THE HERMITAGE.
Reflecting on the recent catastrophe, I rode for some time absorbed in mournful thought, from which I was aroused by the peculiar sound of Cartouche's hoofs ringing on hard pavement. On looking about, and finding that I was riding over some old Roman way, the aged hermit, whom the young ladies had requested me to visit, came to my remembrance: for in answer to my inquiries at Policastro, as to his residence, I had been informed that a causeway of unknown antiquity led to his hermitage.
Evening was fast approaching; and after entering a narrow wooded valley between two lofty hills, I found the gloom increasing rapidly. The clouds, too, were gathering fast; a few large drops of rain plashed heavily on the tossing leaves; while a faint gleam of lightning, and the muttering of distant thunder announced an approaching storm. I now looked somewhat anxiously for the dwelling of the recluse; and pursuing the windings of that ancient way—which, perhaps, in former days had echoed to the sandalled feet of Milo's mighty host—I penetrated yet further into the deep valley. Stupendous oaks clothed the darkening hills, and cast a sable and melancholy gloom around. The solitude was awful; the stillness intense: for it was scarcely broken by a brawling torrent, rushing, red and muddy, over a precipice of jagged rock, and resounding in a deep and echoing chasm. Afar off, on the most distant peaks, flickered the blaze of vast furnaces kindled by charcoal burners; but soon these fires were quenched by the fury of the rising storm, and broad sheets of lightning, with vivid and ghastly glare lit earth and sky almost incessantly. By the livid flashes I was enabled to find my way to the hermitage, and pushing forward at full gallop I gladly reached its welcome shelter.
A rough wooden cross, and a turf-seat beside a rock, from which bubbled a rill into a basin worn by the water (that had fallen for ages, perhaps) on the stones below, answered the description given me of the abode of this recluse of the wilderness. Dismounting, I approached a small edifice of stone, which appeared to be the ruined tomb of some ancient Roman; whose name once great and glorious, was now lost in oblivion. Its form was square, its size about twelve feet each way, and it had a domed roof of massive stone-work, which was covered with ivy and myrtle, while wild fuchsias and wall-flowers flourished in the clefts and joints of the decayed masonry. Two Roman columns and an entablature, time-worn and mutilated, formed the portico, which was closed by a rustic door of rough-barked wood. On the architrave I could just make out this inscription, cut in ancient characters,
SIT TIBI TERRA LEVIS;
the wish uttered at the funerals of the Latins, that earth might press lightly on the person buried. I, therefore, concluded that the edifice had been erected anterior to the custom of burning the dead.
Fastening my horse in a sheltered nook, between the tomb and a rock that rose perpendicularly behind it, I knocked thrice at the door; but not receiving an answer, I pushed it open and entered. The light of a lamp, placed in a recess before an image of the Madonna, glimmered like a star amid the darkness of that dreary habitation, and just enabled me to perceive, on my eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, a most melancholy object; one not unlike that which presented itself to the reprobate Don Raphael and his friend among the mountains of Cuença.
On a bed of leaves and straw, stretched on the paved floor, and clad in the coarse canvass garb of the poorest order of priesthood, lay the venerable hermit. The hand of death pressed heavily on him. His cassock, rent and torn in twenty places, scarcely covered his almost fleshless form; which age, fasting, and maceration had attenuated to a frightful degree. A rusty chain, evidence of some self-imposed penance, encircled his waist; and he convulsively clasped in his bony and shrunken hands a rosary. Close by lay an old drinking horn and a human skull: the latter well polished by long use; and near them lay a handful of chestnuts, the remains of his last repast.
"O thou most adorable Virgin!" he exclaimed, in a feeble but piercing voice, "in this terrible hour intercede for me with Him whom I dare not address: for horribly the awful memory of the past arises at this moment before me! Gesù Cristo, hear me! and thou blessed Madonna!"
His voice died away, and I approached gently, removing my hat on drawing near.
"A foot!" he exclaimed. "Oh, stranger! for the love of mercy give me a draught of water! Thirst makes me suffer in anticipation those pains which are in store for sinners such as I am!"
