambition of the latter had left nothing to achieve for
+the woman who had reached her thirtieth year when Alberic's revolution
+consigned her sister to a nameless doom.
+
+Strange rumors concerning her were afloat in Rome. Strange things were
+whispered of her palace on Mount Aventine, where she assembled about
+her the nobility of the city and the surrounding castelli, and soon
+her court vied in point of sumptuousness and splendor with the most
+splendid and profligate of her time.
+
+Her admirers numbered by thousands, and her exotic beauty caused new
+lovers to swell the ranks of the old with every day that passed down
+the never returning tide of time.
+
+Some came openly and some came under the cover of night, heavily
+muffled and cloaked: spendthrifts, gamblers, gallants, men of fashion,
+officers of the Senator's Court, poets, philosophers, and the feudal
+lords of the Campagna.
+
+Wealthy debauchees from the provinces, princes from the shores of
+the Euxine, Lombard and Tuscan chiefs, Northmen from Scandinavia and
+Iceland, wearing over their gnarled limbs the soft silken tunics of
+Rome, Greeks, sleek, furtive-eyed, rulers from far-off Cathay, wearing
+coats of crimson with strange embroidery from the scented East, men
+from the isles of Venetia and the stormy plains of Thessaly, men with
+narrow slanting eyes from the limitless steppes of Sarmatia, blond
+warriors from the amber coasts of the Baltic, Persian princes who
+worshipped the Sun, and Moors from the Spanish Caliphate of Cordova;
+chieftains from the Lybian desert, as restive as their fiery steeds;
+black despots from the hidden heart of Africa, with thick lips and
+teeth like ivory, effete youths from Sicily and the Ionian isles,
+possessed of the insidious beauty of the Lesbian women, adventurers
+from Samarkand and Bokhara, trading in strange wares and steeped in
+odor of musk and spices; Hyperboreans from the sea-skirt shores of an
+ever frozen unimaginable ocean;--from every land under the sun they
+came to Rome, for the sinister fame of Theodora's beauty, the baleful
+mystery that surrounded her, and her dark repute proved powerful
+incentives to curiosity, which soon gave way to overmastering passion,
+once the senses had been steeped in the intoxicating atmosphere of the
+woman's presence.
+
+And, indeed, her physical charms were such as no mortal had yet
+resisted whom she had willed to make her own. Her body, tall as a
+column, was lustrous, incomparable. The arms and hands seemed to have
+been chiselled of ivory by a master creator who might point with pride
+to the perfection of his handiwork--the perfection of Aphrodité, Lais
+and Phryné melted into one. The features were of such rare mould and
+faultless type that even Marozia had to concede to her younger sister
+the palm of beauty. The wonderful, deep set eyes, with their ever
+changing lights, now emerald, now purple, now black; the straight,
+pencilled brows, the broad smooth forehead and the tiny ears, hidden in
+the wealth of her raven hair, tied into a Grecian knot and surmounted
+by a circlet of emeralds, skillfully worked into the twining bodies of
+snakes with ruby eyes; the satin sheen of the milk-white skin whose
+ivory pallor was tinted with the faintest rose-light that never changed
+either in heat or in cold, in anger or in joy: such was the woman
+whose long slumbering, long suppressed ambition, coupled with a daring
+that had not its equal, was to be fanned into a raging holocaust after
+Marozia's untimely demise.
+
+Concealing her most secret hopes and ambitions so utterly that even
+Alberic became her dupe, Theodora threw herself into the whirl of life
+with a keen appreciation of all its thrilling excitement. Vitally
+alive with the pride of her sex and the sense of its power, she found
+in her existence all the zest of some breathlessly fascinating game.
+Men to her were mere pawns. She regarded them almost impersonally, as
+creatures to taunt, to tempt, to excite, to play upon. Deliberately and
+unstintingly she applied her arts. She delighted to see them at her
+feet, but to repel them as the mood changed, with exasperating disdain.
+Love to her was a word she knew but from report,--or, from what she had
+read. She knew not its meaning, nor had she ever fathomed its depths.
+
+To revel through delirious nights with some newly-chosen favorite
+of the moment, who would soon thereafter mysteriously disappear, to
+be tossed from the embrace of one into the arms of another; in the
+restless, fruitless endeavor to kill the pain of life, the memory
+of consciousness, to fill the void of a heart, that, alive to the
+shallowness of existence, clutches at the saving hope of power, to
+rule and to crush the universe beneath her feet, a dream, vague, vain,
+unattainable: this desire filled Theodora's soul.
+
+Her soul was burning itself to cinders in its own fires,--those baleful
+fires that had proven the undoing of her equally beautiful sister.
+
+Alone she would pace her gilded chambers, feverishly, unable to think,
+driven hither and thither by the demons of unrest, by the disquietude
+of her heart. Desperately she threw herself into whatever excitement
+offered.
+
+But it was always in vain.
+
+She found no respite. Ever and ever a reiterant, restless craving
+gnawed, like a worm, at her heart.
+
+As she approached the thirtieth year of her life, Theodora had grown
+more dazzling in beauty. Her body had assumed the wonderful plasticity
+of marble. Her eyes had become more unfathomable, more wondrously
+changeful in hues, like the iridescent waters of the sea.
+
+Living as she did in an age where a morbid trend pervaded the world,
+where the approach of the Millennium, though no one of the present
+generation would see the day, was heralded as the End of Time; living
+as she did in the darkest epoch of Roman history, Theodora felt the
+utter inadequacy of her life, a hunger which nothing but power could
+assuage.
+
+Slowly this desire began to grow and expand. She wished to wield her
+will, not only on men's emotions, but upon their lives as well. Perhaps
+even the death of Marozia, with its paralyzing influence over her soul,
+the captivity in the Lateran of her sister's son, and the hateful rule
+of Alberic, would not have brought matters to a focus, had not the
+appearance upon the stage of a woman, who, in point of beauty, spirit
+and daring bade fair to constitute a terrible rival, roused all the
+dormant passions in Theodora's soul and when Roxana openly boasted
+that she would wrest the power from the hands of her rival and rule in
+the Emperor's Tomb in spite of the Pontiff, of Alberic and Marozia's
+blood-kin, the soul of Theodora leaped to the challenge of the other
+woman and she craved for the conflict as she had never longed for
+anything in her life, save perchance, a love of which she had but
+possessed the base counterfeit.
+
+No one knew whence Roxana had come, nor how long she had been in Rome,
+when an incident at San Lorenzo in Lucina had brought the two women
+face to face. Both, with their trains, had simultaneously arrived
+before the portals of the sanctuary when Roxana barred Theodora's way.
+Some mysterious instinct seemed to have informed each of the person
+and ambition of the other. For a moment they faced each other white
+to the lips. Then Roxana and her train had entered the church, and as
+she passed the other woman, a deadly challenge had flashed from her
+blue eyes into Theodora's dark orbs. The populace applauded Roxana's
+daring, and, in order to taunt her rival, she had established her court
+on desert Aventine, assembling about her the disgruntled lovers of
+Theodora and others, whom her disdain had driven to seek oblivion and
+revenge.
+
+The land of Roxana's birth was shrouded in mystery. Some reported her
+from the icy regions of the North, others credited her with being the
+fugitive odalisque of some Eastern despot, a native of Kurdistan, the
+beauty and fire of whose women she possessed to a high degree.
+
+Such was Roxana, who had challenged Theodora for the possession of the
+Emperor's Tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SHRINE OF HEKATÉ
+
+
+Athwart the gleaming balconies of the east the morning sun shone
+golden and the shadows of the white marble cornices and capitals and
+jutting friezes were blue with the reflection of the cloudless sky.
+Far below Mount Aventine the soft mists of dawn still hovered over the
+seven-hilled city, whence the distant cries of the water carriers and
+fruit venders came echoing up from the waking streets.
+
+A fugitive sunbeam stole through a carelessly closed lattice of a
+chamber in the palace of Theodora, and danced now on the walls, bright
+with many a painted scene, now on the marble inlaid mosaic of the
+floor. Now and then a bright blade or the jewelled rim of a wine cup of
+eastern design would flash back the wayward ray, until its shaft rested
+on a curtained recess wherein lay a faintly outlined form. Tenderly
+the sunbeams stole over the white limbs that veiled their chiselled
+roundness under the blue shot webs of their wrappings, which, at the
+capricious tossing of the sleeper, bared two arms, white as ivory and
+wonderful in their statuesque moulding.
+
+The face of the sleeper showed creamy white under a cloud of dark,
+silken hair, held back in a net of gold from the broad smooth forehead.
+Dark, exquisitely pencilled eyebrows arched over the closed,
+transparent lids, fringed with lashes that now and then seemed to
+flicker on the marble pallor of the cheeks, and the proudly poised head
+lay back, half buried in the cushions, supported by the gleaming white
+arms that were clasped beneath it.
+
+Then, as if fearful of intruding on the charms that his ray had
+revealed, the sunbeam turned and, kissing the bosom that swelled and
+sank with the sleeper's gentle breathing, descended till it rested on
+an overhanging foot, from which a carelessly fastened sandal hung by
+one vermilion strap.
+
+Of a sudden a light footfall was audible without and in an instant the
+sleeper had heard and awakened, her dark eyes heavy with drowsiness,
+the red lips parted, revealing two rows of small, pearly teeth, with
+the first deep breath of returning consciousness.
+
+At the sound one white hand drew the silken wrappings over the limbs,
+that a troubled slumber and the warmth of the Roman summer night had
+bared, while the other was endeavoring to adjust the disordered folds
+of the saffron gossamer web that clung like a veil to her matchless
+form.
+
+"Ah! It is but you! Persephoné," she said with a little sigh, as a
+curtain was drawn aside, revealing the form of a girl about twenty-two
+years old, whose office as first attendant to Theodora had been firmly
+established by her deep cunning, a thorough understanding of her
+mistress' most hidden moods and desires, her utter fearlessness and a
+native fierceness, that recoiled from no consideration of danger.
+
+Persephoné was tall, straight as an arrow, lithe and sinuous as a
+snake. Her face was beautiful, but there was something in the gleam
+of those slightly slanting eyes that gave pause to him who chanced to
+cross her path.
+
+She claimed descent from some mythical eastern potentate and was a
+native of Circassia, the land of beautiful women. No one knew how she
+had found her way to Rome. The fame of Marozia's evil beauty and her
+sinister repute had in time attracted Persephoné, and she had been
+immediately received in Marozia's service, where she remained till the
+revolt of Alberic swept her mistress into the dungeons of Castel San
+Angelo. Thereupon she had attached herself to Theodora who loved the
+wild and beautiful creature and confided in her utterly.
+
+"Evil and troubled have been my dreams," Theodora continued, as the
+morning light fell in through the parted curtains. "At the sound of
+your footfall I started up--fearing--I knew not what--"
+
+"For a long time have I held out against his pleadings and commands,"
+Persephoné replied in a subdued voice, "knowing that my lady slept. But
+he will not be denied,--and his insistence had begun to frighten me. So
+at last I dared brave my lady's anger and disturb her--"
+
+"Frighten you, Persephoné?" Theodora's musical laughter resounded
+through the chamber. "You--who braved death at these white hands of
+mine without flinching?"
+
+She extended her hands as if to impress Persephoné with their beauty
+and strength.
+
+Whatever the circumstance referred to, Persephoné made no reply. Only
+her face turned a shade more pale.
+
+The draped figure had meanwhile arisen to her full height, as she
+stretched the sleep from her limbs, then, her question remaining
+unanswered, she continued:
+
+"But--of whom do you speak? A new defiance from Roxana? A new insult
+from the Senator of Rome? I would have it understood," this with a
+slight lift of the voice, "that even were the end of the world at hand,
+of which they prate so much of late, and heaven and earth to crumble
+into chaos, I would not be disturbed to listen to shallow plaints and
+mock heroics."
+
+"It is neither the one nor the other," replied Persephoné with an
+apprehensive glance of her slanting eyes over her shoulder, "but my
+Lord Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. He waits without where the eunuchs
+guard your slumber, and his eyes are aflame with something more than
+impatience--"
+
+At the mention of the name a subtle change passed over the listener's
+face, and a sombre look crept into her eyes as she muttered:
+
+"What can he be bringing now?"
+
+Then, with a sudden flash, she added, tossing back her beautiful head:
+
+"Let the Lord Basil wait! And now, Persephoné, remove from me the
+traces of sleep and set the couches in better order."
+
+Silently and quickly the Circassian sprang forward and rolled back the
+curtains from the lattices, letting a stronger but still subdued light
+enter the chamber, revealing, as it did, many a chased casket, and
+mirrors of polished steel and bronze, and lighting up exquisite rainbow
+hued fabrics, thrown carelessly over lion-armed chairs, with here and
+there an onyx table wonderfully carved.
+
+The chamber itself looked out upon a terrace and garden, a garden
+filled with such a marvellous profusion of foliage and flowers, that,
+looking at it from between the glistening marble columns surrounding
+the palace, it seemed as though the very sky above rested edgewise on
+towering pyramids of red and white bloom. Awnings of softest pale blue
+stretched across the entire width of the spacious outer colonnade,
+where a superb peacock strutted majestically to and fro, with
+boastfully spreading tail and glittering crest, as brilliant as the
+gleam of the hot sun on the silver fringe of the azure canopies, amidst
+the gorgeousness of waving blossoms that seemed to surge up like a sea
+to the very windows of the chamber.
+
+Filling an embossed bowl with perfumed water, Persephoné bathed the
+hands of her mistress, who had sunk down upon a low, tapestried
+couch. Then, combing out her luxuriant hair, she bound it in a
+jewelled netting that looked like a constellation of stars against the
+dusky masses it confined. Taking a long, sleeveless robe of amber,
+Persephoné flung it about her subtle form and bound it over breast and
+shoulders with a jewelled band. But Theodora's glance informed her that
+something was still wanting and, following the direction of her gaze,
+Persephoné's eye rested on a life-size statue of Hekaté that stood with
+deadly calm on its inexorable face and slightly raised hands, from one
+of which hung something that glittered strangely in the subdued light
+of the recess.
+
+Obeying Theodora's silent gesture, Persephoné advanced to the image and
+took from its raised arm a circlet fashioned of two golden snakes with
+brightly enamelled scales, bearing in their mouths a single diamond,
+brilliant as summer lightning. This she gently placed on her mistress'
+head, so that the jewel flamed in the centre of the coronet, then,
+kneeling down, she drew together the unlatched sandals.
+
+Persephoné's touch roused her mistress from a day dream that had set
+her features as rigid as ivory, as she surveyed herself for a moment
+intently in a great bronze disk whose burnished surface gave back her
+flawless beauty line for line.
+
+In Persephoné's gaze she read her unstinted admiration, for, beautiful
+as the Circassian was, she loved beauty in her own sex, wherever she
+found it.
+
+Theodora seemed to have utterly forgotten the presence of the Grand
+Chamberlain in the anteroom, yet, in an impersonal way, her thoughts
+occupied themselves with the impending tete-a-tete.
+
+Her life had been one constant round of pleasure and amusement, yet she
+was not happy, nor even contented.
+
+Day by day she felt the want of some fresh interest, some fresh
+excitement, and it was this craving probably, more than innate
+depravity, which plunged her into those disgraceful and licentious
+excesses that were nightly enacted in the sunken gardens behind her
+palace. Lovers she had had by the scores. Yet each new face possessed
+for her but the attraction of novelty. The favorite of the hour had
+small cause to plume himself on his position. No sooner did he believe
+himself to be secure in the possession of Theodora's love, than he
+found himself hurled into the night of oblivion.
+
+A strange pagan wave held Rome enthralled. Italy was in the throes of
+a dark revulsion. A woman, beautiful as she was evil, had exercised
+within the past decade her baleful influence from Castel San Angelo.
+Theodora had taken up Marozia's tainted inheritance. Members of a
+family of courtesans, they looked upon their trade as a hereditary
+privilege and, like the ancient Aspasias, these Roman women of the
+tenth century triumphed primarily by means of their feminine beauty
+and charms over masculine barbarism and grossness. It was an age
+of feudalism, when brutal force and murderous fury were the only
+divinities whom the barbarian conqueror was compelled to respect.
+Lombards and Huns, Franks and Ostrogoths, Greeks and Africans, the
+savage giants issuing from the deep Teutonic forests, invading the
+classic soil of Rome, became so many Herculeses sitting at the feet of
+Omphalé, and the atmosphere of the city by the Tiber--the atmosphere
+that had nourished the Messalinas of Imperial Rome--poured the flame of
+ambition into the soul of a woman whose beauty released the strongest
+passions in the hearts of those with whom she surrounded herself, in
+order to attain her soul's desire. To rule Rome from the fortress
+tomb of the Flavian emperor was the dream of Theodora's life. It had
+happened once. It would happen again, as long as men were ready to
+sacrifice at the shrines of Hekaté.
+
+Unbridled in her passions as she was strong in her physical
+organization, an unbending pride and an intensity of will came to
+her aid when she had determined to win the object of her desire. In
+Theodora's bosom beat a heart that could dare, endure and defy the
+worst. She was a woman whom none but a very bold or ignorant suitor
+would have taken to his heart. Perchance the right man, had he appeared
+on the stage in time, might have made her gentle and quelled the
+wild passions that tossed her resistlessly about, like a barque in a
+hurricane.
+
+Suddenly something seemed to tell her that she had found such a one.
+Tristan's manly beauty had made a strong appeal upon her senses. The
+anomaly of his position had captivated her imagination. There was
+something strangely fascinating in the mystery that surrounded him,
+there was even a wild thrill of pleasure in the seeming shame of loving
+one whose garb stamped him as one claimed by the Church. He had braved
+her anger in refusing to accompany Persephoné. He had closed his eyes
+to Theodora's beauty, had sealed his ears to the song of the siren.
+
+"A man at last!" she said half aloud, and Persephoné, looking up from
+her occupation, gave her an inquisitive glance.
+
+The splash of hidden fountains diffused a pleasant coolness in the
+chamber. Spiral wreaths of incense curled from a bronze tripod into the
+flower-scented ether. The throbbing of muted strings from harps and
+lutes, mingling with the sombre chants of distant processions, vibrated
+through the sun-kissed haze, producing a weird and almost startling
+effect.
+
+After a pause of some duration, apparently oblivious of the fact
+that the announced caller was waiting without, Theodora turned to
+Persephoné, brushing with one white hand a stray raven lock from the
+alabaster forehead.
+
+"Can it be the heat or the poison miasma that presages our Roman fever?
+Never has my spirit been so oppressed as it is to-day, as if the gloomy
+messengers from Lethé's shore were enfolding me in their shadowy
+pinions. I saw his face in the dream of the night"--she spoke as if
+soliloquizing--"it was as the face of one long dead--"
+
+She paused with a shudder.
+
+"Of whom does my lady speak?" Persephoné interposed with a swift glance
+at her mistress.
+
+"The pilgrim who crossed my path to his own or my undoing. Has he been
+heard from again?"
+
+A negative gesture came in response.
+
+"His garb is responsible for much," replied the Circassian. "The city
+fairly swarms with his kind--"
+
+The intentional contemptuous sting met its immediate rebuke.
+
+"Not his kind," Theodora flashed back. "He has nothing in common with
+those others save the garb--and there is more beneath it than we wot
+of--"
+
+"The Lady Theodora's judgment is not to be gainsaid," the Circassian
+replied, without meeting her mistress' gaze. "Do they not throng to her
+bowers by the legion--"
+
+"A pilgrimage of the animals to Circé's sty--each eager to be
+transformed into his own native state," Theodora interposed
+contemptuously.
+
+"Perchance this holy man is in reality a prince from some mythical,
+fabled land--come to Rome to resist temptation and be forthwith
+canonized--"
+
+Persephoné's mirth suffered a check by Theodora's reply.
+
+"Stranger things have happened. All the world comes to Rome on one
+business or another. This one, however, has not his mind set on the
+Beatitudes--"
+
+"Nevertheless he dared not enter the forbidden gates," the Circassian
+ventured to object.
+
+"It was not fear. On that I vouch. Perchance he has a vow. Whatever it
+be--he shall tell me--face to face--and here!"
+
+"But if the holy man refuse to come?"
+
+Theodora's trained ear did not miss the note of irony in the
+Circassian's question.
+
+"He will come!" she replied laconically.
+
+"A task worthy the Lady Theodora's renown."
+
+"You deem it wonderful?"
+
+"If I have read the pilgrim's eyes aright--"
+
+"Perchance your own sweet eyes, my beautiful Persephoné, discoursed to
+him something on that night that caused misgivings in his holy heart,
+and made him doubt your errand?" Theodora purred, extending her white
+arms and regarding the Circassian intently.
+
+Persephoné flushed and paled in quick succession.
+
+"On that matter I left no doubt in his mind," she said enigmatically.
+
+There was a brief pause, during which an inscrutable gaze passed
+between Theodora and the Circassian.
+
+"Were you not as beautiful as you are evil, my Persephoné, I should
+strangle you," Theodora at last said very quietly.
+
+The Circassian's face turned very pale and there was a strange light
+in her eyes. Her memory went back to an hour when, during one of the
+periodical feuds between Marozia and her younger sister, the former
+had imprisoned Theodora in one of the chambers of Castel San Angelo,
+setting over her as companion and gaoler in one Persephoné, then in
+Marozia's service.
+
+The terrible encounter between Theodora and the Circassian in the
+locked chamber, when only the timely appearance of the guard saved each
+from destruction at the hands of the other, as Theodora tried to take
+the keys of her prison from Persephoné, had never left the latter's
+mind. Brave as she was, she had nevertheless, after Marozia's fall,
+entered Theodora's service, and the latter, admiring the spirit of
+fearlessness in the girl, had welcomed her in her household.
+
+"I am ever at the Lady Theodora's service," Persephoné replied, with
+drooping lids, but Theodora caught a gleam of tigerish ferocity
+beneath those silken lashes that fired her own blood.
+
+"Beware--lest in some evil hour I may be tempted to finish what I left
+undone in the Emperor's Tomb!" she flashed with a sudden access of
+passion.
+
+"The Lady Theodora is very brave," Persephoné replied, as, stirred by
+the memory, her eyes sank into those of her mistress.
+
+For a moment they held each other's gaze, then, with a generosity
+that was part of her complex nature, Theodora extended her hand to
+Persephoné.
+
+"Forgive the mood--I am strangely wrought up," she said. "Cannot you
+help me in this dilemma, where I can trust in none?"
+
+"There dwells in Rome one who can help my lady," Persephoné replied
+with hesitation; "one deeply versed in the lore and mysteries of the
+East."
+
+"Who is this man?" Theodora queried eagerly.
+
+"His name is Hormazd. By his spells he can change the natural event of
+things, and make Fate subservient to his decrees."
+
+"Why have you never told me of him before?"
+
+"Because the Lady Theodora's will seemed to do as much for her as
+could, to my belief, the sorcerer's art!"
+
+The implied compliment pleased Theodora.
+
+"Where does he abide?"
+
+"In the Trastevere."
+
+"What does he for those who seek him?"
+
+"He reads the stars--foretells the future--and, with the aid of strange
+spells of which he is master, can bring about that which otherwise
+would be unattainable--"
+
+"You rouse my curiosity! Tell me more of him."
+
+An inscrutable expression passed over Persephoné's face.
+
+"He was Marozia's trusted friend."
+
+A frozen silence reigned apace.
+
+"Did he foretell that which was to happen?" Theodora spoke at last.
+
+"To the hour!"
+
+"And yet--forewarned--"
+
+"Marozia, grown desperate in the hatred of her lord, derided his
+warnings."
+
+"It was her Fate. Tell me more!"
+
+"He has visited every land under the sun. From Thulé to Cathay his
+fame is known. Strange tales are told of him. No one knows his age. He
+seems to have lived always. As he appears now he hath ever been. They
+say he has been seen in places thousand leagues apart at the same time.
+Sometimes he disappears and is not heard of for months. But--whoever
+he may be--whatever he may be engaged in--at the stroke of midnight
+that he must suspend. Then his body turns rigid as a corpse, bereft of
+animation, and his spirit is withdrawn into realms we dare not even
+dream of. At the first hour of the morning life will slowly return. But
+no one has yet dared to question him, where he has spent those dread
+hours."
+
+Theodora had listened to Persephoné's tale with a strange new interest.
+
+"How long has this Hormazd--or whatever his name--resided in Rome?" she
+turned to the Circassian.
+
+"I met him first on the night on which the lady Marozia summoned him to
+the summit of the Emperor's Tomb. There he abode with her for hours,
+engaged in some unholy incantation and at last conjured up such a
+tempest over the Seven Hills, as the city of Rome had not experienced
+since it was founded by the man from Troy--"
+
+Persephoné's historical deficiency went hand in hand with a
+superstition characteristic of the age, and evoked no comment from one
+perchance hardly better informed with regard to the past.
+
+"I well remember the night," Theodora interposed.
+
+"We crept down into the crypts, where the dog-headed Egyptian god keeps
+watch over the dead Emperor," Persephoné continued. "The lady Marozia
+alone remained on the summit with the wizard--amidst such lightnings
+and crashing peals of thunder and a hurricane the like of which the
+oldest inhabitants do not remember--"
+
+"I shall test his skill," Theodora spoke after a pause. "Perchance he
+may give me that which I have never known--"
+
+"My lady would consult the wizard?" Persephoné interposed eagerly.
+
+"Such is my intent."
+
+"Shall I summon him to your presence?"
+
+"I shall go to him!"
+
+In Persephoné's countenance surprise and fear struggled for mastery.
+
+"Then I shall accompany my lady--"
+
+"I shall go alone and unattended--"
+
+"It is an ill-favored region, where the sorcerer dwells--"
+
+An inscrutable look passed into Theodora's eyes.
+
+"Can he but give me that which I desire I shall brave the hazard, be it
+ever so great."
+
+The last words were uttered in an undertone. Then she added imperiously:
+
+"Go and summon the lord Basil and bid two eunuchs attend him hither!
+And do you wait with them within call behind those curtains."
+
+Then, as Persephoné silently piled cushions behind her in the
+lion-armed chair and withdrew bowing, Theodora murmured to herself:
+
+"Hardly can I trust even him in an hour so fraught with darkness and
+peril. Yet strive as he will, he may not break the chains his passion
+has woven around his senses."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE GAME OF LOVE
+
+
+The pattering of footsteps resounded on the marble floor of the
+corridor and the hangings once more parted, revealing the form of a
+man sombre even in the shadows which seemed part of the darkness that
+framed his white face.
+
+With eyes that never left the woman's graceful form the visitor slowly
+advanced and, concealing his chagrin at having been kept waiting like a
+slave in the anteroom, bent low over Theodora's hand and raised it to
+his lips.
+
+She had seated herself on a divan which somewhat shaded her face and
+invited him with a mute gesture to take his seat beside her. Persephoné
+and the eunuchs had left the chamber.
+
+"Fain would I have departed, Lady Theodora, when the maid Persephoné,
+who has the devil in her eyes, told me that the Lady Theodora slept,"
+Basil spoke as, with the light of a fierce passion in his eyes, he sank
+down beside the wondrous form, and his hot breath fanned her shoulder.
+"But my tidings brook no delay. Closer, fairest lady, that your ear
+alone may hear this new perplexity that does beset us, for it concerns
+that which lies closest to our heart, and the time is brief--"
+
+"I cannot even guess your tidings," replied Theodora, withdrawing
+herself a little from his burning gaze. "For days mischance has emptied
+all her quivers at me, leaving me not a dart wherewith to strike."
+
+"It is as a bolt from the clear blue," interposed the Grand
+Chamberlain. "Yet--how were we to reckon with that which did happen?
+Every detail had been carefully planned. In the excitement and turmoil
+which roared and surged over the Navona the task could not fail of its
+accomplishment and he who was to speed the holy man to his doom had but
+to plunge into that seething vortex of humanity to make his escape.
+Surely the foul fiend was abroad on that night and stalked about
+visibly to our undoing. For not a word have I been able to get out of
+Il Gobbo who raves that at the very moment when he was about to strike,
+St. John himself towered over him, paralyzed his efforts, and gave him
+such a blow as sent him reeling upon the turf. Some say,"--the speaker
+added meditatively, "it was a pilgrim--"
+
+"A pilgrim?" Theodora interposed, a sudden gleam in her eyes. "A
+pilgrim? What was he like?"
+
+"To Il Gobbo he appeared no doubt of superhuman height, else had he not
+affrighted him. For the bravo is no coward--"
+
+"A pilgrim, you say," Theodora repeated, meditatively.
+
+"Whosoever he is," Basil continued after a pause, "he seems to scent
+ample entertainment in this godly city. For, no doubt it was the same
+who thwarted by his timely appearance the abduction of the Pontiff by
+certain ruffians, earning thereby much distinction in the eyes of the
+Senator of Rome who has appointed him captain of Castel San Angelo--and
+Gamba in whom we placed our trust has fled. If he is captured--if he
+should confess--"
+
+The color had died out of Theodora's cheeks and she sat bolt upright as
+a statue of marble, gazing into the shadows with great wide eyes, as in
+a low voice, hardly audible even to her visitor, she said:
+
+"God! Will this uncertainty never cease? What is to be done?
+Speak!--For I confess, I am not myself today."--
+
+Basil hesitated, and a sudden flame leaped into his eyes as they
+devoured the beauty of the woman beside him, and raising to his lips
+the hand that lay inert on the saffron-hued cushion, he replied:
+
+"The lady Theodora has many who do her bidding, yet is the heart of
+none as true as his, who is even now sitting beside her. Therefore ask
+of me whatever you will and, if a blade be needed, your slightest favor
+will fire me to any deed,--however unnameable."--
+
+Lower the man bent, until his hot breath scorched her pale cheeks. But
+neither by word nor gesture did she betray that she was conscious of
+his nearer approach as, in a calm voice, she replied:
+
+"Full well do I know your zeal and devotion, my lord Basil. Yet there
+hangs in the balance the keen and timely stroke that shall secure for
+me the dominion of the Seven Hills and the Emperor's Tomb. For failure
+would bring in its wake that which would be harder to endure than
+death itself. Therefore," she added slowly, "I would choose one whose
+devotion is only equalled by his blind indifference to that which I am
+minded to bring about; not one only fired with a passion, which when
+cooled might leave nothing but fear and hesitation behind."--
+
+"Has all that has passed between us left you with so ill an opinion
+of me?" Basil replied, drawing back somewhat ostentatiously. "There
+are few that can be trusted with that which must be done--and trusted
+blades are scarce."
+
+"The more reason that we choose wisely and well," came the reply in
+deliberate tones. "How much longer must I suffer the indignity which
+this stripling dares to put upon his own flesh and blood,--upon myself,
+who has striven for this dominion with all the fire of this restless
+soul? How much longer must I sit idly by, pondering over the mystery
+that enshrouds Marozia's untimely end? How much longer must I tremble
+in abject fear of him whom the Tuscan's churlishness has set up in
+yonder castello and who conspires with my rival to gain his sinister
+ends?"
+
+"By what sorcery she holds him captive, I cannot tell," Basil
+interposed. "Yet, if we are not on our guard, we shall awaken one day
+to the realization that even the faint chance which remains to us now
+has passed from our hands. I doubt not but that Roxana will enlist the
+services of the stranger who in the space of a week, during the lord
+Alberic's absence, will lord it over the city of Rome!"
+
+With a smothered cry of hate, that drove from Theodora's face every
+trace of her former mood, she bounded upright.
+
+"What demon of madness possesses you, my lord Basil, to taunt me with
+your suspicions?" she flashed.
+
+Basil had sped his shaft at random, but he had hit the mark.
+
+In suave and insinuating tones, without relinquishing his gaze upon the
+woman, he replied:
+
+"I voice but my fears, Lady Theodora, and the urgency of assembling
+your friends under the banners of your house. What is more natural," he
+continued with slow and sinister emphasis, "than for a beautiful woman
+to harbor the desire for conquest, and to profit from so auspicious a
+throw of fate as the stranger's espousing her part against an equally
+beautiful, hated rival? Is not the inference justified, that, ignorant
+of the merits of the feud, which has been raging these many months, he
+will take the part of the one whose beauty had compelled the Senator's
+unwitting tribute--as it were?"
+
+He paused for a moment, watching the woman before him from under
+half-shut lids, then continued slowly:
+
+"Roxana is consumed with the desire to stake soul and body upon
+attaining her ends, humbling her rival in the dust and set her foot
+upon her neck. Time and again has she defied you! At the banquet she
+gave in honor of the Senator of Rome, when one of the guests lamented
+the Lady Theodora's absence from the festal board, she openly boasted,
+that in youth as well as in beauty, in strength as in love,
+she would vanquish Marozia's sister utterly--and when one of the
+guests, commenting upon her boast, suggested with a smile that in the
+time of the Emperor Gallus women fought in the arena, she bared her
+arms and replied: 'Are there no chambers in this demesne where a woman
+may strangle her rival?'"
+
+[Illustration: "A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes"]
+
+Theodora had listened to Basil's recital, white to the lips. Her bosom
+heaved and a strange fire burnt in her eyes as she replied:
+
+"Dares she utter this boast, woman to woman?"--
+
+Basil, checking himself, gave a shrug.
+
+"Misinterpret not my words, dearest lady," he said solicitously. "It
+is to warn you that I came. Alberic's attitude is no longer a secret.
+Roxana is leaving no stone unturned to drive you from the city, to
+encompass your death--and Alberic is swayed by strange moods. Roxana
+is growing bolder each day and the woman who dares challenge the Lady
+Theodora is no coward."
+
+A strange look passed into Theodora's eyes.
+
+"Three days hence," she said, "I mean to give a feast to my friends,
+if," she continued with lurid mockery, "I can still number such among
+those who flock to my bowers. I shall ask the Lady Roxana to grace the
+feast with her presence--"
+
+A puzzled look passed into Basil's eyes.
+
+"Deem you she will come?"
+
+Theodora's lips curved in a smile.
+
+"You said but just now, my lord, the woman who dares challenge Theodora
+is no coward--"
+
+"Yet--as your guest--suspecting--knowing--"
+
+"I doubt not, my lord, she is well informed," Theodora interposed
+with the same inscrutable smile. "Yet--if she is as brave as she is
+beautiful--she will come--doubt not, my lord--she will come--"
+
+"Nevertheless, I question the wisdom," Basil ventured to interpose. "A
+sudden spark--from nowhere--who will quench the holocaust?"
+
+"When Roxana and Theodora meet,--woman to woman--ah, trust me, my lord,
+it will be a festive occasion--one long to be remembered. Perchance
+you, my lord, who boast of a large circle know young Fabio of the
+Cavalli--a comely youth with the air and manners of a girl. Persephoné,
+my Circassian, could strangle him."
+
+"I know the youth, Lady Theodora," Basil interposed with a puzzled air.
+"What of him?"
+
+"He once did me the honor to imagine himself in love with me. Did he
+not pursue me with amorous sighs and burning glances and oaths--my
+lord--such oaths! Cerberus would wince in Tartarus could he hear but
+one of them--"
+
+Basil's lips straightened and his eyelids narrowed.
+
+"Pardon, Lady Theodora, if I do not quite follow the trend of your
+reminiscent mood--"
+
+Theodora smiled.
+
+"You will presently, my lord--believe me--you will presently. When
+I became satiated with him I sent him on his way and straightway he
+sought my beautiful rival. I am told she is very fond of him--"
+
+A strange nervousness had seized Basil.
+
+"I shall bid him to the feast," Theodora continued. "'Twere scant
+courtesy to request the Lady Roxaná's presence without that of her
+lover. And more, my lord. Since you boast your devotion to me in such
+unequivocal terms--your task it shall be to bring as your honored
+guest the valiant stranger who took so brave a part in aiding the Lord
+Alberic to regain his prisoner, and who, within a week, is to be the
+new captain of Castel San Angelo."--
+
+Basil was twitching nervously.
+
+"Lady Theodora, without attempting to fathom the mood which prompts
+the request, am I to traverse the city in quest of a churl who has
+hypnotized the Lord Alberic and has destroyed our fondest hopes?"--
+
+"That it shall be for myself to decide, my Lord Basil," Theodora
+replied with her inscrutable smile. "I do not desire you to fathom my
+mood, but to bring to me this man. And believe me, my Lord Basil--as
+you value my favor--you will find and bring him to me!"
+
+Half turning she flung a light vesture from off her bosom and the faint
+light showed not the set Medusa face that meditated unnameable things,
+but eyes alight with desire and a mouth quivering for kisses.
+
+As he gazed, Basil was suddenly caught in the throes of his passion.
+He clutched at the ottoman's carved arms, striving to resist the tide
+of emotion that tossed him like a helpless bark in its clutches and,
+suddenly bearing down every restraint, his arms went round the supple
+form as he crushed her to him with a wild uncontrolled passion, bending
+her back, and his eyes blazed with a baleful fire into her own, while
+his hot kisses scorched her lips.
+
+She struggled violently, desperately in his embrace, and at last
+succeeded, bruised and crushed, in releasing herself.
+
+"Beast! Coward!" she flashed, "Can you not bridle the animal within
+you? I have it in mind to kill you here and now."
+
+Basil's face was ashen. His eyes were bloodshot. The touch of her lips,
+of her hands, had maddened him. He groaned, and his arms fell limply by
+his side. Presently he raised his head and, his eyes aflame with the
+madness of jealousy, he snarled:
+
+"So I did not go amiss, when I long suspected another in the bower of
+roses. Who is he? Tell me quickly, that I may at least assuage this
+hatred of mine, for its measure overflows."
+
+His hand closed on his dagger's hilt that was hidden by his tunic, but
+Theodora rose and her own eyes flashed like naked swords as with set
+face she said:
+
+"Have you not yet learned, my lord, how vain it is to probe the
+clouds of my mind for the unseen wind that stirs behind its curtains?
+Aye--crouch at my feet, you miserable slave, gone mad with the dream of
+my favor possessed and wake to learn, that, as Theodora's enchantments
+compel all living men, nevertheless she gives herself unto him she
+pleases. I tell you, you jealous fool, that, although I serve the
+goddess of night yonder, never till yesterday was my heart touched by
+the divine enchantments of Venus, nor have the lips ever closed on
+mine, that could kindle the spark to set my breast afire with longing."
+
+"Ah me!" she continued, speaking as though she thought aloud. "Will
+Hekaté ever grant me to find amongst these husks of passion and
+plotting that great love whereof once I dreamed, that love which I am
+seeking and which ever flits before me, disembodied and unattainable,
+like a ghost in the purple twilight? Or, must I wander, ever loved yet
+unloving, until I am gathered to the realms of shadows, robbed of my
+desire by Death's cold hand?"
+
+She paused, her lips a-quiver, the while Basil watched her with
+half-closed eyes, filled with sudden and ominous brooding.
+
+"Who is the favored one?" he queried darkly, "who came and saw and
+conquered, while others of long-tried loyalty are starving at the
+fount?"
+
+She gave him an inscrutable glance, then answered quickly:
+
+"A man willing to risk life and honor and all to serve me as I would be
+served."
+
+Basil gave her a baffled look.
+
+"Can he achieve the impossible?"
+
+Theodora gave a shrug.
+
+"To him who truly loves nothing is impossible. You are the trusted
+friend of the Senator who encompasses my undoing--need I say more?"
+
+"Were I not, Lady Theodora, in seeming,--who knows, but that your blood
+would long have dyed this Roman soil, or some dark crypt contained your
+wonderful beauty? Bide but the time--"
+
+An impatient wave of Theodora's hand interrupted the speaker.
+
+"Time has me now! Will there ever be an end to this uncertainty?"
+
+"You have not yet told me the name of him whose sudden advent on the
+stage has brought about so marvellous a transformation," Basil said
+with an air of baffled passion and rage.
+
+"What matters the name, my lord?" Theodora interposed with a sardonic
+smile.
+
+"A nameless stranger then," he flashed with a swiftness that staggered
+even the woman, astute as she was.
+
+"I said not so--"
+
+"A circumstance that should recommend him to our consideration," he
+muttered darkly. "I shall find him--and bring him to the feast--"
+
+There was something in his voice that roused the tigress in the woman.
+
+"By the powers of hell," she turned on the man whose fatal guess had
+betrayed her secret, "if you but dare touch one hair of his head--"
+
+Basil raised his hand disdainfully.
+
+"Be calm, Lady Theodora! The Grand Chamberlain soils not his steel with
+such carrion," he said with a tone of contempt that struck home. "And
+now I will be plain with you, Lady Theodora. All things have their
+price. Will you grant to me what I most desire in return for that which
+is ever closest to your heart?"
+
+Theodora gave a tantalizing shrug.
+
+"Like the Fata Morgana of the desert, I am all things to all men," she
+said. "Remember, my lord, I must look for that which I desire wherever
+I may find it, since life and the future are uncertain."
+
+There was a silence during which each seemed intent upon fathoming the
+secret thoughts of the other.
+
+It was Basil who spoke.
+
+"What of that other?"
+
+Theodora had arisen.
+
+"Bring him to me--three days hence--as my guest. Thrice has he crossed
+my path.--Thrice has he defied me!--I have that in store for him at
+which men shall marvel for all time to come!"
+
+Basil bent over the white hand and kissed it. Then he took his leave.
+Had he seen the expression in the woman's eyes as the heavy curtains
+closed behind him, it would have made the Grand Chamberlain pause.
+
+Theodora passed to where the bronze mirror hung and stood long before
+it, with hands clasped behind her shapely head, wrapt in deepest
+thought.
+
+And while she gazed on her mirrored loveliness, an evil light sprang up
+in her eyes and all her mouth's soft lines froze to a mould of dreaming
+evil, as she turned to where the image of Hekaté gazed down upon her
+with inhuman calm upon its face, and, holding out shimmering, imploring
+arms, she cried:
+
+"Help me now, dread goddess of darkness, if ever you looked with love
+upon her whose prayers have been directed to you for good and for evil.
+Fire the soul of him I desire, as he stands before me, that he lose
+reason, honor, and manhood, as the price of my burning kisses--that he
+become my utter slave."
+
+She clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared from behind the curtains.
+
+"For once Fate is my friend," she turned with flashing eyes to the
+Circassian. "Before his departure to the shrines of the Archangel,
+Alberic has appointed this nameless stranger captain of Castel San
+Angelo. Go--find him and bring him to me! Now we shall see," she added,
+"if all this beauty of mine shall prevail against his manhood. Your
+eyes express doubt, my sweet Persephoné?"
+
+Theodora had raised herself to her full height. She looked regal
+indeed--a wonderful apparition. What man lived there to resist such
+loveliness of face and form?
+
+Persephoné, too, seemed to feel the woman's magic, for her tone was
+less confident when she replied:
+
+"Such beauty as the Lady Theodora's surely the world has never seen."
+
+"I shall conquer--by dread Hekaté," Theodora flashed, flushed by
+Persephoné's unwitting tribute. "He shall open for me the portals of
+the Emperor's Tomb, he shall sue at my feet for my love--and obtain his
+guerdon. Not a word of this to anyone, my Persephoné--least of all, the
+Lord Basil. Bring the stranger to me by the postern--"
+
+"But--if he refuse?"
+
+There was something in Persephoné's tone that stung Theodora's soul to
+the quick.
+
+"He will not refuse."
+
+Persephoné bowed and departed, and for some time Theodora's dark
+inscrutable eyes brooded on the equally inscrutable face of the goddess
+of the Underworld, which was just then touched by a fugitive beam of
+sunlight and seemed to nod mysteriously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A SPIRIT PAGEANT
+
+
+When, on the day succeeding his appointment Tristan returned to the
+Inn of the Golden Shield he felt as one in a trance. Like a puppet of
+Fate he had been plunged into the seething maelstrom of feudal Rome.
+He hardly realized the import of the scene in which he had played so
+prominent a part. He had acted upon impulse, hardly knowing what it was
+all about. Dimly at intervals it flashed through his consciousness,
+dimly he remembered facing two youths, the one the Senator of Rome--the
+other the High Priest of Christendom, even though a prisoner in the
+Lateran. Vaguely he recalled the words that had been spoken between
+them, vaguely he recalled the fact that the Senator of Rome had
+commended him for having saved the city, offering him appointment,
+holding out honor and preferment, if he would enter his service.
+Vaguely he remembered bending his knee before the proud son of Marozia
+and accepting his good offices.
+
+In the guest-chamber Tristan found pilgrims from every land assembled
+round the tables discoursing upon the wonders and perils hidden in the
+strange and shifting corridors of Rome. Not a few had witnessed the
+scene in which he had so conspicuously figured and, upon recognizing
+him, regarded him with shy glances, while commenting upon the
+prevailing state of unrest, the periodical seditions and outbreaks of
+the Romans.
+
+Tristan listened to the buzz and clamor of their voices, gleaning here
+and there some scattered bits of knowledge regarding Roman affairs.
+
+He could now review more calmly the events of the preceding day.
+Fortune seemed to have favored him indeed, in that she had led him
+across the path of the Senator of Rome.
+
+Thus Tristan set out once again, to make the rounds of worship and
+obedience. These absolved, he wandered aimlessly about the great city,
+losing himself in her ruins and gardens, while he strove in vain to
+take an interest in what he beheld, rather distracted than amused by
+the Babel-like confusion which surrounded him on all sides.
+
+Nevertheless, once more upon the piazzas and tortuous streets of Rome,
+his pace quickened. His pulses beat faster. At times he did not feel
+his feet upon those stony ways which Peter and Paul had trod, and many
+another who, like himself, had come to Rome to be crucified. People
+stared at his dark and sombre form as he passed. Now and then he was
+retarded by chanting processions, that wound their interminable coils
+through the tortuous streets, pilgrims from all the world, the various
+orders of monks in the habits peculiar to their orders, wine-venders,
+water-carriers, men-at-arms, sbirri, and men of doubtful calling.
+Sacred banners floated in the sunlit air and incense curled its
+graceful spiral wreaths into the cloudless Roman ether.
+
+Surely Rome offered a wide field for ambition. A man might raise
+himself to a certain degree by subservience to some powerful prince,
+but he must continue to serve that prince, or he fell and would never
+aspire to independent domination, where hereditary power was recognized
+by the people and lay at the foundation of all acknowledged authority.
+It was only in Central Italy, and especially in Romagna and the States
+of the Church, where a principle antagonistic to all hereditary claims
+existed in the very nature of the Papal power, so that any adventurer
+might hope, either by his individual genius or courage, or by services
+rendered to those in authority, to raise himself to independent rule or
+to that station which was only attached to a superior by the thin and
+worn-out thread of feudal tenure.
+
+Rome was the field still open to the bold spirit, the keen and
+clear-seeing mind. Rome was the table on which the boldest player was
+sure to win the most. With every change of the papacy new combinations,
+and, consequently, new opportunities must arise. Here a man may, as
+elsewhere, be required to serve, in order at length to command. But, if
+he did not obtain power at length, it was his fault or Fortune's, and
+in either event he must abide the consequences.
+
+Revolving in his mind these matters, and wondering what the days to
+come would hold, Tristan permitted himself to wander aimlessly through
+the desolation which arose on all sides about him.
+
+Passing by the Forum and the Colosseum, ruins piled upon ruins, he
+wandered past San Gregorio, where, in the garden, lie the remains of
+the Servian Porta Capena, by which St. Paul first entered Rome. The Via
+Appia, lined with vineyards and fruit-trees, shedding their blossoms
+on many an ancient tomb, led the solitary pilgrim from the memories of
+the present to the days, when the light of the early Christian Church
+burned like a flickering taper hidden low in Roman soil.
+
+The ground sweeping down on either side in gentle, but well-defined
+curves, led the vision over the hills of Rome and into her valleys.
+Beneath a cloudless, translucent sky the city was caught in bold shafts
+of crystal light, revealing her in so strong a relief that it seemed
+like a piece of exquisite sculpture.
+
+Fronting the Coelian, crowned with the temple church of San Stefano
+in Rotondo, fringed round with tall and graceful poplars, rose the
+immeasurable ruins of Caracalla's Baths, seeming more than ever the
+work of titans, as Tristan saw them, shrouded in deep shadows above
+the old churches of San Nereo and San Basilio, shining like white
+huts, a stone's throw from the mighty walls. Beyond, as a beacon of
+the Christian world in ages to come, on the site of the ancient Circus
+of Nero, arose the Basilica of Constantine, still in its pristine
+simplicity, ere the genius of Michel Angelo, Bramanté and Sangallo
+transformed it into the magnificence of the present St. Peter's.
+
+For miles around stretched the Aurelian walls, here fallen in low
+ruins, there still rising in their proud strength. Weathered to every
+shade of red, orange, and palest lemon, they still showed much of
+their ancient beauty near the closed Latin gate. High towers, arched
+galleries and battlements cast a broad band of shade upon a line of
+peach trees whose blossoms had opened out to the touch of the summer
+breeze.
+
+Beneath Tristan's feet, unknown to him, lay the sepulchral chambers of
+pagan patricians, and the winding passage tombs of the Scipios. Out of
+the sunshine of the vineyard Tristan's curiosity led him into the dusk
+of the Columbaria of Pomponius Hylas, full of stucco altar tombs. He
+descended into the lower chambers with arched corridors and vaulted
+roofs where, in the loculi, stood terra-cotta jars holding the ashes
+of the freedmen and musicians of Tiberius with their servants, even to
+their cook.
+
+Returning full of wonder to the golden light of day, Tristan retraced
+his steps once again over the Appian Way. Passing the ruined Circus
+of Maxentius, across smooth fields of grass, he saw the fortress tomb
+of Cæcilia Metella, set grandly upon the hill. It appeared to break
+through the sunshine, its marble surface of a soft cream color, looking
+more like the shrine of some immortal goddess of the Campagna than the
+tomb of a Roman matron.
+
+And, as he wandered along the Appian Way, past the site of lava
+pools from Mount Alba, remains of ancient monuments lay thicker
+by the roadside. Prostrate statues appeared in a setting of wild
+flowers. Sculptured heads gazed out from half-hidden tombs, while one
+watch-tower after another rose out of the undulating expanse of the
+Campagna.
+
+To Tristan the memories of an ancient empire which clung to the place
+held but little significance.
+
+Here emperors had been carried by in their litters to Albano.
+Victorious generals returning in their chariots from the south, drove
+between these avenues of cypress-guarded tombs to Rome. The body of
+the dead Augustus had been brought with great following from Bovilæ to
+the Palatine, as before him Sulla had been borne along to Rome amid
+the sound of trumpets and tramp of horsemen. Near the fourth milestone
+stood Seneca's villa, where he received his death warrant from an
+emissary of Nero, and nearby was that of his wife who, by her own
+desire, bravely shared his fate.
+
+And, last to haunt the Appian Way in the spirit pageant of the Golden
+Age, a memory destined to lie dormant till the dawn of the Renaissance,
+was Paul the Apostle, the tent-maker from Tarsus, who entered Rome
+while Nero reigned in the white marble city of Augustus and suffered
+martyrdom for the Faith.
+
+It was verging towards evening when Tristan's feet again bore him past
+the stupendous ruins of the Colosseum, through the roofless upper
+galleries of which streamed the light of the sinking sun.
+
+After reaching the Forum, almost deserted by this hour, save for a few
+belated ramblers, he seated himself on a marble block and tried to
+collect his thoughts, at the same time drinking in the picture which
+unrolled itself before his gaze.
+
+If Rome was indeed, as the chroniclers of the Middle Ages styled her,
+"Caput Mundi," the Forum was the centre of Rome. From this centre
+Rome threw out and informed her various feelers, farther and farther
+radiating in all directions, as she swelled out with greatness, drawing
+her sustenance first from her sacred hills and groves, then from the
+very marbles and granites of the mountains of Asia and Africa, from the
+lives of all sorts of peoples, races and nations. And like the Emperor
+Constantine, as we are told by Ammianus Marcellinus, on beholding the
+Forum from the Rostra of Domitian, stood wonder-stricken, so Tristan,
+even at this period of decay, was amazed at the grandeur of the ruins
+which bore witness to Rome's former greatness.
+
+The sound of the Angelus, whose silvery chimes permeated the tomb-like
+stillness, roused Tristan from his reveries.
+
+He arose and continued upon his way, until he found himself in the
+square fronting the ancient Basilica of Constantine.
+
+Notwithstanding the fact that it was a Vigil of the Church, popular
+exhibitions of all sorts were set upon the broad flagstones before
+St. Peter's. Street dancing girls indulged on every available spot in
+those gliding gyrations, so eloquently condemned by the worthy Ammianus
+Marcellinus of orderly and historical memory. Booths crammed with
+relics of doubtful authenticity, baskets filled with fruits or flowers,
+pictorial representations of certain martyrs of the Church, basking
+in haloes of celestial light, tempted in every direction the worldly
+and unworldly spectators. Cooks perambulated, their shops upon their
+backs, merchants shouted their wares, wine-sellers taught Bacchanalian
+philosophy from the tops of their casks; poets recited spurious
+compositions which they offered for sale; philosophers indulged in
+argumentations destined to convert the wavering, or to perplex the
+ignorant. Incessant motion and noise seemed to be the sole aim and
+purpose of the crowd which thronged the square.
+
+Nothing could be more picturesque than the distant view of the joyous
+scene, this Carnival in Midsummer, as it were.
+
+The deep red rays of the westering sun cast their radiance, partly
+from behind the Basilica, over the vast multitude in the piazza. In
+unrivalled splendor the crimson light tinted the water that purled from
+the fountain of Bishop Symmachus. Its roof of gilded bronze, supported
+by six porphyry columns, was enclosed by small marble screens on which
+griffins were carved, its corners ornamented by gilded dolphins and
+peacocks in bronze. The water flowed into a square basin from out
+of a bronze pine cone which may have come from Hadrian's Mausoleum.
+Bathed in the brilliant glow the smooth porphyry colonnades reflected,
+chameleon-like, ethereal and varying hues. The white marble statues
+became suffused with delicate rose, and the trees gleamed in the
+innermost of their leafy depths as if steeped in the exhalations of a
+golden mist.
+
+Contrasting strangely with the wondrous radiance around it, the bronze
+pine-tree in the centre of the piazza rose up in gloomy shadow,
+indefinite and exaggerated. The wide facade of the Basilica cast its
+great depth of shade into the midst of the light which dominated the
+scene.
+
+Tristan stood for a time gazing into the glowing sky, then he slowly
+made his way towards the Basilica, the edifice which commemorated the
+establishment of Christianity as the state religion of Rome, as in its
+changes it has reflected every change wrought in the spirit of the new
+worship up to the present hour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE DENUNCIATION
+
+
+The Basilica of Constantine no longer retained its pristine splendor,
+its pristine purity as in the days, ere the revival of paganism by the
+Emperor Julian the Apostate had put a sudden and impressive check upon
+the meretricious defilement of the glory, for which it was built.
+
+The exterior began to show signs of decay. The interior, too, had
+changed with the inexorable trend of the times. The solemn recesses
+were filled with precious relics. Many hued tapers surrounded the
+glorious pillars, and eastern tapestries wreathed their fringes round
+the massive altars.
+
+As Tristan entered the incense-saturated dusk of St. Peter's, the first
+part of the service had just been concluded. The last faint echoes from
+the voices in the choir still hovered upon the air, and the silent
+crowds of worshippers were still grouped in their listening attitudes
+and absorbed in their devotions.
+
+The only light was bestowed by the evening sun, duskily illuminating
+the emblazoned windows, or by the glimmer of lamps in distant
+shrines, hung with sable velvet and attended each by its own group of
+ministering priests.
+
+Struck with an indefinable awe Tristan looked about. At first he only
+realized the great space, the four long rows of closely set columns,
+and the great triumphal arch which framed the mosaics of the apse,
+where Constantine stood in the clouds offering his Basilica to the
+Saviour and St. Peter. Then he looked towards the sacred shrines
+above the Apostle's grave, where lamps burned incessantly and cast a
+dazzling halo above the high altar, reflected in the silver paving of
+the presbytery and on the golden gates and images of the Confessio.
+Immediately behind the altar was revealed a long panel of gold, studded
+with gems and ornaments, with figures of Christ and the Apostles, a
+native offering from the Emperor Valentinian III. The high altar and
+its brilliant surroundings were seen from the nave between a double row
+of twisted marble columns, white as snow. A beam covered with plates of
+silver united them and supported great silver images of the Saviour,
+the Virgin and the Apostles with lilies and candelabra.
+
+To their shrines, to do homage, had in time come the Kings from all
+the earth: Oswy, King of the Northumbrians, Cædwalla, King of the
+West Saxons, Coenred, King of the Mercians, and with him his son
+Sigher, King of the East Saxons. Even Macbeth is said to have made
+the pilgrimage. Ethelwulf came in the middle of the ninth century,
+and with him came his son Alfred. In the arcades beneath the columned
+vestibule of the Basilica, tomb succeeded tomb. Here the popes were
+buried, Leo I, the Great, being first in line, the Saxon Pilgrim Kings,
+the Emperors Honorius III and Theodosius II, regarding whom St. John
+Chrysostomus has written: "Emperors were proud to stand in the hall
+keeping guard at the fisherman's door."
+
+During the interval between the divisions of the service, Tristan,
+like many of those present, found his interest directed towards the
+relics, which were inclosed in a silver cabinet with crystal doors and
+placed above the high altar. Although it was impossible to obtain a
+satisfactory view of these ecclesiastical treasures, they nevertheless
+occupied his attention till it was diverted by the appearance of a
+monk in the habit of the Benedictines, who had mounted the richly
+carved pulpit fixed between two pillars.
+
+As far as Tristan was enabled to follow the trend of the sermon it
+teemed with allusions to the state of society and religion as it
+prevailed throughout the Christian world, and especially in the city
+of the Pontiff. By degrees the monk's eloquence took on darker and
+more terrible tints, as he seemed slowly to pass from generalities to
+personal allusions, which increased the fear and mortification of the
+great assembly with every moment.
+
+From the shadows of the shrine, where he had chosen his station,
+Tristan was enabled to mark every shade of the emotions which swayed
+the multitudes and, as his eyes roamed inadvertently towards the chapel
+of the Father Confessor, he saw a continuous stream of penitents enter
+the dark passage leading towards the crypts, many of whom were masked.
+
+Turning his head by chance, Tristan's glance fell upon two men who had
+apparently just entered the Basilica and paused a few paces away, to
+listen to the words which the monk hurled like thunderbolts across the
+heads of his listeners. Despite their precaution to wear masks, Tristan
+recognized the Grand Chamberlain in the one, while his companion, the
+hunchback, appeared rather uncomfortable in the sanctified air of the
+Basilica.
+
+Hitherto Odo of Cluny's attacks on the existing state had been general.
+Now he glanced over the crowd, as if in quest of some special object,
+as with strident voice he declaimed:
+
+"Repent! Death stands behind you! The flag of your glory shall cease
+to wave on the towers of your strong citadel. Destruction clamors at
+your palace gates, and the enemy that cometh upon you unaware is an
+enemy that none shall vanquish or subdue, not even they who are the
+mightiest among the mighty. Blood stains the earth and the sky. Its
+red waves swallow up the land! The heavens grow pale and tremble! The
+silver stars blacken and decay, and the winds of the desert make lament
+for that which shall come to pass, ere ever the grapes be pressed or
+the harvest gathered. It is a scarlet sea wherein, like a broken and
+deserted ship, Rome flounders, never to rise again--"
+
+He paused for a moment and caught his breath hard.
+
+"The Scarlet Woman of Babylon is among us!" he cried. "Hence! accursed
+tempter. Thou poisoner of peace, thou quivering sting in the flesh,
+destroyer of the strength of manhood! Theodora!--thou abomination--thou
+tyrannous treachery! What shall be done unto thee in the hour of
+darkness? Put off the ornaments of gold, the jewels, wherewith thou
+adornest thy beauty, and crown thyself with the crown of endless
+affliction. For thou shalt be girdled about with flame and fire shall
+be thy garment. Thy lips that have drunk sweet wine shall be steeped
+in bitterness! Vainly shalt thou make thyself fair and call upon thy
+legion of lovers. They shall be as dead men, deaf to thine entreaties,
+and none shall respond to thy call! None shall hide thee from shame
+and offer thee comfort! In the midst of thy lascivious delights shalt
+thou suddenly perish, and my soul shall be avenged on thy sins,
+queen-courtesan of the earth!"
+
+Scarcely had the last word died to silence when a blinding flash of
+lightning rent the gloom followed by a tremendous crash of thunder
+that shook the great edifice to its foundation. The bronze portals
+opened as of their own accord and a terrific gust of wind extinguished
+every light in the thousand-jetted candelabrum. Impenetrable darkness
+reigned--thick, suffocating darkness, as the thunder rolled away in
+grand, sullen echoes.
+
+There was a momentary lull, then, piercing the profound gloom, came
+the cries and shrieks of frightened women, the horrible, selfish
+scrambling, struggling and pushing of a bewildered multitude. A
+veritable frenzy of fear seemed to possess every one. Groans and sobs,
+entreaties and curses from those, who, intent on saving themselves,
+were brutally trying to force a passage to the door, the heart-rending,
+frantic appeals of the women--all these sounds increased the horror
+of the situation, and Tristan, blind, giddy and confused, listened to
+the uproar about him with somewhat of the affrighted, panic-stricken
+compassion that a stranger in hell might feel, while hearkening to the
+ceaseless plaints of the self-tortured damned.
+
+Lost in a dim stupefaction of wonderment, Tristan remained where he
+stood, while the crowds rushed from the Basilica. As he was about to
+follow in their wake, his gaze was attracted towards the chapel of the
+Grand Penitentiary, from which came a number of masked personages while
+he, to whose keeping were confided crimes of a magnitude that seemed
+beyond the extensive powers of absolution, was barely visible under the
+cowl, which was drawn deeply over his forehead.
+
+The thought occurred to Tristan to seek the ear of the Confessor, in as
+much as the Pontiff to whom he had hoped to lay bare his heart could
+not grant him an audience.
+
+The lateness of the hour and the uncertainty of the fate of the Monk
+of Cluny prevented him from following the prompting of the moment and,
+staggering rather than walking, Tristan made for the portals of St.
+Peter's and walked unseeing into the gathering dusk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE CONFESSION
+
+
+The storm had abated, but the sheen of white lightnings to southward
+and the menacing growl of distant thunder that seemed to come from the
+bowels of the earth held out promise of renewed upheavals of disturbed
+nature.
+
+The streets of Rome were comparatively deserted with the swiftly
+approaching dusk, and it occurred to Tristan to seek the Monk of Cluny
+in his abode on Mount Aventine whither he had doubtlessly betaken
+himself after his sermon in the Basilica of St. Peter's. For ever and
+ever the memory of lost Hellayne dominated his thoughts, and, while he
+poured out prayers for peace at the shrines of the saints, with the
+eyes of the soul he saw not the image of the Virgin, but of the woman
+for the sake of whom he had come hither and, having come, knew not
+where to find that which he sought.
+
+From a passing friar Tristan learned the direction of Mount Aventine,
+where, among the ruins near the newly erected Church of Santa Maria of
+the Aventine, Odo of Cluny abode. Tristan could not but marvel at the
+courage of the man whose life was in hourly jeopardy and who, in the
+face of an ever present menace could put his trust so completely in
+Heaven as to brave the danger without even a guard.--
+
+Taking the road indicated by the friar, Tristan pursued his solitary
+path. In seeking the Monk of Cluny his purpose was a twofold one,
+certainty with regard to his own guilt, in having loved where love was
+a crime, and counsel with regard to the woman who, he instinctively
+felt, would not stop at her first innuendos.
+
+As Tristan proceeded on his way his feelings and motives became more
+and more perplexed, and so lost was he in thought that, without heeding
+his way or noting the scattered arches and porticoes, he lost himself
+in the wilderness of the Mount of Cloisters. The hush was intensified
+rather than broken by the ever louder peals of thunder, which
+reverberated through the valleys, and the Stygian darkness, broken at
+intervals by vivid flashes of lightning, seemed to hem him in, as a
+wall of basalt.
+
+Gradually all traces of a road vanished. On both sides rose woody
+acclivities, covered with ruins and melancholy cypresses, whose
+spectral outlines seemed to stretch into gaunt immensity, in the sheen
+of the lightnings which grew more and more frequent. The wind rose
+sobbingly among the trees, and a few scattered rain-drops began to warn
+Tristan that a shelter of any sort would be preferable to exposing
+himself to the onslaught of the elements.
+
+Entering the first group of ruins he came to, he penetrated through
+a series of roofless corridors and chambers into what seemed a dark
+cylindrical well at the farther extremity of which there gleamed an
+infinitesimal light. Even through the clamor of the storm that raged
+outside there came to him the sound of voices from the interior.
+
+Impelled as much by curiosity as by the consideration of his own safety
+Tristan crept slowly towards the aperture. As he did so, the light
+vanished, but a crimson glow, as of smouldering embers, succeeded,
+and heavy fumes of incense, wafted to his nostrils, informed him that
+his fears regarding the character of the abode were but too well
+founded. He cowered motionless in the gloom until the storm had abated,
+determined to return at some time to discover what mysteries the place
+concealed.
+
+A fresher breeze had sprung up, driving the thunderclouds to northward,
+and from a clear azure the stars shone in undimmed lustre upon the
+dreaming world beneath.
+
+For a moment Tristan stood gazing at the immense desolation, the
+wilderness of arches, shattered columns and ivy-covered porticoes. The
+hopelessness of finding among these relics of antiquity the monk's
+hermitage impressed itself at once upon him. Pausing irresolutely,
+he would probably have retraced his steps, had he not chanced to see
+some one emerge from the adjacent ruins, apparently bound in the same
+direction.
+
+Whether it was a presentiment of evil, or whether the fear bred of
+the region and the hour of the night prompted the precaution, Tristan
+receded into the shadows and watched the approaching form, in whom he
+recognized Basil, the Grand Chamberlain. He at once resolved to follow
+him and the soft ground aided the execution of his design.
+
+The way wound through a veritable labyrinth of ruins, nevertheless
+he kept his eyes on the tall dark form, stalking through the night
+before him. At times an owl or bat whirled over his head. With these
+exceptions he encountered no living thing among the ruins to break the
+hush of the sepulchral desolation.
+
+The distance between them gradually diminished. Tristan saw the other
+turn to the right into a wilderness of grottoes, the tortuous corridors
+of which were at times almost choked up with weeds and wild flowers,
+but when he reached the spot, there was no vestige of a human presence.
+Basil had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him.
+
+Possessed by a sudden fear that some harm might be intended the monk
+and remembering certain veiled threats he had overheard against his
+life, he proceeded more slowly and cautiously by the dim light of the
+stars.
+
+Before long he found himself before a flight of grass grown steps that
+led up to a series of desolate chambers which, although roofless
+and choked with rank vegetation, still bore traces of their ancient
+splendor. These corridors led to a clumsy door, standing half ajar,
+from beyond which shone the faint glimmer of a light.
+
+After having reached the threshold Tristan paused.
+
+High, oval-shaped apertures admitted light and air at once, and the
+dying embers of a charcoal fire revealed a chamber, singularly void of
+all the comforts of existence. Almost in the centre of this chamber,
+before a massive stone table, upon which was spread a huge tome, sat
+the Monk of Cluny, shading his eyes with his right hand and reading
+half aloud.
+
+For a few moments Tristan regarded the recluse breathlessly, as if he
+dreaded disturbing his meditations, when Odo suddenly raised his eyes
+and saw the dark form standing in the frame of the door.
+
+The look which he bestowed upon Tristan convinced the latter
+immediately of the doubt which the monk harbored regarding the quality
+of his belated caller, a doubt which he deemed well to disperse before
+venturing into the monk's retreat.
+
+Therefore, without abandoning his position, he addressed the inmate of
+the chamber and, as he spoke, the tone of his voice seemed to carry
+conviction, that the speaker was sincere.
+
+"Your pardon, father," Tristan stammered, "for one who is seeking you
+in an hour of grave doubt and misgiving."
+
+The monk's ear had caught the accent of a foreign tongue. He beckoned
+to Tristan to enter, rising from the bench on which he had been seated.
+
+"You come at a strange hour," he said, not without a note of suspicion,
+which did not escape Tristan. "Your business must be weighty indeed
+to embolden one, a stranger on Roman soil, to penetrate the desolate
+Aventine when the world sleeps and murder stalks abroad."
+
+"I am here for a singular purpose, father,--having obeyed the impulse
+of the moment, after listening to your sermon at St. Peter's."
+
+"But that was hours ago," interposed the monk, resting his hand on the
+stone table, as he faced his visitor.
+
+"I lost my way--nor did I meet any one to point it," Tristan replied,
+as he advanced and kissed the monk's hand reverently.
+
+"What is your business, my son?" asked the monk.
+
+Tristan hesitated a moment. At last he spoke.
+
+"I came to Rome not of my own desire,--but obeying the will of another
+that imposed the pilgrimage. I have sinned, father--and yet there are
+moments, when I would almost glory in that which I have done. It was
+my purpose, while at St. Peter's to confess to the Grand Penitentiary.
+But--I know not why--I chose you instead, knowing that you would give
+truth for truth."
+
+The monk regarded his visitor, wondering what one so young and
+possessed of so frank a countenance might have done amiss.
+
+"You are a pilgrim?" he queried at last.
+
+"For my sins--"
+
+"Of French descent, yet not a Frenchman--"
+
+Tristan started at the monk's penetration.
+
+"From Provence, father," he stammered, "the land of songs and flowers--"
+
+"And women--" the monk interposed gravely.
+
+"There are women everywhere, father."
+
+"There are women and women. Perchance I should say 'Woman.'"
+
+Tristan bowed his head in silence.
+
+The monk cast a penetrating glance at his visitor. He understood the
+gesture and the silence with that quick comprehension that came to him
+who was to reform Holy Catholic Church from the abuse of decades--as an
+intuition.
+
+"But now, my son, speak of yourself," said the monk after a pause.
+
+"I lived at the court of Avalon, the home of Love and Troubadours."
+
+"Of Troubadours?" the monk interposed dreamily. "A worldly lot--given
+to extolling free love and what not--"
+
+"They may sing of love and passion, father, but their lives are pure
+and chaste," Tristan ventured to remonstrate.
+
+"You are a Troubadour?" came the swift query.
+
+"In my humble way." Tristan replied with bowed head.
+
+The monk nodded.
+
+"Go on--go on!"
+
+"At the court of Avalon I met the consort of Count Roger de Laval. He
+was much absent, on one business or another,--the chase--feuds with
+neighboring barons.--He chose me to help the Lady Hellayne to while
+away the long hours during his absence--"
+
+"His wife! What folly!"
+
+"The Count de Laval is one of those men who would tempt the heavens
+themselves to fall upon him rather than to air himself beneath them.
+That his fair young wife, doing his will among men given to the chase
+and drinking bouts, and the society of tainted damsels, should long for
+something higher, she, whom he regarded with the high air of the lord
+of creation--that she should dare dream of some intangible something,
+for which she hungered, and craved and starved--"
+
+"If you are about to confess, as I conceive, to a wrong you have done
+to this same lord," interposed the monk, "your sin is not less black if
+you paint him you have wronged in odious tints."
+
+"Nevertheless I am most sorry to do so, father," Tristan interposed,
+"else could I not make you understand to its full extent his folly and
+conceit by placing me, a creature of emotion, day by day beside so
+fair a being as his young wife. Therefore I would explain."
+
+"It needs some explanation truly!" the monk said sternly.
+
+"The Count de Laval is a man whose conceit is so colossal, father, that
+he would never think it possible that any one could fail in love and
+admiration at the shrine which he built for himself. A man of supreme
+arrogance and self-righteousness."
+
+"Sad, indeed--" mused the monk.
+
+"Our thoughts were pagan, drifting back to the days when the world was
+peopled with sylvan creatures--with the deities of field and stream--"
+
+"Mere heathen dreams," interposed the monk. "Go on! Go on!"
+
+"I then felt within myself the impulse to throw forth a minstrelsy
+prophetic of a new world resembling that old which had vanished. It was
+not to be a mere chant of wrath or exultation--it was to sound the joy
+of the earth, of the air, of the sun, of the moon and the stars,--the
+song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers--"
+
+"Words that have but little meaning left in this stern world wherein we
+dwell--"
+
+"They had meaning for me, father. Also for her. They were to both of
+us a bright and mystical ideal, in the fumes of which we steeped our
+souls,--our very selves, till our natures seemed to know no hurt,
+seemed incapable of evil--"
+
+"Alas--the greater the pity!"
+
+"I was sure of myself. She was sure of me. I loved her. Her presence
+was to me as some intoxication of the soul--some rare perfume that
+captivates the senses, raising the spirit to heights too rarefied for
+breath--"
+
+"And you fell?"
+
+The words came from the monk's lips, slowly, inexorably, as the knell
+of fate.
+
+"I--all, but fell!" stammered Tristan. "One day in a chamber far
+removed from the inhabited part of the castle we sat and read. And
+suddenly she laid her face close to mine and with eyes in whose mystic
+depths lurked something more than I had ever seen in them before asked
+why, through Fate's high necessity, two should forever wander side by
+side, longing for each other--their longing unsatisfied--when the hour
+was theirs--"
+
+Again Tristan paused.
+
+The monk regarded him in silence.
+
+"You fell?" the question came again.
+
+"In that moment, father, I was no more myself, no more the one whose
+art is sacred and alone upon the mountain summit of his soul. Its
+freedom and aspirations were no more. I was undone, a tumbled, wingless
+thing. My pride had fled. Long, long I looked into her eyes, and when
+she put her wonderful white arms about me, I, in a dizzy moment of
+desire, dropped my face to hers. Then was love all uttered. Straightway
+I arose. I clasped her in my arms. I kissed--I kissed her--"
+
+The monk regarded him sternly, yet not unkindly.
+
+"It was a sin. Yet--there is more?"
+
+Tristan's hands were clasped.
+
+"One evening in the rose garden--at dusk--the evening on which she sent
+me from her--bade me go to Rome to obtain forgiveness for a sin of
+which I could not repent."
+
+The monk nodded. "Go on! Go on!"
