Rule of the Monk Part 5

"They came here, but have already left," stammered Procopio, as soon as he had recovered from his surprise.

"Is it long since they quitted your Eminence?" asked Julia.

"But a few minutes," was the reply.

"I presume they have left the palace, then?"

"a.s.suredly," affirmed he, unblushingly.

Julia, with a gesture of incredulity, bowed, and took her leave.

What is there perfect in the world? This English nation is by no means exempt from imperfection; yet the English are the only people who can be compared with the ancient Romans, for they resemble each other in the splendid selfishness of their virtues and their vices.

Egotists and conquerors, the history of both abounds in crime committed either in their own dominions, or in those countries which they invaded and subdued. Many are the nations they have overthrown to satisfy their boundless thirst for gold and power.

Yet who dare deny that the Britons, with all their faults, have contributed largely to the civilization and social advancement of mankind? They have laid the grand foundations of a new idea of humanity, erect, inflexible, majestic, free; obeying no masters but the laws which they themselves have made, no kings but those which they themselves control.

By untiring patience and indomitable legality, this people has known how to reconcile government and order with the liberty of a self-ruling community.

The isle of England has become a sanctuary, an inviolable refuge for the unfortunate of all other nations. Those proscribed by tyrants, and the tyrants who have proscribed them, flee alike to her hospitable sh.o.r.es, and find shelter on the single condition of taking their place as citizens among citizens, and yielding obedience to the sovereign laws.

England, too, be it ever remembered first proclaimed to the world the emanc.i.p.ation of the slave, and her people willingly submitted to an increased taxation in order to carry out this glorious act in all her colonies. Her descendants in America have, after a long and b.l.o.o.d.y struggle between freedom and oligarchy, banished slavery also forever from the New World.

Lastly, to England Italy is indebted in part for her reconstruction, by reason of that resolute proclamation of fair play and no intervention in the Straits of Messina in 1860.

To France Italy is also, indeed, indebted, since so many of her heroic soldiers fell in the Italian cause in the battles of Solferino and Magenta. She has also profited, like the rest of the world, by the writings of the great minds of France, and by her principles of justice and freedom. To France, moreover, we owe, in a great measure, the abolition of piracy in the Mediterranean. France marched, in truth, for some centuries alone, as the leader in civilization.

The time was when she proclaimed and propagated liberty to the world; but she has now, alas! fallen, and is crouching before the image of a fict.i.tious greatness, while her ruler endeavors to defraud the nation which he has exasperated, and employs his troops to deprive Italy of the freedom which he helped to give her.

Let us hope that, for the welfare of humanity, she will, ere long, resume her proper position, and, united with England, once again use her sublime power to put down violence and corruption, and raise the standard of universal liberty and progress.

CHAPTER XVI. ENGLISH JULIA

In Siccio's little room was that same evening gathered a group of three persons who would have gladdened the heart and eyes of any judge of manly and womanly beauty.

Is it a mere caprice of chance to be born beautiful? The spirit is not always reflected in the form. I have known many a n.o.ble heart enshrined in an unpleasing body. Nevertheless, man is drawn naturally to the beautiful. A fine figure and n.o.ble features instinctively call forth not only admiration, but confidence; and every one rejoices in having a handsome father, a beautiful mother, fine children, or a leader resembling Achilles rather than Thersites. On the other hand, how much injustice and mortification are often borne on account of deformity, and how many are the wounds inflicted by thoughtless persons on those thus afflicted by their undisguised contempt or more cruel pity.

Julia, for she it is who forms the loveliest of our triad, had just returned from her visit to the palace, and related to her auditors, Attilio and Muzio, what had transpired.

"Yes!" she exclaims, "he told me they were gone; but you see how powerful is gold to obtain the truth, even in that den of vice! The ladies are there detained. I bought the truth of one of his people."

Attilio, much disturbed, pa.s.sed his hand over his brow as he paced and repaced the floor.

Julia, seeing how perturbed in spirit he was by her discovery, went to him, and, placing her hand with a gentle pressure upon his shoulder, besought him to be calm, saying that he needed all possible self-control and presence of mind to procure his betrothed's release.

"You are right, Signora," said Muzio, who until now had remained silent, but watchful; "you are ever right."

The triad had already discussed a plan of rescue; and Muzio proposed to let Silvio know, and to engage him to meet them with some of his companions at ten o'clock.

Muzio was n.o.ble-minded, and though he loved the beautiful stranger with all the force of his pa.s.sionate southern nature, he felt no thought of jealousy as he thus prepared to leave her alone with his attractive friend.

Nor did Julia run any danger from her warm feeling of compa.s.sion for Attilio, for her love for Muzio, though as yet unspoken, was pure and inalienable. A love that no change of fortune, time, or even death, could destroy. She had but lately learned the story of his birth and misfortunes, and this, be sure, had not served to lessen it.

"No," she replied; "I will bid you both adieu for the present. At ten o'clock I shall await you in a carriage near the Piazza, and will receive the ladies, and cany them, when you have liberated them, to a place of safety."

So saying, she beckoned to her nurse to follow, and departed to make the necessary arrangements for the flight of the sculptor's family, whose cause she had magnanimously espoused, ignoring completely the personal danger she was incurring.

