CHAPTER XIV
THE MONK'S STRUGGLE
The golden sunshine of the spring morning was deadened to a sombretone in the shadowy courts of the Capuchin convent. The reddish brownof the walls was flecked with gold and orange spots of lichen; andhere and there, in crevices, tufts of grass, or even a little bunch ofgold-blooming flowers, looked hardily forth into the shadowy air. Acovered walk, with stone arches, inclosed a square filled with duskyshrubbery. There were tall, funereal cypresses, whose immense heightand scraggy profusion of decaying branches showed their extreme oldage. There were gaunt, gnarled olives, with trunks twisted in immenseserpent folds, and boughs wreathed and knotted into wild, unnaturalcontractions, as if their growth had been a series of spasmodicconvulsions, instead of a calm and gentle development of Nature. Therewere overgrown clumps of aloes, with the bare skeletons of formerflower-stalks standing erect among their dusky horns or lying rottingon the ground beside them. The place had evidently been intended forthe culture of shrubbery and flowers, but the growth of the trees hadlong since so intercepted the sunlight and fresh air that not evengrass could find root beneath their branches. The ground was coveredwith a damp green mould, strewn here and there with dead boughs, orpatched with tufts of fern and lycopodium, throwing out their greenhairy roots into the moist soil. A few half-dead roses and jasmines,remnants of former days of flowers, still maintained a strugglingexistence, but looked wan and discouraged in the effort, and seemedto stretch and pine vaguely for a freer air. In fact, the whole gardenmight be looked upon as a sort of symbol of the life by which it wassurrounded,--a life stagnant, unnatural, and unhealthy, cut off fromall those thousand stimulants to wholesome development which areafforded by the open plain of human existence, where strong naturesgrow distorted in unnatural efforts, though weaker ones find in itslowly shadows a congenial refuge.
We have given the brighter side of conventual life in the days we aredescribing: we have shown it as often a needed shelter of woman'shelplessness during ages of political uncertainty and revolution; wehave shown it as the congenial retreat where the artist, the poet, thestudent, and the man devoted to ideas found leisure undisturbed todevelop themselves under the consecrating protection of religion. Thepicture would be unjust to truth, did we not recognize, what, from ourknowledge of human nature, we must expect, a conventual life of farless elevated and refined order. We should expect that institutionswhich guaranteed to each individual a livelihood, without the necessityof physical labor or the responsibility of supporting a family, mightin time come to be incumbered with many votaries in whom indolence andimprovidence were the only impelling motives. In all ages of the worldthe unspiritual are the majority,--the spiritual the exceptions. It wasto the multitude that Jesus said, "Ye seek me not because ye saw themiracles, but because ye did eat and were filled,"--and the multitudehas been much of the same mind from that day to this.
The convent of which we speak had been for some years under the lenientrule of the jolly Brother Girolamo,--an easy, wide-spread, looselyorganized body, whose views of the purpose of human existence weredecidedly Anacreontic. Fasts he abominated,--night-prayers he foundunfavorable to his constitution; but he was a judge of olives and goodwine, and often threw out valuable hints in his pastoral visits onthe cooking of macaroni, for which he had himself elaborated a savoryrecipe; and the cellar and larder of the convent, during his pastorate,presented so many urgent solicitations to conventual repose, as tothreaten an inconvenient increase in the number of others. The monksin his time lounged in all the sunny places of the convent like somany loose sacks of meal, enjoying to the full the _dolce far niente_which seems to be the universal rule of Southern climates. They ateand drank and slept and snored; they made pastoral visits through thesurrounding community which were far from edifying; they gambled, andtippled, and sang most unspiritual songs; and keeping all the whiletheir own private pass-key to Paradise tucked under their girdles,were about as jolly a set of sailors to Eternity as the world had toshow. In fact, the climate of Southern Italy and its gorgeous sceneryare more favorable to voluptuous ecstasy than to the severe and gravewarfare of the true Christian soldier. The sunny plains of Capuademoralized the soldiers of Hannibal, and it was not without a reasonthat ancient poets made those lovely regions the abode of Sirens whosesong maddened by its sweetness, and of a Circe who made men drunk withher sensual fascinations, till they became sunk to the form of brutes.Here, if anywhere, is the lotos-eater's paradise,--the purple skies,the enchanted shores, the soothing gales, the dreamy mists, which allconspire to melt the energy of the will, and to make existence either ahalf doze of dreamy apathy or an awaking of mad delirium.