+
+"The world had fallen away from us. We stood in a grove, our arms about
+each other. Suddenly I saw a face. I withdrew my arm, overwhelmed by
+all the shame of guilt. The face vanished and, passion overmastering
+once more, we touched our lips anew. It was the last time we were to
+see each other. I left behind the wondrous silken hair my hands had
+touched in our last mad caress. I left behind that tender face and
+form. She made no attempt to follow, or to call me back. I hastened
+to my chamber, and there I fought anew with all that evil impulse of
+my youth, to face the shame, as long as joy endured. If I had sinned
+in mind against my high ideal might I not some day recover it and be
+purified?"
+
+"What of God and Holy Church?" queried the monk.
+
+"To them I gave no heed, but to my honor. This upheld me."
+
+The monk gave a nod.
+
+"I left Avalon. It seemed as if without her my life were ebbing away. I
+joined a pilgrim party, and now my pilgrimage is ended. What must I do
+to still this inward craving that will not leave my soul at peace?"
+
+He ended in a sob.
+
+The monk had relapsed into deep thought, and Tristan's eyes were
+riveted on the ascetic form in silent dread, as to what would be the
+verdict.
+
+At last Odo broke the heavy silence.
+
+"You have committed a grievous sin--adultery--nay, speak not!" he said,
+as Tristan attempted to remonstrate against the dire accusation. "The
+seed of every act slumbers in the mind ere its pernicious shoots are
+manifest in deeds. He who looks upon a woman with the desire to possess
+her has already committed adultery with her. Yet--not one in a thousand
+would have done so nobly under such temptation!"
+
+The monk's voice betrayed some feeling as he placed his hand on
+Tristan's bowed head.
+
+"I shall consider what penances are most fit for one who has
+transgressed as you have, my son. It is for your future life--perchance
+Holy Orders--"
+
+Tristan raised his head imploringly.
+
+"Not that, father,--not that! I am not fit!"
+
+The monk regarded him quizzically.
+
+"The lust of the eye is mighty and the fever of the world still burns
+in your veins, my son, rebelling against the passion that chastens and
+purifies. Nevertheless, the Church desires no enforced service. She
+wishes to be served through love, not with aversion and fear. Continue
+to do penance, implore His forgiveness, and that He may take from you
+this worldly desire."
+
+Kissing anew the hand which the monk extended, Tristan arose, after Odo
+had made upon him the holy sign.
+
+"I shall obey your behest," he said in a low, broken voice, then
+withdrew, while the Monk of Cluny returned to his former pursuit,
+unconscious that another had witnessed and overheard the strange
+confession from a recess in the wall.
+
+As one in a trance Tristan left the Monk of Cluny, his heart filled
+with gratitude for the man who, in the midst of a world of strife and
+unrest, had listened to his tale and had not dealt harshly with him,
+but had received him sympathetically, even while rebuking the offence.
+While the penances imposed upon him were not severe, Tristan chafed
+nevertheless under the restraint they laid upon his soul.
+
+What was his future life to be? What new vistas would open before him?
+What new impressions would superimpose themselves upon the memories of
+the past--the memory of Hellayne?
+
+As he passed the church of Santa Maria of the Aventine, Tristan saw
+the portals open. Puzzled over the problems he was face in the days to
+come, he entered the dim shadows of the sanctuary.
+
+All that night Tristan knelt in solitary prayer.
+
+The great church was empty and silent, unlit save for the lamp upon the
+altar. There Tristan kept his vigil, his tired, tearful eyes upon the
+crucifixion, searching his own heart.
+
+The night of silence brought him no vision and shed no light upon his
+path. The pale dawn found him still upon his knees before the altar,
+his eyes upon the drooping form of the crucified Christ.
+
+Thus the monks found him when they entered for early Matins. At last he
+arose, in his sombre eyes a touching resignation and infinite regret.
+
+END OF BOOK THE FIRST
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE GRAND CHAMBERLAIN
+
+
+Castel San Angelo, the Tomb of the Flavian Emperor, seemed rather to
+have been built for a great keep, a breakwater as it were to stem the
+rush of barbarian seas which were wont to come storming down from
+the frozen north, than for the resting-place of the former master
+of the world. Its constructors had aimed at nothing less than its
+everlastingness. So thick were its bastioned walls, so thick the
+curtains which divided its inner and outer masonry, that no force of
+nature seemed capable of honeycombing or weakening them.
+
+Hidden within its screens and vaults, like the gnawings of a foul and
+intricate cancer, ran dark passages which discharged themselves here
+and there into dreadful dungeons, or secret places not guessed at in
+the common tally of its rooms.
+
+These oubliettes were hideous with blotched and spotted memories,
+rotten with the dew of suffering, eloquent in their terror and
+corruption and darkness of the cruelty which turned to these walls for
+security. The hiss and purr of subterranean fires, the grinding of low,
+grated jaws, the flop and echo of stagnant water that oozed from a
+stagnant inner moat into vermin-swarming, human-haunted cellars: these
+sounds spoke even less of grief than the hellish ferment in the souls
+of those who had lorded it in this keep since the fall of the Western
+Empire.
+
+On this night there hung an air of menace about the Mausoleum of the
+Flavian Emperor which seemed enhanced by the roar and clatter of
+the tempest that raged over the seven-hilled city. Snaky twists of
+lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness, and deafening peals of
+thunder reverberated in deep, booming echoes through the inky vault of
+the heavens.
+
+In one of the upper chambers of the huge granite pile, which seemed to
+defy the very elements, in a square room, dug out of the very rock,
+containing but one window that appeared as a deep wedge in the wall,
+piercing to the sheer flank of the tower, there sat, brooding over a
+letter he held in his hand, Basil, the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+The drowsy odor of incense, smouldering in the little purple shrine
+lamp, robbed the air of its last freshness.
+
+A tunic of dark velvet, fur bound and girt with a belt of finest
+Moorish steel, was relieved by an undervest of deepest crimson. Woven
+hose to match the tunic ended in crimson buskins of soft leather. The
+mantle and the skull cap which he had discarded lay beside him on the
+floor, guarded by a tawny hound of the ancient Molossian breed.
+
+By the fitful light of the two waxen tapers, which flickered dismally
+under the onslaught of the elements, the inmate of the chamber slowly
+and laboriously deciphered the letter. Then he placed it in his
+doublet, lapsing into deep rumination, as one who is vainly seeking to
+solve a problem that defies solution.
+
+Rising at last from his chair Basil paced the narrow confines of the
+chamber, whose crimson walls seemed to form a fitting background for
+the dark-robed occupant.
+
+Outside, the storm howled furiously, flinging gusty dashes of rain and
+hail against the stone masonry and clattering noisily with every blow
+inflicted upon the solid rock.
+
+When, spent by its own fury, the hurricane abated for a moment, the
+faint sound of a bell tolling the Angelus could be heard whimpering
+through the night.
+
+When Basil had left Theodora after their meeting at the palace, there
+had been a darker light in his eyes, a something more ominous of evil
+in his manner. While his passion had utterly enslaved him, making
+him a puppet in the hands of the woman whose boundless ambition must
+inevitably lead her either to the heights of the empire whereof she
+dreamed, or to the deepest abyss of hell, Basil was far from being
+content to occupy a position which made him merely a creature of her
+will and making. To mount the throne with the woman whose beauty had
+set his senses aflame, to rule the city of Rome from the ramparts of
+Castel San Angelo, as Ugo of Tuscany by the side of Marozia, this was
+the dream of the man who would leave no stone unturned to accomplish
+the ambition of his life.
+
+In an age where certain dark personalities appeared terribly sane to
+their contemporaries, their occult dealings with powers whose existence
+none questioned must have seemed terribly real to themselves and to
+those who gazed from afar. When the mad were above the sane in power,
+and beyond the reach of observation, there was no limit to their
+baleful activity.
+
+Basil, from the early days of his youth, had lived in a world of evil
+spirits, imaginary perhaps for us, but real enough for those who might
+at any moment be at his mercy. Stimulating his mad desire with the
+potent drug which the Saracens had brought with them from the scented
+East, he pushed his hashish-born imaginings to the very throne of
+Evil. His ambition, which was boundless, and centred in the longed for
+achievement of a hope too stupendous even for thought, had intimately
+connected him with those whose occult researches put them outside the
+pale of the Church, and the power he wielded in the shadowy world of
+demons was as unchallenged as that which he felt himself wielding in
+the tangible world of men.
+
+Among the people there was no end to the dark stories of magic and
+poison, some of them real enough, that were whispered about him, and
+many a belated rambler looked with a shudder up to the light that
+burned in a chamber of his palace on the Pincian Hill till the wee,
+small hours of the night. Had he been merely a practitioner of the
+Black Arts he would probably long since have ended his career in the
+dungeons of Castel San Angelo. But he was safe enough as one of the
+great ones of the world, the confidant of the Senator of Rome; safe,
+because he was feared and because none dared to oppose his baleful
+influence.
+
+Basil pondered, as if the solution of the problem in his mind had at
+last presented itself, but had again left him, unsatisfied, in the
+throes of doubt and fear.
+
+Rising from his seat he again unfolded the letter and peered over its
+contents.
+
+"Can we regain the door by which we have entered?" he soliloquized.
+"Can we conquer the phantom that haunts the silent chambers of the
+brain? Were it an eye, or a hand, I could pluck it off. However, if I
+cannot strangle it, I can conquer it! Shall it forever blot the light
+of heaven from my path? Shall I forever suffer and tremble at this
+impalpable something--this shade from the abyss--of hell--that is
+there--yet not there?"
+
+He paused for a moment in his perambulation, gazing through the narrow
+unglazed window into the storm-tossed night without. Now and then a
+flash of lightning shot athwart the inky darkness, lighting up dark
+recesses and deep embrasures. The sullen roar of the thunder seemed to
+come from the bowels of the earth.
+
+And as the Grand Chamberlain walked, as if driven by some invisible
+demon, the great Molossian hound followed him about with a stealthy,
+noiseless gait, raising its head now and then as if silently inquiring
+into its master's mood.
+
+When at length he reseated himself, the huge hound cowered at his feet
+and licked its huge paws.
+
+The mood of the woman for whom his lust-bitten soul yearned as it had
+never yearned for anything on earth, her words of disdain, which had
+scorched his very brain, and, above all, the knowledge that she read
+his inmost thoughts, had roused every atom of evil within his soul.
+This state of mind was accentuated by the further consideration that
+she, of all women whom he had sent to their shame and death, was not
+afraid of him. She had even dared to hint at the existence of a rival
+who might indeed, in time, supersede him, if he were not wary.
+
+For some time Basil had been vaguely conscious of losing ground in the
+favor of the woman whom no man might utterly trust save to his undoing.
+The rivalry of Roxaná, who, like her tenth-century prototypes, was but
+too eager to enter the arena for Marozia's fateful inheritance, had
+poured oil on the flames when Theodora had learned that the Senator
+of Rome himself was frequenting her bowers, and she was not slow to
+perceive the agency that was at work to defeat and destroy her utterly.
+
+By adding ever new fuel to the hatred of the two women for each other
+Basil hoped to clear for himself a path that would carry him to the
+height of his aspirations, by compelling Theodora to openly espouse
+him her champion. Sooner or later he knew they would ignite under each
+other's taunts, and upon the ruins of the conflagration he hoped to
+build his own empire, with Theodora to share with him the throne.
+
+Alberic had departed for the shrines of the Archangel at Monte Gargano.
+Intent upon the purification of the Church and upon matters pertaining
+to the empire, he was an element that needed hardly be reckoned with
+seriously. A successful coup would hurl him into the dungeons of his
+own keep, perchance, by some irony of fate, into the very cell where
+Marozia had so mysteriously and ignominiously ended her career. Once
+in possession of the Mausoleum, the Germans and Dalmatians bought and
+bribed, he would be the master--unless--
+
+Suddenly the huge beast at his feet raised its muzzle, sniffing the air
+and uttering a low growl.
+
+A moment later Maraglia, the Castellan of Castel San Angelo, entered
+through a winding passage.
+
+"What brings you here at this hour, with your damned butcher's face?"
+Basil turned upon the newcomer who had paused when his gaze fell upon
+the Molossian.
+
+The brutal features of Maraglia looked ghastly enough in the flickering
+light of the tapers and Basil's temper seemed to deepen their ashen
+pallor.
+
+"My lord--it is there again,--in the lower gallery--near the cell where
+the Lady Marozia was strangled--"
+
+"By all the furies of Hell! Since when are you in the secrets of the
+devil?"
+
+"Since I held the noose, my Lord Basil," replied the warden of the
+Emperor's Tomb doggedly. "Though I knew not at the time whose breath
+was being shortened. It was all too dark--a night just like this--"
+
+"Perchance your memory, going back to that hour, has retained something
+more than the mere surmise," Basil glowered from under the dark,
+straight brows. "How many were there?"
+
+"There were three--all masked, my lord. But their voices were their
+own--"
+
+"You possess a keen ear, my man, as one, accustomed to dark deeds and
+passages, well should," Basil interposed sardonically. "Deem you, in
+your undoubted wisdom, the lady has returned and is haunting her former
+abode? Once upon a time she was not wont to abide in estate so lowly.
+And, they say, she was beautiful--even to her death."
+
+"And well they may," Maraglia interposed. "I saw her but twice. When
+she came, and before she died."
+
+"Before she died?"
+
+"And the look she bent upon him who led the execution," Maraglia
+continued thoughtfully. "She spoke not once. Dumb and silent she went
+to the fishes. When the Lord Alberic arrived, it was all too late--"
+
+"All too late!" Basil interposed sardonically. "The fishes too were
+dumb. Profit by their example, Maraglia. Too much wisdom engenders
+death."
+
+"The death rattle of one sounds to my ears just like that of another,
+my lord," Maraglia replied, quaking under the look that was upon him.
+"And the voices of the few who still abide are growing weaker day by
+day."
+
+"They shall not much longer annoy your delicate ears," Basil replied.
+"The Senator who has found this abode somewhat too draughty has
+departed for the holy shrines, to do penance for the death of his
+mother. He suspects all was not well. He would know more. Perchance the
+Archangel may grant him a revelation. Meanwhile, we must to work. The
+new captain appointed by the Senator enters his service on the morrow.
+A holy man, much given to contemplation over the mysteries of love. His
+attention must be diverted. Every trace of life must be extinct--this
+very night. No proofs must be allowed to remain. Meanwhile, what of the
+apparition whereof you rave?"
+
+"It is there, my lord, as sure as my soul lives," replied the
+castellan. "A shapeless something, preceded by a breath, cold as from a
+newly dug grave."
+
+"A shapeless something, say you? Whence comes it and where goes it? For
+whose diversion does it perambulate?"
+
+"The astrologer monk perchance who improvises prophecies."
+
+"Then let his improvising damn himself," replied Basil sullenly. "To
+call himself inspired and pretend to read the stars! How about his
+prophecy now?"
+
+"He holds to it!"
+
+"What! That I have less than one month to live?"
+
+"Just that--no more!"--
+
+Basil gave the speaker a quick glance.
+
+"What niggardly dispensation and presumption withal! This fellow to
+claim kinship with the stars! To profess to be in their confidence, to
+share the secrets of the heavens while he is smothered by darkness,
+utter and everlasting. The heavens mind you, Maraglia! My star! It is a
+star of darker red than Mars and crosses Hell--not Heaven! In thought I
+watch it every night with sleepless eyes. Is it not well to cleanse the
+earth of such lying prophets that truth may have standing room? Where
+have you lodged him?"
+
+"In the Hermit's cell--"
+
+"Well done! Thereby he shall prove his asceticism. Let practised
+abstinence save him in such a pass! He shall eat his words--an
+everlasting banquet. A fat astrologer--by the token--as I hear, was he
+not?"
+
+"He was fat when he entered."
+
+"Wretch! Would you starve him? Remember the worms and the fishes--your
+friends. Would you cheat them? Hath he foretold his end?"
+
+"Ay--by starvation."
+
+"He lies! You shall take him in extremis and, with your knife in his
+throat, give him the lie. An impostor proved. What of the night?"
+
+"It rains and thunders."
+
+"Why should we mind rain and thunder? Lead me to this madman, and,
+incidentally, to this phantom that keeps him company. Why do you gape,
+Maraglia? Move on! I follow!"
+
+Maraglia was ill at ease, but he dared not disobey. Taking up one
+of the candles, he led the way, trembling, his face ashen, his teeth
+chattering, as if in the throes of a chill.
+
+Through a panel door in the wall they descended a winding stairway,
+leaving the dog behind. The flight conducted them to a private postern,
+well secured and guarded inside and out. As they issued from this the
+howl of blown rain met and staggered them. Looking up at the cupola of
+basalt from the depths of that well of masonry, it seemed to crack and
+split in a rush of fusing stars. Basil's mad soul leapt to the call
+of the hour. He was one with this mighty demonstration of nature. His
+brain danced and flickered with dark visions of power. He appeared to
+himself as an angel, a destroying angel, commissioned from on high to
+purge the world of lies.
+
+"Take me to this monk!" he screamed through the thunder.
+
+Deep in the foundation of the northeastern crypts the miserable
+creature was embedded in a stone chamber as utterly void and empty as
+despair. The walls, the floor, the roof were all chiselled as smooth as
+glass. There was not a foothold anywhere even for a cat, neither door,
+nor traps, nor egress, nor window of any kind save where, just under
+the ceiling, the grated opening by which he had been lowered, admitted
+by day a haggard ghost of light. And even that wretched solace was
+withdrawn as night fell, became a phantom, a diluted whisp of memory,
+sank like water into the blackness, and left the fancy suddenly naked
+in the self-consciousness of hell. Then the monk screamed like a madman
+and threw himself towards the flitting spectre. He fell on the smooth
+surface of the polished rock and bruised his limbs horribly. Yet the
+very pain was a saving occupation. He struck his skull and revelled in
+the agonizing dance of lights the blow procured him. But one by one
+they blew out; and in a moment dead negation had him by the throat
+again, rolling him over and over, choking him under enormous slabs of
+darkness. Gasping, he cursed his improvidence, in not having glued his
+vision to the place of the light's going. It would have been something
+gained from madness to hold and gloat upon it, to watch hour by hour
+for its feeble redawn. Among all the spawning monstrosities of that
+pit, with only the assured prospect of a lingering death before him,
+the prodigy of eternal darkness quite overcrowded that other of thirst
+or starvation.
+
+Yet the black gloom broke, it would seem, before its due. Had he
+annihilated time and was this death? He rose rapturously to his feet
+and stood staring at the grating, the tears gushing down his sunken
+cheeks. The bars were withdrawn, in their place a dim lamp was intruded
+and a face looked down.
+
+"Barnabo--are you hungry and a-thirst?"
+
+The voice spoke to him of life. It was the name he had borne in the
+world and he wondered who from that world could be addressing him.
+
+He answered quaveringly.
+
+"Of a truth, I am hungry and a-thirst."
+
+"It is a beatitude," replied the voice suavely. "You shall have your
+fill of justice."
+
+"Justice!" screamed the prisoner. "I fear it is but an empty phrase."
+
+"Comfort yourself," said the other. "I shall make a full measure of it!
+It shall bubble and sparkle to the brim like a goblet of Cyprian. Know
+you the wine, monk? A cool fragrant liquid, that gurgles down the arid
+throat and brings visions of green meadows and sparkling brooks--"
+
+"I ask no mercy," cried the monk, falling on his knees and stretching
+out his lean arms. "Only make an end of it--of this hellish torment."
+
+"Torment?" came the voice from above. "What torment is there in the
+vision of the wine cup--or, for that matter, a feast on groaning tables
+under the trees? Are you not rich in experiences, Barnabo,--both of
+the board and of love? Remember the hours when she lay in your arms,
+innocent, save of original sin? Ah! Could she see you now, Barnabo--how
+you have changed! No more the elegant courtier that wooed Theodora ere
+despair drove you to don the penitential garb and, like Balaam's ass,
+to raise your voice and prophesy! Deem you--as fate has thrown her into
+these arms of mine--memory will revive the forgotten joys of the days
+of long ago?"
+
+"Mercy--demon!" gasped the monk. His swollen throat could hardly shape
+the words.
+
+Basil laughed and bent lower.
+
+"Answer me then--you who boast of being inspired from above--you
+who listen to the music of the spheres in the dead watches of the
+night--tell me then, you man of God--how long am I to live?"
+
+"Monster, relieve me of your sight!" shrieked the unhappy wretch.
+
+"It is the light," mocked Basil. "The light from above. Raise your
+voice, monk, and prophesy. You who would hurl the anathema upon Basil,
+the Grand Chamberlain, who arrogated to yourself the mission to
+purge the universe and to summon me--me--before the tribunal of the
+Church--tell me, you, who aspired to take to his bed the spouse of the
+devil, till the white lightnings of her passion seared and blasted your
+carcass,--tell me--how long am I to live?"
+
+An inarticulate shriek came from within.
+
+"By justice--till the dead rise from their graves."
+
+"Live forever--on an empty phrase?" Basil mocked. "Are you, too,
+provisioned for eternity?"
+
+He held out his hand as if he were offering the starving wretch food.
+
+The monk fell on his knees. His lips moved, but no sound was audible.
+
+"Perchance he hath a vision," Basil turned to Maraglia who stood
+sullenly by.
+
+"Oh, dull this living agony."
+
+"How long am I to live?"
+
+"Now, hear me, God," screamed the monk. "Let not this man ever again
+know surcease from torment in bed, at board, in body or in mind. Let
+his lust devour him, let the worm burrow in his entrails, the maggot in
+his brain! May death seize and damnation wither him at the moment when
+he is nearest the achievement of his fondest hopes!"
+
+Basil screamed him down.
+
+An uncontrollable terror had seized him.
+
+"Silence, beast, or I shall strangle you!"
+
+"Libertine, traitor, assassin--may heaven's lightnings blast you--"
+
+For a moment the two battled in a war of screeching blasphemy.
+
+At the next moment the grate was flung into place, the light whisked
+and vanished, a door slammed and the Stygian blackness of the cell
+closed once more upon the moaning heap in its midst.
+
+Basil's eyes gleamed like live coals as he turned to Maraglia, who,
+quaking and ashen, was babbling a prayer between white lips.
+
+"Make an end of him!" he snarled. "He has lived too long. And now, in
+the devil's name, lead the way above!"
+
+A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens illumined for
+a moment the dark and tortuous passage, its sheen reflected through
+the narrow port-holes on the blackness of the walls. It was followed
+by a peal of thunder so terrific that it shook the vast pile of the
+Emperor's Tomb to its foundations, clattering and roaring, as if a
+thousand worlds had been rent in twain.
+
+Maraglia, who had preceded the Grand Chamberlain with the taper,
+uttered a wild shriek of terror, dropped the light, causing it to be
+extinguished and his fleeting steps carried him down a night-wrapped
+gallery as fast as his limbs would carry him, utterly indifferent to
+Basil's fate in the Stygian gloom.
+
+Paralyzed with terror, the Grand Chamberlain stared into the inky
+blackness. For a moment it had seemed to him as if a breath from an
+open grave had indeed been wafted to his nostrils.
+
+But it was neither the thunder, nor the lightning, neither the swish of
+the rain nor the roar of the hurricane, that had prompted Maraglia's
+outcry and precipitate flight and his abject terror, as we shall see.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CALL OF EBLIS
+
+
+In the lurid flash that had illumined the gallery, lighting up rows of
+cells and deep recesses, Basil had seen, as if risen from the floor,
+a black, indefinable shape, wrapped in a long black mantle, the hood
+of which was drawn over its face. Through its slits gleamed two eyes,
+like live coals. Of small stature and apparently great age, the bent
+apparition supported itself by a crooked staff, the fleshless fingers
+barely visible under the cover of the ample sleeve, and resembling the
+claws of some bird of prey.
+
+At last the terror which the uncanny apparition inspired changed to its
+very counterpart, as, defiance in his tone, the Grand Chamberlain made
+a forward step.
+
+"Who goes there?--Friend or foe of the Lord Basil?"--
+
+His voice sounded strange in his own ears.
+
+A gibbering response quavered out of the gloom.
+
+"What matters friend or foe as long as you grasp the tenure of power?"
+
+Basil breathed a sigh of relief.
+
+"I ought to know that voice. You are Bessarion?"
+
+"I have waited long," came the drawling reply.
+
+There was a pause brief as the intake of a breath.
+
+"What do you demand?"--
+
+"You shall know in time."
+
+"In time comes death!"
+
+"And more!"
+
+"It is the hour that calls!"
+
+"Are you prepared?"
+
+"Show me what you can do!"
+
+"For this I am here! Are you afraid?"
+
+The air of mockery in the questioner's tone cut the speaker to the
+quick.
+
+In the intermittent flashes of lightning Basil saw the shapeless form
+cowering before him in the dusk of the gallery, barring the way. But
+again it mingled quickly with the darkness.
+
+"Of whom?" Basil queried.
+
+There was another pause.
+
+"Of the Presence!"
+
+"That craven hound Maraglia has upset the light," muttered Basil. "I
+cannot see you."
+
+"Can you not feel my presence?" came the gibbering reply.
+
+"Even so!"
+
+"Know you what high powers of night control your life--what dark-winged
+messengers of evil fly about you?"
+
+"Your words make my soul flash like a thunder cloud."
+
+"And yet does your power stand firm?"
+
+"It rests on deep dug dungeons, where the light of heaven does not
+intrude. I spread such fear in men's white hearts as the craven have
+never known."
+
+A faint chuckle came in reply.
+
+"Only last night I saw you in the magic crystal sphere in which I read
+the dire secrets of Fate. Above your head flew evil angels. Beneath
+your horse's hoofs a corpse-strewn path."
+
+"The time is not yet ripe."
+
+"Time does not wait for him who waits to dare."
+
+An evil light flashed from Basil's eyes.
+
+"What can you do?"
+
+Response came as from the depths of a grave.
+
+"I shall conjure such shapes from the black caves of fear as have not
+ventured forth since madness first began to prowl among the human race,
+when the torturing dusk drowns every helpless thing in livid waves of
+shadow. It is the spirit of your sire that draws the evil legions to
+you."
+
+Basil straightened in surprise.
+
+"What know you of him?" he exclaimed. "Dull prayers and fasts and
+penances, not such freaks as this, were the only things he thought of."
+
+From the cowled form came a hiss.
+
+"Fool! Not that grunting and omnivorous swine who took the cowl, begat
+you! Your veins run with fiery evil direct from its fountainhead. No,
+no,--not he!"
+
+"Not he?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain. "If I am not his progeny,
+then whose?"
+
+"Some mighty lord's."
+
+"The Duke of Beneventum?"
+
+"One greater yet."
+
+"King Berengar?"
+
+"One adored by him as his liege."
+
+"Ha! I guess it now! It was Otto the Great, he whose fury gored the
+heart of the Romans."
+
+"One greater still."
+
+"Earth hath no greater lord."
+
+"Is there not heaven above and hell below? Your sire rules the millions
+who have donned fear's stole forever. He is lord of lords, where all
+the lips implore and none reply."
+
+A flash of lightning gleamed through the gallery.
+
+A shadow passed over Basil's countenance, like a swift sailing cloud.
+
+Darkness supervened, impenetrable, sepulchral.
+
+"Well may you cower," gibbered the shape in its inexorable monotone.
+"For you came into this life among the death-fed mushrooms that grow
+where murder rots. The moon-struck wolves howled for three nights, and
+ill-omened birds flapped for three days around the tower where she who
+gave you life breathed her last."
+
+A fitful muttering as of souls in pain seemed to pervade the
+night-wrapped galleries, with sultry storm gusts breathing inarticulate
+evil. No light save the white flash of the lightning revealed now and
+then the uncanny form of the speaker. The smell of rotting weeds came
+through the crevices of the wall.
+
+When Basil, spell-bound, found no tongue, the dark shape continued:
+
+"Wrapped in midnight's cloak, nine witches down in the castle moat sang
+a baptismal hymn of horror as you saw the light. As mighty brazen wings
+sounded the roaring of the tempest-churned seas. And above you stood
+he who holds the keys to thought's dark chambers, he in whose ranks
+the sullen angels serve, whose shadowy dewless wings cast evil on the
+world. And I am he whose palace rings with the eternal Never!"
+
+Frozen with terror Basil listened.
+
+The thunder growled ever louder. A vampire's bark stabbed the darkness;
+the shriek of witches rose above the tempest, there was a rattling of
+bones as if skeletons were rising from their graves. All round the
+Emperor's Tomb the ghouls were prowling, and the soulless corpses were
+as restless as the fleshless souls that whimpered and moaned in the
+night. Giant bats flew to and fro like evil spirits. The great peals
+shook the huge pile from vault to summit. The running finger of the
+storm scribbled fiery, cabalistical zigzags on the firmament's black
+page. And in every peal, louder and louder as the echoes spread, Basil
+seemed to hear his name shrieked by the weird powers of darkness, till,
+half mad with terror, he cried:
+
+"Away! Away! Your presence flings dark glare like glowing lava--"
+
+"I come across the night," replied the voice, "ere death has made you
+mine! Deserve the doom that is prepared for those who do my bidding.
+You have shot into my heart a ray of blackest light--"
+
+Basil held out his hands, as if to ward off some unseen assailant.
+
+"Whirl back into the night--" he shrieked, but the voice resumed,
+mocking and gibbering.
+
+"Only a coward will shrink from the dreadful boundaries between things
+of this earth and things beyond this earth. I have sought you by night
+and by day--as fiercely as any of those athirst pant round hell's mock
+springs! In the great vaults of wrath, in the sleepless caverns, whose
+eternal darkness is only lighted by pools of molten stone that bathe
+the lost, where, in the lurid light, the shadows dance--I sit and
+watch the lakes of torment, taciturn and lone. I summon you to earthly
+power--to the fulfillment of all your heart desires!"--
+
+The voice ceased. All the elements of hell seemed to roar and shriek
+around the battlemented walls.
+
+There was a pause during which Basil regained his composure.
+
+At last the dread shadow was looming across his path. An undefined awe
+crept over him, such as dark chasms instill; an awe at his own self.
+He would fain have been screened from his own substance. By degrees he
+welcomed the tidings with a dark rapture. In himself lay the substance
+of Evil. It was not the Angel of Light that ruled the reeling universe.
+It was the shadow of Eblis looming dark and terrible over the lives of
+men. Long before he had ever guessed what rills of flaming Phlegethon
+ran riot in his veins, had he not felt his pulses swell with joy at
+human pain, had he not played the fiend untaught? Could not the
+Fiend, as well as God, live incarnate in human clay? Was not the earth
+the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? And why should not he, Basil,
+defying Heaven, be Hell's incarnation?--
+
+Ay--but the day of death and the day of reckoning! Would his parentage
+entail eternal fire, or princely power and sway in the dark vaults of
+nameless terror? Should he quail or thrill with awful exaltation?
+
+"And--in return for that which I offer up--King of the dark red
+glare--will you give to me what I crave--boundless power and the woman
+for which my soul is on fire?"
+
+"Have you the courage to snatch them from the talons of Fate?" came
+back the gibbering reply.
+
+A blinding flash of lightning was succeeded by an appalling crash of
+thunder.
+
+"From Hell itself!" shrieked Basil frenzied. "Give me Theodora and I
+will fill the cup of torture that I have seized on your shadowy altars,
+and quaff your health at the terrific banquet board of Evil in toasts
+of torment--in wine of boundless pain!"
+
+In the quickly succeeding flashes of lightning the dark form seemed to
+rise and to expand.
+
+"I knew you would not fail me! Come!"
+
+For a moment Basil hesitated, fingering the hilt of his poniard.
+
+"Where would you lead me?" he queried, his tone far from steady. "How
+many of these twilights must I traverse before I see him whom you
+serve?"
+
+"That you shall know to-night!"
+
+In the deep and frozen silence which succeeded the terrible peals of
+thunder their retreating footsteps died to silence in the labyrinthine
+galleries of the Emperor's Tomb.
+
+Only the dog-headed Anubis seemed to stare and nod mysteriously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE CRYSTAL SPHERE
+
+
+Outwardly and in daylight there was nothing noticeable about the sixth
+house in the Lane of the Sclavonians in Trastevere beyond the fact that
+it was a dwelling of a superior kind to those immediately surrounding
+it, which were chiefly ill-favored cottages of fishermen and boatmen,
+and had about it an air of almost sombre retirement.
+
+It stood alone within a walled court, containing a few shrubs. The
+windows were few, high and narrow, and the front bore a rather
+forbidding appearance. One ascending to the flat roof would have found
+it to command on the left a desolate view of a square devoted to
+executions, and on the right a scarcely more cheerful prospect over the
+premises belonging to the convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Had
+the visitor been farther able to penetrate into the principal chamber
+of the first floor, on the night of the scene about to be related, he
+might indeed have found himself well repaid for his trouble.
+
+This chamber, which was of considerable size and altogether devoid of
+windows, being lighted during the daytime by a skylight, carefully
+blinded from within, was now duskily illumined by a transparent device
+inlaid into the end wall and representing the beams of the rising moon
+gleaming from a sky of azure. The extremity of the room, which fronted
+the symbol, was semi-circular and occupied by a narrow table, before
+which moved a tall, shadowy form that paused now and then before a
+fire of fragrant sandal wood, which burned in a brazen tripod, passing
+his fingers mechanically, as it would seem, through the bluish flame.
+In its unsteady flicker the strange figures on the walls, which had
+defied the decree of Time, seemed to nod fantastically when touched by
+a fitful ray.
+
+This was Hormazd, the Persian, the former confidant and counsellor of
+Marozia, in the heyday of her glory. In those days he had held forth
+in a turret chamber on the summit of Castel San Angelo, where he would
+read the stars and indulge his studies in the black arts to his heart's
+content. Driven forth by Alberic, after Marozia's fall, the Persian had
+taken up his abode in the Trastevere, where he continued to serve those
+who came to him for advice, or on business that shunned the light of
+day.
+
+Now and then the Oriental bent his tall, spare form over a huge tome
+which lay open upon the table, the inscrutable, ascetic countenance
+with the deep, brilliant eyes seemingly plunged in deep, engrossing
+thought, but in reality listening intently, as for the approach of some
+belated caller.
+
+The soft patter of hurried footsteps on the floor of the corridor
+without soon rewarded his attention. The rustle of a woman's silken
+garments caused him to give a start of surprise. A heavy curtain was
+raised and she glided noiselessly into his presence.
+
+The woman's face was covered with a silken vizor, but her coronet of
+raven hair no less than the matchless figure, outlined against the
+crimson glow, at once proclaimed her rank.
+
+The first ceremony of silent greeting absolved, the Persian's visitor
+permitted the black silken cloak which had enveloped her from head to
+toe, to fall away, revealing a form exquisitely proportioned. The ivory
+pallor of the throat, which rose like a marble column from matchless
+shoulders, and the whiteness of the bare arms, seemed even enhanced by
+the dusky background whose incense-laden pall seemed to oppress the
+very walls.
+
+"I am trusting you to-night with unreserved confidence," the woman
+spoke in her rich, vibrant voice. "Many serve me from motives of
+selfishness and fear. Do you serve me, because I trust you."
+
+She laid her white hand frankly upon his arm and the Persian, isolated
+above and below the strongest impulses of humanity, shivered under her
+touch.
+
+"What is it you desire?" he questioned after a pause.
+
+"If you possess the knowledge with which the vulgar credit you," the
+woman said slowly, not without an air of mockery in her tone, "I hardly
+need reveal to you the motives which prompted this visit! You knew
+them, ere I came, even as you knew of my coming!"
+
+"You speak truly," said Hormazd slowly, now completely master of
+himself. "For even to the hour it was revealed to me!"
+
+The woman scanned him with a searching look.
+
+"Yet I had confided in none!" she said musingly. "Tell me then who I
+am!"
+
+"You are Theodora!"
+
+"When have we met before?"--
+
+"Not in this life, but in a previous existence. Our souls touched then,
+predestined to cross each other on a future plane."
+
+She removed her silken vizor and faced him.
+
+The dark eyes at once challenged and besought. No sculptor could have
+chiselled those features on which a divinity had recklessly squandered
+all it had to bestow for good or for evil. No painter could have
+reproduced the face which had wrought such havoc in the hearts of men.
+
+Like summer lightnings in a dark cloudbank, all the emotions of the
+human soul seemed to have played therein and left it again, forging it
+in the fires of passion, but leaving it more beautiful, more mysterious
+than before.
+
+The Oriental regarded her in silence, as she stood before him in the
+flickering flame of the brazier.
+
+"In some previous existence, you say?" she said with dreamy interest.
+"Who was I then--and who were you?"
+
+"Two driftless spirits on the driftless sea of eternity," he replied
+calmly. "Foredoomed to continue our passage till our final destiny be
+fulfilled."
+
+"And this destiny is known to you?"
+
+"Else I had watched in vain. But you--queen and sorceress--do you
+believe in the message?"
+
+She pondered.
+
+"I believe," she said slowly, "that we make for ourselves the destiny
+to which hereafter we must submit. I believe that some dark power can
+foretell that destiny, and more--compel it!"--
+
+Hormazd bowed ever so slightly. There was a dawning gleam of satire in
+his brilliant eyes, a glimpse which was not lost on her.
+
+Again the question came.
+
+"What is it you desire?"
+
+Theodora gave an inscrutable smile that imparted to her features a
+singular softness and beauty, as a ray of sunlight falling on a dark
+picture will brighten the tints with a momentary warmth of seeming life.
+
+"I was told," she spoke slowly, as if trying to overcome an inward
+dread, "that you are known in Rome chiefly as being the possessor of
+some mysterious internal force which, though invisible, is manifest to
+all who place themselves under your spell! Is it not so?"
+
+The Persian bowed slightly.
+
+"It may be that I have furnished the Romans with something to talk
+about besides the weather; that I have made a few friends, and an
+amazing number of enemies--"
+
+"The latter argues in your favor," Theodora interposed. "They say,
+furthermore, that by this same force you are enabled to disentangle the
+knots of perplexity that burden the overtaxed brain."
+
+Hormazd nodded again and the sinister gleam of his eyes did not escape
+Theodora's watchful gaze.
+
+"If this be so," the woman continued, "if you are not an impostor who
+exhibits his tricks for the delectation of the rabble, or for sordid
+gain--exert your powers upon me, for something, I know not what, has
+frozen up the once overflowing fountain of life."
+
+The Oriental regarded her intently.
+
+"You have the wish to be deluded--even into an imaginary happiness?"
+
+Theodora gave a start.
+
+"You have expressed what I but vaguely hinted. It may be that I
+am tired"--she passed her hand across her brow with a troubled
+gesture--"or puzzled by some infinite distress of living things.
+Perchance I am going mad--who knows? But, whatever the cause, you,
+if report be true, possess the skill to ravish the mind away from
+its trouble, to transport it to a radiant Elysium of illusions and
+ecstasies. Do this for me, as you have done it for another, and,
+whatever payment you demand, it shall be yours!"
+
+She ceased.
+
+Faintly through the silence came the chimes of convent bells from the
+remote regions of the Aventine, pealing through the fragrant summer
+night above the deep boom of distant thunder that seemed to come as
+from the bowels of the earth.
+
+Hormazd gave his interrogator a swift, searching glance, half of pity,
+half of disdain.
+
+"The great eastern drug should serve your turn," he replied
+sardonically. "I know of no other means wherewith to stifle the voice
+of conscience."
+
+Theodora flushed darkly.
+
+"Conscience?" she flashed in resentful accents.
+
+The Persian nodded.
+
+"There is such a thing. Do you profess to be without one?"
+
+Theodora's eyes endeavored to pierce the inscrutable mask before her.
+The ironical curtness of the question annoyed her.
+
+"Your opinion of me does little honor to your wisdom," she said after a
+pause.
+
+"A foul wound festers equally beneath silk and sack-cloth," came the
+dark reply.
+
+"How know you that I desire relief from this imaginary malady?"
+
+The Oriental gave a shrug.
+
+"Why does Theodora come to the haunts of the Persian? Why does she ask
+him to mock and delude her, as if it were his custom to make dupes of
+those who appeal to him?"
+
+"And are they not your dupes?" Theodora interposed, her face a deeper
+pallor than before.
+
+"Of that you shall judge after I have answered your questions," Hormazd
+returned darkly. "There are but two things in life that will prompt a
+woman like Theodora to seek aid of one like myself."--
+
+"You arouse my curiosity!"
+
+"Disappointment in power--or love!"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"Will you help me?"
+
+She was pleading now.
+
+The Oriental sparred for time. It was not his purpose to commit himself
+at once.
+
+"I am but one who, long severed from the world, has long recognized
+its vanities. My cures are for the body rather than the soul."
+
+Theodora's face hardened into an expression of scorn.
+
+"Am I to understand that you will do nothing for me?" she said in a
+tone which convinced the Persian that the time for dallying was past.
+
+The words came slowly from his lips.
+
+"I can promise you neither self-oblivion nor visionary joys. I possess
+an internal force, it is true, a force which, under proper control,
+overpowers and subdues the material, and by exerting this I can, if
+I think it well to do so, release your soul, that inner intelligence
+which, deprived of its mundane matter, is yourself, from its house of
+clay and allow it a brief interval of freedom. But--what in that state
+its experience may be, whether joy or sorrow, I cannot foretell."
+
+"Then you are not the master of the phantoms you evoke?"
+
+"I am merely their interpreter!"
+
+She looked at him steadfastly as if pondering his words.
+
+"And you profess to be able to release the soul from its abode of clay?"
+
+"I do not profess," he said quietly. "I can do so!"
+
+"And with the success of this experiment your power ceases? You cannot
+tell whether the imprisoned creature will take its course to the
+netherworld of suffering, or a heaven of delight?"
+
+"The liberated soul must shift for itself."
+
+"Then begin your incantations," Theodora exclaimed recklessly. "Send
+me, no matter where, so long as I escape from this den of the world,
+this dungeon with one small window through which, with the death rattle
+in our throats, we stare vacantly at the blank, unmeaning horror of
+life. Prove to me that the soul you prattle of exists, and if mine can
+find its way straight to the mainsprings of this revolving creation, it
+shall cling to the accursed wheels and stop them, that they may grind
+out the torture of life no more."
+
+She stood there, dark, defiant, beautiful with the beauty of the fallen
+angel. Her breath came and went quickly. She seemed to challenge some
+invisible opponent.
+
+The tall sinewy form by her side watched her as a physician might watch
+in his patient the workings of a new disease, then Hormazd said in low
+and tranquil tones:
+
+"You are in the throes of your own overworked emotions. You are seeking
+to obtain the impossible--"
+
+"Why taunt me?" she flashed. "Cannot your art supply the secret in
+whose quest I am?"
+
+The Persian bowed, but kept silent.
+
+Again, with the shifting mood, the rare, half-mournful smile shone in
+Theodora's face.
+
+"Though you may not be conscious of it," she said, laying her white
+hand on his trembling arm, "something impels me to unburden my heart to
+you. I have kept silence long."
+
+Hormazd nodded.
+
+"In the world one must always keep silence, veil one's grief and force
+a smile with the rest. Is it not lamentable to think of all the pent-up
+suffering, the inconceivably hideous agonies that remain forever
+unrevealed? Youth and innocence--"
+
+Theodora raised her arm.
+
+"Was I ever--what they call--innocent?" she interposed musingly. "When
+I was young--alas, how long it seems, though I am but thirty--the dream
+of my life was love! Perchance I inherited it from my mother. She was a
+Greek, and she possessed that subtle quality that can never die. What I
+was--it matters not. What I am--you know!"
+
+She raised herself to her full height.
+
+"I long for power. Men are my puppets. And I long for love! I have
+sought it in all shapes, in every guise. But I found it not. Only
+disillusion--disappointment have been my share. Will my one desire be
+ever fulfilled?"
+
+"Some day you shall know," he said quietly, keeping his dark gaze upon
+her.
+
+"I doubt me not I shall! But--when and where? Tell me then, you who
+know so much! When and where?"
+
+Hormazd regarded her quizzically, but made no immediate reply.
+
+After a time she continued.
+
+"Some say you are the devil's servant! Show me then your power. Read
+for me my fate!"
+
+She looked at him with an air of challenge.
+
+"It was not for this you came," the Persian said calmly, meeting the
+gaze of those mysterious wells of light whose appeal none had yet
+resisted whom she wished to bend to her desires.
+
+The woman turned a shade more pale.
+
+"Then call it a whim!"
+
+"What will it avail?"
+
+Her eyes flashed.
+
+"My will against--that other."
+
+A flash of lightning was reflected on the dark walls of the chamber.
+The thunder rolled in grand sullen echoes down the heavens.
+
+She heard it not.
+
+"What are you waiting for?" she turned to Hormazd.
+
+There was a note of impatience in her tone.
+
+"You are of to-day--yet not of to-day! Not of yesterday, nor to-morrow.
+To some in time comes love--"
+
+"But to me?"
+
+His voice sank to a frozen silence.
+
+She stood, gazing at him steadily. She was very pale, but the smile of
+challenge still lingered on her lips.
+
+"But to me?" she repeated.
+
+He regarded her darkly.
+
+"To you? Who knows?--Some day--"
+
+"Ah! When my fate has chanced! Are you a cheat then, like the rest?"
+
+He was silent, as one in the throes of some great emotion. She took a
+step towards him. He raised both hands as if to ward her off. His eyes
+saw shapes and scenes not within the reach of other's ken.
+
+"Tell me the truth," she said calmly. "You cannot deceive me!"
+
+Hormazd sprinkled the cauldron with some white powder that seethed and
+hissed as it came in contact with the glowing metal and began to emit a
+dense smoke, which filled the interior of the chamber with a strange,
+pungent odor.
+
+Then he slowly raised one hand until it touched Theodora. Dauntless
+in spirit, her body was taken by surprise, and as his clammy fingers
+closed round her own she gave an involuntary start. With a compelling
+glance, still in silence, he looked into her face.
+
+A strange transformation seemed to take place.
+
+She was no longer in the chamber, but in a grove dark with trees and
+shrubbery. A dense pall seemed to obscure the skies. The atmosphere was
+breathless. Even as she looked he was no longer there. Great clouds of
+greenish vapor rolled in through the trees and enveloped her so utterly
+as to shut out all vision. It was as if she were alone in some isolated
+spot, far removed from the ken of man. She was conscious of nothing
+save the insistent touch of his hand upon her arm.
+
+Gradually, as she peered into the vapors, they seemed to condense
+themselves into a definite shape. It was that of a man coming towards
+her, but some invisible agency seemed ever to retard his approach. In
+fact the distance seemed not to lessen, and suddenly she saw her own
+self standing by, vainly straining her gaze into space, indescribable
+longing in her eyes.
+
+A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the vault of heaven was
+followed by so terrific a peal of thunder that it seemed to shake the
+very earth.
+
+A shriek broke from Theodora's lips.
+
+"It is he! It is he!" she cried pointing to the curtain. Hormazd
+turned, hardly less amazed than the woman. He distinctly saw, in the
+recurrent flash, a face, pale and brooding, framed by the darkness, of
+which it seemed a part.
+
+At the next moment it was gone, as if it had melted into air.
+
+Theodora's whole body was numb, as if every nerve had been paralyzed.
+The Persian was hardly less agitated.
+
+"Is it enough?" she heard Hormazd's deep voice say beside her.
+
+She turned, but, though straining her eyes, she could not see him. The
+flame in the tripod had died down. She was trembling from head to foot.
+
+But her invincible will was unshaken.
+
+"Nay," she said, and her voice still mocked. "Having seen the man my
+soul desires, I must know more. The end! I have not seen the end! Shall
+I possess him? Speak!"
+
+"Seek no more!" warned the voice by her side. "Seek not to know the
+end!"
+
+She raised herself defiantly.
+
+"The end!"
+
+He made no reply. She saw the white vapors forming into faces. The hour
+and the place of the last vision were not clear. She saw but the man
+and herself, standing together at some strange point, where time seemed
+to count for naught.
+
+Between them lay a scarf of blue samite.
+
+After a protracted silence a moan broke from Theodora's lips.
+
+The Persian took no heed thereof. He did not even seem to hear. But,
+beneath those half-closed lids, not a movement of the woman escaped his
+penetrating gaze. Though possessed with a vague assurance of his own
+dark powers, controlled by his nerve and coolness, Hormazd could read
+in that fair, inscrutable face far more than in the magic scrolls.
+
+And as he scanned it now, from under half-shut lids, it was fixed and
+rigid as marble, pale, too, with an unearthly whiteness. She seemed to
+have forgotten his presence. She seemed to look into space, yet even as
+he gazed, the expression of that wonderfully fair face changed.
+
+Theodora's eyes were fierce, her countenance bore a rigid expression,
+bright, cold, unearthly, like one who defies and subdues mortal pain.
+
+The tools of love and ambition are sharp and double-edged, and Hormazd
+knew it was safer to trust to wind and waves than to the whims of woman.
+
+But already her mood had changed and her face had resumed its habitual
+expression of inscrutable repose.
+
+"Is it the gods or the devil who sway and torture us and mock at our
+helplessness?" she turned to the Oriental, then, without waiting his
+reply, she concluded with a searching glance that seemed to read his
+very heart.
+
+"Report speaks true of you. Unknowingly, unwittingly you have pointed
+the way. Farewell!"
+
+Long after she had disappeared Hormazd stared at the spot where her
+swiftly retiring form had been engulfed by the darkness. Then, weighing
+the purse, which she had left as an acknowledgment of his services, and
+finding it sufficiently heavy to satisfy his avarice, the Persian stood
+for a time wrapped in deep thoughts.
+
+"That phantom at least I could not evoke!" he muttered to himself. "Who
+dares to cross the path of Hormazd?"
+
+The thunder seemed to answer, for a crash that seemed to split the
+seven hills asunder caused the house to rock as with the force of an
+earthquake.
+
+With a shudder the Persian extinguished the fire in the brazier and
+retreated to his chamber, while outside thunder and lightning and rain
+lashed the summer night with the force of a tropical hurricane.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+PERSEPHONÉ
+
+
+It was not Tristan's other self, conjured by the Persian from the
+mystic realms of night which Theodora had seen outlined against the
+dark curtain that screened the entrance into the Oriental's laboratory.
+The object of her craving had, indeed, been present in the body,
+seeking in the storm that suddenly lashed the city the shelter of an
+apparently deserted abode. Thus he had unwittingly strayed into the
+domain of the astrologer, finding the door of his abode standing ajar
+after Theodora had entered.
+
+A superstition which was part and parcel of the Persian's character,
+caused the latter to regard the undesired presence in the same light
+as did Theodora, the more so as, for the time, it served his purpose,
+although, when the woman had departed, he was puzzled no little over
+a phenomenon which his skill could not have conjured up. Tristan had
+precipitately retreated, so soon as the woman's outcry had reached his
+ear, convinced that he had witnessed some unholy incantation which must
+counteract the effect of the penances he had just concluded and during
+the return from which the tempest had overtaken him.
+
+Thoroughly drenched he arrived at the Inn of the Golden Shield and
+retired forthwith, wondering at the strange scene which he had
+witnessed and its import.
+
+Tristan arose early on the following day.
+
+On the morrow he was to enter the service of the Senator of Rome, who
+had departed on his pilgrimage to the shrines of Monte Gargano.
+
+Tristan resolved to make the most of his time, visiting the sanctuaries
+and fitly preparing himself to be worthy of the trust which Alberic had
+reposed in him. Yet his thoughts were not altogether of the morrow.
+Once again memory wandered back to the sunny days in Provence, to the
+rose garden of Avalon, and to one who perchance was walking alone in
+the garden, along the flower-bordered paths where he had found and lost
+his greatest happiness.--
+
+Persephoné meanwhile had not been idle. It pleased her for once to
+propitiate her mistress, and through her own spies she had long been
+informed of Tristan's movements, being not altogether averse to
+starting an intrigue on her own account, if her mistress should fail
+sufficiently to impress the predestined victim. Her own beauty could
+achieve no less.
+
+Drawing a veil about her head and shoulders so as effectually to
+conceal her features, she proceeded to thread her way through the
+intricate labyrinth of Roman thoroughfares. When she reached her
+destination she concealed herself in a convenient lurking place from
+which she took care not to emerge till she had learned all she wished
+from one who had dogged Tristan's footsteps all these weary days.
+
+"What do you want with me?" asked the latter somewhat disturbed by her
+sudden appearance, as he came out of the little temple church of San
+Stefano in Rotondo on the brow of the Cælian Hill.
+
+Persephoné had raised her veil and in doing so had taken care to reveal
+her beautiful white arms.
+
+"I am unwelcome doubtless," she replied, after a swift glance had
+convinced her that there was no one near to witness their meeting.
+"Nevertheless you must come with me--whether you will or no. We Romans
+take no denial. We are not like your pale, frozen women of the North."
+
+Subscribing readily to this opinion, Tristan felt indignant,
+nevertheless, at her self-assurance.
+
+"I have neither time nor inclination to attend upon your fancies," he
+said curtly, trying to pass her. But she barred his passage.
+
+"As for your inclination to follow me," Persephoné laughed--"that is a
+matter for you to decide, if you intend to prosper in your new station."
+
+She paused a moment, with a swift side glance at the man. Persephoné
+had not miscalculated the effect of her speech, for Tristan had started
+visibly at her words and the knowledge they implied.
+
+"As for your time," Persephoné continued sardonically, "that is another
+matter. No doubt there are still a few sanctuaries to visit," she said
+suggestively, with tantalizing slowness and a tinge of contempt in
+her tones that was far from assumed. "Though I am puzzled to know why
+one of your good looks and courage should creep like a criminal from
+shrine to shrine, when hot life pulsates all about us. Are your sins so
+grievous indeed?"
+
+She could see that the thrust had pierced home.
+
+"This is a matter you do not understand," he said, piqued at her
+persistence. "Perchance my sins are grievous indeed."
+
+"Ah! So much the better," Persephoné laughed, showing her white teeth
+and approaching a step closer. "The world loves a sinner. What it
+dislikes is the long-faced repentant transgressor. You are a man after
+all--it is time enough to become a saint when you can no longer enjoy.
+Come!"
+
+And the white arm stole forth and a white hand took hold of his mantle.
+
+Every word of the Circassian seemed to sting Tristan like a wasp. His
+whole frame quivered with anger at her taunts, but he scorned to show
+it, and putting a strong constraint upon his feelings he only asked
+quietly:
+
+"What would you with me? Surely it was not to tell me this that you
+have tracked me hither."
+
+Persephoné thought she had now brought the metal to a sufficiently
+high temperature for fusion. She proceeded to mould it accordingly.
+Nevertheless she was determined to gain some advantage for herself in
+executing her mistress' behest.
+
+"I tracked you here," she said slowly, "because I wanted you! I wanted
+you, because it is in my power to render you a great service. Listen,
+my lord,--you must come with me! It is not every man in Rome who would
+require so much coaxing to follow a good-looking woman--"
+
+She looked very tempting as she spoke, but her physical charms were
+indeed sadly wasted on the pre-occupied man before her, and if she
+expected to win from him any overt act of admiration or encouragement,
+she was to be woefully disappointed.
+
+"I cannot follow you," he said. "My way lies in another direction.
+Besides--you have said it yourself--I am now in the service of another."
+
+"That is the very reason," she interposed. "Have you ever stopped to
+consider the thousand and one pitfalls which your unwary feet will
+encounter when you--a stranger--unknown--hated perchance--attempt to
+wield the authority entrusted to you? What do you know of Rome that you
+should hope to succeed when he, who set you in this hazardous place,
+cannot quell the disturbances that break out between the factions
+periodically?"
+
+"And why should you be disposed to confer upon me such a favor?"
+Tristan asked with instinctive caution. "I am a stranger to you. What
+have we in common?"
+
+Persephoné laughed.
+
+"Perchance I am in love with you myself--ever since that night when you
+would not enter the forbidden gates. Perchance you may be able to serve
+me in turn--some day. How cold you are! Like the frozen North! Come!
+Waste no more time, if you would not regret it forevermore."--
+
+There was something compelling in her words that upset Tristan's
+resolution.
+
+Still, he wavered.
+
+"You have seen my mistress," Persephoné resumed, "the fairest woman
+and the most powerful in Rome--a near kinswoman, too, of your new
+master--the Senator."
+
+The words startled Tristan.
+
+"It needs but a word from her to make you what she pleases," she
+continued, as they delved into the now darkening streets. "She is
+headstrong and imperious and does not brook resistance to her will."
+
+Tristan remembered certain words Alberic had spoken to him at their
+final parting. It behooved him to be on his guard, yet without making
+of Theodora an open enemy. "Be wary and circumspect," had been the
+Senator's parting words.
+
+"Did the Lady Theodora send you for me?" he asked, with some anxiety in
+his tone. "And how did you know where to find me in a city like this?"
+
+"I know a great many things--and so does my mistress," Persephoné made
+smiling reply. "But she does not choose every one to be as wise as she
+is. I will answer both your questions though, if you will answer one
+of mine in return. The Lady Theodora did not mention you by name,"
+Persephoné prevaricated, "yet I do not think there is another man in
+Rome who would serve her as would you.--And now tell me in turn.--Deem
+you not, she is very beautiful?"
+
+"The Lady Theodora is very beautiful," Tristan replied with a
+hesitation that remained not unremarked. "Yet, what is there in common
+between two strangers from the farthest extremities of the earth?"
+
+"What is there in common?" Persephoné smiled. "You will know ere an
+hour has sped. But, if you would take counsel from one who knows, you
+will do wisely to ponder twice before you choose--your master. Silence
+now! Step softly, but follow close behind me! It is very dark under the
+trees."
+
+They had arrived on Mount Aventine. Before them, in the dusk, towered
+the great palace of Theodora.
+
+After cautioning him, Persephoné led Tristan through a narrow door in a
+wall and they emerged in a garden. They were now in a fragrant almond
+grove where the branches of the trees effectually excluded the rays of
+the rising moon, making it hardly possible to distinguish Persephoné's
+tall and lithe form.
+
+Presently they emerged upon a smooth and level lawn, shut in by a
+black group of cedars, through the lower branches of which peeped the
+crescent moon and, turning the corner of a colonnade, they entered
+another door which opened to Persephoné's touch and admitted them into
+a long dark passage with a lamp at the farther end.
+
+"Stay here, while I fetch a light," Persephoné whispered to Tristan
+and, gliding away, she presently returned, to conduct him through a
+dark corridor into another passage, where she stopped abruptly and,
+raising some silken hangings, directed him to enter.
+
+"Wait here. I will announce you."--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MAGIC GLOOMS
+
+
+Floods of soft and mellow light dazzled Tristan's eyes at first, but
+he soon realized the luxurious beauty of the retreat into which he had
+been ushered. It was obvious that, despite a decadent age, all the
+resources of wealth had been drawn upon for its decoration. The walls
+were painted in frescoes of the richest colorings and represented the
+most alluring scenes. Around the cornices, relics of imperial Rome,
+nymphs and satyrs in bas-relief danced hand in hand, wild woodland
+creatures, exultant in all the luxuriance of beauty and redundancy of
+strength; and yonder, where the lamp cast its softest glow upon her,
+stood a marble statue of Venus Anadyomené, her attitude expressive of
+dormant passion lulled by the languid insolence of power and tinged
+with an imperious coquetry, the most alluring of all her charms.
+
+Tristan moved uneasily in his seat, wishing that he had not come,
+wondering how he had allowed himself to be thus beguiled, wondering
+what it was all about, when a rustling of the hangings caused him to
+turn his head. There was no more attraction now in bounding nymph or
+marble enchantress. The life-like statue of Venus was no longer the
+masterpiece of the chamber for there, in the doorway, appeared Theodora
+herself.
+
+Tristan rose to his feet, and thus they stood, confronting each other
+in the subdued light--the hostess and her guest--the assailant and the
+assailed.
+
+Theodora trembled in every limb, yet she should have remained the
+calmer of the two, inasmuch as hers could scarcely have been the
+agitation of surprise. Such a step indeed, as she had taken, she had
+not ventured upon without careful calculation of its far reaching
+effect. Determined to make this obstinate stranger pliable to her
+desires, to instill a poison into his veins which must, in time, work
+her will, she had deliberately commanded Persephoné to conduct him to
+this bower, the seductive air of which no one had yet withstood.
+
+Theodora was the first to speak, though for once she hardly knew how
+to begin. For the man who stood before her was not to be moulded by a
+glance and would match his will against her own. Such methods as she
+would have employed under different circumstances would here and now
+utterly fail in their intent. For once she must not appear the dominant
+factor in Rome, rather a woman wronged by fate, mankind and report. Let
+her beauty do the rest.
+
+"I have sent for you," she said, "because something tells me that I
+can rely implicitly on your secrecy. From what I have seen of you, I
+believe you are incapable of betraying a trust."
+
+Theodora's words had the intended effect. Tristan, expecting reproach
+for his intentional slight of her advances, was thrown off his guard
+by the appeal to his honor. His confusion at the sight of the woman's
+beauty, enhanced by her gorgeous surroundings, was such that he did but
+bow in acknowledgment of this tribute to his integrity.
+
+Theodora watched him narrowly, never relinquishing his gaze, which
+wandered unconsciously over her exquisite form, draped in a diaphanous
+gown which left the snowy arms and hands, the shoulders and the round
+white throat exposed.
+
+"I have been told that you have accepted service with the Lord Alberic,
+who has offered to you, a stranger, the most important trust in his
+power to bestow."
+
+Tristan bowed assent.
+
+"The Lord Alberic has rewarded me, far beyond my deserts, for ever so
+slight a service," he replied, without referring to the nature of the
+service.
+
+Theodora nodded.
+
+"And you--a stranger in the city, without counsellor--without friend.
+Great as the honor is, which the Senator has conferred upon you--great
+are the pitfalls that lurk in the hidden places. Doubtlessly, the
+Lord Alberic did not bestow his trust unworthily. And, in enjoining
+above all things watchfulness--he has doubtlessly dropped a word of
+warning regarding his kinswoman," here Theodora dropped her lids, as
+if she were reluctantly touching upon a distasteful subject, "the Lady
+Theodora?"
+
+As suddenly as she had dropped her lids as suddenly her eyes sank into
+the unwary eyes of Tristan. The scented atmosphere of the room and the
+woman's nearness were slowly creeping into his brain.
+
+"The Lord Alberic did refer to the Lady Theodora," he stammered, loth
+to tell an untruth, and equally loth to wound this beautiful enigma
+before him.
+
+"I thought so!" Theodora interposed with a smile, without permitting
+him to commit himself. "He has warned you against me. Admit it, my Lord
+Tristan. He has put you on your guard. And yet--I fain would be your
+friend--"
+
+"The Lord Alberic seems to count you among his enemies," Tristan
+replied. The mention of an accepted fact could not, to his mind, be
+construed into betraying a confidence.
+
+Theodora smiled sadly.
+
+"The Lord Alberic has been beguiled into this sad attitude by one who
+was ever my foe, perchance, even his. Time will tell. But it was not
+to speak of him that I summoned you hither. It is because I would
+appear lovable in your eyes. It is, because I am not indifferent to
+your opinion, my Lord Tristan. Am I not rash, foolish, impulsive, in
+thus placing myself in the power of one who may even now be planning
+my undoing? One who on a previous occasion so grievously misjudged my
+motives as to wound me so cruelly?"
+
+The woman's appeal knocked at the portals of Tristan's heart. Would
+she but state her true purpose, relieve this harrowing suspense. She
+had propounded the question with a deepening color, and glances that
+conveyed a tale. And it was a question somewhat difficult to answer.
+
+At last he spoke, stammeringly, incoherently:
+
+"I shall try to prove myself worthy of the Lady Theodora's confidence."
+
+She seemed somewhat disappointed at the coldness of his answer,
+nevertheless her quick perception showed her where she had scored a
+point, in making an inroad upon his heart. And her critical eye could
+not but approve of the proud attitude he assumed, the look that had
+come into his face.
+
+She edged a little closer to him and continued in a subdued tone.
+
+"A woman is always lonely and helpless--no matter what may be her
+station. How liable we are to be deceived or--misjudged. But I knew
+from the first that I could trust you. Do you remember when we first
+met in the Navona?"
+
+Again the warm crimson of the cheek, again the speaking flash from
+those luring eyes. Tristan's heart began to beat with a strange
+sensation of excitement and surprise. To love this wonder of all
+women--to be loved by her in return--life would indeed be one mad
+delirium.
+
+"How could I forget it?" he said, more warmly than he intended, meeting
+her gaze. "It was on the day when I arrived in Rome."
+
+Her eyes beamed on him more benevolently than ever.
+
+"I saw you again at Santa Maria of the Aventine. I sent for you," she
+said, with drooping lids, "because I so wanted some one to confide
+in. I have no counsellor,--no champion--no friend. The object of
+hatred to the rabble which stones those to-day before whom it cringed
+yesterday--I am paying the penalty of the name I bear--kinship to one
+no longer among the living. But you scorned my messenger. Why did you?"
+
+She regarded Tristan with expectant, almost imploring eyes. She saw him
+struggling for adequate utterance. Continuing, she held out to him her
+beautiful hands. Her tone was all appeal.
+
+"I want you to feel that Theodora is your friend. That you may turn to
+her in any perplexity that may beset you, that you may call upon her
+for counsel whenever you are in doubt and know not what to do. And oh!
+I want you to know above all things how much you could be to me, did
+you but trust--had not the drop of poison instilled by the Senator set
+you against the one woman who would make you great, envied above all
+men on earth!"
+
+Tristan bent over Theodora's hands and kissed them. Cool and trusting,
+yet with a firm grasp, they encircled his burning palms and their
+whiteness caused his senses to reel.
+
+"In what manner can I be of service to the Lady Theodora?" he spoke at
+last, unable to let go of those wonderful hands that sent the hot blood
+hurtling to his brain.
+
+Theodora's face was very close to his.
+
+As she spoke, her perfumed breath softly fanned his cheeks.
+
+She spoke with well-studied hesitancy, like a child that, in preferring
+an overbold request, fears denial in the very utterance.
+
+"It is a small thing, I would ask," she said in her wonderfully
+melodious voice. "I would once again visit the places where I have
+spent the happy days of my childhood, the galleries and chambers of
+the Emperor's Tomb. You start, my Lord Tristan! Perchance this speech
+may sound strange to the ears of one who, though newly arrived in Rome,
+has heard but vituperations showered upon the head of a defenceless
+woman, who, if not better, is at least not worse than the rest of her
+kind. Yes--" she continued, returning the pressure of his fingers
+and noting, not without inward satisfaction, a soft gleam that had
+dispelled the sterner look in his eyes, "those were days of innocence
+and peace, broken only when the older sister, my equal in beauty,
+began to regard me as a possible rival. Stung by her taunts I leaped
+to her challenge and the fight for the dominion of Rome was waged
+between us with all the hot passion of our blood, Marozia conquered,
+but Death stood by unseen to crown her victory. The Mount of Cloisters
+is my asylum. The gates of the Emperor's Tomb are sealed to me forever
+more. Why should Alberic, disregarding the ties of blood, fear a
+woman--unless he hath deeply wronged her, even as he has wronged
+another who wears the crown of thorns upon earth?"
+
+Theodora paused, her lids half-shut as if to repress a tear; in reality
+to scan the face of him who found her tale most strange indeed.
+
+And, verily, Tristan was beginning to feel that he could not depend
+upon himself much longer. The subdued lights, the heavy perfume, the
+room itself, the seductive beauty of this sorceress so near to him that
+her breath fanned his cheeks, the touch of her hands, which had not
+relinquished his own, were making wild havoc with his senses and reason.
+
+Like many a gentle and inexperienced nature, Tristan shrank from
+offending a woman's delicacy, by even appearing to question the truth
+of her words, and he doubted not but that here was a woman who had
+been sinned against much more than she had sinned, a woman capable
+of gentler, nobler impulses than were credited to her in the common
+reckoning. It required indeed a powerful constraint upon his feelings
+not to give way to the starved impulse that drove him to forget past,
+present and future in her embrace.
+
+A sad smile played about the small crimson mouth as Theodora, with a
+sigh, continued:
+
+"I have quaffed the joys of life. There is nothing that has remained
+untasted. And yet--I am not happy. The fires of unrest drive me hither
+and thither. After years of fiercest conflict, with those of my own
+sex and age, who consider Rome the lawful prey of any one that may
+usurp Marozia's fateful inheritance, I have had a glimpse of Heaven--a
+Heaven that perchance is not for me. Yet it aroused the desire for
+peace--happiness--love! Yes, my Lord Tristan, love! For though I have
+searched for it in every guise, I found it not. Will the hour every
+toll--even for me? Deem you, my Lord Tristan, that even one so guilt
+lost as Theodora might be loved?"
+
+"How were it possible," he stammered, "for mortal eyes to resist such
+loveliness?"
+
+His words sounded stilted in his ears. Yet he knew if he permitted the
+impulse to master him he would be swept away by the torrent.
+
+The woman also knew, and woman-like she felt that the poison rankled in
+his veins. She must give it time to work. She must not precipitate a
+scene that might leave him sobered, when the fumes had cleared from his
+brain.
+
+Putting all the witchery of her beauty into her words she said, with a
+tinge of sadness:
+
+"I fear I am trespassing, my Lord Tristan. It is so long, since I have
+unveiled the depths of my heart. Forget the request I have made. It may
+conflict with your loyalty to my Lord Alberic. I shall try to foster
+the memories of the place which I dare not enter--"
+
+She had ventured all upon the last throw, and she had conquered.
+
+"Nay, Lady Theodora," Tristan interposed, with a seriousness that
+even staggered the woman. "There is no such clause or condition in the
+agreement between the Lord Alberic and myself. It is true," he added in
+a solemn tone, "he has warned me of you, as his enemy. Report speaks
+ill of you. Nevertheless I believe you."
+
+"I thank you, my Lord Tristan," she said, releasing his hands.
+"Theodora never forgets a service. Three nights hence I am giving a
+feast to my friends. You will not fail me?"
+
+"I am happy to know," he said, "that the Lady Theodora thinks kindly
+of me. I shall not fail her. And now"--he added, genuine regret in his
+tone--"will the Lady Theodora permit me to depart? The hour waxes late
+and there is much to be done ere the morrow's dawn."
+
+Theodora clapped her hands and Persephoné appeared between the curtains.
+
+"Farewell, my Lord Tristan. We shall speak of this again," she said,
+beaming upon him with all the seductive fire of her dark eyes, and he,
+bowing, took his leave.
+
+When Persephoné returned, she was as much puzzled at the inscrutable
+smile that played about her mistress' lips as she had been at Tristan's
+abstracted state of mind, for, hardly noting her presence, he had
+walked in silence beside her to the gate, and had there taken silent
+leave.--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE LURE OF THE ABYSS
+
+
+The sun had sunk to rest in fleecy clouds of crimson and gold.
+
+The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy enveloped hill and dale,
+bathing in its effulgence the groves, palaces and ruins of the Eternal
+City. The huge pile of the Colosseum was bathed in its rosy glow,
+raising itself in serene majesty towards the beaming night sky.
+
+A few hours later a great change had come over the heavens. The wind
+had sprung up and had driven the little downy clouds of sunset into
+a great, black mass, which it again tore into flying tatters that it
+swept before it. The moon rose and raced through the dun and silver.
+Below it, in the vast spaces of the deserted amphitheatre, from whose
+vomitories pale ghosts seemed to flit, the big boulders and rain-left
+pools looked dim and misty. Night had cast her leper's cloak on nature
+and the moon seemed the leprous face.
+
+Deepest silence reigned, broken only by the occasional hoot of an owl,
+or the swishing of a bat that whirled its crazy flight in and out the
+labyrinthine corridors.
+
+By the largest of these boulders stood the dark cloaked form of a man.
+As the moon-thrown shadows of the clouds swept over him and the rude
+rock by which he stood looking up at the sky, his black mantle flapped
+in the wind and clung to his limbs, making him look even taller than he
+was.
+
+At the feet of Basil cowered the huge Molossian hound. As the wind
+grew stronger and the clouds above assumed more fantastic shapes, it
+raised its head and gave voice to a low whine. On the distant hillocks
+a myriad dusky flames seemed to writhe and hiss and dart through tinted
+moon-gleams.
+
+Three times he whistled--and in the misty, moonlit expanse countless
+forms, as weird as himself, seemed to rise and form a great circle
+about him.
+
+Were they the creatures of his brain which had at last given way in the
+excitement of the hour? Were they phantoms of mist and moon, wreathing
+round him from the desolate marshes? Or were they real beings of flesh
+and blood, congregations of crime and despair, mad with the misery of a
+starving century, the horrors of serfdom and oppression that had united
+in the great reel of a Witches' Sabbat?
+
+Round him they circled, at first slowly,--like the curls of a marsh,
+then faster and ever faster, till his eyes could scarcely follow them
+as they rotated about him in their horrible dance of madness and sin.
+
+Black clouds raced over the moon. The reddish gleam of a forked tongue
+of fire illumined the dark heavens, and thunder went pealing down the
+hills. Suddenly out of the underbrush arose a black form, about the
+height and breadth of a man, but without the distinct outlines of
+one. Basil's face grew white as death, and his gaze became fixed as
+he clutched at the rock for support. But the next moment he seemed to
+gain his reassurance from the knowledge that he had seen this phantom
+before. The dog lay at his feet and continued its low tremulous whine.
+
+"You have kept the tryst," gibbered the bent form as it slowly
+approached, supporting itself upon a crooked staff of singular height.
+
+"Else were I not the man to compel fate to do my bidding," responded
+the Grand Chamberlain. "Fear can have no part in the compact which
+binds us. I have live things under my feet that clog my steps and grow
+more stubborn day by day."--
+
+"Deem you, you can keep your footing in the black lobbies of hell?"
+gibbered the cowled form. "For you will need all your courage, if you
+would reach the goal!"
+
+Basil, for a moment, faced his shadowy interlocutor in silence. There
+was a darker light in his eyes when he spoke.
+
+"Give me but that which my soul desires and I shall run the gauntlet
+unflinchingly. I shall brace my courage to the dread experiment."
