Kitabı oku: «The Hill of Venus», sayfa 17

Book the Fifth
THE APOSTACY

CHAPTER I
A LEGEND

OUT into the open caverns of the night Francesco and Ilaria rode. Their eyes still roved from the fading city to the great ships stealing over the water. Their tall masts rose against the last gleaming cranny of the west. Beyond them the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed with aureoles of transient fire. Even in the half-gloom they could see a vague glittering movement on the slopes behind Astura, a glitter that told of armed men marching from the hills, while shadowy ships seemed striding, solemn and silent, out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water. Sudden out of the gloom leaped the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from the hills. A vague clamor came from the shore. In Astura torches were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell boomed and clashed; then like giants' ghosts the ships crept out to sea, sable and strange against the fading west.

As Francesco turned, sick at heart, he met Ilaria's eyes. Her sweet, proud face was near him once again, overtopping his manhood. The moonbeams played upon her dusky hair.

The silence was intense. Only the pounding of their horses' feet beat insistent clamor into the stillness of the night.

The trees and bushes began to mass themselves into denser shadow against the tinge of ghostly starlight.

Now her face was very close to his.

"At times I feel as if we had lived very, very long ago, – ages and ages ago, when the world was young and only the moon and the stars were old. None walked upon the earth save we two and the world and its beauty was for us alone. Dusky forests covered the land, where strange flowers bloomed, where strange birds sang. Beneath the sunken light of a seared moon we walked hand in hand." —

A great wave of misery swept over him.

"I love you, – I love you," he whispered hoarsely. "Heart of my heart, that is the tale, a tale of three words, which is yet larger than any tale that was ever said or sung. Do you know what this must mean to you and me?"

She drew herself away from him.

"You love me," she repeated, not questioningly, but as one stating a fact. "Yet such love is not for you and me! All men, all circumstances would try to part us!"

"But why? But why?" he cried. "Ilaria, I love you with a love that must last through life and death and all that lies beyond. So, since I am what I must be, I place my life into your hands for good or evil."

He kissed her, then looked hungrily into her eyes.

She gave a wan smile.

"Dear, do not grieve!" she said. "I have always loved you, love you now and think it no shame. Had you consented to become my lover, the man I love had died! What I love best in you, is what held you far!"

"Ilaria!" he cried, loosening the horses' reins, "what is there between you and Stefano Maconi?"

She breathed hard, and her face was very pale.

"I too might have found forgetfulness where others find. That path was not for me. Francesco!" She laid her hand upon his own. "Look in my eyes and see!"

That night they stopped at a wayside inn, as brother and sister, Francesco keeping watch outside, while Ilaria occupied the only guest-chamber of the tavern.

Francesco's eyes stayed with her darkly, sadly, after she had gone inside. His tragic face seemed to look out of the night like the face of one dead.

He had tethered their horses some distance away, so that the occasional tramp of their hoofs should fall muffled on the air. The deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The thin, pale face, white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land.

It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed what he held to be truth, like a shadow; who had found the light of life in a woman's eyes, and saw that light slowly go out and vanish in outer darkness.

There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that was pleading with death. The face would have seemed stern, but for a certain something that made its shadows kind.

The woods about him seemed to swim in a mist of silver.

Thus he sat through the night. He saw the moon go down in the west. Nothing earthly could come into the sad session of remembrances, the vigil of a dead past. —

The early dawn found them again upon the road.

The evening of another day descended; the green valleys were full of light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome, touching the transient crimson of the west. Ilex and cedar stood, sombre giants, in a golden, shimmering sea. The eastern slopes gleamed in the sun, a cataract of leaves, plunging into gloom. The forests were full of shadows and mysterious streams of gold, and a great silence shrouded the wilderness, save for the distant thunder of the streams.

Whenever Ilaria had grown tired, they had stopped in the shelter of the giant oaks, and partaken of the refreshments which Francesco had taken along. At high-noon they had reached what appeared to be a deserted castle, situated in the midst of a flowery oasis. Here they had dismounted and Ilaria had found great delight in roaming through the enchanted wilderness, calling each flower by its name and, now and then, referring to the old rose-garden at Avellino, those happy days of their guileless youth. Francesco's heart was heavy within him as he watched the girlish figure, over whom sorrow had passed with so loving a hand, idealizing and etherealizing her great beauty, never dimming her sweet eyes. Then he had led their steeds down to the stream, which purled through the underbrush, and while they drank, he had seated himself on the bank and buried his head in his hands.

