“I have given All the gifts required of me―
Hope that blessed me, bliss that crowned,
Love that left me with a wound.”
RAYMOND’S mind wandered at intervals amidst old scenes and vague new bewildering fancies; although, after the first few hours, he recognized Theodore and Giulio, and called them by their names. But he manifested no surprise at being cared for tenderly by Theodore; he seemed to have lost all recollection of their quarrel, and to have gone back to his deliverance from the prison. He evidently confused his transit from the Castle of St. Angelo to the church with the more recent move from the capanno to the osteria, and often he was heard to murmur, “The living took the place of the dead, the dead took the place of the living.” He talked of his mother; and of Viola, showing plainly by what he said that their last interview had been of a satisfactory nature; and he repeated, so frequently that Theodore came to know them by heart, the words which had taken such hold upon his memory, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” Giulio, in his watches by his side, read aloud to him, more than once, the whole of the Gospel from which they are taken, translating it roughly into Italian for his benefit. The monotonous sound seemed to soothe him; but how much, or how little, reached his understanding, was not apparent at the time.
But at last Theodore announced to Giulio with undisguised satisfaction, “I think we shall bring him round. But I have never had a more interesting case, or a more difficult one.”
That evening Raymond looked up, as Theodore stooped over him to administer a cordial. “Theodore, have you forgiven me?” he asked.
“Is not my presence here proof enough of it?” Theodore answered. But he added inwardly, “‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink,’ saith the law of Jehovah.” Going into the outer room, he said to “He is decidedly better tonight. I think I may ride to the city tomorrow and get some things that are needed.” (Giulio had already done so once or twice.) “You know what to do in my absence.”
Giulio readily agreed; and thus he had a long, solitary day with Raymond, who, weak as he still was, undoubtedly felt relieved by the temporary absence of Theodore.
“Giulio,” he said, “there is something I want you to do for me when next you visit the city. Think you―could you venture with safety to the Master’s house on the Esquiline?”
“Undoubtedly, Count Raymond.”
“The few possessions I left there have of course been taken away during my imprisonment. Indeed, most of the books and clothes were sent to me from time to time, and are doubtless lost forever now. There was nothing else of value. Except ―what neither friend nor foe would think worth removing―a figure, in clay, not finished. You will find it in the room where I used to sleep. I left it carefully covered with a cloth of blue and crimson tapestry; but that, being rather costly, may have been taken away.”
“Well, sir, if I find it?”
“Break it into a thousand pieces, if you love me.”
“What! Your own work?”
“My own failure. All unworthy of her whom it pretended to represent. Still, I would not have it touched by rude, unloving hands.” Then after a pause, and with some impetuosity, “My life seems a failure too. Best it were shattered to fragments, like my work, as indeed I thought it would be―until now.”
“Nay, Count Raymond; that must the Maker decide, not the work.”
“I am in a cruel strait. I have unwillingly, yet most really, proved a traitor to Theodore, that best and truest of friends. And he, knowing this, has crushed me altogether by saving my life a second time at the, risk of his own.”
“You are no traitor, Count Raymond. You should not call yourself that which you are not. The just man is just to himself as well as to his neighbor.”
“Nay, but I am. I hold the signorina’s promise. I―”
“Signor, do not trouble yourself to explain. It would only agitate you. I perfectly understand the situation. You are the doctor’s successful rival.”
Raymond bowed his head. “I sometimes wish I could die, and leave the field clear for him,” he said. “Only death could do it―only death.”
“Count Raymond, you talk as if your life were your own, to give or to keep. Many a man is very generous with the property of others. Your life belongs first to God; next, to the noble lady to whom you vowed all that man can vow to woman; after that, to your mother, your friends, your fellow-citizens, and your fellow-men.”
Raymond was silent and pondered. Giulio resumed after a pause, “My good friend and master, Dr. Theodore, is passing through the waters of a deep and bitter sorrow. You have been the occasion of it, but not the cause. You cannot help him now; ―no, not even by your death. The Signorina Viola di Porcaro is not one who would listen to the voice of a new lover with the first scarcely cold in his grave. You would but consign her to the dreary living death of a convent.” (Giulio spoke and felt far too bitterly of institutions which after all were the only refuges for unprotected womanhood in those rough and lawless times.) “But there is One who can help him―the God of his fathers; and think that even now he is seeking Him who never said to the House of Israel, ‘Seek ye my face in vain.’”
“You are mistaken there, Giulio. Theodore does not believe in God. He is a Rationalist―a disciple of Averroës.”
“He was. But it is not so easy to escape from God. Dr. Theodore may say, as did one of his forefathers, ‘Though I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.’”
“The wings of the morning―the golden rays of the rising sun? I think those were what we were taking―ay, and using them to flee from God.”
“How so, Count Raymond?”
“It was all morning with us students. We were as men newly awakened out of a long, deep sleep, and we thought the world around us was awakening too. Our hands had found the priceless stores of ancient learning, art, civilization, and our souls rejoiced over them as over great spoil. We would make them the heritage of all mankind; we would bring back the good old times, which would be indeed the good new times that the whole earth was waiting for. We hoped a world’s redemption from Greek MSS. and Roman antiquities. Ah, Giulio, it was a beautiful dream,” he ended, with a sigh.
“The morning light is always beautiful,” Giulio said.
“But we floated on its beams away from God. We did not want Him in our new world.”
“He wanted you, Count Raymond.”