+
+A fierce gust of wind shook the cypresses and holm oaks into shuddering
+anxiety.
+
+"You are about to embark upon an enterprise more perilous than any man
+now living has ever ventured upon," spoke the cowled form. "Your soul
+will travel through the channels, through which the red and fiery tide
+rolls up when the volcano wakes. Each time it wakes the lava washes
+over the lost souls, which, chained to rings in the black rock, glow
+like living coals, but leaves them whole, to undergo their fate anew.
+Do you persist?"
+
+"Give me what I desire--"
+
+"Ay--so say they all--but to grovel in the dust before the Unknown
+Presence which they have defied."
+
+"Who are you to taunt me with a fear my soul knows not?" Basil turned
+to the black-robed form, stretching out his hand as if to touch his
+mantle.
+
+A magnetic current passed through his limbs that caused him to drop his
+arm with a cry of pain.
+
+Forked lightnings leaped from one cloud-bank to another.
+
+Distant thunder growled and died among the hills.
+
+"I have seen the fall of Nineveh and Babylon. I was present at the
+destruction of the Holy City by the legions of Titus, I witnessed the
+burning of Rome by Nero and the fall of the temple of Serapis. I stood
+upon Mount Calvary under the shadow of the world's greatest tragedy."
+
+The voice of the speaker died to silence.
+
+Basil's hand went to his head, as if he wished to assure himself
+whether he was awake or in the throes of some mad dream.
+
+It is a narrow boundary line, that divides the two great realms of
+sanity and madness. And the limits are as restless as those of two
+countries divided from each other by a network of shifting rivers. What
+belonged to the one overnight may belong to the other to-morrow.
+
+An overmastering dread had seized upon Basil at the speech of the
+uncanny apparition. Was not he, too, pushing his excursions now into
+the one realm, now into the other? And who would know in which of the
+two to seek for him?
+
+"Have you indeed wandered upon earth ever since those days?" he
+stammered, once more slave to his superstition.
+
+The apparition nodded.
+
+"I have drunk deep from the black wells of despair. I have raised the
+shadowy altars of him who was cast out of the heavens, higher and
+higher, till they almost touch the throne of the Father."
+
+"Your master then is Lucifer--"
+
+"Cannot the Fiend as well as God live incarnate in human clay? Is not
+the earth the meeting ground of Heaven and Hell? Why should not Basil,
+the Grand Chamberlain, be Hell's incarnation?"--
+
+"What then must I do to deserve the crimson aureole?"
+
+"Espouse the cause of him who rules the shadows. He will give to you
+what your soul desires. One of the shadowy congregation that rules the
+world through fear, make quick wings for Time, that crawls through
+eternity like a monstrous snake, while with starved desire your eyes
+glare at the fleeting things of life--dominion, power and love, that
+you may snatch from fate! Only by becoming one of us can your soul
+slake its thirst. Speak--for my time is brief--"
+
+When Basil turned towards the bent form of the speaker his gaze fell
+upon a gleaming knife which Bessarion had produced from under the loose
+folds of his gown.
+
+For a moment the two stood face to face. Neither spoke, each seemingly
+intent upon fathoming the thoughts of the other. The wind hissed and
+screamed through the corridors of the Colosseum.
+
+It was Basil who broke the silence.
+
+"What is it, you want?"
+
+"Bare your left arm!"
+
+There was a natural hollow in the rock, that the weather had scooped
+out in the stone altar.
+
+Basil obeyed.
+
+The gibbering voice rose again above the silence.
+
+"Hold it over the basin!"
+
+The lightnings twisted and streamed like silvery adders through the
+dark vaults of the heavens, and terrific peals of thunder shook the
+shuddering world in its foundations.
+
+The bent form raised the knife.
+
+Three drops of blood dripped, one by one, into the hollow of the stone.
+
+Bessarion chanted some words in an unintelligible jargon as, with a
+claw-like hand, he bound up the wound in Basil's arm.
+
+"At midnight--in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus--you will stand face to
+face with the Presence," the apparition spoke once more.
+
+The next moment, after a fantastic salutation, he had vanished, as if
+the earth had swallowed him, behind a projecting rock.
+
+Basil remained for a time in deep rumination. The Molossian hound
+rose up from the ground as soon as the adept of the black arts had
+disappeared, and, sitting on its haunches, gazed inquisitively into its
+master's face.
+
+Suddenly it uttered a growl.
+
+At the next moment the misshapen form of an African Moor crouched at
+the feet of the Grand Chamberlain. Noiselessly and swiftly as a panther
+he had sped through the waste spaces of the amphitheatre, and even
+Basil could not overcome a feeling of revulsion as he gazed into the
+hairy, bestial features of Daoud, whom he employed when secrecy and
+despatch were essential to the success of a venture.
+
+Red inflamed eyelids gleamed from a face whose cadaverous tints seemed
+enhanced by wiry black hair that hung in disordered strands from under
+a broad Spanish hat. Daoud was undersized in stature, but possessed
+prodigious strength, and the size of his hands argued little in favor
+of him who had incurred the disfavor of his master or his own.
+
+This monster in human guise Basil had acquired from a certain nobleman
+in the suite of the Byzantine ambassador extraordinary to the Holy See.
+
+Basil looked up at the moon which just then emerged from the shadow of
+a cloud. Then he gave a nod of satisfaction.
+
+"Your promptness argues well for your success," he turned to his runner
+who was cowering at his feet, the ashen face with the blinking and
+inflamed eyes raised to his master. "Know you the road to southward, my
+good Daoud?"
+
+The Moor gave a nod and Basil proceeded.
+
+"You must depart this very night. Take the road that leads by Benevento
+to the Shrines of the Archangel. You will overtake the Senator and
+deliver into his hands this token. You will return forthwith and bring
+to me--his answer. Do I make myself quite clear to your understanding,
+my good Daoud?"
+
+The Moor fell prostrate and touched Basil's buskin with his forehead.
+
+"Up!" the latter spurned the kneeling brute. "To-morrow night must find
+you in the Witches' City."
+
+With these words he placed into the Moor's hand a small article,
+carefully tied and sealed.
+
+The twain exchanged a mute glance of mutual understanding, then Daoud
+gave a bound, darted forward and shot away like an arrow from the bow.
+Almost instantly he was out of sight.
+
+The hound bounded after him but, obedient to his master's call,
+instantly returned to the latter's feet.
+
+For some time Basil remained near the rock where the weird ceremony had
+taken place.
+
+"The Rubicon is passed," he muttered. "The stars--or the abyss."
+
+Then, slowly quitting the stupendous ruins of the Amphitheatre, he took
+the direction of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE FACE IN THE PANEL
+
+
+On the following day Tristan entered upon his duties as captain of the
+Senator's guard.
+
+The first person upon whom he chanced on his rounds at the Lateran
+was the Grand Chamberlain, who inquired affably how his penitences
+were progressing and expressed the hope that he had received final
+absolution, and that his sins would not weigh too heavily upon his
+soul. Basil commended him for his zeal in the cause of the Senator,
+hinting incidentally that his duties between the Lateran and Castel San
+Angelo need not deprive him of the society of the fair Roman ladies,
+who would welcome the stranger from Provence and would doubtlessly
+enmesh his heart, if it were not well guarded. He then proceeded to
+caution Tristan with respect to his exalted prisoner. Numerous attempts
+at abduction had been made from time to time, Tristan having, by his
+prowess and daring, prevented the last, emanating doubtlessly from the
+Pontiff's nearest kith and kin. The men under him could be fully relied
+upon. Nevertheless, it behooved him to be circumspect.
+
+After a time Basil departed, and Tristan went about his business,
+inspecting the guard and familiarizing himself with the place where he
+was to keep his first watch.
+
+The level beams of the evening sun filled the Basilica of St. John in
+Laterano. There were pearl lights and lights of sapphire; falling
+radiances of emerald and blood-red; vague translucent greens, that
+seemed to tremble under spiral clouds of incense.
+
+Now the sun was sinking behind Mount Janiculum. The clouds at the
+zenith of the heavens were rose-hued, but it was growing dark in the
+valleys, and the great church began to take on sombre hues. It seemed
+to frown upon him, to warn him not to enter, an impression he was long
+afterwards to remember, as he strode through the high-vaulted corridors.
+
+He hesitated, till the sound of a distant chant reached his ear. With
+a sort of fascination he could not account for, he watched the advance
+of the slowly gathering gloom, as an increasing greyness stole into the
+chapels.
+
+Evening was about to take the veil of night.
+
+The light left the stained-glass windows and the church grew darker and
+darker. The altar steps lay now in purple shadows that were growing
+deeper and denser each moment.
+
+Shadowy forms seemed to be moving about in the sanctuaries. Soon a monk
+entered with a taper, lighting the lights before some remote shrines.
+Tristan could not distinguish his features, for the light was very dim.
+Yet it enabled him to see that there were a few belated worshippers in
+the church.
+
+After a time the great nave was deserted. As the lone monk passed
+quickly through a sphere of thin light, Tristan gave a start. It seemed
+a ghost in a cassock that had vanished in the sacristy. He told himself
+that the impression was absurd, but he could not throw it off. He
+had caught a momentary glimpse of a face that had no human likeness,
+and the way in which the cassock had flapped about the limbs of the
+fleeting form seemed to suggest that it clothed a frame that had lost
+its flesh.
+
+Superstitious fear began to creep over him. He felt that he must
+seek the open, escape the haunting incense-saturated pall, these dim
+sepulchral chapels. Such light as there was, save what emanated from
+the candles on the altar, came from a stone lamp which cast its glimmer
+on the vanishing form.
+
+In every corner of the vast nave now lay fast gathering darkness. The
+figures of the saints seemed vague and formless. The altar loomed dim
+in the shadows.
+
+All these things Tristan noted.
+
+The whole interior of the church was now steeped in the dense pall of
+night, illumined only by the faint radiance of the lamp upon the altar,
+which seemed rather to intensify than to lift the gloom.
+
+A faint footfall was audible behind the carven screen, near the
+entrance to the chapels. A figure, almost lost in the gloom, glided
+into the nave, and shadows were falling about him like thin veils.
+
+It was an unusual hour for monks to be abroad. None the less, he
+seemed sure of himself, for he proceeded without hesitation to the
+altar, shrouded as it was in utter darkness, but for the light of one
+faint taper, which gleamed afar, like a star in the nocturnal heavens,
+driving the gloom a few paces from the carven stone. There the shrouded
+form seemed to melt into the very pall of night that weighed heavily
+upon the time-stained walls of the Mother Church of Rome.
+
+At first Tristan thought it was some belated penitent seeking
+forgiveness for his sins, but when the dark-robed form did not return
+he strode towards the altar to see if he might perchance be of
+assistance to him.
+
+When Tristan reached the altar steps he could discover no trace of a
+human being, though he searched every nook and corner and peered into
+every chapel, examined every shrine.
+
+Seized with a strange restiveness he began to pace up and down before
+the altar steps. He was far from feeling at ease. He remembered the
+warning of the Grand Chamberlain. He remembered the strange tales he
+had heard whispered of the Pontiff's prison house.
+
+Tristan suddenly paused.
+
+He thought he heard sibilant whispers and the low murmur of voices from
+behind the screen at the eastern transept of the Capella, and at once
+he began assembling the things in his mind which might beset him in the
+hour of darkness.
+
+The Chapel of the Most Holy Saviour of the Holy Stairs, the Scala
+Santa of the present day, adjoins the Lateran Church. At the period
+of which we write it was still the private chapel of the popes in the
+Patriarchium, and was called the Sancta Sanctorum on account of the
+great number of precious relics it enshrines.
+
+To this chapel Tristan directed his steps, oppressed by some mysterious
+sense of evil. By a judicious disposition of the men under his command
+he had, after a careful survey of the premises, placed them in such a
+manner that it would be impossible for any one to gain access to the
+stairs leading to the Pontiff's chamber.
+
+Had it been a hallucination of his senses conjured up by his sudden
+fear?
+
+Not a sound broke the stillness. Only the echoes of his own footsteps
+reverberated uncannily from the worn mosaics of the floor. In the dim
+distance of the corridors he saw a shadow moving to and fro. It was the
+guard before the entrance to a side-chapel of the Basilica.
+
+What caused Tristan to pause in the night gloom of the corridor leading
+to the Pontifical Chapel he did not know. He seemed as under a strange
+spell. At a distance from him of some five feet, in the decorated wall,
+there was a dark panel some two feet in height and of corresponding
+breadth, looking obliquely towards the Pontifical Chapel. The panel
+contained a small round opening, a spy-hole which communicated with a
+secret chamber in the thickness of the wall.
+
+A slight rustling noise came from behind the masonry. Tristan heard it
+quite distinctly. It suggested the passing of naked feet over marble.
+
+Suddenly, noiselessly the panel parted.
+
+A sudden gleam of white, blinding light shot into the chapel like a
+spear of silver.
+
+Tristan paused with a start, looking swiftly and inquiringly at the
+black slit in the wall and as he did so the spear of light shifted a
+little in its passing.
+
+A face, white with the pallor of death, ghastly and hideous as a corpse
+that has retained upon its set features the agony of dying, peered out
+from blackness into blackness.
+
+A tremor shook Tristan's frame from head to toe. He could not have
+cried out, had he wished to. He felt as one grazed by a lightning bolt.
+Then, in a flash that made his heart and soul shudder within him, he
+knew.
+
+He had seen looking at him a face--the clean shaven face of a man. But
+it was not human. It bore the terrible stigmata of the unquenchable
+fire; an abominable vision of the lust that cannot be satiated, the
+utter, unconquerable, fiendish malevolence of Hell. A harsh, raven-like
+croak broke the stillness, and at the sound of that cry the terrible
+face vanished with the swiftness of a trick. Instead, a long arm,
+clothed in a black sleeve, stole through the opening. A flash, keen
+as that of the lightning, cut the air and a dagger struck the mosaic
+floor at Tristan's feet with such force that its point snapped after
+shattering the stone, drawing fire from the impact.
+
+Bounding back, Tristan uttered a shrill cry of terror, but when he
+looked in the direction of the panel only dim dun dusk met his eyes.
+
+Rushing frantically from the corridor he now called with all his might.
+His outcries brought the guards to the scene. Briefly, incoherently,
+almost mad with terror, he told his tale. They listened with an air of
+amazement in which surprise held no small share. Then they accompanied
+him back to the chapel.
+
+Arriving near the spot he was about to point to the dagger, to
+corroborate his wild tale. But the dagger had disappeared. Only the
+shattered marble of the floor lent testimony and credence to his words.
+
+On the following morning an outcry of horror arose from all quarters of
+Rome.
+
+On the night which preceded it, the Holy Host had been taken from the
+Pontifical Chapel in the Lateran.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE SHADOW OF ASRAEL
+
+
+It was ten in the morning.
+
+Deep silence reigned in the strange walled garden on the Pincian Hill
+that surrounded the marble villa of the Grand Chamberlain. Only the
+murmur of the city below and the soft sounds of bells from tower and
+campanile seemed to break the dreamlike stillness as they began to toll
+for High Mass.
+
+In a circular chamber lighted only by lamps, for there were no windows,
+and daylight never penetrated there, before an onyx table covered with
+strange globes and philtres, sat Basil.
+
+The walls of the chamber were of wood stained purple. The far wall
+was hidden by shelves on which were many rolls of vellum and papyrus,
+spoils of pagan libraries of the past. There were the works of monks
+from all the monasteries of Europe, illuminated by master hands, the
+black letter pages glowing with red and gold, almost priceless even
+then. In one corner of the room stood an iron chest, secured by locks.
+What this contained no one even dared to guess.
+
+As the chimes from churches and convents reached his ears, Basil's face
+paled. Something began to stir in the dark unfathomable eyes as some
+unknown thing stirs in deep water. Some nameless being was looking out
+of those windows of the soul. Yet the rest of the face was unruffled
+and expressionless, and the contrast was so horrible that a spectator
+would have shrank away, cold fear gripping his heart, and perhaps a cry
+upon his lips.
+
+Basil had closed the heavy bronze doors behind him when he had entered
+from the atrium. The floor of colored marbles was flooded with the
+light from the bronze lamps. Before him was a short passage, hardly
+more than an alcove, terminating in a door of cedarwood behind a purple
+curtain.
+
+In the dull yellow gleam of the lamps the chamber seemed cold, full of
+chill and musty air.
+
+In a moment however the lamps seemed to burn more brightly, as Basil's
+eyes became adjusted to their lights.
+
+There was the silence of the tomb. The lamps burnt without a flicker,
+for there was not a breath of air to disturb their steady glow. The
+plan of the room, its yellow lights, its silence, its entire lack of
+correspondence with the outside world, was Basil's own. He had designed
+it as a port, as it were, whence to put out to sea upon the tide of his
+ever-changing moods in the black barque of sin.
+
+For some time he remained alone in the silent room, dreaming and
+brooding over greatness and power, that terrible megalomania that is
+the last and rarest madness of all.
+
+He had read of Caligula, Nero, and Domitian, of Heliogabalus, whose
+madness passed the bounds of the imaginable. Like gold and purple
+clouds, bursting with sombre light and power, they had passed over Rome
+and were gone.
+
+Then thoughts of the popes came to him, those supreme rulers of the
+temporal and spiritual world whose dominion had been so superb, since
+they first began to crown the emperors, one hundred and thirty-five
+years ago.
+
+In a monstrous and swiftly moving panorama they passed through a brain
+that worked as if it were packed in ice. And yet one and all had gone
+into the dark. The power of none had been lasting and complete.
+
+But into his reverie stole a secret glow, into his blood an intense,
+ecstatic quickening. For them the hour had tolled. Each step in life
+was but one nearer the grave. Not so was it to be with him.
+
+A black fire began to burn round his heart, coiling there like a
+serpent, as he thought of the illumination that was his, the promise
+he had received--deep down in the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb and
+again in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus. And he had fallen down and
+worshipped, had given his soul to Darkness and abjured the Light.
+
+Satan should rule again on earth. For this had been revealed to him
+by the High Priest of Satan himself, then in a vision by the Lord of
+Evil. To penetrate the mysteries of Hell with his whole heart and soul,
+to strike chill terror into the hearts of those who worshipped at the
+altars of Christ, had become Basil's ambition for which he would live
+and die.
+
+Basil sat dreaming and gloating over his coming glory; a glory in which
+the woman whose beauty had stung him with maddening desire should
+share, even if he had to drag her before the dark throne upon which sat
+the Unspeakable Presence. The yellow light of the lamps fell upon his
+unnatural and mask-like face as he sat rigid in his chair hypnotized by
+Hell.
+
+Christ had thrown his great Cross upon the feasts and banquets of the
+gods. On his head was a crown of thorns and the Stigmata upon his hands
+and feet. And the goblets of red gold had lost their brightness. The
+pagan gods were stricken dumb. They had faded away in vapor and were
+gone.
+
+And with them the fierce joy of living had left the world. Christ
+reigned upon earth, implanting conscience in the souls of men, that
+robbed ecstasy of its fruition and infused the most delicious cup
+touched with the Aliquid Amari of the poet.
+
+Basil paced the narrow confines of the room, and from his lips came the
+opening stanza of that dreadful parody of the Good Friday hymn sung by
+the votaries of Satan: "Vexilla Regis Prodeunt Inferni."
+
+Already the banners of the advancing hosts were in the sky. Soon--soon
+would he appear himself--the Lord of Darkness!
+
+The room suddenly grew very chill, as if the three dread winds of
+Cocytus were blowing through the chamber.
+
+There was a slim rod of copper suspended from the wall, close to the
+couch of dull grey damask upon which he had been reclining. He pulled
+it and somewhere away in the villa a gong sounded. A moment later a
+drab man, lean as a skeleton and bald as an egg, with slanting eyes in
+an ashen face and a stooping gait, came gliding noiselessly into the
+lamplit room. He wore a long black cassock, which covered his fleshless
+form from head to toe.
+
+"Has no one called?" Basil turned to his factotum.
+
+"A stranger," came the sepulchral reply. "He bade me give you this!"
+
+Basil took the scroll which his famulus handed to him and cut the cord.
+
+A fiendish smile passed over his face and lighted up the dark, sinister
+eyes. But quickly as the mood had come it left. It fell from him as a
+dropped cloak.
+
+He stood upright, supporting himself on the onyx table, while Horus,
+who only understood in a dull dim way his master's moods, assisting
+him in all his villainies, but confessing his own share to a household
+priest, stood impassively by.
+
+"Give me some wine!" Basil turned to the sinister Major Domo, and the
+latter disappeared and returned with a jug of Malvasian.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain grasped the jug which Horus had brought him and
+held it with shaking fingers to his mouth. When he had drank deep he
+dismissed his famulus, struck a flint and burnt the scroll to pallid
+ashes. Then he staggered out into the hall of colored marbles and
+through it to the garden doors.
+
+The bronze gates trembled as they swung back upon their hinges, and as
+the full noon of the quiet garden burst upon Basil's eyes he fancied he
+saw the fold of a dark robe disappear among the cypresses.
+
+And now the hot air of high noon wrapped him round with its warm
+southern life, flowing over the lithe body within the silken doublet,
+drawing away the inward darkness and the vaulting flames within his
+soul and reminding his sensuous nature that the future held gigantic
+promise of love and power.
+
+The great tenor and alto bells of St. John in Lateran were beating the
+echoes to silver far away. The roofs and palaces, domes and towers of
+Rome, were bathed in sunlight as he advanced to the embrasure in the
+wall and once more surveyed the city.
+
+The heat shimmered down and, through the quivering sunlit air, the
+colors of the buildings shone like pebbles at the bottom of a pool and
+the white ruins glowed like a mirage of the desert.
+
+An hour later, regardless of the vertical sun rays that beat down
+upon the tortuous streets of the city with unabated fervor, the Grand
+Chamberlain rode through the streets of Rome, attended by a group of
+men-at-arms with the crest of the Broken Spear in a Field of Azure
+embroidered upon their doublets.
+
+As the cavalcade swept through the crowded streets, with their
+pilgrims from all parts of the world, the religious in their habits,
+men-at-arms, flower-sellers, here and there the magnificent chariot of
+a cardinal, many of the people lowered their eyes as Basil cantered
+past on his black Neapolitan charger, trapped with crimson. More than
+one made the sign of the horn, to avert the spell of the evil eye.
+
+When Basil reached the Lateran he found a captain of the noble guard
+with two halberdiers in their unsightly liveries guarding the doors.
+They saluted and Basil inquired whether the new captain of the guard
+was within.
+
+"The Lord Tristan is within," came the reply, and Basil entered,
+motioning to his escort to await his return outside.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain traversed several anterooms, speaking to one
+or the other of the senatorial guard, and on every face he read
+consternation and fear. Little groups of priests stood together in
+corners, whispering among each other; the whole of the Lateran was
+aroused as by a secret dread. Such deeds, though they were known to
+have occurred, were never spoken of, and the priests of the various
+churches that had suffered desecration wisely kept their own counsel.
+
+In this, the darkest age in the history of Rome, when crime and lust
+and murder lurked in every corner, an outrage such as this struck every
+soul with horror and awe. It was unthinkable, unspeakable almost,
+suggesting dark mysteries and hidden infamies of Hell, which caused the
+blood to run cold and the heart to freeze.
+
+When Basil had made his way through the crowded corridors, receiving
+homage, though men looked askance at him as he passed, he came to a
+chamber usually reserved for a waiting room in times when the Pontiff
+received foreign envoys or members of the priesthood and nobility; a
+privilege from which the unfortunate prisoner in the Lateran was to be
+forever debarred.
+
+Basil entered this chamber, giving orders that he was to be in no wise
+disturbed until he called and those outside heard him lock and bar the
+door from within.
+
+In the exact centre of the wall, reaching within two feet of the
+ground, there was a large picture of St. Sebastian, barbarously painted
+by some unknown artist.
+
+Basil approached the picture and pressed upon the flat frame with all
+his strength. There was a sudden click, a whirring, as of the wheels of
+a clock. Then the picture swung inward, revealing a circular stairway
+of stone, mounting upward. Without replacing the panel door, Basil
+mounted the stairs for nearly a hundred steps, until he came to a door
+upon which he beat with the hilt of his poniard.
+
+An answering knock came from within, and the door opened. Basil entered
+a small chamber, lighted from above by a window in a small dome.
+
+A bat-like figure stood before a table covered with strange
+manuscripts. As Basil entered, a thin black arm emerged from the
+folds of the gown, which the inmate of the chamber wore. Then, with a
+quick bird-like movement, an immensely thin hand twisted like a claw,
+wrinkled, yellow and of incredible age, was stretched out toward the
+newcomer.
+
+On the second finger of this claw was a certain ring. Basil bent and
+kissed the ring. There was another deft and almost imperceptible
+movement. When the hand reappeared the ring was gone.
+
+"It has been done?" Basil turned to the dark-robed form in bated
+whispers.
+
+The voice that answered seemed to come from a great distance. The lips
+in the waxen face scarcely moved. They parted, that was all. Yet the
+words were audible and distinct.
+
+"It was done. Last night."
+
+"You were not seen?"
+
+"I wore the mask."
+
+"Is it here?" Basil queried, his eyes flickering with a faint
+reflection of that hate which had blazed in them earlier in the day.
+
+"It is not here."
+
+"Where is it?"
+
+"You shall know to-night!"
+
+The light faded out of Basil's eyes.
+
+"What of the new captain?"
+
+"His presence is a menace."
+
+In Basil's eyes gleamed a sombre fire.
+
+"I, too, owe him a grudge. In good time!"
+
+"The time is Now!"
+
+"Patience!" replied the Grand Chamberlain. "He will work his own
+undoing. We dare not harm him yet."
+
+"Only a miracle saved him last night."
+
+"Are there not other churches in Rome?"--
+
+"Ay!" mouthed the black form. "But the time of the great sacrifice
+draws near--"
+
+"I knew not it was so near at hand," interposed Basil with a start.
+
+"The Becco Notturno demands a bride!"
+
+"How am I to help you in these matters?"
+
+"Am I to counsel the Lord Basil?" sneered the shape. "You drew the
+crimson ball."
+
+"When is it to be?"
+
+"Three weeks from to-night. Mark you--a stainless dove!"
+
+Basil nodded, an evil smile upon his lips.
+
+"It shall be as you say! As for that other--I am minded to try his
+mettle--"
+
+"So be it!" said the shape. "Leave me now! You will hear from me. My
+familiars are everywhere."
+
+Without another word Basil arose and left the chamber. In the corridor
+below he met Tristan.
+
+"I know all," he cut short the speech of the new captain of the guard.
+"All Rome is full of it. How did it happen? And where?"
+
+"Attracted by a noise as of slippered feet passing over marble, I
+entered the corridor of the Sacred Stairs, when one of the panels
+parted. A devilish apparition stood within, throwing the beam of its
+lantern into the chapel. When a chance ray of light disclosed my
+presence the shape of darkness hurled a poniard. It missed me, thanks
+be to Our Lady, struck the mosaic of the floor and broke in two."
+
+"You have the pieces?" Basil queried affably and with much concern.
+
+"I ran to the end of the gallery, shouting to my men," Tristan replied.
+"When we returned the blade had disappeared."
+
+"Where was it?" Basil queried with much concern and soon they faced the
+shattered mosaic.
+
+Basil examined the spot minutely.
+
+"From yonder panel, you say?" he turned to Tristan.
+
+"The third from the Capella," came the ready reply.
+
+"Have you searched the premises?"
+
+"From cellar to garret."--
+
+"And discovered nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"What of the panel?"
+
+"It defies our combined efforts."
+
+"Strange, indeed."
+
+Basil strode to the wall and struck the spot indicated by Tristan with
+the hilt of his poniard. Then he tested the wall on either side.
+
+"Can your ear detect any difference in sound?"
+
+A negative gesture came in response, and with it a puzzled look passed
+into Tristan's eyes.
+
+"Have you seen the Pontiff?"
+
+"We reported the matter to His Holiness."
+
+"And?"
+
+"His Holiness raised his eyes to heaven and said: 'Even God's Vicar has
+no jurisdiction in Hell!'"
+
+"Was that all he said?"
+
+"That was all!"
+
+There was a silence during which Basil seemed to commune with himself.
+
+"It is indeed a matter of grave concern," he said at last. "Treason
+stalks everywhere. I will send for my Spanish Captain, Don Garcia. He
+may be of assistance to you."
+
+And Basil turned and walked down the corridor.
+
+After a time Tristan walked out upon the terrace looking toward the
+Coelian Hill.
+
+A brilliant light beat upon domes and spires and pinnacles, and flooded
+the august ruins of the Cæsars on the distant Palatine and the thousand
+temples of the Holy Cross with scintillating radiance which poured down
+from the intense blue of heaven.--
+
+The long lights of the afternoon were shifting towards the eventide,
+giving place to a limpid and colorless light that silvered the adjacent
+olive groves.
+
+Tristan roused himself with a start. The sense of moving like a ghost
+among a world of ghosts had left him. He was once more awake and aware.
+But even now his sorrow, his fears, his hopes of winning again to some
+safe harbor in the storm tossed Odyssey of his life, were numbed. They
+lay heavy within him, but without urgency or appeal.
+
+What did it matter after all? Life was a little thing, a forlorn
+minstrel that evoked melancholy strains from a pipe of oaten straw.
+Life was a little thing, nor death a great one. For his part he would
+not be loth to take his poppies and fall asleep.
+
+At one time or another such moods must come to all of us and be
+endured. We must enter into the middle country, that dull Sahara of the
+soul, a broad belt of barren land where no angels seem to walk by our
+side, nor can the false voices of demons lure us to our harm.
+
+This is the land where we are imprisoned by the deeds of others and
+never by our own. What we do ourselves will send us to Heaven or to
+Hell; but not to the middle country where the plains of disillusion are.
+
+At last the sunset came.
+
+The ashen color of the olive-trees flashed out into silver, the
+undulating peaks of the Sabine Mountains became faintly flushed and
+phantom fair, as in a tempest of fire the sun sank to rest. The groves
+of ilex and arbutus seemed to tremble with delight, as the long red
+heralds touched their topmost boughs.
+
+The whole landscape seemed to smile a farewell to departing day. The
+chimes of the Angelus trembled on the purple dusk.
+
+Night came on apace.
+
+Tristan re-entered the Lateran Basilica, set the watch and arranged
+with Don Garcia to spend the night in the sacristy, while Don Garcia
+was to guard the approaches to the Pontifical Chapel to prevent a
+recurrence of the horrible sacrilege of the preceding night.
+
+One by one the worshippers left the vast nave of the church. After a
+time the sacristans closed the heavy bronze doors and extinguished the
+lights, all but the one upon the altar.
+
+When they, too, had departed, and deepest silence filled the sacred
+spaces, Tristan emerged from a side chapel and took his station near
+the entrance to the sacristy, where, on the preceding night, he had
+seen the shadow disappear.
+
+How long he had been there in dread and wonder he did not know, when
+two cloaked and hooded figures emerged slowly out of the gloom. He
+could not tell whence they came or whether they had been there all the
+time. They bent their steps towards the sacristy and, as they were
+about to pass Tristan in his hiding-place, they paused as if conscious
+of another presence.
+
+"As we proceed in this matter," whispered the one voice, "I grow
+fearful. You know my relations to the Senator--"
+
+"Your anxiety moves me not," croaked the other voice. "Deem you to
+attain your ends by mortal means?"
+
+The voice caused Tristan to shudder as with an ague, though he saw not
+him who spoke.
+
+"What of yourself?" whispered the first speaker.
+
+"Have you forgotten," came the hoarse reply, "that either I am
+soulless, or else my spirit, damned from its beginning, will scarce be
+saved by the grace of Him I dare not name! You are defiled in the very
+conversing with me."
+
+The tone in which these words were spoken, either defied answer, or, if
+a response was made, it did not reach Tristan's ears as they slowly,
+noiselessly, proceeded upon their way.
+
+Tristan vaguely listened for the echo of their retreating footsteps
+as, passing behind the altar, they disappeared, as if the earth had
+swallowed them.
+
+Now he was seized with a terrible fear. What, if they were to repeat
+the sacrilege? He thought he recognized the voice of the first speaker;
+but this no doubt was but a trick of his excited imagination.
+
+Determined to prevent so terrible a crime, he crept cautiously down
+the narrow passage through which they had disappeared. Six steps he
+counted, then he found himself in a room which seemed to be part of
+the sacristy, yet not a part, for a postern stood open through which
+gleamed the misty moonlight.
+
+There was little doubt in Tristan's mind that they had passed out
+through this postern which had been left unguarded, and he found his
+conjectures confirmed, when his eye, accustoming itself to the radiance
+without, saw two misty figures passing along the road that leads past
+the Coelian Hill through fields of ruins.
+
+Taking care so they would not be attracted by the sound of his steps,
+Tristan crept in the shadows of roofless columns, shattered porticoes
+and dismantled temples, half hidden amid the dark foliage that sprang
+up among the very fanes and palaces of old. At times he lost sight
+of his quarry. Again they would rise up before him like evil spirits
+wandering through space.
+
+As Tristan continued in his pursuit, he began to be beset by dire
+misgivings.
+
+The twain had vanished as utterly as if the earth had swallowed them
+and he paused in his pursuit to gain his bearings. Had he followed two
+phantoms or two beings in the flesh? Had he abandoned his watch for two
+penitents who had perchance been locked in the church?
+
+What might not be happening at the Lateran at this very moment! How
+would Don Garcia construe his absence?
+
+A tremor passed through his limbs. He started to retrace his steps, but
+some unknown agency compelled him onward.
+
+Penetrating the gloomy foliage, Tristan found himself before a large
+ruin, grey and roofless, from the interior of which came, muffled and
+indistinct, the sound of voices.
+
+Two men were stealthily creeping beneath the shadow of a wall that
+extended for some distance from the ruin.
+
+Both wore long monkish garbs and were muffled from head to toe. Over
+their faces they wore vizors with slits for eyes and mouth. One of the
+twain was spare, yet muscular. His companion walked with a stooping
+gait and supported himself by a staff.
+
+The light which had attracted Tristan, emanated from a lantern which
+they had placed on the ground and which they could shade at will, but
+which cast its fitful glimmer over the grass plot, revealing what
+appeared to be a grave, from which the mould had been thrown up. At a
+short distance there stood a black and stunted yew tree. Before this
+they paused.
+
+Now, from under his black cassock, the taller produced a strange
+object, the nature of which Tristan was unable to discover by the
+fitful light of the moon.
+
+No sooner was it revealed to his companion, than the latter began to
+chant a weird incantation, in which he who held the strange object
+joined.
+
+Louder and more strident grew their voices, and, notwithstanding the
+warmth of the summer night, Tristan felt an icy shudder permeate his
+whole being while, with a strange fascination, he watched the twain.
+
+Now he who supported himself by a staff uttered a shrill inarticulate
+outcry, and, producing a long, gleaming knife from under his cassock,
+stabbed the thing viciously, while his voice rose in mad, strident
+screams:
+
+"Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"
+
+The fit of madness seemed to have caught his companion. Producing a
+knife similar to that of the other he, too, stabbed the object he held
+in his hand, shrieking deliriously:
+
+"Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!"
+
+An hour was to come when Tristan was to learn the terrible import
+of the apparently meaningless jumble which struck his ear with mad
+discordance.
+
+Suddenly he felt upon himself the insane gleam of two eyes, peering
+from the slits of the bent figure's mask.
+
+There was a death-like stillness, as both looked towards the intruder.
+Tristan would have fled, but his feet seemed rooted to the spot. His
+energies were paralyzed as under the influence of a terrible spell.
+
+The stooping form raised aloft a small phial. A bluish vapor floated
+upward, in thin spiral curls.
+
+The effect was instantaneous. Tristan was seized by a great drowsiness.
+His limbs refused to support him. He no longer felt the ground under
+his feet. His hand went to his head and, reeling like a drunken man,
+he fell among the tall weeds that grew in riotous profusion around the
+ancient masonry.
+
+The setting moon shone out from behind a fleecy cloud, and in the
+pallid crimson of her light the ill-famed ruins of the ancient temple
+of Isis rose weird and ghostly in the summer night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE FEAST OF THEODORA
+
+
+A fairy-like radiance pervaded the great pavilion in the sunken gardens
+of Theodora on Mount Aventine.
+
+It was a vast circular hall, roofed in by a lofty dome of richest
+malachite, from the centre of which was suspended a huge globe of
+fire, flinging blood-red rays on the amber colored silken carpets and
+tapestries that covered floors and walls. The dome was supported by
+rows upon rows of tall tapering crystal columns, clear as translucent
+water and green as the grass in spring, and between and beyond these
+columns were large oval shaped casements set wide open to the summer
+night, through which the gleam of a broad lake, laden with water
+lilies, could be seen shimmering in the yellow radiance of the moon.
+
+The centre of the hall was occupied by a long table in the form of a
+horseshoe, upon which glittered vessels of gold, crystal and silver
+in the sheen of the revolving globe of fire, heaped with all the
+accessories of a sumptuous banquet, such as might have been spread
+before the ancient gods of Olympus in the heyday of their legendary
+prime.
+
+Strange scents assailed the nostrils: pomegranate and frankincense,
+myrrh, spikenard and saffron, cinnamon and calamus mingled their
+perfume with the insidious distillations of the jasmine, and spiral
+clouds of incense rose from tripods of bronze to the vaulted ceiling.
+
+Inside the horseshoe, black African slaves, attired in fantastic
+liveries of yellow and blue, crimson and white, orange and green,
+carried aloft jewelled flagons and goblets, massive gold dishes and
+great platters of painted earthenware.
+
+There were wines from Cyprus and Malvasia, from Montepulciano and the
+sunny slopes of Hymettus, Chianti and Lacrymae Christi.
+
+The almost incredible brilliancy of the assembled company, contrasting
+with the fantastic background, caught the eye as with a stab of pain,
+held the gaze for a single instant of frozen incredulity, then gripped
+the throat in a choking sensation by reason of its wonder.
+
+Lounging on divans of velvet and embroidered satin from the looms of
+fabled Cathay, set in the old Roman fashion round the table, eating,
+drinking, gossiping and occasionally bursting into wild snatches of
+song, were a company of distinguished looking personages, richly
+and brilliantly attired, bent upon enjoying the pleasures offered
+by the immediate hour. All who laid claim to any distinction in the
+seven-hilled city were there, the lords of the Campagna and of the
+adjacent fiefs of the Church. Strangers from all parts of the inhabited
+globe were there, steeping their bewildered brain in the splendors
+that assailed their eyes on every point; from Africa and Iceland, from
+Portugal and India, from Burgundy and Aquitaine, from Granada and from
+Greece, from Germania and Provence, from Persia and the Baltic shores.
+Their fantastic and semi-barbaric costumes seemed to enhance the
+grotesque splendor of the banquet hall.
+
+The Romans were acquainting their guests with the exalted rank of
+the woman who ruled the city as surely as ever had Marozia from the
+Emperor's Tomb. And the strangers listened wide-eyed and with bated
+breath.
+
+Near the raised dais which Theodora was to occupy, at the head of
+the table, there were three couches reserved for guests who, like the
+hostess, had not yet arrived.
+
+Below these, by the side of a martial stranger with the air of one
+who would fain sweep the board clear of his neighbors on either
+hand, devouring his food in fierce silence, sat the Prefect of Rome,
+endeavoring to expound the qualities of his countrymen to the silent
+guest, interspersing his encomiums now and then with a rapturous eulogy
+of Theodora.
+
+"Monstrous times have robbed us Romans of the power of the sword.
+But they cannot rob us of the power of the spirit, which will endure
+forever."
+
+The stranger replied with a stony stare of contempt.
+
+Beside the Lord Atenulf of Benevento sat a tall girl with heavy coils
+of blue black hair, eyes that smouldered with a sombre light, curved
+carnation lips set in a perfect, oval face, and seeming more scarlet
+than they were, owing to her ivory pallor, the tint of the furled
+magnolia bud which is, perhaps, only seen to perfection in Italy and
+especially in Rome.
+
+She looked at the grave-faced guest with quickened eyes.
+
+Snatching some vine leaves from a pyramid of grapes, as purple as the
+tapestries of Tyre, she arose and laying her hand on the stranger's
+arm, said laughingly:
+
+"Oh, what a brow! Dark as a thundercloud in June. Let me crown you with
+the leaves of the vine! Perchance the hour will evoke the mood!"
+
+She twisted the leaves into a wreath and dropped them lightly on his
+head. The eyes of the silent guest, set in a face of sanguine color,
+leered viciously, with the looks of one who believes himself, however
+mistakenly, master of himself. There was a contemptuous curl about his
+lips. They were thick lips and florid.
+
+"Ah!" he turned to the girl in a barbarous jargon, "you are one of
+those who go veiled in the streets."
+
+And as he spoke his eyes leered with yet livelier malice.
+
+The girl shrank back.
+
+"Those who go veiled know more than ordinary folk," she replied, then
+mingled with the other guests.
+
+A young woman of great beauty, with light hair and blue eyes, sat
+beside young Fabio of the Cavalli. Her bare arms, white as snow, and of
+exquisite contour, encircled his neck, while he drank and drank. Now
+and then she sipped of the wine, Lacrymae Christi from Viterbo, of the
+greenish straw color of the chrysoberyl.
+
+Some one had put red poppy leaves in Roxana's hair, and as she sat by
+the side of the youth, she had the air and appearance of a Corybante.
+
+Now and then she gave a glance at the purple curtain in the background,
+and one who watched her closely might have seen a strange sparkle in
+the depths of her clear blue eyes. With a look of disappointment she
+turned away, as not a ripple of air stirred the curtain's heavy fold.
+Then her arms stole anew round the youth, who drained one goblet after
+another, as if each succeeding one yielded up a new secret to him.
+
+Roxana marked it well.
+
+Her eyes danced to his, whenever Fabio's gaze stole towards the purple
+curtain which screened the mysterious garden beyond, in which the spray
+of a fountain cast silvery showers into branch-shadowed thickets,
+hidden retreats and silent, leafy alcoves, where flowers swooned in the
+moonlight and gave up their perfume for love.
+
+From the immobile sable hangings the youth's eyes wandered back to
+Roxana's face, but there lurked something strange in their depths.
+
+"Am I not more beautiful than Theodora?" whispered the woman by his
+side, extending her marble arms before her lover.
+
+"You are beautiful, my Roxana," he stammered. "But Theodora is the most
+beautiful woman on earth."
+
+Roxana turned very white at his words.
+
+"She has challenged me to come to her feast," she said in a low tone,
+audible only to Fabio. "Let her look to herself!"
+
+And her eyes were alight with the desire of the meeting.
+
+On an adjoining couch reclined the huge jelly of a man who looked like
+Pan, enormously swollen and bloated. His paunch bellied out over the
+table like a full blown sail. His face was stained with many a night
+of wine. The mulberry eyes twinkled merrily. The swollen lips babbled
+incessantly.
+
+It was the Lord Boso of Caprara.
+
+"They say that seven devils were cast out of Magdalene--" he turned to
+Roxana--
+
+The Lord of Norba interposed.
+
+"De mortuis nil nisi bene! Natura abhorret vacuum! I drink to the
+thirst to come!"
+
+And he raised his goblet and tossed it off.
+
+The Lord Atenulf rose to his feet, swaying and supporting himself with
+one hand on the table. His great swollen face, big as a ham, creased
+itself into merriment.
+
+"Let the wine ferret out the thirst!" he shouted, and drained off his
+tankard.
+
+"Argus hath a hundred eyes! A butler ought to have a hundred hands!"
+shouted the Lord of Camerino. "Wine,--slaves! Wine,--fill up in the
+name of Lucifer!"
+
+"My tongue is peeling!"
+
+"Wine! Wine!"
+
+The Africans filled up the empty tankards.
+
+"Privatio praesupponit habitum!" opined the Prefect of Rome.
+
+"We drink to Life and the fleeting Hour."
+
+"Pereat Mors."
+
+And the goblets clanged.
+
+"Who speaks of Death?" shrieked young Fabio of the Cavalli, attempting
+to rise. The wine was taking effect on his brain.
+
+Roxana drew him back on the couch beside her.
+
+"Fill the goblets! A brimmer of Chianti, red as blood--"
+
+"Or the poppies in Roxana's hair!"
+
+"Wine from Samos--sweetened with honey."
+
+"A decoction of Nectar and Ambrosia."
+
+The strangers who crowded the vast hall began to join in the mirth and
+jollity of their Roman hosts, their Oriental apathy or frozen stolidity
+melting slowly in the fumes of the wines.
+
+A curtain had parted and a bevy of girls clad in diaphanous gowns of
+finest silver gauze made their way into the banquet hall and took their
+seats, as choice directed, beside the guests. Peals of laughter echoed
+through the vaulted dome, and excited voices were raised in clamorous
+disputations and contentious arguments. The wine began to flow more
+lavishly. The assembled guests grew more and more careless of their
+utterances. They flung themselves full length upon their luxurious
+couches, now pulling out handfuls of flowers from the tall malachite
+jars that stood near, and pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion,
+now summoning the attendant slaves to refill their wine cups, while
+they lay lounging at ease among the silken cushions.
+
+There was a moment's silence, sudden, unexplained, like the presage of
+some dark event.
+
+The slow solemn boom of a bell sounded the hour of midnight.
+
+The voices had ceased.
+
+With one accord, as though drawn by some magnetic spell, all turned
+their eyes towards the purple curtain through which Theodora had just
+entered, and, rising from their seats, they broke into boisterous
+welcome and acclaim. Young Fabio of the Cavalli whose flushed face
+had all the wanton, effeminate beauty of a pictured Dionysos, reeled
+forward, goblet in hand and, tossing the wine in the air, so that it
+splashed down at his feet, staining his garments, he shouted:
+
+"Vanish dull moon and be ashamed, for a fairer planet
+rules the midnight sky! To Theodora--the Queen of Love!"
+
+[Illustration: "Pelting the dancing girls for idle diversion"]
+
+He staggered a few paces towards her, holding the empty goblet in
+his hand. His hair tossed back from his brows and entangled in a
+half-crushed wreath of vine-leaves, his garments disordered, his
+demeanor that of one possessed of a delirium of the senses, he stared
+at the wonderful apparition when, meeting Theodora's icy glance, he
+started as if he had been suddenly stabbed. The goblet fell from his
+hand and a shudder ran through his supple frame.
+
+By the side of the Grand Chamberlain, who was garbed in black from head
+to toe, Theodora descended the steps that led from the raised platform
+into the brilliant hall.
+
+Greeting her guests with her inscrutable smile, she moved as a queen
+through a crowd of courtiers, the changing lights of crimson and green
+playing about her like living flame, her head, wreathed with jewelled
+serpents, rising proudly erect from her golden mantle, her eyes
+scintillating with a gleam of mockery which made them look so lustrous,
+yet so cold.
+
+Thus she strode towards the dais, draped in carnation-colored silks and
+surmounted by an arch of ebony.
+
+For the space of a moment she paused, surveying her guests. A film
+seemed to pass over her eyes as her gaze rested upon one who had slowly
+arisen and was facing her in white silence.
+
+With a slight bend of the head Roxana acknowledged Theodora's silent
+greeting; then, amidst loud shouts of acclaim she sank languidly upon
+her couch, trying to soothe young Fabio, who had raised his fallen
+goblet and held it out to a passing slave. The latter refilled it with
+wine, which he gulped down thirstily, though the purple liquid brought
+no color to his drawn and ashen cheek.
+
+Theodora paid no heed to the youth's discomfiture, but Roxana's face
+was white as death, and her lips were set as the lips of a marble mask
+as she gazed towards the ebony arch, upon which the eyes of all present
+were riveted.
+
+With a rustle as of falling leaves Theodora's gorgeous mantle had
+released itself from its jewelled clasps, and had slowly fallen on the
+perfumed carpet at her feet.
+
+A sigh quivered audibly through the hall, whether of joy, hope, desire
+or despair it was difficult to tell. The pride and peril of matchless
+loveliness was revealed in all its fatal seductiveness and invincible
+strength. In irresistible perfection she stood revealed before her
+guests in a robe of diaphanous silver gauze, which clung like a pale
+mist about the wonderful curves of her form and seemed to float about
+her like a summer cloud. Her dazzling white arms were bare to the
+shoulders. A silver serpent with a head of sapphires girdled her waist.
+
+Sinking indolently among the silken cushions of the dais, where she
+gleamed in her wonderful whiteness like a glistening pearl, set in
+ebony, Theodora motioned to her guests to resume their places at the
+board.
+
+She was instantly obeyed.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain took what appeared to be his accustomed seat
+at her right, the seat at her left remaining vacant. For a moment
+Theodora's gaze rested thereon with a puzzled air, then she seemed to
+pay no farther heed.
+
+But a close observer might have noted a shade of displeasure on the
+brow of the Grand Chamberlain, which no attempt at dissimulation could
+dispel.
+
+A triumphant peal of music, the clash of mingled flutes, hautboys,
+tubas and harps rushed through the dome like a wind sweeping in from
+tropical seas.
+
+Basil turned to Theodora with a searching glance.
+
+"One couch still awaits its guest."
+
+She nodded languidly.
+
+"Tristan--the pilgrim. He is late. Know you aught of him, my lord?"
+
+There was an air of mockery in her tone, not unmingled with concern.
+
+Basil's thin lips straightened.
+
+"Perchance the holy man hath other sheep in mind. What is he to you,
+Lady Theodora? Your concern for him seems of the suddenest."
+
+"What is it to you, my lord?" she flashed in return. "Am I accountable
+to you for the moods that sway my soul?"
+
+A mocking laugh startled both the Grand Chamberlain and Theodora.
+
+Low as the words between them had been spoken, they had reached the ear
+of Roxana. Watchful of every shade of expression in Theodora's face,
+she was resolved to take up the gauntlet her hated rival had thrown to
+her, to draw her out of her defences into open conflict, for which she
+longed with all the fire of her soul. Determined to wrest the dominion
+of Rome from Marozia's beautiful sister, she was resolved to stake her
+all, counting upon the effect of her wonderful beauty and her physical
+perfection, which was a match for Theodora's in every point.
+
+This desire on Roxana's part was precipitated by the strange demeanor
+of young Fabio of the Cavalli. From the moment Theodora had entered
+the banquet hall his fevered gaze had devoured her wonderful beauty.
+A feverish restlessness had taken possession of the youth and he had
+rudely repelled Roxana when she tried to soothe his wine-besotten brain.
+
+"Perchance," she turned to Theodora, "remembering how Circé of old
+changed her lovers into swine, the sainted pilgrim no longer worships
+at Santa Maria of the Aventine."
+
+Theodora started at the sound of her rival's hated voice as if an asp
+had stung her.
+
+"Perchance the well-known blandishments of our fair Roxana might
+accomplish as much, if report speaks true," she replied, returning the
+smouldering challenge in the other woman's eyes.
+
+"And why not?" came the purring response. "Am I not your match in body
+and soul?"
+
+Every vestige of color had faded from Theodora's cheeks. For a moment
+the two women seemed to search each other's souls, their bosoms
+heaving, their eyes alight with the desire for the conflict.
+
+Roxana slowly arose and strode toward the vacant seat at Theodora's
+left.
+
+"When you circled the Rosary on yesternight, fairest Theodora," she
+purred, "was he not there--waiting for you?"
+
+Instead of Theodora, it was Basil who made reply.
+
+"Of whom do you speak?"
+
+Again the silvery ripple of Roxana's laughter floated above the din.
+
+"Perchance, my Lord Basil, our fair Theodora should be able to
+enlighten you on that point--"
+
+"Of whom do you speak?" Basil turned to the woman.
+
+There was something ominous in his eyes. His face was pale.
+
+Theodora regarded him contemptuously, her dark slumbrous eyes turning
+from him to the woman.
+
+"Beware lest I be tempted to strangle you," she spoke in a low tone,
+her white hands opening and closing convulsively.
+
+"Like Persephoné, your Circassian,--in the Emperor's Tomb?" came the
+taunting reply.
+
+Theodora's face was white as lightning.
+
+"I should not leave the work undone!"
+
+"Neither should I," came the purring reply, as Roxana extended her
+wonderful hands and arms. "Meanwhile--will you not inform your guests
+of the story of the pilgrim, who wellnigh caused Marozia's sister to
+enter a nunnery?"
+
+A group of listeners had gathered about.
+
+Basil was swaying to and fro in his seat with suppressed fury.
+
+"One convent at least would be damned from gable to refectory," he
+muttered, emptying the tankard which one of the Africans had just
+replenished.
+
+Theodora regarded him icily. Her inscrutable countenance gave no hint
+of her thoughts. She did not even seem to hear the questions which fell
+thick and fast about her, but there was something in the velvet depths
+of her eyes that would have caused even the boldest to tremble in the
+consciousness of having incurred her anger.
+
+The Lord of Norba reeled towards the couch, where Roxana had taken her
+seat, blinking out of small watery eyes and flirting with his lordly
+buskins.
+
+"How came it about?"
+
+"What was he like?"
+
+Theodora turned slowly from the one to the other. Then with a voice
+vibrant with contempt she said:
+
+"A man!"
+
+"And you were counting your beads?" shouted the Lord Atenulf in so
+amazed a tone, that the guests broke out into peals of laughter.
+
+"It was then it happened," Roxana related, without relating.
+
+"How mysterious," shivered some one.
+
+"Will you not tell us?" Roxana challenged Theodora anew.
+
+Their eyes met. Roxana turned to her auditors.
+
+"Our fair Theodora had been suddenly touched by the spirit," she began
+in her low musical voice. "Withdrawing from the eyes of man she gave
+herself up to holy meditations. In this mood she nightly circled the
+Penitent's Rosary at Santa Maria of the Aventine, praying that the
+saint might take compassion upon her and deliver unto her keeping a
+perfect, saintly man, pure and undefiled. And to add weight to her
+own prayers, we, too, circled the Rosary; Gisla, Adelhita, Pamela and
+myself. And we prayed very earnestly."
+
+She paused for a moment and looked about, as if to gauge the impression
+her tale was producing on the assembled guests. Her smiling eyes swept
+the face of Theodora who was listening as intently as if the incident
+about to be related had happened to another, her sphinx-like face
+betraying not a sign of emotion.
+
+"And then?"
+
+It was Basil's voice, hoarse and constrained.
+
+"Then," Roxana continued, "the miracle came to pass before our very
+eyes. Behind one of the monolith pillars there stood one in a pilgrim's
+garb, young and tall of stature. His gaze followed our rotations, and
+each time we circled about him our fair Theodora offered thanks to the
+saint for granting her prayer--"
+
+She paused and again her gaze mockingly swept Theodora's sphinx-like
+face.
+
+"And then?" spoke the voice of Basil.
+
+"When our devotions had come to a close," Roxana turned to the speaker,
+"Theodora sent Persephoné to conduct the saintly stranger to her
+bowers. And then the unlooked for happened. The saintly stranger fled,
+like Joseph of old. He did not even leave his garb."
+
+There was an outburst of uproarious mirth.
+
+"But do these things ever happen?" fluted the Poet Bembo.
+
+"In the realms of fable," shouted the Lord of Norba.
+
+"Now men have become wiser."
+
+"And women more circumspect."
+
+Theodora turned to the speaker.
+
+"Perchance traditions have been merely reversed."
+
+"Some recent events do not seem to support the theory," drawled the
+Grand Chamberlain.
+
+Theodora regarded him with her strange inscrutable smile.
+
+"Who knows,--if all were told?"
+
+"The fact remains," Roxana persisted in her taunts, "that our fair
+Theodora's power has its limits; that there is one man at least whom
+she may not drug with the poison sweetness of her song."
+
+In Theodora's eyes gleamed a smouldering fire, as she met the
+insufferable taunts of the other woman.
+
+"Why do you not try your own charms upon him, fairest Roxana?" she
+turned to her tormentor. "Charms which, I grant you, are second not
+even to mine."
+
+Roxana's bosom heaved. A strange fire smouldered in her eyes.
+
+"And deem you I could not take him from you, if I choose?" she replied,
+the pupils of her eyes strangely dilated.
+
+"Not if I choose to make him mine!" flashed Theodora.
+
+Roxana's contemptuous mirth cut her to the quick.
+
+"You have tried and failed!"
+
+"I have neither tried nor have I failed."
+
+"Then you mean to try again, fairest Theodora?" came the insidious,
+purring reply.
+
+"That is as I choose!"
+
+"It shall be as I choose."
+
+"What do you mean, fairest Roxana?"
+
+"I mean to conquer him--to make him mine--to steep his senses in so
+wild a delirium that he shall forget his God, his garb, his honor. And,
+when I have done with him, I shall send him to the devil--or to you,
+fairest Theodora--to finish, what I began. This to prove you a vain
+boaster, who has failed to make good every claim you have put forth--"
+
+Theodora was very pale. In her voice there was an unnatural calm as she
+turned to the other woman.
+
+"You have boasted, you will make this austere pilgrim your own, body
+and soul--you will cast the tatters of his soiled virtue at my feet.
+I did not desire him. But now"--her eyes sank into those of the other
+woman, "I mean to have him,--and I shall--with you, fairest Roxana, and
+all your power of seduction against me! I shall have him--and when I
+have done with him, not even you shall desire him--nor that other, whom
+you serve--"
+
+Both women had risen to their feet and challenged each other with their
+eyes.
+
+"By the powers of darkness, you shall not!" Roxana returned, pale to
+the lips.
+
+"Take him from me--if you can!" Theodora flashed. "I shall conquer
+you--and him!"
+
+At this point the Grand Chamberlain interposed.
+
+"Were it not wise," he drawled, looking from the one to the other, "to
+acquaint this holy man with the perils that beset his soul, since the
+two most beautiful and virtuous ladies in Rome seem resolved to guide
+him on his Way of the Cross?"
+
+There was a moment of silence, then he continued in the same drawl,
+which veiled emotions he dared not reveal in this assembly.
+
+"Deem you, the man who journeyed hundreds of leagues to obtain
+absolution for having kissed a woman in wedlock has aught to fear from
+such as you?"
+
+Ere Theodora could make reply the tantalizing purring voice of Roxana
+struck her ear.
+
+"Surely this is no man--"
+
+"A man he is, nevertheless," Basil retorted hotly. "One night I
+wandered out upon the silent Aventine. Losing myself among the ruins,
+I heard voices in the abode of the Monk of Cluny. Fearing, lest some
+one should attempt to harm this holy friar," he continued, with a side
+glance at Theodora, "I entered unseen. I overheard his confession."
+
+There was profound silence.
+
+It seemed too monstrously absurd. Absolution for a kiss!
+
+Roxana spoke at last, and her veiled mockery strained her rival's
+temper to the breaking point. Her words stung, as needles would the
+naked flesh.
+
+"Then," she said with deliberate slowness, "if our fair Theodora
+persist in her unholy desire, what else is there for me to do but to
+take him from her just to save the poor man's soul?"
+
+Theodora's white hands yearned for the other woman's throat.
+
+"Deem you, your charms would snare the good pilgrim, should I will to
+make him mine?" she flashed.
+
+"Why not?" Roxana purred. "Shall we try? Are you afraid?"--
+
+"Of you?" Theodora shrilled.
+
+A strange fire burnt in Roxana's eyes.
+
+"Of the ordeal! Once upon a time you took from me the boy I loved. Now
+I shall take from you the man you desire!"
+
+"I challenge you!"
+
+"To the death!" Roxana flashed, appraising her rival's charms against
+her own. Her further utterance was checked by the sudden entrance of
+one of the Africans, who prostrated himself before Theodora, muttering
+some incoherent words at which both the woman and Basil gave a start.
+
+"Have him thrown into the street," Basil turned to Theodora.
+
+"Have him brought in," Theodora commanded.
+
+For the space of a few moments intense silence reigned throughout the
+pavilion. Then the curtains at the farther end parted, admitting two
+huge Africans, who carried between them the seemingly lifeless form of
+a man.
+
+An imperious gesture of Theodora directed them to approach with their
+burden, and a cry of surprise and dismay broke from her lips as she
+gazed into the white, still features of Tristan.
+
+He was unconscious, but faintly breathing, and upon his garb were
+strange stains, that looked like blood. The Africans placed their
+burden on the couch from which Roxana had arisen, and Theodora summoned
+the Moorish physician Bahram from the lower end of the table, where he
+had indulged in a learned dispute with a Persian sage. The other guests
+thronged about, curious to see and to hear.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain changed color when his gaze first lighted on
+the prostrate form and he felt inclined to make light of the matter
+hinting at the effect of Italian wines upon strangers unaccustomed
+to the vintage. The ashen pallor of Tristan's cheeks had not remained
+unremarked by Theodora, as she turned from the unconscious victim of a
+villainy to the man beside her, whom in some way she connected with the
+deed.
+
+Basil's comment elicited but a glance of contempt as, approaching the
+couch whereon he lay, Theodora eagerly watched the Moorish physician
+in his efforts to revive the unconscious man. Tristan's teeth were so
+tightly set that it required the insertion of a steel bar to pry them
+apart.
+
+Bahram poured some strong wine down the throat of the still unconscious
+man, then placed him in a sitting position and continued his efforts
+until, with a violent fit of coughing, Tristan opened his eyes.
+
+It was some time, however, until he regained his faculties sufficiently
+to manifest his emotions, and the bewilderment with which his gaze
+wandered from one face to the other, would have been amusing had not
+the mystery which encompassed his presence inspired a feeling of awe.
+The Moorish physician, upon being questioned by Theodora, stated, some
+powerful poison had caused the coma which bound Tristan's limbs and
+added, in another hour he would have been beyond the pale of human
+aid. More than this he would not reveal and, his task accomplished, he
+withdrew among the guests.
+
+From the Grand Chamberlain, whose stony gaze was riveted upon him,
+Tristan turned to the woman who reclined by his side on the divan. His
+vocal chords seemed paralyzed, but his other faculties were keenly
+alive to the strangeness of his surroundings. Perceiving his inability
+to reply to her questions, Theodora soothed him to silence.
+
+Vainly endeavoring to speak, Tristan partook but sparingly of the
+refreshments which she offered to him with her own hands. She was
+now deliberately endeavoring to enmesh his senses, and her exotic,
+wonderful beauty could not but accomplish with him what it had
+accomplished with all who came under its fatal spell. An insidious,
+sensuous perfume seemed to float about her, which caused Tristan's
+brain to reel. Her bare arms and wonderful hands made him dizzy. Her
+eyes held his own by their strange, subtle spell. Unfathomed mysteries
+seemed to lurk in their hidden depths. Without endeavoring to engage
+him in conversation, much as she longed to question him on certain
+points, she tried to soothe him by passing her cool white hands over
+his fevered brow. And all the time she was pondering on the nature of
+his infliction and the author thereof, as her gaze pensively swept the
+banquet hall.
+
+The guests had, one by one, returned to their seats. Theodora also had
+arisen, after having made Tristan comfortable on the couch assigned to
+him.
+
+Unseen, the heavy folds of the curtain behind her parted. A face peered
+for a moment into her own, that seemed to possess no human attributes.
+Theodora gave a hardly perceptible nod and the face disappeared.
+The Grand Chamberlain took his seat by her side and Roxana flinging
+Theodora a glittering challenge seated herself beside Tristan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE CHALICE OF OBLIVION
+
+
+A delirium of the senses such as he had never experienced to this
+hour began to steal over Tristan, as he found himself seated between
+Theodora, the fairest sorceress that ever triumphed over the frail
+spirit of man--and Roxana, who was whispering strange words into his
+bewildered ears.
+
+Across the board the gloomy form of the Grand Chamberlain in his sombre
+attire loomed up like a shadow of evil in a garden of strangely tinted
+orchids.
+
+How the time passed on, he could not tell. Peals of laughter resounded
+now and then through the vaulted dome and voices were raised in
+clamorous disputations that just sheered off the boundary-line of
+actual quarrel.
+
+Theodora seemed to pay but little heed to Tristan. Roxana had coiled
+her white arms about him and, whenever he raised his goblet, their
+hands touched and a stream of fire coursed through his veins. Only now
+and then Theodora's drowsy eyes shot forth a fiery gleam from under
+their heavily fringed lids.
+
+Roxana smiled into her rival's eyes and, raising a goblet of wine to
+her lips, kissed the brim and gave it to Tristan with an indescribably
+graceful swaying motion of her whole form that reminded one of a tall
+white lily, bowing to the breeze.
+
+Tristan seized the cup eagerly, drank from it and returned it and, as
+their hands touched again, he could hardly restrain himself from giving
+way to a transport of passion. He was no longer himself. His brain
+seemed to reel. He felt as if he would plunge into the crater of a
+seething volcano without heeding the flames.
+
+Even Hellayne's pale image seemed forgotten for the time.
+
+The guests waxed more and more noisy, their merriment more and more
+boisterous. Many were now very much the worse for their frequent
+libations, and young Fabio particularly seemed to display a desire to
+break away from all bonds of prudent reserve.
+
+He lay full length on his silken divan, singing little snatches of
+song to himself and, pulling the vine-wreath from his tumbled locks,
+as though he found it too cumbersome, he flung it on the ground amid
+the other debris of the feast. Then, folding his arms lazily behind
+his head, he stared straight and fixedly at Theodora, surveying every
+curve of her body, every slight motion of her head, every faint
+smile that played upon her lips. She was listening with an air of
+ill-disguised annoyance to Basil, whose wine-inflamed countenance and
+passion-distorted features left little to the surmise regarding his
+state of mind.
+
+On the couch adjoining the one of Fabio of the Cavalli reclined a
+nobleman from Gades, who, having partaken less lavishly of the wine
+than the rest of the guests, was engaged in a dispute with the burly
+stranger from the North, whose temper seemed to have undergone little
+change for the better for his having filled his paunch.
+
+In the barbarous jargon of tenth century Latin they commented upon
+Theodora, upon the banquet, upon the guests and upon Rome in general,
+and the Spaniard expressed surprise that Marozia's sister had failed to
+revenge Marozia's death, contenting herself to spend her life in the
+desert wastes of Aventine, among hermits, libertines and fools.
+
+Notwithstanding his besotten mood Fabio had heard and understood every
+word the stranger uttered. Before he, to whom his words was addressed
+could make reply, he shouted insolently:
+
+"Ask Theodora why she is content to live in her enchanted groves
+instead in the Emperor's Tomb, haunted by the spectre of strangled
+Marozia!"
+
+A terrible silence followed this utterance. The eyes of all present
+wandered towards the speaker. The Grand Chamberlain ground his teeth.
+Every vestige of color had faded from his face.
+
+"Are you afraid?" shouted Fabio, raising himself upon his elbows and
+nodding towards Theodora.
+
+The woman turned her splendid, flashing orbs slowly upon him. A chill,
+steely glitter leaped from their velvety depths.
+
+"Pray, Fabio, be heedful of your speech," said she with a quiver in her
+voice, curiously like the suppressed snarl of a tigress. "Most men are
+fools, like yourself, and by their utterance shall they be judged!"
+
+Fabio broke out into boisterous mirth.
+
+"And Theodora rules with a rod of iron. Even the Lord Basil is but a
+toy in her hands! Behold him,--yonder."
+
+Basil had arisen, his hand on the hilt of his poniard. Theodora laid
+her white hand upon his arm.
+
+"Nay--" she said sweetly, "this is a matter for myself to settle."
+
+"A very anchorite," the mocking voice of Fabio rose above the silence.
+
+A young noble of the Cætani tried to quiet him, but in vain:
+
+"The Lord Basil is no monk."
+
+"Wherefore then his midnight meditations in the devil's own chapel
+yonder, in which our fair Theodora officiates as Priestess of Love?"
+
+"Midnight meditations?" interposed the Spaniard, not knowing that he
+was treading on dangerous ground.
+
+"Ask Theodora," shouted Fabio, "how many lovers are worshipping at her
+midnight shrine!"
+
+The silence of utter consternation prevailed. Glances of absolute
+dismay went round the table, and the stillness was as ominous as the
+hush before a thunderclap. Fabio, apparently struck by the sudden
+silence, gazed lazily from out the tumbled cushions, a vacant, besotten
+smile upon his lips.
+
+"What fools you are!" he shouted thickly. "Did you not hear me? I
+bade you ask Theodora," and suddenly he sat bolt upright, his face
+crimsoning as with an access of passion, "why the Lord Basil creeps in
+and out her palace at midnight like a skulking slave? Ask him why he
+creeps in disguise through the underground passage. Ay--stranger," he
+shouted to Tristan, "you are near enough to our lady of Witcheries. Ask
+her how many lovers have tasted of the chalice of oblivion?"
+
+Another death-like silence ensued.
+
+Even the attendants seemed to move with awed tread among the guests.
+
+Theodora and Roxana had risen almost at the same time, facing each
+other in a white silence.
+
+Roxana extended her snow-white arms towards Theodora.
+
+"Why do you not reply to your discarded lover?" she taunted her rival.
+"Shall I reply for him? You have challenged me, and I return your
+challenge! I am your match in all things, Lady Theodora. In my veins
+flows the blood of kings--in yours the blood of courtesans. There is
+not room on earth for both of us. Does not your coward soul quail
+before the issue?"
+
+Theodora turned to Roxana a face, white as marble, her eyes
+preternaturally brilliant. "You shall have your wish--even to the
+death. But--before the dark-winged messenger enfolds you with his sable
+wings you shall know Theodora as you have never known her--nor ever
+shall again."
+
+From the woman Theodora turned to the man.
+
+"Fabio," she said in her sweet mock-caressing tone, "I fear you have
+grown altogether too wise for this world. It were a pity you should
+linger in so narrow and circumscribed a sphere."
+
+She paused and beckoned to a giant Nubian who stood behind her chair.
+
+"Refill the goblets!"
+
+Her behest executed she clinked goblets with Roxana. An undying hate
+shone in the eyes of the two women as they raised the crystal goblets
+to their lips.
+
+Theodora hardly tasted of the purple beverage. Roxana eagerly drained
+her cup, then she kissed the brim and offered the fragrant goblet to
+Tristan, as her eyes challenged Theodora anew.
+
+Ere he could raise it to his lips, Theodora dashed the goblet from
+Tristan's hands and the purple wine dyed the orange colored carpet like
+dark stains of blood.
+
+White as lightning, her eyes ablaze with hidden fires, her white hands
+clenched, Roxana straightened herself to her full height, ready to
+bound at Theodora's throat, to avenge the insult and to settle now and
+here, woman to woman, the question of supremacy between them, when she
+reeled as if struck by a thunderbolt. Her hands went to her heart and
+without a moan she fell, a lifeless heap, upon the floor.
+
+Ere Tristan and the other guests could recover from their
+consternation, or fathom the import of the terrible scene, a savage
+scream from the couch upon which Fabio reclined, turned the attention
+of every one in that direction.
+
+Fabio, suddenly sobered, had risen from his couch and drained his
+goblet. It rolled upon the carpet from his nerveless grasp. For a
+moment his arms wildly beat the air, then he reeled and fell prone upon
+the floor. His staring eyes and his face, livid with purple spots,
+proclaimed him dead, even ere the Moorish physician could come to his
+aid.
+
+Theodora clapped her hands, and at the signal four giant Nubians
+appeared and, taking up the lifeless bodies, disappeared with them in
+the moonlit garden outside.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain, rising from his seat, informed the guests that
+a sudden ailment had befallen the woman and the man. They were being
+removed to receive care and attention.
+
+Though a lingering doubt hovered in the minds of those who had
+witnessed the scene, some kept silent through fear, others whose brains
+were befuddled by the fumes of the wine gave utterance to inarticulate
+sounds, from which the view they took of the matter, was not entirely
+clear.
+
+The shock had restored to Tristan the lost faculty of speech. For a
+moment he stared horrified at Theodora. Her impassive calm roused in
+him a feeling of madness. With an imprecation upon his lips he rushed
+upon her, his gleaming dagger raised aloft.
+
+But ere he could carry out his intent, Theodora's clear, cold voice
+smote the silence.
+
+"Disarm him!"
+
+One of the Africans had glided stealthily to his side, and the steel
+was wrenched from Tristan's grip.
+
+"Be silent,--for your life!" some one whispered into his ear.
+
+Suddenly he grew weak. Theodora's languid eyes met his own, utterly
+paralyzing his efforts. A smile parted her lips as, without a trace of
+anger, she kissed the ivory bud of a magnolia and threw it to him.
+
+As one in a trance he caught the flower. Its fragrance seemed to creep
+into his brain, rob his manhood of its strength. Sinking submissively
+into his seat he gazed up at her in wondering wistfulness. Was there
+ever woman so bewilderingly beautiful? A strange enervating ecstasy
+took him captive, as he permitted his eyes to dwell on the fairness
+of her face, the ivory pallor of her skin, the supple curves of her
+form. As one imprisoned in a jungle exhaling poison miasmas loses all
+control over his faculties, feeling a drowsy lassitude stealing over
+him, so Tristan gave himself up to the spell that encompassed him,
+heedless of the memories of the past.
+
+Now Theodora touched a small bell and suddenly the marble floor yawned
+asunder and the banquet table with all its accessories vanished
+underground with incredible swiftness. Then the floor closed again. The
+broad centre space of the hall was now clear of obstruction and the
+guests roused themselves from their drowsy postures of half-inebriated
+languor.
+
+Tristan drank in the scene with eager, dazzled eyes and heavily beating
+heart. Love and hate strangely mingled stole over him more strongly
+than ever, in the sultry air of this strange summer night, this night
+of sweet delirium in which all that was most dangerous and erring in
+his nature waked into his life and mastered his better will.
+
+Outside the water lilies nodded themselves to sleep among their
+shrouding leaves. Like a sheet of molten gold spread the lake over the
+spot where Roxana and Fabio had found a common grave.
+
+Surrounding this lake spread a garden, golden with the sleepy radiance
+of the late moon, and peacefully fair in the dreaminess of drooping
+foliage, moss-covered turf and star-sprinkled violet sky. In full
+view, and lighted by the reflected radiance flung out from within, a
+miniature waterfall tumbled headlong into a rocky recess, covered and
+overgrown with lotus-lilies and plumy ferns. Here and there golden
+tents glimmered through the shadows cast by the great magnolia trees,
+whose half-shut buds wafted balmy odors through the drowsy summer
+night. The sounds of flutes, of citherns and cymbals floated from
+distant bosquets, as though elfin shepherds were guarding their fairy
+flocks in some hidden nook. By degrees the light grew warmer and more
+mellow in tint till it resembled the deep hues of an autumn sunset,
+flecked through the emerald haze, in the sunken gardens of Theodora.
