“I am not learned, Francesco, as you are—still, I believe! Let us say that there are mystic secrets to be discovered only by close and painful study and seclusion, and poring over the crucible and the cauldron. Who are we taught shall probe these mysteries? The pure of life, the good, the holy, who pray as they work, who toil for heaven’s glory, not their own; who seek gold, not for the good it will do to them, but for the good it will enable them to do to others. Will the covetous succeed, do you think? Never!”
“Spare me, Geronimo!” cried the alchemist, piteously.
“Will gold be found in the crucible when fraud has heated the furnace? Never! You have robbed the monks of the Staccata, taking money and not giving toil; it is their money that consumes in that fire. Francesco, you will never find the secret—you seek your own vantage, and you are a cheat!”
“Geronimo!”
“I am sick speaking such words, but I must speak them. May the Virgin make them reach your heart.”
“Stay! lift me up—what day is this?”
“The 24th of August.”
“And the year?”
“The year of our Lord 1540.”
“Ah! the game is nearly played out, Geronimo. It was as I thought. The spirit will quit me, then, as it quitted the divine Raffaello. It was at my age he died.”
“You were like him once, Francesco; you had the same sweet smile, the same grace of manner, the same kind eyes and witching voice.”
“And now, cousin, now you would say I am savage and ragged, burnt and mad. Yes; very nearly mad. Let us do as you say; let us go out into the air, I am very faint and feeble, and there is something weighing on my heart, and staying my breath—let us hence, I am stifled.”
“And the fire?”
“It must go out. I shall need it no more.”
He spoke in a tone of deep suffering. Geronimo bore the sinking man into the sunshine. It was almost blinding after the darkness of the laboratory. The sky was deep blue, with here and there a dapple of vapourous white.
“I breathe with more ease here, Geronimo, though the light beats cruelly upon my poor scorched eyes. Don’t withdraw your hand, don’t shrink from me.”
“Indeed, Francesco, I do not.”
“Promise me one thing—nay, two. Do you hear me, cousin?”
“I do. I promise.”
“When I am dead—”
“Nay, speak not of it. You will live yet, Francesco.”
“Peace! I am dying, and I know it. Hear me. You will finish the frescoes of the Staccata for the holy brotherhood, without reward, save only the dead Francesco’s thanks.”
“To the best of my abilities, I will do this, cousin.”
“More—how my hands burn, and yet I shiver; this is fever, is it not, Geronimo? More—let me be buried at the Fontana, the church of the Servite monks, a mile from Casal Maggiore. Let me be buried as a lay brother, without shroud or coffin, save the robe of the order, and place a cypress cross upright on my breast. You will do this? You swear it?”
“I will, indeed.”
“So, I believe you. I would be near her even in my grave; and, oh! Geronimo—”
“Speak! what would you, cousin?”
“Blame me not when I am gone—cry not shame upon my grave. If I have been wrong, wicked, impious; if I have sought gold for itself only, as you say, from covetousness—yet—yet there is excuse.”
“There will be only sorrow for you in my heart, Francesco. No blame, no bitterness.”
“But hear me. You remember, I left you at Parma, I journeyed to Rome, years and years gone. There, Geronimo—there, I loved, with my whole soul, with a love that preyed upon my brain, Catarina—call her only that—more of her name I have breathed to no living soul! I may not tell even to you, my cousin. Look at her face in the face of the Roman Lucretia in the picture; see her eyes in the eyes of the Virgin in the fresco of the Staccata. I loved her madly! Years have gone by, and still that love is mine—new and young and restless in my heart as ever.”
He stopped breathless, while Geronimo wiped the wan face and brushed away the withered, tangled hair from the furrowed forehead.
“It was love without hope, Geronimo. She was far above me, noble and rich as she was beautiful. I, a poor painter, the son of a poor painter, the child of dead Filippo Mazzuoli, the flower-painter. I, to dare look up so high! Still, I loved. I knew that she often visited the workshop of Valerio Vicentino, the carver in crystal. With my best picture I bought of him the right to loiter in the room where she might come. It was such happiness to look upon her, to be near her. Soon my heart would bear silence no longer—my passion would burst into words. The opportunity came. I told her all and learnt from her own lips that my love was returned. The miserable folly of this was clear to all others, perhaps, but not to us. Then the end. The black curtain fell between us. We were cruelly sundered. I was driven from her presence, never to see her again. While, yet, there was a whisper torturing my ear, that if I had been rich she might have been mine! I was haunted by a demon that ever cried to me, ‘Gold! gold! get gold! A painter you will starve, a sage you will grow rich—find the philosopher’s stone, and buy of her proud kinsmen the hand of Catarina!’ Well! I have toiled over the furnace, I have watched the crucible What sound is that, Geronimo?”
“I hear nothing.”
“It is the music of angels! and one voice, with, oh! such a plaintive wail in it, thrills through all. Listen, Geronimo!
“I hear nothing—yet, stay. Ah! it is the nuns of Santa Lucia winding along the footpath, singing as they approach.”
“Geronimo, it is her voice; Catarina joined the sisterhood of Santa Lucia! Quick! bear me to her. It is for her I have surrendered all—my art, my life, perhaps even my soul! I have ventured