CHAPTER XVII. RETRIBUTION

Justice! sacred word, yet how art thou abused by the powerful upon earth! Was not Christ, the just one, crucified in the name of justice?

Was not Galileo put to the torture in the name of justice? And are not the laws of this unjust Babel, falsely called civilized Europe, made and administered in the name of justice? Ay, in Europe, where the would-be industrious man dies of hunger, and the idle and profligate flaunt in luxury and splendor!--in Europe, where a few families govern the nations, and keep them in a chronic state of warfare under the high-sounding names of justice, loyalty, military glory, and the like!

There in the palace sit Procopio and Ign.a.z.io in the name of justice.

Outside are the rabble--Attilio, forsooth, Muzio, and Silvio, with twenty of our three hundred, who mean to have justice after their own fashion. The hearts of these suitors are glad and gay, as on the eve of a feast. It is true they beat, but it is in confident hope, for the hour of their duty is near. They pace the Lungara in parties of twos and threes, to avoid suspicion, awaiting the striking of the clock. Whilst they linger outside, we will enter, and take a retrospect.

When Gianni summoned Aurelia and Silvia to attend Father Ign.a.z.io, Clelia, suspecting treachery, drew a golden stiletto from her hair and secreted it in her belt, that it might be at hand in the event of her needing it to defend herself.

The prelate, meantime, having attired himself in his richest robes, in the hope that their magnificence might have effect upon the simple girl, prepared, as he facetiously termed it, "to summon the fortress." Opening the door of the apartment in which Clelia was anxiously awaiting her mother's return, he entered with a false benignancy upon his face.

"You must pardon us," he said, "for having detained you so long, my daughter, but I wished to a.s.sure you in person that no harm shall befall your father, as well as," he continued--and here he caught up her hand--"to tell you, most lovely of women, that since I beheld you first my heart has not ceased to burn with the warmest love for you."

Clelia, startled by the words and the pa.s.sionate look which the Cardinal fixed upon her, drew back a little s.p.a.ce, so as to place a small table between them.

Then ensued a shameful burst of insult and odious entreaty. In vain did he plead, urging that her consent alone could procure her father's'

pardon. Clelia continued to preserve her look of horror, and her majestic scorn, contriving by her movements to keep the table between them. Enraged beyond measure, the Cardinal made a sign to his creatures, Ign.a.z.io and Gianni, who were near at hand, to enter.

Clelia, comprehending her danger, s.n.a.t.c.hed forth her dagger, and exclaimed in an indignant voice, "Touch me at your peril! rather than submit to your infamous desires I will plunge this poniard into my heart!"

The libidinous prelate, not understanding such virtue, approached to wrest the weapon from the Roman girl, but received a gash upon his palm, as she s.n.a.t.c.hed it free, and stood upon the defensive, with majestic anger and desperation. He called to his satellites, and they closed like a band of devils about the maiden; nor was it till their blood was drawn by more than one thrust from her despair, that Gianni caught the wrist of Clelia as she strove to plunge the knife into her own heart, while Father Ign.a.z.io pa.s.sed swiftly behind her, and seized her left hand, motioning to Gianni to hold the right fast, and the Cardinal himself threw his arms around her. The heroic girl was thus finally deprived of her weapon. This achieved, they proceeded to drag her towards an alcove, where a couch was placed, behind a curtain of tapestry.

At this instant, happily for our heroine, there was a sudden crash in the vestibule, and as her a.s.sailants turned their heads in the direction of the sound, two manly forms, terrible in their fiery wrath and grace, rushed forward. The first, Attilio, flew to his beloved, who, from revulsion of feeling, was becoming rapidly insensible, and tore her from the villains, while the prelate and his accomplices yielded their hold with a cry, and endeavored to escape. This Muzio prevented by barring the way; and bidding Silvio, and some of his men, who arrived at this juncture, to surround them, he drew forth a cord, and, after gagging the three scoundrels, he commenced binding the arms of the affrighted priest, his friends similarly treating Ign.a.z.io and the trembling tool Gianni Many and abject were the gestures of these miserable men for mercy, but none was shown by their infuriated captors, but the prayers and curses of the Cardinal were choked with his own mantle; and Muzio did not refrain, as Father Ign.a.z.io writhed under the pressure of the cord, from reminding him of his villainy in robbing a helpless child of his lawful inheritance.

At dawn three bodies, suspended from a window of the Corsini palace, were seen by the awakening people, and a paper was found upon the breast of the Cardinal, with these words, "So perish all those who have polluted the metropolis of the world with falsehood, corruption, and deceit, and turned it into a sewer and a stew."

CHAPTER XVIII. THE EXILE

The sun of that avenging morning was beginning to shed its rays upon the few stragglers in the Forum who, with pale squalid faces betokening hunger and misery, shook their rags free of dust as they rose unrefreshed from their slumbers, when a carriage containing four women rolled through the suburbs. It pa.s.sed rapidly along towards those vast uninhabited plains, where little is to be seen except a wooden cross here and there, reminding the traveller unpleasantly that on that spot a murder has been committed.

Arriving at the little house already twice mentioned, its occupants alighted; and who shall describe the joy of that meeting. Julia and Aurelia contemplated in silence the reunion of the now happy Manlio with his wife and daughter, for all the prisoners of the wicked palace were free.