The Captain of the Janizaries Part 23

She replied with loving reverence in her tone and look, "I thank you, Sire, for that t.i.tle; for the father of his country has the keeping of the hearts of all the daughters of Albania."

It were difficult to say whether the sweet loveliness in the lines of her face, or the majesty of character and superb heroism that shone through them, gave her the greater fascination as she added,

"If Jesu wills that among strangers I can best serve my country, there shall be my home."

"But you will not long be among strangers. Your goodness will make them all friends. Beside, G.o.d will keep such as you, for he loves the pure and beautiful."

Morsinia blushed as she answered,

"And does G.o.d not love the true and the n.o.ble? So he will keep thee and Albania. Does not the sun send down her[62] beams as straight over Constantinople as over Croia? and does she not draw the mists by as short a cord of her twisted rays from the Marmora as from the Adriatic? Then G.o.d can be as near us there as here; and our prayers for thee and our land will go as speedily to the Great Heart over all.

The Blessed Mary keep you, Sire!"

"Ay, the Blessed Mary spake the blessing through your lips, my child,"

responded Scanderbeg as he lifted her to her horse.

Constantine released himself from the general's hearty embrace, and sprang into the saddle at her side. Preceded and followed by a score of troopers they disappeared in the deep shadows of a mountain path.

FOOTNOTES:

[61] The death angel.

[62] In Albanian speech the sun is feminine.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Durazzo lies upon a promontory stretching out into the Adriatic. The walls which surrounded it at the time of our story, told, by the weather-wear of their stones, the different ages during which they had guarded the little bay that lies at the promontory's base. A young monk,[63] Barletius, to whom Colonel Kabilovitsch introduced the voyagers, as a travelling companion for a part of their journey, pointed out the great and rudely squared boulders in the lower course of masonry, as the work of the ancient Corcyreans, centuries before the coming of Christ. The upper courses, he said, were stained with the blood of the Greek soldiers of Alexius, when the Norman Robert Guiscard a.s.saulted the place, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

Indeed, to the monk's historic imagination, the world seemed still wrapped in the mists of the older ages; and, just as the low lying haze, with its mirage effect, contorted the rocks along the sh.o.r.e into domes and pinnacles, so did his fancy invest every object with the greatness of the history with which the old ma.n.u.scripts had made him familiar.

While Morsinia listened with a strange entertainment to his rhapsodic narrations, Constantine was busy studying the graceful lines of the Venetian half-galley that lay at the base of the cliff, and upon which they were to embark; her low deck, cut down in the centre nearly to the water's edge; her sharp, swan-necked prow raised high in air, and balanced by the broad elevation at the stern; the lateen sail that, furled on its boom, hung diagonally against the slender mast; the rows of holes at the side, through which in calm weather the oars were worked; the gay pennant from the mast-head, and the broad banner at the stern, which spread to the light breeze the Lion of St. Mark.

They were soon gliding out of the harbor of Durazzo, at first under the regularly timed stroke of a score of oarsmen. Rounding the promontory, the west wind filled the sail; and, careening to the leeward, the galley danced toward the south through the light spray of the billows which sung beneath the prow like the strings of a zither.

Perhaps it was this music of the waves--or it may have been that the wind was blowing straight across from Italy; or, possibly, it was the beauty of the maiden reclining upon the cus.h.i.+oned dais of the stern deck--that led the weather-beaten sailing master to take the zither, and sing one after another of Petrarch's love songs to Laura. Though his voice was as hoa.r.s.e as the wind that crooned through the cordage, and his language scarcely intelligible, the flow of the melody told the sentiment. Constantine's eyes sought the face of his companion, as if for the first time he had detected that she was beautiful. And perhaps for the first time in her life Morsinia felt conscious that Constantine was looking at her;--for she generally withstood his gaze with as little thought of it as she did that of the sky, or of Kabilovitsch. Even the monk turned his eyes from the magnificent sh.o.r.es of Albania, with their beetling headlands and receding bays, to cast furtive glances upon the maiden.

The monk's face was a striking one. He was pale, if not from holy vigil, from pouring over musty secular tomes. He had caught the spirit of the revival of learning which, notwithstanding all the superst.i.tion of ecclesiastics, was first felt in the cloisters of the church. His forehead was high, but narrow; his eyes mild, yet l.u.s.trous; his lower features almost feminine. One familiar with men would have said, "Here is a man of patient enthusiasm for things intellectual, a devotee to the ideal. He may be a philosopher, a poet, an artist; but he could never make a soldier, a diplomat, or even a lover, except of the most Platonic sort. Just the man for a monk. If all monks were like him, the church would be enriched indeed; but, if all like him were monks, the world would be the poorer."

