“To be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness on the brain.”
THE rapture of recovered freedom was delicious, but it might be dangerous. Not long did Theodore allow Raymond to indulge it. He took him to the sacristy, and furnished him with clothing, supplied by the friendly priest, and therefore likely to prove a safe and suitable disguise. Then he brought him to his own lodging, which was nigh at hand. His inclination had led him to Trastevere, a quarter of the city in which many of his brethren resided; while his ample means enabled him to provide himself with handsome apartments in the Lungaretta, the best street of the locality. As they passed along, the August sun flashed up in glory, and Raymond grew faint and dizzy with the unaccustomed splendor. His friend supported his tottering footsteps, until at last they reached a quiet room, with blinds closely drawn, where Giulio stood waiting to welcome them, having divested himself of the hideous black cloak and hood of the becchino. Raymond grasped his hand, and poured out fervent thanks for his share in the rescue.
“Thank God, signor,” was the answer. “I have but fulfilled the will of my master, and he has but fulfilled the will of God.”
“That is more than I say for myself, good Giulio,” said Theodore.
“You will say it one day, signor doctor,” returned Giulio quietly, as he left the room.
Then, for the first time, Raymond tried to find words for his gratitude to Theodore.
“Truest of friends hast thou been to me,” he said.
“You would have done as much in my place,” replied Theodore; “you, who are no son of Israel. As for us, our loves and our hates are alike intense, and they last from generation to generation.”
“One word, dearest Theodore. How fares my mother?”
“She has been ill; but the news of thy deliverance will be her best medicine. Fain would she have come hither to plead thy cause in person with the Pope; but my father withheld her, telling her it would not serve thee. Nor would it have done so.”
“I will go to her. And the sooner I go the better. In all probability my escape will be discovered this morning, and search will be made for me. I shall endanger you.”
“It is but too certain you must leave Rome, and that immediately. But not for Venice. The Pope is a Venetian, and the Signory, for a miracle, are but too complaisant to his Holiness at present. They have allowed him to get into his clutches your master, Pomponius Laetus, for whom you have all suffered more than he deserves.”
“Say not that, Theodore.”
“Well, perhaps I need not. Why should a man be a martyr for old-world habits, and uncertain speculations, and curious Latinity? Or for aught else, indeed?”
“Save for friendship,” said Raymond.
“Or love.”
“True; for love. But to return to your matters. The heat is fierce; you cannot travel until nightfall. Still, as you may be sought for in the city during the day, it is best we should agree upon some lonely spot―say in the Borghese Gardens―where I can find you tonight, and bring you what is necessary for your journey.”
“But whither can I go, if not to Venice?”
“Back with me to Montpellier.”
There followed a discussion of some length, and Raymond, while he talked and listened, partook with his friend of a more hearty meal than he had enjoyed since his imprisonment. He was disposed to anticipate, with hope and pleasure, the long journey before him; and he had reasons of his own for wishing to visit Languedoc, which had ever been with him the land of romance and dreams.
“It is strange enough,” he said, “that I am bound by a solemn promise to go thither one day―and why not now?”
“You never told me about that.”
“I told no one; that too was a promise, though meant, I suppose, only to bind my heedless youth. From thee, and now, I can have no secrets. One of my forefathers, a crusading knight, has bequeathed to our family a legend about a treasure buried in the garden of his ancestral home. My grandfather, on his deathbed, made me promise to go and seek for it one day. Should I succeed it will be doubly welcome, now that I am as bare of this world’s goods as when I came into it. Even my clothes and my books I can never hope to see again.”
With the happy light heartedness of youth he laughed at his own destitution, more than satisfied with the one priceless jewel he had won back―the pearl of freedom.
“Giulio, though an Italian by birth, has gone up and down in Languedoc for many a year, and knows every rood of the land. And you may trust him utterly. It were well therefore to take him into counsel. Have you any clear indication of the spot where this treasure is supposed to be?”
