"You know not what it may import." And then she turned to Fra Gervasio.
"Who was this mendicant?" she asked.
He had by now recovered from his erstwhile confusion. But he was still pale, and I observed that his hand trembled.
"He must have been one of the two little brothers of St. Francis on their way, they said, from Milan to Loreto on a pilgrimage."
"Not those you told me are resting here until to-morrow?"
From his face I saw that he would have denied it had it lain within his power to utter a deliberate falsehood.
"They are the same," he answered in a low voice.
She rose. "I must see this friar," she announced, and never in all my life had I beheld in her such a display of emotion.
"In the morning, then," said Fra Gervasio. "It is after sunset," he explained. "They have retired, and their rule..." He left the sentence unfinished, but he had said enough to be understood by her.
She sank back to her chair, folded her hands in her lap and fell into meditation. The faintest of flushes crept into her wax-like cheeks.
"If it should be a sign!" she murmured raptly, and then she turned again to Fra Gervasio. "You heard Agostino say that he could not bear this friar"s gaze. You remember, brother, how a pilgrim appeared near San Rufino to the nurse of Saint Francis, and took from her arms the child that he might bless it ere once more he vanished? If this should be a sign such as that!"
She clasped her hands together fervently. "I must see this friar ere he departs again," she said to the staring, dumbfounded Fra Gervasio.
At last, then, I understood her emotion. All her life she had prayed for a sign of grace for herself or for me, and she believed that here at last was something that might well be discovered upon inquiry to be an answer to her prayer. This capuchin who had stared at me from the courtyard became at once to her mind--so ill-balanced upon such matters--a supernatural visitant, harbinger, as it were, of my future saintly glory.
But though she rose betimes upon the morrow, to see the holy man ere he fared forth again, she was not early enough. In the courtyard whither she descended to make her way to the outhouse where the two were lodged, she met Fra Gervasio, who was astir before her.
"The friar?" she cried anxiously, filled already with forebodings. "The holy man?"
Gervasio stood before her, pale and trembling. "You are too late, Madonna. Already he is gone."
She observed his agitation now, and beheld in it a reflection of her own, springing from the selfsame causes. "Oh, it was a sign indeed!"
she exclaimed. "And you have come to realize it, too, I see." Next, in a burst of grat.i.tude that was almost pitiful upon such slight foundation, "Oh, blessed Agostino!" she cried out.
Then the momentary exaltation fell from that woman of sorrows. "This but makes my burden heavier, my responsibility greater," she wailed. "G.o.d help me bear it!"
Thus pa.s.sed that incident so trifling in itself and so misunderstood by her. But it was never forgotten, and from time to time she would allude to it as the sign which had been vouchsafed me and for which great should be my thankfulness and my joy.
Save for that, in the four years that followed, time flowed an uneventful course within the four walls of the big citadel--for beyond those four walls I was never once permitted to set foot; and although from time to time I heard rumours of doings in the town itself, of the affairs of the State whereof I was by right of birth the tyrant, and of the greater business of the big world beyond, yet so trained and schooled was I that I had no great desire for a nearer acquaintance with that world.
A certain curiosity did at times beset me, spurred not so much by the little that I heard as by things that I read in such histories as my studies demanded I should read. For even the lives of saints, and Holy Writ itself, afford their student glimpses of the world. But this curiosity I came to look upon as a lure of the flesh, and to resist.
Blessed are they who are out of all contact with the world, since to them salvation comes more easily; so I believed implicitly, as I was taught by my mother and by Fra Gervasio at my mother"s bidding.
And as the years pa.s.sed under such influences as had been at work upon me from the cradle, influences which had known no check save that brief one afforded by Gino Falcone, I became perforce devout and pious from very inclination.
Joyous transports were afforded me by the study of the life of that Saint Luigi of the n.o.ble Mantuan House of Gonzaga--in whom I saw an ideal to be emulated, since he seemed to me to be much in my own case and of my own estate--who had counted the illusory greatness of this world well lost so that he might win the bliss of Paradise. Similarly did I take delight in the Life, written by Tommaso da Celano, of that blessed son of Pietro Bernardone, the merchant of a.s.sisi, that Francis who became the Troubadour of the Lord and sang so sweetly the praises of His Creation. My heart would swell within me and I would weep hot and very bitter tears over the narrative of the early and sinful part of his life, as we may weep to see a beloved brother beset by deadly perils.
And greater, hence, was the joy, the exultation, and finally the sweet peace and comfort that I gathered from the tale of his conversion, of his wondrous works, and of the Three Companions.
In these pages--so lively was my young imagination and so wrought upon by what I read--I suffered with him again his agonies of hope, I thrilled with some of the joy of his stupendous ecstasies, and I almost envied him the signal mark of Heavenly grace that had imprinted the stigmata upon his living body.
All that concerned him, too, I read: his Little Flowers, his Testament, The Mirror of Perfection; but my greatest delight was derived from his Song of the Creatures, which I learnt by heart.
Oftentimes since have I wondered and sought to determine whether it was the piety of those lauds that charmed me spiritually, or an appeal to my senses made by the beauty of the lines and the imagery which the a.s.sisian used in his writings.
Similarly I am at a loss to determine whether the pleasure I took in reading of the joyous, perfumed life of that other stigmatized saint, the blessed Catherine of Siena, was not a sensuous pleasure rather than the soul-ecstasy I supposed it at the time.