As he came from watering his horses at the stream, he heard the sound of her footsteps amid the vines and pomegranates, chanting some sorrowful legend of lost love. Francesco had discovered a rough bridge across the stream, where giant boulders seemed to have been set as stepping-stones between the western grass-land and the castle. There was a narrow postern giving entrance through the walls. Francesco stood at the gate and listened. Above the thunder of the foaming streams her voice seemed to rise; even the great golden vault of heaven seemed full of the echoes of her passionate song.

He found Ilaria seated on the terrace-way, where the oleanders bloomed. Under the stone bridge the water foamed and purled, the ferns and the moss green and brilliant above the foam. About her rose the knolls of the gold-fruited trees. Further the forests climbed into the glory of the heavens.

She ceased her chanting as Francesco came to her and made room for him on the long bench of stone. There was a tinge of petulance about the red mouth, the pathetic perverseness of a heart that loved not by the will of circumstance. Ilaria was as a woman deceived by dreams. She had loved a dream, and since fate bowed not to her desire, she turned her back in anger upon the world.

How Francesco loved her, she knew full well. Yet she could not forget that he had chosen the garb he wore rather than herself. Her very love for him stiffened her perverseness and caused her to delight in torturing him.

Francesco sat on the stone seat and looked up at her with questioning gaze. To Ilaria there was a love therein such as only once comes into a woman's life, yet the look troubled her. She feared its appeal, feared the weakening of her own resolve.

"Francesco," she said at last.

He took her hand, his eyes fixed solemnly upon the face he loved so well.

"You will return to Naples?" she queried with a show of indifference.

"Naples is far from me as yet," he said with bowed head.

"Let me not hinder you, – since go you must." —

"Are you so anxious to be relieved of me?" he said bitterly.

"The fate of Conradino, – the fate of our friends hang in the balance."

"I could not save them single-handed, though I would!"

"Yet save them you must! You must redeem your past, – for my sake! Why not part here, since part we must? There are other claims upon my soul!"

"Raniero Frangipani still lives – "

"I shall never return to him!"

He did not answer her for a moment. Her eyes were troubled, she looked as one whose thoughts were buffeted by a strong wind. Above them the zenith mellowed to a deeper gold, and they had the noise of the waters in their ears.

"Ilaria," he said at last, "what would you with me? Am I not pledged to guard your life, – your honor?"

"Ah," she said, drooping her lashes, "I shall not clog your years! The springtime of life has passed, – for each of us!"

"But not my love for you!" he cried fiercely, with the tone of a man tortured by suspense.

Ilaria looked at him, and she saw the love upon his face, like a sunset streaming through a cloud. She pitied him for a moment, but hardened her heart the more.

"I am weary of the world," she said.

"Weary, Ilaria? Are you not free?"

She looked at him quizzically.

"The wife of Raniero Frangipani?"

"Have you not broken the chains?"

"Mine the forging – mine the suffering," she said, almost with a moan. "Though I have left him, I am not free. Nor are you! Though you burn your garb – you are forever a monk – the slave of Rome! Who is free in life?" she added, after a brief pause. "I am fearful of the ruffian passions of the world, – the lusts and the terrors, – even love itself! Life seethes with turbulence and the great throes of wrath. I would be at peace, – I have suffered – God, how I have suffered!"

Francesco rose up suddenly, and began to stride to and fro before her. He loved Ilaria, he knew it at this moment, with all the strongest fibres of his heart. He had hoped too much, trusted too much to the power of his own faith. He turned and faced her, there, outwardly calm, miserable within.

"Must this thing be?" he asked her.

There was such deep wistfulness in those words of his that she bent her head and would not look into his face.

"Francesco," she said, "I pray you, plead no further with my heart. I shall turn nun, – there is the truth."

"As you will – " he said, and a cord seemed to snap in his heart. "It is not for me to parley with your soul, not for me to revive a past that had best never been!"