“Yes; an exact description, which I have always worn about my person, though I have not read it for years. In fact, it is in the Romance tongue, which I could not easily understand. Here it is.”
He took from its place the little silken bag that contained his treasures; and as he drew out his reliquary out of it, the half circle of silver fell upon the table.
Then there swept over the face of Theodore one of those swift, sudden changes possible only to the children of the fiery East. He touched the toy with a trembling finger, and said, in tones that scarcely seemed his own―
“Whence comes that, Count Raymond?” Raymond was not looking up.
“Oh, that?” he answered with a blush and a smile, for in this happy hour his whole soul was flung open to the sunshine, and secret hopes and aspirations blossomed into instantaneous flower under the magic of its touch. “Don’t you remember, long ago, when we were boys at the Academy of Venice, how we one day succored a distressed damsel in the Piazza San Marco?”
“Allow me to correct you, Count Raymond; you were a boy, I was a man.”
“That day I picked up this, and stored it as a relic; and then I sought once and again, with boyish admiration, a sight of the sweet face of her whose hand it had touched. But soon we were parted; I came hither, as thou knowest, to complete my studies.”
“Was there no highborn Roman lady amongst the Orsini, the Savelli, the Colonna, the Rovere who were Count Raymond’s daily associates, upon whom he could have fixed his wandering fancy?”
“Oh I had wandering fancies enough; I blush to own it. Six times at least I imagined myself in love. Until she came―and then I knew the gold from the tinsel. For these things a man has no words. This only will I say, with Viola di Porcaro yesterday’s dungeon would have been a Paradise; without her, or the hope of winning her, today’s freedom would be a dungeon.”
“Count Raymond, I have heard your story. Now hear mine.”
“My friend,―my friend,―what has happened?” cried Raymond, horror-stricken at the look in his companion’s face.
“Only what happens every day between Jew and Christian,” said Theodore with intense bitterness. “Another edition of the old parable Nathan told David. Moreover, a little touch is added which rather heightens the effect. The poor man had just saved the rich man’s life at some risk to himself.”
“Dearest Theodore!” cried Raymond in great distress, as the truth broke at last upon his mind. “I never dreamed of this! How could I?”
“How could you not? Were you not aware that I ministered to her every need, and to those of her grandfather? That I was there every day?”
“You forget that I left Venice nearly a year before you did.”
“I forget nothing.” He rose, unlocked a strong box that lay upon a cabinet at one side of the room, and took out a half-ring of silver corresponding exactly with Raymond’s. “I too have kept my token since that day,” he said, “though I cannot boast, like a lovesick boy, of wearing it next my heart.”
The taunt was but a dash of spray flung up from the fount of bitterness that slumbers in the depths of every strong human heart.
“I never dreamed you had it,” Raymond said with truth.
“I think you might have dreamed―but let that pass,” Theodore resumed in a gentler tone. “I have heard you―now hear me. As for you, you own you have had six fancies―this is the seventh. As for me, I have known since manhood dawned this one passion, this one hope―no other. To become worthy of Viola di Porcaro I have toiled, and striven, and endured. I have won successes in the schools, stooped to pick up honors my heart despised, turned my lemming into gold and glory for her sake. But, you will tell me, I am a Jew―what chance has one of the accursed race against untainted blood, Christian faith? Not so fast, Count Raymond Chalcondyles. Remember, she too belongs, by birth, to the ranks of the outlawed―her father died on the gibbet in the Castle of St. Angelo, and he died unshriven. Moreover, she is poor and friendless; her kinsfolk (curse them!) care for her but little, may force her, any day, to enter a convent. But were the distance between us ten times greater, I will try what courage, faith, patience, and the skill that is born of thought and experience can do to bridge it over. Thus have I sworn. Now, Count Raymond, are we to be friends or foes?”
Raymond’s head drooped on his hands. The alternative was very bitter. On the one side, ingratitude to the friend who had just saved him from a fate worse than death―on the other, abandonment of his dearest earthly hopes. Which should he give up, Theodore or Viola? Still, the man’s heart could find but one answer.