And as I wept over the early sins of St. Francis, so too did I weep over the rhapsodical Confessions of St. Augustine, that mighty theologian after whom I had been named, and whose works--after those concerning St.
Francis--exerted a great influence upon me in those early days.
Thus did I grow in grace until Fra Gervasio, who watched me narrowly and anxiously, seemed more at ease, setting aside the doubts that earlier had tormented him lest I should be forced upon a life for which I had no vocation. He grew more tender and loving towards me, as if something of pity lurked within the strong affection in which he held me.
And, meanwhile, as I grew in grace of spirit, so too did I grow in grace of body, waxing tall and very strong, which would have been nowise surprising but that those nurtured as was I are seldom l.u.s.ty. The mind feeding overmuch upon the growing body is apt to sap its strength and vigour, besides which there was the circ.u.mstance that I continued throughout those years a life almost of confinement, deprived of all the exercises by which youth is brought to its fine flower of strength.
As I was approaching my eighteenth year there befell another incident, which, trivial in itself, yet has its place in my development and so should have its place within these confessions. Nor did I judge it trivial at the time--nor were trivial the things that followed out of it--trivial though it may seem to me to-day as I look back upon it through all the murk of later life.
Giojoso, the seneschal, of whom I have spoken, had a son, a great raw-boned lad whom he would have trained as an amanuensis, but who was one of Nature"s dunces out of which there is nothing useful to be made.
He was strong-limbed, however, and he was given odd menial duties to perform about the castle. But these he shirked where possible, as he had shirked his lessons in earlier days.
Now it happened that I was walking one spring morning--it was in May of that year "44 of which I am now writing--on the upper of the three s.p.a.cious terraces that formed the castle garden. It was but an indifferently tended place, and yet perhaps the more agreeable on that account, since Nature had been allowed to have her prodigal, luxuriant way. It is true that the great boxwood hedges needed tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and that weeds were sprouting between the stones of the flights of steps that led from terrace to terrace; but the place was gay and fragrant with wild blossoms, and the great trees afforded generous shade, and the long rank gra.s.s beneath them made a pleasant couch to lie on during the heat of the day in summer. The lowest terrace of all was in better case. It was a well-planted and well-tended orchard, where I got many a colic in my earlier days from a gluttony of figs and peaches whose complete ripening I was too impatient to await.
I walked there, then, one morning quite early on the upper terrace immediately under the castle wall, and alternately I read from the De Civitate Dei which I had brought with me, alternately mused upon the matter of my reading. Suddenly I was disturbed by a sound of voices just below me.
The boxwood hedge, being twice my height and fully two feet thick, entirely screened the speakers from my sight.
There were two voices, and one of these, angry and threatening, I recognized for that of Rinolfo--Messer Giojoso"s graceless son; the other, a fresh young feminine voice, was entirely unknown to me; indeed it was the first girl"s voice I could recall having heard in all my eighteen years, and the sound was as pleasantly strange as it was strangely pleasant.
I stood quite still, to listen to its expostulations.
"You are a cruel fellow, Ser Rinolfo, and Madonna the Countess shall be told of this."
There followed a crackling of twigs and a rush of heavy feet.
"You shall have something else of which to tell Madonna"s beat.i.tude,"
threatened the harsh voice of Rinolfo.
That and his advances were answered by a frightened screech, a screech that moved rapidly to the right as it was emitted. There came more snapping of twigs, a light scurrying sound followed by a heavier one, and lastly a panting of breath and a soft pattering of running feet upon the steps that led up to the terrace where I walked.
I moved forward rapidly to the opening in the hedge where these steps debouched, and no sooner had I appeared there than a soft, lithe body hurtled against me so suddenly that my arms mechanically went round it, my right hand still holding the De Civitate Dei, forefinger enclosed within its pages to mark the place.
Two moist dark eyes looked up appealingly into mine out of a frightened but very winsome, sun-tinted face.
"O Madonnino!" she panted. "Protect me! Save me!"
Below us, checked midway in his furious ascent, halted Rinolfo, his big face red with anger, scowling up at me in sudden doubt and resentment.
The situation was not only extraordinary in itself, but singularly disturbing to me. Who the girl was, or whence she came, I had no thought or notion as I surveyed her. She would be of about my own age, or perhaps a little younger, and from her garb it was plain that she belonged to the peasant cla.s.s. She wore a spotless bodice of white linen, which but indifferently concealed the ripening swell of her young breast. Her petticoat, of dark red homespun, stopped short above her bare brown ankles, and her little feet were naked. Her brown hair, long and abundant, was still fastened at the nape of her slim neck, but fell loose beyond that, having been disturbed, no doubt, in her scuffle with Rinolfo. Her little mouth was deeply red and it held strong young teeth that were as white as milk.
I have since wondered whether she was as beautiful as I deemed her in that moment. For it must be remembered that mine was the case of the son of Filippo Balducci--related by Messer Boccaccio in the merry tales of his Decamerone 1--who had come to years of adolescence without ever having beheld womanhood, so that the first sight of it in the streets of Florence affected him so oddly that he vexed his sire with foolish questions and still more foolish prayers.
1 In the Introduction to the Fourth Day.