Ilaria's gaze seemed far away. Her eyes, under their dark lashes, seemed like spring violets hiding in shadows.

There was an infinite pride, an infinite tenderness in the wistful face, as she turned to Francesco.

"Ah," she said with a sudden kindling, "why has it been decreed thus? I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer, – dreaming still, after the devastating storms of life have spent themselves over my head, – but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests, marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see the sea, one laugh of gold. Now, every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. Yet I can still sing to the stars at night, songs such as the woods weave from the voice of a gentle wind, dew-laden, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel faint for sheer love of this fair earth."

Francesco's eyes were on her with a strange, deep look. Every fibre of his being, every hidden instinct cried out in him to fold her in his arms, to hold her there forevermore, safe from the world, from harm. But, as if she had divined his thoughts, she drew away from him.

He stood motionless, with head thrown back, his eyes gazing upon the darkening windows of the east. The sound of the running waters surged in his ears; the colors and odors of the place seemed to faint into the night. As for Ilaria, she stared immovable into space.

At last she turned to Francesco.

"And are they all, – all lost?"

His lips hardened.

"All, save the lords of Astura."

Her face was pale as death.

Francesco took her hands in his, bent over them and kissed them passionately.

A soft light shone in her eyes; yet underneath there was that inexplicable perverseness in her heart that at certain moments makes a woman treacherous to her own desires.

And Ilaria, as if to inflict a mortal wound on him she loved best, beckoned her own fate on with a bitterness that Francesco could not fathom.

"Listen," she said. "You will go to Naples, – you may be of service to the Swabian cause, – I must not – I will not – detain you, – besides, – I am weary of the world, – I am weary of it all! Take me to San Nicandro by the Sea – there I shall strive to forget!"

Francesco watched her, listening like a man to the reading of his own doom. Ilaria did not look at him. Her head was bowed down. And as he sat there, gazing on the face he so passionately loved, her eyes, her lips, Francesco could hardly restrain himself from putting his arms about her and holding her close, close to his heart. But an icy hand seemed to come between them, seemed to hold them apart.

"I will do as you wish!" he said.

The west was an open gate of gold. The darkening forests were wreathed in veils of mist. The island with the dark foliage of its trees and shrubs, lay like some dusky emerald sewn on the bosom of a sable robe.

CHAPTER II
MEMORIES

HOW the birds sang that evening when the saffron afterglow had fainted over the forest spires, and when all was still with the hush of night, how the cry of a nightingale thrilled from a tree near the cottage!

The glamor of the day had passed, and now what mockery and bitterness came with the cold, unimpassioned light of the moon! Ilaria tossed and turned on her couch like one taken with a fever; her brain seemed afire, her hair like so much shadow about her head. As she lay staring with wide, wakeful eyes, the birds' song mocked her to the echo; the scent of rose and honeysuckle floated in like a sad savor of death, and the moonlight seemed to watch her without a quaver of pity. Her heart panted in the darkness; she was torn by the thousand torments of a troubled conscience; wounded to tears, yet her eyes were dry and waterless as a desert. Raniero's face seemed to glare down on her out of the dusky gloom, and she could have cried out with the fear that lay like an icy hand over her bosom.

How her heart wailed for Francesco; how she longed for the touch of his hand. God of heaven, she could not let him go again and starve her soul with the old, cursed life. His lips had touched hers; his arms had held her close; she had felt the warmth of his body, and the beating of his heart. Was all this nothing, – a dream, a splendid phantasm, to be rent away like a crimson cloud? Was she to be Raniero's wife despite of all, a bitter flower growing up under a gallows?

God of heaven, no! What had the world done for her, that she should obey its edicts, and suffer for its tyrannies? Raniero had cheated her of her youth, her happiness; let him pay the price to the fates! What honor, indeed, had she to preserve for him? If he was a brute piece of lust, a tyrant, a traitor, so much the better! It would ease her conscience. She owed him no fealty, no marriage vow! Her body was no more his than was her soul, and a dozen priests and a dozen masses might as well marry ice to fire! How could a fool in a cape and frock, by gabbling a service, bind an irresponsible woman to the man she hated with a hatred enduring as the stars? It was a stupendous piece of nonsense, to say the least of it. No God calling himself a just God, could hold such a bargain holy.