+
+Another clash of cymbals, stormily persistent, then the chimes of
+bells, such as bring tears to the eyes of many a wayfarer, who hears
+the silvery echoes when far away from home and straightway thinks of
+his childhood days, those years of purest happiness.
+
+A curious, stifling sensation began to oppress Tristan as he listened
+to those bells. They reminded him of strange things, things to which he
+could not give a name, odd suggestions of fair women who were wont to
+pray for those they loved, and who believed that their prayers would be
+heard in heaven and would be granted!
+
+With straining eyes he gazed out into the languorous beauty of the
+garden that spread its emerald glamour around him, and a sob broke from
+his lips as the peals of the chiming bells, softened by degrees into
+subdued and tremulous semitones, the clarion clearness of the cymbals
+again smote the silent air.
+
+Ere Tristan, in his state of bewilderment, could realize what was
+happening, the great fire globe in the dome was suddenly extinguished
+and a firm hand imperiously closed on his own, drawing him along, he
+knew not whither.
+
+He glanced about him. In the semi-darkness he was able to discern
+the sheen of the lake with its white burden of water lilies, and the
+dim, branch-shadowed outlines of the moonlit garden. Theodora walked
+beside him, Theodora, whose lovely face was so perilously near his
+own, Theodora, upon whose lips hovered a smile of unutterable meaning.
+His heart beat faster; he strove in vain to imagine what fate was in
+store for him. He drank in the beauty of the night that spread her
+star-embroidered splendors about him, he was conscious of the vital
+youth and passion that throbbed in his veins, endowing him with a keen
+headstrong rapture which is said to come but once in a lifetime, and
+which in the excess of its folly will bring endless remorse in its
+wake.
+
+Suddenly he found himself in an exquisitely adorned pavilion of painted
+silk, lighted by a lamp of tenderest rose lustre and carpeted with
+softest amber colored pile. It stood apart from the rest, concealed
+as it were in a grove of its own, and surrounded by a thicket of
+orange-trees in full bloom. The fragrance of the white waxen flowers
+hung heavily upon the air, breathing forth delicate suggestions of
+languor and sleep. The measured cadence of the waterfall alone broke
+the deep stillness, and now and then the subdued and plaintive thrill
+of a nightingale, soothing itself to sleep with its own song in some
+deep-shadowed copse.
+
+Here, on a couch, such as might have been prepared for Titania,
+Theodora seated herself, while Tristan stood gazing at her in a sort
+of mad, fascinated wonderment, and gradually increasing intensity of
+passion.
+
+The alluring smile and the quick brightening of the eyes, so rare a
+thing with him who, since he had left Avalon, was used to wear so calm
+and subdued a mask, changed his aspect in an extraordinary manner. In
+an instant he seemed more alive, more intensely living, pulsing with
+the joy of the hour. He felt as if he must let the natural youth in his
+veins run riot, as Theodora's beauty and the magic of the night began
+to sting his blood.
+
+Theodora's eyes danced to his. She had marked the symptoms and knew.
+Her eyes had lost their mocking glitter and swam in a soft languor,
+that was strangely bewitching. Her lips parted in a faint sigh and a
+glance like are shot from beneath her black silken lashes.
+
+"Tristan!" she murmured tremulously and waited. Then again: "Tristan!"
+
+He knelt before her, passion sweeping over him like a hurricane, and
+took her unresisting hands in his.
+
+"Theodora!" he said, bending over her, and his voice, even to his own
+ears had a strange sound, as if some one else were speaking. "Theodora!
+What would you have of me? Speak! For my heart aches with a burden of
+dark memories conjured up by the wizard spell of your eyes!"
+
+She gently drew him down beside her on the couch.
+
+"Foolish dreamer!" she murmured, half mockingly, half tenderly. "Are
+love and passion so strange a thing that you wonder--as you sit here
+beside me?"
+
+"Love!" he said. "Is it love indeed?"
+
+He uttered the words as if he spoke to himself, in a hushed, awe-struck
+tone. But she had heard, and a flash of triumph brightened her
+beautiful face.
+
+"Ah!" and she dropped her head lower and lower, till the dark perfumed
+tresses touched his brow. "Then you do love me?"
+
+He started. A dull pang struck his heart, a chill of vague uncertainty
+and dread. He longed to take her in his arms, forget the past, the
+present, the future, life and all it held. But suddenly a vague
+thought oppressed him. There was the sense that he was dishonoring
+that other love. However unholy it had been, it was yet for him a real
+and passionate reality of his past life, and he shrank in shame from
+suppressing it. Would it not have been far nobler to have fought it
+down as the pilgrim he had meant to be than to drown its memory in a
+delirium of the senses?
+
+And--was this love indeed for the woman by his side? Was it not mere
+passion and base desire?
+
+As he remained silent the silken voice of the fairest woman he had ever
+seen once more sent its thrill through his bewildered brain in the
+fateful question:
+
+"Do you love me, Tristan?"
+
+Softly, insidiously, she entwined him with her wonderful white arms.
+Her perfumed breath fanned his cheeks; her dark tresses touched his
+brow. Her lips were thirstily ajar.
+
+He put his arms about her. Hungrily, passionately, his gaze wandered
+over her matchless form, from the small feet, encased in golden
+sandals, to the crowning masses of her dusky hair. His heart beat with
+loud, impatient thuds, like some wild thing struggling in its cage, but
+though his lips moved, no utterance came.
+
+Her arms tightened about him.
+
+"You are of the North," she said, "though you have hotter blood in
+your veins. Now under our yellow sun, and in our hot nights, when the
+moon hangs like an alabaster lamp in the sky, a beaten shield of gold
+trembling over our dreams--forget the ice in your blood. Gather the
+roses while you may! A time will come when their soft petals will have
+lost their fragrance! I love you--be mine!"
+
+And, bending towards him, she kissed him with moist, hungry lips.
+
+He fevered in her embrace. He kissed her eyes--her hair--her lips--and
+a strange dizziness stole over him, a delirium in which he was no
+longer master of himself.
+
+"Can you not be happy, Tristan?" she whispered gently. "Happy as other
+men when loved as I love you!"
+
+With a cold sinking of the heart he looked into the woman's perfect
+face. His upturned gaze rested on the glittering serpent heads that
+crowned the dusky hair, and the words of Fabio of the Cavalli knocked
+on the gates of his memory.
+
+"Happy as other men when they love--and are deceived," he said, unable
+to free himself of her entwining arms.
+
+"You shall not be deceived," she returned quickly. "You shall
+attain that which your heart desires. Your dearest hope shall be
+fulfilled,--all shall be yours--all--if you will be mine--to-night."
+
+Tristan met her burning gaze, and as he did so the strange dread
+increased.
+
+"What of the Grand Chamberlain?" he queried. "What of Basil, your
+lover?"
+
+Her answer came swift and fierce, as the hiss of a snake.
+
+"He shall die--even as Roxana--even as Fabio, he who boasted of my
+love! You shall be lord of Rome--and I--your wife--"
+
+Her words leaped into his brain with the swift, fiery action of a
+burning drug. A red mist swam before his eyes.
+
+"Love!" he cried, as one seized with sudden delirium. "What have I to
+do with love--what have you, Theodora, who make the lives of men your
+sport, and their torments your mockery? I know no name for the fever
+that consumes me, when I look upon you--no name for the ravishment that
+draws me to you in mingled bliss and agony. I would perish, Theodora.
+Kill me, and I shall pray for you! But love--love--it recalls to my
+soul a glory I have lost. There can be no love between you and me!"
+
+He spoke wildly, incoherently, scarcely knowing what he said. The
+woman's arms had fallen from him. He staggered to his feet.
+
+A low laugh broke from her lips, which curved in an evil smile.
+
+"Poor fool!" she said in her low, musical tones, "to cast away that for
+which hundreds would give their last life's blood. Madman! First to
+desire, then to spurn. Go! And beware!"
+
+She stood before him in all her white glory and loveliness, one white
+arm stretched forth, her bosom heaving, her eyes aflame. And Tristan,
+seized with a sudden fear, fled from the pavilion, down the moonlit
+path as if pursued by an army of demons.
+
+A man stepped from a thicket of roses, directly into his path. Heedless
+of everything, of every one, Tristan endeavored to pass him, but the
+other was equally determined to bar his way.
+
+"So I have found you at last," said the voice, and Tristan, starting
+as if the ground had opened before him, stared into the face of the
+stranger at Theodora's board.
+
+"You have found me, my Lord Roger," he said, after recovering from his
+first surprise. "Here I may injure no one--you, my lord, least of all!
+Leave me in peace!"
+
+The stranger gave a sardonic laugh.
+
+"That I may perchance, when you have told me the truth--the whole
+truth!"
+
+"Ask, my lord, and I will answer," Tristan replied.
+
+"Where is the Lady Hellayne?"--
+
+The questioning voice growled like far off thunder.
+
+Tristan recoiled a step, staring into the questioner's face as if he
+thought he had gone mad.
+
+"The Lady Hellayne?" he stammered, white to the lips and with a dull
+sinking of the heart. "How am I to know? I have not seen her since I
+left Avalon--months ago. Is she not with you?"
+
+The Lord Laval's brow was dark as a thunder cloud.
+
+"If she were with me--would I be wasting my time asking you concerning
+her?" he barked.
+
+"Where is she, then?" Tristan gasped.
+
+"That you shall tell me--or I have forgotten the use of this knife!"
+
+And he laid his hand on the hilt of a long dagger that protruded from
+his belt.
+
+Tristan's eyes met those of the other.
+
+"My lord, this is unworthy of you! I have never committed a deed I
+dared not confess--and I despise your threat and your accusation as
+would the Lady Hellayne, were she here."
+
+Steps were heard approaching from the direction of the pavilion.
+
+"I am a stranger in Rome. Doubtless you are familiar with its ways.
+Some one is coming. Where shall we meet?"
+
+Tristan pondered.
+
+"At the Arch of the Seven Candles. Every child can point the way. When
+shall it be?"
+
+"To-morrow,--at the second hour of the night. And take care to speak
+the truth!"
+
+Ere Tristan could reply the speaker had vanished among the thickets.
+
+For a moment he paused, amazed, bewildered. Roger de Laval in Rome! And
+Hellayne--where was she? She had left Avalon--had left her consort. Had
+she entered a convent? Hellayne--where was Hellayne?
+
+Before this dreadful uncertainty all the events of the night vanished
+as if they had never been.
+
+For a long time Tristan remained where Roger de Laval had left him.
+The cool air from the lake blew refreshingly on his heated brow. A
+thousand odors from orange and jessamine floated caressingly about
+him. The night was very still. There, in the soft sky-gloom, moved the
+majestic procession of undiscovered worlds. There, low on the horizon,
+the yellow moon swooned languidly down in a bed of fleecy clouds. The
+drowsy chirp of a dreaming bird came softly now and again from branch
+shadowed thickets, and the lilies on the surface of the lake nodded
+mysteriously to each other, as if they were whispering a secret of
+another world.
+
+At last the moon sank out of sight and from afar, softened by the
+distance, the chimes of convent bells from the remote regions of the
+Aventine were wafted through the flower scented summer night.
+
+END OF BOOK THE SECOND
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE THIRD
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WOLFSBANE
+
+
+The early summer dawn was creeping over the silent Campagna when
+Tristan reached the Inn of The Golden Shield.
+
+As one dazed he had traversed the deserted, echoing streets in the
+mysterious half-light which flooded the Eternal City; a light in which
+everything was sharply defined yet seemed oddly spectral and ghostlike.
+
+Deep down in his heart two emotions were contending, appalling in their
+intensity and appeal. One was an agonized fear for the woman he loved
+with a love so unwavering that his love was actually himself, his whole
+being, the sacrament that consecrated his life and ruled his destiny.
+
+She had left Avalon; she had left him to whom she had plighted her
+troth. Where was she and why was Roger de Laval in Rome?
+
+An icy fear gripped his heart at the thought; a nameless dread and
+horror of the terrible scene he had witnessed at the midnight feast of
+Theodora.
+
+For a time he was as one obsessed, hardly master of himself and his
+actions. In an age where scenes such as those he had witnessed were
+quickly forgotten the death of Roxana and young Fabio created but
+little stir. Rome, just emerging from under the dark cloud of Marozia's
+regime, in the throes of ever-recurring convulsions, without a helmsman
+to guide the tottering ship of state, received the grim tidings with a
+shrug of apathy; and the cowed burghers discussed in awed whispers the
+dread power of one whose vengeance none dared to brave.
+
+Tristan's unsophisticated mind could not so easily forget. He had
+stood at the brink of the abyss, he had looked down into the murky
+depths from which there was no escape once the fumes had conquered the
+senses and vanquished resistance. With a shudder he called to mind,
+how utterly and completely he had abandoned himself to the lure of the
+sorceress, how little short of a miracle had saved him. She had led him
+on step by step, and the struggle had but begun.
+
+No one was astir at the inn.
+
+He ascended the stairs leading to his chamber. The chill of the night
+was still lingering in the dusky passages. He lighted the taper of a
+tiny lamp that burnt before an image of the Mother of Sorrows in a
+niche.
+
+Then he sank upon his couch. His vitality seemed to be ebbing and his
+mind clouding before the problems that began to crowd in upon him.
+
+Nothing since he left Avalon, nothing external or merely human, had
+stirred him as had his meeting with Theodora. It had roused in him
+a dormant, embryonic faculty, active and vivid. What it called into
+his senses was not a mere series of pictures. It created a visual
+representation of the horrified creature, roused from the flattering
+oblivion of death to memory and shame and dread, nothing really
+forgotten, nothing past, the old lie that death ends all pitifully
+unmasked.
+
+He shuddered as he thought of the consequences of surrender from which
+a silent voice out of the far off past had saved him--just in time.
+
+His life lay open before him as a book, every fact recorded, nothing
+extenuated.
+
+A calm, relentless voice bade him search his own life, if he had done
+aught amiss. He had never taken or desired that which was another's.
+Yet his years had been a ceaseless perturbation. There had been endless
+and desperate clutchings at bliss, followed by the swift discovery that
+the exquisite light had faded, leaving a chill gloaming that threatened
+a lonely night. And if the day had failed in its promise what would the
+night do?
+
+His soul cried out for rest, for peace from the enemy; peace, not this
+endless striving. He was terrified. In the ignominious lament there
+was desertion, as if he were too small for the fight. He was demanding
+happiness, and that his own burden should rest on another's shoulders.
+How silent was the universe around him! He stood in tremendous, eternal
+isolation.
+
+Pale and colorless as a moonstone at first the ghostly dawn had
+quickened to the iridescence of the opal, flaming into a glory of gold
+and purple in the awakening east.
+
+And now the wall in the courtyard was no longer grey. A faint, clear,
+golden light was beginning to flow and filter into it, dispelling, one
+by one, the dark shadows that lurked in the corners. Somewhere in the
+distance the dreamer heard the shrill silver of a lark, and a dull
+monotonous sound, felt rather than heard, suggested that sleeping Rome
+was about to wake.
+
+And then came the sun. A long golden ray stabbed the mists and leaped
+into his chamber like a living thing. The little sanctuary lamp before
+the image of the Blessed Virgin glowed no more.
+
+After a brief rest Tristan arose, noting for the first time with a
+degree of chagrin that his dagger had not been restored to him.
+
+It was day now. The sun was high and hot. The streets and thoroughfares
+were thronged. A bright, fierce light beat down upon dome and spire
+and pinnacle, flooding the august ruins of the Cæsars and the thousand
+temples of the Holy Cross with brilliant radiance from the cloudless
+azure of the heavens. Over the Tiber white wisps of mist were rising.
+Beyond, the massive bulk of the Emperor's Tomb was revealed above the
+roofs of the houses, and the olive groves of Mount Janiculum glistened
+silvery in the rays of the morning sun.
+
+It was only when, refreshed after a brief rest and frugal refreshments,
+Tristan quitted the inn, taking the direction of Castel San Angelo,
+that the incidents leading up to his arrival at the feast of Theodora
+slowly filtered through his mind.
+
+Withal there was a link missing in the chain of events. From the time
+he had left the Lateran in pursuit of the two strangers everything
+seemed an utter blank. What mysterious forces had been at work
+conveying him to his destiny, he could not even fathom and, in a state
+of perplexity, such as he had rarely experienced, he pursued his way,
+paying little heed to the life and turmoil that seethed around him.
+
+Upon entering Castel San Angelo he was informed that the Grand
+Chamberlain had arrived but a few moments before and he immediately
+sought the presence of the man whose sinister countenance held out
+little promise of the solution of the mystery.
+
+In an octagon chamber, the small windows of which, resembling
+port-holes, looked out upon the Campagna, Basil was fretfully
+perambulating as Tristan entered.
+
+After a greeting which was frosty enough on both sides, Tristan briefly
+stated the matter which weighed upon his mind.
+
+The Grand Chamberlain watched him narrowly, nodding now and then by
+way of affirmation, as Tristan related the experience at the Lateran,
+referring especially to two mysterious strangers whom he had followed
+to a distant part of the city, believing they might offer some clue to
+the outrage committed at the Lateran on the previous night.
+
+Basil regarded the new captain with a mixture of curiosity and gloom.
+Perchance he was as much concerned in discovering what Tristan knew
+as the latter was in finding a solution of the two-fold mystery.
+After having questioned him on his experience, without offering any
+suggestion that might clear up his visitor's mind, Basil touched upon
+the precarious state of the city and its hidden dangers.
+
+Tristan listened attentively to the sombre account, little guessing its
+purpose.
+
+"Much have I heard of the prevailing lawless state," he interposed at
+last, "of dark deeds hidden in the silent bosom of the night, of feud
+and rebellion against the Church which is powerless to defend herself
+for the want of a master-hand that would evoke order out of chaos."
+
+The dark-robed figure by his side gave a grim nod.
+
+"Men are closely allied to beasts, giving rein to their desires and
+appetites as the tigers and hyenas. It is only fear that will restrain
+them, fear of some despotic invisible force that pervades the universe,
+whose chiefest attribute is not so much creative as destructive. It is
+only through fear you can rule the filthy rabble that reviles to-day
+its idol of yesterday."
+
+There was an undercurrent of scorn in Basil's voice and Tristan saw,
+as it were, the lightning of an angry or disdainful thought flashing
+through the sombre depths of his eyes.
+
+"What of the Lady Theodora?" Tristan interposed bluntly.
+
+Basil gave a nameless shrug.
+
+"She bends men's hearts to her own desires, taking from them their
+will and soul. The hot passion of love is to her a toy, clasped and
+unclasped in the pink hollow of her hand."
+
+And, as he spoke, Basil suited the gesture to the word, closing his
+fingers in the air and again unclosing them.
+
+"As long as she retains the magic of her beauty so long will her sway
+over the Seven Hills endure," he added after a brief pause.
+
+"What of the woman who paid the penalty of her daring?" Tristan
+ventured to inquire.
+
+Basil regarded the questioner quizzically.
+
+"There have been many disturbances of late," he spoke after a pause.
+"Roxana's lust for Theodora's power proved her undoing. Theodora will
+suffer no rival to threaten her with Marozia's fate."
+
+"I have heard it whispered she is assembling about her men who are
+ready to go to any extreme," Tristan interposed tentatively, thrown off
+his guard by Basil's affability of manner.
+
+The latter gave a start, but recovered himself.
+
+"Idle rumors. The Romans must have something to talk about. Odo of
+Cluny is thundering his denunciations with such fervid eloquence that
+they cannot but linger in the rabble's mind."
+
+"The hermit of Mount Aventine?" Tristan queried.
+
+"Even he! He has a strange craze, a doctrine of the End of Time, to
+be accomplished when the cycle of the sæculum has run its course. A
+doctrine he most furiously proclaims in language seemingly inspired,
+and which he promulgates to farther his own dark ends."
+
+"A theory most dark and strange," Tristan replied with a shudder, for
+he was far from free of the superstition of the times.
+
+Basil gave a shrug. His tone was lurid.
+
+"What shall it matter to us, who shall hardly tread this earth when the
+fateful moment comes?"
+
+"If it were true nevertheless?" Tristan replied meditatively.
+
+A sombre fire burnt in the eyes of the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+"Then, indeed, should we not pluck the flowers in our path, defying
+darkness and death and the fiery chariot of the All-destroyer that is
+to sweep us to our doom?"
+
+Tristan shuddered.
+
+Some such words he had indeed heard among the pilgrim throngs without
+clearly grasping their import. They had haunted his memory and had,
+for the time at least, laid a restraining hand upon his impulses.
+
+But the mystery of the Monk of Cluny weighed lightly against the
+mystery of the woman who held in the hollow of her hand the destinies
+of Rome.
+
+Basil seemed to read Tristan's thoughts.
+
+Reclining in his chair, he eyed him narrowly.
+
+"You, too, but narrowly escaped the blandishments of the Sorceress,
+blandishments to which many another would have succumbed. I marvel at
+your self-restraint, not being bound by any vow."
+
+The speaker paused and waited, his eyes lying in ambush under the dark
+straight brows.
+
+The memory still oppressed Tristan and the mood did not escape Basil,
+who stored it up for future reckoning.
+
+"Perchance I, too, might have succumbed to the Lady Theodora's beauty,
+had not something interposed at the crucial moment."
+
+"The memory of some earlier love, perchance?" Basil queried with a
+smile.
+
+Tristan gave a sigh. He thought of Hellayne and the impending meeting
+with Roger de Laval.
+
+His questioner abandoned the subject. Master in dissimulation he had
+read the truth on Tristan's brow.
+
+"Pray then to your guardian saint, if of such a one you boast," he
+continued after a pause, "to intervene, should temptation in its most
+alluring form face you again," he said with deliberate slowness. "You
+witnessed the end of Fabio of the Cavalli?"--
+
+Tristan shuddered.
+
+"And yet there was a time when he called all these charms his own, and
+his command was obeyed in Theodora's gilded halls."
+
+"Can love so utterly vanish?" Tristan queried with an incredulous
+glance at the speaker.
+
+Basil gave a soundless laugh.
+
+"Love!" he said. "Hearts are but pawns in Theodora's hands. Her
+ambition is to rule, and he who can give to her what her heart desires
+is the favorite of the hour. Beware of her! Once the poison of her
+kisses rankles in your blood nothing can save you from your doom."
+
+Basil watched the effect of his words upon his listener and for the
+nonce he seemed content. Tristan would take heed.
+
+When Tristan had taken his leave a panel in the wall opened noiselessly
+and Il Gobbo peered into the chamber.
+
+Basil locked and bolted the door which led into the corridor, and the
+sinister, bat-like form stepped out of its dark frame and approached
+the inmate of the chamber with a fawning gesture.
+
+"If your lordship will believe me," he said in a husky undertone, "I am
+at last on the trail."
+
+"What now?"
+
+"I may not tell your nobility as yet."
+
+"Do you want another bezant, dog?"
+
+"It is not that, my lord."
+
+"Then, who does he consort with?"
+
+"I have tracked him as a panther tracks its prey--he consorts with no
+one."
+
+"Then continue to follow him and see if he consorts with any--woman."
+
+"A woman?"
+
+"Why not, fool?"
+
+"But had your nobility said there was a woman--"
+
+"There always is."
+
+"Your nobility let him go--and yet--one word--"
+
+"I must know more, before I strike. I knew he would come. There is more
+to this than we wot of. Theodora is infatuated with his austerity. He
+has jilted her and she smarts under the blow. She will move heaven and
+earth to bring him to her feet. Meanwhile there are weightier matters
+to be considered. Perchance I shall pay you an early call in your noble
+abode. Prepare fitly and bid the ghosts troop from their haunted caves.
+And now be off! Your quarry has the start!"
+
+Il Gobbo bowed grotesquely and receded backward towards the panel which
+closed soundlessly behind him.
+
+Basil remained alone in the octagon cabinet.
+
+He strode slowly towards one of the windows that faced to southward and
+gazed long and pensively out upon the undulating expanse of the Roman
+Campagna.
+
+"Three messengers, yet none has returned," he muttered darkly. "Can it
+be that I have lost my clutch on destiny?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNDER THE SAFFRON SCARF
+
+
+Once again the pale planets of night ruled the sky, when Tristan
+emerged from his inn and took the direction of the Palatine.
+
+All memories of his meeting with the Lord Basil had faded before the
+import of the coming hour, when he was to stand face to face with him
+who held in his hand the fate of two beings destined for each other
+from the beginning of time and torn asunder by the ruthless hand of
+Fate.
+
+There was not a sound, save the echo of his own footsteps, as Tristan
+wound his way through the narrow streets, high cliffs of ancient houses
+on either side, down which the white disk of the moon penetrated but a
+yard or two.
+
+At the foot of the Palatine Hill, cutting into the moonlight, the
+Colosseum rose before him, gaunt, vast, sinister, a silhouette of
+enormous blackness, pierced as with innumerable empty eyes flooded
+by greenish, ghostly moonlight. Necromancers and folk practising the
+occult arts dwelled in ancient houses built with the honey-colored
+Travertine, stolen from the Hill of the Cæsars. It was said that
+strange sounds echoed from the arena at night; that the voices of those
+who had died for the faith in the olden days could be heard screaming
+in agony at certain periods of the moon.
+
+Gigantic masses of gaunt masonry rose around him as, with fleet steps,
+he traversed the deserted thoroughfares. In the greenish moonlight he
+could discern the tumbled ruins of arches and temples scattered about
+the dark waste. His gaze also encountered the frowning masonry of more
+recent buildings. The castellated palace of one of the Frescobaldi had
+been reared right across that ancient site, including in its massive
+bulk more than one monument of imperial days.
+
+As he approached the region of the Arch of the Seven Candles, as the
+Arch of Titus with its carving of the Jewish Candelabrum borne in
+triumph was then called, Tristan walked more warily.
+
+The reputed dangers of the Campo Vaccino knocking at the gates of his
+memory, he loosened the sword in his scabbard.
+
+He had, by this time, arrived at the end of the street, that curves
+towards the Arch of Titus, which commands the avenue of lone holm-oaks,
+leading towards the Appian Way.
+
+Suddenly a man emerged from the shadows. He was armed with sword and
+buckler, his body was covered with hauberk of mail and he wore the
+conical steel casque in vogue since Norman arms served as the military
+model.
+
+Roger and Tristan confronted each other, the former's face tense,
+drawn, white; the latter with calm eyes in which there was the light
+of a great regret. An expression not easy to read lay in Laval's eyes,
+eyes that scanned Tristan from under half-shut lids.
+
+"So you have come?" the stranger said brutally, after a brief and
+painful pause.
+
+"I have never broken my word," Tristan replied.
+
+"Well spoken! I shall be plain and brief, if you will own the truth."
+
+"I have nothing to conceal, my lord."
+
+Roger's eyes gleamed with yet livelier malice.
+
+"Where is the Lady Hellayne? Where is my wife?"
+
+"As God lives, I know not. Yet--I would give my life, to know."
+
+"Indeed! You may be given that chance. You are frank at least--"
+
+"I may have wronged you in heart, my lord,--but never in deed--"
+Tristan replied.
+
+"What I have seen, I have seen," the other snarled viciously.
+"Perchance this silent devotion accounts also for many other things."
+
+"I do not understand, my lord."
+
+"Soon after your flight the Lady Hellayne departed, without a word."
+
+"So you were pleased to inform me."
+
+"I was not pleased," spat out Laval. "How do you explain her flight?"
+
+"I do not explain, my lord. I have not seen or heard from the Lady
+Hellayne since I left Avalon."
+
+"Then you still aver the lie?"
+
+Tristan raised himself to his full height.
+
+"I am speaking truth, my lord. Why, indeed, should she have left you
+without even a word?"
+
+Roger eyed the man before him as a cat eyes a captured bird at a foot's
+distance of mock freedom.
+
+"Why, indeed, save for love of you?"
+
+Tristan raised his hands.
+
+"Deep in my heart and soul I worship the Lady Hellayne," he said. "For
+me she had but friendship. Else were I not here!"
+
+"A sainted pilgrim," sneered the Count, "in the Groves of Enchantment.
+And for such a one she left her liege lord."
+
+His mocking laughter resounded through the ruins.
+
+"You wrong the Lady Hellayne and myself. Of myself I will not speak. As
+concerns her--"
+
+"Of her you shall not speak! Save to tell me her abode."
+
+"Of her I shall speak," Tristan flashed. "You are insulting your
+wife--"
+
+"Take care lest worse befall yourself," snarled Laval, advancing
+towards the object of his wrath.
+
+Tristan's look of contempt cut him to the quick.
+
+"You think to bully me as you bully your menials," he said quietly. "I
+do not fear you!"
+
+"Why, then, did you leave Avalon, if it was not fear that drove you?"
+drawled Laval, his eyes a mere slit in the face, drawn and white.
+
+The utter baseness and conceit in the speaker's nature were so plainly
+revealed in his utterance that Tristan replied contemptuously:
+
+"It was not fear of you, my lord, but the Lady Hellayne's expressed
+desire that brought me to Rome."
+
+"The Lady Hellayne's desire? Then it was she who feared for you?"
+
+"It was not fear for my body, but my soul."
+
+"Your soul? Why your soul?"
+
+"Because my love for her was a wrong to you, my lord,--even though I
+loved her but in thought."--
+
+"On that night in the garden--you embraced in thought?"
+
+The leer had deepened on the speaker's face.
+
+"A resistless something impelled--"
+
+"And you a fair and pleasant-featured youth, beside Roger de Laval--her
+husband. And now you are here doing penance at the shrines, at the Lady
+Theodora's shrine?"
+
+"What I am doing in Rome does not concern you, my lord," Tristan
+interposed firmly. "I did not attend the Lady Theodora's feast of my
+own choice--"
+
+"Nor were you in her pavilion of your own choice. Yet a pinch more of
+penance will set that right also."
+
+"I take it, my lord, that I have satisfied your anxiety," Tristan
+replied, as he started to pass the other.
+
+Laval caught him roughly by the shoulder.
+
+"Not so fast," he cried. "I shall inform you when I have done with
+you--"
+
+Tristan's face was white, as he peered into the mask of cunning that
+leered from the other's countenance. Perchance he would not have heeded
+the threat had it not been for his anxiety on Hellayne's account. He
+suspected that Laval knew more than he cared to tell.
+
+"For the last time I ask, where is the Lady Hellayne?"
+
+The Count's form rose towering above him, as he threw the words in
+Tristan's face.
+
+"For the last time I tell you, my lord, I know not," Tristan replied,
+eye in eye. "Though I would gladly give my life to know."
+
+"Perchance you may. I have been told the Lady Hellayne is here in
+Rome. Wherefore is she here? Can it be the spirit that prompted the
+pilgrimage to her lost lover? Will you take oath, that you have not
+seen her?"
+
+The speaker's eyes blazed ominously.
+
+Tristan raised his head.
+
+"I will, my lord, upon the Cross!"
+
+Roger's heavy hand smote his cheek.
+
+"Liar!"--
+
+A woman who at that moment crept in the shadows of the Arch of Titus
+saw Tristan, sword in hand, defending himself against a man apparently
+much more powerful than himself. For a moment or two she gazed,
+bewildered, not knowing what to do. Tristan at first seemed to stand
+entirely on the defensive, but soon his blood grew hot and, in answer
+to his adversary's lunge, he lunged again. But the other held a dagger
+in his left hand and with it easily parried the blade. The next pass
+she saw Tristan reel. She could bear no more and rushed screaming
+towards some footmen with torches who were standing outside a dark and
+heavily shuttered building.
+
+Tristan and Roger de Laval rushed at each other with redoubled fury.
+Both had heard the cry and their blows rang out with echoing clatter,
+filling the desolate spaces with a sound not seldom heard there in
+those days. It was a struggle of sheer strength, in which the odds were
+all against Tristan. He began to yield step by step. Soon a yet fiercer
+blow of his antagonist must bring him down to his knees, and he fell
+back farther, as a veritable rain of blows fell upon him.
+
+Four men followed by a woman rushed to the scene.
+
+"Haste! Haste!" she cried frantically. "There is murder abroad!"
+
+She fancied she should behold the younger man already vanquished by his
+more vigorous enemy. On the contrary, he seemed to have regained his
+strength and was now pressing the other with an agility and vigor that
+outweighed the strength of maturity on the part of his adversary.
+
+All was clear in the bright moonlight, as if the sun had been blazing
+down upon them, and, as the woman leaped forward, she beheld Tristan's
+assailant gain some advantage. He was pressed back along the Arch
+towards the spot where she stood.
+
+What now followed she could not see. It was all the work of a moment.
+But the next instant she saw the elder man raise his arm as if to
+strike with his dagger. Tristan staggered and fell, and the other
+was about to strike him through when, with a wild, frantic outcry of
+terror, she rushed between them, arresting the blow ere it could fall.
+
+"Hellayne!"
+
+A cry in which Tristan's smothered feelings broke through every
+restraint winged itself from the mouth of the fallen man.
+
+"Tristan!" came the hysterical response.
+
+Roger had hurled his wife aside, his eyes flaming like live coals under
+their bushy brows.
+
+Those whom Hellayne had summoned to Tristan's aid, when she first
+arrived on the scene of the conflict, unacquainted with the cause of
+the quarrel and doubtful which side to aid, stood idly by, since with
+Tristan's fall there seemed to be no farther demand for their services,
+nor did Roger's towering stature invite interference.
+
+In the heat of the conflict with its attendant turmoil none of those
+immediately concerned had remarked a procession approaching from the
+distance which now emerged from the shadow of the great arch into the
+moonlit thoroughfare.
+
+It was headed by four giant Nubians, carrying a litter on silver poles,
+from between the half-shut silken curtains of which peered the face of
+a woman. In its wake marched a score of Ethiopians in fantastic livery,
+their broad, naked scimitars glistening ominously in the moonlight.
+
+The litter and its escort arrived but just in time. Ere Laval's blade
+could pierce the heart of his prostrate victim, Theodora had leaped
+from her litter and thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth.
+
+With all the outlines of her beautiful form revealed through the thin
+robe of spangled gauze she faced the irate aggressor and her voice cut
+like steel as she said:
+
+"Dare to touch him beneath this scarf! This man is mine."
+
+Laval drew back, but his glaring eyes, his parted lips and his labored
+breath argued little in favor of the fallen man, even though the blow
+was, for the moment, averted.
+
+With foam-flecked lips he turned to Theodora.
+
+"This man is mine! His life is forfeit. Stand back, that I may wipe
+this blot from my escutcheon."
+
+Theodora faced the speaker undauntedly.
+
+Ere he could reply, a woman's voice shrieked.
+
+"Save him! Save him! He is innocent! He has done naught amiss!"
+
+Hellayne, whom the Count had hurled against the masonry of the arch,
+bruising her until she was barely able to support herself, at this
+moment threw herself between them.
+
+[Illustration: "Thrown her saffron scarf over the prostrate youth"]
+
+"Who is this woman?" Theodora turned to Tristan's assailant. "Who is
+this woman?" Hellayne's eyes silently questioned Tristan.
+
+Laval's sardonic laughter pealed through the silence.
+
+"This lady is my wife, the Countess Hellayne de Laval, noble Theodora,
+who has followed her perjured lover to Rome, so they may do penance in
+company," he replied sardonically. "His life is forfeit. His offence
+is two-fold. Within the hour he swore he knew naught of her abode.
+But--since you claim him,--by ties this scarf proclaims--take him and
+welcome! I shall not anticipate the fate you prepare for your noble
+lovers!"
+
+The two women faced each other in frozen silence, in the consciousness
+of being rivals. Each knew instinctively it would be a fight between
+them to the death.
+
+Theodora surveyed Hellayne's wonderful beauty, appraising her charms
+against her own, and Hellayne's gaze swept the face and form of the
+Roman.
+
+Tristan had scrambled to his feet, his face white with shame and rage.
+From Theodora, in whose eyes he read that which caused him to tremble
+in his inmost soul, he turned to Hellayne.
+
+"Oh, why have you done this thing, Hellayne, why?--oh, why?"
+
+Roger de Laval laughed viciously.
+
+"It was indeed not to be expected that the Lady Hellayne would find her
+recalcitrant lover in the arms of the Lady Theodora."
+
+With an inarticulate outcry of rage Tristan was about to hurl himself
+upon his opponent, had not Theodora placed a restraining hand upon him,
+while her dark eyes challenged Hellayne.
+
+All the revulsion of his nature against this man rose up in him and
+rent him. All the love for Hellayne, which in these days had been
+floating on the wings of longing, soared anew.
+
+But his efforts at vindication in this strangest of all predicaments
+were put to naught by the woman herself.
+
+"Hear me, Hellayne--it is not true!" he cried, and paused with a
+choking sensation.
+
+Hellayne stood as if turned to stone.
+
+Then her eyes swept Tristan with a look of such incredulous misery that
+it froze the words that were about to tumble from his lips.
+
+With a wail of anguish she turned and fled down the moonlit path like a
+hunted deer.
+
+"Up and after her!" Laval shouted to the men whom Hellayne had summoned
+to the scene and these, eager to demonstrate their usefulness, started
+in pursuit, Roger leading, ere Tristan could even make a move to
+interfere.
+
+Hellayne had fled into the open portals of a church at the end of the
+street. She tottered and fell. Crawling through the semi-darkness she
+gasped and leaned against a pillar. She saw a small side chapel, where,
+before an image of the Virgin, guttered a brace of tapers. But ere she
+reached the shrine her pursuers were upon her. As, with a shriek of
+mortal fear she fell, she gazed into the brutal features of Roger de
+Laval. His lips were foam-flecked, revealing his wolfish teeth.
+
+It was then her strength forsook her. She fell fainting upon the hard
+stone floor of the church.--
+
+For a pace Tristan and Theodora faced each other in silence.
+
+It was the woman who spoke.
+
+Her voice was cold as steel.
+
+"I have saved your life, Tristan! The weapon which my slaves have taken
+from you awaits the call of its rightful claimant."
+
+She reentered her litter while Tristan stood by, utterly dazed. But,
+when the slaves raised the silver poles, she gave him a parting glance
+from within the curtains that seemed to electrify his whole being.
+
+After the litter-bearers and their retinue had trooped off, Tristan
+remained for a time in the shadow of the Arch of the Seven Candles.
+
+He knew not where to turn in his misery, nor what to do.
+
+In the same hour he had found and lost his love anew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DARK PLOTTINGS
+
+
+It was past the hour of midnight.
+
+In a dimly lighted turret chamber in the house of Hormazd the Persian
+there sat two personages whose very presence seemed to enhance the
+sinister gloom that brooded over the circular vault.
+
+The countenance of the Grand Chamberlain was paler than usual and there
+was a slight gathering of the eyebrows, not to say a frown, which in
+an ordinary mortal might have signified little, but in one who had so
+habitual a command of his emotions, would indicate to those who knew
+him well an unusual degree of restlessness. His voice was calm however,
+and now and then a bland smile belied the shadows on his brow.
+
+At times his gaze stole towards a dimly lighted alcove wherein moved
+a dark cowled figure, its grotesque shadow reflected in distorted
+outlines upon the floor.
+
+"The Moor tarries over long," Basil spoke at last.
+
+"So do the ends of destiny," replied a voice that seemed to come from
+the bowels of the earth.
+
+"He is fleeter than a deer and more ferocious than a tiger," the Grand
+Chamberlain interposed. "Nothing has ever daunted him, nor lives the
+man who would thwart him and live. Can you tell me where he is now?"
+
+"Patience!" came the sepulchral reply. "The magic disk reveals all
+things! Anon you shall know."
+
+Informed by daily gossip and the reports of his innumerable spies,
+Basil was aware of a growing belief among the people that the power
+he wielded was not altogether human, and he would have viewed it with
+satisfaction even had he not shared it. Seeing in it an additional
+force helpful to the realization of his ambition, he had thrown himself
+blindly into the vortex of black magic which was to give to him that
+which his soul desired.
+
+In this chamber, filled with strange narcotic scents and the mysterious
+rustling of unseen presences, by which he believed it to be peopled,
+with the aid of one who seemed the personified Principle of Evil, Basil
+assembled about him the forces that would ultimately launch him at the
+goal of his ambition.
+
+This devil's kitchen was the portal to the Unseen, the shrine of the
+Unknown, the observatory of the Past and the Future, and the laboratory
+of the Forbidden. There were dim and mysterious mirrors, before which
+stood brazen tripods whose fumes, as they wreathed upward, gleamed with
+dusky fires. It was in these mirrors that the wizard could summon the
+dead and the distant to appear darkly, in scarcely definable glimpses.
+But he could also produce apparitions more vivid, more startling and
+more beautiful. Once, in the dark depths of the chamber, Basil had
+seen a woman's phantom apparition suddenly become strangely luminous,
+her garments glowing like flames of many colors, that shifted and
+blent and alternated in ceaseless dance and play, waving and trembling
+in unearthly glory, till she seemed to be of the very flame herself.
+The reflection of the world of shadows was upon her; its splendors
+were wrapping her round like a mantle. He watched her with bated
+breath, not daring to speak. And brighter, ever brighter, dazzling,
+ever more dazzling, had grown the flaming phantom, till the wondrous
+transfiguration reached the height of its beauty and its terror. Then
+the phantom of murdered Marozia, evoked at his expressed desire from
+the land of shadows, had faded, dying slowly away in the mysterious
+depths of the mirror, as the fires that produced it sank and died in
+white ashes.
+
+There could be no doubt. It was the emissary of Darkness himself who
+held forth in this dim, demon-haunted chamber where he had so often
+listened to the record of his awful visions. He had made him see in
+his dreadful ravings the great vaults of wrath, where dwelt the dread
+power of Evil. He had made him see the King of the Hopeless Throngs
+on his black basaltic throne in the terrific glare-illumined caves,
+where Michael had cast him and where Pain's roar rises eternally night
+and day. He had made him see the great Lord of the Doomed Shadows,
+receiving the homage of those dreadful slaves, those terror-spreading
+angels of woe whose hand flings destruction over the earth and sea and
+air, while flames were fawning and licking his feet with countless
+tongues.
+
+And then he had shown to him a spirit mightier and more subtle than
+any of those great wild destroyers who rush blindly through nature,
+a spirit who starts in silence on her errand, whom none behold as,
+creeping through the gloom, she undermines, unties and loosens all the
+pillars of creation, with no more sign nor sound than a black snake in
+the tangled grass, till with a thunder that stuns the world the house
+of God comes crashing down--dread Hekaté herself.
+
+Was there any crime he had left undone?
+
+His subterranean prisons in which limbs unlearned to bend and eyes to
+see concealed things whose screams would make the flesh of a ghost
+creep, if flesh one had.
+
+But now there was a darker light in Basil's eyes, a something more
+ominous of evil in his manner. The wizard's revelation had possessed
+his soul and his whole terrible being seemed intensified. With the
+patience of one conscious of a superhuman destiny he waited the
+summons that was to come to him, even though his soul was consumed by
+devouring flames.
+
+For he had come yet upon another matter; an inner voice, whose appeal
+he dared not ignore, had informed him long ago of his waning power with
+Theodora. From the man wont to command he had fallen to the level of
+the whimpering slave, content to pick up such morsels as the woman saw
+fit to throw at his feet. Only on the morning of this day, which had
+gone down the never returning tide of time, a terrible scene had passed
+between them. And he knew he had lost.
+
+Basil had been an unseen witness of Theodora's and Tristan's meeting
+in the sunken gardens on the Aventine. Every moment he had hoped to
+see the man succumb to charms which no mortal had yet withstood upon
+whom she had chosen to exert them, and on the point of his poniard
+sat Death, ready to step in and finish the game. From the fate he had
+decreed him some unknown power had saved Tristan. But Basil, knowing
+that Theodora, once she was jilted by the object of her desire, would
+leave nothing undone to conquer and subdue, was resolved to remove from
+his path one who must, sooner or later, become a successful rival. By
+some miraculous interposition of Providence Tristan had escaped the
+fate he had prepared for him on the night when he had tracked the two
+strangers from the Lateran. He had had him conveyed for dead to the
+porch of Theodora's palace. But Fate had made him her mock.
+
+Never had Basil met Theodora in a mood so fierce and destructive as on
+the morning after she had destroyed Roxana and her lover, and had, in
+turn, been jilted by Tristan. And, verily, Basil could not have chosen
+a more inopportune time to press his suit or to voice his resentment
+and disapprobation. Theodora had driven every one from her presence and
+the unwelcome suitor shared the fate of her menials. Her dark hints
+had driven the former favorite to madness, for his passion-inflamed
+brain could not bear the thought that the love he craved, the body
+he had possessed, should be another's, while he was drifting into the
+silent ranks of the discarded. He knew for a surety that Theodora was
+not confiding in him as of old. Had she somehow guessed the dread
+mystery of the crypts in the Emperor's Tomb, or had some demon of Hell
+whispered it into her ear during the dark watches of the night?
+
+A flash of lightning followed by a terrific peal of thunder roused him
+from his reveries. The storm which had threatened during the early
+hours of the evening now roared and shrieked round the tower and the
+very elements seemed in accord with the dark plottings in Hormazd's
+chamber.
+
+"How much longer must I wait ere the fiends will reveal their secrets?"
+Basil at last turned to the exponent of the black arts.
+
+The wizard paused before the questioner.
+
+"To what investigation shall we first proceed?"
+
+"You must already have divined my thoughts."
+
+"I knew the instant you arrived. But there is an incompleteness which
+makes my perceptions less exact than usual."
+
+"Where are my messengers? To the number of three have I sped. None has
+returned."
+
+The Oriental touched a knob and the lamps were suddenly extinguished,
+leaving the room illumined by the red glow of the oven. Then he bade
+his visitor fix his eyes on the surface of the disk.
+
+"Upon this you will presently behold two scenes."
+
+He poured a few drops of something resembling black oil upon the
+disk, which at once spread in a mirror-like surface. Then he began to
+mutter some words in an Oriental tongue, and lighted a few grains of a
+chemical preparation which emitted an odor of bitter aloë. This, when
+the flames had subsided, he threw upon the oil which at the contact
+became iridescent.
+
+Basil looked and waited in vain.
+
+The conjurer exhausted all the selections which he thought
+appropriate. The oil gradually lost the changing aspect it had acquired
+from the burning substance, and returned to its dull murky tints, and
+the interest which had appeared on Basil's features gave place to a
+contemptuous sneer.
+
+"Are you, after all, but a trickster who would impose his art upon the
+unwary?"
+
+The magician did not reply to this insult, nor did it seem to affect
+him visibly.
+
+"We must try a mightier spell," he said, "for hostile forces are in
+conjunction against us."
+
+By a small tongs he raised from the fire the metallic plate that had
+been lying upon it. Its surface presented the appearance of oxidized
+silver with a deep glow of heat.
+
+Upon this he claimed to be able to produce the picture of past or
+future events, and many scenes had been reflected upon the magic shield.
+
+He now poured upon it a spoonful of liquid which spread simmering and
+became quickly dissipated in light vapors. Then he busied himself with
+scattering over the plate some grains that looked like salt which the
+heated metal instantly consumed.
+
+At the end of a few moments he experienced what resembled an electric
+or magnetic shock. His frame quivered, his lips ceased to repeat the
+muttered incantations, his hand firmly grasped the tongs by which he
+raised the metal aloft, now made brighter by the drugs just consumed,
+and upon which appeared a white spot, which enlarged till it filled the
+lower half of the plate.
+
+What it represented it was difficult to say. It might have been a sheet
+or a snow drift. Basil felt an indefinable dread, as above it shimmered
+forth the vague resemblance of a man on horseback, apparently riding at
+breakneck speed.
+
+Slowly his contour became more distinct. Now the horseman appeared to
+have reached a ford. Spurring his steed, he plunged into the stream
+whose waters seemed for a time to carry horse and rider along with the
+swift current. But he gained the opposite shore, and the apparition
+faded slowly from sight.
+
+"It is the Moor!" cried Basil in a paroxysm of excitement. "He has
+forded the rapids of the Garigliano. Now be kind to me O Fate--let this
+thing come to pass!"
+
+He gave a gasp of relief, wiping the beads from his brow.
+
+The cowled figure now walked up to the central brazier, muttering words
+in a language his visitor could not understand. Then he bade Basil walk
+round and round it, fixing his eyes steadily upon the small blue flame
+which danced on the surface of the burning charcoal.
+
+When giddiness prevented his continuing his perambulation he made him
+kneel beside the brazier with his eyes riveted upon it.
+
+Its fumes enveloped him and dulled his brain.
+
+The wizard crooned a slow, monotonous chant. Basil felt his senses keep
+pace with it, and presently he felt himself going round and round in an
+interminable descent. The glare of the brazier shrank and diminished,
+invaded from outside by an overpowering blackness. Slowly it became
+but a single point of fire, a dark star, which at length flamed into a
+torch. Beside him, with white and leering face, stood the dark cowled
+figure, and below him there seemed to stretch intricate galleries,
+strangled, interminable caves.
+
+"Where am I?" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain, overpowered by the fumes
+and the fear that was upon him.
+
+"Unless you reach the pit," came the dark reply, "farewell forever to
+your schemes. You will never see a crown upon your head."
+
+"What of Theodora?" Basil turned to his companion, choking and blinded.
+
+"If the bat-winged fiends will carry you safely across the abyss you
+shall see," came the reply.
+
+A rush as of wings resounded through the room, as of monstrous bats.
+
+"Gehenna's flame shall smoothe her brow," the wizard spoke again. "When
+Death brings her here, she shall stand upon the highest steps, in her
+dark magnificence she shall command--a shadow among shadows. Are you
+content?"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+The storm howled with redoubled fury, flinging great hailstones against
+the time-worn masonry of the wizard's tower.
+
+"Then," Basil spoke at last, his hands gripping his throat with a
+choking sensation, "give me back the love for which my soul thirsts and
+wither the bones of him who dares to aspire to Theodora's hand."
+
+The wizard regarded him with an inscrutable glance.
+
+"The dark and silent angels, once divine, now lost, who do my errands,
+shall ever circle round your path. Everlasting ties bind us, the
+one to the other. Keep but the pact and that which seems but a wild
+dream shall be fulfilled anon. They shall guide you through the dark
+galleries of fear, till you reach the goal."
+
+"Your words are dark as the decrees of Fate," Basil replied, as the
+fumes of the brazier slowly cleared in his brain and he seemed to
+emerge once more from the endless caverns of night, staring about him
+with dazed senses.
+
+"You heed but what your passion prompts," the cowled figure interposed
+sternly, "oblivious of that greater destiny that awaits you! It is a
+perilous love born in the depths of Hell. Will you wreck your life for
+that which, at best, is but a fleeting passion--a one day's dream?"
+
+"Well may you counsel who have never known the hell of love!" Basil
+cried fiercely. "The fiery torrent that rushes through my veins defies
+cold reason."
+
+The cowled figure nodded.
+
+"Many a ruler in whose shadow men have cowered, has obeyed a woman's
+whim and tamely borne her yoke. Are you of those, my lord?"
+
+"I have set my soul upon this thing and Fate shall give to me that
+which I crave!" Basil cried fiercely.
+
+The wizard nodded.
+
+"Fate cannot long delay the last great throw."
+
+"What would you counsel?" the Grand Chamberlain queried eagerly,
+peering into the cowled and muffled face, from which two eyes sent
+their insane gleam into his own.
+
+"Send her soul into the dark caverns of fear--surround her with
+unceasing dread--let the ghosts of those you have sent butchered to
+their doom surround her nightly pillow, whispering strange tales into
+her ears,--then, when fear grips the maddened brain and there seems no
+rescue but the grave--then peals the hour."
+
+Basil gazed thoughtfully into the wizard's cowled face.
+
+"When may that be?"
+
+"I will gaze into the silent pools of my forbidden knowledge with the
+dark spirits that keep me company. I have mysterious rules for finding
+day and hour."
+
+"I cannot expel the passion that rankles in my blood," Basil interposed
+darkly. "But I will tear out my heart strings ere I shirk the call. An
+emperor's crown were worth a tenfold price, and ere I, too, descend to
+the dread shadows, I mean to see it won."
+
+"These thoughts are idle," said the wizard. "Only the weak plumb the
+depths of their own soul. The strong man's bark sails lightly on
+victorious tides. Your soul is pledged to the Powers of Darkness."
+
+"And by the fiends that sit at Hell's dark gate, I mean to do their
+bidding," Basil replied fiercely. "Else were I indeed the mock of
+destiny. Tell me but this--how did you obtain a knowledge at which the
+fiend himself would pale?"
+
+The wizard regarded him for a moment in silence.
+
+"You who have peered behind the curtain that screens the dreadful
+boundaries--you who have seen the pale phantom of Marozia, whom you
+have sent to her doom,--how dare you ask?"
+
+Basil had raised both hands as if to ward off an evil spirit.
+
+"This, too, then is known to you? Tell me! Was what I saw a dream?"
+
+"What you have seen--you have seen," the cowled form replied
+enigmatically. "The cocks are crowing--and the pale dawn glimmers in
+the East."
+
+Throwing his mantle about him, Basil left the turret chamber and, after
+creeping down a narrow winding stair, he made for his villa on the
+Pincian Hill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+FACE TO FACE
+
+
+Roger de Laval had chosen for his abode in Rome a sombre and frowning
+building not far from the grim ways of the Campo Marzo, half palace
+half fortalice, constructed about a huge square tower with massive
+doors. Like all palace fortresses of the time which might at any
+moment have to stand a siege, either at the hands of a city mob or at
+those of some rapacious noble, it contained in its vaulted halls and
+tower chambers all the requisites for protracted resistance as well
+as aggression. On the walls between flaunting banners hung the many
+quartered shields and the dark coats of chain, the tabards of the
+heralds and the leathern jerkins of the bowmen. On the shelves between
+the arches stood long rows of hauberks and shining steel caps. Dark
+tapestries covered the walls and the bright light of the Roman day fell
+muted through the narrow slits in the sombre masonry which served as
+windows.
+
+It was not to seek his wife that Roger had come to Rome, and his
+meeting with Tristan in the gardens of Theodora had been purely
+accidental. While his vanity and selfishness had received a severe
+shock in Hellayne's departure, without even a farewell, he had not
+allowed an incident in itself so trifling to disturb the even tenor of
+his ways. He had loved to display her at his feasts as one displays
+some exceeding handsome plaything that gives pleasure to the senses;
+otherwise he and the countess had no common bond of interest. Hellayne
+was the only child of one of the most powerful barons of Provence, and
+had been given in marriage to the older man before she even realized
+what the bonds implied. Only after meeting Tristan had the awakening
+come, and youth sought youth.
+
+That which brought every one to Rome in an age when Rome was still by
+common consent the centre of the universe, such as the Saxon Chronicles
+of the Millennium pronounce it, had also caused Roger de Laval to seek
+the Holy Shrines, not in quest of spiritual benefit, but of temporal
+aggrandizement, in the character of an investiture from the Vicar of
+Christ himself. His disappointment at finding the head of Christendom a
+prisoner in his own palace was perhaps only mitigated by the disclosure
+that he should have to rely upon his own fertility of mind for the
+realization of a long-fostered ambition.
+
+On one of his visits to the Lateran, hoping to obtain an interview
+with the Pontiff, he had met Basil as representative of the Roman
+government, in the absence of Alberic, and a sinister attraction had
+sprung up between them in the consciousness that each had something
+to give the other lacked. This bond was even strengthened by Basil's
+promise to aid the stranger in the attainment of his desires, and at
+last Roger had confided in Basil the story of the shadow that had
+spread its gloomy pinions over the castle of Avalon. Basil had listened
+and suggested that the Lord Laval drown his sorrows at the board of
+Theodora. Therein the latter had acquiesced, with the result that he
+met Tristan on that night.
+
+Hellayne was sitting alone by the window in a long silent gallery. She
+could not take her eyes off the restless outline of the clouds where
+head on head and face on face continued taking shape. In vain her
+teased brain tried to see but clouds. Two nights ago had not a horrid
+face grinned at her from out of these same clouds? The face of a wolf
+it had seemed. And it had taken human shape and changed to the face of
+the man who had brought her to this abode from the sanctuary where she
+had fallen by the shrine.
+
+And yet, as she looked at the sun, whose beams were fast dwindling on
+the bar of the horizon, how she yearned to keep the light a little
+longer, if only a few short minutes. She could have cried out to the
+sun not to leave her so soon, again to wage her lonely war with the
+Twilight and with Fear. For during the hours of day her lord was away.
+Business of state he termed what took him from her side. With a leer he
+left and with a leer he was wont to return. And with him the memory of
+his meeting with Tristan!
+
+She had found him again, the man she loved! Found him--but how? And
+Hellayne covered her burning eyes with her white hands.
+
+This other woman who had stepped in between her and Tristan, who had
+laid a detaining hand upon his arm and had silently challenged her for
+his possession--what was she to him?
+
+For three days and three nights the thought had tormented her even to
+the verge of madness. Had she sacrificed everything but to find him
+she loved in the arms of another? Silently she had borne the taunts of
+her lord, his insults, his vile insinuations. He did not understand.
+He never understood. What of it? In the great balance what mattered it
+after all?
+
+She must see Tristan. She must hear the truth from his own lips. In
+vain she puzzled her brain how to reach him. She remembered his last
+outcry of protest. There was a mystery she must solve. Come what might,
+she was once more the woman who loved. And she was going to claim the
+payment of love!
+
+As regarded that other, to whom she had bound herself, her conscience
+had long absolved her of an obligation that had been forced upon her.
+Had fate and fact not proved the thing impossible? Had fate not cast
+them again and again into each other's arms and made mock of their
+conscience? Nature had made them lovers, let it be the will of God or
+the devil.
+
+And lovers till death should they be henceforth. He belonged to her.
+Away with faith--away with fear of this world, or the next. Away with
+all but the dear present, in which the brutality of others had set her
+free. For a moment her thoughts turned almost pagan.
+
+Was she to return to the old, loveless life in that far corner of the
+earth, while he whom she loved took up a new existence in the centre
+of the world, loving another to whose ambition he might owe a great
+career? She needed indeed to sit in silence, she who had done daring
+things without a misgiving, as if impelled by a power not her own. She
+had done them, marvelling at her own courage, at her own faith in him
+she loved, and she had not faltered.
+
+The torturing dusk was drowning every living thing in pallid waves of
+shadow. One by one, through the wan gallery in which she was locked,
+the motley spectres of night would pass in all their horrors, and begin
+their crazy, soundless nods and becks.
+
+Suddenly she cowered back, shuddering, with her eyes fixed on the
+darkening depths of the gallery and her day dreams died, like pale
+ashes crumbling on the hearth.
+
+Roger de Laval had entered and was regarding her with a malignant leer
+that almost froze the blood in her veins. She knew not what business
+had taken him abroad. Nevertheless was assured that some dark deed was
+slumbering in the depths of his soul.
+
+"Are you thinking of your fine lover?" he said as he slowly advanced
+towards her. "You are grieved to have your thoughts broken into by your
+husband? No doubt you wish me dead--"
+
+"Spare me this torture, my lord," she entreated. "I have answered a
+thousand times--"
+
+"Then answer again--"
+
+"I swear before God and the Saints he is guiltless. He knew not I was
+in Rome."
+
+"Swear what you will! A woman's oath is but a wind upon one's cheek on
+a warm summer day--gone ere you have felt it. The oath of a woman who
+has followed her lover--"
+
+"I have not done so!"
+
+"You have done your best to make the world believe it."
+
+"What of yourself?" There was a ring of scorn in her voice.
+
+"You have brought me to shame!"
+
+"What of the women you have shared with me?"
+
+Hellayne's eyes met those of her tormentor.
+
+"It is a man's part!"
+
+"And you are a man!"
+
+"One at least shall have cause to think so."
+
+"Perchance you will have him murdered. Why not kill me, too? That, too,
+is a man's part."
+
+He gave a great roar.
+
+"And who says that I shall not?"
+
+An icy fear, not for herself, but for Tristan, gripped her heart. She
+tried to hide it under a mantle of indifference.
+
+"What have you ever done to make yourself beloved?"
+
+"By Beelzebub--you--the runaway mistress of a fop--dares to question
+me--her rightful lord?"
+
+"Who made the laws that bound me to your keeping? They are man-made,
+and God knows as little of them as he knows of you. It was your
+measureless conceit, your boundless egotism, that whispered to you that
+any woman should feel honored, should deem it the height of glory, to
+be your wife."
+
+"And is it not?"
+
+She shuddered.
+
+"You never dreamed there might be something in the depths of my soul
+that cried out for more than the mere comforts and exigencies of
+existence! Something that craved love, companionship, and, above all,
+friendship. What have you done to waken this little slumbering voice
+which died in the shadow of your tremendous egotism?"
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"He has taught you this speech, by God!"
+
+"He has awakened my true self! What was I to you but part of your
+magnificence, a thing to make your fellows envious--"
+
+He roared. She continued:
+
+"The one decent woman of your life--your world--"
+
+His eyes glared.
+
+"So then, this low-born churl is a better man than I?"
+
+"At least he knew I had a soul of my own."
+
+"Skillfully cultivated to his own sweet ends."
+
+"His ends were innocent, else had he not fled."
+
+"Knowing that you would follow him."
+
+"He knew naught."
+
+"That remains to be seen."
+
+"It was you who brought us together!" she said with quiet scorn. "You
+were so sure in your pride and your power and of my own timidity that
+you thought it impossible that something might defy them. And you could
+not understand that another might be so much closer to my nature, or
+that I had a nature of my own. In those days I well remember, ere my
+heart had strayed too far, I tried to waken you to the great danger.
+I tried to speak of mine. But you would not be apprised of aught that
+would seem a concession to your pride. So we are come to this!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Come to what?" he thundered.
+
+"My ruin--and your disgrace!"
+
+His breast heaved.
+
+"Of you I know nothing. As for myself--I suffer no disgrace. I am too
+much a man of sense for that. Not a soul but thinks that you are absent
+with my consent. A pilgrimage to Rome! Many a woman has, for her soul's
+good gone alone. Not a soul, I warrant, has thought of your connection
+with that fellow's plight. Not a soul but thinks that this is the sole
+cause of your disappearance. And when I, too, went I was careful to
+leave the rumor behind."
+
+He stepped closer, his breath fanning her pale cheeks. She looked
+almost like a ghost in the grey twilight.
+
+"And now--" he continued, licking his sensuous lips, "you are
+found--you are found--my beautiful wife--you are found--and--to the
+eyes of the world at least--unstained. One alone whose lips are sealed,
+knows."
+
+Hellayne's lips tightened.
+
+"And a woman."
+
+A strange expression came into his face.
+
+"Have you spied upon me, too?"
+
+"You forget the meeting at the Arch."
+
+"No woman will spread the story of a rival's claims!"
+
+There was a pause, then he continued, with deliberate slowness:
+
+"You shall come back with me--my beautiful Hellayne--my wife in name,
+if not in deed! And you shall submit to my caresses, knowing, as I
+do, how loathsome they are. And you shall smile--smile--and appear
+happy--my wife henceforth in name only. And you shall smile no less at
+what henceforth your lord's pleasure may be with other women--fair as
+yourself--and you shall grow old and grey, and the thing you call your
+soul shall die and wither up your beauty--and never a word shall pass
+your lips anent this chastisement. And at last you shall die--and be
+laid by--and not a soul shall ever be the wiser for your shame."
+
+Hellayne covered her face with her hands.
+
+"And if I should refuse to accept this fate?"
+
+"Then you shall be flung into a nunnery."
+
+"And if I refuse to become a nun?"
+
+"Then your lover shall pay the price--with his blood instead of yours.
+Know you the woman he so madly loves?"
+
+"It is a lie!" she shrieked.
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Her name is Theodora. Saw you ever fairer creature?"
+
+"God!"
+
+"I want your answer!" leered the man.
+
+"I do not refuse!"
+
+An evil smile curved his lips.
+
+"I knew you would be reasonable--my fair Hellayne!"
+
+His lips were parted in a fatuous smile. He pictured to himself the
+pain at the parting and indeed his satisfaction was so great that he
+decided to prolong it yet a little longer. How amusing it would be to
+watch the face of him who had dared to love Hellayne. Knowing as now
+he did all the motives for his actions, it gave him pleasure to think
+that he could mar the astonishing good fortune of this adventurer who
+had found employment in the service of Alberic by the intrusion of this
+passion for another woman. It would be real joy to see this creature
+of sentiment thus torn and tortured. And it was yet a greater joy to
+force Hellayne to witness the struggle, forced to smile at the conquest
+of her lover by another woman. And he would watch the pangs of their
+suffering till the day of his departure.
+
+With her own blue eyes Hellayne should witness the love of him she had
+so madly followed, estranged by the beauty of Theodora, whose lure no
+mortal might resist.
+
+After he had entered his own chamber, Hellayne flew like a mad thing
+down the gloom-haunted gallery. Could she but escape from this
+humiliation--even through death's doors--she would not shrink. She
+felt, if she remained, she would go mad.
+
+It was true, then! Tristan loved another. The old love had been
+forgotten and cast aside! All her fears and misgivings returned in one
+mad whirl.
+
+Frantically she tried to remove the heavy bolt when she was paralyzed
+by a demoniacal laugh that issued behind her and swooning she fell at
+the feet of the man whose name she bore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE CRESSETS OF DOOM
+
+
+Never had Tristan's feelings been more hopelessly involved than since
+that eventful night by the Arch of the Seven Candles when, like a ghost
+of the past, Hellayne had once more crossed his path and had given
+his solemn pledge the lie. And the more Tristan's thoughts reverted
+to that fateful hour, when his oath seemed like so many words written
+upon water, and the man who believed him guilty held his life in the
+hollow of his hand, the greater grew his misery and unrest. Physically
+exhausted, mentally startled at the vehemence of his own feelings,
+he was suffering the relapse of a passion which he thought had burnt
+itself out, letting his mind drift back to the memory of happier
+days--days now gone forever.
+
+Why had she followed him? What was she doing here? Was the old fight to
+be renewed? And withal happiness mingled with the pain.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts came others.
+
+Had she accompanied the Count Laval to Rome and were his questionings
+mere pretense, to surprise the unguarded confession of a wrong of which
+he knew himself sinless? Had she been here all these days, seeking him
+perchance, yet not daring to make her presence known?
+
+And now where was she? Hardly found had he lost her? And see her he
+must--whatever the hazard, even to death. How much he had to say to
+her. How much he had to ask. Her presence had undone everything. Was
+the old life to begin again, only with a change of scenes?
+
+He had read her love for him in her eyes, and he could have almost
+wished that moment to have been his last, ere the untimely arrival of
+Theodora saved him from the death stroke of his enraged enemy. For he
+had seen the light fade from Hellayne's blue eyes when she faced the
+other woman, and Laval's taunts had found receptive ears. Everything
+had conspired against him on that night, even to seeming the thing he
+was not, and with a heart heavy to breaking Tristan scoured the city of
+Rome for three days in quest of the woman, but to no avail.
+
+His duties were not onerous and the city was quiet. No farther attempts
+had been made to liberate the Pontiff and the feuds between the rival
+factions seemed for the nonce suspended.
+
+Nevertheless Tristan felt instinctively, that all was not well. Night
+after night Basil descended into the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb,
+sometimes alone, sometimes with one or two companions, men Tristan
+had never seen. Ostensibly the Grand Chamberlain visited the cells of
+certain prisoners of state, and one night Tristan ventured to follow
+him. But he was seized with so great a terror that he resolved to
+confide in Odo of Cluny, who possessed the entire confidence of the
+Senator of Rome, and be guided by his counsel.
+
+In the meantime, like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky, the terrible
+thing had happened again. From the churches of Santa Maria in
+Trastevere and Santa Sabina of the Aventine, the Holy Host had been
+taken, notwithstanding the increased number of guards keeping watch in
+the sanctuaries.
+
+Rome shivered in the throes of abject terror. People whispered in
+groups along the thoroughfares, hardly daring to raise their voices,
+and many asserted that the Antichrist had returned once more to earth
+and that the End of Time was nigh. Like a dread foreboding of evil it
+gripped Tristan's soul.
+
+And day and night interminable processions of hermits and monks
+traversed the city with crosses and banners and smouldering incense.
+Their chants could be heard from the ancient Flaminian to the Appian
+Gate.
+
+Once more the shades of evening laid their cool touch upon the city's
+fevered brow, and as the distant hills rose into a black mass against
+the sunset two figures emerged on the battlements of the Emperor's Tomb
+and gazed down on the dimmed outlines of the Pontifical City.
+
+Before them lay a prospect fit to rouse in the hearts of all who knew
+its history an indescribable emotion. There, before them, lay the broad
+field of Rome, whereon the first ominous activities of the Old World's
+conquerors had been enacted. There in the mellow light of eve, lay the
+Latin land, once popular and rich beyond all quarters of the earth
+since the plain of Babylon became a desert, and now no less deserted
+and forlorn. And from the height from which these two looked down upon
+it, its shallow hills and ridges were truly minimized to the aspect of
+one mighty plain, increasing the vast sense of desolation. Rome--Rome
+alone--denied the melancholy story of disaster, utter and complete, the
+work of Goth and Hun and of malarial terror.
+
+But now over all this solemn prospect was the luminous blue light of
+evening, fading to violet and palest yellow in the farthest west, where
+lay the Tyrrhene Sea.
+
+Presently one of the two laid aside his cloak and, baring his arms
+to the kiss of the wind that crept softly about them, said in weary
+accents:
+
+"Never in all my life, Father, have I known a day to pass as tardily
+as this, for to me the coming hour is fraught with evil that may abide
+with me forever, and my soul is eager to know its doom, yet shrinks
+from the sentence that may be passed."
+
+Odo of Cluny looked into Tristan's weary face.
+
+"I, too, have a presentiment of Evil, as never before," the monk
+replied, laying a gentle hand on his companion's shoulder. "There are
+things abroad in Rome--one dares not even whisper. The Lord Alberic
+chose an evil hour for his pilgrimage to Monte Gargano. Have you no
+tidings?"
+
+"No tidings," reechoed Tristan gloomily.
+
+Odo of Cluny nodded pensively.
+
+"It seems passing strange. I know not why--" his voice sank to a
+whisper. "I mistrust the Grand Chamberlain. Whom can we trust? A poison
+wind is blowing over these hills--withering--destroying. The awful
+sacrilege at Santa Maria in Trastevere, following so closely upon
+the one at the Lateran, is but another proof that dark powers are at
+work--powers defying human ken--devils in human shape, doomed to burn
+to a crisp in the eternal fires."
+
+"Meanwhile--what can we do?"
+
+"Have you seen the Lord Basil?"--
+
+"He was much concerned, examined the place in person, but found no
+clue."
+
+"Are your men trustworthy?"
+
+"I know not, Father! For a slight service I chanced to do the Lord
+Alberic he made me captain of the guard in place of one who had
+incurred his displeasure. My men are Swiss and Lombards, a Spaniard or
+two--some Calabrians--no Romans."
+
+"Therein lies your salvation," interposed the Benedictine. "How many
+guard this tomb?"
+
+"Some four score men--why do you ask?"
+
+"I hardly know--save that there lurks some dark mystery behind the
+curtain. Let no man--nor woman--relax your watchfulness. There are
+tempests that destroy even the cedars of Lebanon," the monk continued
+with meaning. "And such a one may burst one night."
+
+"Your words are dark, Father, and fill me with misgivings."
+
+"And well they should," Odo interposed with a penetrating glance at the
+young captain. "For rumor hath it that another bird has strayed into
+the Lady Theodora's bower--"
+
+Tristan colored under the monk's scrutiny.
+
+"I was present at her feast. Yet I know not how I got there!"
+
+The monk looked puzzled.
+
+"Now that you have crossed the dark path of Marozia's sister I fear the
+ambushed gorge and the black arrow that sings from the hidden depths.
+Why seek the dark waters of Satan, when the white walls of Christ rise
+luminously before you?"
+
+"What is the import of these strange words so strangely uttered?"
+Tristan turned to the monk with a puzzled air.
+
+"That shall be made known to you in time. Treason lurks everywhere.
+Seal your ears against the Siren's song. Some say she is a vampire
+returned to earth, doomed to live on, as long as men are base enough
+to barter their soul for her kisses. And yet--how much longer? The
+Millennium draws nigh. The End of Time is near."
+
+There was a pause. Tristan tried to speak, but the words would not come
+from his lips.
+
+At last with an effort he stammered:
+
+"At the risk of incurring your censure, Father--even to the palace of
+Theodora must I wend my steps to recover that which is my own."
+
+And he informed the Monk of Cluny how he had lost his poniard and his
+scarf of blue Samite.
+
+"Why not send one you trust to fetch them back?" protested the monk.
+"It is not well to brave the peril twice."
+
+"Myself must I go, Father. For once and all time I mean to break her
+spell."
+
+"Deem you to accomplish that which no man hath--and live?"
+
+"There is that which shall keep my honor inviolate," Tristan replied.
+
+The cloudless sky was shot with dreamy stars, and cooling breezes were
+wafted over the Roman Campagna. Through the stillness came the muffled
+challenges of the guard.
+
+The twain crossed the ramparts of the Mausoleum in silence, holding
+to their way which led towards a postern, when suddenly, out of
+the battlements' embrazure, peered two gray, ghastly faces, which
+disappeared as suddenly. But Tristan's quick eye had marked them and,
+plucking at the monk's sleeve, he whispered:
+
+"Look yonder, Father--where stand two forms that scan us eagerly. My
+bewildered brain refuses me the knowledge I seek, yet I could vouch the
+sight of them is somehow familiar to my eyes."
+
+"That may well be," replied the monk. "For all this day long have
+I been haunted by the consciousness that our movements are being
+watched. Yet, I marvel not, for until Purgatory receive the soul of
+this accursed wanton, there is neither peace nor security for us.
