"Have you heard the news? Messer Raniero Frangipani and Madonna Ilaria Caselli are passing on their bridal journey to Rome!" Francesco's face was so pale that no earthly tint seemed to have remained in it. Only the large eyes gave evidence of life. "You come to me from her?" he questioned to the peasant. "She bade me tell you that from no motive of coercion,--but of her own free will and choice, the Frangipani's proposal had been accepted!" Francesco gave a sudden cry like one who leaps over a precipice, and, falling on his knees, buried his face in his hands. When he roused himself from the stupor which benumbed his limbs the peasant had disappeared, with him the bridal procession and the Swabian contingents of Conradino. The full moon gazed down upon him through the great silence of the mountain-world, and a thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the stars. CHAPTER III TONSURE AND THORN The following weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the monks but realized it:--putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling upon the stones before the solitary shrine. Could he have seen himself he would have staggered! How old and emaciated, shrunken and hopeless he looked, as he knelt there in his ungainly garments. The face which had formerly borne an open expression of happiness, was hard now, unreadable and impassive. His hands, once white and well cared for, had become almost transparent. As he held his body straight from the knees upward, it was difficult to perceive how much weaker this body had grown. There was a pathetically haughty poise to the head still; but the skin was colorless. The love for Ilaria, her witch-like face, her witch-like eyes, had remained with him. He had hoped against hope, that by some human, or divine interposition, the yoke about to be imposed upon him would be shattered, that it would prove but a period of probation, a horrid nightmare forsooth, which would be dispelled by some divine ray, give him back to earth, to life, to love, for which his heart yearned with a feverish longing that was fast sapping his strength. His prayers had been in vain: the moments were fleeting fast towards the consummation of his destiny. It suffered him no longer in the incense-saturated gloom of the chapel. Escaping from his solitary vigil he traversed the courtyard and almost unconsciously reached the spot whence on the night of his arrival at the cloisters he had looked down upon the mountain world of Central Italy.