Once more he raised his head, and the two gazed steadfastly, each in the other’s face. Characters of race never seen before, at least by Raymond, had now become visible in Theodore’s―a look of resistance, fierce, determined, sullen, as of a creature brought to bay and fighting to the last―a look, not quite of hatred, but still the look of a man who could hate with unspeakable intensity. It was he who spoke first.
“Count Raymond, I have loved you more than brother loves brother; yet, should you bar my way here, I tell you I will strike you from my path―if I can.”
“And I,” said Raymond—for his spirit was kindling too— “I will refer my cause to her who alone has the right to decide between us.”
“What! As you are? A hunted fugitive? But do what you please, I do not pretend to control your actions,” returned Theodore, with the coldness that covers strong passion.
“But do not let us part in wrath,” Raymond pleaded.
“There is no question of wrath. Only, I do not suppose the poor man in the parable regarded his wealthy neighbor with very lively affection.”
Theodore feared. Raymond as a rival exceedingly; strange compound as he was of pride and humility, he greatly undervalued his own personal advantages, and thought the brilliant, beautiful young Greek must be well-nigh irresistible. Sorely tempted was he to hate him for it. The power to love implies a corresponding capability of jealousy, as strong light implies deep shadow. Moreover, the ancient prophetic doom of his race rang in his ears, and sounded like a knell to his heart. “Thou shalt be only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee. Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall take her; thou shalt build a house, and thou shalt not dwell therein; thou shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof. Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long and there shall be no might in thine hand.” So long had he brooded, in the depths of his angry soul, upon oppression, violence, and wrong, that his eye could see naught else, whithersoever it turned, but the sombre hues to which it was accustomed. The natural interest which Viola, with all her kindred, had evinced in the fate of Raymond was now transformed into the evidence of a very different feeling. And Raymond’s silence on the subject at their first meeting, which was no more singular than his own, became an evidence of deep and treacherous design.
“So it was for this I rescued you,” he resumed at last. “Be it so. Try the power of your fair face, your soft eyes, your pleading voice—ay, even your misfortunes, against the sour-faced, world-hardened Jew physician, with his furred robe and gold-headed cane. Tell the signorina how you dreamed of her bright eyes in the dungeon of St. Angelo, while your rival lost his time dreaming of you and your resale. To be sure you have at present no fortune to outweigh the certainty of a very comfortable establishment at Montpellier; but you have a buried treasure somewhere, if you can only find it.”
“Not from any other in the whole world would I hear such words,” said Raymond. “And even from you I will hear no more of them. While we talk time passes. Every moment increases my danger, and yours, if I am found here. I have no longer the right to imperil you; and so, farewell. May God have you in His keeping, and may He show you my innocence towards you.”
“God?” Theodore repeated, in a tone of bitter incredulity that revealed too clearly the real root of his want of faith in man. Ere the mocking echo of the word had died away Raymond was gone past recall.
The old cobbler who sat at the comer between the Lungaretta and the Piazza di Santa Maria paused in the song with which he lightened his toil, to observe to his friend the fruit seller, “See that poor young priest with the sad face hurrying up the street, keeping on the sunny side too, as if he were a dog or a foreigner. Per Bacco! he will have a sunstroke.”
“He is going, no doubt, to some dying man. Stay him not.”
“Ay, stay him not. I warrant me it is to someone who has been stabbed in a fray.”
Then, with admirable consistency, the two friends together beset Raymond. “A bunch of grapes for a baiocco! Two pears for a mezzo-baiocco!” ― “Mend your reverence’s shoes for a couple of baiocchi.” While half-a-dozen idle bystanders chimed in, and began to whine out their petitions for charity “for the sake of God and the blessed Virgin.”