+Her devilish hand may even now be informing all this dark plot, that
+seethes about us," Odo of Cluny concluded in apprehensive tones.
+
+Presently they drew near the great gateway, before which the flicker of
+cressets showed a company of the guard, with breast plates and shields,
+their faces hidden by the lowered visors of their Norman casks. Among
+them they noted a wizened eunuch, who, after peering at them with his
+ferret-like eyes, pointed to a door sunk in the wall, the while he
+whispered something in Tristan's ear. Thereupon Odo and Tristan entered
+the guard chamber.
+
+It was deserted.
+
+Beneath the cressets' uncertain gleam, as they emerged beyond, stood
+the eunuch with the same ferret-like glance, pointing across the dim
+passage, to, where could be made out the entrance to a gallery. The
+group behind them stood immobile in the flickering light and the space
+about them was naught but a shadowy void. Yet, as they went, their
+ears caught the clink of unseen mail, the murmur of unseen voices, and
+Tristan gripped the monk's arm and said in husky tones:
+
+"By all the saints,--we are fairly in the midst of Basil's creatures.
+An open foe I can face without shrinking, but I tell you this peril,
+ambushed in impenetrable night, saps my courage as naught else would.
+If but one battle-cry would shatter this numbing silence, one simple
+sword would flash, as it leaps from its scabbard, I should be myself
+again, ready to face any foe!"
+
+They entered the half gloom of a painted gallery where dog-headed
+deities held forth in grotesque representation beside the crucified
+Christ. They stole along its whole deserted length until they reached
+a door, hardly discernible in the pictured wall. The lamps burned low,
+but in the centre of the marble floor a brazier sent up a brighter
+flame, filling the air with a fragrance as of sandal wood.
+
+Tristan's hand groped for a spring along the outer edge of the door.
+At his touch a panel receded. Both he and the monk entered and the
+door closed noiselessly behind them. Tristan produced a candle and
+two flints from under his coat of mail. But ere he could light it by
+striking the flints, the approach of a dim light from the farther end
+of the tortuous gallery caused him to start, and both watched its
+approach with dread and misgiving.
+
+Soon a voice fell on their ear, answered by another, and Tristan
+swiftly drew his companion into a shadowy recess which concealed them
+while it yet enabled them to hear every word spoken by the two.
+
+"Thus we administer justice in Rome," said the one speaker, in whom
+Tristan recognized the voice of the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+"Somewhat like in our own feudal chateaux," came back the surly reply.
+
+Tristan started as the voice reached his ear. How came Roger de Laval
+here in that company?
+
+"You approve?" said the silken voice.
+
+"There is nothing like night and thirst to make the flesh pliable."
+
+"Then why not profit thereby?--But are you still resolved upon this
+thing?"--
+
+There was a pause. The voice barked reply:
+
+"It is a fair exchange."
+
+Their talk died to a vague murmur till presently the harsher voice rose
+above the silence.
+
+"Well, then, my Lord Basil, if these matters be as you say,--if you
+will use your good offices with the Lady Theodora--"
+
+"Can you doubt my sincerity--my desire to promote your interests--even
+to the detriment of my own?"
+
+His companion spat viciously.
+
+"He who sups with the devil must needs have a long spoon. What is to be
+your share?"
+
+"Your meaning is not quite clear, my lord."
+
+"Naught for naught!" Roger snarled viciously. "Shall we say--the price
+of your services?"
+
+"My lord," piped Basil with an injured air, "you wrong me deeply. It
+is but my interest in you, my desire to see you reconciled to your
+beautiful wife--"
+
+"How know you she is beautiful?" came the snarling reply.
+
+"I, too, was an unseen witness of your meeting at the Arch of the Seven
+Candles," Basil replied suavely.
+
+"Was all Rome abroad to gaze upon my shame?" growled Basil's companion.
+"Though--in a manner--I am revenged," he continued, through his
+clenched teeth. "Instead of giving her her freedom, I shall use her
+shrinking body for my plaything--I shall use her so that no other lover
+shall desire her. As for that low-born churl--"
+
+With a low cry Tristan, sword in hand, made a forward lunge. The monk's
+grip restrained him.
+
+"Madman!" Odo whispered in his ear. "Would you court certain death?"
+
+The words of the twain had died to a whisper. Thus they were lost
+to Tristan's ear, though he strained every nerve, a deadly fear for
+Hellayne weighting down his soul.
+
+The two continued their walk, passing so near that Tristan could have
+touched the hem of their garbs. Basil was importuning his companion on
+some matter which the latter could not hear. Laval's reply seemed not
+in accord with the Grand Chamberlain's plans, for his voice became more
+insistent.
+
+"But you will come--my lord--and you will bring your beautiful
+Countess? Remember, her presence in Rome is no longer a secret.
+And--whatever the cause which prompted her--pilgrimage, would you have
+the Roman mob point sneering fingers at Roger de Laval?"--
+
+"By God, they shall not!"
+
+"Then the wisdom of my counsel speaks for itself," Basil interposed
+soothingly. "It is the one reward I crave."
+
+There was a pause. Whatever of evil brooded in that brief space of time
+only these two knew.
+
+"It shall be as you say," Roger replied at last, and from their chain
+mail the gleam of the lantern they carried evoked intermittent answer.
+
+When their steps had died to silence Tristan turned to the monk. His
+voice was unsteady and there was a great fear in his eyes.
+
+"Father, I need your help as have I never needed human help before.
+There is some devil's stew simmering in the Lord Basil's cauldron. I
+fear the worst for her--"
+
+Odo shot a questioning glance at the speaker.
+
+"The wife of the Count Laval?" he returned sharply.
+
+"Father--you know why I am here--and how I have striven to tear this
+love from my heart and soul. Would she had not come! Would I had never
+seen her more--for where is it all to lead? For, after all, she is his
+wife--and I am the transgressor. But now I fear for her life. You have
+heard, Father. I must see her! I must have speech with her. I must warn
+her. Father--I promise--that shall be all--if you will but consent and
+find her--for I know not her abode."
+
+"You promise--" interposed the monk. "Promise nothing. For if you meet,
+it will not be all. All flesh is weak. Entrust your message to my care
+and I shall try to do your bidding. But see her no more! Your souls are
+in grave peril--and Death stands behind you, waiting the last throw."
+
+"Even if our souls should be forever stamped with their dark errors I
+must see her. I must know why she came hither--I must know the worst.
+Else should I never find rest this side of the grave. Father, in mercy,
+do my bidding, for gloom and misery hold my soul in their clutches, and
+I must know, ere the twilight of Eternity engulfs us both."
+
+"We will speak of this anon," the Monk of Cluny interposed, as together
+they left the gallery, now sunk in the deepest gloom and, passing
+through the vaulted corridors, emerged upon the ramparts. No sign of
+life appeared in the twilight, cast by the towering walls, save where
+in the shadowy passages the dimmed lights of cressets marked the
+passing of armed men.
+
+Below, the city of Rome began to take shape in the dim and ghostly
+starlight, thrusting shadowy domes and towers out of her dark slumber.
+
+In the distance the undulating crests of the Alban Hills mingled with
+the night mists, and from the nearby Neronian Field came the croaking
+of the ravens, intensifying rather than breaking the stillness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A MEETING OF GHOSTS
+
+
+A voice whose prompting he could not resist, impelled Tristan, after
+his parting from the Monk of Cluny, to follow the Grand Chamberlain,
+who had taken the direction of the Pincian Hill. His retreating form
+became more phantom-like in the misty moonlight, as viewed from the
+ramparts of the Emperor's Tomb. Nevertheless, mindful of the parting
+words of the monk, and filled with dire misgivings, Tristan set out
+at once. True to his determination, he procured a small lantern and a
+piece of coarse thick cloth, which he concealed under his cloak, then,
+by a solitary pathway, he followed the direction he had seen Basil
+take. The Bridge of San Angelo was deserted and not a human being was
+abroad.
+
+After a time he arrived at a small copse, where Basil's form had
+disappeared from sight. Clearing away the underbrush, Tristan came to
+what seemed a fissure in a wall, which cast a tremendous shadow over
+the surrounding trees and bushes. Creeping in as far as he dared, he
+paused, then, with mingled emotions of expectancy and apprehension
+which affected him so powerfully that for a moment he was hardly master
+of his actions, he slowly and carefully uncovered his lantern, struck
+two flints and lighted the wick.
+
+His first glance was intuitively directed to the cavity that opened
+beneath him.
+
+Of Basil he saw no trace, notwithstanding he had seen him enter
+the cavity at the point where he himself had entered. Ere long
+however, he heard a thin, long-drawn sound, now louder, now softer;
+now approaching, now receding, now verging toward shrillness, now
+returning to a faint, gentle swell. This strange, unearthly music was
+interrupted by a succession of long, deep rolling sounds, which rose
+grandly about the fissures above, like prisoned thunderbolts striving
+to escape. Roused by the mystery of the place and the uncertainty of
+his own purpose, Tristan was, for a moment, roused to a pitch of such
+excitement that almost threatened to unsteady his reason. Conscious of
+the danger attending his venture, and the fearful legends of invisible
+beings and worlds, he was constrained to believe that demons were
+hovering around him in viewless assemblies, calling to him in unearthly
+voices, in an unknown tongue, to proceed upon his enterprise and take
+the consequences of his daring.
+
+Thus he remained for a time, fearful of advancing or retracing his
+steps, looking fixedly into the trackless gloom and listening to the
+strange sounds which, alternately rising and falling, still floated
+around him. The fitful light of his lantern suddenly fell upon a
+shape that seemed to creep through one of the stone galleries. In the
+unsteady gleam it appeared from the distance like a gnome wandering
+through the bowels of the earth, or a forsaken spirit from purgatory.
+
+Had it been but a trick of his imagination, or had his mortal eyes
+seen a denizen of the beyond? At last he aroused himself, trimmed with
+careful hand his guiding wick and set forth to penetrate the great rift.
+
+He moved on in an oblique direction for several feet, now creeping
+over the tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities
+of the protrusions in the ruined brickwork, now descending into dark,
+slimy, rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all
+directions.
+
+For a moment Tristan paused and considered. He was almost tempted to
+retrace his steps, abandoning the purpose upon which he had come.
+Before him stretched interminable gloom, brooding, he knew not over
+what caverns and caves, inhabited by denizens of night.
+
+He moved onward, with less caution than he had formerly employed,
+when suddenly and without warning a considerable portion of brickwork
+fell with lightning suddenness from above. It missed him, else he
+should never had known what happened. But some stray bricks hurled him
+prostrate on the foundation arch, dislocating his right shoulder, and
+shattering his lantern into atoms. A groan of anguish rose to his lips.
+He was left in impenetrable darkness.
+
+For a short time Tristan lay as one stunned in his dark solitude.
+Then, trying to raise himself, he began to experience in all their
+severity the fierce spasms, the dull gnawings that were the miserable
+consequences of the injury he had sustained. His arm lay numbed by his
+side, and for the space of some moments he had neither the strength nor
+the will to even move the sound limbs of his body.
+
+But gradually the anguish of his body awakened a wilder and strange
+distemper in his mind, and then the two agonies, physical and mental,
+rioted over him in fierce rivalry, divesting him of all thoughts, save
+such as were aroused by their own agency. At length, however, the pangs
+seemed to grow less frequent. He hardly knew now from what part of his
+body they proceeded. Insensibly his faculties of thinking and feeling
+grew blank; he remained for a time in a mysterious, unrefreshing repose
+of body and mind, and at last his disordered senses, left unguided and
+unrestrained, became the victims of a sudden and terrible illusion.
+
+The black darkness about him appeared, after an interval, to be dawning
+into a dull, misty light, like the reflection on clouds which threaten
+a thunderstorm at the close of day. Soon this atmosphere seemed to be
+crossed and streaked with a fantastic trellis work of white, seething
+vapor. Then the mass of brickwork which had fallen in, grew visible,
+enlarged to an enormous bulk and endowed with the power of locomotion,
+by which it mysteriously swelled and shrank, raised and depressed
+itself, without quitting for a moment its position near him. And then,
+from its dark and toiling surface, there rose a long array of dusky
+shapes, which twined themselves about the misty trellis work above and
+took the palpable forms of human countenances.
+
+There were infantile faces wreathed with grave worms that hung round
+them like locks of slimy hair; aged faces dabbled with gore and slashed
+with wounds; youthful faces, seamed with livid channels along which
+ran unceasing tears; lovely faces distorted into the fixed coma of
+despairing gloom. Not one of these countenances exactly resembled the
+other. Each was stigmatized by a revolting character of its own. Yet,
+however deformed their other features, the eyes of all were preserved
+unimpaired. Speechless and bodiless they floated in unceasing myriads
+up to the fantastic trellis work, which seemed to swell its wild
+proportions to receive them. There they clustered in their goblin
+amphitheatre, and fixedly and silently they glared down, without
+exception, on the intruder's face.
+
+Meanwhile the walls at the side began to gleam out with a light of
+their own, making jaded boundaries to the midway scenes of phantom
+faces. Then the rifts in their surface widened, and disgorged
+misshapen figures of priests and idols of the olden time, which came
+forth in every hideous deformity of aspect, mocking at the faces of
+the trellis work, while behind and over the whole soared shapes of
+gigantic darkness. From this ghastly assemblage there came not the
+slightest sound. The stillness of a dead and ruined world was about
+him, possessed of appalling mysteries, veiled in quivering vapors and
+glooming shadows.
+
+Days, years, centuries seemed to pass, as Tristan lay gazing up in a
+trance of horror into this realm of peopled and ghostly darkness.
+
+At last he staggered to his feet. He must find an egress or go mad.
+Slowly raising himself upon his uninjured arm, he looked vainly about
+for the faintest glimmer of light. Not a single object was discernible
+about him. Darkness hemmed him in, in rayless and triumphant obscurity.
+
+The first agony of the pain having resolved itself into a dull
+changeless sensation, the vision that had possessed his senses was now,
+in a vast and shadowy form, present only to his memory, filling the
+darkness with fearful recollections and urging him on, in a restless,
+headlong yearning, to effect his escape from this lonely and unhallowed
+sepulchre.
+
+"I must pass into light. I must breathe the air of the sky, or I shall
+perish in this vault," he muttered in a hoarse voice, which the fitful
+echoes mocked by throwing his words as it were, to each other, even to
+the faintest whisper of its last recipient.
+
+Gradually and painfully he commenced his meditated retreat.
+
+Tristan's brain still whirled with the emotion that had so entirely
+overwhelmed his mind, as, staggering through the interminable gloom, he
+set forth on his toilsome, perilous journey.
+
+Suddenly however he paused, bewildered, in the darkness. He had no
+doubt mistaken the direction, and a gleam of light, streaming through
+the fissure of the rock, informed him that there were others in this
+abode of darkness, beside himself.
+
+Had he come upon the object of his quest?
+
+For a moment Tristan's heart stood still, then, with all the caution
+which the darkness, the danger of secret pitfalls and the risk of
+discovery suggested, he crept toward the crevice until the glow
+gradually increased. From the bowels of the earth, as it were, voices
+were now audible; they seemed to issue from the depths of a cavern
+directly below where Tristan stood. Groping his way carefully along
+the wall of rock, he at last reached the spot whence the light issued
+and presently started at finding himself before an aperture just wide
+enough to admit the body of a single man. A sort of perpendicular
+ladder was formed in the wall of narrow juttings of stone, and below
+these was the rock chamber from which the voices proceeded.
+
+It was some time ere the confusion of his ideas and the darkness
+allowed Tristan to form any notion of the character of the locality,
+when it suddenly dawned upon him that he had strayed into a place
+regarding which he had heard and wondered much: the Catacombs of St.
+Calixtus.
+
+This revelation was by no means reassuring, although the presence of
+others held out hope that he would discover an exit from this shadowy
+labyrinth.
+
+For a moment Tristan remained as one transfixed, as he gazed from his
+lofty pinnacle into the shadowy vault below.
+
+He saw a stone table, lighted with a single taper, in the centre of
+which lay an unsheathed dagger, and an object the exact character of
+which he could not determine in the half gloom, also a brazen bowl.
+About a dozen men in cloaks with black vizors stood around, and one,
+taller than the rest, the gleam of whose eyes shone through the slits
+of his mask, appeared to be concluding an address to his companions.
+
+The words were indistinguishable to Tristan but, when the speaker had
+concluded, a dark murmur arose which subsided anon. Then those present
+crowded around the stone table. The taper was momentarily obscured by
+the intervening throng, and Tristan could not see the ceremony, though
+he could hear the muttered formula of an oath they seemed to be taking.
+What he did see caused the chill of death to run through his veins.
+
+The group again receding, the man bared his left arm, raised the dagger
+on high and let it descend. Tristan saw the blood weltering slowly
+from the self-inflicted wound, trickling drop by drop into the brazen
+bowl, which another muffled figure was holding. Then each one present
+repeated the ceremony, he who was presenting the bowl being the last to
+mingle his blood with that of the rest.
+
+Then another stepped forth and, raising the bloody knife on high,
+stabbed the object that lay upon the table. Some mysterious signs
+passed between them, meaningless words that struck Tristan's ear with
+the vague memory of a dimly remembered dream. Then he who seemed to
+be the speaker raised the object on high and, walking to a niche,
+concealed in the shadows, placed it in, what seemed to Tristan, a
+fissure in the rock.
+
+Like ghosts returning to the bowels of the earth, they glided away,
+silently, soundlessly, and soon the silence of death hovered once again
+in the rock caverns of the Catacombs of St. Calixtus.
+
+In breathless suspense, utterly oblivious of the injury he had
+sustained, Tristan gazed into the deserted rock chamber where the dim
+light of the taper still flickered in a faint breath of air wafted from
+without.
+
+Hardly did the hearts of the Magi when the vision of the Star in the
+East first dawned upon their eyes experience a transport more vivid
+than that which animated Tristan when he found his terrible stress
+relieved.
+
+But almost immediately a reaction set in and a dire misgiving
+extinguished the quick ray of hope that had lighted his heart, luring
+him on to escape from these caverns of Death.
+
+By a strange mischance they had neglected to extinguish the taper.
+They might return at any moment and, his presence discovered, the doom
+in store for the intruder on their secret rites was not a matter of
+surmise. Composing himself to patience, Tristan waited, glaring as a
+caged tiger at the gates whose opening or closing might spell freedom
+or doom. At last, after a considerable lapse of time, moments that
+seemed eternity, he resolved to hazard the descent.
+
+Slowly and painfully moving, with the pace and perseverance of a
+turtle, he writhed downward upon his unguided course until he reached
+the bottom of the cavern. Breathless with exhaustion after his
+breakneck descent, he waited in the shadow of a projecting rock. When
+the deep sepulchral silence remained undisturbed, he advanced toward
+the fissure in the rock where one of the muffled company had placed the
+mysterious object.
+
+Tristan's quest was not at once rewarded. The shelving in the rock
+cavern, being irregular and almost indistinguishable, offered no clue
+to the mystery. A great fear was upon him, but he was determined, to
+discover the meaning of it all.
+
+Suddenly he paused. A small cabinet of sandal wood, concealed behind
+the jutting stone, had caught his eye. It was painted to resemble the
+rock and the untrained eye would not linger upon it. A small keyhole
+was revealed, but the key had been taken away.
+
+Tristan stood irresolute, with straining eyes and listening ear. Not
+a sound was audible. Even the piping of the night wind in the rock
+fissures seemed to have died to silence. With quick resolution he
+inserted one of the sharp-edged flints and gave a wrench.
+
+When the top receded he could not repress an outcry. A chill coursed
+coldly through his veins. His breath came and went in sobs, as from one
+half drowned.
+
+He only glanced at what was before him for the fraction of a second.
+But he knew what had made the very soul within him shudder and his
+bones grind, as if in mortal agony.
+
+It was as though Hell itself had opened the gates. He staggered back in
+a paroxysm of horror.--
+
+With a grim, set face Tristan closed the top of the cabinet and
+replaced it on the rocky ledge. Thus he stood, his face buried in his
+hands. Could the All-seeing God permit such an outrage and let the
+perpetrators live?
+
+But there was no time for reflection. At any moment one of the muffled
+phantoms might return, and indeed he thought he heard steps approaching
+through one of the rock galleries. He crouched in breathless, agonized
+suspense, for it did not suffer him longer in these caverns of crime
+and death.
+
+He dimly remembered the direction in which the nocturnal company had
+departed and, after some research, he discovered a narrow corridor
+that seemed to slope upward through the gloom. His lantern having been
+broken to atoms, the taper held out little promise of life beyond a
+brief space of time during which he must find the entrance of the
+cavern, if he did not wish to meet a fate even worse than death in the
+event of discovery.
+
+Grimly resolved Tristan raised the flickering taper and entered the
+gallery on his left. The Stygian gloom almost extinguished the feeble
+light, though he noted every object he passed, every turn in the
+tortuous ascent.
+
+After some time which seemed eternity he at last perceived a dim glow
+at the extremity of the gallery, and soon found himself before the
+outer cavity of the stone wall, in a region of the city that seemed
+miles removed from the place where he had entered.
+
+It was near daybreak. The moon shone faintly in the grey heavens and a
+vaporous mist was sinking from shapeless clouds that hovered over the
+course of the Tiber.
+
+Tristan looked about his solitary lurking place, but beheld no human
+being in its lonely recesses. Then his eyes fixed themselves with a
+shudder upon the glooming vault from which he had made his escape.
+
+He was on the track of a terrible mystery, a mystery which shunned the
+light of day and of heaven. He must fathom it, whatever the risk. A
+strange new energy possessed him. His life at last seemed to have a
+purpose. He was no longer a rolling stone. There was work ahead. His
+future course stood out clearly defined, as Tristan turned his back
+upon the Catacombs of St. Calixtus and took the direction of the
+Aventine. To Odo, the Monk of Cluny, he must confide the terrible
+discovery he had made in the mephitic caverns of the Catacombs. To him
+he must turn for counsel, of which he stood sorely in need. And in some
+way which he could not account for to himself, Tristan felt as if the
+fate of Hellayne was bound up in these dreadful mysteries. At first
+the thought seemed absurd, but somehow it gained upon him and began to
+add new weight to his burden. Could he but see her! Could he but have
+speech with her. A great dread seized him at the thought of what might
+be her fate at the present hour. What would she think of him who seemed
+to have abandoned her in the hour of dire distress, when she needed him
+above all men on earth?
+
+Did her intuition, did her heart inform her that he had roamed the city
+for days in the hope of finding her? Had her heart informed her that,
+like a spirit judged and condemned, he found neither rest nor peace
+in his vain endeavors to discover her abode? Was she sinking under
+her loneliness, perishing from uncertainty of her fate, doubts of his
+allegiance? To what perils and miseries had he exposed her, and to what
+end? He groaned in despair, as his mind reverted from the dark present
+to the happy past. A past, forever gone!--
+
+A faint streak of light crept across the East, permeating the grey dawn
+with roseate hues as Tristan re-entered the Emperor's Tomb to partake
+of an hour or two of much needed rest, ere the business of the new-born
+day claimed him its own.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A BOWER OF EDEN
+
+
+After some hours of much needed rest Tristan started out to find
+the Monk of Cluny. The task he had set himself was not one easy of
+execution, since the Benedictine friar was wont to visit the Roman
+sanctuaries following the promptings of the spirit without adhering to
+a definite routine. Thus the greater part of the day was consumed in a
+futile quest of him of whose counsel he stood sorely in need.
+
+At the hour of sunset Tristan set anew upon his quest. His feet carried
+him to a remote region of the city, and when he regained his bearings
+he found himself before the convent of Santa Maria del Priorata with
+its environing groves of oleander and almond trees.
+
+The moon was floating like a huge pearl of silver through vast seas of
+blue. The sleeping flowers were closed, like half-extinguished censers,
+breathing faint incense on the night's pale brow. From some dark bough
+a nightingale was shaking down a flood of song. The fountains from
+their stone basins leaped moonward in the passion of their love and
+seemed to fall sobbing back to earth. The night air breathed hot and
+languorous across the gardens of the Pincian Mount. Lutes tinkled here
+and there. And the magic of the night thrilled Tristan's soul. As in a
+trance his gaze followed the white figure that was moving noiselessly
+down a moss grown path. A thick hedge of laurel concealed her now. Then
+she paused as if she, too, were enraptured by the magic of the night.
+
+The moon illumined the central lawn and the whispering fountains. Tall
+cypresses seemed to intensify the shade. In the distance he could
+faintly discern the white balustrade, crowning a terrace where green
+alleys wound obscurely beneath the canopy of darkest oak, and moss and
+violet made their softest bed. In the very centre of it was a small
+domed temple, a shrine to Love.
+
+Tristan's senses began to swoon. Was it a hallucination--was it
+reality? A moon maiden she seemed, made mortal for a night, to teach
+all comers love in the sacred grove.
+
+"Hellayne! Hellayne!"
+
+His voice sounded strange to his own ears.
+
+As in a dream he saw her come towards him. She came so silent and so
+pale in the spectral light that he feared lest it was the spectre
+of his mind that came to meet him. And once more the voice cried
+"Hellayne!" and then they lay in each other's arms. All her reluctance,
+all her doubts seemed to have flown at the sound of her name from his
+lips.
+
+"Hellayne! Hellayne!" he whispered deliriously, kissing her eyes, her
+hair, her sweet lips, and folding her so close to him, as if he would
+never again part from her he loved better than life. "At last I have
+found you! How came you here? Speak! Is it indeed yourself, or is it
+some mocking spirit that has borrowed your form?"
+
+And again he kissed her and their eyes held silent commune.
+
+"It is I who have just refound you!" she whispered, as he looked
+enraptured into the sweet girlish face, the face that had not changed
+since he had left Avalon, though she seemed to have become more
+womanly, and in her eyes lay a pathetic sorrow.
+
+What a rapture there was in that clear tone. But she trembled as she
+spoke. Would he understand? Would he believe?
+
+"But--why--why--are you here?" he stammered.
+
+"I have sought you long."
+
+"You have followed me? You are not then a nun?"
+
+"You see I am not."
+
+"But why--oh why,--have you done this thing?"
+
+She made no answer.
+
+"You are here in Rome--and he is here. And you did not know?"
+
+"I knew!" she replied with a little nod, like a questioned child.
+
+"You knew! And he believes that I knew!"
+
+"That is a small matter, dear. For he knows, that you knew not."
+
+The endearment startled him. It seemed to cast her faith upon him.
+
+"What are you doing here?" he said.
+
+"I came because I had to come! I had no choice--!"
+
+"No choice! Then why did you send me away?"
+
+She gave a little shrug.
+
+"I knew not how much I loved you."
+
+"And yet, dearest, you cannot remain here. You know his moods better
+than any one else--and you know if he finds us--for your own sake,
+dearest, you cannot remain."
+
+In the warmth of his entreaty he had used as endearing words as she.
+They were precious to her ears.
+
+"Let him come!" she said, nestling close to him. "Let him come and kill
+me!"
+
+She glanced about. He pointed to the castellated building that rose
+darkly beyond the holm-oaks.
+
+"Yonder--is yonder your abode?" he stammered.
+
+Suddenly the woman in her gained the mastery.
+
+"Oh no! No! No! Let us hide! Wretch that I am, to risk your life with
+mine."
+
+She had flung herself upon him. Around them rioted roses in wild
+profusion. To him it seemed like a bosquet of Eden. Upon his breast she
+sobbed. But no consideration of past or present could restrain his hand
+from gently soothing her silken hair.
+
+"Oh, why did you leave me?" she cried. "Why could we not have loved
+without all this? Surely two souls can love--if love they must--without
+doing wrong to any one."
+
+His arms stole about her.
+
+"Speak to me! Speak to me!" she whispered with upturned face.
+
+"Had I known that this would happen, I should have known that I did
+foolishly," he replied. "You should have known, dearest. You thought to
+kill our love by cutting it to earth. You have but made its roots grow
+deeper down into the present and the future!"
+
+She nodded dreamily.
+
+"Perchance you speak truth!" she said. "You see me here by your side,
+having crossed leagues and leagues to seek your soul, my home--my only
+home forever. And as surely as the bee goes back to its one hallowed
+oak have I refound you. And as surely as the ocean knows that every
+breath of vapor lifted from its face shall some day come back to its
+breast, so surely did you know that your love must return to you."
+
+"Unless," he said, "it sinks into the unseen springs that are so deep
+that they are lost from sight forever."
+
+"Lost--nothing is lost. The deepest water shall break out some day and
+reach the lake--the river. Then, why not now? I am one who cannot wait
+for eternity."
+
+"And yet, eternity I fear, is waiting for us!"
+
+There was a deep silence, lasting apace.
+
+"Ah, I know," she said at last. "I know I ought to think as you do. I
+should be conscience stricken now, as I was then. I should be glad that
+you left me. But I am not--I am not. I am here, dearest, to ask you if
+you love me still?"--
+
+"Love you?" he replied in a transport, holding her close, while he
+covered her eyes and her upturned face with kisses. "I love you as
+never woman was loved--as the night loves the dew in the cups of the
+upturned flowers--as the nightingale loves the dream that weaves its
+phantom webs about her bowers. I love you above everything in heaven or
+on earth. You knew the answer, dearest. Why did you ask?"
+
+"I see it in your eyes. You love me still," she crooned, her beautiful
+white arms about his neck, "notwithstanding--"
+
+He started. And yet, after the scene she had witnessed on that night,
+her doubts were but too well-founded. Yet she had not queried before.
+
+"Strange fortunes crossed my path since I came here," he said.
+"Ambition lured--I followed, as one who lost his way. Would you have
+had me do otherwise?"
+
+In his eyes she read the truth. Yet the shadow of that other woman had
+come between them as a phantom.
+
+"Oh, no,--although I never thought that you were made for statecraft."
+
+"I am in the service of the Senator. And the Senator of Rome is her
+foe."
+
+"And you?"
+
+"I am his servant."
+
+She laughed nervously.
+
+"I never thought you would come to this, my love."
+
+"Nor ever should I have thought so. But fate is strange. The Holy
+Father is imprisoned in the Lateran. To him I wended my way. But
+the only service I did him was to prevent his escape--unwittingly.
+I visited the sanctuaries. But though prayers hovered on my lips,
+repentance was not in my heart. And then it came to pass. And I feel
+like one borne in a bark that has neither sail nor rudder. And if,
+instead of being far-floated to these Roman shores, I am headed for a
+port where all is security and peace, can I prevent it? I am borne on!
+I close my eyes and try to think that Fate has intended it for my good."
+
+"For your good!" she said bitterly.
+
+"For yours no less, perchance."
+
+"How so, dearest? What good can come to me from your soul's security?
+To me, who believe our love is rightful?"
+
+"And yet you sent me from you--into darkness--loneliness--despair?"
+
+She stroked his hair.
+
+"It was fear as well as conscience that prompted. You once said that
+all things are right, that may not be escaped. You said, that if God
+was at the back of all things, all things were pure--"
+
+"I know I said it! But, what I meant, I know not now. I saw things
+strangely then."
+
+"There were days when I, too, lost my vision," she said softly, "when I
+said to myself: there is truth and truth--the higher and the lower. It
+was the higher, if you like to call it so, Tristan, that prompted the
+deed. Since then I have come down to earth, and the lower truth, more
+fit for beings of clay, proclaims my presence here--"
+
+"What will you do?" he queried anxiously.
+
+"I know not--I know not! I came here to be with you--without ever a
+thought of meeting him again whom I have wronged--if wronged indeed
+I have. He has vowed to kill you! Oh, to what a pass have I brought
+you--my love--my love! Let us fly from Rome! Let us leave this city. He
+will never know. And as for me--he but loves me because I am fair to
+look upon, and lovable in the eyes of another. What I have suffered in
+the silence, in the darkness, you will never know. You shall take me
+with you--anywhere will I go--so we shake the dust of this city from
+our feet."
+
+She leapt at him again and flung her arms about his neck, her face
+upturned. He had neither will nor power to release himself. He scarcely
+had the strength to speak the words which he knew would stab her to the
+heart.
+
+Even ere he spoke she fell away from him as if she had read his mind.
+
+"So you persuaded him of your repentance," she cried. "You are friends
+over the body of your murdered love! And I--who gave all--am left
+alone,--the foe of either. It was nobly done."
+
+He stared at her as if he thought she had gone mad.
+
+"Listen, Hellayne," he urged, taking her hands in his, in the endeavor
+to soothe her. "What spirit of evil has whispered this madness into
+your ears? Even just now you said, he has sworn to kill me. How could
+there be reconciliation between Roger de Laval and myself--who love his
+wife?"
+
+"Then what is it?" she queried, her eyes upon his lips as if she were
+waiting sentence to be pronounced upon her.
+
+"I am the Senator's man!"
+
+The words fell upon her ears like the knell of doom.
+
+"He will release you! I will go to him--if your pride is greater, than
+your love."
+
+She was all woman now, deaf to reason and entreaty, thinking of nothing
+but her great love of him.
+
+He drew her down beside him on the marble seat.
+
+"Listen, Hellayne! You do not understand--you wrong me cruelly. Naught
+is there in this world that I would not do to make you happy--you,
+whose love and happiness are my one concern while life endures. But
+this thing may not be. The Senator of Rome is away on a pilgrimage. He
+has chosen me to watch over this city till his return. Danger lurks
+about me in every guise. Its nature I know not. But I do know that
+there is some dark power at work plotting evil. There is one I do not
+trust--the Lord Basil."
+
+Hellayne gave a start.
+
+"The bosom friend, so it would seem, of the Count Laval."
+
+The color had left Tristan's face.
+
+"You have met?"
+
+"He appears to have taken a great liking to my lord. Almost daily does
+he call, and they seem to have some secret matter between them."
+
+Tristan gripped Hellayne's hand so fiercely that she hardly suppressed
+an outcry.
+
+"Have you surprised any utterance?"
+
+"Only a name. They thought I was out of earshot."
+
+"What name?"
+
+"Theodora!"
+
+She watched him narrowly as she spoke the word.
+
+He gave a start.
+
+"Theodora," Hellayne repeated slowly. "She who saved your life when my
+poor efforts failed."
+
+There was a tinge of bitterness in her tone which did not escape
+Tristan's ear. Ere he could make reply, she followed it up with the
+question:
+
+"What is there between you and her?"
+
+"For aught I know it is some strange whim of the woman, call it
+infatuation if you will," he replied, "which, though I have repelled
+her, still maintains. It was at her feast I first met the Lord Roger
+face to face."
+
+"How came you there?" she questioned with pained voice.
+
+Tristan recounted the circumstances, concealing nothing from the time
+of his arrival in Rome to the present hour. Hellayne listened wearily,
+but the account he gave seemed rather to irritate than to reconcile her
+to him, who thus laid bare his heart before her.
+
+"And so soon was I forgot?" she crooned.
+
+"Never for a moment were you forgot, my Hellayne," he replied with all
+the fervor of persuasion at his command. "At all times have I loved
+you, at all times was your image enshrined in my heart. Theodora is
+all-powerful in Rome, as was Marozia before her. The magistrates, the
+officers of the Senator's court, are her creatures,--Basil no less than
+the rest. Would that the Lord Alberic returned, for the burden he has
+placed upon my shoulders is exceeding heavy. But you, my Hellayne, what
+will you do? I cannot bear the thought of knowing you with him who has
+wrecked your life, your happiness."
+
+In Hellayne's blue eyes there was a great pain.
+
+"Why mind such trifles since you but think of yourself?"
+
+"You do not understand!" he protested. "Can I with honor abandon the
+trust which the Senator has imposed? What if the dreadful thing should
+happen? What if sudden sedition should sweep his power into the night
+of oblivion? Could I stand face to face with him, should he ask: 'How
+have you kept your trust?'"
+
+Steps were approaching on the greensward.
+
+Hellayne turned pale and Tristan's arm closed about her, determined to
+defend her to the death against whosoever should dare intrude.
+
+Then it was as if some impalpable barrier had arisen between the man
+and the woman. It seemed the last hard malice of Fate to have brought
+them so near to what was not to be.
+
+Hardly had Tristan drawn her throbbing bosom to his embrace when a dark
+shadow fell athwart their path and, looking up, he became aware of a
+forbidding form that stood hard by, wrapped in a black mantle that
+reached to his heels. From under a hood which was drawn over his face
+two beady eyes gleamed with smouldering fire, while the hooked nose
+gave the face the semblance of a bird of prey, which illusion the cruel
+mouth did little to dispel.
+
+Hellayne, too, had seen this phantom of ill omen and was about to
+release herself from Tristan's arms, her face white as her robe, when
+the speech of the intruder arrested her movement.
+
+"A message from the Lady Theodora."
+
+A hot flush passed over Tristan's face, giving way to a deadly
+pallor as, hesitating to take the proffered tablet, he replied with
+ill-concealed vexation:
+
+"Whom does the Lady Theodora honor by sending so ill-favored a
+messenger?"
+
+The cowled figure fixed his piercing eyes first upon Tristan then upon
+Hellayne.
+
+"The Lord Tristan will do well to pay heed to the summons, if he values
+that which lies nearest his heart."
+
+But ere he, for whom the message was intended, could take it, Hellayne
+had snatched it from the messenger, had broken the seal and devoured
+its contents by the light of the moon which made the night as bright as
+day.
+
+Then, with a shrill laugh, she cast it at Tristan's feet and, ere the
+latter could recover himself, both the woman and the messenger had gone
+and he stood alone in the bosquet of roses, vainly calling the name of
+her who had left him without a word to his misery and despair.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+AN ITALIAN NIGHT
+
+
+The palace of Theodora on Mount Aventine was aglow with life and
+movement for the festivities of the evening. The lights of countless
+cressets were reflected from the marble floor of the great reception
+hall and shone on the rich panelling, and the many-hued tapestries
+which decked the walls.
+
+In the shadow of the little marble kiosk which rose, a relic of a
+happier age, among oleander and myrtles, shadowed by tall cypresses,
+silent guardians of the past, Theodora and Basil faced each other.
+The white, livid face of the man gave testimony to the passions that
+consumed him, as his burning gaze swept the woman before him.
+
+"I have spoken, my Lord Basil! Should some unforeseen mischance befall
+him I have summoned hither, look to it that I require not his blood at
+your hands."
+
+Theodora's tone silenced all further questioning. After a pause she
+continued: "And if you desire farther proof that this man shall not
+stand against my enchantments, pass into yonder kiosk and through its
+carven windows shall you be able to witness all that passes between us."
+
+She ceased with quivering lips, the while Basil regarded her from under
+half-shut lids, filled with sudden brooding, and for a space there was
+silence. At last he said in a low, unsteady voice:
+
+"So I did not err when my hatred rose against this puppet of the
+Senator's, who came to Rome to do penance for a kiss. You love him,
+your foe, while I, your utter slave, must stand by and, with aching
+heart, see your mad desire bring all our schemes to naught."
+
+His hand closed on his dagger hilt, but Theodora's eyes flashed like
+bared swords as with set face she said:
+
+"Fool!--to see but that which lies in your path, not the intricate nets
+which are spread in the darkness. I mean to make this man my very own!
+His fevered lips shall close on mine, and in my embrace he shall climb
+to the heaven of the Gods. He shall be mine! He shall do my bidding
+utterly. He shall open for me the gates of the Emperor's Tomb. He shall
+stand beside me when I am proclaimed mistress of Rome! For my love he
+shall defy the world that is--and the world that is not."
+
+"And what of the woman he loves?" Basil snarled venomously, and the
+pallor of Theodora's face informed him that the arrow he had sped had
+hit the mark.
+
+She held out her wonderful statuesque arms, then, raising herself to
+her full height, she said:
+
+"Is the pale woman from his native land a match for me? What rare sport
+it shall be to make of this Hellayne a mock, and of her name a memory,
+and put Theodora's in its high place. Do you doubt my power to do as I
+say?"
+
+"Verily I do believe that you love this pilgrim," Basil said sullenly.
+"And while I am preparing the quake that shall tumble Alberic's
+dominion into dust and oblivion, you are making him the happiest of
+mortals. And deem you I will stand by and see yon dotard reap the
+fruits of my endeavors and revel where I, your slave, am starving for a
+look?"
+
+"Well have you chosen the word, my lord--my slave! For then were
+Theodora indeed the puppet of a lust-bitten subject did she heed his
+mad ravings and his idle plaints. Know, my lord, that my love is his to
+whom I choose to give it, his who gives to me that in return which I
+desire. And though I have drunk deep of the goblet of passion, never
+has my heart beat one jot the faster, nor has the fire in my soul been
+kindled until I met him whom this night I have summoned."
+
+"And deem you, fairest Theodora, that the sainted pilgrim will come?"
+Basil interposed with an evil leer.
+
+An inscrutable smile curved Theodora's crimson lips.
+
+"Let that be my affair, my lord, but--that everything may be clear
+between us--know this: when I summoned him, after he had spurned me on
+the night when I intended to make him the happiest of men, it was to
+torture him, to make a mock of him, to arouse his passions till they
+overmastered all else, till in very truth he forgot his God, his honor,
+and the woman for whose kisses he does such noble penance--but now--"
+
+"But now?" came the echo from Basil's lips.
+
+"Who says I shall not?" Theodora replied with her inscrutable smile.
+"Who shall gainsay me? You--my lord?"
+
+There was a strange light in Basil's eyes, kindled by her mockery.
+
+"And when he kneels at your feet, drunk with passion--laying bare
+his soul in his mad infatuation--who shall prevent this dagger from
+drinking his heart's blood, even as he peers into the portals of bliss?"
+
+Theodora's eyes flashed lightnings.
+
+"I shall kill you with my own hands, if you but dare but touch one hair
+of his head," she said with a calm that was more terrible than any
+outburst of rage would have been. "He is mine, to do with as I choose,
+and look well to it, my lord, that your shadow darken not the path
+between us.--Else I shall demand of you such a reckoning as none who
+may hear of it in after days shall dare thwart Theodora--either in love
+or in hate."
+
+Basil's writhing form swayed to and fro; passion-tossed he tried in
+vain to speak when she raised her hand.
+
+With a gesture of baffled wrath and rage Basil bowed low. A sudden
+light leaped into his eyes as he raised her hand to his lips. Then he
+retreated into the shadow of the kiosk.
+
+A moment later Tristan came within view, walking as one in a trance.
+Mechanically he passed towards the banquet hall. Then he paused,
+seeming to wait for some signal from within.
+
+A hand stole into his and drew him resistlessly into the shadows.
+
+"Why do you linger here? Behold where the moonlight calls."
+
+"Where is your mistress?" Tristan turned to the Circassian.
+
+A strange smile played on Persephoné's lips.
+
+"She awaits you in yonder kiosk," she replied, edging close to him.
+"Take care you do not thwart her though--for to-day she strikes to
+kill."
+
+"It is well," Tristan replied. "It must come, and will be no more
+torture now than any other time."
+
+Persephoné gave a strange smile, then she led him through a cypress
+avenue, at the remote end of which the marble kiosk gleamed white in
+the moonlight.
+
+Pointing to it with white outstretched arm she gave him a mock bow and
+returned to the palace.
+
+His lips grimly set, Tristan, insensible to the beauty of the summer
+night, strode down the flower-bordered path. Woven sheets of silvery
+moonlight, insubstantial and unreal, lay upon the greensward. The
+sounds of distant lutes and harps sank down through the hot air. The
+sky was radiant with the magic lustre of a great white moon, suspended
+like an alabaster lamp in the deep azure overhead. Her rays invaded the
+sombre bosquets, lighted the trellised rose-walks and cast into bold
+relief against the deep shadows of palm and ilex many feathery fountain
+sprays, crowning flower-filled basins of alabaster with whispering
+coolness.
+
+The path was strewn with powdered sea shells and bordered on either
+side with rare plants, filling the air with exquisite perfume. Between
+thickets of yellow tufted mimosa and leafy bowers of acacia shimmered
+the crystal surface of the marble cinctured lake, tinted with pale gold
+and shrouded by pearl-hued vapors.--Pink and white myrtles, golden-hued
+jonquils, rainbow tinted chrysanthema, purple rhododendrons, iris,
+lilac and magnolia mingled their odors in an almost disconcerting orgy,
+and rare orchids raised their glowing petals with tropical gorgeousness
+from vases of verdigris bronze in the moonlight.
+
+At the entrance of the marble kiosk, there stood the immobile form of a
+woman, half hidden behind a cluster of blooming orchids.
+
+The silver light of the moon fell upon the pale features of Theodora.
+Her gaze was fixed upon the dark avenue of cypress trees, through which
+Tristan was swiftly approaching.
+
+She stood there waiting for him, clad in misty white, like the
+moonbeams, yet the byssus of her garb was no whiter than was the throat
+that rose from the faultless trunk of her body, no whiter than her
+wonderful hands and arms.
+
+Tristan's lips tightened. He had come to claim the scarf and dagger.
+To-night should end it all. There was no place in his life for this
+woman whose beauty would be the undoing of him who gave himself up to
+its fatal spell.
+
+As he stood before her, a gleam of moonlight on his broad shoulders,
+Theodora felt the blood recede to her heart, the while she gazed on his
+set, yet watchful face. His silence seemed to numb her faculties and
+her voice sounded strange as, extending her hand, she said:
+
+"Welcome, my Lord Tristan."
+
+He bowed low, barely touching the soft white fingers.
+
+"The Lady Theodora has been pleased to summon me and I have obeyed. I
+am here to claim the dagger which was taken from me and the scarf of
+blue samite."
+
+Theodora glanced at him for a moment, the blood drumming in her ears
+and driving a coherent answer from her mind, while Tristan met her gaze
+without flinching, with the memory of Hellayne in his heart.
+
+"Presently will I reveal this matter to you, my Lord Tristan," she said
+at last. "Meanwhile sit you here beside me--for the night is hot, and I
+have waited long for your coming."
+
+For a moment Tristan hesitated, then he took his seat beside her on the
+marble bench, his brain afire, as he mused on all the treachery her
+soft bosom held.
+
+"You look strangely at me, Tristan," she said in a low tone, dropping
+all formality, "almost as if it gave you pain to sit beside me. Yet I
+cannot think that a man like you has never rested beside a beautiful
+woman in an hour of solitude and passion."
+
+A laugh, soft as the music of the Castalian fountain, fell on Tristan's
+ear, but as he sat without answer, she continued, her face very close
+to his:
+
+"Strange, indeed, my words may sound in your ears, Tristan--and
+yet--can it be that you are blind as well as deaf to the call of the
+Goddess of Love, who rules us all?"
+
+She paused, her lips ajar, her eyes alight with a strange fire, such
+as he had seen therein on the night in the sunken gardens, beyond the
+glimmering lake.
+
+"And what have I to give to you, Lady Theodora," he said at length.
+"What can you expect from me, the giving of which would not turn my
+honor to disgrace and my strength to water?"
+
+At his words she rose up and, towering her glorious womanhood above
+him, glided behind the marble bench and, leaning hot hands upon his
+shoulders, bent low her head, till strands of perfumed hair rested on
+his tense features.
+
+"Do you love power, Tristan?" she said with low, yet vibrant voice.
+"I tell you that, if you give yourself to me, there are no heights to
+which the lover of Theodora may not climb. The way lies open from camp
+to palace, from sword to sceptre, and, though the aim be high, at
+least it is worth the risk. Steep is the path, but, though attainment
+seems impossible, I tell you it is the wings of love that shall raise
+you and bid you soar to flights of glory and rapture. I offer you
+a kingdom, if you will but lay your sword at my feet and yet more
+besides, for, Tristan, I offer you myself."
+
+The perfumed head bent lower and the scented cloud fell more thickly
+upon him as he sat there, dazed and enchanted out of all powers of
+resistance by the misty sapphire eyes that gleamed amid it, and seemed
+to drag his soul from out of him. Now his head was pillowed on her soft
+bosom and her white arms were about him, while lingering kisses burnt
+on his unresponsive lips, when suddenly she faced round with a cry,
+for there, directly before them in the clearing, stood a woman, whose
+gleaming white robe, untouched by any color, save that of the violet
+band that bound it round her shoulders, seemed one with the sun-kissed
+hair, tied into a simple knot.
+
+Hellayne stood there as if deprived of motion, her blue eyes wide with
+horror and pain, her curved lips parted, as if to speak, though no
+sound came from them, until Tristan turned and, as their glances met,
+he gave a strangled groan and buried his face in his hands.
+
+Theodora stood immobile, with blazing eyes and terrible face, then
+she clapped her hands twice and at the sound two eunuchs appeared and
+stood motionless awaiting their mistress' behest. For apace there was
+silence, while Theodora glanced from the one to the other, quivering
+from head to foot with the violence of the passion that possessed her,
+casting anon a glance at Tristan who stood silent, with bowed head.
+
+At length she glided up to him and, as she laid her two white hands on
+his broad shoulders, Tristan shuddered and felt a longing to make an
+end of all her evil beauty and devilish cunning. Then, deliberately,
+she took the scarf of blue samite, which lay beside her and put her
+foot upon it.
+
+"This is very precious to you, Tristan, is it not?" she said in her
+sweet voice, while her witching eyes sank into his. "I was about to
+tell you how you might serve me, and deserve all the happiness that
+is in store for you when I was interrupted by the appearance of this
+woman. Can you tell me, who she is, and why she is regarding you so
+strangely?"
+
+As she spoke she turned slowly towards Hellayne whose face was pale as
+death.
+
+A spasm of rage shook Tristan, at the sight of the woman who regarded
+him out of wide, pitiful eyes, but even as he longed to pierce the
+heart of her who was striving to wreck all he held dear, Odo of Cluny's
+warning seemed to clear his brain of the rage and hate that was
+clouding it, and in that instant he knew, if he played his part, he
+held in his hand the last throw in the dread game, of which Rome was
+the pawn.
+
+"In all things will I do your bidding, Lady Theodora,--for who can
+withstand your beauty and your enchantment?" said a voice that seemed
+not part of himself.
+
+Theodora turned to Hellayne.
+
+"You have heard the words the Lord Tristan has spoken," she said in
+veiled tone of mockery. "Tell me now, did you not know that I was
+engaged upon matters of state when you intruded yourself into our
+presence?"
+
+For a moment the blue eyes of Hellayne flashed swords with the dark
+orbs of Theodora. There was a silence and the two women read each
+other's inmost thoughts, Hellayne meeting Theodora's contemptuous scorn
+with the keen look of one who has seen her peril and has nerved herself
+to meet it.
+
+To Tristan she did not even vouchsafe a glance.
+
+"I followed one, perjured and forsworn," she said in tones that cut
+Tristan's very soul, while a look of immeasurable contempt flashed from
+her blue eyes. "You are welcome to him, Lady Theodora. I do not even
+envy you his memory."
+
+Ere Theodora could reply, Hellayne, with a choking sob, turned and fled
+down the moonlit path like some hunted thing, and ere either realized
+what had happened she had vanished in the night.
+
+Tristan, dreading the worst, his soul bruised in its innermost
+depths, cursing himself for having permitted any consideration except
+Hellayne's life to interfere with his preconceived plans, started to
+follow, when Theodora, guessing his purpose, suddenly barred his way.
+
+Ere he could prevent, she had thrown her arms about him and her
+face upturned to his stormy brow she whispered deliriously, utterly
+oblivious of two eyes that burnt from their sockets like live coals:
+
+"I love you! I love you!" and her whole being seemed ablaze with the
+fire of an all-devouring passion. "Tristan, I love you with a love
+so idolatrous, that I could slay you with these hands rather than be
+spurned, be denied by you. Love me Tristan--love me! And I shall give
+you such love in return as mortals have never known. I am as one in a
+trance--I cannot see--I cannot think! I, the woman born to command--am
+begging--imploring--I care not what you do with me--what becomes of me.
+Take me!--I am yours--body and soul!"
+
+Her face was lighted up by the pale rays of the moon. But, though
+his senses were steeped in a delirium that almost took from him his
+manhood, the gloom but deepened on Tristan's brow, while with moist
+hungry lips she kissed him, again and again.
+
+At last, seemingly on the verge of merging his whole being into her
+own, he succeeded in extricating himself from the steely coils of those
+white arms.
+
+"Lady Theodora," he said in cold and constrained tones, "I am too poor
+to return even in part such priceless favors of the Lady Theodora's
+love!"
+
+Stung in her innermost soul by his words, trembling from head to foot
+with the violence of her emotions, she panted in a passion of anger and
+shame.
+
+"You dare? This to me? Since then you will not love me--take this--"
+
+Above him, in her hand, gleamed his own unsheathed dagger.
+
+Tristan with a supple movement caught the white wrist and wrenched the
+weapon from her.
+
+"The Lady Theodora is always true to herself," he said with cutting
+irony, retreating from her in the direction of the lake.
+
+She threw out her arms.
+
+"Tristan--Tristan--forgive me! Come back--I am not myself."
+
+He paused.
+
+"And were you Aphrodite, I should spurn your love,--I should refuse to
+kiss the lips, which a slave, a churl has defiled."
+
+"You spurn me," she laughed deliriously. "Perchance, you are right. And
+yet," she added in a sadder tone, "how often does fate but grant us
+the dream and destroy the reality. Go--ere I forget, and do what I may
+repent of. Go! My brain is on fire. I know not what I am saying. Go!"
+
+As Tristan turned without response, a gleam of deadly hatred shone from
+her eyes. For a long time she stood motionless by the kiosk, staring
+as one in a trance down the long cypress avenue, whose shadows had
+swallowed up Tristan's retreating form.
+
+The spectral rays of the moon broke here and there through the dense,
+leafy canopy, and dream-like the distant sounds of harps and flutes
+were wafted through the stillness of the starlit southern night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE NET OF THE FOWLER
+
+
+The appearance of Basil who had emerged from the kiosk and regarded
+Theodora with a look in his pale, passion distorted features that
+seemed to light up recesses in his own heart and soul which he himself
+had never fathomed, caused the woman to turn. But she looked at the
+man with an almost unknowing stare. Notwithstanding a self-control
+which she rarely lost, she had not found herself. The incredible had
+happened. When she seemed absolutely sure of the man, he had denied
+her. Her ruse had been her undoing. For Hellayne's presence had
+been neither accidental, nor had Hellayne herself brought it about.
+The messenger who had summoned Tristan had skillfully absolved both
+commissions. He was to have brought the woman to the tryst, that she
+might, with her own eyes, witness her rival's triumph. In her flight
+she had vanquished Theodora.
+
+Stealthily as a snake moves in the grass, Basil came nearer and nearer.
+When he had reached Theodora's side he took the white hand and raised
+it, unresisting, to his lips. His eyes sought those of the woman, but a
+moment or two elapsed ere she seemed even to note his presence.
+
+He bent low. There was love, passion, adoration in his eyes and there
+was more. Theodora had over-acted her part. He had seen the fire
+in her eyes and he knew. It was more than the determination to make
+Tristan pliable to her desires in the great hour when she was to enter
+Castel San Angelo as mistress of Rome. He saw the abyss that yawned at
+his own feet, and in that moment two resolves had shaped themselves in
+Basil's mind, shadowy, but gaining definite shape with each passing
+moment, and, while his fevered lips touched Theodora's hand, all the
+evil passions in his nature leaped into his brain.
+
+Suddenly Theodora, glancing down at him, as if she for the first time
+noted his presence, spoke.
+
+"Acknowledge, my lord, that I have attained my ends! For, had
+it not been for the appearance of that woman, I should have
+conquered--ay--conquered beyond a doubt."
+
+But when she looked at him she hardly recognized in him the man she
+knew, so terribly had rage and jealousy distorted his countenance.
+
+"How can I gainsay that you have conquered, fairest Theodora," he said,
+"when I heard the soft accents of your endearments and your panting
+breath, as you drowned his soul in fiery kisses? 'Tis but another
+poor fool swallowed up in the unsatisfied whirlpool of your desires,
+another victim marked for the holocaust that is to be. But why did the
+Lady Theodora cry out and bring the tender love scene to a close all
+unfinished?"
+
+"By pale Hekaté, I had almost forgot the woman! Why did I permit her
+to go without strangling her on the spot?" she cried, the growing
+anger which the man's speech had aroused, brought to white heat in the
+reminder.
+
+"The honor of being strangled by the fair hands of the Lady Theodora
+may be great," sneered Basil. "Yet I question if the Lady Hellayne
+would submit without a struggle even to so fair an opponent."
+
+"Why do you taunt me?" Theodora flashed.
+
+"Why?" he cried. "Because I witnessed another reaping the fruit of
+the deeds I have sown--another stealing from me the love of the woman
+I have possessed,--one, too, held in silken bondage by another's wife.
+Rather would I plunge this knife into my own heart and--"
+
+Theodora's bosom heaved convulsively.
+
+"Put up your dagger, my lord," she said, with a wave of her hand. "For,
+ere long, it shall drink its fill. Strange it is that I--the like of
+whose beauty, as they tell me, is not on earth--should be conquered by
+a woman from the North--that the fires of the South should be quenched
+by Northern ice. I could almost wish that matters had run differently
+between her and myself, for she is brave, else had she not faced me as
+she did."
+
+"What else can you look for, Lady Theodora, from one sprung from such a
+race?" replied the man sullenly. "I tell you, Lady Theodora, if you do
+not ward yourself against her, she will vanquish you utterly, body and
+soul."
+
+"The future shall decide between us. I am still Theodora, and it will
+go hard with you, if you interpret my will according to your own
+desires. I foresee that we shall have need of all our resources when
+the hour tolls that shall see Theodora set upon the throne that is her
+own, and then--let deeds speak, not words."
+
+"Since when have you found occasion to doubt the sureness of my blade,
+Lady Theodora?" answered Basil, a dark look in his furtive eyes.
+
+"Peace, my lord!" interposed Theodora. "Why do you raise up the ghost
+of that which has been between us? Bury the past, for the last throw
+that is in the hands of destiny ends the game which has been played
+round this city of Rome these many weary days."
+
+"And had you, Theodora, of a truth won over this Tristan," came the
+dark reply, "so that one hour's delight in your arms would have caused
+him to forget the world about him--what of me who has given to you the
+love, the devotion of a slave?"
+
+At the words Theodora flung wide her shimmering arms and cried:
+
+"I tell you, my lord, that as I hold you and every man captive on whom
+my charms have fallen, so shall I hold in chains the soul of this
+Tristan, even though he resist--to the last."
+
+"Full well do I know the potency of your spell," answered Basil with
+lowering eyes, "and, I doubt me, if such is the case. Nevertheless,
+I warn you, Lady Theodora, not to place too great a share of this
+desperate venture on the shoulders of one you have never proved."
+
+A contemptuous smile curved Theodora's lips as she rose from her seat.
+With a single sweep her draperies fell from her like mist from a
+snow-clad peak, and for the space of a moment there was silence, broken
+only by Basil's panting breath. At last Theodora spoke.
+
+"Man's honor is so much chaff for the burning, when the darts of love
+pierce his brain. With beauty's weapons I have fought before, and once
+again the victory shall be mine!"
+
+There was an ominous light in Basil's eyes.
+
+"Beware, lest the victory be not purchased with the blood of one whom
+your fickleness has chosen to sit in the empty seat of the discarded.
+At the bidding of a mad passion have you been defeated."
+
+A flood of words surged irresistibly to Basil's lips, but at the sight
+of Theodora's set face the words froze in the utterance. But when the
+woman stared into space, her face showing no sign that she had even
+heard his speech, he continued:
+
+"And when you are stretched out on a bed of torment and call for death
+to ease your pain, let the bitterest pang be that, had you enlisted my
+blade and cherished the devotion I bore you, this night's work would
+have set the seal of victory on our perilous venture."
+
+"Blinded I have been," said Theodora, a strange light leaping to her
+eyes, "to all the devotion which now I begin to fathom more clearly.
+Answer me then, my lord! Is it only to slake the pangs of mad jealousy
+that you taunt me with words which no man has dared to speak--and live?"
+
+The sheen of a drawn dagger flashed above his head. Basil faced the
+death that lurked in Theodora's uplifted arm and he replied in an
+unmoved voice:
+
+"Lady Theodora, if you harbor one single doubt in your mind of him who
+has worked your will on those you consigned to their doom and laid
+their proud heads low in the dust of the grave, let your blade descend
+and quit me according to what I have deserved. Nay--Lady Theodora," he
+continued, as her white arm still hovered tense above him, "it is quite
+evident your love I never had, your trust I have lost! Therefore send
+my soul to the dim realms of the underworld, for I have no longer any
+desire for life."
+
+He was gazing up at her with eyes full of passionate devotion, when
+of a sudden the blade dropped from her grasp, tinkling on the stone
+beneath, and, burying her face in her hands, Theodora burst into an
+agony of tears that shook her form with piteous sobbing.
+
+"By all the saints, dear lady, weep not," Basil pleaded, placing gentle
+hands upon her shoulders. "Rather let your dagger do its work and drink
+my blood, than that grief should thus undo you."
+
+"Truly had some evil spirit entered into me," she spoke at length in
+broken accents, "else had I not so madly suspected one whose devotion
+to me has never wavered. Can you forgive me, my lord, most trusted and
+doubted of my friends?"
+
+With a fierce outcry the man cast himself at her feet, and, bending
+low, kissed her hands, while, in tones, hoarse with passion, he
+stammered:
+
+"Let me then prove my love, Lady Theodora, most beautiful of all women
+on earth! Set the task! Show me how to win back that which I have
+lost! Let me become your utter slave."
+
+And, so saying, he swept the unresisting woman into his grasp, and as
+her body lay motionless against his breast the sight of her lips so
+close to his own sent the hot blood hurtling through his fevered brain.
+
+Theodora shuddered in his embrace.
+
+He kissed her, again and again, and her wet lips roused in him all the
+demoniacal passions of his nature.
+
+"Speak," he stammered, "what must I do to prove to you the love which
+is in my heart--the passion that burns my soul to crisp, as the fires
+of hell the souls of the damned?"
+
+Theodora's eyes were closed, as if she hesitated to speak the words
+that her lips had framed. He, Tristan, had brought her to this pass.
+He had denied, insulted her, he had made a mock of her in the eyes of
+this man, who was kneeling at her feet, bond slave of his passions. By
+his side no task would have seemed too great of accomplishment. And
+whatever the fruits of her plotting he was to have shared them. How
+she hated him; and how she hated that woman who had come between them.
+As for him whose stammering words of love tumbled from his drunken
+lips, Theodora could have driven her poniard through his heart without
+wincing in the act.
+
+"If you love me then, as you say," she whispered at last, "revenge me
+on him who has put this slight upon me!"
+
+A baleful light shone in Basil's eyes.
+
+"He dies this very night."
+
+She raised her hands with a shudder.
+
+"No--no! Not a quick death! He would die as another changes his
+garment--with a smile.--No! Not a quick death! Let him live, but wish
+he were dead a thousand times. Strike him through his honor. Strike him
+through the woman he loves."
+
+For a pace Basil was silent. Could Theodora have read his thoughts at
+this moment the weapon would not have dropped from her nerveless grasp.
+
+"Ah!" he said, and a film seemed to pass over his eyes in the
+utterance. "There is nothing that shall be left undone--through his
+honor--through the woman he loves."
+
+She utterly abandoned herself to him now, suffering his endearments and
+kisses like a thing of stone and thereby rousing his passions to their
+highest pitch. She could have strangled him like a poisonous reptile
+that defiled her body, but, after having suffered his embrace for a
+time, she suddenly shook herself free of him.
+
+"My lord--what of our plans? How much longer must I wait ere the
+clarions announce to Rome that the Emperor's Tomb harbors a new
+mistress? What of Alberic? What of Hassan Abdullah, the Saracen?"
+
+Basil was regarding her with a mixture of savage passion, doubt,
+incredulity and something like fear.
+
+"The death-hounds are on Alberic's scent," he said at last, with
+an effort to steady his voice, and hold in leash his feelings,
+which threatened to master him, as his eyes devoured the woman's
+beauty.--"Hassan Abdullah is even now in Rome."
+
+"Can we rely upon him and his Saracens when the hour tolls that shall
+see Theodora mistress of Rome?"
+
+"Weighing a sack of gold against the infidel's treachery, it is safe to
+predict that the scales will tip in favor of the bribe--so it be large
+enough."
+
+"Be lavish with him, and if his heart be set on other matters--"
+
+She paused, regarding the man with an inscrutable look. Shrewd as he
+was, he caught not its meaning.
+
+"Why not entrust to his care the Lady Hellayne?"
+
+The devilish suggestion seemed to find not as enthusiastic a reception
+as she had anticipated.
+
+"After having seen the Lady Theodora," Basil said, his eyes avoiding
+those of the woman, "I fear the Lady Hellayne will appear poor in
+Hassan Abdullah's eyes."
+
+Theodora had grown pensive.
+
+"I do not think so. To me she seemed like a snow-capped volcano. All
+ice without, all fire within. Perchance I should bow to your better
+judgment, my lord, and perchance to Hassan Abdullah's, whose good taste
+in preferring the Lady Theodora cannot be gainsaid. But, our guests are
+becoming impatient. Take me to the palace."
+
+Basil barred the woman's way.
+
+"And when you have reached the summit of your desire, will you remember
+certain nuptials consummated in a certain chamber in the Emperor's
+Tomb, between two placed as we are and mated as we?"
+
+Theodora's lips curved in one of those rare smiles which brought him to
+whom she gave it to her feet, her abject slave.
+
+"I shall remember, my lord," she said, and, linking her arm in his,
+they strode towards the palace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+DEVIL WORSHIP
+
+
+The dawn of the following day brought in its wake consternation and
+terror. From the churches of the two Egyptian Martyrs, Sts. Cosmas
+and Damian, the Holy Host had been taken during the preceding night.
+Frightened beyond measure, the ministering priests had suffered the
+terrible secret to leak out, and this circumstance, coupled with the
+unexplained absence of the Senator, the tardiness of the Prefect to
+start his investigations, and the captivity of the Pontiff, threw the
+Romans into a panic. It was impossible to guard every church in Rome
+against a similar outrage, as the guards of the Senator were inadequate
+in number, and, consisting chiefly of foreign elements, could not be
+relied upon.
+
+The early hours of the morning found Tristan in the hermitage of Odo of
+Cluny. To him he confided the incidents of the night and his adventure
+in the Catacombs. To him he also imparted the terrible discovery he had
+made.
+
+Odo of Cluny listened in silence, his face betraying no sign of the
+emotion he felt. When Tristan had concluded his account he regarded him
+long and earnestly.
+
+"I, too, have long known that all is not well, that there is something
+brewing in this witches' cauldron which may not stand the light of
+day.--"
+
+"But what is it?" cried Tristan. "Tell me, Father, for a great fear as
+of some horrible danger is upon me; a fear I cannot define and which
+yet will not leave me."
+
+Odo's face was calm and grave. The Benedictine monk had been listening
+intently, but with a detached interest, as to some tale which, even if
+it concerned himself, could not in the least disturb his equanimity.
+With his supernormal quickness of perception he knew at once the powers
+with which he had to cope. Tristan had told him of the devilish face in
+the panel during the night of his first watch at the Lateran.
+
+"The powers of Evil at work are so great that only a miracle from
+heaven can save us," he said at last. "Listen well, and lose not a word
+of what I am about to say. Have you ever heard of one Mani, who lived
+in Babylonia some seven hundred years ago and founded a religion in
+which he professed to blend the teachings of Christ with the cult of
+the old Persian Magi?"
+
+A negative gesture came in response. Tristan's face was tense with
+anxiety. Odo continued:
+
+"According to his teachings there exist two kingdoms: the kingdom of
+Light and the kingdom of Darkness. Light represents the beneficent
+primal spirit: God. Darkness is likewise a spiritual kingdom: Satan and
+his demons were born from the kingdom of Darkness. These two kingdoms
+have stood opposed to each other from all eternity--touching each
+other's boundaries, yet remaining unmingled. At last Satan began to
+rage and made an incursion into the kingdom of Light. Now, the God of
+Light begat the primal man and sent him, equipped with the five pure
+elements, to fight against Satan. But the latter proved himself the
+stronger, and the primal man was, for the time, vanquished. In time
+the cult of the Manichæans spread. The seat of the Manichæan pope was
+for centuries at Samarkand. From there, defying persecutions, the sect
+spread, and obtained a foothold in northern Africa at the time of St.
+Augustine. Thence it slowly invaded Italy."
+
+Tristan listened with deep attention.
+
+"The original creed had meanwhile been split up into numerous sects,"
+Odo of Cluny continued. "The followers of Mani believed there were
+two Gods,--the one of Light, the other of Darkness, both equally
+powerful in their separate kingdoms. But lately one by the name of
+Bogumil proclaims that God never created the world, that Christ had
+not an actual body, that he neither could have been born, nor that he
+died, that our bodies are evil, a foul excrescence, as it were, of the
+evil principle. Maintaining that God had two sons--Satan the older
+and Christ the younger--they refuse homage to the latter, Regent of
+the Celestial World, and worship Lucifer. And they hold meetings and
+perform diabolical ceremonies, in which they make wafers of ashes and
+drink the blood of a goat, which their devil-priests administer to them
+in communion."
+
+Odo of Cluny paused and took a long breath, fixing Tristan with his
+dark eyes. And when Tristan, stark with horror, dared not trust himself
+to speak, Odo concluded:
+
+"This is the peril that confronts us! And Holy Church is without a
+head, and the cardinals cannot cope with the terrible scourge. It is
+this you saw, my son, and, had your presence been discovered, you would
+never again have greeted the light of day."
+
+At last Tristan found his tongue.
+
+"God forbid that there should be such a thing, that men should worship
+the Fiend."
+
+"Nevertheless they do," Odo replied, "and other things too awful for
+mortal mind to credit."
+
+The perspiration came out on Tristan's brow. Although he was prepared
+for matters of infinite moment and knew that this interview might
+well be one of the decisive moments of his life, he yet possessed the
+detached attitude of mind which was curious of strange learning and
+information, even in a crisis.
+
+"And you have known this, Father?" he said at last, "and you have done
+nothing to check the evil?"
+
+"We are living in evil times, my son," Odo replied. "I have long known
+of the existence of this black heresy, which has slowly spread its
+baleful cult, until it has reached our very shores. But that they would
+dare to establish themselves in the city of the Apostle, this I was not
+prepared to accept, until the terrible crime at the Lateran removed the
+last doubt. And now I know that the foul thing has obtained a footing
+here, and more than that, I know that some high in power are affiliated
+with this society of Satan, that would establish the reign of Lucifer
+among the Seven Hills. Did you not tell me, my son, of one, terrible
+of aspect, who peered through the panel in the Capella Palatina on the
+night of that first and most horrible outrage?"
+
+"One who looked as the Fiend might look, did he assume human guise,"
+Tristan confirmed with a nod.
+
+"The high priest of Satan," Odo returned, "a familiar of black
+magic--the most terrible of all heinous crimes against Holy Church. A
+wave of crime is rolling its crimson tide over the Eternal City such as
+the annals of the Church have never recorded. It started in the reign
+of Marozia, and Theodora is leagued with the fiend, as was her sister
+before her."
+
+Odo paused for a moment, breathing deep, while Tristan listened
+spellbound.
+
+"Have you ever pondered," he continued with slow emphasis, "why the
+Lord Alberic entrusted to you, a stranger, so important a post as the
+command of the Emperor's Tomb? That there may be one he does not trust
+and who that one may be?"
+
+Tristan gave a start.
+
+"There is one I do not trust--one who seems to wrap himself in a poison
+mist of evil--the Lord Basil."
+
+"Be wary and circumspect. Has he of late come to the Tomb?"
+
+"Three days ago--in company with a stranger from the North--one I may
+not meet and again look upon heaven."
+
+"The woman's husband?" Odo queried with a penetrating glance.
+
+Tristan colored.
+
+"How these two met I cannot fathom."
+
+"Remember one thing, my son, their alliance portends evil to some one.
+What did they in the crypts?"
+
+"The Lord Basil seems to have taken a fancy to exploring the cells,"
+Tristan replied. "Those who have followed him report that he holds
+strange converse with the ghost of some mad monk whom he starved into
+eternity."
+
+"And this converse--what is its subject?" Odo queried with awakening
+interest.
+
+"A prophecy and a woman," Tristan replied. "Though those who heard them
+were so terror stricken at their infectious madness that they fled--not
+daring to tarry longer lest they would find themselves in the clutches
+of the fiend."
+
+"A prophecy and a woman," Odo repeated pensively. "The Lord Alberic has
+confided much in me--his fears--his doubts! For even he knows not, how
+his mother came to her untimely end."
+
+"The Lady Marozia?"
+
+"The tale is known to you?"
+
+"Rumors--flimsy--intangible--"
+
+"One night she was mysteriously strangled. The Lord Alberic was almost
+beside himself. But the mystery remained unsolved."
+
+After a pause Odo continued:
+
+"I, too, have not been idle. We must lull them in security! We must
+appear utterly paralyzed. Our terror will increase their boldness.
+Their ultimate object is still hidden. We must be wary. The Lord
+Alberic must be informed. We must spike the bait."
+
+"I have despatched a trusty messenger in the guise of a peasant to the
+shrine of the Archangel," Tristan interposed.
+
+"God grant that he arrive not too late," Odo replied. "And now, my son,
+listen to my words. A great soul and a stout heart must he have who
+sets himself to such a task as is before you! We are surrounded by the
+very fiends of Hell in human guise. Speak to no one of what you have
+seen. If you are in need of counsel, come to me!"
+
+Odo raised his hands, pronouncing a silent blessing over the kneeling
+visitor and Tristan departed, dazed and trembling, wide-eyed and with
+pallid lips.
+
+As he passed Mount Aventine the dark-robed form of a hunchback suddenly
+rose like a ghost from the ground beside him and, approaching Tristan,
+muttered some words in an unintelligible jargon. Believing he was
+dealing with a beggar, Tristan was about to dismiss the ill-favored
+gnome with a gift, which the latter refused, motioning to Tristan to
+incline his ear.
+
+With an ill-concealed gesture of impatience Tristan complied, but his
+strange interlocutor had hardly delivered himself of his message when
+Tristan recoiled as if he had seen a snake in the grass before him,
+every vestige of color fading from his face.
