: The Hill of Venus by Gallizier Nathan Garrett Edmund H Edmund Henry Illustrator Verburg P Illustrator - Italy History 13th century Fiction

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sently something, a quiver of feeling, stopped him. He hesitated for a moment, then he returned to the bedside, bending over it and gazing sadly into his father's face.

"I shall see you again in the morning?" he asked gently.

His head had sunk upon his breast. Francesco crossed the room and was gone. A moment after they heard a loud, jarring laugh without. Then all was still.

The elder Villani and the monk exchanged looks in silence. For some time neither spoke. When the silence was broken at last, it was in a way which revealed the close touch between the minds of these two.

"Was the struggle great?" questioned the monk.

"Great as the sacrifice demanded," replied the sick man. "And yet, not as fierce as I had apprehended. Francesco is my own flesh and blood! Ah! At times my heart reproaches me for what I have done!"

"A weakness you will overcome! In giving back to the Church the boy who was in a fair way to become her enemy, who had been reared in the camp of her mortal foes, who had been fed on the milk of heresy and apostasy, you have but done your duty. He will soon have forgotten that other life, which would have consigned him to tortures eternal, and will gladly accept what is required of him for the repose of your soul and his own!"

There was a brief pause, during which the elder Villani seemed to collect his waning energies. The monk's speech had roused in him a spirit of resistance, of defiance. Who were they that would dispose of the life of his own flesh and blood? It was too late, to undo what he had done. But it should not pass without a protest.

"Monk, you know not whereof you speak," the sick man said hoarsely. "The rioting blood of youth cannot suddenly be stemmed in the veins, and congealed to ice at the command of a priest! I too was young and happy once,--long ago, and how happy! God who knows of my transgression, alone knows! I have paid the penalty with my own flesh and blood. Tell His Holiness, he may be satisfied!"

"His Holiness could demand no less," interposed the monk. "Your sin was mortal: you added to it by placing the offspring of a forbidden love at the court of the arch-heretic, thrice under ban of excommunication."

"That was my real sin,--that other would have been forgiven," replied the elder Villani bitterly, as if musing aloud. "Let those who are undefiled, cast the first stone. How beautiful she was,--how heavenly sweet! And with dying breath, as if the impending dissolution of the body had imbued her with the faculty to look into the future, she piteously begged me, as if she apprehended my weakness after her spirit had fled:--'Do not make a monk of my boy!'"

He paused with a sob, then he continued:

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