Louder and louder the voice swelled out, piercing as a cry of anguish; yet full of a powerful sweetness the song echoed through the sultry stillness of night. It struck the ear of the rider. He checked his horse, looked around him, and then spurred the animal anew until he leaped wildly on. She bent forward--farther forward,--"Plus d'espoir!" she groaned. Her heart was so heavy, so heavy! Beneath, the dew glistened like a silver sheen over the azure fields, out of which an angel seemed calling her to "Cool rest--cool rest!" She bent forward--forward! and then fell many, many fathoms deep into the moat below. * * * * * The heavy fall was heard in the castle, and soon the servants with torches hurried forth to see what had happened. There, below, glimmered something white as a blossom broken off by the storm. They climbed down. The light of the torches played over a pale, lovely face which smiled in death. She was not disfigured, not a particle of dust, not a speck of mud or soil of earth, adhered to her white garment, although she had fallen among plants growing in the mud. In spotless purity the white folds wound about her beautiful limbs. And when the people saw this, they marvelled, and said, "A miracle!" Then one pressed through the throng, deathly pale with distorted face--Henri de Lancy! But Gottfried coldly turned him away from the dead maiden. Right tenderly the old soldier lifted the lovely body in his arms, murmuring: "Her heart was broken--she is released!" XI It was an age full of horrors, when the noblest blood of illustrious Hellenism rose up to face a background of battles, orgies, and pulpit harangues. It was not only a period in which Lorenzo de' Medici, in disguise and at the head of a bacchanalian troop tore through the streets of Florence; Benvenuto Cellini stabbed his enemies at the street corners; Pope Leo at a cardinal's supper presented a sacrifice of doves to the Goddess of Love upon a white marble altar, and offered to his favourite, Raphael, a cardinal's hat in payment of his bills--but a time also when Savonarola preached the loftiest asceticism; Rabelais, in the midst of his obscene rhapsodies, created the wonderful idyl of l'Abbaye de Telesme; Fra Angelico on his knees painted his picture of Christ, and the triumphal procession of an emperor ended in a monastery! A time full of enigmas! and among the many enigmas which lived in it, was one of a sad, silent monk, of whom his cloister-brethren asserted that he once had led a very dissolute life, but now was the most absorbed _dèvoté_.