Raymond, hearing the word “baiocco,” a sound too familiar to all sojourners in Rome, mechanically thrust his hands into the pockets of his soutane, to perform what every Roman who had a pocket was taught to consider the first of Christian and social duties. Their absolute emptiness seemed to startle him; but he only shook his head, and walked rapidly on, pursued by a torrent of words which, it is to be feared, were not blessings; at least, the sound of “apoplexy” was distinctly audible more than once. He passed quickly through the Piazza, never halting until he reached the door of Santa Maria. Then, after a moment’s pause, he ascended the steps, and plunged out of the blazing sunlight into the darkness of the grand old church.
For an instant its antique legend flashed across his mind, as irrelevant thoughts are wont to do in hours of intense excitement. Here, it was said, had a fountain of oil sprung up miraculously on the same day that the oil of joy for the whole toiling suffering world had been poured forth in the birth, far away, of the Babe of Bethlehem. With slackened pace he ascended the seven steps that led to the transept, and then stood looking at the worn inscription in the pavement, “Fons olei,” which indicated the cite of the alleged miracle. But no marvel of the distant past could hold him long from thoughts of the nearer past of his own brief history, when he used to haunt that church for a glimpse of Viola. He felt as though it would still the tumult within him to breathe a prayer where she had prayed so often.
At an altar near that of St. Philip and St. James a priest was doing something, and a few market women and contadini were kneeling around muttering prayers. Raymond went forward and knelt amongst them, and from his confused troubled spirit, darkened though it was with a heavy cloud of ignorance, there arose a murmur, like the lisping of a child, to One great and good, who, as he dimly hoped, would hear and help him.
As he rose his eye sought out a well-known object, one of the curious antique columns that supported the church, conspicuous amongst the others for its size and for the representations of heathen deities that adorned its Ionic capital. Behind this pillar, as he well knew, had been interred, not inappropriately, the remains of the breve old Roman, Stefano Porcaro, though even the hand of affection had not dared to mark the plain slab that covered them, save with a cross, two letters, and a date. And now, beside that grave, two persons were standing, apparently in earnest conversation ―Viola di Porcaro herself, and Theodore’s servant Giulio.
Viola wore, as usual, her dress of deep mourning; but her sweet face shone with an animation he had nevar seen in it before. The fawn-eyed, frightened child of the Piazza San Marco was a woman now―a grave, thoughtful woman, with a bromo shadowed evermore by the reflection of a great sorrow. She looked like one whose heart
“Sat silent thro’ the noise
And concourse of the street.”
Very beautiful indeed she was, but not with the rich beauty of the Roman maid, ripened by the kiss of southern suns. Viola was a flower that had grown in the shade―she had the delicacy, the grave, the fragrance of her namesake. Raymond stood and, gazed; indemnifying himself by that gaze for the lonely months that had been―the lonely years that were to be, if his foreboding heart spoke true.
And there, all the time, stood the grave, mysterious scholar whom Theodore called his servant; no doubt delivering messages from him, and pleading his cause. It was a pity that Raymond’s delicate sense of honor kept him just outside earshot, or he might have been undeceived. The words that had such power to bring the light to Viola’s eye and the color to her cheek were not those of earthly hope or love. But this Raymond could not guess. As he watched and waited the fire burned in his heart. If Theodore all this time had been working for himself, then his hands were unbound, he might do the same. He was a hunted fugitive―yesterday a prisoner, tomorrow an exile―he had suffered long and terribly. Was not the poor man free to ask an alms, the traveler free to beg a “God speed” to help him on his way? And yet, poor as he was, it might be that fortune had left him somewhat to offer that Viola di Porcaro might not quite disdain. Had he not a true heart, a princely name, a buried treasure?
Meanwhile Giulio bowed respectfully, and moved away. As he reached the door, a contadina, leading a child by the hand, dipped her finger in the vessel of holy water, crossed herself on the forehead, and did the same to the little one; then she stepped courteously aside to allow the stranger to perform the pious ceremony. This, however, Giulio chose to decline, but that he might do so with leas observation, he turned back for a moment into the church, and thus it happened that he saw Raymond and Viola standing together, hand clasped in hand.