It was not from dreamy, voluptuous Southern Italy that the religiousprogress of the Italian race received any vigorous impulses. These camefrom more northern and more mountainous regions, from the severe, clearheights of Florence, Perugia, and Assisi, where the intellectual andthe moral both had somewhat of the old Etruscan earnestness and gloom.
One may easily imagine the stupid alarm and helpless confusion ofthese easy-going monks, when their new Superior came down among themhissing with a white heat from the very hottest furnace fires of a newreligious experience, burning and quivering with the terrors of theworld to come,--pale, thin, eager, tremulous, and yet with all themartial vigor of the former warrior, and all the habits of command of aformer princely station. His reforms gave no quarter to right or left;sleepy monks were dragged out to midnight prayers, and their devotionsenlivened with vivid pictures of hell-fire and ingenuities of eternaltorment enough to stir the blood of the most torpid. There was to beno more gormandizing, no more wine-bibbing; the choice old wines wereplaced under lock and key for the use of the sick and poor in thevicinity; and every fast of the Church, and every obsolete rule of theorder, were revived with unsparing rigor. It is true, they hated theirnew Superior with all the energy which laziness and good-living hadleft them, but they every soul of them shook in their sandals beforehim; for there is a true and established order of mastery among humanbeings, and when a man of enkindled energy and intense will comes amonga flock of irresolute commonplace individuals, he subjects them tohimself by a sort of moral paralysis similar to what a great, vigorousgymnotus distributes among a fry of inferior fishes. The bolder ones,who made motions of rebellion, were so energetically swooped upon, andconsigned to the discipline of dungeon and bread-and-water, that lesscourageous natures made a merit of siding with the more powerful party,mentally resolving to carry by fraud the points which they despaired ofaccomplishing by force.
On the morning we speak of, two monks might have been seen lounging ona stone bench by one of the arches, looking listlessly into the sombregarden-path we have described. The first of these, Father Anselmo, wasa corpulent fellow, with an easy swing of gait, heavy animal features,and an eye of shrewd and stealthy cunning: the whole air of the manexpressed the cautious, careful voluptuary. The other, Father Johannes,was thin, wiry, and elastic, with hands like birds' claws, and an eyethat reminded one of the crafty cunning of a serpent. His smile was acurious blending of shrewdness and malignity. He regarded his companionfrom time to time obliquely from the corners of his eyes, to see whatimpression his words were making, and had a habit of jerking himself upin the middle of a sentence and looking warily round to see if any onewere listening, which indicated habitual distrust.
"Our holy Superior is out a good while this morning," he said, atlength.
The observation was made in the smoothest and most silken tones, butthey carried with them such a singular suggestion of doubt and inquirythat they seemed like an accusation.
"Ah?" replied the other, perceiving evidently some intended undertoneof suspicion lurking in the woods, but apparently resolved not tocommit himself to his companion.
"Yes," said the first; "the zeal of the house of the Lord consumes him,the blessed man!"
"Blessed man!" echoed the second, rolling up his eyes, and giving adeep sigh, which shook his portly proportions so that they qu
iveredlike jelly.
"If he goes on in this way much longer," continued Father Johannes,"there will soon be very little mortal left of him; the saints willclaim him."
Father Anselmo gave something resembling a pious groan, but dartedmeanwhile a shrewd observant glance at the speaker.
"What would become of the convent, were he gone?" said Father Johannes."All these blessed reforms which he has brought about would fall back;for our nature is fearfully corrupt, and ever tends to wallow in themire of sin and pollution. What changes hath he wrought in us all! Tobe sure, the means were sometimes severe. I remember, brother, when hehad you under ground for more than ten days. My heart was pained foryou; but I suppose you know that it was necessary, in order to bringyou to that eminent state of sanctity where you now stand."
The heavy, sensual features of Father Anselmo flushed up with someemotion, whether of anger or of fear it was hard to tell; but he gaveone hasty glance at his companion, which, if a glance could kill, wouldhave struck him dead, and then there fell over his countenance, like aveil, an expression of sanctimonious humility as he replied,--
"Thank you for your sympathy, dearest brother. I remember, too, how Ifelt for you that week when you were fed only on bread and water, andhad to take it on your knees off the floor, while the rest of us sat attable. How blessed it must be to have one's pride brought down in thatway! When our dear, blessed Superior first came, brother, you were asa bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, but now what a blessed change! Itmust give you so much peace! How you must love him!"
