Prima che incontro alla festosa fronte
I lugubri suoi lampi il ver baleni.
It was very still in the small neglected chapel. The noises of the farmcame faintly through closed doors—voices shouting at the oxen in thelower fields, the querulous bark of the old house-dog, and Filomena'sangry calls to the little white-faced foundling in the kitchen.
The February day was closing, and a ray of sunshine, slanting through aslit in the chapel wall, brought out the vision of a pale haloed headfloating against the dusky background of the chancel like a water-lilyon its leaf. The face was that of the saint of Assisi—a sunken ravagedcountenance, lit with an ecstasy of suffering that seemed not so much toreflect the anguish of the Christ at whose feet the saint knelt, as themute pain of all poor down-trodden folk on earth.
When the small Odo Valsecca—the only frequenter of the chapel—had beentaunted by the farmer's wife for being a beggar's brat, or when his earswere tingling from the heavy hand of the farmer's son, he found amelancholy kinship in that suffering face; but since he had fightingblood in him too, coming on the mother's side of the rude Piedmontesestock of the Marquesses di Donnaz, there were other moods when he turnedinstead to the stout Saint George in gold armour, just discerniblethrough the grime and dust of the opposite wall.
The chapel of Pontesordo was indeed as wonderful a storybook as fateever unrolled before the eyes of a neglected and solitary child. For ahundred years or more Pontesordo, a fortified manor of the Dukes ofPianura, had been used as a farmhouse; and the chapel was never openedsave when, on Easter Sunday, a priest came from the town to say mass. Atother times it stood abandoned, cobwebs curtaining the narrow windows,farm tools leaning against the walls, and the dust deep on the sea-godsand acanthus volutes of the altar. The manor of Pontesordo was very old.The country people said that the great warlock Virgil, whosedwelling-place was at Mantua, had once shut himself up for a year in thetopmost chamber of the keep, engaged in unholy researches; and anotherlegend related that Alda, wife of an early lord of Pianura, had thrownherself from its battlements to escape the pursuit of the terribleEzzelino. The chapel adjoined this keep, and Filomena, the farmer'swife, told Odo that it was even older than the tower and that the wallshad been painted by early martyrs who had concealed the