Among other pa.s.sengers was a Greek monk, Gennadius. This man's full beard and long curly forelocks hanging in front of his ears, were in odd contrast with the smooth face and shaven head of the Latin monk.

Though strangers, they courteously saluted each other. However sharp might be the differences in their religious notions, they soon felt the fraternity such as cultured minds and great souls realize in the presence of the sublimities of nature. They studied each other's faces with agreeable surprise as the glories about them drew from their lips vivid outbursts of descriptive eloquence, in which, speaking the Latin or Greek with almost equal facility, they quoted from the cla.s.sic poets with which they were equally familiar.

As the galley turned eastward into the Corinthian gulf there burst upon them a panorama of natural splendor combined with cla.s.sic enchantment, such as no other spot on the earth presents. The mountainous sh.o.r.es lay about the long and narrow sea, like sleeping giants guarding the outflow of some sacred fountain. Back of the northern coast rose, like waking sentinels, the Helicon and Parna.s.sus, towering thousands of feet into the air; their tops helmeted in ice and plumed with fleecy clouds. The western sun poured upon the track of the voyagers floods of golden l.u.s.tre which lingered on the still waters, flashed in rainbows from the splas.h.i.+ng oars, gilded with glory the hither slope of every projection on either sh.o.r.e, and filled the great gorges beyond with dark purple shadows.

As Morsinia reclined with her head resting on Constantine's shoulder, and drank in the gorgeous, yet quieting, scene, the two monks stood with uncovered heads and, half embracing, chanted together in Greek one of the oldest known evening hymns of the Christian church. In free translation, it ran thus:--

"O Jesu, the Christ! glad light of the holy!

The brightness of G.o.d, the Father in heaven!

At setting of sun, with hearts that are lowly, We praise Thee for life this day Thou hast given."

"I love that hymn," said Gennadius, "because it was written long before the schism which rent the Holy Church into Latin and Greek."

"We will rejoice, then, that by the inspiration of the Holy Father, Eugenius, and the a.s.sent of your patriarch, the wound in the body of Christ has, after six centuries, at last been healed," replied Barletius.

"I fear that the healing is but seeming," said the Greek. "I was a member of the council of Florence, and know the motives of the men who composed it, and the exact meaning of the agreement--which means nothing. Your Pope cares not a sc.r.a.p of tinsel from his back for the true Christian dogma; and while his ambition led him to desire to become the uniter of Christendom, his own bishops, who know him well, were gathered in synod at Basil, and p.r.o.nounced him heretic, perjurer and debauchee."

"But you Greeks were doubtless more honest," said Barletius, with a tone and look of sarcasm.

"Humph!" grunted Gennadius, walking away; but turning about quickly he added,

"How could we be honest when, for the sake of the union, we a.s.sented to a denial of our most sacred dogmas by allowing the _Filioque_?[64]

It is not in the power of men living to change the truth as expressed through all past ages in the creed of the true church. Our emperor yielded the points to the Latins; but holy Mark of Ephesus and Prince Demetrius, our emperor's brother, did not. They retired in disgust from Italy. Why, the very dog of the emperor, that lay on his foot-cloth, scented the heresy to which his master was about to subscribe, and protested against the sacrilege by baying throughout the reading of the act of union. And I learn that the clergy and populace at Byzantium are foaming with rage at this impiety of our Latinizing emperor. I am hasting thither that I may utter my voice, too, in my cell in prayer, and from the pulpit of St. Sophia, against the unholy alliance."

"Yet," said Barletius, with scorn, "your emperor and church authorities subscribed. What sort of a divine spirit do you Greeks possess, that prompts you to confess what you do not believe?"

"I feel your taunt," replied Gennadius. "It is both just and unjust.

Have not some of your own prelates lately taught that the end justifies the means? The union, though wrong in itself, was justified--according to Latin ethics--by the result to be secured, the safety of both Greek and Latin churches from being conquered by the Turks. Our Eastern empire, the glory of the later Caesars, has already become reduced to the suburbs of Byzantium. The empire of Justinian and Theodosius has not to-day ten thousand soldiers to withstand the myriads of the Sultan. There must be union. We must have soldiers, even if we buy them with the price of an article of the creed--nay the loan of the article--for the union will not stand when danger has pa.s.sed. Conscience alone is one thing: conscience under necessity--I speak the ethics of you Latins--is another thing. But I abhor the deceit. Your bishop, whom you call Pope, has no reverence from our hearts, though we were to kiss his toe. You are idolaters with your images of Mary and the saints. _Filioque_ is a lie!" cried the Greek, giving vent to his prejudice and spite.