+
+"At the Lateran?" he chokingly replied to the whispered confidence of
+the hunchback.
+
+The latter nodded.
+
+"At the Lateran."
+
+Ere Tristan could recover from his surprise, his informant had
+disappeared among the ruins.
+
+For some time he stood as if rooted to the spot.
+
+It was too monstrous--too unbelievable and yet--what could prompt his
+informant to invent so terrible a tale?
+
+At midnight, two nights hence, the consecrated wafer was to be taken
+from the tabernacle in the Lateran!
+
+Perchance he had spoken even to one of the sect who had, at the last
+moment, repented of his share in the contemplated outrage.
+
+If it were granted to him to deliver Rome and the world from this
+terror! A strange fire gleamed in his eyes as he returned to Castel San
+Angelo.
+
+Himself, he would keep the watch at the Lateran and foil the plot.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BY LETHE'S SHORES
+
+
+Basil the Grand Chamberlain was giving one of his renowned feasts in
+his villa on the Pincian Mount. But on this evening he had limited the
+number of his guests to two score. On his right sat Roger de Laval,
+the guest of honor, on his left the Lady Hellayne. Over the company
+stretched a canopy of cloth of gold. The chairs were of gilt bronze,
+their arms were carved in elaborate arabesques. The dishes were of
+gold; the cups inlaid with jewels. There was gayety and laughter. Far
+into the night they caroused.
+
+Hellayne's face was the only apprehensive one at the board. She was
+pale and worn, and her countenance betrayed her reluctance to be
+present at a feast into the spirit of which she could not enter. She
+was dimly conscious of the fact that Basil devoured her with his eyes
+and her lord seemed to find more suited entertainment with the other
+women who were present than with his own wife. Only by threats and
+coercion had he prevailed upon her to attend the Grand Chamberlain's
+banquet. With a brutality that was part of his coarse nature he now
+left her to shift for herself, and she tolerated Basil's unmistakable
+insinuations only from a sense of utter helplessness.
+
+Her beauty had indeed aroused the host's passion to a point where he
+threw caution to the winds. The exquisite face, framed in a wealth
+of golden hair, the deep blue eyes, the marble whiteness of the skin,
+the faultless contours of her form--an ensemble utterly opposed to the
+darker Roman type--had aroused in him desires which soon swept away
+the thin veneer of dissimulation and filled Hellayne with a secret
+dread which she endeavored to control. Her thoughts were with the man
+by whom she believed herself betrayed, and while life seemed to hold
+nothing that would repay her for enduring any longer the secret agonies
+that overwhelmed her, it was to guard her honor that her wits were
+sharpened and, believing in the adage that danger, when bravely faced,
+disappears, she entered, though with a heavy heart, into the vagaries
+of Basil, but, like a premonition of evil, her dread increased with
+every moment.
+
+And now the host announced to his guests his intention of leaving Rome
+on the morrow for his estate in the Rocca, where an overpunctilious
+overseer demanded his presence.
+
+Raising his goblet he pledged the beautiful wife of the Count de Laval.
+It was a toast that was eagerly received and responded to, and even
+Hellayne was forced to appear joyous, for all that her heart was on the
+point of breaking.
+
+She raised her goblet, a beautiful chased cup of gold, in
+acknowledgment. But she did not see the ill-omened smile that flitted
+over the thin lips of Basil, and she wished for Tristan as she had
+never wished for him before.
+
+After a time the guests quitted the banquet hall for the moonlit
+garden, and Basil's attentions became more and more insistent. It was
+in vain Hellayne's eyes strained for her lord. He was not to be found.--
+
+It was on the following morning when the horrible news aroused
+the Romans that the young wife of the strange lord from Provence
+had, during the night, suddenly died at the banquet of the Grand
+Chamberlain. From a friar whom he chanced to pass on his way to the
+Lateran Tristan received the first news.
+
+Fra Geronimo's face was white as death, and his limbs shook as with a
+palsy. He had been the confessor of the Lady Hellayne, the only visitor
+allowed to come near her.
+
+"Have you heard the tidings?" he cried in a quavering voice, on
+beholding Tristan.
+
+"What tidings?" Tristan returned, struck by the horror in the friar's
+face.
+
+"The Lady Hellayne is dead!" he said with a sob.
+
+Tristan stared at him as if a thunderbolt had cleft the ground beside
+him. For a moment he seemed bereft of understanding.
+
+"Dead?" he gasped with a choking sensation. "What is it you say?"
+
+"Well may you doubt your ears," the friar sobbed. "But Mater
+Sanctissima, it is the truth! Madonna Hellayne is dead. They found her
+dead--early this morning--in the vineyard of the Lord Basil."
+
+"In the vineyard of the Lord Basil?" came back the echo from Tristan's
+lips.
+
+"There was a feast, lasting well into the night. The Lady Hellayne took
+suddenly ill. They fetched a mediciner. When he arrived it was all
+over."
+
+"God of Heaven! Where is she now?"
+
+"They conveyed her to the palace of the Lord Laval, to prepare her for
+interment."
+
+Without a word Tristan started to break away from the friar, his head
+in a whirl, his senses benumbed. The latter caught him betime.
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+Tristan stared at him as one suddenly gone mad.
+
+"I will see her."
+
+"It is impossible!" the friar replied. "You cannot see her."
+
+From Tristan's eyes came a glare that would have daunted many a one of
+greater physical prowess than his informant.
+
+"Cannot? Who is to prevent me?"
+
+"The man whom fate gave her for mate," replied the friar.
+
+"That dog--"
+
+"A brawl in the presence of death? Would you thus dishonor her memory?
+Would she wish it so?"
+
+For a moment Tristan stared at the man before him as if he heard some
+message from afar, the meaning of which he but faintly guessed.
+
+Then a blinding rush of tears came to his eyes. He shook with the agony
+of his grief regardless of those who passed and paused and wondered,
+while the friar's words of comfort and solace fell on unmindful ears.
+
+At last, heedless of his companion, heedless of his surroundings,
+heedless of everything, he rushed away to seek solitude, where he would
+not see a human face, not hear a human voice.
+
+He must be alone with his grief, alone with his Maker. It seemed to
+him he was going mad. It was all too monstrous, too terrible, too
+unbelievable.
+
+How was it possible that one so young, so strong, so beautiful, should
+die?
+
+Friar Geronimo knew not. But his gaze had caused Tristan to shiver as
+in an ague.
+
+He remembered the discourse of Basil and his companion in the galleries
+of the Emperor's Tomb.
+
+Twice was he on the point of warning Hellayne not to attend Basil's
+banquet.
+
+Each time something had intervened. The warning had remained unspoken.
+
+Would she have heeded it?
+
+He gave a groan of anguish.
+
+Hellayne was dead! That was the one all absorbing fact which had taken
+possession of him, blotting out every other thought, every other
+consideration.
+
+She was dead--dead--dead! The hideous phrase boomed again and
+again through his distracted mind. Compared with that overwhelming
+catastrophe what signified the Hour, the Why and the When. She was
+dead--dead--dead!
+
+For hours he sat alone in the solitudes of Mount Aventine, where no
+prying eyes would witness his grief. And the storm which had arisen and
+swept the Seven Hilled City with the vehemence of a tropical hurricane
+seemed but a feeble echo of the tempest that raged within his soul.
+
+She was dead--dead--dead. The waves of the Tiber seemed to shout it as
+they leapt up and dashed their foam against the rocky declivities of
+the Mount of Cloisters. The wind seemed now to moan it piteously, now
+to shriek it fiercely, as it scudded by, wrapping its invisible coils
+about him and seeming intent on tearing him from his resting place.
+
+Towards evening he rose and, skirting the heights, descended into the
+city, dishevelled and bedraggled, yet caring nothing what spectacle he
+might afford. And presently a grim procession overtook the solitary
+rambler, and at the sight of the black, cowled and visored forms that
+advanced in the lurid light of the waxen tapers, Tristan knelt in the
+street with head bowed till her body had been borne past. No one heeded
+him. They carried her to the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, and
+thither he followed presently, and, in the shadow of one of the pillars
+of the aisle, he crouched, while the monks chanted the funeral psalms.
+
+The singing ended the friars departed, and those who had formed the
+cortege began to leave the church. In an hour he was alone, alone with
+the beloved dead, and there on his knees he remained, and no one knew
+whether, during that horrid hour, he prayed or blasphemed.
+
+It may have been toward the third hour of the night when Tristan
+staggered up, stiff and cramped, from the cold stone. Slowly, in a
+half-dazed condition, he walked down the aisle and gained the door of
+the church. He tried to open it, but it resisted his efforts, and he
+realized it was locked for the night.
+
+The appreciation of his position afforded him not the slightest dismay.
+On the contrary, his feelings were rather of relief. At least there
+was none other to share his grief! He had not known whither he should
+repair, so distracted was his mind, and now chance or fate had settled
+the matter for him by decreeing that he should remain.
+
+Tristan turned and slowly paced back, until he stood beside the great,
+black catafalque, at each corner of which a tall wax taper was burning.
+His steps rang with a hollow sound through the vast, gloomy spaces of
+the cold and empty church. But these were not matters to occupy his
+mind in such a season, no more than the damp, chill air which permeated
+every nook and corner. Of all of these he remained unconscious in the
+absorbing anguish that possessed his soul.
+
+Near the foot of the bier there was a bench, and there he took his seat
+and, resting his elbows on his knees, took his dishevelled head between
+his trembling hands. His thoughts were all of her whose poor, murdered
+clay lay encased above him. In turn he reviewed each scene of his life
+where it had touched upon her own. He evoked every word she had spoken
+to him since they had again met on that memorable night.
+
+Thus he sat, clenching his hands and torturing his dull inert brain
+while the night wore slowly on. Later a still more frenzied mood
+obsessed him, a burning desire to look once more upon the sweet face
+he had loved so well. What was there to prevent him? Who was there to
+gainsay him?
+
+He arose and uttered aloud the challenge in his madness. His voice
+echoed mournfully along the aisles and the sound of the echoes chilled
+him, though his purpose gathered strength.
+
+Tristan advanced, and, after a moment's pause, with the silver
+embroidered hem of the pall in his hands, suddenly swept off that
+mantle of black cloth, setting up such a gust of wind as all but
+quenched the tapers. He caught up the bench upon which he had been
+sitting and, dragging it forward, mounted it and stood, his chest on
+a level with the coffin lid. His trembling hands fumbled along its
+surface. He found it unfastened. Without thought or care how he went
+about the thing, he raised it and let it crash to the ground. It fell
+on the stone flags with a noise like thunder, booming and reverberating
+through the gloomy vaults.
+
+A form all in purest white lay there beneath his gaze, the face covered
+by a white veil. With deepest reverence, and a prayer to her departed
+soul to forgive the desecration of his loving hands, he tremblingly
+drew the veil aside.
+
+How beautiful she was in the calm peace of death! She lay there like
+one gently sleeping, the faintest smile upon her lips, and, as he
+gazed, it was hard to believe that she was truly dead. Her lips had
+lost nothing of their natural color. They were as red as he had ever
+seen them in life.
+
+How could this be?
+
+The lips of the dead are wont to assume a livid hue.
+
+Tristan stared for a moment, his awe and grief almost effaced by the
+intensity of his wonder. This face, so ivory pale, wore not the ashen
+aspect of one that would never wake again. There was a warmth about
+that pallor. And then he bit his nether lip until it bled, and it
+seemed a miracle that he did not scream, seeing how overwrought were
+his senses.
+
+For it had seemed to him that the draperies on her bosom had slightly
+moved, in a gentle, almost imperceptible heave, as if she breathed. He
+looked--and there it came again!
+
+God! What madness had seized upon him, that his eyes should so deceive
+him! It was the draught that stirred the air about the church, and blew
+great shrouds of wax down the taper's yellow sides. He manned himself
+to a more sober mood and looked again.
+
+And now his doubts were all dispelled. He knew that he had mastered
+any errant fancy, and that his eyes were grown wise and discriminating,
+and he knew, too, that she lived! Her bosom slowly rose and fell; the
+color of her lips, the hue of her cheek, confirmed the assurance that
+she breathed!
+
+He paused a second to ponder. That morning her appearance had been such
+that the mediciner had been deceived by it and had pronounced her dead.
+Yet now there were signs of life! What could it portend, but that the
+effects of a poison were passing off and that she was recovering?
+
+In the first wild excess of joy, that sent the blood tingling and
+beating through his brain, his first impulse was to run for help. Then
+Tristan bethought himself of the closed doors and he realized that, no
+matter how loudly he shouted, no one would hear him. He must succour
+her himself as best he could, and meanwhile she must be protected from
+the chill night air of the church, cold as the air of a tomb. He had
+his cloak, a heavy serviceable garment, and, if more were needed, there
+was the pall which he had removed, and which lay in a heap about the
+legs of the bench.
+
+Leaning forward Tristan slowly passed his hand under her head and
+gently raised it. Then, slipping it downward, he thrust his arm after
+it, until he had her round the waist in a firm grip. Thus he raised
+her from the coffin, and the warmth of her body on his arms, the ready
+bending of her limbs, were so many added proofs that she lived.
+
+Gently and reverently Tristan raised the supple form in his arms, an
+intoxication of almost divine joy pervading him as the prayers fell
+faster from his lips than they had ever since he had recited them on
+his mother's knee. He laid her on the bench, while he divested himself
+of the cloak.
+
+Suddenly he paused and stood listening with bated breath.
+
+Steps were approaching from without.
+
+Tristan's first impulse was to rush towards the door, shouting his
+tidings and imploring assistance. Then, a sudden, almost instinctive
+dread caught and chilled him. Who was it that came at such an hour?
+What would any one seek in the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin at
+dead of night? Was the church indeed their goal, or were they but
+chance passers-by?
+
+That last question remained not long unanswered. The steps came nearer.
+They paused before the door. Something heavy was hurled against it.
+Then some one spoke.
+
+"It is locked, Tebaldo! Get out your tools and force it!"
+
+Tristan's wits were working at fever pace. It may have been that he was
+swift of thought beyond any ordinary man, or it may have been a flash
+of inspiration, or a conclusion to which he leapt by instinct. But in
+that moment the whole problematical plot was revealed to him. Poisoned
+forsooth she had been, but by a drug that but produced for a time the
+outward appearance of death, so truly simulated as even to deceive the
+most learned of doctors. Tristan had heard of such poisons, and here,
+in very truth, was one of them at work. Some one, no doubt, intended
+secretly to bear her off. And to-morrow, when men found a broken church
+door and a violated bier, they would set the sacrilege down to some
+wizard who had need of the body for his dark practices.
+
+Tristan cursed himself in that dark hour. Had he but peered earlier
+into her coffin while yet there might have been time to save her. And
+now? The sweat stood out in beads upon his brow. At that door there
+were, to judge by the sound of their footsteps and voices, some five
+or six men. For a weapon he had only his dagger. What could he do to
+defend her? Basil's plans would suffer no defeat through his discovery
+when to-morrow the sacrilege was revealed. His own body, lying cold and
+stark beside the desolated bier, would be but an incident in the work
+of profanation they would find; an item that in no wise could modify
+the conclusion at which they would naturally arrive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+THE DEATH WATCH
+
+
+A strange and mysterious thing is the working of terror on the human
+mind. Some it renders incapable of thought or action, paralyzing their
+limbs and stagnating the blood in their veins; such creatures die in
+anticipating death. Others, under the stress of that grim emotion have
+their wits preternaturally sharpened. The instinct of self-preservation
+assumes command and urges them to swift and feverish action.
+
+After a moment of terrible suspense Tristan's hands fell limply beside
+him. At the next he was himself again. His cheeks were livid, his lips
+bloodless. But his hands were steady and his wits under control.
+
+Concealment--concealment for Hellayne and himself--was the thing that
+now imported, and no sooner was the thought conceived than the means
+were devised. Slender means they were, yet since they were the best
+the place afforded, he must trust to them without demurring, and pray
+to God that the intruders might lack the wit to search. And with that
+fresh hope it came to him that he must find a way as to make them
+believe that to search would be a waste of effort.
+
+The odds against him lay in the little time at his disposal. Yet a
+little time there was. The door was stout, and those outside might not
+resort to violent means to break it open lest the noise arouse the
+street.
+
+With what tools the sbirri were at work he could not guess, but surely
+they must be such as to leave him but a few moments. Already they had
+begun. He could distinguish a crunching sound as of steel biting into
+wood.
+
+Swiftly and silently Tristan set to work. Like a ghost he glided round
+the coffin's side, where the lid was lying. He raised it and, after he
+had deposited Hellayne on the ground, mounted the bench and replaced
+it. Next he gathered up the cumbrous pall and, mounting the bench once
+more, spread it over the coffin. This way and that he pulled it, until
+it appeared undisturbed as when he had entered.
+
+What time he toiled, the half of his mind intent upon his task, the
+other half was as intent upon the progress of the workers at the door.
+
+At last it was done. Tristan replaced the bench at the foot of the
+catafalque and, gathering up the woman in his arms, as though her
+weight had been that of a feather, he bore her swiftly out of the
+radius of the four tapers into the black, impenetrable gloom beyond. On
+he sped towards the high altar, flying now as men fly in evil dreams,
+with the sensation of an enemy upon them, and their progress a mere
+stand still.
+
+Thus he gained the chancel, stumbling against the railing as he passed,
+and pausing for an instant, wondering whether those outside had heard.
+But the grinding sound continued and he breathed more freely. He
+mounted the altar stairs, the distant light behind him feebly guiding
+him on, then he ran round to the right and heaved a great sigh of
+relief upon finding his hopes realized. The altar stood a pace or so
+from the wall, and behind it there was just such a concealment as he
+had hoped to find.
+
+Tristan paused at the mouth of that black well, and even as he paused
+something that gave out a metallic sound, dropped at the far end of
+the church. Intuition informed him that it was the lock which the
+miscreants had cut from the door. He waited no longer, but like a deer
+scudding to cover, plunged into the dark abyss.
+
+Hellayne, wrapped in his cloak, as she was, he placed on the ground,
+then crept forward on hands and knees and thrust out his head, trusting
+to the darkness to conceal him.
+
+He waited thus for a time, his heart beating almost audibly in the
+intermittent silence, his head and face on fire with the fever of
+sudden reaction.
+
+From his point of vantage it was impossible for Tristan to see the door
+that was hidden in the black gloom. Away in the centre of the church,
+an island of light in that vast well of blackness, stood the catafalque
+with its four waxen tapers. Something creaked, and almost immediately
+he saw the flames of those tapers bend toward him, beaten over by the
+gust that smote them from the door. Thus he surmised that Tebaldo and
+his men had entered. Their soft foot-fall, for they were treading
+lightly now, succeeded, and at last they took shape, shadowy at first,
+then clearly defined, as they emerged within the circle of the light.
+
+For a moment they stood in half whispered conversation, their voices
+a mere boom of sound in which no words were to be distinguished. Then
+Tristan saw Tebaldo step forward, and by his side another he knew by
+his great height--Gamba, the deposed captain. Tebaldo dragged away,
+even as Tristan had done, the pall that hid the coffin. Next he seized
+the bench and gave a brisk order to his men.
+
+"Spread a cloth!"
+
+In obedience to his command, the four who were with him spread a cloak
+among them, each holding one of its corners. Apparently they intended
+to carry away the dead body in this manner.
+
+The sbirro now mounted the bench and started to remove the coffin lid,
+when a blasphemous cry of rage broke from his lips that defied utterly
+the sanctity of the place.
+
+"By the body of Christ! The coffin is empty!"--
+
+It was the roar of an enraged beast and was succeeded by a heavy crash,
+as he let fall the coffin lid. A second later a second crash waked the
+midnight echoes of that silent place.
+
+In a burst of maniacal fury he had hurled the coffin from its trestles.
+
+Then he leaped down from the bench and flung all caution to the winds
+in the rage that possessed him.
+
+"It is a trick of the devil," he shouted. "They have laid a trap for
+us, and you have never even informed yourselves."
+
+There was foam about the corners of his mouth, the veins had swollen
+on his forehead, and from the mad bulging of his eyes spoke fury and
+abject terror. Bully as Tebaldo was, he could, on occasion, become a
+coward.
+
+"Away!" he shouted to his men. "Look to your weapons! Away!"
+
+Gamba muttered something under his breath, words the listener's ear
+could not catch. If it were a suggestion that the church should be
+searched, ere they abandoned it! But Tebaldo's answer speedily relieved
+his fears.
+
+"I'll take no chances," he barked. "Let us go separately. Myself first
+and do you follow and get clear of this quarter as best you may."
+
+Scarcely had the echoes of his footsteps died away, ere the others
+followed in a rush, fearful of being caught in some trap that was here
+laid for them, and restrained from flying on the instant but by their
+still greater fear of their master.
+
+Thanking Heaven for this miraculous deliverance, and for his own
+foresight in so arranging matters as to utterly mislead the ravishers,
+Tristan now devoted his whole attention to Hellayne. Her breathing had
+become deeper and more regular, so that in all respects she resembled
+one sunk into healthful slumber. He hoped she would waken before the
+elapse of many moments, for to try to bear her away in his arms would
+have been sheer madness. And now it occurred to him that he should
+have restoratives ready for the time of her regaining consciousness.
+Inspiration suggested to him the wine that should be stored in the
+sacristy for altar purposes. It was unconsecrated, and there could be
+no sacrilege in using it.
+
+He crept round to the front of the altar. At the angle a candle branch
+protruded at the height of his head. It held some three or four tapers
+and was so placed as to enable the priest to read his missal at early
+Mass on dark winter mornings. Tristan plucked one of the candles from
+its socket and, hastening down the church, lighted it from one of the
+burning tapers of the bier. Screening it with his hand he retraced his
+steps and regained the chancel. Then, turning to the left, he made for
+a door which gave access to the sacristy. It yielded and he passed down
+a short, stone flagged passage and entered a spacious chamber beyond.
+
+An oak settle was placed against one wall, and above it hung an
+enormous, rudely carved crucifix. On a bench in a corner stood a basin
+and ewer of metal, while a few vestments, suspended beside these,
+completed the appointments of the austere and white-washed chamber.
+Placing his candle on a cupboard, he opened one of the drawers. It was
+full of garments of different kinds, among which he noticed several
+monks' habits. Tristan rummaged to the bottom, only to find therein
+some odd pairs of sandals.
+
+Disappointed, Tristan closed the drawer and tried another, with no
+better fortune. Here were undervests of fine linen, newly washed and
+fragrant with rosemary. He abandoned the chest and gave his attention
+to the cupboard. It was locked, but the key was there. Tristan's candle
+reflected a blaze of gold and silver vessels, consecrated chalices, and
+several richly carved ciboria of solid gold, set with precious stones.
+But in a corner he discovered a dark brown, gourd-shaped object. It was
+a skin of wine and, with a half-suppressed cry of joy, he seized upon
+it.
+
+At that moment a piercing scream rang through the stillness of the
+church and startled him so that for some moments he stood frozen with
+terror, a hundred wild conjectures leaping into his brain.
+
+Had the ruffians remained hidden in the church? Had they returned? Did
+the screams imply that Hellayne had been awakened by their hands?
+
+A second time it came, and now it seemed to break the hideous spell
+that its first utterance had cast over him. Dropping the leathern
+bottle he sped back, down the stone passage to the door that abutted on
+the church.
+
+There, by the high altar, Tristan saw a form that seemed at first but a
+phantom, in which he presently recognized Hellayne, the dim rays of the
+distant tapers searching out the white robe with which her limbs were
+draped. She was alone, and he knew at once that it was but the natural
+fear consequent upon awakening in such a place, that had evoked the cry
+he had heard.
+
+"Hellayne!" he called, advancing swiftly to reassure her. "Hellayne!"
+
+There was a gasp, a moment's silence.
+
+"Tristan?" she cried questioningly. "What has happened? Why am I here?"
+
+He was beside her now and found her trembling like an aspen.
+
+"Something horrible has happened, my Hellayne," he replied. "But it is
+over now, and the evil is averted."
+
+"What is it?" she insisted, pale as death. "Why am I here?"
+
+"You shall learn presently."
+
+He stooped, to gather up the cloak, which had slipped from her
+shoulders.
+
+"Do you wrap this about you," he urged, assisting her with his own
+hands. "Are you faint, Hellayne?"
+
+"I scarce know," she answered, in a frightened voice. "There is a black
+horror upon me. Tell me," she implored again, "Why am I here? What does
+it all mean?"
+
+He drew her away now, promising to tell her everything once she were
+out of these forbidding surroundings. He assisted her to the sacristy
+and, seating her upon a settle, produced the wine skin. At first she
+babbled like a child, of not being thirsty, but he insisted.
+
+"It is not a matter of quenching your thirst, dearest Hellayne. The
+wine will warm and revive you! Come, dearest--drink!"
+
+She obeyed him now, and having got the first gulp down her throat, she
+took a long draught, which soon produced a healthier color, driving the
+ashen pallor from her cheeks.
+
+"I am cold, Tristan," she shuddered.
+
+He turned to the drawer in which he had espied the monks' habits and
+pulling one out, held it for her to put on. She sat there now in that
+garment of coarse black cloth, the cowl flung back upon her shoulder,
+the fairest postulant that ever entered upon a novitiate.
+
+"You are good to me, Tristan," she murmured plaintively, "and I have
+used you very ill! You do not love that other woman?" She paused,
+passing her hand across her brow.
+
+"Only you, dearest--only you!"
+
+"What is the hour?" she turned to him suddenly.
+
+It was a matter he left unheeded. He bade her brace herself, and take
+courage to listen to what he was about to tell. He assured her that the
+horror of it all was passed and that she had naught to fear.
+
+"But--how came I here?" she cried. "I must have lain in a swoon, for I
+remember nothing."
+
+And then her quick mind, leaping to a reasonable conclusion, and
+assisted perhaps by the memory of the shattered catafalque which she
+had seen, her eyes dilating with a curious affright as they were turned
+upon his own, she asked of a sudden:
+
+"Did you believe that I was dead?"
+
+"Yes," he replied with an unnatural calm in his voice. "Every one
+believed you were dead, Hellayne."
+
+And with this he told her the entire story of what had befallen, saving
+only his own part therein, nor did he try to explain his own opportune
+presence in the church. When he spoke of the coming of Tebaldo and his
+men she shuddered and closed her eyes. Only after he had concluded
+his tale did she turn them full upon him. Their brightness seemed to
+increase, and now he saw that she was weeping.
+
+"And you were there to save me, Tristan?" she murmured brokenly. "Oh,
+Tristan, it seems that you are ever at hand when I have need of you!
+You are, indeed, my one true friend--the one true friend that never
+fails me!"
+
+"Are you feeling stronger, Hellayne?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes--I am stronger!"
+
+She rose as if to test her strength.
+
+"Indeed little ails me save the horror of this thing. The thought of it
+seems to turn me sick and dizzy."
+
+"Sit then and rest!" he enjoined. "Presently, when you feel equal to
+it, we shall start out!"
+
+"Whither shall we go?" she asked.
+
+"Why--to the abode of your liege lord."
+
+"Why--yes--" she answered at length, as though it had been the last
+suggestion she had expected. "And when he returns," she added, after
+a pause, "he will owe you no small thanks for your solicitude on my
+behalf."
+
+There was a pause. A hundred thoughts thronged Tristan's mind.
+
+Presently she spoke again.
+
+"Tristan," she inquired very gently, "what was it that brought you to
+the church?"
+
+"I came with the others, Hellayne," he replied, and, fearing such
+questions as might follow--questions he had been dreading ever since he
+brought her to the sacristy, he said:
+
+"If you are recovered, we had better set out."
+
+"I am not yet sufficiently recovered," she replied. "And, before we go,
+there are a few points in this strange adventure that I would have you
+make clear to me! Meanwhile we are very well here! If the good fathers
+do come upon us, what shall it signify?"--
+
+Tristan groaned inwardly and grew more afraid than when Basil's men had
+broken into the church an hour ago.
+
+"What detained you after all had gone?"
+
+"I remained to pray," he answered, with a sense of irritation at her
+persistence. "What else was there to do in a church?"
+
+"To pray for me?"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"Dear, faithful heart," she murmured. "And I have used you so cruelly.
+But you merited my cruelty--Tristan! Say that you did, else must I
+perish of remorse."
+
+"Perchance I deserved it," he replied. "But perchance not so much as
+you bestowed, had you understood my motives," he said unguardedly.
+
+"If I had understood your motives?" she mused. "Ay--there is much I do
+not understand! Even in this night's business there are not wanting
+things that remain mysterious, despite the elucidations you have
+supplied. Tell me, Tristan--what was it that caused you to believe,
+that I still lived?"
+
+"I did not believe it," he blundered like a fool, never seeing whither
+her question led.
+
+"You did not?" she cried, with deep surprise, and now, when it was too
+late, he understood. "What was it then that induced you, to lift the
+coffin lid?"--
+
+"You ask me more than I can tell you," he answered almost roughly, for
+fear lest the monks would come at any moment.
+
+She looked at him with eyes that were singularly luminous.
+
+"But I must know," she insisted. "Have I not the right? Tell me now!
+Was it that you wished to see my face once more before they gave me
+over to the grave?"
+
+"Perchance it was, Hellayne," he answered. Then he suggested their
+going, but she never heeded his anxiety.
+
+"Do you love me then so much, dearest Tristan?"
+
+He swung round to her now, and he knew that his face was white, whiter
+than the woman's had been when he had seen her in the coffin. His
+eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. A madness seized upon him and
+completely mastered him. He had undergone so much that day of grief,
+and that night the victim of a hundred emotions, that he no longer
+controlled himself. As it was, her words robbed him of the last
+lingering restraint.
+
+"Love you?" he replied, in a voice that was unlike his own. "You are
+dearer to me than all I have, all I am, all I ever hope to be! You are
+the guardian angel of my existence, the saint to whom I have turned
+mornings and evenings in my prayers! I love you more than life!"
+
+He paused, staggered by his own climax. The thought of what he had
+said and what the consequences must be, rushed suddenly upon him. He
+shivered as a man may shiver in waking from a trance. He dropped upon
+his knees before her.
+
+"Forgive," he entreated. "Forgive--and forget!"
+
+"Neither forgive nor forget will I," came her voice, charged with an
+ineffable sweetness, such as he had never before heard from her lips,
+and her hands lay softly on his bowed head as if she would bless and
+soothe him. "I am conscious of no offence that craves forgiveness, and
+what you have said to me I would not forget if I could. Whence springs
+this fear of yours, dear Tristan? Has not he to whom I once bound
+myself in a thoughtless moment, he who never understood, or cared to
+understand my nature, he whose cruelty and neglect have made me what I
+am to-day, lost every right, human or divine? Am I more than a woman
+and are you less than a man that you should tremble for the confession
+which, in a wild moment, I have dragged from you? For that wild moment
+I shall be thankful to my life's end, for your words have been the
+sweetest that my poor ears have ever listened to. I count you the
+truest friend and the noblest lover the world has ever known. Need it
+surprise you then, that I love you, and that mine would be a happy life
+if I might spend it in growing worthy of this noble love of yours?"
+
+There was a choking sensation in his throat and tears in his eyes.
+Transport the blackest soul from among the damned in Hell, wash it
+white of its sins and seat it upon one of the glorious thrones of
+Heaven,--such were the emotions that surged through his soul. At last
+he found his tongue.
+
+"Dearest," he said, "bethink yourself of what you say! You are still
+his wife--and the Church grants no severance of the bonds that have
+united two for better or worse."
+
+"Then shall we see the Holy Father. He is just and he will be merciful.
+Will you take me, Tristan, no matter to what odd shifts a cruel Fortune
+may drive us? Will you take me?"
+
+She held his face between her palms and forced his eyes to meet her
+eyes.
+
+"Will you take me, Tristan?" she said again.
+
+"Hellayne--"
+
+It was all he could say.
+
+Then a great sadness overwhelmed him, a tide that swept the frail bark
+of happiness high and dry upon the shores of black despair.
+
+"To-morrow, Hellayne, you will be what you were yesterday."
+
+"I have thought of that," she said, a slight flutter in her tone.
+"But--Hellayne is dead.--We must so dispose that they will let her rest
+in peace."--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE CONVENT IN TRASTEVERE
+
+
+He stared at her speechless, so taken was he with the immensity of the
+thing she had suggested. Fear, wonder, joy seemed to contend for the
+mastery.
+
+"Why do you look at me so, Tristan?" she said at last. "What is it that
+daunts you?"
+
+"But how is this thing possible?" he stammered, still in a state of
+bewilderment.
+
+"What difficulty does it present?" she returned. "The Lord Basil
+himself has rendered very possible what I suggest. We may look on him
+to-morrow as our best friend--"
+
+"But Tebaldo knows," he interposed.
+
+"True! Deem you, he will dare to tell the world what he knows? He might
+be asked to tell how he came by his knowledge. And that might prove a
+difficult question to answer. Tell me, Tristan," she continued, "if he
+had succeeded in carrying me away, what deem you would have been said
+to-morrow in Rome when the coffin was found empty?"--
+
+"They would naturally assume that your body had been stolen by some
+wizard or some daring doctor of anatomy."
+
+"Ah! And if we were quietly to quit the church and be clear of Rome
+before morning--would not the same be said?"
+
+He pondered a while, staggered by the immensity of the risk, when
+suddenly a memory flashed through his mind that left his limbs numb as
+if they had been paralyzed by a thunderbolt.
+
+It was the night on which the terrible crime at the Lateran was to be
+committed. Even now it could not be far from the midnight hour. Did he
+dare, even for the consideration of the greatest happiness which the
+world and life had to give, to forego his duty towards the Church and
+the Senator of Rome?
+
+Hellayne noted his hesitancy.
+
+"Why do you waste precious moments, Tristan?" she queried. "Is it that
+you do not love me enough?"
+
+A negative gesture came in response, and his eyes told her more than
+words could have expressed.
+
+At last he spoke.
+
+"If I hesitate," he said, trying to avoid the real issue, instead of
+stating it without circumlocution, "it is because I would not have you
+do now of what, hereafter, you might repent. I would not have you be
+misled by the impulse of a moment into an act whose consequences must
+endure while life endures."
+
+"Is that the reasoning of love?" she said very quietly. "Is this cold
+argument, this weighing of issues consistent with the hot passion you
+professed so lately?"
+
+"It is," he replied. "It is because I love you more than I love myself,
+that I would have you ponder, ere you adventure your life upon a broken
+raft such as mine. You are still the wife of another."
+
+"No!" she replied, her eyes preternaturally brilliant in the intensity
+of her emotion. "Hellayne, the wife of Roger de Laval, is dead--as
+dead to him, as if she in reality were bedded in the coffin. Where is
+he? Where is the man who should have been where you are, Tristan? I
+venture to say his grief did not overburden him. He will find ready
+consolation in the arms of another for the wife who was to him but
+the plaything of his idle hours. He never loved me! He even threatened
+to shut me up within convent walls for the rest of my days if I did
+not return with him--his mistress,--his wife but in a name, a thing
+to submit to his loathsome kisses and caresses, while her soul is
+another's. He himself and death, which perchance he himself decreed,
+have severed bonds no persuasion would have tempted me to break.
+Tristan, I am yours--take me."
+
+She held out her beautiful arms.
+
+He was in mortal torment.
+
+"Nevertheless, Hellayne, to-night of all nights it may not be--" he
+stammered. "Listen, dearest--"
+
+"Enough!" she silenced him, as she rose. She swept towards him and,
+before he knew it, her hands were on his shoulders, her face upturned,
+her blue eyes holding his own, depriving him of will and resistance.
+
+"Tristan," she said, and there was an intensity almost fierce in her
+tones, "moments are fleeting, and you stand there reasoning with me and
+bidding me weigh what already is weighed for all time. Will you wait
+until escape is rendered impossible, until we are discovered, before
+you will decide to save me and to grasp with both hands the happiness
+that is yours; this happiness that is not twice offered in a lifetime?"
+
+She was so close to him that he could almost feel the beating of
+her heart. He was now as wax in her hands. Forgotten were all
+considerations of rank and station. They were just man and woman whose
+fates were linked together irrevocably. Under the sway of an impulse he
+could not resist, he kissed her upturned face, her lips, her eyes. Then
+he broke from her clasp and, bracing himself for the task to which they
+stood committed by that act, he said, the words tumbling from his lips:
+
+"Hellayne, we know not who is abroad to-night. We know not what
+dangers are lurking in the shadows. Tebaldo and his men may even now be
+scouring the streets of Rome for a fugitive, and once in their power
+all the saints could not save us from our doom. I know not the object
+of this plot of which you were the victim, and even the Lord Roger
+may be but the dupe of another. I will take you to the convent of the
+Blessed Sisters of Santa Maria in Trastevere, that you may dwell there
+in safety until I have ascertained that all danger is past. You shall
+enter as my sister, trying to escape the attention of an unwelcome
+suitor. But the thing that chiefly exercises my mind now is how to make
+our escape unobserved."
+
+Hellayne nodded dreamily.
+
+"I have thought of it already."
+
+"You have thought of it?" he replied. "And of what have you thought?"
+
+For answer she stepped back a pace and drew the cowl of the monk's
+habit over her head until her features were lost in the shadows. Her
+meaning was clear to him at once. With a cry of relief he turned to
+the drawer whence he had taken the habit in which she was arrayed and,
+selecting another, he hastily donned it above the garments he wore.
+
+No sooner was it done than he caught her by the arm.
+
+There was no time to be lost. Moments were flying.
+
+If he should be too late at the Lateran!
+
+"Come!" he said in an urgent voice.
+
+At the first step she stumbled. The habit was so long that it cumbered
+her feet. But that was a difficulty soon overcome. Without regarding
+the omen, he cut with his dagger a piece from the skirt, enough to
+leave her freedom of movement and, this accomplished, they set out.
+
+They crossed the church swiftly and silently, then entered the porch,
+where he left her in order to peer out upon the street. All was quiet.
+Rome was wrapt in sleep. From the moon he gleaned it wanted less than
+an hour to midnight.
+
+Drawing their cowls about their faces, they abandoned the main streets,
+Tristan conducting his charge through narrow alleys, deserted of the
+living. These lanes were dark and steep, the moonlight being unable to
+penetrate the chasms formed between the tall, ill-favored houses. They
+stumbled frequently, and in some places he carried her almost bodily,
+to avoid the filth of the quarter they were traversing.
+
+The night was solemn and beautiful. Myriads of stars paved the deep
+vault of heaven. The moon, now in her zenith, hung like a silver lamp
+in the midst of them; a stream of quivering, rosy light, issuing from
+the north, traversed the sky like the tail of some stupendous comet,
+sending forth, ever and anon, corruscations like flaming meteors.
+
+At last they reached the Transtiberine region and the convent of
+Santa Maria in Trastevere hove into sight. The range of habitations
+around were in a ruinous state and the whole aspect of the region was
+so dismal as to encourage but few ramblers to venture there after
+nightfall.
+
+Passing through the ill-famed quarter of the Sclavonians, where, in
+after time, one of the blackest crimes in history was committed,
+Tristan and Hellayne at last arrived before the gates of the convent.
+They had spoken but little, dreading even the faintest echo of their
+footsteps might bring a pursuer on their track. Their summons for
+admission was, after a considerable wait, answered by the porter of
+the gate, who, upon seeing two monks, relinquished his station by the
+wicket and descended to inquire into their behest.
+
+Hellayne shrank up to Tristan, as the latter stated their purpose and
+the old monk, unable to understand the jargon of his belated caller,
+withdrew, mumbling some equally unintelligible reply.
+
+Hellayne's eyes were those of a frightened deer.
+
+"What will he do, Tristan?" she whispered, "Oh, Tristan, do not leave
+me! I feel I shall never see you again, Tristan--my love--take me
+away--I am afraid--"
+
+He held her close to him.
+
+"There is nothing to fear, my Hellayne! To-morrow night I shall return
+and place you safely where we may see each other till I have absolved
+my duties to the Senator. Do not fear, sweetheart! Of all the abodes
+in Rome the sanctity of the convent is inviolate! But I hear steps
+approaching--some one is coming. Courage, dearest--remember how much is
+at stake!"
+
+Another moment and they stood before the Abbess of Santa Maria in
+Trastevere.
+
+Summoning all his presence of mind, Tristan told his tale and made
+his request. Danger lurking in the infatuation of a Roman noble was
+threatening his sister. She had fled from his innuendos and begged the
+convent's asylum for a brief space of time, when he, Tristan, would
+claim her. He explained Hellayne's attire, and the Abbess, raising the
+woman's head, looked long and earnestly into her face.
+
+What she saw seemed to confirm of the truth of Tristan's speech, and
+she agreed readily to his request. Tristan kissed Hellayne on the brow,
+then, after a brief and affectionate farewell and the assurance that he
+would return on the following day, he left her in charge of the Blessed
+Sisters. With a sob she followed the Abbess and the gates shut behind
+them.
+
+For a moment Tristan felt as if all the world about him was sinking
+into a dark bottomless pit.
+
+Then, suppressing an outcry of anguish, his winged feet bore him across
+Rome towards the Basilica of St. John in Lateran.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PHANTOM OF THE LATERAN
+
+
+It still lacked a few minutes of midnight when Tristan arrived at the
+Lateran. The guard had been set in all the chapels, as on the night
+when he had kept the watch before.
+
+Without confiding his purpose to any one, he traversed the silent
+corridors until he came to the chapel where he was to watch all night.
+
+The men-at-arms were posted outside the door. A lamp was burning in the
+corridor, and strict orders had been given that no person whatsoever
+was to pass into the chapel.
+
+After assuring himself that all was secure, Tristan seated himself in a
+chair which stood in the centre of the chapel.
+
+The place was dim and ghostly. A red lamp burnt before the Blessed
+Sacrament, and from the roof of the chapel hung another lamp of bronze.
+The light was turned low, but it threw a slight radiance upon portions
+of the mosaic of the floor.
+
+Tristan unbuckled his sword and placed it ready to hand. The whole of
+the Basilica was hushed in sleep. There was a heaviness and oppression
+in the air, and no sound broke the stillness in the courts of the
+palace.
+
+Memory flared up and down like the light of a lamp, as Tristan pondered
+over the changes and vicissitudes of his life, with all its miseries
+and heart-aches, as he thought of the future and of Hellayne. Danger
+encompassed them on every side. But there had been even greater
+terrors when he had plucked her from the very grip of Death, from the
+midst of her foes.
+
+And then he began to pray, pray for Hellayne's happiness and safety,
+and his whispering voice sounded as if a dry leaf was being blown over
+the marble floor, and when it ceased the silence fell over him like a
+cloak, enveloping him in its heavy, stifling folds.
+
+He had been on guard in the Lateran before, but the silence had never
+seemed so deep as it was now. His mind, heated and filled with the
+events of the past days, would not be tranquil. And yet there was a
+deadly fascination in this profound silence, in which it seemed his own
+mind and the riot of his thoughts were living and awake.
+
+What, if even now some lurking danger were approaching through the
+thousand corridors and anterooms of the palace! For on this night the
+enemies of Christ were abroad, silently unfurling the sable banners of
+Hell.
+
+The thought was almost unbearable. It was not fear which Tristan felt,
+rather a restlessness he was unable to control. Although the night was
+no hotter than usual, perspiration began to break out upon his face,
+and he felt athirst. The fumes of incense that permeated the chapel,
+increased his drowsiness.
+
+With something of an effort Tristan strode to the door and opened it.
+In the corridor two men-at-arms were on guard, one standing against
+the wall, the other walking slowly to and fro. The men reported that
+all was well, and that no one had passed that way. Tristan closed the
+door and returned inside. He walked up the chapel's length and then,
+his drawn sword beside him on the marble, knelt in prayer before the
+Blessed Sacrament which he had come to guard.
+
+There, for a little, his confused and restless mind found peace.
+
+But not for long.
+
+A drowsiness more heavy and insistent than any he had ever known
+began to assail him. It billowed into his brain, wave after wave. It
+assailed him with an irresistible, physical assault. He fought against
+it despairingly and hopelessly, knowing that he would be vanquished.
+Once, twice, sword in hand, as though the long blade could help him in
+the fight, he staggered up and down the chapel. Then, with a smothered
+groan, he sank into the chair, the sword slipping from his grasp. He
+felt as if deep waters were closing over him. There was a sound like
+dim and distant drums in his ears, a sensation of sinking, lower, ever
+lower,--then utter oblivion.
+
+And now silence reigned, silence more intense than his mind had ever
+known.
+
+The red lamp burned before the Host. The lamp in the centre of the
+chapel threw a dim radiance upon the bowed form of Tristan, whose sword
+crossed the mosaics of the floor.
+
+Silence there was in the whole circuit of the Lateran.
+
+Even the Blessed Father, prisoner in his own chamber, was asleep. The
+domestic prelates, the whole vast ecclesiastical court were wrapt in
+deep repose.
+
+In the chapel of St. Luke the silence was broken by the deep breathing
+of Tristan. It was not the breathing of a man in healthy sleep. It
+was a long-drawn catching at the breath, then once more a difficult
+inhalation. The men-at-arms outside in the corridor heard nothing of
+it. The sound was confined to the interior alone.
+
+The ceiling of the chapel was painted, and the various panels were
+divided by gilded oak beadings.
+
+Almost in the centre, directly above where Tristan reposed in leaden
+slumber, was a panel some two feet square, which represented in faint
+and faded colors the martyrdom of St. Sebastian.
+
+Suddenly, without a sound, the panel parted.
+
+If the sleeper had been awake he would have seen almost at his feet a
+swaying ladder of silk rope, which for a moment or two hissed back and
+forth over the tesselated floor.
+
+Now the dark square in the painted ceiling became faintly illumined.
+In its dim oblong a formless shape centred itself. The faint hiss from
+the end of the silken rope ladder recommenced and down the ladder from
+the roof of the chapel descended a formless spectre, with incredible
+swiftness, with incredible silence.
+
+The spider had dropped from the centre of its web. It had chosen the
+time well. It was upon its business.
+
+The trembling of the rope ladder ceased. Without a sound the black
+figure emerged into the pale light thrown by the central lamp. The
+figure was horrible. It was robed in deepest black, and as it made a
+quick bird-like movement of the head, the face, plucked as from some
+deadly nightmare, was so awful that it seemed well that Tristan was
+unconscious.
+
+The High Priest of Satan stood in the chapel of the Lateran. His quick,
+dexterous fingers ran over Tristan's sleeping form. Then he nodded
+approvingly.
+
+There was a soft pattering of steps and now the black form passed out
+of the circle of light and emerged into the red light of the lamp,
+which burned before the altar.
+
+Above, upon the embroidered frontal, were the curtains of white silk
+edged with gold--the gates of the tabernacle.
+
+A long, lean arm, hardly more than a bone, drew apart the curtains.
+Mingling with the heavy breathing of the sleeping man there was a sharp
+sound, most startling in the intense silence.
+
+It was a bestial snarl of satisfaction. It was followed by abominable
+chirpings of triumph, cold, inhuman, but real.
+
+Tristan slept on. The men-at-arms kept their faithful watch. In the
+whole of the Lateran Palace no one knew that the High Priest of Satan
+was prowling through the precincts and had seized upon his awful prey.
+
+He thrust the Holy Host into a silver box, and placed it next to his
+bosom. Then he drew a wafer of the exact size and shape of the stolen
+Host from the pocket of his robe. Gliding over to Tristan he thrust
+this unconsecrated wafer into his doublet.
+
+Then the black bat-like thing mounted to the ceiling. The lemon-colored
+light reappeared for a moment. In its glare the dark phantom looked
+terrific, like a fiend from Hell. The rope ladder moved silently
+upwards, and the painted panel with the arrow-pierced Sebastian dropped
+soundlessly into its place.
+
+The red lamp burnt in front of the tabernacle. But the chapel was empty
+now.
+
+At dawn the unexpected happened.
+
+The guards, expecting to be relieved, found themselves face to face
+with a special commission, come to visit the Lateran. It consisted
+of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna, the Cardinal of Orvieto, the
+Prefect of the Camera and Basil the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+After having made the rounds they at last arrived before the chapel of
+St. Luke. They found the two men-at-arms stationed at the door, alert
+at their post. The men were exhausted; their faces appeared grey and
+drawn in the morning light, but they reported that no one had passed
+into the chapel, nor had they seen anything of Tristan since midnight,
+when he had questioned them.
+
+The doors of the chapel were locked. Tristan held the keys. Repeated
+knocks elicited no response.
+
+The Archbishop of Ravenna looked anxiously at the Prefect of the Camera.
+
+"I do not like this, Messer Salviati," he said in a low voice. "I fear
+there is something wrong here."
+
+"Beat upon the door more loudly," the Prefect turned to one of the
+halberdiers, and the man struck the solid oak with the staff of his
+axe, till the whole corridor, filled with the ghostly advance light of
+dawn, rang and echoed with the noise.
+
+The Prefect of the Camera turned to the Archbishop.
+
+"It would seem the Capitano has fallen asleep. That is not a thing he
+ought to have done--but as the chapel seems inviolate we need hardly
+remain longer."
+
+And he looked inquiringly at the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+The latter shook his head dubiously.
+
+"I fear the Capitano can hardly be asleep, since we have called him so
+loudly," he said, looking from the one to the other. "I would suggest
+that the door of the chapel be forced."
+
+They were some time about it. The door was of massive oak, the lock
+well made and true. A man-at-arms had been despatched to another part
+of the Lateran to bring a locksmith who, for nearly half an hour,
+toiled at his task.
+
+It was accomplished at last and the four entered the chapel.
+
+It stretched before them, long, narrow, almost fantastic in the grey
+light of morning.
+
+The painted ceiling above held no color now. The mosaics of the
+floor were dead and lifeless. In the centre of the chapel, with face
+unnaturally pale, sat Tristan, huddled up in the velvet chair. By his
+side lay his naked sword.
+
+The lamp which was suspended from the centre of the ceiling had almost
+expired.
+
+In front of the altar the wick, floating on the oil, in its bowl of red
+glass, gave almost the only note of color against the grey.
+
+As they entered the chapel, the four genuflected to the altar. And
+while the Prefect and Basil went over to where Tristan was sleeping in
+his chair, and stood about with alarmed eyes, the Cardinal of Orvieto
+and the Archbishop of Ravenna approached the tabernacle with the proper
+reverences, parted the curtains and staggered back, indescribable
+horror in their faces.
+
+The Holy Host had disappeared.
+
+The priests stared at each other in terror. What did it mean? Again the
+Body of Our Lord had been taken from His resting-place. The captain of
+the guard was asleep in his chair. Verily the demons were at work once
+more and Hell was loosed again.
+
+The Archbishop of Ravenna began to weep. He covered his face with his
+hands. As he knelt upon the altar steps, great tears trickled through
+his trembling fingers, while he sent up prayers to the Almighty that
+this sacrilege might be discovered and its perpetrators brought to
+justice. On either side of him knelt the priests who had come into the
+chapel after them. Their hearts were filled with fear and sorrow.
+
+The Cardinal of Ravenna rose at last.
+
+His old, lean face shone with holy anger and sorrow.
+
+"An expiatory service will be held in this chapel before noon," he
+addressed those present. "I shall myself say Mass here. Meanwhile the
+whole of the palace must be aroused. Somewhere the emissaries of Satan
+have in their possession the Blessed Sacrament. See that the secret
+Judas does not escape us!"
+
+Almost upon his words there came a loud wail of anguish from the centre
+of the chapel where Tristan was still huddled in his chair.
+
+Basil had opened the doublet at his neck, as if to give him air, and
+the Prefect of the Camera, who was standing by, clapped his hands to
+his temples, and groaned like a soul in torment.
+
+The two ecclesiastics hurried down from the altar steps.
+
+Upon the lining of Tristan's doublet there lay the large round wafer,
+which every one present believed to be the consecrated Host.
+
+The Cardinal-Archbishop reverently took the wafer from Tristan and held
+it up in two hands.
+
+The men-at-arms sank to their knees with a rattle and ring of
+accoutrement.
+
+Every one knelt.
+
+Then in improvised procession, His Eminence restored the wafer to the
+tabernacle.
+
+Tristan was dragged out of the chapel.
+
+In the corridor horror-stricken men-at-arms buffeted him into some
+sort of consciousness. His bewildered ears caught the words: "To San
+Angelo," as he staggered between the men-at-arms as one in the thrall
+of an evil dream, leaving behind him a nameless fear and horror among
+the monks, priests and attendants at the Lateran.
+
+END OF BOOK THE THIRD
+
+BOOK THE FOURTH
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RETURN OF THE MOOR
+
+
+In a domed chamber of the Emperor's Tomb there sat two personages
+engaged in whispered conversation, Basil and a weird hooded phantom
+that seemed part of the dread shadows which crowded in upon the room,
+quenching the dying light of day. Deep silence reigned. Only the
+monotonous tread of the sentries broke the stillness as they made the
+rounds above them.
+
+It was Basil who spoke.
+
+"All is going well! We shall prevail! We shall set up the throne of
+Ebony in the stead of the Cross. I bow to your wisdom, my master! The
+promised reward shall not fail you!"
+
+As he spoke, the thin, black arm of his vis-a-vis trembled for a moment
+in the ample folds of his black gown. Then, with a quick, bird-like
+movement, a thin hand, twisted like a claw, wrinkled and yellow, was
+stretched out towards the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+On the second finger of this claw there was a ring. Basil bent and
+kissed it.
+
+Basil began to speak in his ordinary, conversational tone, but there
+was a strange gleam in his eyes.
+
+"It has been accomplished," he said. "They tell me all Rome is astir!"
+
+The voice that replied seemed to come from a great distance; the lips
+of the waxen face hardly moved. They parted, that was all.
+
+"It has been done! I took it myself! It was the Host which the Cardinal
+of Ravenna had consecrated on that morning."
+
+"And you were not seen?"
+
+"I was not," came the whispered reply. "As a measure of precaution I
+wore the mask which I use to go about the churches at night. I met no
+one."
+
+"Is it here?" Basil queried eagerly.
+
+"It is not here," replied the voice. "It must be kept until the night
+of the great consecration, when Lucifer himself shall sit upon the
+ebony throne and demand his bride--his stainless dove. Where is she
+now?"
+
+The light had faded out of Basil's eyes, and his face was ashen.
+
+"One has been found, worthy of even as fastidious a master as he, whom
+we both serve. Well-nigh had she escaped us, had not one who never
+fails me tracked her on that fatal night, when her body lay in her
+coffin ready to be consecrated to the Nameless one."
+
+From the eyeless sockets of the shadow-mask a phosphorescent gleam shot
+towards the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+"What of the man?"
+
+"The wafer was discovered on a certain captain of the guard who hath
+crossed my path to his undoing once too often. The Church herself shall
+pronounce sentence upon him--through me!"
+
+"And--that other?"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"Her husband!--He deems her dead, nor grieves he overmuch, believing,
+as he does, that her love was another's--even his whom I have marked
+for certain doom. I have it in my mind to try what a jest will do for
+him."
+
+The lurid tone of the speaker seemed to impress even his shadowy
+companion.
+
+"A jest?"
+
+"He shall attend the great ceremony," Basil explained. "And he shall
+behold the stainless dove. When is it to be?" he added after a pause.
+
+"When is it to be?"
+
+"Six nights hence--on the night of the full moon."
+
+"And then you shall give to me that which I crave, and the forfeit
+shall be paid."
+
+"The forfeit shall be paid," the voice re-echoed from the shadows, and
+to Basil it seemed as if the damp, cold breath from an open grave had
+been wafted to his cheeks.
+
+Like a phantom that sinks back into the night of the grave, whence it
+had emerged, Bessarion vanished from the chamber. In his place stood
+Hormazd, who had noiselessly entered through a panel in the wall.
+
+Basil greeted him with a silent nod.
+
+"What of the messenger?" he turned to the Oriental.
+
+"He returns within the hour," replied the voice.
+
+"What are his tidings?" Basil queried eagerly. "Is Alberic in the land
+of shadows, where she dwells who gave him birth?"
+
+"Sent by the same relentless hand across the Styx," the cowled figure
+spoke, yet Basil knew not whether it was a question or a statement.
+
+He gave a start.
+
+"Tell me, how are secrets known to you at which Hell itself would
+pale?" he turned with unsteady tone to his companion.
+
+"Those of the shadows commune with the shadows," came the enigmatical
+reply. "Is everything prepared?"
+
+"When the brazen tongue from the Capitol tolls the hour, the blow shall
+fall," Basil replied. "Hassan Abdullah and his Saracens are anchored
+off the port of Ostia. The Epirotes and Albanians in the Senator's
+service are bribed to our cause. Rome is in the throes of mortal
+terror. Even the Monk of Cluny is under the spell, and has ceased
+to arraign the Scarlet Woman of Babylon. The dread of the impending
+judgment day will succor our cause. And--once installed within these
+walls as master of Rome--with Theodora by my side--you shall have full
+sway, to do whatever your dark fancies may prompt. You shall have a
+chamber and a laboratory and be at liberty to roam at will through your
+devil's kitchen."
+
+The cowled figure gave a silent nod, but, before he could speak, the
+door leading into the chamber opened as from the effect of a violent
+gust of wind, and a shapeless form, that seemed half human, half ape,
+flew at Basil's feet, who recoiled as if a ghost had arisen before him
+from the floor.
+
+For a moment Basil stared from Daoud the Moor to his shadowy visitor,
+then he bade the runner arise and commanded him in some Eastern tongue
+to unburden himself.
+
+With many protestations of his devotion the monster produced a bundle
+which Basil had not noted, owing to the swiftness with which the
+African had entered the chamber. Panting, with deft, though trembling
+fingers, Daoud untied the cords and a bloody head, severed from its
+trunk, rolled upon the floor of the chamber, and lay still at Basil's
+feet. It had lost all human semblance and exhaled the putrid odor of
+the grave.
+
+Basil started to his feet, staring from the Moor to Hormazd.
+
+"Dead--" his pale lips stammered. Then, turning to his dark companion,
+he added by way of encouragement to himself:
+
+"You gave me truth!"
+
+Daoud was cowering on the floor, his eyes staring into the shadows,
+where hovered the Persian's almost invisible form.
+
+A nod from Basil caused him to rise.
+
+"Away with it!" shrieked the Grand Chamberlain overcome with terror.
+"See that no one sets eyes upon it!"
+
+The Moor wrapped the severed head into the blood-stained cloth and
+darted from the chamber.
+
+Then Basil turned to his visitor.
+
+"In six days Rome shall hail a new master! Let then the sable banners
+of Hell be unfurled and the Nameless Presence rejoice upon his ebony
+throne! And now do you come with me into the realms of doom that gape
+below, that your eyes may be gladdened by that which is in store for
+you!"
+
+Taking up a torch, Basil lighted it with the aid of two flints and the
+twain trooped out of the chamber into the shadowy corridor leading into
+the crypts of the Emperor's Tomb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE ESCAPE FROM SAN ANGELO
+
+
+Hidden away in some secret vault of the great honey-colored Mausoleum
+Tristan found himself when the men-at-arms had departed, and he had
+regained his full senses. Color had faded out of everything. The
+rock walls were lifeless and grey. The immense silence of the tomb
+surrounded him. The rayless gloom was without relief, save what sparse
+light filtered through a narrow grated window so high in the wall that
+nothing could be seen from below, save the sky.
+
+The torture of it all he could have endured very well. There was
+something greater. It was the thought of Hellayne. This dreadful
+uncertainty swung like a bell in his brain, cut through the fibre
+of his being. And when these thoughts came over him in his lone
+confinement he beat his hands upon the stone and wept.
+
+They had placed him in a cell, which seemed to have been hollowed out
+of the Travertine rock. It was small, built in the thickness of the
+mighty Roman walls. Tristan set his teeth hard, prepared to endure. He
+knew well enough what it meant. He would be confined in this living
+tomb till his enemies thought his spirit was broken, and then he would
+be summoned before a tribunal of the Church.
+
+Once a day, and once only, the door of his cell opened. By the smoky
+light of a torch, his gaoler pushed a pitcher of water and a machet of
+bread into his prison. Then the red light died and darkness and silence
+supervened. Yet it was not the ordinary darkness which men know.
+Through the haunted chambers of Tristan's mind fantastic forms began
+to chase each other, evil things to uncoil themselves and raise their
+heads. More and more drearily the burden of the days began to press
+upon him. What availed heroic endurance?
+
+But it was not only darkness, nor was it only despair. Nor was it
+only silence. It was a strange impalpable something which haunted his
+restless, enforced vigil; a dim inchoate nothingness, that drove him to
+the verge of madness. Though day draped the sky with blue and golden
+banners, to tell the sons of men that Night was past and they need not
+longer fear, for Tristan darkness was not a transient thing, but an
+awful negation of hope.
+
+All of this Tristan could have endured, had not the thought of Hellayne
+unnerved him utterly.
+
+She was safe--so he hoped--in the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
+But, as hour succeeded hour, his assurance began to pale. Everything
+had been arranged with the Abbess. But--had she indeed eluded her
+pursuers? The empty coffin had no doubt long been discovered. Did they
+believe she was dead, or did the hand who had dealt the blow in the
+dark, the vigilant eye that had pursued her every step, plot further
+mischief?
+
+He thought of Odo of Cluny. The monk was influential, but there was, at
+this hour, in Rome, one even more powerful, and he doubted not but that
+by his agency the wafer had been placed into his doublet, though the
+events of that fateful night from the time he had entered the Lateran,
+were like a black blot upon his memory.
+
+Had Odo even sought admission to his cell? Did he, too, believe him
+guilty? Had his ears, too, been poisoned by the monstrous lie? To him
+he might indeed have turned; of him he might have received assurance
+of Hellayne's fate; and in return he might have reassured her who was
+pining at the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
+
+But, was she ignorant indeed of what was happening in the seven-hilled
+city of Rome? Would not the rumor of the terrible outrage committed at
+the Lateran knock even at the silent walls of the convent? A captain of
+the Senator's guard caught red-handed in the perpetration of a crime
+too heinous for the human mind to conceive!
+
+He reviewed his own life, the close of which seemed very near at hand.
+Free from cunning and that secret conceit which is peculiarly alarming
+to natures that know themselves to be, in all practical matters,
+confounded and confused, he had, in a short time, found himself placed
+upon the world's greatest stage, a world little fit for dreamers and
+for dreams. He had been plunged into the inner circles of the mighty
+struggle, impending between Powers of Light and the Powers of Darkness,
+upon a sea he knew not how to navigate, and upon whose cliffs his ship
+had stranded.
+
+One evening, when the cold greyness of an early twilight had enveloped
+the city, and from the darkening sky every now and then was heard a
+sound of approaching thunder, Tristan, counting the weary hours of his
+unbroken solitude, which he could but measure by the appearance and
+departure of his gaoler, had been more restless than usual. He had
+hoped to be summoned for early trial before those high in the Church,
+when, in Odo of Cluny, he would find an advocate, who alone might save
+him from his doom. But nothing had happened. Nothing had broken the
+dreary, maddening monotony, save now and then the shriek and curses of
+a maddened fellow-prisoner, or the moans of a wretch who was dying of
+thirst or hunger.
+
+Whoever the powers that dominated his life, they evidently had not
+decreed his immediate death, as if they were rejoicing in the torture
+of false hopes which each recurrent day waked in his breast, and which
+each departing day extinguished. The food never varied, and the water
+intended for the cleansing of his body was so sparse that he had to
+husband it as a precious possession till the gaoler refilled the bronze
+ewer on the succeeding day.
+
+When waking from feverish, troubled slumbers, broken by the squeaking
+of the rats that scurried over the filthy floor of his dungeon, and
+other presences that caused him to pray for a speedy death from this
+slow torture, he found himself nevertheless listening for the approach
+of the gaoler who, after dispensing his bounty, departed as he had
+come, silent as the tomb, without making reply to Tristan's queries.
+
+Escape, to all appearances, seemed quite beyond the scope of
+possibility. Yet, with failing hopes, the spirit of Tristan seemed to
+rise. Had not his good fortune been with him ever since he arrived at
+Rome? Had he not, by some miraculous decree of destiny, again met the
+woman he loved better than all the world? And then, they had left him
+his dagger. After all, not such wretched company in his present plight.
+
+It was on the eve of the third day when the voices of men coming down
+the night-wrapt passage struck his wakeful ear.
+
+In one of the speakers he recognized Basil.
+
+"And you are quite sure no one saw you enter?" he said to his companion.
+
+"No one!" came the snarling reply. "Nevertheless--they are on my track.
+I breathe the air of the gibbet which burns my throat."
+
+"And you are positive no one recognized you?" spoke the silken voice.
+
+"No one."
+
+"Take courage, Hormazd. Then there is little danger, yet you should
+take care that no one may see you. We are surrounded by spies."
+
+"Do you not trust Maraglia?"
+
+"I trust none! You will therefore remain a short time concealed in this
+subterranean passage."
+
+"Subterranean?"
+
+There was a note of terror in the Oriental's voice.
+
+"That is to say--the vaults! Here you will find honorable and pleasant
+company, who will not betray you. You will find straw in abundance and
+each day Maraglia will bring you something to eat. Go slowly. How do
+you like the abode?"
+
+"Not even the devil can find me here."
+
+"No one will find you here!"
+
+"No one knows where I am," Hormazd interposed dubiously.
+
+"Nor ever shall."
+
+"It is of no consequence. So I am safe."
+
+"You are safe enough. Lower your head and take care not to stumble over
+the threshold. Here--this side--enter."
+
+"Enter," re-echoed the other. Then there was a pause.
+
+"It is very evident, you are afraid--"
+
+"Afraid? No--but I am thinking we always know when we enter such
+places--never when we shall leave them."
+
+"How? Did I not say to-morrow night?"
+
+"But if you should not come for me?"
+
+"What profit would your death be to me? Where shall I find another
+wizard to bring to foretell the death of another Alberic?"
+
+Tristan gave an audible gasp at these words. He felt his limbs grow
+numb. Had his ears heard aright? Surely they had not. Some demon had
+mocked him, to drive him mad. Ere he could regain his mental balance,
+the voice of the Grand Chamberlain's companion again struck his ear.
+
+"But if you should not come, my lord?"
+
+"You could scream!"
+
+"What would that avail?"
+
+"Mind you--I might have to stay here myself for sheltering such a
+patriarch as you."
+
+"Nevertheless--to guard against all risks--leave the door open--"
+
+He entered, but the door turned immediately upon its hinges.
+
+"My Lord Basil--" shrieked Hormazd, "the door is shut--"
+
+"I stumbled against it."
+
+"Bring a light--open the door--" came a muffled voice from within.
+
+"I shall soon return."
+
+"Do not forget the light."
+
+"Light!--Ay! You shall not want for light,--if what I say be not false:
+Et lux perpetua luceat eis," chanted the Grand Chamberlain in Requiem
+measure, as he strode away.
+
+Silence, deep and sepulchral, succeeded. Tristan cowered on the floor,
+his face covered with his hands. If what he had overheard was true,
+he, too, was lost. What had happened? Who was the Grand Chamberlain's
+companion?
+
+Now Hormazd began to scream and rave in the darkness. Terrible
+execrations broke from the Oriental's lips, as he hurled his body
+against the iron bars of his prison cell. Demoniacal yells waked the
+silent echoes. The other prisoners, alarmed and rendered restless, soon
+joined in, and soon the dark vaults of the Emperor's Tomb resounded
+with a veritable pandemonium, a chorus of the damned that caused
+Tristan to put his fingers to his ears lest he, too, go mad.
+
+At nine o'clock that night the last visit was to be paid the prisoners.
+At nine o'clock Maraglia, the Castellan, came, attended by the
+guard, which waited outside. The Castellan was in a state of nervous
+excitement. As he entered Tristan's cell he looked about, as if he
+dreaded a listener, then he approached his prisoner and whispered
+something into his ear.
+
+For a moment Tristan knew not what has happening to him. Was he alone
+with a mad man and was Maraglia too possessed?--
+
+The Castellan, to prove his assertion that he was a bat, began
+forthwith to squeak, and waved his arms, as if they were wings.
+
+Curious stories were told about Maraglia. No one knew, why he had
+retained his post so long amidst ever recurring changes, and it was
+whispered that he was subject to strange possessions of the mind. He
+faced his prisoner nervously, fingering a poniard in his belt. Tristan
+watched his every gesture.
+
+A little foam came out of the corners of Maraglia's lips. He wrung his
+hands and his voice rose into a sort of shriek. He jerked his head half
+round towards the men-at arms outside in the gallery. The screams of
+Hormazd continued.
+
+"It is the Ape of Antichrist," he whispered to Tristan. "I have a mind
+to try conclusions with him. Close the door."
+
+Tristan's wits, preternaturally sharpened in his predicament put words
+in his mouth which he seemed unable to account for. He had heard rumors
+of the Castellan. Perchance he might turn his madness to account.
+
+"I can tell you much," he said. "But not here! But one thing I
+perceive. You are approaching one of your bad spells."
+
+Maraglia shrank back against the door. His face was pale as death.
+
+"Then you know?" he squeaked.
+
+Tristan nodded. The torch which the Castellan had placed in an iron
+holder that projected from the wall, was burning low and the resinous
+fumes filled the cell.
+
+"Something I know--but not all! Yet, I believe I can cure you--"
+
+"I am about to turn into a bat! And when I go abroad I scream like
+a bat--in a thin, high pitched tone. And I flap my arms--and fly
+away--thus--"
+
+Tristan nodded wisely.
+
+"I know the symptoms--they are of Satan. Nevertheless, I can cure you."
+
+"Without conference with the evil powers?"
+
+Tristan pondered.
+
+"You shall not imperil your soul! But--take heed! It is well that you
+have spoken to me of these matters. For, from feeling that you are a
+bat, a bat you will become."
+
+Maraglia was pale as a ghost.
+
+"Then I was just in the nick of time?"
+
+"You are already half immersed," Tristan replied in a deep and menacing
+tone. "Take heed lest you be utterly drowned."
+
+The Castellan shivered as one in an ague.
+
+"Every Friday at midnight the Black Mass is said by one Bessarion, that
+is of unthinkable age--a hideous wizard and High Priest of Satan. It is
+he who has cast the spell over me."
+
+Hope mounted high in Tristan. The alert confidence of his companion
+animated him and he felt almost as if the great ordeal was over. A
+distant bell was tolling. Its tones came in muffled cadence into the
+night wrapt corridors of the Emperor's Tomb.
+
+Nevertheless he shivered at the Castellan's confession. Maraglia, then,
+was under the spell of this Wizard of Hell.
+
+"I have seen him stalking through these galleries," he turned to his
+gaoler. "But I possess a spell which renders him harmless. He cannot
+touch me--nor breathe his evil breath into my soul. I can compel him to
+take away the spell he has cast over you--that is, if you so wish it."
+
+The Castellan squeaked and waved his arms.
+
+"You would do this for me?"
+
+"If you will not betray me. For only a more powerful spell than that
+which he possesses can take away the curse he has put upon you."
+
+"Ah! If you would do this! It is coming upon me now. I am going mad. I
+am a bat!"
+
+And Maraglia squeaked like a whole company of dusky mice, and flapped
+his arms as if he were about to fly away.
+
+"This very night will I do it," Tristan replied. "But you must help me."
+
+"What can I do?"
+
+Tristan cast all upon one throw.
+
+"Remove your guards from this corridor and leave me a light and a rope."
+
+"It is but reasonable," Maraglia returned. "I will fetch them. When
+appears the wizard?"
+
+"At midnight! See that I am not disturbed."
+
+Maraglia nodded. Fear had almost deprived him of his senses.
+
+"Last time I saw him he came from yonder corridor," Tristan informed
+the Castellan.
+
+"That may not be!" the latter replied. "Unless he hath wings. This
+passage leads to the ramparts."
+
+"It is possible I have been confused by the darkness," Tristan replied
+pensively. "Nevertheless, I will oblige you, Messer Maraglia."
+
+The Castellan retired with many manifestations of his gratitude,
+leaving Tristan in possession of a lantern, a candle and a coil of rope.
+
+It was midnight.
+
+The sharp click of a flint upon steel was repeated several times
+before a spark fell upon the tinder and it caught with a blue, ghostly
+flicker. There were strange reflections in Tristan's cell. Curious
+steely lights played upon him.
+
+Then the candle ignited. The glow widened out. Tristan peered about
+cautiously. The door of his cell had been left unfastened by Maraglia.
+He had no fear of his prisoner escaping. No one had ever escaped from
+these vaults, except to certain death.
+
+He crept out into the corridor. It was dark as in the realms of the
+underworld. The silence of the tomb prevailed. After a time the passage
+made a sharp turn at right angles. A cooler air blew upon his face,
+wafted through an unbarred embrasure, beyond which showed a star-lit
+night without a moon, but not wholly dark.
+
+Drawing himself up into the embrasure he stood at last upon a broad
+sill of stone. A cool breeze eddied around him. He was at an immense
+height. A vast portion of Rome lay below. The Tiber seemed like a river
+of lead. Far away to the left the dark cypresses of the Pincian Hill
+cut into the night sky in sombre silhouette. He was above the tombs of
+Hadrian and Caracalla.
+
+Tristan shivered despite himself as he fastened the rope he had secured
+from the unwary Castellan to the stone ledge. It was not fear; but that
+actual, physical shrinking, which induces nausea, had him in its grip.
+
+"There is Rome," he said to himself with a savage chuckle.
+
+He made a stirrup loop and curved it round a boss of antique tile,
+which stretched above the abyss like a gargoyle. Then, with infinite
+precaution, he lowered the coil of rope.
+
+Dawn was already heralded in the East. A faint grey light appeared in
+the direction of the Alban Hills. From over the Esquiline came the
+shrill trumpeting of a cock.