And then the truth! What a stumbling-block truth was on occasions. She knew Francesco's fine sensibilities, and his very love for her made him the victim of an ethical tyranny. And again! For all her passion and the fire of her rebellious heart she was not a woman who could fling reason to the winds and stifle up her conscience with a kiss. Besides, she loved Francesco to the very zenith of her soul. To have a lie understood upon her lips, to be shamed before the man's eyes, were things that scourged her in fancy even more than the thought of losing him. She trembled when she thought how he might look at her in the days to come, if a passive lie were proven against her with open shame.

And Francesco was a monk! He might break the shackles, defy the powers of the Church, – he was a monk nevertheless! It might be possible that his love proved stronger than his reason; it was possible that he might face the world and frown down the petty judgments of men! Glorious and transcendent sacrifice! She could face calumny beside him, as a rock faces the froth of the waves, she could look Raniero in the eye and know neither pity nor shame.

Her mood that night was like the passage of a blown leaf, tossed up to heaven, whirled over the tree-tops, driven down again into the mire. Strong woman that she was, her very strength made the struggle more indecisive and more racking. She could not renounce Francesco for the great love she bore him; and yet she could not will to play a false part by reason of this same great love! Her soul, like a wanderer in the wilds, halted and wavered between two tracks that led forward into the unknown.

As she tossed and tossed and thought of her life in Astura, her face became hard as stone. Even since they had journeyed from Naples, Ilaria had been conscious of a change. Her face showed melancholy, mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression in the old days, within the walls of Avellino. For a time hope had waited wide-eyed in her heart. She had conjured up love like some Eastern house of magic, only to see its domes faint away into the gloom of night. The past was as a wounded dream to her! Her eyes had hungered for a face, grieving in dark reserve and silence. Her love, once forged, could bend to no new craft.

After the barren months at Astura, the long bondage of hate, Francesco had come into her life again. He had come to her with a glory of love in his eyes, he had taken her hands and kissed them, as though there were no such divine flesh in the whole wide world. How wonderful it was, to be touched so, to have such eyes pouring out so strong a soul before her face; to know the presence of a great love and to feel the echoing passion of it in her own heart!

Was this faery time but for an hour, a day, and no longer? Was she but to see the man's face, to feel the touch of his hands, the grand calm of his love, before losing him, perhaps for life? Her heart fluttered in her like a smitten bird. Could she but creep to him, where he lay, touch his hands, his lips! Her eyes stared out in the night with a starved frenzy.

"Francesco! Francesco!" —

It was like the wild cry of a woman over her dead love.

A wind had arisen. The thousand voices of the trees seemed to call to her with a weird, perpetual clamor. She saw their spectral hands jerking and clutching against the sky. The wind was crying through the trees, swaying them restlessly against the starry sky, making plaintive moan through all the myriad aisles.

How many a heart trembles with the return of day! What fears rise with the first blush of light in the purple bowl of night! To Ilaria the dawn would come as a message of misery; she dared not think what the coming hours would bring.

At last she closed her weary eyes, and under the sheer weight of her own grief fell into a deep and dreamless slumber, while the gloom was growing less and less, and dawn, like a pale phantom, stalked out of the east.

CHAPTER III
THE GRAIL OF LOVE

FRANCESCO was astir early with the coming of the dawn. The grass was drenched with dew, the woods towered heavenwards with a thousand golden peaks. In the valleys the stream echoed back the light.

Francesco was very solemn about the eyes. He looked as one who took little joy in life, but worked to forget and to ease his heart of its great pain. He watched the sun climb over the leafy hills, saw the clouds trend the heavens, heard the thunder of the streams. There was life in the day and wild love in the woods. Yet from this world of passion and delight he was as an exile, rather a pilgrim, fettered by a heavy vow. He was to bear the Grail of Love through all these wilds, yet might never look thereon, nor quench his thirst.

He met Ilaria in the garden, took her head between his hands, and kissed her upon the lips. She clung close to him and smiled, yet her looks were distraught; she seemed fearful of looking in his eyes.

"I have saddled the horses," he said laconically.

She read the heroism in his heart; the bitterness of the faith she compelled from him. The truth troubled and shamed her.