Barletius in the meantime had felt other emotions than the holiest being kindled within him by these hot words of his companion; and when the Greek had flashed his unseemly denunciation at _Filioque_, the Latin's soul burst in responsive rage. But he was not accustomed to harsh debate. Words were consumed upon his hot lips, or choked in his fury-dried throat. His frame trembled with the pent wrath. His hands clenched until the nails cut into the flesh. But alas for the best saints.h.i.+p, if temptation comes before canonization! The thin hand was raised, and it fell upon the holy brother's face. The blow was returned. But neither of them had been trained to carnal strife, nor had they the skill and strength to do justice to their n.o.ble rage.

Constantine, who leaped forward to act as peace-maker, stopped to laugh at the strange pose of the antagonists; for the Greek had valiantly seized the cowl of the Latin, and drawn it down over his face; while Barletius' thin fingers were wriggling through Gennadius'

beard, and both were prancing as awkwardly as one-day-old calves about the narrow deck, with the imminent prospect of cooling their spirits by immersion in the water.

The presence of this danger led Constantine to separate the scufflers; although his laughter at the contestants had made his limbs almost as limp as theirs. The ecclesiastical champions stood glaring their celestial resentment, the one white, the other red, like two statues of burlesque gladiators carved respectively in marble and porphyry.

The conflict might have been renewed had not Morsinia risen from her cus.h.i.+on, and approached them. But no sooner did Gennadius realize the danger of having so much as his gown touched by a woman, than he bolted to the other end of the galley, and sat down, with fright and shame, upon a coil of ropes. The Greek had been trained at the monastery on Mount Athos. From that masculine paradise the fair daughters of Eve were as carefully excluded as if they were still the agents of Satan, and sent by the devil to work the ruin of those who, by lofty meditation and unnatural asceticism, would return to the pre-marital Adamic state of innocence. During the long twilight, and when the night left only the outlines of the mountains sharply defined high up against the star-lit sky, Gennadius still sat motionless; his legs crossed beneath him; his head dropped upon his bosom. He gave no response to the salutation of the attendant who brought him the evening meal: nor would he touch it. When the sailors sung the songs whose melody floated over the sea, keeping time to the cadences of the light waves which bent but did not break the surface, the monk put his fingers into his ears. He tried to drive out worldly thoughts by recalling those precepts of an ancient saint which, for four hundred years, had been prescribed at Mount Athos for those who would quiet their perturbed souls and rise into the upper light of G.o.d. They were such as these. "Seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin upon thy breast; turn thy eyes and thoughts toward the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul, which when discovered will be involved in a mystic and ethereal light."

Barletius, equally chagrined by his display of temper before the laity, sought relief by inflicting upon himself a task of Pater Nosters, which he tallied off on his beads, made of olive-wood and sent him by a learned monk at Bethlehem.

When his punishment seemed accomplished, Morsinia asked him,

"Good father, why did you quarrel with the stranger?"

Barletius entered into a long explanation of the faith of the Roman Church at the point challenged by the Greek.

"I understand your words," said Morsinia, "but I do not understand their meaning."

"It is not necessary that you should, my child. If Holy Church understands, it is enough. A child may not understand all that the mother knows; yet believes the mother's word. So should you believe what Mother Church says."

"I would believe every word that Mother Church speaks, even though I do not understand why she speaks it," said Morsinia reverently. "But how can one believe another's words when one does not know what they mean; when they give no thought? Now what you say about the 'procession of the spirit,' and the 'begetting of the Son,' I do not get any clear thought about; and how then can I believe it in my heart."

The monk cast a troubled look upon the fair inquirer, and replied--

"Then you must simply believe in Holy Church which believes the truth."

"And say I believe the creed, when I only believe that the Church believes the creed?" queried the girl.

"It is enough. Happy are you if you seek to know no more. Beware of an inquisitive mind. It leads one astray from truth, as a wayward disposition soon departs from virtue. Credo! Credo! Credo! Help thou mine unbelief! should be your prayer. Restrain your thoughts as the helmsman yonder keeps our prow on the narrow way we are going. How soon you would perish if you should attempt to find your way alone out there on the deep! Woe to those who, like these wretched Greeks, depart from truth, and teach men so. Anathema, Maranatha!"