+
+There was a horrible moment as Tristan's hands left the roof edge and
+he fell a foot to grasp the rope. He curled his legs about it, got it
+between his crossed feet and began to let himself down. The sinews of
+his arms seemed to creak. Once he passed an open window and distinctly
+heard the snores of the men-at-arms who were sleeping within. The
+descent seemed interminable. As seen from above, had there been any one
+to watch him, his form grew less and less. From a man it seemed to turn
+into an ape; from an ape as a night bird groping down the Mausoleum's
+side; from a bird it dwindled to a spider, spinning downward on a taut
+thread. Up there, on the height, the rope groaned and creaked upon
+the curved tile from which it hung. But tile and fibre held. Once his
+feet rested upon a leaden water pipe and he clung and swayed, glad of
+a momentary release from the frightful strain upon his arms. That was
+almost the last conscious sensation. Clinging to the rope he came down
+quick and more quickly. His arms rose and fell with the precision of a
+machine. At last he felt his feet upon solid ground, where he reeled
+and staggered like a drunken man.
+
+He had traversed a hundred thirty-five feet of air.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE LURE
+
+
+For three whole days Hellayne consumed herself waiting for Tristan, and
+she began to feel listless and dispirited. She had long acknowledged
+to herself the necessity of his presence, and how much his love
+had influenced her thoughts and actions ever since she had known
+him--a period that now seemed of infinite length. She found herself
+perpetually recalling the origin and growth of this love. She dwelt
+with a strange pleasure on her terrible plight, when, believing she was
+dead, he had remained with her body. As evening approached she strolled
+down to the Tiber, with a strange persistency and the vague expectation
+of Tristan's return. She now trusted him utterly, since that last and
+most potent proof of his love for her.
+
+On the first day this dreamy, imaginative existence was delightful.
+The region of the Trastevere at the period of our story was but
+sparsely populated, and the great convent, with its church of Santa
+Maria, dominated the lowly fisher huts, scattered over its precincts.
+Hellayne, during these quiet evening hours, when only the sounds of
+far-off chimes from churches and convents smote the silence with their
+silver tongues, and during which hours the Abbess of Santa Maria
+permitted her to leave the silent walls of her asylum for a short walk
+to the Tiber's edge, rarely ever saw a human being. Only at dusk, when
+the fishermen and boatmen returned from their daily routine, she saw
+them pass in the distance, like phantoms that come and go and vanish in
+the evening glow.
+
+On the second day there came a feeling of want; the consciousness that
+there was a void which it would be a great happiness to fill. This
+grew to a longing for those hours which had glided by so quickly and
+sweetly. At intervals there came the startling thought: if she should
+never see him again! Then her heart stopped beating, and her cheek
+paled with the thought of the bare possibility.
+
+Thus the third day sped, and when Hellayne still remained without
+tidings from Tristan her anxiety slowly changed to a great fear.
+She could hardly contain herself during the long hours of the day,
+and though she spent hours and hours in prayer for his return, her
+heart seemed to sink under the weight of her fear and sorrow. She
+was alone--alone in Rome--exposed to dangers which her great beauty
+rendered even more grave than those that beset an ordinary person.
+She feared lest Basil was scouring the city for the woman who had
+so mysteriously baffled his desires, and she dreaded the hatred of
+Theodora, whose infatuation for her lover had rather increased than
+diminished in the face of Tristan's resistance. How long would he be
+able to withstand, if Theodora had decreed his undoing?
+
+There were moments when a mad jealousy and despair surged up in
+Hellayne's heart, yet she hesitated to confide her fears and anxiety
+to the Abbess, voicing only her disquietude at Tristan's prolonged
+absence. Then only the latter informed Hellayne of a strange rumor
+which had found its way into the Trastevere. Three nights ago a
+terrible sacrilege had been committed at the Lateran, during the small
+hours of the night, and on the following morning, during an inspection
+by some high prelates of the Church, the criminal had been discovered
+in the person of a captain of the Senator's guard, who had but recently
+arrived in Rome, and had been placed in high command by the Senator
+himself, whom he had so cruelly betrayed.
+
+Three nights ago! It was on the night of the terrible crime from whose
+consequences she had been saved just in the nick of time. With painful
+minuteness Hellayne recalled, or tried to recall, every incident,
+every detail, every utterance of her lover. But there was nothing at
+which she could clutch save--but it was sheer madness. Surely it was
+some horrid nightmare. Again she sought the Abbess, later in the day,
+questioning her regarding the name of him who had been taken in the
+commission of so heinous an offence. It was some time ere the Abbess
+could recall a name strange in her own land, and Hellayne, with the
+persistency of desperation, withheld any aid, so as not to offer a clue
+to the one she dreaded to hear. But the strain proved too great. Almost
+with a shriek she demanded to know if, perchance, the name was Tristan.
+The Abbess regarded her questioner strangely. "Tristan is the name. Do
+you know this man, my child?"
+
+Hellayne was on the point of fainting. Everything grew black before her
+eyes, and she would have fallen, had not the Abbess supported her.
+
+"A countryman of mine," she said, dreading lest by revealing their
+connection she might herself be held in custody. "He came to Rome on
+a pilgrimage. Surely there is some horrible mistake! He could not! He
+could not!"
+
+The Abbess placed an arm round the trembling girl.
+
+"If he can prove that he is innocent, the Cardinal-Archbishop will
+not suffer a hair of his head to be touched," she tried to console
+Hellayne whose head rested on her shoulder. She seemed utterly crushed.
+Surely--it was too monstrous--too unbelievable. Yet as the moments sped
+on, an icy, sickening fear gripped her heart. She recalled an incident
+of that last evening with Tristan which, but for what had happened or
+was rumored to have happened, she would have utterly ignored. She had
+noted her lover's restlessness, and his apparent haste in leaving her
+at the convent gates. She recalled now that he repeatedly glanced at
+the moon and did, at one time, comment upon the lateness of the hour.
+He had not seemed anxious to prolong their tete-a-tete, and he had not
+been heard from in three days. Surely, no matter where he was, he could
+have sent a message, verbal or otherwise. And the crime had happened
+during the small hours of the night--after he had left her! It was too
+horrible to ponder upon!
+
+That there was some dreadful mystery which surrounded this deed of
+darkness and Tristan's share therein, Hellayne did not question. But
+how was she, a woman, a stranger, alone in Rome, to aid in clearing it
+up and reveal her lover's innocence? There was no doubt in her mind,
+but that he was the victim of some devilish conspiracy--perchance a
+thread of that same web which had entangled her to her undoing. But how
+to convince the Cardinal-Archbishop of Tristan's innocence, when the
+facts surrounding the terrible discovery were unknown to her?
+
+"This man is, no doubt, very dear to you," said the Abbess at last.
+
+Hellayne shrank before the questioner and averted her face. But the
+Abbess was resolved to know more, once her suspicions were aroused.
+
+"Could it perchance be he who brought you here three nights ago--your
+brother?" she queried with a kind, though penetrating glance at the
+woman who was trembling like an aspen, her face colorless, her eyes
+dimmed with tears.
+
+A silent nod convinced the Abbess of the truth of her surmise. She
+stroked Hellayne's silken hair.
+
+"It is a dreadful crime of which he stands accused, one for which there
+is no remission--no pardon here or hereafter," she said sorrowfully.
+
+"He is innocent," sobbed Hellayne. "He is as pure as the light, as the
+flowers. There is some dreadful mistake. He must be saved before it is
+too late! Oh--dear mother--could you not intercede for him with His
+Eminence?"
+
+The Abbess regarded her as if she thought her protege had suddenly
+lost her reason. To intercede with the Cardinal-Archbishop for one who
+stood committed of so heinous an offence, taken in the very act,--one
+who, perchance, was implicated in all those other terrible outrages
+committed in the various sanctuaries of Rome! Nevertheless she made
+allowance for Hellayne's hysterical plea.
+
+"Has he never mentioned these matters to you?" She queried kindly,
+hoping to draw the girl out.
+
+"What matters?" Hellayne queried, with wide eyes, and the question
+convinced the Abbess that the woman knew nothing.
+
+"These dark practices," replied the Abbess. "For this is not the first
+offence. Even within this very moon cycle the Holy Host has been taken
+from the Church of Our Blessed Lady yonder. And all efforts to discover
+the guilty one have failed."
+
+"I had not heard of it," said Hellayne. "I have not been long in Rome.
+Nor has he. About a month, I should say."
+
+"A month?"
+
+"And he knew nothing of this. Nor knew he even one person in this whole
+city."
+
+"Wherefore then came he?"
+
+Hellayne explained and the Abbess listened. Hellayne's account, which
+was impersonal, impressed her protectress in so far as she knew she
+spoke truth. For, if here was an impostor, it was the cleverest she had
+ever faced and, while a stranger to the world and to worldly affairs,
+the stamp of truth was too indelibly written upon Hellayne's brow to
+even permit of the shadow of a doubt. Perhaps it was for this reason
+the Abbess refrained from questioning her farther, for she had been
+somehow curious of the relation between the woman and the man who had
+brought her here.
+
+Here was matter for thought indeed. For, if the man was guilty and,
+notwithstanding Hellayne's protestations, the Abbess was in her own
+mind convinced that the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna could not be
+deceived in matters of this kind, what was to become of the woman he
+had placed in her charge? There were also other matters equally grave
+which oppressed the Abbess' mind. Hellayne's connection with one
+who had committed the unspeakable crime might militate against her
+remaining at the convent. Yet she hesitated to send her out into the
+world, unprotected and alone.
+
+For a time there was silence. Hellayne, utterly exhausted from the
+recital of a past, which had reopened every wound in her heart, causing
+it to bleed anew, anxious, afraid, doubting and wondering how far her
+protectress might go, stood before the woman who seemed to hold in her
+hand both her own fate and that of her lover.
+
+"I will retire to my cell and pray to the Blessed Virgin for light to
+guide my steps," the Abbess said at last, laying her hand on Hellayne's
+head. "Do not venture away too far," she enjoined, "and come to me
+after the Ave Maria. Perchance I may then know what to counsel."
+
+Hellayne bowed her head and kissed the hem of the Abbess' robe.
+
+After she had left, Hellayne remained standing where she was,
+transfixed with anxiety and grief.
+
+What forces of gloom and evil encompassed her on all sides? The man to
+whom she had given her youth and beauty, who had plucked the flower
+which others had vainly desired, instead of cherishing the gift she
+had bestowed upon him, had trampled the delicate blossom in the dust.
+He, to whom her heart belonged ever since she had power to think,
+was doomed for a deed too terrible to name. She had been ruthlessly
+sacrificed by the one, and now the other had failed her, and a third
+tried to encompass her ruin. And she was alone--utterly alone!
+
+What was she to do? To request an audience of the Cardinal-Archbishop
+was little short of madness. In her own heart Hellayne doubted
+seriously that the Abbess would concern herself any further about her
+or her distress. Nevertheless she felt that something must be done.
+This inertia which was creeping over her would drive her mad. But first
+of all she must know the nature of the charge placed against the man
+she loved before she would determine what to do. In vain she taxed her
+tired brain for a ray of hope in the encompassing gloom.
+
+The long lights of the afternoon crossed and recrossed the sanctuary
+of Santa Maria in Trastevere when Hellayne, after an hour of fervent
+prayer, emerged from its portals and took the direction of the Tiber,
+where she sat on her accustomed seat and brooded over her misery.
+
+At last the sunset came. The ashen color of the olive trees flashed out
+into silver. The mountain peaks of distant Alba became faintly flushed
+and phantom fair as, in a tempest of fire, the sun sank to rest. The
+forests of ilex and arbutus on the Janiculum Hill seemed to tremble
+with delight as the long red heralds touched their topmost boughs. The
+whole landscape seemed to smile farewell to departing day.
+
+As she sat there, Hellayne's attention was attracted to a woman who had
+paused near the river's edge. There was nothing remarkable either in
+her carriage or apparel. It was a wrinkled hag, swart, snake-locked,
+cowled, her dress jingling with sequins, her right hand clawed upon a
+crooked staff. She appeared, in fact, just an old Levantine hoodie-crow
+of the breed which was familiar enough in Rome in those cataclysmic
+days, when all sorts of queer, tragic fowl were being driven northward
+from over seas before the tidal wave of invading Islam. Her speech as
+well as her manners and dress betrayed Oriental origin.
+
+As she hobbled up to where Hellayne was seated she stopped and asked
+some trifling question about her way, which Hellayne pointed with some
+hesitation, explaining that she was herself a stranger in Rome, and
+knew not the direction of the city.
+
+The old crone seemed interested.
+
+"In yonder cloister--yet not of it?" she queried, pointing with the
+crooked staff to the convent walls that towered darkly behind them in
+the evening dusk.
+
+Her penetration startled Hellayne.
+
+"How did you guess, old mother?" she queried with a look of awe, which
+was not unremarked by the other.
+
+"Ay--there is lore enough under these faded locks of mine to turn the
+foulest cesspool in Rome as clear as crystal, or to change this staff
+whereon I lean into a thing that creeps and hisses," she said with a
+low laugh.
+
+Hellayne shrank back from her with a gesture of dismay. Believing
+implicitly in their power, she felt a deadly fear of those who
+professed the black arts.
+
+The old woman read her thoughts.
+
+"My daughter," she said, "be not afraid of the old woman's secret
+gifts. Mine is a harmless knowledge, gained by study of the scrolls of
+wise men, in my own native land. Fear not, I say, for I, who have pored
+over those mystic characters till me eyes grew dim, can read your sweet
+pale face as plainly as the brazen tablets in the Forum, and I can see
+in it sorrow and care and anxiety for one you love."
+
+Hellayne gave a start.
+
+It was true! But how had the old crone found it out! She glanced
+wistfully at her companion, and the latter, satisfied she was on the
+right track, proceeded to answer that questioning glance.--
+
+"You think he is in danger, or in grief," she continued mysteriously,
+"and you wonder why he does not come. What would you not give, my poor
+child, to see him this very moment--to look into his face--his eyes.
+And I can show him to you, if you will. I am not ungrateful, even for a
+slight service."
+
+The blood mounted to Hellayne's brow, and a strange light kindled in
+her eyes, while a soft radiance swept over her face such as comes
+into every countenance when the heart vibrates with an illusion to
+its happiness, as though the silver cord thrilled to the touch of an
+angel's wing. It was no clumsy guess of the wise woman to infer that
+the woman before her loved.
+
+"What mean you?" asked Hellayne eagerly. "How can you show him to me?
+What do you know of him? Where is he? Is he safe?"
+
+The wise woman smiled. Here was a bird flying blindly into the net.
+Take her by her affections, there would be little difficulty in the
+capture.
+
+"He is in danger--in grave danger," she replied. "But you could save
+him, if you only knew how. He might be happy, too, if he would.
+But--with another!"
+
+To do Hellayne justice, she heard only the first sentence.
+
+"In grave danger," she repeated. "I knew it! And I could save him! Oh,
+tell me where he is, and what I can do for him?"
+
+The wise woman pulled a small mirror from her bosom.
+
+"I cannot tell you," she replied. "But I can show him to you. Only not
+here, where the shadow of any chance passer-by might destroy the charm.
+Let us turn aside into yonder ruins. There is no one near, and you
+shall gaze without interruption into the face of him you love--"
+
+It was but a short way off, though the ruins which surrounded it
+made the place lonely and secluded. Had it been twice the distance
+however, Hellayne would have accompanied her new acquaintance for
+Tristan's sake, in the eagerness to obtain tidings of his fate. As she
+approached the ruins she could not repress a faint sigh, which was not
+lost on her companion.
+
+"It was here you parted," she said. "It is here you shall see him
+again."
+
+This was scarcely a random shaft, for it required little penetration
+to discover that Hellayne had some tender association connected with a
+spot, the solitude of which appealed to her in so great a degree.
+
+Nevertheless the utterance convinced Hellayne of her companion's
+supernatural power and, though it roused alarm, it excited curiosity to
+a still greater degree.
+
+"Take the mirror in your hand," whispered the wise woman, when they
+reached the portico, casting a searching glance around. "Shut your eyes
+while I speak the charm that calls him three times over, and then look
+steadily on its surface till I have counted ten."
+
+Hellayne obeyed these instructions implicitly. Standing in the centre
+of the ruin with the mirror in her hand, she shut her eyes and listened
+intently to the low solemn tones of the woman's chanting, while from
+the deep shadows of the ruin there stole out a muffled form and at the
+same time a half dozen sbirri rose from their different hiding places
+among the ruins.
+
+Ere the incantation had been twice repeated, the leader threw a scarf
+over Hellayne's head, muffling her so completely that an outcry was
+impossible.
+
+Resistlessly she felt herself taken up and carried to a chariot, which
+was waiting a short space away. A moment later the driver whipped the
+horses into a gallop and the vehicle with its occupants and burden
+disappeared in the gathering dusk.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A LYING ORACLE
+
+
+It was an eventful night in Rome and, although for that reason well
+adapted to deeds of violence, the tumult and confusion exacted great
+caution from those who wished to proceed without interruption along the
+streets.
+
+A storm had burst as out of a clear sky, and was sweeping in its fury
+throughout a large portion of the city. Like all similar outbreaks, it
+gathered force from many sources unconnected with its original course.
+
+Rome was the theatre that night of a furious strife between the great
+feudal houses which lorded it over the city.
+
+The Leonine city with its protecting walls did not exist until some
+decades later. Thus, not only hordes of marauding Saracens, but Franks
+and Teutons used to make occasional inroads to the very gates of the
+city. On this evening Pandulph of Benevento, having taken umbrage at
+some decision of the Sacred Consistory regarding the lands he held as
+fief of the Church, conferring upon him a title which was disputed by
+Wido of Prænesté, had broken into the city and a bloody and obstinate
+conflict was being waged between his forces and the soldiers of the
+Church. The Roman nobles, ever restless and ready to revolt alike from
+the authority of the Emperor or of the Church, would not let this
+glorious opportunity pass without reminding those in power that they
+had built upon a volcano. They joined in the fray, some taking the
+part of the invader, others of the Church.
+
+An hour or two before sunset an undisciplined horde of mercenaries,
+armed cap-a-pie, and formidable chiefly for the wild fury with which
+they seemed inspired, attacked the Mausoleum of the Flavian Emperor.
+The assailants, having no engines of war either for protection or
+assault, suffered severely from the missiles showered upon them by the
+besieged. Being repulsed after repeated assaults, they threw flaming
+torches into the houses that lined the river on the opposite shore and
+withdrew. From another quarter of the city a large body of Epirotes,
+who had hoisted the standard of the Lord Gisulph of Salerno and had
+already suffered one defeat, which rather roused their animosity
+than quelled their ardor, were advancing in good order. Before the
+Lateran they met the forces of Pandulph of Benevento, and a terrible
+hand-to-hand encounter ensued. Nor was man the only demon on the scene.
+Unsexed women with bare bosoms, wild eyes and streaming hair, the very
+outcast of the Roman scum, their feet stained with blood, flew to and
+fro, stimulating each other to fresh atrocities with wine, caresses and
+ribald mirth. It was a feast of Death and Sin. She had wreathed her
+white arms about the spectral king and crowned his fleshless head with
+her gaudy garlands, wrapped him in a mantle of flame and pressed the
+blood-red goblet to his lips, maddening him with her shrieks of wild,
+mocking mirth, the while mailed feet trampled out the lives of their
+victims on the flagstones of Rome.
+
+Through a town in such a state of turmoil and confusion Tebaldo took
+it upon himself to conduct in safety the prize he had succeeded in
+capturing, not, it must be confessed, without many hearty regrets that
+he had ever embarked on the enterprise.
+
+It was indeed a difficult and perilous task. He had been compelled to
+dismiss his men long ago, in order not to attract attention. There
+was but room for himself and one stout slave, beside the charioteer
+and his captive. The latter had struggled violently and required to be
+held down by sheer force, nor, in muffling her screams, was it easy to
+observe the happy medium between silence and suffocation. Also, it was
+indispensable in the present state of lawlessness to avoid observation,
+and the spectacle of a golden chariot with a woman prisoner, gagged
+and veiled, the whole drawn by four spirited black steeds, was
+not calculated to avoid suspicion and comment. Stefano, Tebaldo's
+underling, had indeed suggested a litter, but this had been overruled
+by his comrade on the score of speed, and now the congestion of the
+streets made speed impossible. To be sure, this enabled his escort to
+keep up with them at a distance, but a fight at this present moment
+was little to Tebaldo's taste. The darkness which should have favored
+him was dispelled by the numerous conflagrations in the various parts
+of the city, and when the chariot was stopped and forced to run into
+a by-street, to avoid a crowd running toward the Campo Marzo, Tebaldo
+felt his heart sink within him in an access of terror such as even he
+had rarely felt before.
+
+Up one street, down another, avoiding the main thoroughfares, now
+rendered impassable by the throngs, the charioteer directed his steeds
+towards Basil's palace on the Pincian Hill.
+
+Hellayne seemed to have either fainted, or resigned herself to her
+fate, for she had ceased to struggle and cowered on the floor of
+the chariot, silent and motionless. Tebaldo hoped his difficulties
+were over, and promised himself never again to be concerned in such
+an affair. Already he imagined himself safe on his patron's porch,
+claiming his reward, when his advance was stopped by a pageant, which
+promised a protracted and hazardous delay.
+
+Winding its slow way along, with all the pomp and splendor attending
+it, a procession of chariots crossed in front of Tebaldo's steeds,
+and not a man in Rome would have dared to break in upon the train of
+Theodora, who was abroad to view the strife of the factions, utterly
+indifferent to the perils of the venture.
+
+It may be that something whispered to Hellayne that, of the two perils
+confronting her, what she contemplated was the lesser, and no sooner
+did the car stop to let the chariots pass, than, tearing away the
+bandage, she uttered a piercing scream, which brought it to a halt at
+once, while Tebaldo, trying to wear a bold front, quaked in every limb.
+
+At a signal from the woman in the first chariot her giant Africans
+seized the shaking Tebaldo and surrounded his chariot. Already a crowd
+of curious spectators was gathering, and the glare of the bonfires,
+kindled here and there, shed its light on their dark, eager faces,
+contrasting strangely with the veiled form of a woman, cold and
+immobile as marble.
+
+Two of the Africans seized Tebaldo, and buffeted him unceremoniously
+to within a few paces of the occupant of the chariot. Here he stood,
+speechless and trembling, anger and fear contending for the mastery,
+which changed to dismay as the woman raised her veil with a hand
+gleaming white as ivory.
+
+"Do you know me?"
+
+Whatever he had intended to say, the words died on Tebaldo's lips.
+
+"The Lady Theodora!"
+
+"You still have your wits about you," replied the woman. "Whom have you
+there?"
+
+The cold sweat stood on the brow of Basil's henchman.
+
+"The run-away mistress of my lord," he said, looking from right to left
+for some one to prompt him, some escape from the dilemma.
+
+"Who is your master?" Theodora queried curtly.
+
+"The Lord Basil--"
+
+"The Lord Basil!" shrilled Theodora. "Indeed I knew not he had lost a
+mistress. Yet I saw him within the hour and had speech with him."--
+
+Stefano had meanwhile come up, composed and sedate, little guessing
+the quality of his companion's interlocutor, with the air of a man
+confident in the justice of his case.
+
+"Where are you taking this woman?" Theodora queried.
+
+Tebaldo attempted to speak, but Stefano anticipated him.
+
+"To the palace of my Lord Basil on the Pincian Hill, noble lady," he
+said with many obese bows. "Suffer us to proceed, for the streets are
+becoming more unsafe every moment and our lord will not be trifled with
+in matters of this kind."
+
+"Indeed," Theodora interposed. "Is his heart so much set upon this
+prize? Ho there, Bahram--Yussuff--bring the woman here!"
+
+Tebaldo tried to worm himself out of the clutch of the black giants, in
+order to prevent them from obeying Theodora's order, but he found the
+situation hopeless and was about to address Theodora when the latter
+bade him be silent.--
+
+"The woman shall speak for herself," she said in a tone that suffered
+no contradiction and, in another moment, Hellayne, lifted by four
+muscular arms from the chariot of her abductors, stood, released of her
+bandages, before Theodora.
+
+All color left the Roman's face as she gazed into the pallid and
+anguished features of the woman whom of all women on earth she feared
+and hated most, the woman who dared to enter the arena with her for the
+love of the one man whom she was determined to possess, if the universe
+should crumble to atoms. Hellayne's fear upon beholding Theodora gave
+way to her pride as she met the dark eyes of the Roman in which there
+might have been a gleam of pity or a flash of scorn.
+
+But, ere Hellayne could speak, finding herself, caught like a poor
+hunted bird, in one net, ere she had well escaped the other, Theodora
+turned to Tebaldo.
+
+"Tell the Lord Basil, the woman he craves is under Theodora's roof,
+and--if so he be inclined--he may claim her at my hands--"
+
+The gleaming white arm went out, and ere Hellayne knew what happened,
+she found herself raised into the second chariot, where sat a tall girl
+of great beauty, Persephoné, the Circassian.
+
+A signal to the charioteer and the pageant moved with slightly
+increased speed towards the Aventine, while Tebaldo and Stefano,
+out-witted and non-plussed, stared after the vanishing procession as if
+they were encompassed by a nightmare. Then, simultaneously, they broke
+out into such a chorus of vituperation that the by-standers shrank back
+from them in horror, and they soon found themselves, their chariot
+and its driver, almost the only human beings in the now deserted
+thoroughfare.
+
+Hellayne meanwhile sat, utterly dazed, next to Persephoné. Terrified by
+the danger she had escaped, and scarcely reassured by the manner of her
+rescue she seemed as one in a stupor, unable to think, unable to speak.
+
+Persephoné regarded her with a strange fascination, not unmingled with
+curiosity. Hellayne's fair and wonderful beauty appealed strangely to
+the Circassian, while, with her native intuition, she wondered whether
+Theodora's act was prompted by kindness or revenge.
+
+Hellayne seemed, for the first time, to note her companion. Looking
+into Persephoné's eyes she shuddered.
+
+"Where are we going?" she whispered, gazing about in a state of
+bewilderment, as the procession slowly wound up the slopes of the Mount
+of Cloisters, and the broad ribbon of the Tiber gleamed below in the
+moonlight.
+
+A strange smile curved Persephoné's lips.
+
+"To the Groves of Enchantment," she replied. "You are the guest of the
+Lady Theodora."
+
+Hellayne brushed back the silken hair from her brow as if she were
+waking from a troubled dream.
+
+She gave a swift glance to her companion, another to the winding road
+and, suddenly rising from her seat, started to leap from the chariot.
+
+Ere she could carry out her intent, she was caught in the Circassian's
+arms.
+
+A silent, but terrible struggle ensued. Notwithstanding her harrowing
+experiences of the past days, despair had given back to Hellayne the
+strength of youth. But in the lithe Circassian she found her match
+and, after a few moments, she sank back exhausted, Persephoné's arms
+encircling her like coils of steel, while her smiling eyes sank into
+her own.
+
+The palace of Theodora rose phantom-like from among its environing
+groves in the moonlight, and the chariots dashed through the portals of
+the outer court, which closed upon the fantastic procession.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+BITTER WATERS
+
+
+The dawn was creeping over the Sabine mountains when Tristan, after
+having made good his escape from the dungeons of Castel San Angelo,
+reached the hermitage of Odo of Cluny on distant Aventine.
+
+Fatigued almost to the point of death, bleeding and bruised, only his
+unconquerable will had urged him on towards safety.
+
+His first impulse, after crossing the bridge of San Angelo, was to go
+to the Convent of Santa Maria in Trastevere. He abandoned this plan
+upon saner reflection. Doubtlessly all Rome was instructed regarding
+the crime of which he stood accused. Recognition meant arrest and a
+fate he dared not think of. Tears forced themselves into Tristan's
+eyes, tears of sheer despair and hopelessness. Now, that he was free,
+he dared not follow the all-compelling impulse of his heart, assuage
+the craving of his soul, to learn if Hellayne was safe.
+
+After a few moments rest in the shadow of a doorway he set out to seek
+the one man in all Rome to whom he dared reveal himself.
+
+Not a soul seemed astir. Dim dusk hovered above the high houses beyond
+the Tiber, between whose silent chasms Tristan, dreading the echo of
+his own footsteps, made his way towards the Church of the Trespontine.
+Thus, after a circuitous route through waste and desert spaces, he
+reached the Benedictine's hermitage.
+
+Odo stared at the early visitor as if a ghost had arisen from the floor
+before him. He had just concluded his devotions and Tristan, fearing
+lest the Monk of Cluny might believe in his guilt, lost no time in
+stating his case, pouring forth a tale so fantastic and wild that his
+host could not but listen in mingled horror and amaze.
+
+Beginning with the moment when he had been informed of Hellayne's
+sudden death, he omitted not a detail up to the time of his escape
+from the dungeon, which to him meant nothing less than the antechamber
+of death. Minutely he dwelt upon his watch in the Lateran, laying
+particular stress upon the deadly drowsiness, which had gradually
+overtaken him, binding his limbs as with cords of steel. Graphically he
+depicted his awakening, when he found himself surrounded by the high
+prelates of the Church who faced him with the supposed evidence of a
+crime of which he knew nothing. And lastly he repeated almost word for
+word the strange discourse he had overheard in his dungeon between
+Basil and the Oriental.
+
+A ghastly pallor flitted over the features of Odo of Cluny at the
+latter intelligence.
+
+"If this be true indeed--if Alberic is dead--woe be to Rome! It is too
+monstrous for belief, and yet--I have suspected it long."
+
+For a time Odo relapsed into silence, brooding over the tidings of
+doom, and Tristan, though many questions struggled for utterance,
+waited in anxious suspense.
+
+At last the monk resumed.
+
+"I see in this the hand of one who never strikes but to destroy. The
+blow falls unseen, yet the aim is sure. I have not been idle, yet do I
+not hold in my hand all the threads of the dark web that encompasses
+us. Of the crime of which you stand accused I know you to be innocent.
+Nevertheless--you dare not show yourself in Rome. Your escape from
+your dungeon once discovered, not a nook or corner of Rome will remain
+unsearched. They dare not let you live, for your existence spells their
+doom. They will not look for you in this hermitage. It has many secret
+winding passages, and it will be easy for you to elude them. Therefore,
+my son, school your soul to patience, for here you must remain till
+we have assembled around the banner of the Cross the forces of Light
+against the legions of Hell."
+
+"What of the woman, Father, who is awaiting my return at the Convent of
+Santa Maria in Trastevere?" Tristan turned to the monk in a pleading,
+stifled voice. "Doubtless the terrible rumor has reached her ear."
+
+He covered his face with his hands, while convulsive sobs shook his
+whole frame.
+
+Odo tried to soothe him.
+
+"This is hardly the spirit I expected of one who has hitherto shown
+so brave a front, and whose aim it is not to anticipate the blows of
+chance."
+
+"Nevertheless, Father, it is more than I can bear. I have no lust for
+life, and care not what fate has in store for me, for my heart is heavy
+within me, and all the fountains of my hopes are dried up, until I know
+the fate of the Lady Hellayne--and know from her own lips that she does
+not believe this devilish calumny."
+
+A troubled look passed into Odo's face.
+
+"If she still is at the convent of the Blessed Sisters of Trastevere
+she is undoubtedly safe," he said, but there was something in his tone
+which struck Tristan's ear with dismay.
+
+"You are keeping something from me, Father," he said falteringly. "Tell
+me the worst! For this anxiety is worse than death. Where is the Lady
+Hellayne? Is she--dead?"
+
+"Would she were," replied the monk gloomily. "I wished to spare you the
+tidings! She was taken from the convent on some pretext--the nature of
+which I know not. At present she is at the palace of Theodora on Mount
+Aventine."
+
+Tristan sat up as if electrified.
+
+"At the palace of Theodora?" he cried. "How is this known to you?"
+
+"Little transpires in Rome which I do not know," Odo replied darkly.
+"It seems that those whom the Lord Basil entrusted with the task of
+abducting the woman were in turn outwitted by Theodora who, in rescuing
+her from a fate worse than death at the hands of the Grand Chamberlain,
+has perchance consigned her to one equally, if not more, cruel."
+
+A moan broke from Tristan's lips. Then he was seized with a terrible
+fit of rage.
+
+"Then it is Theodora's hand that has sundered us in the flesh as her
+witches' beauty had estranged our hearts. More merciless than a beast
+of prey she did not strike Hellayne with death, so that I might have
+sentinelled her hallowed tomb, and with her sweet memory for company
+might have watched for the coming of my own hour to join her again! I
+have lost my love--my honor--my manhood--at the hands of a wanton."
+
+Odo tried for a time, though in vain, to calm him by reminding him that
+Hellayne would rather suffer death than dishonor. As regarded himself,
+he was convinced that Theodora would have moved heaven and earth to
+have set him free, had not his supposed crime concerned the Church and
+the Cardinal-Archbishop was adamant.
+
+"Oft, in my visions," he concluded, speaking lower, as if his mind
+strove with some vague elusive memory, "have I heard the voice of
+Theodora's doom cried aloud. A cruel fate is yours indeed--and we can
+but pray to the saints that the worst may be averted from the woman who
+has suffered so much."
+
+"Something must be done," Tristan interposed, his fierce mood gaining
+the mastery over every other feeling. "I care not if the minions of
+the devil take me back to the prison that leads to death, so I snatch
+her prey from this arch-courtesan of the Aventine."
+
+Odo laid a detaining hand upon his arm.
+
+"Madman! You are but planning your own destruction. And, if you die,
+wherein will it benefit the woman who is left to her fate? You are weak
+from the night's work and your nerves are overwrought. Follow me into
+the adjoining room even though the repast be meagre. We will devise
+some means to rescue the Lady Hellayne from the powers of darkness and,
+trusting in Him who died that we may live, we shall succeed."
+
+Pointing to the drooping form of the crucified Christ on the opposite
+wall of his improvised oratory, Odo beckoned to Tristan to follow him,
+and the latter accompanied the Benedictine into the adjoining rock
+chamber, where he did ample justice to the frugal repast which Odo
+placed before him, and of which the monk himself partook but sparingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FROM DREAM TO DREAM
+
+
+Theodora's sleep had been broken and restless. She tossed and turned
+upon her pillow. It was weary work to lie gazing with eyes wide open
+at the fantastic shadows cast by the flickering night lamp. It was
+still less productive of sleep to shut them tight and abandon herself
+to the visions thus created which stood out in life-like colors and
+refused to be dispelled. Do what she would to forget him, Tristan ever
+and ever stood before her, towering like a demigod above the mean,
+effeminate throng that surrounded her. She could no longer analyze her
+feelings. She believed herself to be bewitched. She had not reached
+the prime of womanhood without having sounded, as she thought, every
+chord of the human heart. Descendant from a family of courtesans, such
+as had ruled Rome during the tenth century, she had tasted every cup,
+as she thought, that promised gratification and excitement. She had
+been flattered, courted, loved, admired. Yet she had remained utterly
+cold to all these experiences, and none of her lovers could boast that
+her passion had endured beyond the hour. The terrible fascination she
+exercised over all men made them slaves in her hands, blind instruments
+of her will. But, as the years went by, the utter disgust she felt with
+these hordes of beasts that thronged her bowers, was only equalled by
+a mad desire for power, a struggle, which alone could bring to her
+oblivion. To rule had become a passion with the woman, who had no heart
+interest that made life worth living. The fleeting passion for Basil
+had long ceased to kindle a responsive fire in her veins. Fit but to
+be her tool, she was determined to rid herself of him as soon as her
+ambition should have been realized.
+
+Suddenly the unbelievable had come to pass. She had met a man. Not one
+of those crawling, fawning reptiles who nightly desecrated her groves,
+but a man who might have steered her life into different channels, who
+might have directed the flight of her soul to regions of light, instead
+of chaining it to the dark abyss among the shadows. It was a new
+sensation altogether. This intense and passionate longing she had never
+felt before. But in its novelty it was absolutely painful. For the man
+whom she craved with all the fibres of her being, to whom her soul went
+out as it had never gone out to mortal, had scorned her.
+
+Her fame had proved more potent than her beauty.
+
+Tristan's continued indifference had roused in her all the demons
+in her nature. Her first impulse had been revenge at any price. Her
+compact with Basil was the fruit of her first madness. Even now she
+would have rescinded it had Tristan but shown a softer, kindlier
+feeling towards her. Some incongruous whim had prompted her to choose
+for her instrument the very man whom in her heart she loathed, whose
+attentions were an insult to her. For, in her own heart, Theodora held
+herself to be some God-decreed thing, like the Laides and Thaides and
+Phrynes of old. She could not escape her destiny.
+
+With all her self-command Theodora's feelings had almost overpowered
+her. Ever since the tidings of Tristan's supposed crime and captivity
+had reached her ear, she had taxed her brain, though in vain, to
+bring about his rescue. For once her efforts were baffled and she met
+a resistance which all the tigerish ferocity of her nature could
+not overcome. Tristan was in the custody of the Church. In his guilt
+Theodora did not believe, rather did she suspect foul play at the hands
+of one of whom she would demand a terrible reckoning. She thought of
+Tristan night and day, and she was determined to save him, whatever the
+hazard,--save him for herself and her love. Her spies were at work, but
+meanwhile she must sit idly by and wait--wait, though the blood coursed
+like lava through her veins. She dared confide in none, nor could she
+even have speech with the man she loved. She had managed to curb her
+feelings and to preserve an outward calm, while Persephoné prepared her
+for repose. The latter was much puzzled by her mistress's mood, but she
+retired to her own couch carefree, while Theodora writhed in an agony
+such as she had never known before.
+
+Yet, fate had been kind to her,--kinder than she had dared to hope.
+By some fatal throw of chance the woman Tristan loved--her rival--had
+fallen into her hands. While this circumstance did not in itself take
+the sting of Tristan's insult from the wound, she would, at least, be
+revenged upon the cause of her suffering.
+
+When, on that memorable evening at the Arch of the Seven Candles, she
+had first met Hellayne face to face, when first the truth had flashed
+upon her and she knew herself rejected for that white lily from the
+North, a hatred such as she had never known had crept into her heart,
+a hatred to which fresh fuel was added from the consciousness of her
+rival's beauty, her strength, her youth. With all the fire of her
+southern temperament she longed to meet this woman, to conquer her, to
+take from her the man she loved.
+
+Morning brought in its wake its unfailing accession of
+clear-sightedness and practical resolve. Long before she rose she had
+made up her mind where and how to strike. Nothing remained but to
+choose the weapon and to put a keener edge upon the steel.
+
+When Persephoné came to assist her mistress, she wondered how the mood
+of the evening had passed. While attiring Theodora, the Circassian
+could not but wonder at the marvellous beauty of this woman who had
+bent the hearts of men to her desires like wind blown reeds, only
+to break them and cast them at their feet. Only on the previous day
+a new wooer had entered the lists; a man rude of speech and manner,
+vain withal and self-satisfied, had laid gifts at Theodora's feet.
+Roger de Laval was the great man's name. He came from some far away,
+fabled land, and it was rumored that he had come to Rome to seek his
+truant wife. Having surprised her in the arms of her lover, whom she
+had followed, he had killed both. Such a temper was to the liking
+of Persephoné, and, as her soft white fingers played around her
+mistress' throat, in the endeavor to fasten her rose-colored tunic, she
+could hardly restrain herself from encircling that white throat and
+strangling the woman who had spurned the attentions of one for whose
+love she would have sacrificed her soul.
+
+"What of the Lady Hellayne?" Theodora broke the heavy silence.
+
+"She remains in the chamber which the Lady Theodora has assigned to
+her." Persephoné replied.
+
+"Are the eunuchs at their post?"
+
+"Before her door and beneath her windows."
+
+Theodora gave a nod.
+
+"Bring the Lady Hellayne here!"
+
+"The Lady Theodora has not breakfasted."
+
+"I know! Yet I would not delay this meeting longer."
+
+Persephoné hesitated.
+
+"The Lady Hellayne is in a perilous mood--"
+
+"I should love nothing better than to find her so," Theodora replied,
+extending her two snowy arms, whose steely strength Persephoné knew
+so well. "I long for the conflict with this marble statue as I have
+never longed for anything in my life. I could find it in my heart to
+be happy if she destroyed me with those white hands that rival mine,
+if she but stepped out of her reserve, her marble calm, if her soul
+ignited from mine."
+
+"If I know aught about her kind, the Lady Theodora will do well to be
+wary," Persephoné replied demurely.
+
+The covert taunt had its instantaneous effect.
+
+"Deem you I fear this white siren from the North?" Theodora flashed,
+regarding herself in the bronze mirror and brushing a stray lock of
+hair from her white brow.
+
+"What will you do with her, Lady Theodora?" Persephoné purred.
+
+Theodora's face was very white.
+
+"There are times when nothing but the physical touch will satisfy. And
+now go and fetch hither the Lady Hellayne that I may hear from her own
+lips how she fared under the roof of her rival."
+
+Persephoné departed from the room, while Theodora arose and, stepping
+to the casement, looked out into the blossoming gardens that encircled
+her palace.
+
+Her beauty was regal indeed, as she stood there brooding, her bare arms
+dropping by her side. But for the expression of the eyes, in which
+a turmoil of passion seemed to seethe, the wonderful face in repose
+would have seemed that of an angel rather than a woman meditating the
+destruction of another.
+
+After a time Persephoné returned. By her side walked Hellayne.
+
+Her beauty seemed even enhanced by the expression of suffering revealed
+in the depths of her blue eyes. She wore a dark robe, almost severe in
+its straight lines. The loose sleeves revealed her white arms. Her hair
+was tied in a Grecian knot.
+
+At a sign from Theodora Persephoné left the room.
+
+For a moment the two women faced each other in silence, fixing each
+other with their gaze, each trying to read the thoughts of the other.
+
+It was Hellayne who spoke.
+
+"The Lady Theodora has desired my presence."
+
+"It was my anxiety for your welfare, Lady Hellayne," Theodora replied,
+inviting her to a seat, while she seated herself opposite her visitor.
+"After the trying experiences of yesterday I do not wonder at the
+shadows that creep under your eyes. They but prove that my anxiety was
+well founded. May I ask if you rested well?"
+
+"I owe you thanks, Lady Theodora, for your timely aid," Hellayne
+replied in cold, passionless accents. "They tell me I was in dire
+straits, though I cannot conceive who should care to abduct one who
+would so little repay the effort."
+
+"Enough to infatuate him, whoever he was, with a beauty as rare as it
+is wonderful," Theodora replied, forced to an expression of her own
+admiration at the sight of the exquisite face, the white throat, the
+wonderful arms and hands of her rival. "I but did what any woman would
+do for another whose life she saw imperilled. Your wonderful youth
+and strength will soon restore you to your former self. Deign then to
+accept the hospitality of this abode until such a time."
+
+There was a pause during which each seemed to search the soul of the
+other.
+
+It was Hellayne who spoke.
+
+"I thank you, Lady Theodora. Nevertheless I intend to depart at the
+earliest. I can picture to myself the anxiety of the Blessed Sisters of
+Santa Maria in Trastevere at my mysterious disappearance."
+
+"You intend taking holy orders?"
+
+Theodora's question was pregnant with a strange wonder.
+
+A negative gesture came in response.
+
+"The convent proved a haven of refuge to me when I was sorely tried."
+
+"Yet--you cannot return there," Theodora interposed. "You would not
+be safe. Know you from whose minions my Africans rescued you on yester
+eve?"
+
+Hellayne's wide eyes were silent questioners.
+
+"Then listen well and ponder. You were in the power of the Lord Basil.
+And that which he desires he usually obtains."
+
+Hellayne covered her face with her hands.
+
+"The Lord Basil!"
+
+"You know him, Lady Hellayne?"
+
+"Slightly. He was wont to call upon the man I once called my husband."
+
+"The man you deserted for another."
+
+Hellayne's eyes glittered like steel.
+
+"That is a matter which concerns only myself, Lady Theodora," she said
+coldly. "You saved my honor--perchance my life. For this I thank you. I
+shall depart at once."
+
+She walked to the door, opened it and recoiled.
+
+Before it stood two Africans with gleaming scimitars.
+
+White to the lips, Hellayne closed the door and faced Theodora.
+
+"Lady Theodora--why are these there?"
+
+Theodora's smouldering gaze met the fire in the other woman's eyes.
+
+"Those who come to the bowers of Theodora, remain," she said slowly.
+
+"Am I to understand that you will detain me by force within these walls
+of infamy?"
+
+"Your language is a trifle harsh, fairest Lady Hellayne," Theodora
+replied mockingly. "Your over-wrought nerves must bear the burden of
+the blame. Yet, whatever it may please you to call the place where
+Theodora dwells, always remember, I am Theodora. You have heard of me
+before."
+
+"Yes--I have heard of you before!"
+
+The calm and cutting contempt which lingered in these words stung
+Theodora like a whip-lash.
+
+"You know then, Lady Hellayne, it is your will against mine! We have
+met before!"
+
+"You mean to detain me here, against my will?"
+
+"Whether I detain you or no--shall depend upon yourself. We are two
+women--young,--beautiful--passionate--determined to win that which we
+deem our happiness. I will be plain with you. All the reverses and
+heartaches of months and days are wiped out in this glorious moment
+when I hold you here in my power. For once my guardian angel, if I can
+still boast of one, has been kind to me. He has delivered you into my
+hands--and I shall bend or break you!"
+
+Hellayne listened to this outburst of passion with outward calm, though
+her heart beat so wildly that she thought the other woman must hear it
+through the deadly silence which prevailed for a space.
+
+"You will bend or break me, Lady Theodora?" Hellayne replied with a
+pathetic shrug. "There is nothing that you could do that would even
+leave a memory. I have suffered that in life which makes you to me but
+the nightmare of an evil dream."
+
+"We shall see, Lady Hellayne," Theodora replied, her passion kindling
+at the other woman's calm.
+
+"What then is the ransom you desire, Lady Theodora?" Hellayne continued
+sardonically. "A woman of your kind desires but one thing--and gold I
+do not possess--"
+
+Theodora's eyes scanned Hellayne's pale face.
+
+"Lady Hellayne," she said slowly, "of all the things in heaven or on
+earth there is but one I desire: Tristan,--the man you love--the man
+who loves you with a passion so idolatrous that, did I possess but the
+one thousandth atom of what he gives to your ice cold heart, I should
+deem myself blessed above all women on earth. Give him to me--renounce
+him--and you are free to go wherever your fancy may lead you."
+
+Hellayne regarded the speaker as if she thought she had gone mad.
+
+"Give him to you?" she said, hardly above a whisper, but her tone stung
+Theodora to the quick.
+
+"To me!" she said. "Look at me! Am I not beautiful? Am I not created
+to make man happy? What woman may match herself with me? Even your
+pale beauty, Lady Hellayne, is but as a disembodied wraith as compared
+to mine. To me! To me! You are young, Lady Hellayne. What can the
+sacrifice matter to you? To you it can mean little. There are other
+men with whom you may be happy. For me it spells salvation--or eternal
+doom! For I love him, I love him with my whole heart and soul, love
+him as never I loved the thing called man before! He has shown to me
+one glimpse of heaven, and now I mean to have him, to atone for a
+past that was my evil inheritance, to taste life ere I too descend
+to those shadowy regions whence there is no return. Lady Hellayne,"
+she continued, hardly noting the expression of horror and loathing
+that had crept into Hellayne's countenance. "You have heard of
+me--you know who I am--and what! Those who went before me were the
+same, generations, perchance. It rankles in our blood. But there is
+salvation--even for such as myself. To few it comes, but I have seen
+the star. It is the love of a man, pure and true. Where such a one
+is found, even the darkness of the grave is dispelled. I have lived
+and loved, Lady Hellayne! I have been loved as few women have. I have
+hurled myself into this mad whirlpool to forget--but forget I could
+not. Man, the beast, is ever ready to drag the woman who cries for life
+and its true meaning back into the mire. He alone of all has spurned
+me--he alone has resisted the deadly lure of my charms. Never have I
+spoken to woman before as I am speaking to you, Lady Hellayne. Hear my
+prayer!--Renounce him!"
+
+Hellayne stared mute at the speaker, as if her tongue refused her
+utterance. Was she going mad? Theodora, the courtesan queen of
+Rome, trying to obtain salvation by taking from her her lover? She
+could almost have found it in her heart to laugh aloud. A death-bed
+repentance that made the devils laugh! In her virginal purity Hellayne
+could not fathom what was going on in the soul of a woman who had
+suddenly awakened to the terror of her life and was snatching at the
+last straw to save herself from drowning in the cesspool of vice.
+
+Theodora, with her woman's intuition, saw what was going on in the
+other woman's soul. She noted the slow transformation from amazement to
+horror, and from horror to defiance. She saw Hellayne slowly raising
+herself to her full height, and approaching her, who had risen, until
+her breath fanned her cheek.
+
+"Give him to you, Lady Theodora? Surely you must be mad to even dream
+of so monstrous a thing."
+
+She was very white, and her hands were clenched as if she forcibly
+restrained herself from flying at her opponent's throat.
+
+Theodora's self-restraint was slowly waning. She knew she had pleaded
+in vain. She knew Hellayne did not understand, or, if she understood,
+did not believe.
+
+She spoke calmly, yet there was something in her voice that warned
+Hellayne of the impending storm.
+
+"Listen, Lady Hellayne," she said. "You are alone in Rome! At the mercy
+of any one who desires you! Your lover is accused of the most heinous
+crime. He has taken the consecrated wafer from the chapel in the
+Lateran and, who knows, from how many other churches in Rome."
+
+Hellayne's eyes sank into those of the other woman.
+
+"No one knows better than yourself, Lady Theodora, how utterly false
+and infamous this accusation is. Tristan is a devout son of the Church.
+His whole life bears testimony thereof."
+
+"If the Consistory pronounce him guilty, who will believe him
+innocent?" came the mocking reply.
+
+"His God--his conscience--and I," Hellayne replied quietly.
+
+"Will that save his life--which is forfeit?" Theodora interposed.
+
+"Where is he? Oh, where is he?"
+
+For a moment Hellayne gave way to her emotions.
+
+"He lies in the vaults of Castel San Angelo," Theodora replied,
+"awaiting his doom."
+
+"Oh, God! Oh, God!" Hellayne moaned, covering her face with her hands
+and sobbing convulsively.
+
+"His rescue--though difficult of achievement--lies with you," Theodora
+said, veiling her inmost feelings. She was staking all on the last
+throw.
+
+"With me?" Hellayne turned to her piteously.
+
+"I will tell you," Theodora interposed, placing her white hands on
+Hellayne's shoulders. "The Consistory has spoken--" she lied--"and no
+power on earth can save your lover from his doom save--myself!"
+
+"How may that be?"
+
+"I know the ways of the Emperor's Tomb. Its denizens obey me! If you
+love him as I do you will bring the sacrifice and save his life."
+
+"Oh, save him if you can, Lady Theodora," Hellayne prayed, her hands
+closing round Theodora's wrists. "Save him--save him."
+
+"I shall, if you will do this thing, I ask," Theodora replied, sinking
+her dark orbs into the blue depths of Hellayne's.
+
+"What am I to do?"
+
+"It is easy. Here are stylus and tablet. Write to the Lord Basil
+to meet you at the Groves of Theodora. A hint of love, passion,
+promise--fulfillment of his desires--then give it to me. It shall save
+your lover."
+
+For a moment Hellayne stared wild-eyed at the woman. It was as if she
+had heard a voice, the meaning of which she no longer understood.
+
+Then, in her unimpassioned voice, she turned to Theodora.
+
+"Only the fiend himself and Theodora could ask as much!"
+
+The blood was coursing like a stream of lava through Theodora's veins.
+
+Would Hellayne but step out of her reserve! Would she but abandon her
+icy calm!
+
+"Then you refuse?" she flashed.
+
+"I defy you," Hellayne replied. "Do your worst! Rather would I see him
+dead than defiled by such as you!"
+
+"Would you, indeed?" Theodora returned with a deadly calm.
+"Nevertheless, when first we met, he, for the mere asking, gave to me
+a scarf of blue samite, a chased dagger, tokens from the woman he had
+loved."
+
+Theodora paused, to watch the effect of the poison shaft she had sped.
+She saw by Hellayne's agonized expression that it had struck home.
+
+"For the last time, Lady Hellayne, do my bidding!"
+
+Hellayne had regained her self-possession. With a supreme effort she
+fought down the pain in her heart.
+
+"Never!" came the firm reply.
+
+"Then I shall take him from you!"
+
+"Deem you, I have aught to fear from such as you?" Hellayne said
+slowly, the blue fire of her eyes burning on the pale face of Theodora.
+"Deem you, that Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan
+queen of Rome?"
+
+A gasp, a choking outcry, and Theodora's white hands closed round
+Hellayne's throat. Though their touch burnt her like fire, Hellayne did
+not even raise her hands.
+
+Fearlessly she gazed into Theodora's face.
+
+"I am waiting," she said with the same passionless voice, but there was
+something in her eyes that gave the other woman pause.
+
+Theodora's hands fell limply by her side. What she read in Hellayne's
+eyes had caused her, perchance, for the first time, to blanch.
+
+She clapped her hands.
+
+The door opened and Persephoné stood on the threshold.
+
+She had listened, and not a word of their discourse had escaped her
+watchful ears.
+
+"The Lady Hellayne desires to return to her chamber," Theodora turned
+to the Circassian, and without another word Hellayne followed her guide.
+
+Yet, as she did so, her head was turned towards Theodora and in her
+eyes was an expression so inscrutable that Theodora turned away with a
+shudder, as the door closed behind their retreating forms, leaving her
+alone with her overmastering agony.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A ROMAN MEDEA
+
+
+It was a moonless night.--
+
+Deep repose was upon the seven hilled city. The sky was intensely dark,
+but the stars shone out full and lustrous. Venus was almost setting.
+Mars glowed red and fiery towards the zenith; the constellations seemed
+to stand out from the infinite spaces behind them. Orion glittered like
+a giant in golden armour; Cassiopeia shone out in her own peculiar
+radiance and the Pleiades in their misty brightness.
+
+A litter, borne by four stalwart Nubians, and preceded by two torch
+bearers, slowly emerged from the gates of Theodora's palace and took
+the direction of the gorge which divides the Mount of Cloisters from
+Mount Testaccio.
+
+Owing to the prevailing darkness which made all objects, moving and
+immobile, indistinguishable, the inmates of the litter had not drawn
+the curtains, so as to admit the cooling night air. There was a
+fixedness in Theodora's look and a recklessness in her manner that
+showed anger and determination. It struck Persephoné, who was seated
+by her side, with a sort of terror, and for once she did not dare to
+accost her mistress with her usual banter and freedom.
+
+Theodora had spent the early hours of the evening in a half obscured
+room, whose sable hangings seemed to reflect the unrest of her
+soul. She had forbidden the lamps to be lighted, brooding alone in
+darkness and solitude. Then she had summoned Persephoné, ordered her
+litter-bearers and commanded them to take her to the house of Sidonia,
+a woman versed in all manner of lore that shunned the light of day.
+
+"It must be done! It shall be done!" she muttered, her white face
+tense, her white hands clenched.
+
+Suddenly her hand closed round Persephoné's wrist.
+
+"She defies me, knowing herself in my power," she said. "We shall see
+who shall conquer."
+
+"The Lady Hellayne is as fearless of death, as yourself, Lady
+Theodora," Persephoné replied. "Indeed, she seemed rather to desire it,
+for no woman ever faced you with such defiance as did she when you put
+before her the fatal choice."
+
+Theodora's face shone ghostly in the nocturnal gloom.
+
+"We shall see! She shall desire death a thousand fold ere she quits the
+abode I have assigned to her. God! Not even Roxana had dared to say to
+me what this one did."
+
+"Nor would her shafts have struck so deep a wound," Persephoné
+interposed with studied insolence.
+
+Theodora's grip tightened round the girl's wrist.
+
+"You admire the Lady Hellayne?" she said softly, but there was a gleam
+in her eyes like liquid fire.
+
+"As one brave woman admires another!" Persephoné replied fearlessly,
+turning her beautiful face to the speaker.
+
+"You may require all your courage some day to face another task,"
+Theodora replied. "Beware, lest you tempt me to do what I might regret."
+
+Persephoné turned white. Her bosom heaved. Her eyes met Theodora's.
+
+"I shall welcome the ordeal with all my heart!"
+
+Theodora relapsed into silence, oppressed by dark thoughts, the memory
+of unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black unscalable
+rocks, like circles of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every side, while
+devils whispered into her ears the words that gave shape and substance
+to her desire to destroy her rival in the love of the one man whom, in
+all her changeable life, she had truly desired.
+
+"Deem you, that I have aught to fear from such as you? Deem you, that
+Tristan would defile his manhood with the courtesan queen of Rome?"
+
+The words still boomed in her ears, the words and the tone in which
+they had been hurled in her face.
+
+Even to this moment she knew not what restrained her from strangling
+Hellayne. It seemed to her that only in a physical encounter could
+she quench the hatred she bore this white, beautiful statue who never
+raised her voice while the fire of her blue eyes seared her very soul.
+
+A thousand frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death, came
+and went before her imagination, which caused her to clutch first at
+one, then at another of the dire suggestions that came in crowds which
+overwhelmed her powers of choice. Then, like an inspiration from the
+very depths of Hell, a thought flashed into her mind, and, no sooner
+conceived, than she determined upon its execution.
+
+The laboratory of the woman whom Theodora was seeking on this night was
+in an old house midway in the gorge. In a deep hollow, almost out of
+sight, stood a square structure of stone, gloomy and forbidding, with
+narrow windows and an uninviting door. Tall pines shadowed it on one
+side, a small rivulet twisted itself, like a live snake, half round it
+on the other. A plot of green grass, ill-kept and teeming with noxious
+weeds, fennel, thistle and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough
+wall of loose stone; and here lived the woman who supplied all those
+who desired her wares, and plied her nocturnal trade.
+
+Sidonia was tall and straight, of uncertain age, though she might have
+been reckoned at forty. The whiteness of her skin was enhanced by her
+blue black hair and lustrous black eyes. Far from forbidding, she
+exercised a sinister charm upon those who called upon her, and who
+vainly tried to reconcile her trade with the traces of a great beauty.
+Yet her thin, cruel lips never smiled, unless she had an object to gain
+by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as light is to an angel of
+darkness.
+
+Hardly any known poison there was, which was not obtainable at her
+hands. In a sombre chest, carved with fantastic figures from Etruscan
+designs, were concealed the subtle drugs, cabalistical formulas and
+alchemic preparations which were so greatly in demand during those
+years of darkness.
+
+In the most secret place of all were deposited, ready for use, a few
+phials of a crystal liquid, every single drop of which contained the
+life of a man, and which, administered in due proportion of time and
+measure, killed and left no trace.
+
+Here was the sublimated dust of the deadly night-shade which kindles
+the red fires of fever and rots the roots of the tongue. Here was the
+fetid powder of stramonium that grips the lungs like an asthma, and
+quinia that shakes its victims like the cold hand of the miasma in
+the Pontine Marshes. The essence of poppies, ten times sublimated, a
+few grains of which bring on the stupor of apoplexy, and the sardonic
+plant that kills its victims with the frightful laughter of madness
+upon their countenance, were here. The knowledge of these and many
+other cursed herbs, once known to Medea in the Colchian land, and
+transplanted to Greece and Rome with the enchantments of their use, had
+been handed down by a long succession of sorcerers and poisoners to the
+woman, who seemed endowed by nature as the legitimate inheritrix of
+this lore of Hell.
+
+At last the litter of Theodora was set down by its swarthy bearers
+before the threshold of Sidonia's house. Theodora alighted and, after
+commanding the Africans to await her return, ascended the narrow stone
+steps alone and knocked at the door. After a brief wait, shuffling
+steps were heard from within, and a bent, lynx-eyed individual of
+Oriental origin opened the door, inviting the visitor to enter. She was
+ushered into a dusky hallway, in which brooded strange odors, thence
+into a dimly lighted room, the laboratory of Sidonia.
+
+Hardly had she seated herself when the woman entered and stood face to
+face with Theodora.
+
+The eyes of the two women instantly met in a searching glance that took
+in the whole ensemble, bearing, dress and almost the very thoughts of
+each other. In that one glance each knew and understood; each knew that
+she could trust the other, in evil, if not in good.
+
+And there was trust between them. The evil spirits that possessed their
+hearts clasped hands, and a silent league was formed in their souls ere
+a word had been spoken.
+
+Sidonia wore a long, purple robe, totally unadorned. The sleeves were
+wide, and revealed her white, bare arms. Her finely cut features were
+crossed with thin lines of cruelty and cunning. No mercy was in her
+eyes, still less on her lips, and none in her heart, cold to every
+human feeling.
+
+"The Lady Theodora is fair to look upon," Sidonia broke the silence.
+"All women admit it; all men confess it." And her gaze swept the other
+woman, who was clad in an ample black mantle which ended in a hood.
+
+"Can you guess why I am here?" Theodora replied. "You are wise and know
+a woman's desire better than she dares avow."
+
+"Can I guess?" replied Sidonia, returning Theodora's scrutiny. "You
+have many lovers, Lady Theodora, but there is one who does not return
+your passion. And, you have a rival. A woman, more potent than
+yourself, has, notwithstanding your beauty, entangled the man you love,
+and you are here to win him back and to triumph over your rival. Is it
+not so, Lady Theodora?"
+
+"More than that," replied the other, clenching her white hands and
+gazing into the eyes that met her own with a look of merciless triumph
+at what she saw reflected therein. "It is all that--and more--"
+
+Sidonia met her eager gaze.
+
+"You would kill your rival!" she said with a smile upon her lips.
+"There is death in your eyes--in your voice--in your heart! You
+would kill the woman. It is good in the eyes of a woman to kill her
+rival--and women like you are rare!"
+
+"Your reward shall be great," Theodora said with an inquisitive glance
+at the woman who had read her inmost thoughts.
+
+"To kill woman or man were a pleasure even without the profit," replied
+Sidonia, darkly. "I come from a race, ancient and terrible as the
+Cæsars, and I hate the puny rabble. I have my own joy in making my hand
+felt in a world I hate and which hates me!"
+
+She held out her hands, as if the ends of her fingers were trickling
+poison.
+
+"Death drops on whomsoever I send it," she continued, "subtly,
+secretly. The very spirits of air cannot trace whence it comes."
+
+"I know you are the possessor of terrible secrets," Theodora replied,
+fascinated beyond all her experiences with the woman and her trade.
+
+"Such secrets never die," said the poisoner. "Few men, still fewer
+women, are there who would not listen at the door of Hell to learn
+them. Let me see your hand!"
+
+Theodora complied with her abrupt demand and laid her beautiful white
+hand into the no less beautiful one of the woman before her.
+
+Her touch, though the hand was cool, seemed to burn, but Theodora's
+touch affected the other woman likewise for she said:
+
+"There is evil enough in the palm of your hand to destroy the
+world! We are well met, you and I. You are worthy of my confidence.
+These fingers would pick the fruit off the forbidden tree, for men
+to eat and die! Lady Theodora--I may some day teach you the great
+secret--meanwhile I will show you that I possess it!"
+
+With these words she walked to the chest, took from it an ebony casket
+and laid it upon the table.
+
+"There is death enough in this casket," she said, "to kill every man
+and woman in Rome!"
+
+Theodora fastened her gaze upon it, as if she would have drawn out the
+secret of its contents by the very magnetism of her eyes. For, even
+while Sidonia was speaking, a thought flashed through her visitor's
+mind--a thought which almost made her forget the purpose on which she
+had come. She laid her hands upon it caressingly, trembling, eager to
+see its contents.
+
+"Open it!" said Sidonia. "Touch the spring and look!"
+
+Theodora touched the little spring. The lid flew back and there flashed
+from it a light which for a moment dazzled her by its very brilliancy.
+She thrust the cabinet from her in alarm, imagining she inhaled the
+odor of some deadly perfume.
+
+"Its glitter terrifies me!" she said. "Its odor sickens."
+
+"Your conscience frightens you," sneered Sidonia.
+
+Theodora rose to her feet, her face pale, her eyes alight with a
+strange fire.
+
+"This to me?" she flashed.
+
+For a moment the two women faced each other in a white silence.
+
+A strange smile played upon Sidonia's lips.
+
+"The Aqua Tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its
+possessor as to its victim!"
+
+"You are brave to speak such words to Theodora!"
+
+Sidonia gave her an inscrutable glance.
+
+"Why should I fear you? Even without these,--woman to woman," she
+replied, as she drew the casket to herself and took out a phial, gilt
+and chased with strange symbols.
+
+Sidonia took it up and immediately the liquid was filled with a million
+sparks of fire. It was the Aqua Tofana, undiluted, instantaneous in its
+effect, and not medicable by antidotes. Once administered there was
+no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have
+received the final judgment. One drop of the sparkling water upon the
+tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, shrivel him
+up to a black, unsightly cinder.
+
+This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners, but it
+formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear or
+hypocrisy, mingled with the element of time, and colored with the
+various hues and aspects of natural disease.
+
+Theodora had again taken her seat and leaned towards Sidonia,
+supporting her chin in the palm of her hands, as she bent eagerly over
+the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks
+in the water that falls upon it.
+
+"What is that?" she pointed to a phial, white as milk and seemingly
+harmless, and while she questioned, her busy brain worked with feverish
+activity. The Aqua Tofana she had used when she struck down Roxana and
+her too talkative lover on the night of the feast in her garden. But
+now she required a different concoction to complete the vengeance on
+her rival.
+
+"This is called Lac Misericordiae," replied Sidonia. "It brings on
+painless consumption and decay! It eats the life out of man or woman,
+while the moon empties and fills. The strong man becomes a skeleton.
+Blooming maidens sink to their graves blighted and bloodless. Neither
+saint or sacrament can arrest its doom. This phial"--and she took
+another from the cabinet, replacing the first--"contains innumerable
+griefs that wait upon the pillows of rejected and heartbroken lovers,
+and the wisest mediciner is mocked by the lying appearances of disease
+that defy his skill and make a mock of his wisdom."
+
+There was a moment's silence. At last Theodora spoke.
+
+"Have you nothing that will cause fear--dread--madness--ere it strikes
+the victim dumb forever more? Something that produces in the brain
+those dreadful visions--horrid shapes--peopling its chambers where
+reason once held sway?"
+
+For a moment Sidonia and Theodora held each other's gaze, as if each
+were wondering at the wickedness of the other.
+
+"This," Sidonia said at last, taking out a curiously twisted bottle,
+containing a clear crimson liquid and sealed with the mystic Pentagon,
+"contains the quintessence of mandrakes, distilled in the alembic, when
+Scorpio rules the hour. It will produce what you desire."
+
+"How much of it is required to do this thing?"
+
+"Three drops. Within six hours the unfailing result will appear."
+
+"Give it to me!"
+
+"You possess rare ingenuity, Lady Theodora," said Sidonia, placing her
+hand in that of her caller. "If Satan prompts you not, it is because he
+can teach you nothing, either in love or stratagem."
+
+She shut up her infernal casket, leaving the phial of distilled
+mandrakes, shining like a ruby in the lamp light, upon the table. By
+its side lay a bag of gold.
+
+Theodora arose. The eyes of the two women flashed in lurid sympathy as
+they parted, and Sidonia accompanied her visitor to the door.
+
+As she did so a heavy curtain in the background parted and the white
+face of Basil peered into the empty room.
+
+After a brief interval Sidonia returned.
+
+Her face had again assumed its forbidding aspect as, removing the
+phials and seemingly addressing no one, she said:
+
+"We are alone now!"
+
+At the next moment Basil stood in the chamber. His eyes burned with a
+feverish lustre, and there was a horror in his countenance which he
+strove in vain to conceal.
+
+"This must not be," he said hoarsely. "Why did you give her this
+devil's brew?"
+
+And staggering up to the table he gripped the soft white wrist of the
+woman with fingers of steel.
+
+Sidonia's eyes narrowed as she gazed into those of the man.
+
+"Do you love that one, too?" she said, wrenching herself free. "Or have
+you lied to her as you have lied to me?"
+
+"Your voice sounds like the cry from a dark gallery that leads to
+Hell," Basil replied. "You, alone, have I loved all these years, and
+for your fell beauty have I risked all I have done and am about to do!"
+
+"Fear speaks in your voice," Sidonia replied with a cruel smile upon
+her lips. "You are in my power, else had you long ago consigned me to a
+place whence there is no return. With me the secret of another's death
+would go to the grave."
+
+"Nay, you do not understand!" Basil interposed. "The woman who has
+aroused Theodora's maddened jealousy is nothing to me. But I have other
+plans concerning her--she must be saved!"
+
+"Other plans?" replied Sidonia darkly. "What other plans? What sort of
+woman is she who can arouse the jealousy of Theodora?"
+
+"White and cold as the snows of the North."
+
+"A stranger in Rome?"
+
+"The wife of one whose days are numbered, if I rightly read the oracle."
+
+"What is this plan?" Sidonia insisted.
+
+"She is to be delivered to Hassan Abdullah, as reward for his aid in
+the great stroke that is about to fall."
+
+In the distance whimpered a bell.
+
+"And, when the hour tolls--the hour of which you have so often
+prated--when you sit in the high seat of the Senator of Rome--where
+then will I be, who have watched your power grow and have aided it in
+its upward flight?"
+
+Basil's face lighted up with the fires within.
+
+"Where else but by my side? Who dares defy us and the realms of the
+Underworld?"
+
+"Who, indeed?" Sidonia replied with a dark, inscrutable glance into
+Basil's face. "Perchance I should not love you as I do were you not as
+evil as you are good to look upon! I love you, even though I know your
+lying lips have professed love to many others, even though I know that
+Theodora has kindled in you all the evil passions of your soul. Beware
+how you play with me!"
+
+She threw back her wide sleeves and two dazzling white arms encircled
+Basil's neck.
+
+"Await me yonder," she then turned to her visitor, pointing to a
+chamber situated beyond the curtain. "We will talk this matter over!"
+
+Basil retired and Sidonia busied herself, replacing the different
+phials in the ebony chest.
+
+After having assured herself that everything was in its place, she
+picked up the lamp and disappeared behind the curtain in the background.
+
+Deep midnight silence reigned in the gorge of Mount Aventine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN TENEBRIS
+
+
+Another day had gone down the never returning tide of time. The sun was
+sinking in a rosy bed of quilted clouds. All day long Hellayne had sat
+brooding in her chamber, unable to shake off the lethargy of despair
+that bound and benumbed her limbs, rousing herself at long intervals
+just sufficiently to wring her hands for very anguish, without even the
+faintest ray of hope to pierce the black night of her misery.
+
+Just as a white border of light had been visible on the edge of the
+dark cloud that hung over her, just as she had refound the man whose
+love was the very breath of her existence, her evil star had again
+flamed in the ascendant and, losing him anew, she had utterly lost
+herself. She struggled with her thoughts, as a drowning man amid
+tossing waves, groping about in the dark for a plank to float upon,
+when all else has sunk in the seas around him.
+
+She had hardly touched the food which Persephoné herself had brought to
+her. Yet it seemed to her the Circassian had regarded her strangely, as
+she placed the viands before her. She had tried to frame a question,
+but her lips seemed to refuse the utterance, and at last Persephoné had
+departed, with the mocking promise to return later, to inquire how the
+Lady Hellayne had spent the day.
+
+Now it seemed to her as if a poison breath of evil was slowly
+permeating the narrow confines of her chamber. Something she had never
+before experienced was floating before her vision, was creeping into
+her brain, was booming in her ears, was turning her blood to ice.
+
+Was it the voiceless echo of an ill-omened incantation, handed down
+through generations of poisoners and witches from the time of pagan
+Rome?
+
+    "Hecaten voco,
+  Voco Tisiphonem,
+    Spargens avernales aquas,
+  Te morti devoveo; te diris ago."
+
+Was she going mad?
+
+Hellayne's hands went to her forehead.
+
+"I think I am sane," she said to herself, "at least--as yet."
+
+Would Heaven not come to her aid? She was but a weak woman who in
+vain--too often in vain--had tried to snatch a few moments of happiness
+from life. Ah! If Death knew what a service he would render her! But
+no! She would brace her heart strings more than ever. She would renew
+her fight with dusk and madness. She would face and challenge each mad
+phantom--make it speak--reveal itself,--or she would break the silence
+of that monstrous place at least with her own voice. Though flesh was
+weak she would be strong to-night--but--ah God! here they came trooping
+out of the night.
+
+She cowered back, shuddering, her eyes fixed on the dusky depths of the
+chamber.
+
+It was the blue one--the one whose limbs and cheeks seemed made of pale
+blue ice. She felt her limbs growing numb. But she would bar its way.
+
+The finger of the freezing shape was on its lip. Did it mean that it
+was dumb? Well, then, let it speak by signs. The dim blue rays that
+draped its silence quaked like aspens.
+
+"Who are you?" she forced herself to speak. "Are you Hate? You shake
+your head? Are you Despair? No? Not that? Then you must be Fear!"
+
+The figure nodded with a horrible grin.
+
+"Fear of what?"
+
+The phantom passed its finger slowly across its throat.
+
+She held on to the panelling to keep from falling. Her woman's strength
+had bounds. But she recovered herself and forced herself to speak.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "it is this she contemplates? How soon? I needs must
+know. How many twilights have I still to live, before they sink my body
+in yonder lotus pond?"
+
+The phantom held up three fingers.
+
+"Only three," Hellayne babbled like a child, talking to herself.
+"Well--pass upon your way, phantom.--You have given me all you had to
+give--three dusks to rise to Heaven."
+
+She raised her eyes in prayer and a strange rapture came into her face.
+But it vanished suddenly--and once more she stared, shuddering, into
+the gloom.
+
+For craze and hell still prevailed.
+
+Look, there it came!
+
+What new and monstrous phantom was swaying and groping towards her? A
+headless monk!--The air grew black with horror. Horror shrivelled her
+skin, was raising the roots of her hair.
+
+It was for her he was groping. Her wits were beginning to leave her.
+She had to move this way and that to avoid him. She felt, if he only
+touched her, madness would win the day. And he groped and groped, and
+she seemed to feel him near to her.
+
+"Away! Away!" she shrieked. But she was wasting her breath. He had
+neither eyes to see nor ears to hear.
+
+And he groped and groped, as if he felt her already under his vague,
+white hands.
+
+"Help--God!" she shrieked.
+
+Nature could not cope with such shapes as these!
