The Strolling Saint | Page 8

that already I have set down. There is one picture of her
that is burnt as with an acid upon my memory, a picture which the mere

mention of her name, the mere thought of her, never fails to evoke like
a ghost before me. I see her always as she appeared one evening when
she came suddenly and without warning upon Falcone and me in the
armoury of the citadel.
I see her again, a tall, slight, graceful woman, her oval face of the
translucent pallor of wax, framed in a nun-like coif, over which was
thrown a long black veil that fell to her waist and there joined the black
unrelieved draperies that she always wore. This sable garb was no mere
mourning for my father. His death had made as little change in her
apparel as in her general life. It had been ever thus as far as my
memory can travel; always had her raiment been the same, those
trailing funereal draperies. Again I see them, and that pallid face with
its sunken eyes, around which there were great brown patches that
seemed to intensify the depth at which they were set and the sombre
lustre of them on the rare occasions when she raised them; those slim,
wax-like hands, with a chaplet of beads entwined about the left wrist
and hanging thence to a silver crucifix at the end.
She moved almost silently, as a ghost; and where she passed she
seemed to leave a trail of sorrow and sadness in her wake, just as a
worldly woman leaves a trail of perfume.
Thus looked she when she came upon us there that evening, and thus
will she live for ever in my memory, for that was the first time that I
knew rebellion against the yoke she was imposing upon me; the first
time that our wills clashed, hers and mine; and as a consequence,
maybe, was it the first time that I considered her with purpose and
defined her to myself.
The thing befell some three months after the coming of Falcone to
Mondolfo.
That the old man-at-arms should have exerted a strong attraction upon
my young mind, you will readily understand. His intimate connection
with that dimly remembered father, who stood secretly in my
imagination in the position that my mother would have had St.
Augustine occupy, drew me to his equerry like metal to a lodestone.

And this attraction was reciprocal. Of his own accord old Falcone
sought me out, lingering in my neighbourhood at first like a dog that
looks for a kindly word. He had not long to wait. Daily we had our
meetings and our talks and daily did these grow in length; and they
were stolen hours of which I said no word to my mother, nor did others
for a season, so that all was well.
Our talks were naturally of my father, and it was through Falcone that I
came to know something of the greatness of that noble-souled, valiant
gentleman, whom the old servant painted for me as one who combined
with the courage of the lion the wiliness of the fox.
He discoursed of their feats of arms together, he described charges of
horse that set my nerves a-tingle as in fancy I heard the blare of
trumpets and the deafening thunder of hooves upon the turf. Of
escalades, of surprises, of breaches stormed, of camisades and
ambushes, of dark treacheries and great heroisms did he descant to fire
my youthful fancy, to fill me first with delight, and then with frenzy
when I came to think that in all these things my life must have no part,
that for me another road was set--a grey, gloomy road at the end of
which was dangled a reward which did not greatly interest me.
And then one day from fighting as an endeavour, as a pitting of force
against force and astuteness against astuteness, he came to talk of
fighting as an art.
It was from old Falcone that first I heard of Marozzo, that
miracle-worker in weapons, that master at whose academy in Bologna
the craft of swordsmanship was to be acquired, so that from fighting
with his irons as a beast with its claws, by sheer brute strength and
brute instinct, man might by practised skill and knowledge gain
advantages against which mere strength must spend itself in vain.
What he told me amazed me beyond anything that I had ever heard,
even from himself, and what he told me he illustrated, flinging himself
into the poises taught by Marozzo that I might appreciate the
marvellous science of the thing.

Thus was it that for the first time I made the acquaintance--an
acquaintance held by few men in those days--of those marvellous
guards of Marozzo's