His drinking cup was empty, so I hastened to the brook and filled it with water: the storm was roaring terrifically through the valley at that moment. Hurrying back, I fastened the door, and pouring a few drops of brandy from my travelling flask into the water, held the cup to the sufferer's lips; who, after drinking greedily, sank again on his couch. A faint flush spread over his death-pale face; he revived rapidly, and endeavoured to raise himself up into a sitting posture; but in vain: nature was exhausted. After trimming the lamp, by its smoky light I took a closer survey of the tomb and its scarcely living tenant. The dismal aspect of the place—its dark walls and darker urn-niches—the feeble light and heavy sombre shadows, together with its wretched inmate, filled me with wonder, disgust, and pity.
The face and figure of the hermit were such as I never saw before, and have never looked on since. He was a very old man—old beyond any one I had ever known; and he seemed to have hovered so long on the brink of the grave—lingering between time and eternity—that he looked (if one may be allowed the expression) a living corpse, almost as much a part of the next world as of this. The crown of his head was bald, but tangled locks of white hair straggled from his temples, and mingling with his beard, formed one matted mass, white as snow, growing together, and almost concealing his visage, and reaching below his rusty girdle. It gave a patriarchal dignity to his appearance. His keen and sunken eyes gleamed beneath his white and bushy eyebrows, with a most unpleasant expression; like the horrid glare of death, mingling with the restless and rolling glances of insanity.
To disturb him as little as possible by the appearance of my uniform, I wrapped my cloak round me, and, seated on a stone near his couch of leaves, waited until he revived so far as to address me. Refreshed by the cool draught, and invigorated by the spirit it contained, his energies were rallying rapidly: yet I did not think he would live out the night. The tempest that raged furiously without, made yet more impressive the silence within the tomb: a silence broken only by the heavy breathing and indistinct muttering of the sufferer.
Sweeping over the drenched wilderness, the rain was pouring down like a cascade on the vaulted roof of the catacomb; the swollen torrent roared over the adjacent rocks; the rushing wind howled through the narrow glen, and the woods reverberated the rattling peals of thunder. Ever and anon the electric fluid sheeted the sky with livid flame, shewing the dark masses of fleeting vapour, and lighting up the doorway and the broken niche that served for a window, so as to reveal the wild landscape—the woods waving tumultuously like a surge, the strained trees tossing their branches to the blast, and the dark hills beyond, whose peaks the thunderbolts were shattering in their fury.
The storm lulled for a moment; and but for a moment only! Again the rolling thunder pealed, slowly and sublimely in the distance; echoing athwart the vault of heaven like platoons of musketry. The roar of the elements increased as the storm rushed onward, till at length it burst anew over the valley, as if to spend its concentrated fury on that lonely tomb. A succession of stunning reports, each one loud as the roar of a hundred pieces of cannon, shook the dome and the walls of the tomb to their foundations; some fragments of masonry fell to the earth, and I leaped towards the door, fearing to be buried in the falling ruin. But the tomb withstood the bursting tempest, as it had done thousands of others.
The old man, uplifting his clasped hands and gleaming eyes to heaven, shrieked wildly a prayer in Latin. His aspect was awful: he seemed the embodied spirit of the tempest—which now died away more suddenly than it rose. The dust was yet falling from the shaken roof and walls of the tomb when the storm ceased.
"'Twas the voice of God in wrath!" exclaimed the hermit, in a firm and solemn voice. "Stranger, would that thou wert a priest to implore for me the intercession of the blessed Mary, mother of all compassion! to pray with me in this dread hour. Prayer! prayer! much need have I of prayer to soothe the terrors of my parting soul!"
I was deeply impressed by this appalling scene. The accents of the dying man were faltering, and full of anguish: he spoke as if eternity had opened to his mental vision.
"More than a hundred years have rolled away since I first looked on the light of this world—Miserere mei, Domine! Sixty years only have I spent in prayer, penance, solitude, and mortification of the flesh; to atone in some degree for the manifold and deadly sins committed while a denizen of the great and wicked community of mankind. You behold a sinner," he continued, his voice rising as he proceeded—"a villain of no ordinary dye! A wretch, whose enormities are greater than sixty years of piety and repentance can atone for: long though they have been. Centuries seem to have elapsed since this dismal tomb of the wilderness first became the witness of my secret sorrow—since I last heard the din of the bad and busy world! How many of the brave, the beautiful, and the innocent have been gathered to their fathers in that weary time! Generations have been born, have lived their allotted span, and been called to their last account: yet this guilty head has been spared. Memory, with all its goading torments, has never left me; though the torpid apathy of age and a life of solitude—sixty slowly passing years spent in brooding over past horrors, and the crimes of early days—have worn and withered to the core, a heart which for swelling pride and ferocity had not its equal in Italy. Who would think this hand had ever grasped a sword?"