+
+And Hellayne fell forward in a swoon.
+
+It was late in the night when she regained consciousness. She opened
+her eyes. The shapes of dusk had gone. She was alone--alone on the
+stone floor of the chamber. Everything was still in the long dusky
+gallery beyond. Perhaps it was all over for the night, and yet--what
+was there upon the threshold?
+
+"Oh, my God! my God!" she cried. "Let me die--only not this horror!"
+
+There the phantom stood. Its scarlet mantle glimmered almost black. She
+dared not turn her back. She dared not shut her eyes. He made neither
+sign, nor beck, nor nod. But, like a crazy shadow, he circled round and
+round her, soundlessly, as if he were treading on velvet.
+
+"Keep off--keep off!" she shrieked. "Protect me, oh my God! Madness is
+closing in upon me!"
+
+And with a sudden, desperate movement she rushed at the phantom to tear
+the crimson mask from its face.
+
+Her arms penetrated empty air.
+
+With a moan she sank upon the floor. Her arms spread out, she lay upon
+her face.
+
+The swoon held her captive once more.
+
+But the dream was kinder to Hellayne than life.
+
+She stood upon a rocky promontory in her own far-off land of Provence.
+
+Before her spread the peace of the wide, glimmering sea.
+
+What are these golden columns through which the water glistens?
+
+A man stood within the ruins of a great temple, the sea before him,
+violet hills behind. From the summit of an island mountain in the bay
+the lilt of a tender song was drifting upwards.
+
+And, as he sang, the great sea stirred. It heaved, it writhed, it rose.
+With onward movement, as of a coiling serpent, the whole vast liquid
+brilliance rushed upon the temple. Mighty billows of beryl curved and
+broke in sheets of white foam.
+
+"Fear nothing," said the man. "Your river has found the sea!"
+
+It was Tristan's voice.
+
+From the distance came the faint tolling of a bell, forlorn, as from a
+forest chapel, infinitely sweet and tremulous. In a faint light, like a
+mountain mist at dawn, the whole scene faded away, and Hellayne was in
+a garden--a rose garden. She had been there before, but how different
+it all was. She was being smothered in roses. Flame roses every
+one--curled into fiery petal whorls, dancing in the garden dusk under a
+red, red sky.
+
+Ah! There it is again, the terrible face, leering from among the
+branches, the face that froze the blood in her veins, that made her
+heart turn cold as ice and filled her soul with horror.
+
+It is the Count Laval. He is seeking her, seeking her everywhere. Horns
+are peering out from under his scarlet cap, and he has long claws.
+
+Now she is fleeing through the rose garden, faster, faster, ever
+faster. But he is gaining upon her. From bosquet to bosquet, from
+thicket to thicket; she hears his approaching steps. Now she can almost
+feel his breath upon her neck.
+
+At last he has overtaken her.
+
+Now he is circling round her, nearer and nearer, extending his hands
+towards her, while she follows his movement with horror-stricken eyes.
+
+But her strength, her body, are paralyzed.
+
+As his hands close round her throat, his eyes gloating with dull
+malice, she covers her face with her hands and falls with a shriek.
+
+And as she lies there before him, dead, he looks down upon her with a
+strange smile upon his lips and casts his scarlet mantle over her.
+
+Once more Hellayne is in the throes of a swoon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE CONSPIRACY
+
+
+It was a night, moonless and starless. Deep silence brooded over the
+city. Not a ray of light was in the sky. A dense fog hung like a
+funeral pall over the Seven Hills, and a ceaseless, changeless drizzle
+was sinking from the heavy clouds whose contours were indistinguishable
+in the nocturnal gloom. The Tiber hardly moaned within his banks. The
+city fires hissed and smouldered away under the descending rain, soon
+to be extinguished altogether.
+
+It was about the second watch of the night when two men, wrapped in
+dark mantles that covered them from head to foot, quitted the monastery
+of San Lorenzo and were immediately swallowed up by the darkness.
+
+The night by this time was more dismal than ever. The wind began to
+rise, and its fitful gusts howled round the stern old walls of the
+monastery, or rustled in the laurels and cypresses by which it was
+surrounded. The great gates were shut and barred. Hardly a light was to
+be seen along the entire range of buildings.
+
+Suddenly a postern gate opened, and what appeared to be a monk, drawing
+his black cowl completely over his head, came forth and hurried along
+in the direction of the river.
+
+Tristan and his companion, emerging from their hiding-place, followed
+at the farthest possible distance which allowed them to retain sight of
+their quarry. Through a succession of the worst and narrowest by-lanes
+of the city they tracked him to the Tiber's edge.
+
+Here, dark as it was, a boat was ready for launching. Five or six
+persons were standing by, who seemed to recognize and address the monk.
+Keeping in the shadows of the tall, ill-favored houses, the twain
+contrived to approach near enough to hear somewhat that was said.
+
+"The light over yonder has been burning this half hour," said one of
+the men.
+
+"I could not come before," said he in the monk's habit. "I was followed
+by two men. I threw them out, however, before I reached the monastery
+of San Lorenzo. But--by all the saints--lose no more time! We have lost
+too much, as it is."
+
+He entered the boat as he spoke. It was pushed out into the water, and
+in another moment the measured sound of oars came to their ears.
+
+Odo of Cluny turned to his companion.
+
+"Tell me, did he who spoke first and mentioned the light yonder on St.
+Bartholomew's Island--a light there is yonder, sure enough--did he
+resemble, think you, one we know?"
+
+"Both in voice and form," replied Tristan.
+
+"My thoughts point the same way as yours!"
+
+"I should know that voice wherever I heard it," Tristan muttered under
+his breath. "But what of the light?"
+
+Dimly through the mist the red glow was discernible.
+
+"It beams from the deserted monastery," Odo replied after a pause.
+
+"Can we put across?" Tristan queried.
+
+"The question is not so much to find a boat as a landing-place, where
+we shall not be seen."
+
+"There is a boat lying yonder. If my eyes do not deceive me, the
+boatman lies asleep on the poop."
+
+"Know you aught of the men who rowed down the river?" Odo turned to the
+boatman, after he had aroused him.
+
+The latter stared uncomprehendingly into the speaker's face.
+
+"I know of no men. I fell asleep for want of custom. It is a
+God-forsaken spot," he added, rubbing his eyes. "Who would want a boat
+on a night like this?"
+
+"We require even such a commodity," Odo replied.
+
+The boatman returned a dull, unresponsive glance and did not move from
+his improvised couch.
+
+"Take your oars and row us to the Tiber Island," Odo said sternly,
+"unless you would bring upon yourself the curse of the Church. We have
+a weighty matter that brooks no delay. And have a care to avoid that
+other boat which has preceded yours. We must not be seen."
+
+Something in Odo's voice seemed to compel, and soon they were afloat,
+the boatman bending to his oars. They drifted through the dense mist
+and soon a dilapidated flight of landing stairs hove in sight, leading
+up to the deserted monastery.
+
+"Had we chosen the usual landing-place, we should have found two boats
+moored there--I saw them as we turned." Odo turned to his companion.
+"Yet we dare not land here. We should be seen from the shore."
+
+Directing their Charon to row his craft higher up, Odo soon discovered
+the place of which he was in quest. It was a little cove. The rocks
+which bordered it were slippery with seaweed, and in that misty
+obscurity offered no very safe footing.
+
+Here the boat was moored, and Odo and his companion clambered slowly,
+but steadily, over the rocks and, in a few moments, had made good their
+landing.
+
+Having directed the boatman to await their call in the shadow of
+the opposite bank, where he might remain unseen, they continued to
+grope their way upward, till they reached the angles of a wall which
+converged here, sheltered by a projecting pent house. Voices were
+heard issuing from within.
+
+"We must have ample security, my lord," said a speaker, whose voice Odo
+recognized as the voice of Basil. "You require of us to do everything.
+You exact ties and pledges and hostages, and you offer nothing."
+
+"I am desirous of sparing, as much as may be, the blood of my men,"
+replied the person addressed. "Rome must be my lord's without conflict."
+
+"That may--or may not be," said the first speaker. "But so much you may
+say to the Lord Ugo. If he expects to reconquer Rome, he will need all
+the forces he can summon."
+
+"A wiser man than you or I, my lord, has said: 'Never force a foe to
+stand at bay,'" interposed a third. "Reject our offers, and we, whom
+you might have for your friends, you will have for your most bitter
+and determined foes. Accept our terms, and Rome, together with the
+Emperor's Tomb, is yours!"
+
+"What terms are contained in this paper?" queried Ugo's emissary.
+
+"They are not very difficult to remember!" returned the Grand
+Chamberlain. "But I might as well repeat them here. First--the revenues
+of all the churches to flow to the Holy See."
+
+"Proceed."
+
+"Utmost security of life, person and property to those who are aiding
+our enterprise."
+
+"It is well," said the voice. "So much I can vouch for, my lord. Is
+that all?"
+
+"All--as far as conditions go," returned the third speaker.
+
+"It is not all, by St. Demetrius," cried Basil. "I claim the office
+I am holding with all its privileges and appurtenances, to give no
+account to any one of the past or the future."
+
+"What of the present?" interposed the voice.
+
+"You never could imagine that I perilled my neck only to secure your
+lord in his former possessions, which he so cowardly abandoned," said
+Basil contemptuously. "I claim the hand of the Lady Theodora--"
+
+"Theodora?" cried the envoy of Ugo of Tuscany, turning fiercely upon
+the speaker. "Surely you are mad, my lord, to imagine that the Lord Ugo
+would peril his reign with the presence of this woman within the same
+walls that witnessed the regime of her sister--"
+
+"Mind your own business, my lord," interposed Basil. "What the man
+thinks who fled from Castel San Angelo at the first cry of revolt, the
+man who slunk away like a thief in the night, is nothing to me. We make
+the conditions. It is for him to accept or reject them, as he sees fit."
+
+A rasping voice, speaking a villainous jargon, made itself heard at
+this juncture.
+
+"What of my Saracens, mighty lord?" Hassan Abdullah, for no lesser than
+the great Mahometan chieftain was the speaker, turned to the Grand
+Chamberlain. "I, too, am desirous of sparing the blood of my soldiers
+and, insofar as lies within my power, that of the Nazarenes also. For
+it is written in the book: Slavery for infidels--but death only for
+apostates."
+
+"Our compact is sealed beyond recall," Basil made reply.
+
+"Then you will deliver the woman into my hands?"
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"She shall be delivered into the hands of Hassan Abdullah! And he
+will sail away with his white-plumed bird--the fairest flower of the
+North--and the ransom of a city."
+
+"Yet I do not know the lady's name," said the Saracen. "This I should
+know--else how may she heed my call?"
+
+"Those who love her call her Hellayne."
+
+At the name Tristan started so violently that the monk caught his arm
+in a grip of steel.
+
+"Silence--if you value your life," Odo enjoined.
+
+"When and where is she to be delivered into my hands?" Hassan Abdullah
+continued.
+
+"The place will be made known to you, my lord," Basil replied, "when
+the Emperor's Tomb hails its new master."
+
+"Here is an infernal plot," Odo whispered into Tristan's ear, "spawned
+up by the very Prince of Darkness."
+
+"What can we do?" came back the almost soundless reply. "Hellayne to be
+delivered over to this infidel dog! Nay, do not restrain me, Father--"
+
+"There are six to two of us," Odo interposed. "Silence! Some one
+speaks."
+
+It was the voice of the envoy of Ugo of Tuscany.
+
+"Although it seems like a taunt, to fling into the face of my lord the
+sister of the woman who was the cause of his defeat--"
+
+"His coward soul was the cause of the Lord Ugo's defeat," Basil
+interposed hotly. "In the dark of night, by means of a rope he let
+himself down from his lair, to escape the wrath of the fledgling he had
+struck for an unintentional affront. Did the Lord Ugo even inquire into
+the fate of the woman who perished miserably in the dungeons of the
+Emperor's Tomb?"
+
+"Let us not be hasty," interposed another. "The Lord Ugo will listen to
+reason."
+
+"The conditions are settled," Basil replied. "On the third night from
+to-night!"
+
+The conspirators rose and, emerging from the ruined refectory, made
+their way down to their boat.
+
+Soon the sound of oars, becoming fainter and fainter, informed the
+listeners that the company had departed.
+
+Tristan's face was very white.
+
+"What is to be done?" he turned pathetically to the monk who stood
+brooding by his side. "I almost wish I had let my fate overtake me--"
+
+"Do not blaspheme," Odo interposed. "Sometimes divine aid is nearest
+when it seems farthest removed. In three days the blow is to fall! In
+three days Rome is to be turned over to the infidels who are ravaging
+our southern coasts, and the Tuscan is once more to hold sway in the
+Tomb of the former Master of the World. But not he--Basil will rule,
+for Ugo has his hands full in Ivrea. With Basil Theodora will lord it
+from yonder castello. He will let the Lord Ugo burn his hands and he
+will snatch the golden fruit. I will pray that this feeble hand may
+undo their dark plotting."
+
+"What is Rome to me? What the universe?" Tristan interposed, "if she
+whom I love better than life is lost to me?"
+
+The monk turned to him laying his hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"You have been miraculously delivered from the very jaws of death. You
+will save the woman you love from dishonor and shame."
+
+Odo pondered for a pace then he continued:
+
+"There is one in Rome--who is encompassing your destruction. The foul
+crime in the Lateran of which you were the victim is but another proof
+of the schemes of the Godless, who have desecrated the churches of
+Christ for their hellish purposes. We must find their devil's chapel,
+hidden somewhere beneath the soil of Rome. None shall escape."
+
+"How will you bring this about, Father?" Tristan queried despairingly.
+
+"The soldiers of the Church have not been bribed," Odo replied.
+"Listen, my son, and do you as I direct. On to-morrow's eve Theodora
+gives one of her splendid feasts. Go you disguised. Watch--but speak
+not. Listen--but answer not. Who knows but that you may receive tidings
+of your lost one? As for myself, I shall seek one whose crimes lie
+heavily upon him, one who trembles with the fear of death, at whose
+door he lies--Il Gobbo--the bravo. His master has dealt him a mortal
+wound to remove the last witness of his crimes. Come to me on the
+second day at dusk."
+
+Emerging from the shadows of the wall, Tristan hailed the boatman, and
+a few moments later they were being rowed towards a solitary spot near
+the base of the Aventine, where they paid and dismissed their Charon
+and disappeared among the ruins.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BROKEN SPELL
+
+
+Again there was feasting and high revels in the palace of Theodora
+on Mount Aventine. Colored lanterns were suspended between the
+interstices of orange and oleander trees; and incense rose in spiral
+coils from bronze and copper vessels, concealed among leafy bowers.
+The great banquet hall was thronged with a motley crowd of Romans,
+Greeks, men from the coasts of Africa and Iceland, Spaniards, Persians,
+Burgundians, Lombards, men from the steppes of Sarmatia, and the amber
+coast of the Baltic. Here and there groups were discussing the wines or
+the viands or the gossip of the day.
+
+The guests marvelled at the splendor, wealth and the variegated
+mosaics, the gilded walls, the profusion of beautiful marble columns
+and the wonderfully groined ceiling. It was a veritable banquet of
+the senses. The fairylike radiance of the hall with its truly eastern
+splendor captivated the eye. From remote grottoes came the sounds of
+flutes, citherns and harps, quivering through the dreaming summer night.
+
+On ebony couches upon silver frames, covered with rare tapestries
+and soft cushions, the guests reclined. Between two immense,
+crescent-shaped tables, made of citron wood and inlaid with ivory, rose
+a miniature bronze fountain, representing Neptune. From it spurted
+jets of scented water, which cooled and perfumed the air.
+
+Not in centuries had there been such a feast in Rome. Mountain, plain
+and the sea had been relentlessly laid under tribute, to surrender
+their choicest towards supplying the sumptuous board.
+
+Nubian slaves in spotless white kept at the elbows of the guests and
+filled the golden flagons as quickly as they were emptied. A powerful
+Cyprian wine, highly spiced, was served. Under its stimulating
+influence the revellers soon gave themselves up to the reckless
+enjoyment of the hour.
+
+As the feast proceeded the guests cried more loudly for flagons of the
+fiery ecobalda. They quaffed large quantities of this wine and their
+faces became flushed, their eyes sparkled and their tongues grew more
+and more free. The temporary restraint they had imposed upon themselves
+gradually vanished. In proportion as they partook of the fiery vintage
+their conviviality increased.
+
+The roll-call was complete. None was found missing. Here was the Lord
+of Norba and Boso, Lord of Caprara. Here was the Lord Atenulf of
+Benevento, the Lord Amgar, from the coasts of the Baltic; here was
+Bembo the poet, Eugenius the philosopher and Alboin, Lord of Farfa.
+Here was the Prefect of Rome and Roger de Laval. He, too, had joined
+the throng of idolators at the shrine of Theodora. The Lord Guaimar of
+Salerno was there, and Guido, Duke of Spoleto.
+
+The curtain at the far end of the banquet hall slowly parted.
+
+On the threshold stood Theodora.
+
+Silent, rigid, she gazed into the hall.
+
+Like a sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from her
+imagination across that glittering, gleaming tinselled atmosphere.
+Everywhere the dead seemed to sit around her, watching, as in a trance,
+strange antics of the grimacing dead.
+
+A vision of beauty she appeared, radiantly attired, a jewelled diadem
+upon her brow. By her side appeared Basil, the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+When her gaze fell upon the motley crowd, a disgust, such as she had
+never known, seized her.
+
+She seated herself on the dais, reserved for her, and with queenly
+dignity bade her guests welcome.
+
+Basil occupied the seat of honor at her right, Roger de Laval at her
+left.
+
+Had any one watched the countenances of Theodora and of Basil he
+would have surprised thereon an expression of ravening anxiety. To
+themselves they appeared like two players, neither knowing the next
+move of his opponent, yet filled with the dire assurance that upon this
+move depended the fate of the house of cards each has built upon a
+foundation of sand.
+
+At last the Count de Laval arose and whirled his glass about his head.
+
+"Twine a wreath about your cups," he shouted, "and drink to the glory
+of the most beautiful woman in the world--the Lady Theodora."
+
+They rose to their feet and shouted their endorsement till the very
+arches seemed to ring with the echoes. His initiative was received
+with such favor by the others that, fired with the desire to emulate
+his example, they fell to singing and shouting the praise of the woman
+whose beauty had not its equal in Rome.
+
+Theodora viewed the scene of dissipation with serenity and composure,
+and, by her attitude she seemed, in a strange way, even tacitly to
+encourage them to drink still deeper. Faster, ever faster, the wine
+coursed among the guests. Some of them became more and more boisterous,
+others were rendered somnolent and fell forward in a stupor upon the
+silken carpets.
+
+Theodora, whose restlessness seemed to increase with every moment, and
+who seemed to hold herself in leash by a strenuous effort of the will,
+suddenly turned to Basil and whispered a question into his ear.
+
+A silent nod came in response and the next moment a clash of cymbals,
+stormily persistent, roused the revellers from their stupor. Then, like
+a rainbow garmented Peri, floating easefully out of some far-off sphere
+of sky-wonders, an aerial maiden shape glided into the full lustre of
+the varying light, a dancer nude, save for the glistening veil that
+carelessly enshrouded her limbs, her arms and hands being adorned with
+circlets of tiny golden bells which kept up a melodious jingle as she
+moved. And now began the strangest music, music that seemed to hover
+capriciously between luscious melody and harsh discord, a wild and
+curious medley of fantastic minor suggestions in which the imaginative
+soul might discover hints of tears and folly, love and madness. To
+this uncertain yet voluptuous measure the glittering girl dancer
+leaped forward with a startling abruptness and, halting as it were on
+the boundary line between the dome and the garden beyond, raised her
+rounded arms in a snowy arch above her head.
+
+Her pause was a mere breathing spell in duration. Dropping her arms
+with a swift decision, she hurled herself into the giddy mazes of a
+dance. Round and round she floated, like an opal-winged butterfly
+in a net of sunbeams, now seemingly shaken by delicate tremors,
+as aspen leaves are shaken by the faintest wind, now assuming the
+most voluptuous eccentricities of posture, sometimes bending down
+wistfully as though she were listening to the chanting of demon voices
+underground, and again, with her waving white hands, appearing to
+summon spirits to earth from their wanderings in the upper air. Her
+figure was in perfect harmony with the seductive grace of her gestures;
+not only her feet, but her whole body danced, her very features bespoke
+abandonment to the frenzy of her rapid movement. Her large black eyes
+flashed with something of fierceness as well as languor; and her raven
+hair streamed behind her like a darkly spread wing.
+
+Wild outbursts of applause resounded uproariously through the hall.
+
+Count Roger had drawn nearer to Theodora. His arms encircled her body.
+
+Theodora bent over him.
+
+"Not to-night! Not to-night! There are many things to consider.
+To-morrow I shall give you my answer."
+
+He looked up into her eyes.
+
+"Do you not love me?"
+
+His hot breath fanned her cheeks.
+
+Theodora gave a shrug and turned away, sick with disgust.
+
+"Love--I hardly know what it means. I do not think I have ever loved."
+
+Laval sucked in his breath between his teeth.
+
+"Then you shall love me! You shall! Ever since I have come to Rome have
+I desired you! And the woman lives not who may gainsay my appeal."
+
+She smiled tauntingly.
+
+He had seized her hand. The fierceness of his grip made her gasp with
+pain.
+
+"And whatever brought you to Rome?" she turned to him.
+
+"I came in quest of one who had betrayed my honor."
+
+"And you found her?"
+
+"Both!" came the laconic reply.
+
+"How interesting," purred Theodora, suffering his odious embrace,
+although she shuddered at his touch.
+
+"And, man-like, you were revenged?"
+
+"She has met the fate I had decreed upon her who wantonly betrayed the
+honor of her lord."
+
+"Then she confessed?"
+
+"She denied her guilt. What matter? I never loved her. It is you I
+love! You, divine Theodora."
+
+And, carried away by a gust of passion, he drew her to him, covering
+her brow, her hair, her cheeks with kisses. But she turned away her
+mouth.
+
+She tried to release herself from his embrace.
+
+Roger uttered an oath.
+
+"I have tamed women before--ay--and I shall tame you," he sputtered,
+utterly disregarding her protests.
+
+She drew back as far as his encircling arms permitted.
+
+"Release me, my lord!" she said, her dark eyes flashing fire. "You are
+mad!"
+
+"No heroics--fair Theodora-- Has the Wanton Queen of Rome turned into a
+haloed saint?"
+
+He laughed. His mouth was close to her lips.
+
+Revulsion and fury seized her. Disengaging her hands she struck him
+across the face.
+
+There was foam on his lips. He caught her by the throat. Now he was
+forcing her beneath his weight with the strength of one insane with
+uncontrollable passion.
+
+"Help!" she screamed with a choking sensation.
+
+A shadow passed before her eyes. Everything seemed to swim around
+her in eddying circles of red. Then a gurgling sound. The grip on
+her throat relaxed. Laval rolled over upon the floor in a horrible
+convulsion, gasped and expired.
+
+Basil's dagger had struck him through, piercing his heart.
+
+Slowly Theodora arose. She was pale as death. Her guests, too much
+engaged with their beautiful partners, had been attracted to her plight
+but by her sudden outcry.
+
+They stared sullenly at the dead man and turned to their former
+pursuits.
+
+Theodora clapped her hands.
+
+Two giant Nubians appeared. She pointed to the corpse at her feet. They
+raised it up between them, carried it out and sank it in the Lotus
+lake. Others wiped away the stains of blood.
+
+Basil bent over Theodora's hands, and covered them with kisses,
+muttering words of endearment which but increased the discord in her
+heart.
+
+She released herself, resuming her seat on the dais.
+
+"It is the old fever," she turned to the man beside her. "You purchase
+and I sell! Nay"--she added as his lips touched her own--"there is no
+need for a lover's attitude when hucksters meet."
+
+Though the guests had returned to their seats, a strange silence had
+fallen upon the assembly. The rhythmical splashing of the water in the
+fountain and the labored breathing of the distressed wine-Bibbie's
+seemed the only sounds that were audible for a time.
+
+"But I love you, Theodora," Basil spoke with strangely dilated eyes.
+"I love you for what you are, for all the evil you have wrought! You,
+alone! For you have I done this thing! For you Alberic lies dead in
+some unknown glen. For you have I summoned about us those who shall
+seat you in the high place that is yours by right of birth."
+
+Theodora was herself again. With upraised hand, that shone marble white
+in the ever-changing light, she enjoined silence.
+
+"What of that other?" she said, while her eyes held those of the man
+with their magic spell.
+
+"What other?" he stammered, turning pale.
+
+"That one!" she flashed.
+
+At that moment the curtain parted again and into the changing light,
+emitted by the great revolving globe, swayed a woman. At first
+it seemed a statue of marble that had become animated and, ere
+consciousness had resumed its sway, was slowly gaining life and motion,
+still bound up in the dream existence into which some unknown power had
+plunged her.
+
+As one petrified, Basil stared at the swaying form of Hellayne. A white
+transparent byssus veil enveloped the beautiful limbs. Her wonderful
+bare arms were raised above her head, which was slightly inclined, as
+in a listening attitude. She seemed to move unconsciously as under a
+spell or as one who walks in her sleep. Her eyes were closed. The pale
+face showed suffering, yet had not lost one whit of its marvellous
+beauty.
+
+The revellers stared spellbound at what, to their superstitious minds,
+seemed the wraith of slain Roxana returned to earth to haunt her rival.
+
+Suddenly, without warning, the dark-robed form of a man dashed from
+behind a pillar. No one seemed to have noted his presence. Overthrowing
+every impediment, he bounded straight for Hellayne, when he saw the
+lithe form snatched up before his very eyes and her abductor disappear
+with his burden, as if the ground had swallowed them.
+
+It seemed to Tristan that he was rushing through an endless succession
+of corridors and passages, crossing each other at every conceivable
+angle, in his mad endeavor to snatch his precious prey from her
+abductor when, in a rotunda in which these labyrinthine passages
+converged, he found himself face to face with an apparition that seemed
+to have risen from the floor.
+
+Before him stood Theodora.
+
+Her dark shadow was wavering across the moonlit network of light. The
+red and blue robes of the painted figures on the wall glowed about her
+like blood and azure, while the moonlight laid lemon colored splashes
+upon the varied mosaics of the floor.
+
+His pulses beating furiously, a sense of suffocation in his throat,
+Tristan paused as the woman barred his way.
+
+"Let me pass!" he said imperiously, trying to suit the action to the
+word.
+
+But he had not reckoned with the woman's mood.
+
+"You shall not," Theodora said, a strange fire gleaming in her eyes.
+
+"Where is Hellayne? What have you done with her?"
+
+Theodora regarded him calmly from under drooping lashes.
+
+"That I will tell you," she said with a mocking voice. "It was my good
+fortune to rescue her from the claws of one who has again got her into
+his power. Her mind is gone, my Lord Tristan! Be reconciled to your
+fate!"
+
+"Surely you cannot mean this?" Tristan gasped, his face under the
+monk's cowl pale as death, while his eyes stared unbelievingly into
+those of the woman.
+
+"Is not what you have seen, proof that I speak truth?" Theodora
+interposed, slightly veiled mockery in her tone.
+
+"Then this is your deed," Tristan flashed.
+
+Theodora gave a shrug.
+
+"What if it were?"
+
+"She is in Basil's power?"
+
+"An experienced suitor."
+
+"Woman, why have you done this thing to me?"
+
+His hands went to his head and he reeled like a drunken man.
+
+Theodora laid her hands on Tristan's shoulders.
+
+"Because I want you--because I love you, Tristan," she said slowly, and
+her wonderful face seemed to become illumined as it were, from within.
+"Nay--do not shrink from me! I know what you would say! Theodora--the
+courtesan queen of Rome! You deem I have no heart--no soul. You deem
+that these lips, defiled by the kisses of beasts, cannot speak truth.
+Yet, if I tell you, Tristan, that this is the first and only time in my
+life that I have loved, that I love you with a love such as only those
+know who have thirsted for it all their lives, yet have never known but
+its base counterfeit; if I tell you--that upon your answer depends my
+fate--my life--Tristan--will you believe--will you save the woman whom
+nothing else on earth can save?"
+
+"I do not believe you," Tristan replied.
+
+Theodora's face had grown white to the lips.
+
+"You shall stay--and you shall listen to me!" she said, without raising
+her voice, as if she were discoursing upon some trifling matter, and
+Tristan obeyed, compelled by the look in her eyes.
+
+Theodora felt Tristan's melancholy gaze resting upon her, as it had
+rested upon her at their first meeting. Was not he, too, like herself,
+a lone wanderer in this strange country called the world! But his
+manhood had remained unsullied. How she envied and how she hated that
+other woman to whom his love belonged. Softly she spoke, as one speaks
+in a dream.
+
+She had gone forth in quest of happiness--happiness at any price. And
+she had paid the forfeit with a poisoned life. The desire to conquer
+had eclipsed every other. The lure of the senses was too mighty to be
+withstood. Yet how short are youth and life! One should snatch its
+pleasures while one may.
+
+How fleet had been the golden empty days of joy. She had drained
+the brimming goblet to the dregs. If he misjudged her motive, her
+self-abasement, if he spurned the love she held out to him, the one
+supreme sacrifice of her life had been in vain. She would fight for
+it. Soul and body she would throw herself into the conflict. Her last
+chance of happiness was at stake. The poison, rankling in her veins,
+she knew could not be expelled by idle sophisms. Life, the despot,
+claimed his dues. Had she lived utterly in vain? Not altogether! She
+would atone, even though the bonds of her own forging, which bound her
+to an ulcered past, could be broken but by the hand of that crowned
+phantom: Death.
+
+Now she was kneeling before him. She had grasped his hands.
+
+"I love you!" she wailed. "Tristan, I love you and my love is killing
+me! Be merciful. Have pity on me. Love me! Be mine--if but for an
+hour! It is not much to ask! After, do with me what you will! Torture
+me--curse me before Heaven--I care not--I am yours--body and soul.--I
+love you!"
+
+Her voice vibrated with mad idolatrous pleading.
+
+He tried to release himself. She dragged herself yet closer to him.
+
+"Tristan! Tristan!" she murmured. "Have you a heart? Can you reject me
+when I pray thus to you? When I offer you all I have? All that I am, or
+ever hope to be? Am I so repellent to you? Many men would give their
+lives if I were to say to them what I say to you. They are nothing to
+me--you alone are my world, the breath of my existence. You, alone, can
+save me from myself!"
+
+Tristan felt his senses swooning at the sight of her beauty. He tried
+to speak, but the words froze on his lips. It was too impossible, too
+unbelievable. Theodora, the most beautiful, the most powerful woman
+in Rome was kneeling before him, imploring that which any man in Rome
+would have deemed himself a thousand fold blessed to receive. And he
+remained untouched.
+
+She read his innermost thoughts and knew the supreme moment when she
+must win or lose him forever was at hand.
+
+"Tristan--Tristan," she sobbed--and in the distant grove sobbed flutes
+and sistrum and citherns--"say what you will of me; it is true. I own
+it. Yet I am not worse than other women who have sold their souls for
+power or gold. Am I not fair to look upon? And is all this beauty of
+my face and form worthless in your eyes, and you no more than man?
+Kill me--destroy me--I care naught. But love me--as I love you!" and
+in a perfect frenzy of self-abandonment she rose to her feet and stood
+before him, a very bacchante of wild loveliness and passion. "Look upon
+me! Am I not more beautiful than the Lady Hellayne? You shall not--dare
+not--spurn such love as mine!"
+
+Deep silence supervened. The expression of her countenance seemed quite
+unearthly; her eyes seemed wells of fire and the tense white arms
+seemed to seek a victim round which they might coil themselves to its
+undoing.
+
+The name she had uttered in her supreme outburst of passion had broken
+the spell she had woven about him.
+
+Hellayne--his white dove! What was her fate at this moment while he was
+listening to the pleadings of the enchantress?
+
+Theodora advanced towards him with outstretched arms.
+
+He stayed her with a fierce gesture.
+
+"Stand back!" he said. "Such love as yours--what is it? Shame to
+whosoever shall accept it! I desire you not."
+
+"You dare not!" she panted, pale as death.
+
+"Dare not?"
+
+But she was now fairly roused. All the savagery in her nature was
+awakened and she stood before him like some beautiful wild animal at
+bay, trembling from head to foot with the violence of her passion.
+
+"You scorn me!" she said in fierce, panting accents, that scarcely
+rose above an angry whisper. "You make a mockery of my anguish and
+despair--holding yourself aloof with your prated virtue! But you shall
+suffer for it! I am your match! You shall not spurn me a third time! I
+have humbled myself in the dust before you, I, Theodora--and you have
+spurned the love I have offered you--you have spurned Theodora--for
+that white marble statue whom I should strangle before your very eyes
+were she here! You shall not see her again, my Lord Tristan. Her
+fate is sealed from this moment. On the altars of Satan is she to be
+sacrificed on to-morrow night!"
+
+Tristan listened like paralyzed to her words, unable to move.
+
+She saw her opportunity. She sprang at him. Her arms coiled about him.
+Her moist kisses seared his lips.
+
+"Oh Tristan--Tristan," she pleaded, "forgive me, forgive! I know not
+what I say! I hunger for the kisses of your lips, the clasp of your
+arms! Do you know--do you ever think of your power? The cruel terrible
+power of your eyes, the beauty that makes you more like an angel than
+man? Have you no pity? I am well nigh mad with jealousy of that other
+whom you keep enshrined in your heart! Could she love, like I? She was
+not made for you--I am! Tristan--come with me--come--"
+
+Tighter and tighter her arms encircled his neck. The moonbeams showed
+him her eyes alight with rapture, her lips quivering with passion, her
+bosom heaving. The blood surged up in his brain and a red mist swam
+before his eyes.
+
+With a supreme effort Tristan released himself. Flinging her from him,
+he rushed out of the rotunda as if pursued by an army of demons. If he
+remained another moment he knew he was lost.
+
+A lightning bolt shot down from the dark sky vault close beside him as
+he reached the gardens, and a peal of thunder crashed after in quick
+succession.
+
+It drowned the delirious outburst of laughter that shrilled from the
+rotunda where Theodora, with eyes wide with misery and madness, stared
+as transfixed down the path where Tristan had vanished in the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE BLACK MASS
+
+
+The night was sultry and dismal.
+
+Dense black clouds rolled over the Roman Campagna, burning blue in
+the flashes of jagged lightnings and the low boom of distant thunder
+reverberated ominously among the hills and valleys of Rome, when three
+men, cloaked and wearing black velvet masks, skirted the huge mediæval
+wall with which Pope Leo IV had girdled the gardens of the Vatican and,
+passing along the fortified rampart which surrounded the Vatican Hill,
+plunged into the trackless midnight gloom of deep, branch-shadowed
+thickets.
+
+Not a word was spoken between them. Silently they followed their
+leader, whose tall, dark form was revealed to them only among the dense
+network of trees and the fantastic shapes of the underbrush, when a
+flash of white lightning flamed across the limitless depths of the
+midnight horizon.
+
+Not a sound broke the stillness, save the menacing growl of the
+thunder, the intermittent soughing of the wind among the branches, or
+the occasional drip-drip of dewy moisture trickling tearfully from the
+leaves, mingling with the dreamy, gurgling sound of the fountains,
+concealed among bosquets of orange and almond trees.
+
+From time to time, as they proceeded upon their nocturnal errand, the
+sounds of their footsteps being swallowed up by the soft carpet of
+moss, they caught fleet glimpses of marble statues, gleaming white,
+like ghosts, from among the tall dark cypresses, or the shimmering
+surface of a marble-cinctured lake, mirrored in the sheen of the
+lightnings.
+
+The grove they traversed assumed by degrees the character of a tropical
+forest. Untrodden by human feet, it seemed as though nature, grown
+tired of the iridescent floral beauty of the environing gardens, had,
+in a sudden malevolent mood, torn and blurred the fair green frondage
+and twisted every bud awry, till the awkward, misshapen limbs resembled
+the contorted branches of wind-blown trees. Great jagged leaves covered
+with prickles and stained with blotches as of spilt poison, thick brown
+stems, glistening with slimy moisture and coiled up like the sleeping
+bodies of snakes, masses of blue and purple fungi, and blossoms
+seemingly of the orchid-species, some like fleshly tongues, others like
+the waxen yellow fingers of a dead hand, protruded spectrally through
+the matted foliage, while all manner of strange overpowering odors
+increased the swooning oppressiveness of the sultry, languorous air.
+
+Arrived at a clearing they paused.
+
+In the distance the Basilica of Constantine was sunk in deep repose.
+All about them was the pagan world. Goat-footed Pan seemed to peer
+through the interstices of the branches. The fountains crooned in their
+marble basins. Centaurs and Bacchantes disported themselves among the
+flowering shrubs and, dark against the darker background of the night,
+the vast ramparts of Leo IV seemed to shut out light and life together.
+
+The Prefect of the Camera turned to his companions, after peering
+cautiously into the thickets.
+
+"We must wait for the guards," he said in a whisper. "It were perilous
+to proceed farther without them."
+
+Tristan's hand tightened upon his sword-hilt. There were tears in
+his eyes when he thought of Hellayne and all that was at stake, the
+overthrow of the enemies of Christ. He had, in a manner, conquered the
+terrible fear that had palsied heart and soul as they had started out
+after nightfall. Now, taking his position as he found it, since he felt
+that his fate was ruled by some unseen force which he might not resist,
+he was upheld by a staunch resolution to do his part in the work
+assigned to him and thereby to merit forgiveness and absolution.
+
+Notwithstanding the enforced calm that filled his soul, there were
+moments when, assailed by a terrible dread, lest he might be too late
+to prevent the unspeakable crime, his energies were almost paralyzed.
+Silent as a ghost he had traversed the grove by the side of his equally
+silent companions, more intent upon his quarry than the patient,
+velvet-footed puma that follows in the high branches of the trees the
+unsuspecting traveller below.
+
+Was it his imagination, was it the beating of his own heart in the
+silence that preceded the breaking of the storm; or did he indeed hear
+the dull throbbing of the drums that heralded the approach of the
+crimson banners of Satan?
+
+The wind increased with every moment. The thunder growled ever nearer.
+The heavens were one sheet of flame. The trees began to bend their tops
+to the voice of the hurricane. The air was hot as if blown from the
+depths of the desert. As the uproar of the elements increased, strange
+sounds seemed to mingle with the voices of the storm. Black shadows
+as of dancing witches darkened the clearing, spread and wheeled,
+interlaced and disentwined. In endless thousands they seemed to fly,
+like the withered and perishing leaves of autumn.
+
+Involuntarily Tristan grasped the arm of the Monk of Cluny.
+
+"Are these real shapes--or do my eyes play me false?" he faltered, an
+expression of terror on his countenance, such as no consideration of
+earthly danger could have evoked.
+
+"To-night, my son, we are invincible," replied the monk. "Trust in the
+Crucified Christ!"
+
+Across the plaisaunce, washed white by the sheen of the lightnings,
+there was a stir as of an approaching forest. Tristan watched as in the
+throes of a dream.
+
+A few moments later the little band was joined by the newcomers,
+masked, garbed in sombre black and heavily armed, three-score
+Spaniards, trusted above their companions for their loyalty and
+allegiance to Holy Church. Among them Tristan recognized the
+Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna, the Bishop of Orvieto and the Prefect
+of Rome.
+
+Odo of Cluny noted Tristan's shrinking at the sight of the two men who
+had been present when the terrible accusation had been hurled against
+him on that fatal morning--the accusation in the Lateran, which had
+launched him in the dungeons of Castel San Angelo.
+
+He comforted the trembling youth.
+
+"They know now that the charge was false," he said. "To-night we shall
+conquer. We shall set our foot upon Satan's neck."
+
+Withdrawing under the shelter of the trees, regardless of the
+increasing fury of the storm, the leaders held whispered consultation.
+
+Before them, set in the massive wall, appeared a door not more than
+five feet high, studded with large nails.
+
+The Prefect of Rome bent forward and inserted a gleaming piece of steel
+in the keyhole. After a wrench or two, which convinced the onlookers
+that the door had been long in disuse, it swung inward with a groan.
+The Prefect, with a muttered imprecation, beckoned his followers to
+enter, and when they were assembled in what appeared to be a courtyard,
+he took pains to close the door himself, to avoid the least noise that
+might reach the ear of those within the enclosure.
+
+At the far end of this courtyard a shadowy pavilion arose, culled
+from the Stygian gloom by the sheen of the lightnings. It seemed
+to have been erected in remote antiquity. A circular structure of
+considerable extent, its ruinous exterior revealed traces of Etruscan
+architecture. No one dared set foot in it, for it was rumored to be
+the abode of evil spirits. Its interior was reported to be a network
+of intricate galleries, leading into subterranean chambers, secret and
+secluded places into which human foot never strayed, for, not unlike
+the catacombs, it was well-nigh impossible to find the exit from its
+labyrinthine passages without the saving thread of Ariadné.
+
+At a signal from the Prefect of the Camera all stopped. Heavy drops of
+rain were falling. The hurricane increased in fury.
+
+It was a weird scene and one the memory of which lingered long after
+that eventful night with Tristan.
+
+Black cypresses and holm-oaks formed a dense wall around the pavilion
+on two sides. In the distance the white limbs of some pagan statues
+could be seen gleaming through the dark foliage. And, as from a
+subterranean cavern, a distant droning chant struck the ear now and
+then with fateful import.
+
+Now the Prefect of Rome threw off his cloak. The others did likewise.
+Their masks they retained.
+
+"There is a secret entrance, unknown even to these spawns of hell,
+behind the pavilion," he addressed his companions in a subdued tone,
+hardly audible in the shrieking of the storm. "It is concealed among
+tall weeds and has long been in disuse. The door is almost invisible
+and they think themselves safe in the performance of their iniquities
+below."
+
+"How can we reach this pit of hell?" Tristan, quivering with
+ill-repressed excitement interposed at this juncture. He could hardly
+restrain himself. On every moment hung the life of the being dearer
+to him than all the world, and he chafed under the restraint like a
+restive steed. If they should be too late, even now!
+
+But the Prefect retained his calm demeanor knowing what was at stake.
+It was not enough to locate the chapel of Satan. Those participating in
+the unholy rites must not be given the chance to escape. They must be
+taken, dead or alive, to the last man.
+
+"We have with us one who is familiar with every nook in the city of
+Rome," the Prefect turned to the Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna. "Long
+have we suspected that all is not well in the deserted pavilion. But
+though we watched by day and by night nothing seemed to reward our
+efforts, until one stormy night a dreadful shape with the face of a
+devil came forth, and the sight so paralyzed those who watched from
+afar that they fled in dismay, believing it was the Evil One in person
+who had come forth from the bowels of the earth. From yonder door a
+dark corridor leads to a shaft whence it winds in a slight incline into
+the devil's chapel below. The latter is so situated that we can watch
+these outcasts at their devotions, unseen, our presence unguessed. This
+way! Let silence be the password. Keep in touch with each other, for
+the darkness is as that of the grave."
+
+A flash of lightning that seemed to rend the very heavens enveloped
+them for a moment in its sulphureous glare, followed by a crash of
+thunder that shook the very earth. The hurricane shrieked, and the rain
+came down in torrents.
+
+They had advanced to the very edge of the underbrush, stumbling over
+the heads and torsos of broken statues that lay among parasitic
+herbage. Monstrous decaying leaves curled upward, leprous in the
+lightnings. A poison mist seemed to hover over this lonely and deserted
+pleasure-house of ancient Pelasgian days.
+
+Skirting the haunted pavilion, unmindful of the onslaught of the
+elements, they took a path so narrow that they could but advance in
+single file. This path had been cut and beaten by the Prefect's guards,
+for the weeds and underbrush luxuriated, until they mounted some ten
+feet against the walls of the pavilion.
+
+They had now reached the back wall and proceeded in utter darkness
+broken only by the flashes of lightning. They passed through a
+half-ruined archway and at last came to a halt, prompted by those in
+front, whose progress had been stopped by, what the others guessed
+to be, the door. They had to work warily, to keep it from falling
+inward. At last the movement continued and they entered the night-wrapt
+corridor.
+
+Tristan had taken his station directly behind the Prefect of Rome. The
+ecclesiastics, for their own protection, had been assigned the rear.
+
+By the sheen of lightnings a pile of brushwood was revealed to the
+sight, which the Prefect, in a low tone, ordered to be cleared away,
+whereupon a circular opening appeared, like the entrance of a well.
+
+The Prefect summoned the leaders around him.
+
+For a moment they stood in silence and listened.
+
+Between the peals of the thunder which rolled in terrifying echoes over
+the Seven Hills, the trained ear could distinguish a strange, droning
+sound that seemed to come from the bowels of the earth.
+
+"Even now the Black Mass is commencing," he turned to Tristan. "We are
+but just in time."
+
+After a pause he continued:
+
+"We must proceed in darkness. The faintest glimmer might betray our
+presence. I shall lead the way. Let each follow warily. Let each be in
+touch with the other. Let all stop when I stop. We shall arrive in a
+circular gallery, whence we may all witness the abomination below. From
+this gallery several flights of winding stairs lead into the devil's
+chapel. Let us descend in silence. When you hear the signal--down the
+quick descent and--upon them!"
+
+One by one they disappeared in the dark aperture. Their feet touched
+ground while they still supported themselves on their arms. They found
+themselves in a subterranean chamber, in impenetrable darkness, whose
+hot, damp murk almost suffocated the intruders.
+
+Slowly, with infinite caution, in infinite silence, they proceeded.
+Every man stretched his hand before him to touch a companion.
+
+The passage began to slant, yet the incline was gradual. Their feet
+touched soft earth which swallowed the sound of their steps. There was
+neither echo nor vibration, only murky silence and the night of the
+grave.
+
+A low, droning sound, infinitely remote, a sound not unlike that of
+swarming bees heard at a great distance, was now wafted to their ears.
+
+A shudder ran through that long chain of living men, who were carrying
+the Cross into the very abyss of Hell.
+
+For they knew they were listening to the infernal choir, they were
+approaching the hidden chapel of Satan. The chant began to swell. Still
+they continued upon their descent.
+
+The imprisoned air became hotter and murkier, almost suffocating in its
+miasmatic waves that assailed the senses and seemed to weigh like lead
+upon the brain.
+
+Now the tunnel turned sharply at right angles and after proceeding
+some twenty or thirty paces in Stygian darkness, a faint crimson glow
+began suddenly to drive the nocturnal gloom before it, and they emerged
+in a gallery, terminating in a number of dark archways, from which
+narrow winding stairs led into the hall below. Small round apertures,
+resembling port-holes, permitted a glimpse into the chapel of Satan,
+and a weird, droning chant was rising rhythmically from the night-wrapt
+depths of the pavilion.
+
+Following the example of the leader, they stole on tiptoe to the
+unglazed port-holes and gazed below, and eager, yet trembling, with the
+anticipation of the dread mysteries they were about to witness.
+
+At first they could not see anything distinctly, owing to the crimson
+mist that seemed to come rolling into the chapel as from some furnace
+and their eyes, after having been long in the darkness, refused to
+focus themselves. But, by degrees, the scene became more distinct.
+
+In the circular chapel below dim figures, robed in crimson, moved to
+and fro, bearing aloft perfumed cressets on metal poles, and in its
+flickering light an altar became visible, hung with crimson, the summit
+of which was lost in the gloom overhead. Here and there indistinct
+shapes were stretched in hideous contortions on the pavement, and as
+others drew nigh, these rose and, throwing back their heads, made the
+vault re-echo with deep-chested roaring.
+
+Suddenly the metal bound gates of a low arched doorway, faintly
+discernible in the uncertain light, seemed to be unclosing with a slow
+and majestic movement, letting loose a flood of light in which the
+ghostly faces of the worshippers leapt into sudden clearness, men and
+women, all seemingly belonging to the highest ranks of society. The
+crimson garbs of the officiating priests showed like huge stains of
+blood against the dark-veined marble.
+
+Tristan gazed with the rest, stark with terror. The blood seemed to
+freeze in his veins as his eyes swept the circular vault and rested at
+the shrine's farther end, where branching candlesticks flanked each the
+foot of two short flights of stairs that led up to the summit of the
+great altar, garnished at the corner with hideous masks, and sending up
+from time to time eddies of smoke, through the reek of which some two
+score of men watched the ceremony from above.
+
+Dim shapes passed to and fro. The droning chant continued. At length
+a shapeless form evolved itself from the crimson mist, approached the
+altar and cast something upon it. Instantly a blaze of light flooded
+the shrine, and in its radiance a weazened, bat-like creature was
+revealed, garbed in the fantastic imitation of a priest's robes.
+
+Approaching the infernal altar, upon which lay obscene symbols of
+horror, he mounted the steps and his figure melted into the gloom.
+
+With the cold sweat streaming from his brow, with a shudder that almost
+turned him dizzy, Tristan recognized Bessarion. The High Priest of
+Satan sat upon the Devil's altar. There was stir and movement in the
+chapel. Then a deep silence supervened.
+
+Petrifaction fell upon the assembly. All voices were hushed, all
+movement arrested. From the black throne, surrounded by terror, where
+sat the great Unknown, came a dull hoarse roar, like the roar of an
+earthquake.
+
+The words were unintelligible to the champions of the Cross. They were
+answered by the Sorcerer's Confession, the hideous, terrible contortion
+of the Credo, and then Tristan's ears were assailed by the sounds he
+had heard on that fatal night, ere he lost consciousness, and again in
+the Catacombs of St. Calixtus, sounds meaningless in themselves, but
+fraught with terrible import to him now!
+
+"Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"--
+
+Pandemonium broke loose.
+
+"Agora! Agora! Patrisa! Agora!"
+
+There was screeching of pipes, made of dead men's bones. A drum
+stretched with the skin of the hanged was beaten with the tail of a
+wolf. Like leaves in a howling storm the fantastic red robed forms
+whirled about, from left to right, from right to left. And in their
+midst, immobile and terrible, sat the Hircus Nocturnus, enthroned upon
+the shrine.
+
+When at last they stopped, panting, exhausted, the same voice,
+deafening as an earthquake, roared:
+
+"Bring hither the bride--the stainless dove!"
+
+A chorus of hideous laughter, a swelling, bleating cacophony of
+execration, so furious and real that it froze the listeners' blood,
+answered the summons.
+
+Then, from an arch in the apse of the infernal chapel, came four
+chanting figures, hideously masked and draped in crimson.
+
+With slow, measured steps they approached. The arch was black again.
+Deep silence supervened.
+
+Now into the centre came two figures.
+
+One was that of a man robed in doublet and hose of flaming scarlet. The
+figure he supported was that of a woman, though she seemed a corpse
+returned to earth.
+
+A long white robe covered her from head to toe, like the winding sheet
+of death. Her eyes were bound with a white cloth. She seemed unable to
+walk, and was being urged forward, step by step, by the scarlet man at
+her side.
+
+Again pandemonium reigned, heightened by the crashing peals of the
+thunder that rolled in the heavens overhead.
+
+"Emen Hetan! Emen Hetan! Palu! Baalberi! Emen Hetan!"
+
+The bleating of goats, the shrieks of the tortured damned, the howling
+of devils in the nethermost pit of Hell, delirious laughter, gibes and
+execrations mingled in a deafening chorus, which was followed by a dead
+silence, as anew the voice of the Unseen roared through the vault:
+
+"Bring hither the bride, the stainless dove!"
+
+There was a tramp of mailed feet.
+
+Like a human whirlwind it came roaring down the winding stairs, through
+the vomitories into the vault. The rattling of weapons, shouts of rage,
+horror and dismay mingled, resounding from the vaulted roof, beaten
+back from the marble walls.
+
+With drawn sword Tristan, well in advance of his companions, leaped
+into the chapel of Satan. When the identity of the staggering white
+form beside the scarlet man had been revealed to him, no power in
+heaven or earth could have restrained him. Without awaiting the signal
+he bounded with a choking outcry down the shaft.
+
+But, when he reached the floor of the chapel, he recoiled as if the
+Evil One had arisen from the floor before him, barring his advance.
+
+Before him stood Theodora.
+
+She wore a scarlet robe, fastened at the throat with a clasp of rubies,
+representing the heads of serpents. Her wonderful white arms were bare,
+her hands were clenched as if she were about to fly at the throat of a
+hated rival and a preternatural lustre shone in her eyes.
+
+"You!"
+
+Tristan's words died in the utterance as he surveyed her for the space
+of a moment with a glance so full of horror and disdain that she knew
+she had lost.
+
+"Yes--it is I," she replied, hardly above a whisper, hot flush and
+deadly pallor alternating in her beautiful face, terrible in its set
+calm. "And--though I may not possess you--that other shall not! See!"
+
+Maddened beyond all human endurance at the sight that met his eyes
+Tristan hurled Theodora aside as she attempted to bar his way, as if
+she had been a toy. Rushing straight through the press towards the
+spot, where the scarlet man, his arms still about the drooping form of
+Hellayne, had stopped in dismay at the sudden inrush of the guards,
+Tristan pierced the Grand Chamberlain through and through. Almost
+dragging the woman with him he fell beside the devil's altar. His head
+struck the flagstones and he lay still.
+
+The Prefect himself dashed up the steps of the ebony shrine and hurled
+the High Priest of Satan on the flagstones below. Bessarion's neck was
+broken and, with the squeak of a bat, his black soul went out.
+
+While the guards, giving no quarter, were mowing down all those of
+the devil's congregation who did not seek salvation in flight or
+concealment, Tristan caught the swooning form of Hellayne in his arms,
+calling her name in despairing accents, as he stroked the silken hair
+back from the white clammy brow. She was breathing, but her eyes were
+closed.
+
+Then he summoned two men-at-arms to his side, and between them they
+carried her to the world of light above.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+SUNRISE
+
+
+The thunder clouds had rolled away to eastward.
+
+A rosy glow was creeping over the sky. The air was fresh with the
+coming of dawn. Softly they laid Hellayne by the side of a marble
+fountain and splashed the cooling drops upon her pale face. After a
+time she opened her eyes.
+
+The first object they encountered was Tristan who was bending over her,
+fear and anxiety in his face.
+
+Her colorless lips parted in a whisper, as her arms encircled his neck.
+
+"You are with me!" she said, and the transparent lids drooped again.
+
+Those who had not been slain of the congregation of Hell had been bound
+in chains. Among the dead was Theodora. The contents of a phial she
+carried on her person had done its work instantaneously.
+
+Suddenly alarums resounded from the region of Castel San Angelo. There
+was a great stir and buzz, as of an awakened bee hive. There were
+shouts at the Flaminian gate, the martial tread of mailed feet and,
+as the sun's first ray kissed the golden Archangel on the summit of
+the Flavian Emperor's mausoleum, a horseman, followed by a glittering
+retinue, dashed up the path, dismounted and raised his visor.
+
+Before the astounded assembly stood Alberic, the Senator of Rome.
+
+Just then they brought the body of Theodora from the subterranean
+chapel and laid it silently on the greensward, beside that of Basil,
+the Grand Chamberlain.
+
+The Cardinal-Archbishop of Ravenna was the first to speak.
+
+"My lord, we hardly trust our eyes. All Rome is mourning you for dead."
+
+Alberic turned to the speaker.
+
+"With the aid of the saint I have prevailed against the foulest treason
+ever committed by a subject against his trusting lord. The bribed hosts
+of Hassan Abdullah, which were to sack Rome, are scattered in flight.
+The attempt upon my own life has been prevented by a miracle from
+Heaven. But--what of these dead?"
+
+Odo of Cluny approached the Senator of Rome.
+
+"The awful horror which has gripped the city is passed. Christ rules
+once more and Satan is vanquished. This is a matter for your private
+ear, my lord."
+
+Odo pointed to the kneeling form of Tristan, who was supporting
+Hellayne in his arms, trying to soothe her troubled spirit, to dispel
+the memory of the black horrors which held her trembling soul in thrall.
+
+Approaching Tristan, Alberic laid his hand upon his head.
+
+"We knew where to trust, and we shall know how to reward! My lords and
+prelates of the Church! Matters of grave import await you. We meet
+again in the Emperor's Tomb."
+
+Beckoning to his retinue, Alberic remounted his steed, as company upon
+company of men-at-arms filed past--a host, such as the city of Rome had
+not beheld in decades, with drums and trumpets, pennants and banderols,
+long lines of glittering spears, gorgeous surcoats, and splendid suits
+of mail.
+
+The forces of the Holy Roman Empire were passing into the Eternal City.
+
+At their head the Senator of Rome was returning into his own.
+
+At last they were alone, Tristan and Hellayne.
+
+His companions had departed. With them they had taken their dead.
+
+Hellayne opened her eyes. They were sombre, yet at peace.
+
+"Tristan!"
+
+He bent over her.
+
+"My own Hellayne!"
+
+"It is beautiful to be loved," she whispered. "I have never been loved
+before."
+
+"You shall be," he replied, "now and forever, before God and the world!"
+
+The old shadow came again into her eyes.
+
+"What of the Lord Roger?"
+
+She read the answer in his silence.
+
+A tear trickled from the violet pools of her eyes.
+
+Then she raised herself in his arms.
+
+"I thought I should go mad," she crooned. "But I knew you would come.
+And you are here--here--with me,--Tristan."
+
+He took her hands in his, his soul in his eyes.
+
+The sun had risen higher through the gold bars of the east, dispelling
+the grey chill of dawn.
+
+She nestled closer to him.
+
+"Take me back to Avalon, to my rose garden," she crooned. "Life is
+before us--yonder--where first we loved."
+
+He took her in his arms and kissed her eyes and the small sweet mouth.
+
+A lark began to sing in the silence.
+
+  THE END
+
+
+
+
+  WHAT ALLAH WILLS
+
+  _By Irwin L. Gordon_
+
+  _Author of "The Log of The Ark"_
+
+  _Illustrated, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_
+
+Take Morocco for a background--that quaint and mysterious land of
+mosques and minarets, where the _muezzin_ still calls to prayer at
+sundown the faithful.
+
+Imagine a story written with power and intensity and the thrill of
+adventure in the midst of fanatical Moslems. Add to this a wealthy
+young medical student, a red-blooded American, who gives up his life to
+helping the lepers of Arzilla, and the presence of a beautiful American
+girl who, despite her love for the hero, is induced to take up the
+Mohammedan faith, and you have some idea of what this remarkable story
+presents.
+
+WHAT ALLAH WILLS is a big story of love and adventure. Mr. Gordon is
+the author of two notable non-fiction successes, but he scores heavily
+in this, his first work of fiction.
+
+
+
+
+  UNDER THE WITCHES' MOON
+
+  _By Nathan Gallizier_
+
+  _Author of "The Sorceress of Rome," "The Court of
+  Lucifer," "The Hill of Venus," etc._
+
+  _Illustrated by The Kinneys, cloth 12mo, net, $1.50;
+  carriage paid, $1.65_
+
+This romantic tale of tenth-century Rome concerns itself with the
+fortunes and adventures of Tristan of Avalon while in the Eternal City
+on a pilgrimage to do penance for his love of Hellayne, the wife of his
+liege lord, Count Roger de Laval.
+
+Tristan's meeting with the Queen Courtesan of the Aventine; her
+infatuation for the pilgrim; Tristan's rounds of obediences, cut short
+by his appointment as Captain of Sant' Angelo by Alberic, Senator
+of Rome; the intrigues of Basil, the Grand Chamberlain, who aspires
+to the dominion of Rome and the love of Theodora; the trials of
+Hellayne, who alternately falls into the power of Basil and Theodora;
+the scene between the Grand Chamberlain and Bessarion in the ruins
+of the Coliseum; the great feud between Roxana and Theodora and the
+final overthrow of the latter's regime constitute some of the dramatic
+episodes of the romance.
+
+"This new book adds greater weight to the claim that Mr.
+Gallizier is the greatest writer of historical novels in America
+today."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._
+
+"In many respects we consider Mr. Gallizier the most versatile and
+interesting writer of the day."--_Saxby's Magazine._
+
+
+
+
+  _A third CHEERFUL BOOK_
+     Trade--------Mark
+
+  SYLVIA ARDEN DECIDES
+
+  By Margaret R. Piper
+
+  _A Sequel to "Sylvia's Experiment: The Cheerful Book"_
+                                     Trade--------Mark
+  _and "Sylvia of the Hill Top"_
+
+  _Illustrated, decorative jacket, net, $1.35; carriage paid,
+  $1.50_
+
+In the original CHEERFUL BOOK, with its rippling play of incident,
+Sylvia proved herself a bringer of tidings of great joy to many people.
+In the second book devoted to her adventures, she was a charming
+heroine--urbane, resourceful and vivacious--with an added shade of
+picturesqueness due to her environment. In this third story Sylvia
+is a little older grown, deep in the problem of just-out-of-college
+adjustment to the conditions of the "wide, wide world," and in the
+process of learning, as she puts it, "to live as deep and quick as
+I can." The scene of the new story is laid partly at Arden Hall and
+partly in New York and, in her sincere effort to find herself, Sylvia
+finds love in real fairy tale fashion.
+
+"There is a world of human nature, and neighborhood contentment and
+quaint, quiet humor in Margaret R. Piper's books of good cheer. Her
+tales are well proportioned and subtly strong in their literary aspects
+and quality."--_North American, Philadelphia._
+
+
+
+
+  A PLACE IN THE SUN
+
+  _By Mrs. Henry Backus_
+
+  _Author of "The Career of Dr. Weaver," "The Rose
+  of Roses," etc._
+
+  _12mo, cloth, illustrated by Wm. Van Dresser, net, $1.35;
+  carriage paid, $1.50_
+
+Gunda Karoli is a very much alive young person with a zest for life and
+looking-forward philosophy which helps her through every trial. She is
+sustained in her struggles against the disadvantage of her birth by
+a burning faith in the great American ideal--that here in the United
+States every one has a chance to win for himself a place in the sun.
+
+Gunda takes for her gospel the Declaration of Independence, only
+to find that, although this democratic doctrine is embodied in the
+constitution of the country, it does not manifest itself outwardly in
+its social life. Nevertheless, she succeeds in mounting step by step
+in the social scale, from the time she first appears at Skyland on the
+Knobs as a near-governess, to her brief season in the metropolis as a
+danseuse.
+
+How she wins the interest of Justin Arnold, the fastidious descendant
+of a fine old family, and brings into his self-centered existence a new
+life and fresh charm, provides a double interest to the plot.
+
+
+
+
+  VIRGINIA OF ELK CREEK
+  VALLEY
+
+  _By Mary Ellen Chase_
+
+  _12mo, cloth decorative, illustrated by R. Farrington
+  Elwell, net, $1.35; carriage paid, $1.50_
+
+A sequel to last year's success, THE GIRL FROM THE BIG HORN COUNTRY
+(sixth printing). This new story is more western in flavor than the
+first book--since practically all of the action occurs back in the Big
+Horn country, at Virginia's home, to which she invites her eastern
+friends for a summer vacation. The vacation in the West proves "the
+best ever" for the Easterners, and in recounting their pleasures they
+tell of the hundreds of miles of horseback riding, how they climbed
+mountains, trapped a bear, shot gophers, fished, camped, homesteaded,
+and of the delightful hospitality of Virginia and her friends.
+
+
+"The story is full of life and movement and presents a variety of
+interesting characters."--_St. Paul Despatch._
+
+
+"This is most gladsome reading to all who love healthfulness of mind,
+heart and body."--_Boston Ideas._
+
+
+
+
+  Selections from
+  The Page Company's
+  List of Fiction
+
+  WORKS OF
+  ELEANOR H. PORTER
+
+  POLLYANNA: The GLAD Book (360,000)
+  Trade Mark Trade----Mark
+
+  Cloth decorative, illustrated by Stockton Mulford.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+Mr. Leigh Mitchell Hodges, The Optimist, in an editorial for the
+_Philadelphia North American_, says: "And when, after Pollyanna has
+gone away, you get her letter saying she is going to take 'eight steps'
+to-morrow--well, I don't know just what you may do, but I know of one
+person who buried his face in his hands and shook with the gladdest
+sort of sadness and got down on his knees and thanked the Giver of all
+gladness for Pollyanna."
+
+
+  POLLYANNA GROWS UP: The Second GLAD Book
+  Trade Mark    (180,000)    Trade----Mark
+
+  Cloth decorative, illustrated by H. Weston Taylor.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+When the story of POLLYANNA told in The _Glad_ Book was ended a great
+cry of regret for the vanishing "Glad Girl" went up all over the
+country--and other countries, too. Now POLLYANNA appears again, just as
+sweet and joyous-hearted, more grown up and more lovable.
+
+"Take away frowns! Put down the worries! Stop fidgeting and
+disagreeing and grumbling! Cheer up, everybody! POLLYANNA has come
+back!"--_Christian Herald._
+
+
+  _The GLAD Book Calendar_
+  Trade----Mark
+
+  THE POLLYANNA CALENDAR
+      Trade Mark
+
+(_This calendar is issued annually; the calendar for the new year being
+ready about Sept. 1st of the preceding year. Note: in ordering please
+specify what year you desire._)
+
+Decorated and printed in colors. _Net_, $1.50; _carriage paid_, $1.65
+
+
+"There is a message of cheer on every page, and the calendar is
+beautifully illustrated."--_Kansas City Star._
+
+
+MISS BILLY (18th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by
+ G. Tyng . . _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"There is something altogether fascinating about 'Miss Billy,'
+some inexplicable feminine characteristic that seems to demand the
+individual attention of the reader from the moment we open the book
+until we reluctantly turn the last page."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+MISS BILLY'S DECISION (11th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by
+ Henry W. Moore.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"The story is written in bright, clever style and has plenty of action
+and humor. Miss Billy is nice to know and so are her friends."--_New
+Haven Times Leader._
+
+
+MISS BILLY--MARRIED (8th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by
+ W. Haskell Coffin.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"Although Pollyanna is the only copyrighted glad girl, Miss Billy is
+just as glad as the younger figure and radiates just as much gladness.
+She disseminates joy so naturally that we wonder why all girls are not
+like her."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+SIX STAR RANCH (19th Printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, 12mo, illustrated by R. Farrington Elwell.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"'Six Star Ranch' bears all the charm of the author's genius and
+is about a little girl down in Texas who practices the 'Pollyanna
+Philosophy' with irresistible success. The book is one of the kindliest
+things, if not the best, that the author of the Pollyanna books has
+done. It is a welcome addition to the fast-growing family of _Glad_
+Books."--_Howard Russell Bangs in the Boston Post._
+
+
+CROSS CURRENTS
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.00; _carriage paid_, $1.15
+
+"To one who enjoys a story of life as it is to-day, with its sorrows
+as well as its triumphs, this volume is sure to appeal."--_Book News
+Monthly._
+
+
+THE TURN OF THE TIDE
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.25; _carriage paid_, $1.40
+
+"A very beautiful book showing the influence that went to the
+developing of the life of a dear little girl into a true and good
+woman."--_Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati, Ohio._
+
+
+
+
+  WORKS OF
+  L. M. MONTGOMERY
+  THE FOUR ANNE BOOKS
+
+
+ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (40th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by M. A. and W. A. J. Claus.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"In 'Anne of Green Gables' you will find the dearest and most moving
+and delightful child since the immortal Alice."--_Mark Twain in a
+letter to Francis Wilson._
+
+
+ANNE OF AVONLEA (24th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"A book to lift the spirit and send the pessimist into
+bankruptcy!"--_Meredith Nicholson._
+
+
+CHRONICLES OF AVONLEA (6th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"A story of decidedly unusual conception and interest."--_Baltimore
+Sun._
+
+
+ANNE OF THE ISLAND (10th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by
+ H. Weston Taylor.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"It has been well worth while to watch the growing up of Anne, and the
+privilege of being on intimate terms with her throughout the process
+has been properly valued."--_New York Herald._
+
+
+THE STORY GIRL (9th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"A book that holds one's interest and keeps a kindly smile upon one's
+lips and in one's heart."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._
+
+
+KILMENY OF THE ORCHARD (10th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"A story born in the heart of Arcadia and brimful of the sweet life of
+the primitive environment."--_Boston Herald._
+
+
+THE GOLDEN ROAD (5th printing)
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by George Gibbs.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"It is a simple, tender tale, touched to higher notes, now and then,
+by delicate hints of romance, tragedy and pathos."--_Chicago Record
+Herald._
+
+
+
+
+  NOVELS BY
+  MRS. HENRY BACKUS
+
+THE CAREER OF DOCTOR WEAVER
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated by William Van Dresser.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"High craftsmanship is the leading characteristic of this novel, which,
+like all good novels, is a love story abounding in real palpitant human
+interest. The most startling feature of the story is the way its author
+has torn aside the curtain and revealed certain phases of the relation
+between the medical profession and society."--_Dr. Charles Reed in the
+Lancet Clinic._
+
+
+THE ROSE OF ROSES
+
+Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color.
+
+  _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+The author has achieved a thing unusual in developing a love story
+which adheres to conventions under unconventional circumstances.
+
+"Mrs. Backus' novel is distinguished in the first place for its
+workmanship."--_Buffalo Evening News._
+
+
+  NOVELS BY
+  MARGARET R. PIPER
+
+
+  SYLVIA'S EXPERIMENT: The Cheerful Book
+                       Trade------Mark
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color from a painting by
+ Z. P. Nikolaki. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"An atmosphere of good spirits pervades the book; the humor that
+now and then flashes across the page is entirely natural, and the
+characters are well individualized."--_Boston Post._
+
+
+  SYLVIA OF THE HILL TOP: The Second Cheerful
+  Book                             Trade----Mark
+
+ Cloth decorative, with a frontispiece in full color, from a painting
+ by Gene Pressler. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"There is a world of human nature and neighborhood contentment
+and quaint quiet humor in Margaret R. Piper's second book of good
+cheer."--_Philadelphia North American._
+
+
+MISS MADELYN MACK, DETECTIVE By HUGH C. WEIR.
+
+ Cloth decorative, illustrated. _Net_, $1.35; _carriage paid_, $1.50
+
+"Clever in plot and effective in style, the author has seized on some
+of the most sensational features of modern life, and the result is
+a detective novel that gets away from the beaten track of mystery
+stories."--_New York Sun._
+
+
+
+
+  WORKS OF
+  CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
+
+
+HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCES
+
+ Cloth decorative, with many drawings by Charles Livingston Bull, four
+ of which are in full color . . . . $2.00
+
+The stories in Mr. Roberts's new collection are the strongest and best
+he has ever written.
+
+He has largely taken for his subjects those animals rarely met with
+in books, whose lives are spent "In the Silences," where they are the
+supreme rulers.
+
+"As a writer about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable place. He
+is the most literary, as well as the most imaginative and vivid of all
+the nature writers."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+RED FOX
+
+ THE STORY OF HIS ADVENTUROUS CAREER IN THE RINGWAAK WILDS, AND OF HIS
+ FINAL TRIUMPH OVER THE ENEMIES OF HIS KIND. With fifty illustrations,
+ including frontispiece in color and cover design by Charles Livingston
+ Bull.
+
+Square quarto, cloth decorative . . . . . $2.00
+
+"True in substance but fascinating as fiction. It will interest old and
+young, city-bound and free-footed, those who know animals and those who
+do not."--_Chicago Record Herald._
+
+
+THE KINDRED OF THE WILD
+
+ A BOOK OF ANIMAL LIFE. With fifty-one full-page plates and many
+ decorations from drawings by Charles Livingston Bull.
+
+Square quarto, cloth decorative . . . . . $2.00
+
+"Is in many ways the most brilliant collection of animal stories that
+has appeared; well named and well done."--_John Burroughs._
+
+
+THE WATCHERS OF THE TRAILS
+
+ A companion volume to "The Kindred of the Wild." With forty-eight
+ full-page plates and many decorations from drawings by Charles
+ Livingston Bull.
+
+Square quarto, cloth decorative $2.00
+
+"These stories are exquisite in their refinement, and yet robust in
+their appreciation of some of the rougher phases of woodcraft. Among
+the many writers about animals, Mr. Roberts occupies an enviable
+place."--_The Outlook._
+
+
+
+
+  WORKS OF
+  GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO
+
+Signor d'Annunzio is known throughout the world as a poet and a
+dramatist, but above all as a novelist, for it is in his novels that he
+is at his best. In poetic thought and graceful expression he has few
+equals among the writers of the day.
+
+He is engaged on a most ambitious work--nothing less than the writing
+of nine novels which cover the whole field of human sentiment. This
+work he has divided into three trilogies, and five of the nine books
+have been published. It is to be regretted that other labors have
+interrupted the completion of the series.
+
+"This book is realistic. Some say that it is brutally so. But the
+realism is that of Flaubert, and not of Zola. There is no plain
+speaking for the sake of plain speaking. Every detail is justified
+in the fact that it illuminates either the motives or the actions of
+the man and woman who here stand revealed. It is deadly true. The
+author holds the mirror up to nature, and the reader, as he sees his
+own experiences duplicated in passage after passage, has something of
+the same sensation as all of us know on the first reading of George
+Meredith's 'Egoist.' Reading these pages is like being out in the
+country on a dark night in a storm. Suddenly a flash of lightning comes
+and every detail of your surroundings is revealed."--_Review of "The
+Triumph of Death" in the New York Evening Sun._
+
+The volumes published are as follows. Each 1 vol., library 12mo, cloth
+. . . . . . . . $1.50
+
+
+  _THE ROMANCES OF THE ROSE_
+
+  =THE CHILD OF PLEASURE= (IL PIACERE).
+  =THE INTRUDER= (L'INNOCENTE).
+  =THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH= (IL TRIONFO DELLA
+  MORTE).
+
+  _THE ROMANCES OF THE LILY_
+
+  =THE MAIDENS OF THE ROCKS= (LE VERGINI
+  DELLE ROCCE).
+
+  _THE ROMANCES OF THE POMEGRANATE_
+
+  =THE FLAME OF LIFE= (IL FUOCO).
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+Some words appear in both hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms in
+the original; these variations have been edited for the sake of
+consistency.
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been corrected.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Under the Witches' Moon, by Nathan Gallizier
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44827 ***