Rienzi, the Last of the Roman Tribunes by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best summer reads .txt) 📗

It was upon that same evening, and while the earlier stars yet shone over the city, that Walter de Montreal, returning, alone, to the convent then associated with the church of Santa Maria del Priorata (both of which belonged to the Knights of the Hospital, and in the first of which Montreal had taken his lodgment), paused amidst the ruins and desolation which lay around his path. Thou little skilled in the classic memories and associations of the spot, he could not but be impressed with the surrounding witnesses of departed empire; the vast skeleton, as it were, of the dead giantess.

“Now,” thought he, as he gazed around upon the roofless columns and shattered walls, everywhere visible, over which the starlight shone, ghastly and transparent, backed by the frowning and embattled fortresses of the Frangipani, half hid by the dark foliage that sprung up amidst the very fanes and palaces of old—Nature exulting over the frailer Art; “now,” thought he, “bookmen would be inspired, by this scene, with fantastic and dreaming visions of the past. But to me these monuments of high ambition and royal splendour create only images of the future. Rome may yet be, with her seven-hilled diadem, as Rome has been before, the prize of the strongest hand and the boldest warrior,—revived, not by her own degenerate sons, but the infused blood of a new race. William the Bastard could scarce have found the hardy Englishers so easy a conquest as Walter the Well-born may find these eunuch Romans. And which conquest were the more glorious,—the barbarous Isle, or the Metropolis of the World? Short step from the general to the podesta—shorter step from the podesta to the king!”

While thus revolving his wild, yet not altogether chimerical ambition, a quick light step was heard amidst the long herbage, and, looking up, Montreal perceived the figure of a tall female descending from that part of the hill then covered by many convents, towards the base of the Aventine. She supported her steps with a long staff, and moved with such elasticity and erectness, that now, as her face became visible by the starlight, it was surprising to perceive that it was the face of one advanced in years,—a harsh, proud countenance, withered, and deeply wrinkled, but not without a certain regularity of outline.

“Merciful Virgin!” cried Montreal, starting back as that face gleamed upon him: “is it possible? It is she:—it is—”

He sprung forward, and stood right before the old woman, who seemed equally surprised, though more dismayed, at the sight of Montreal.

“I have sought thee for years,” said the Knight, first breaking the silence; “years, long years,—thy conscience can tell thee why.”

“Mine, man of blood!” cried the female, trembling with rage or fear; “darest thou talk of conscience? Thou, the dishonourer—the robber—the professed homicide! Thou, disgrace to knighthood and to birth! Thou, with the cross of chastity and of peace upon thy breast! Thou talk of conscience, hypocrite!—thou?”

“Lady—lady!” said Montreal, deprecatingly, and almost quailing beneath the fiery passion of that feeble woman, “I have sinned against thee and thine. But remember all my excuses!—early love—fatal obstacles—rash vow—irresistible temptation! Perhaps,” he added, in a more haughty tone, “perhaps, yet, I may have the power to atone my error, and wring, with mailed hand, from the successor of St Peter, who hath power to loose as to bind—”

“Perjured and abandoned!” interrupted the female; “dost thou dream that violence can purchase absolution, or that thou canst ever atone the past?—a noble name disgraced, a father’s broken heart and dying curse! Yes, that curse, I hear it now! it rings upon me thrillingly, as when I watched the expiring clay! it cleaves to thee—it pursues thee—it shall pierce thee through thy corselet—it shall smite thee in the meridian of thy power! Genius wasted—ambition blasted—penitence deferred—a life of brawls, and a death of shame—thy destruction the offspring of thy crime!—To this, to this, an old man’s curse hath doomed thee!—AND THOU ART DOOMED!”

These words were rather shrieked than spoken: and the flashing eye, the lifted hand, the dilated form of the speaker—the hour—the solitude of the ruins around—all conspired to give to the fearful execration the character of prophecy. The warrior, against whose undaunted breast a hundred spears had shivered in vain, fell appalled and humbled to the ground. He seized the hem of his fierce denouncer’s robe, and cried, in a choked and hollow voice, “Spare me! spare me!”

“Spare thee!” said the unrelenting crone; “hast thou ever spared man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust!—crouch—crouch!—wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour;—crouch, that the foot of the old and impotent may spurn thee!”

“Hag!” cried Montreal, in the reaction of sudden fury and maddened pride, springing up to the full height of his stature. “Hag! thou hast passed the limits to which, remembering who thou art, my forbearance gave thee licence. I had well-nigh forgot that thou hadst assumed my part—I am the Accuser! Woman!—the boy!—shrink not! equivocate not! lie not!—thou wert the thief!”

“I was. Thou taughtest me the lesson how to steal a—”

“Render—restore him!” interrupted Montreal, stamping on the ground with such force that the splinters of the marble fragments on which he stood shivered under his armed heel.

The woman little heeded a violence at which the fiercest warrior of Italy might have trembled; but she did not make an immediate answer. The character of her countenance altered from passion into an expression of grave, intent, and melancholy thought. At length she replied to Montreal; whose hand had wandered to his dagger-hilt, with the instinct of long habit, whenever enraged or thwarted, rather than from any design of blood; which, stern and vindictive as he was, he would have been incapable of forming against any woman,—much less against the one then before him.

“Walter de Montreal,” said she, in a voice so calm that it almost sounded like that of compassion, “the boy, I think, has never known brother or sister: the only child of a once haughty and lordly race, on both sides, though now on both dishonoured—nay, why so impatient? thou wilt soon learn the worst—the boy is dead!”

“Dead!” repeated Montreal, recoiling and growing pale; “dead!—no, no—say not that! He has a mother,—you know he has!—a fond, meekhearted, anxious, hoping mother!—no!—no, he is not dead!”

“Thou canst feel, then, for a mother?” said the old woman, seemingly touched by the tone of the Provencal. “Yet, bethink thee; is it not better that the grave should save him from a life of riot, of bloodshed, and of crime? Better to sleep with God than to wake with the fiends!”

“Dead!” echoed Montreal; “dead!—the pretty one!—so young!—those eyes—the mother’s eyes—closed so soon?”

“Hast thou aught else to say? Thy sight scares my very womanhood from my soul!—let me be gone.”

“Dead!—may I believe thee? or dost thou mock me? Thou hast uttered thy curse, hearken to my warning:—If thou hast lied in this, thy last hour shall dismay thee, and thy death-bed shall be the death-bed of despair!”