Francesco strapped the wallet and water flask to his saddle and lifted Ilaria to her steed. Then they crossed the stream and, riding northwards, plunged into the woods.

All that day Francesco strove and struggled with his youth, his heart beating fast and loud under his steel-hauberk. Love was at his side, robed in crimson and green; Ilaria's hair blinded him more than the noon-brightness of the sun. And as for her eyes, he dared not look therein, lest they should tempt him to deceive his honor. The silence enfolded them as though they were half fearful of each other's thoughts.

Francesco spoke little, keeping his distance, as though mistrusting his own tongue. As for Ilaria, the same passionate perverseness possessed her heart, and, though she pitied Francesco, she pitied him silently and from afar.

The following night they lodged in a beech wood, where dead leaves spread a dry carpet under the boughs. Francesco made a bed of leaves at the foot of a great tree. He spread a cloak underneath for Ilaria's comfort, then started away, as though to increase the distance between them.

"Francesco!" she cried suddenly, looking slantwise at his face.

He turned and stood waiting.

"You have given me your cloak!"

"It will keep the chill air from you!"

"What of yourself?"

"I shall not need it!" he said. "I shall not sleep to-night. I will keep watch and guard you! Have no fear!"

She sighed and hung her head as she sat down at the foot of the tree. Francesco's deep and unselfish love shamed her more and more. Yet his very patience with her hardened her discontent. Had he rebelled and conquered her against her will, she would have followed him to the ends of the earth.

Francesco, with a last look, left her there and strode away to a point where he might see, though not speak to her. A full moon climbed in the east and the wide lands were smitten with her mystery. The valleys were as lakes of glimmering mist, the hills like icy pinnacles gleaming towards the stars. The forest glades were white under the moon; the trees tall, sculptured obelisks, their trunks as of ebony inlaid with pearl wherever the moonlight splashed the bark. The silence of the wilderness was as the silence of a windless sea.

Francesco wandered in the woods, his heart full of the strange, haunting beauty of the autumnal night. The stars spoke to him of Ilaria; the trees had her name unuttered on their lips. What was this woman that she should bring such bitterness into his life? Were there not others in the world as fair as she, with lips as red and eyes as deep? Strangeness – mystery! She was one with the moon; a goddess shrined in the gloom of forests dim. White and immaculate, beautifully strange, she seemed as an elf child fated to doom men to despair, to their own undoing. —

Francesco passed back and found her asleep under the trees. He stood beside her and gazed on the sleeping face. There was silent faith in that slumber; trust in the man who guarded her honor. The moonlight streamed on the upturned face, shining like ivory amid the gleam of her dusky hair. How white her throat was, how her bosom rose and fell with the soft white hands folded thereon.

A sudden warmth flooded Francesco's heart; and youth cried in him for youth. Should this beauty be mured in stone, this red rose be hid by convent trees? Was she not flesh and blood, born to love and to be loved in turn, – and what was life but love and desire?

He crept near on his knees, hung over her breathlessly, gazing on her face. God, but to wake her with one long kiss, to feel those white arms steal around his neck! They were alone, the two of them, under the stars. For many minutes Francesco hung there like a man tottering on a crag betwixt sea and sky. Passion whimpered in him; his heart beat fast. Yet even as he crouched over Ilaria asleep, some dream or vision seemed to trouble her soul. Her hands stirred; her lids quivered; the breath came fast betwixt her lips. A shadow as of pain passed over the moonlit face. Francesco, kneeling motionless, heard her utter a low name, saw tears glistening on her cheeks; she was weeping in her sleep.

Pity, the strong tenderness of his nobler self, his great love for the girl of his youth, rushed back into the deeps as a wave from a cliff. He rose up; the shadows flying from his heart as bats afraid of their own flight. He knelt at the foot of the tree and covered his face with his hands. —

On the following evening they saw the sea, a wild streak of troubled gold under the kindling cressets of the west. Beneath them lay a valley full of tangled shrubs and windworn trees. Westward rose a great rock, thrusting its huge black bastions out into the sea. Upon this rock rose the towers and pinnacles of San Nicandro, smitten with gold, wrapped in mysterious vapor. Into the east stretched a wilderness of woods, dun and desolate, welcoming the night.