He laughed like a serpent hissing, and thrust before me his right hand: lean, bony, and wrinkled, the large joints protruded beneath the thin shrivelled skin, which revealed every vein, muscle, and fibre. His skeleton form was so covered with hair, that he resembled an overgrown baboon; and as he regarded me with a wild and intense stare, his red and sunken eyes sparkled like those of a Skye terrier through the tangled bush of white locks overhanging them.
"Men say I have been mad!" he continued: "I might well have been so, if bodily torture and mental agony, incessant and acute, can unseat the lofty mind which alone makes man godlike! In this dread hour, the memories of other years—deeds of anger and crime, thoughts of sorrow and remorse—come crowding fast upon me! O miserere mei, Domine!" He seemed talking to himself rather than to me, and often pressed his bony fingers on his sharp angular temples, as if trying to arrange the chaos of recollections.
"Blessed be Madonna, that she sent a fellow mortal to witness these last agonies—to behold the deathbed of a sinner! Let its memory be treasured up in your heart—profit by it, my son! One death-scene such as this is better than a thousand homilies."
(This to me, who but two days before had ridden through the carnage of Maida!)
"You are young, and I am old, my son—old in years, and older still in sin: yet say; think you there is any hope for me? In another hour I shall have passed from this transient life to that which is eternal. What will become of my soul? Will He consume me in his wrath? O Spirito Santo, thou alone can answer! I behold that flaming abyss of everlasting misery and woe, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Is that my doom? O miserere mei, Domine! Mercy! pity me! speak!"
While raving thus, he clasped my feet with the energy of despair; his whole frame shook with excess of spiritual terror, and his eyes seemed bursting from their sockets. Deeply moved, I heard him in silence, not knowing what to reply. A long pause ensued.
"Holy father!" said I, when the paroxysm had passed away, "there is hope in the mercy of Heaven even for the vilest, how much more for one who has passed so holy a life as you!"
"Alas! alas!" he exclaimed, beating his breast, "thou knowest me not, my son! And the simple peasantry who regard me as a saint—even like the holy Gennaro—know me not!"
"Whatever may be those crimes the recollection of which so haunts you, let us hope that remorse and sincere repentance——"
"Blessed words! You say truly, my son! Remorse and repentance will do much: but a load of guilt weighs heavy upon my soul. I would fain unburthen my conscience to thee, my son: though the recital of my iniquities might freeze the marrow in your bones. Receive my last confession, I beseech thee; for I would not go down to the grave with the reputation of a saint: which, though given me by many, I merit so little!"
Again he drank thirstily; and raising himself into a half-recumbent posture, prepared to make that revelation for which my excited curiosity longed so impatiently. He was rallying rapidly; his voice became fuller, and his enunciation more distinct and connected. He clutched my arm with an iron grasp, and his bleared and hollow eyes glittering with excitement, glared into mine with a searching and intense expression, which made me feel very far from comfortable.
"You would preach to me words of peace and consolation—peace to a tempest-tost heart—consolation to a soul torn with anguish and remorse! You bid me hope! Listen, then, to what mortal ears have never heard—the long concealed secret of my life—the crimes of my heedless youth, and the sorrows of Diomida: who perhaps, from the side of Madonna in heaven, beholds this scene to-night."
Gathering all his energies, the aged recluse commenced the following narration, in the solemn subdued tone of a contrite sinner recounting his misdeeds; recalling with a vividness that seemed preternatural in one so near his end, the history of his youth.
His narrative was often interrupted by pauses, bursts of sorrow, and groans of remorse, exclamations of pity and horror, pious ejaculations, and prayers for mercy.
Exhausting as this suffering and exertion must have been, he seemed to gain strength as he proceeded; as if all his powers returned to accomplish this last effort: so the flame of the expiring lamp burns bright for a moment ere it is extinguished.