Now and again moments of resonant incredulity beat upon his brain. Why had his guiltless youth been condemned, why had he been sold into bondage? For a moment he started, retreating precipitately into the shadows. On the far bank of the river, whose glittering coils wound through the emerald depths of the valley, there, among the aspens, he descried a company of horsemen, waiting, spears erect, helmets glittering, the wind tossing the dark manes of their horses. After a time they rode onward, and he, too, cautiously pursued his solitary path. Evening had come. The rose had faded from the sky; but the horizon was flooded with pale gold, in which shone the pellucid evening star. The air was filled with the sweet chimes of innumerable bells. A group of towers rising above the distant hills cut sharply into the glory of the sky. Yonder lay Viterbo amidst her encircling walls: thence those carolling chimes, that so strangely stirred him, were singing their message of peace. His eyes were fixed afar. Would he turn back?-- The west was smoking with golden vapors. The forests receding on either hand revealed the hills and summits of the pontifical city. The old Longobard walls curved away on each hand, for a long distance, high and grim, with battlements and towers, bare and menacing. For a moment Francesco paused; his eyes in the tracks of the sinking sun, his lips tightly set, the nails of his hands driven into his own flesh. Then with head high and erect, never a muscle betraying the anguish of his soul, he rode into the gates of Viterbo. CHAPTER IV THE PAWN OF THE CHURCH When Francesco arrived on the height it was the hour of the closing of the city-gates and he took lodging at an inn situated near the city walls. He caught his breath the next morning at the imposing aspect of the place. In the young sunshine its many towers were no longer phantom intruders on the sky, but a dominant fact. The machicolated heights, the encircling ramparts, the stern outlines of the fortress-palace of the pope, rose proudly impregnable in the air. On the broad highways from Umbria, Tuscany and Romagna, even at this early hour, an almost endless stream of humanity was moving. Many a clerk and prelate was there, superbly arrayed, mounted on steeds gay with princely trappings. Fair women took in the freshness of the day. Pilgrims with staff and shell trudged merrily or wearily on. Jewish merchants, serious of face, bore packs containing valuable merchandise. For Viterbo lay on the highway, linking Northern and Southern Italy, and Europe, in motion on its way to Rome, moved incessantly through its streets. The image of Rome, in her desolation, recurred, vague as a ghost, to Francesco's mind and vanished before this city of the present, unhaunted as yet by memories, rising radiant in the morning air.