Francesco and Ilaria rode out from the woods towards the sea, while in the west the sun sank into a bank of burning clouds. The trees were wondrous green in the slant light; the whole land seemed bathed in strange, ethereal glory. San Nicandro upon its headland stood like black marble above the far glimmerings of the sea.

Francesco rode with his eyes fixed on the burning clouds. Ilaria was watching him with strange unrest. Since that first night in the woods he had held aloof from her, had spoken little, had wrapped himself in his iron pride. Yet at times, when his eyes had unwittingly met hers, she had seen the sudden gleam therein of a strong desire. She had watched the color rise in Francesco's sunburnt face; the deep-drawn sighs that ebbed and flowed under the steel hauberk. Though his mouth was as granite, though he hid his heart from her, she knew full well that he loved her to the death. The fine temper of his faith had humiliated, even angered her. Though his silent despair defied her vanity with heroic silence, his courage made her miserable from sheer sympathy and shame.

They crossed a small stream and came to a sandy region, where stunted myrtles clambered over the rocks, and tamarisks, tipped as with flame, waved in the wind. Storm-buffeted and dishevelled pines stood gathered upon the hillock. The region was sombre and very desolate; silent, save for the low piping of the wind.

Neither Francesco nor Ilaria had spoken since they had left the woods and sighted San Nicandro upon its rocky height. Suddenly he pointed with his hands towards the cliffs, the light of the setting sun streaming upon his white and solemn face.

"Yonder lies San Nicandro," he said to her.

There was a species of defiance in the cry, as though the man's soul challenged fate. His heart's cords were wrung with misery. Ilaria quailed inwardly, like one ashamed; her lips quivered; her eyes for the nonce were in peril of tears. —

"Yonder lies San Nicandro," she echoed in an undertone. "There I may be at peace. I shall not forget – "

"Nor I," he said, with grim emphasis.

A narrow causeway curled upwards towards the tower on the rock. The sea had sunk behind the cliff, the sky had faded to a misty gray. Ilaria's eyes were on the walls of San Nicandro and she seemed lost in musings as they rode side by side.

"Francesco," she said suddenly, as they neared the sea, "think not hard of me! Strife and unrest are everywhere. It is better to escape the world!"

"Better perhaps," he said, with his eyes upon the clouds.

"Forget that there is such a woman as Ilaria," she said. "I, too, shall strive to forget the past." —

"Who can forget?" he muttered. "While life lasts, memory lives on!"

They had come to the causeway, where the track wound like a black snake towards the golden heights. Not a sound was there save the distant surging of the sea. The distorted trees thrust out their hands and seemed to cry an eternal "Vale" to the two upon the road.

At the foot of the causeway, Francesco turned his horse.

"Go in peace!" he said, his voice vibrating with inward emotion, her image haunting his heart, like a fell dream at night.

She stretched out a hand.

"Francesco – you will not leave me yet?"

"Ah!" he cried with sudden great bitterness, "is it so easy to say farewell?"

His strong despair swept over her like a wind. She sat mute and motionless upon her horse, gazing at him helplessly as one half dazed. On the cliffs above, San Nicandro beckoned with the great cross above its topmost pinnacle.

Ilaria shivered, struggled with herself, perverse as of yore.

"What am I, that you should desire me?" she said. "I have but little beauty, and am growing old. Leave me, Francesco, and forget me! Forget and forgive! I have no heart to struggle with the world!"

Francesco was white to the lips, as he stiffened his manhood to meet the wrench.

"God knows how I have loved you, – how I love you still!"

"Francesco," she said, leaning towards him from the saddle.

He gave a hoarse cry and covered his face with his hands.

"For pity's sake," he said, "say no more to me! It is enough!" —

They had reached the gate.

He pricked his horse with his spurs, wheeled from her and dashed down the road without a look. His face was as the face of a man who rode to meet his death.

"Francesco!" she cried to him, as she saw him plunge to a gallop, saw the shield between his shoulders dwindle into the night.

"Francesco!" she cried again, a sudden loneliness seizing on her heart. "Francesco, come back! Francesco – "

The cry was in vain, for he would not listen, deeming her pity more grievous than her scorn. Despair spurred him on; the black night called.