“Ay, He followed us. We felt His hand in the gloomy dungeon―a terrible hand.”
“When it strikes. But that is its, and His, strange work. Not when it leads. It is written, ‘Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.’ He is leading you now. Resist Him not.”
“Leading me? Ah, whither?”
“Here, to the rest which is the portion of all who trust Him. Hereafter to the ‘many mansions’ prepared for them.”
“If I were quite pure and innocent I might trust God entirely. But do you make no account of our sins?”
“God forbid. Count Raymond, it is with the faithful Christian as it was with you when you escaped from the Castle of St. Angelo. As you often said in your fevered wanderings, ‘The living took the place of the dead, the dead took the place of the living.’ Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us; He took our place and died for us, then were we accounted dead with Him, so that the law has loosed forever its claim upon us, and we stand now in His place, acquitted and delivered. Do you understand?”
“I think so: but the words you read in your book are simpler and sweeter. ‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.’ That is a wonderful book, Giulio. It has made the Lord Christ real to me. ‘God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God begotten,’ as saith the glorious creed my forefathers held so dear, and yet man to the very core and center of man’s wondrous being. Man, not alone hungering, thirsting, wearying―but hoping, fearing, trusting, loving, as you and I do today. It seems no presumption, only the deepest of all joys, to say I love Him, and would follow Him if need were to the world’s end, nay, to the uttermost parts of the sea.”
“Follow Him, and He will lead you to the Father.”
“And to the ‘many mansions.’―Giulio, what do those words mean, ‘If it were not so I would have told you’?”
“That He is truth, Count Raymond. He keeps no promise to the ear to break it to the heart. He hides nothing; He lets us know the dark as well as the light―Hark! don’t you hear horse-hoofs? Here comes Dr. Theodore.”
Theodore wore an inscrutable face, and was very silent as to his adventures in the city, but he brought strengthening food and vine, and in his quiet, reserved way, watched Raymond carefully for the next few days. They were days of steady and rapid improvement. He avoided conversation, and left him in great measure to the society of Giulio, who read much to him. Sometimes Theodore came in during the reading, and requested Giulio to go on. On one of these occasions it happened that he heard the concluding chapter of the Gospel of John. He said, when the reading was finished, “That is a fine episode in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. It was Simon Peter who denied Him.”
“He whom they call the prince of the Apostles, and whose pretended successors claim infallibility,” said Giulio; and this time he spoke unadvisedly, for he crossed the current of Theodore’s not unprofitable thoughts with another thought, which had no special meaning or message for him.
“Yes,” answered Theodore, “you Christians have distorted the whole story so hopelessly with your mythological legends, that Jesus and Peter look like monstrous unreal shapes looming through a mist, instead of living human beings. That story is quite human, however. If indeed His nature was not more than human for sweetness and for nobleness, who, cut to the heart by the base treachery of a friend, could not only fling him a scornful ‘I forgive you,’ but win from his lips that threefold profession of love, charge him to do for Him the work that lay nearest to His heart, and assure him he should one day conquer the very temptation that had conquered him, and die for the Lord he had denied. It is not thus that men forgive each other nowadays.”
Raymond knew what was passing in the soul of his friend, and his heart yearned towards him. He stretched out his hand to him with a pleading look.
But Theodore shook his head. “Not yet,” he answered coldly but sadly. “I cannot change my own heart, Raymond; but I will do for you all that becomes a man. Listen. You are now convalescent, and there is little danger of a relapse; so I venture to tell you tidings which I have been keeping back since my return from the city the other day. I am not like the false mother who said to King Solomon of the living child, ‘Let it be neither hers nor mine, but rather slay it.’ I went to the Palazzo Porcaro, and I found that the Signorina’s kindred are redoubling their efforts to drive her into a convent. They imagine the Pope has taken umbrage at her presence there, and recent events have made them terribly afraid of his Holiness. You must go in person and solve the difficulty ere it be too late. They will be glad enough to give her to you, as the easiest way out of all their perplexities. But there is no time to be lost.”
“Oh, most generous of friends how can I thank you? But” ―the color faded from his cheek― “how dare I invite her to share my friendless poverty?”
“The Greek professor at Montpellier is dead. You are very young, but your reputation is brilliant, and your misfortunes will not lessen it. I make no doubt you can have his place for the asking, and I will give you a letter which will secure it. I tell you all this not for your sake, but first because it is right, and then because it seems the only chance of happiness left to the Signorina Viola; and whatever I may have suffered I hope I am not coward enough to revenge myself upon her. Go to Rome tomorrow―you are able to travel now, and will be better out of this place ―I will lend you any money that may be necessary, but for other help you must depend upon your own resources. The Porcari, as I have said, will make little opposition, or none, and the priest you wot of will do all you need quietly in the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. A ship in which my father has a venture will leave Ostia in a few days for Marseilles. If you need any further directions, you are not the man I think you. As for me, I am going to Venice, because I long after my father’s house. Giulio, I desire your help and companionship. Pack up what we have here, and follow me tomorrow; I make the first stage of my journey alone this afternoon.”
“I will do all you have said; and I wish I had the power to utter the thanks I owe you,” said Raymond, greatly moved.
An hour afterward Theodore was in the saddle. Raymond came out and once more entreated with touching earnestness that he would give him his hand in token of complete reconciliation.
Theodore extended it, saying, “I give it as a pledge that I have acted towards thee in truth and uprightness. I have done for thee all that man can do for man. And so farewell. God prosper thee.”