"I think we love him about equally," said Father Johannes, his dark,thin features expressing the concentration of malignity. "His laborshave been blessed among us. Not often does a faithful shepherd meet soloving a flock. I have been told that the great Peter Abelard found farless gratitude. They tried to poison him in the most holy wine."
"How absurd!" interrupted Father Anselmo, hastily; "as if the blood ofthe Lord, as if our Lord himself could be made poison!"
"Brother, it is a fact," insisted the former, in tones silvery withhumility and sweetness.
"A fact that the most holy blood can be poisoned?" replied the other,with horror evidently genuine.
"I grieve to say, brother," said Father Johannes, "that in my profaneand worldly days I tried that experiment on a dog, and the poor brutedied in five minutes. Ah, brother," he added, observing that his obesecompanion was now thoroughly roused, "you see before you the chiefof sinners. Judas was nothing to me; and yet, such are the triumphsof grace, I am an unworthy member of this most blessed and piousbrotherhood; but I do penance daily in sackcloth and ashes for myoffense."
"But, Brother Johannes, was it really so? did it really happen?"inquired Father Anselmo, looking puzzled. "Where, then, is our faith?"
"Doth our faith rest on human reason, or on the evidence of our senses,Brother Anselmo? I bless God that I have arrived at that state where Ican adoringly say, 'I believe, because it is impossible.' Yea, brother,I know it to be a fact that the ungodly have sometimes destroyed holymen, like our Superior, who could not be induced to taste wine forany worldly purpose, by drugging the blessed cup; so dreadful are theragings of Satan in our corrupt nature!"
"I can't see into that," said Father Anselmo, still looking confused.
"Brother," answered Father Johannes, "permit an unworthy sinner toremind you that you must not try to see into anything; all that iswanted of you in our most holy religion is to shut your eyes andbelieve; all things are possible to the eye of faith. Now, humanlyspeaking," he added, with a peculiarly meaning look, "who would believethat you kept all the fasts of our order, and all the extraordinaryones which it hath pleased our blessed Superior to lay upon us, as yousurely do? A worldling might swear, to look at you, that such fleshand color must come in some way from good meat and good wine; but weremember how the three children throve on the pulse and rejected themeat from the king's table."
The countenance of Father Anselmo expressed both anger and alarm atthis home-thrust, and the changes did not escape the keen eye of FatherJohannes, who went on.
"I directed the eyes of our holy father upon you as a striking exampleof the benefits of abstemious living, showing that the days of miraclesare not yet past in the Church, as some skeptics would have us believe.He seemed to study you attentively. I have no doubt he will honor youwith some more particular inquiries,--the blessed saint!"
Father Anselmo turned uneasily on his seat and stealthily eyed hiscompanion, to see, if possible, how much real knowledge was expressedby his words, and then answered on quite another topic.
"How this garden has fallen to decay! We miss old Father Angelosorely, who was always trimming and cleaning it. Our Superior is tooheavenly-minded to have much thought for earthly things, and so itgoes."
Father Johannes watched this attempt at diversion with a glitter ofstealthy malice, and, seeming to be absorbed in contemplation, brokeout again exactly where he had left off on the unwelcome subject.
"I mind me now, Brother Anselmo, that, when you came out of your cellto prayers, the other night, your utterance was thick, and your eyesheavy and watery, and your gait uncertain. One would swear that youhad been drunken with new wine; but we knew it was all the effect offasting and devout contemplation, which inebriates the soul with holyraptures, as happened to the blessed Apostles on the day of Pentecost.I remarked the same to our holy father, and he seemed to give itearnest heed, for I saw him watching you through all the services. Howblessed is such watchfulness!"
"The Devil take him!" said Father Anselmo, suddenly thrown off hisguard; but checking himself, he added, confusedly,--"I mean"--
"I understand you, brother," said Father Johannes; "it is a motionof the old nature not yet entirely subdued. A little more of thediscipline of the lower vaults, which you have found so precious, willset all that right."
"You would not inform against me?" said Father Anselmo, with anexpression of alarm.
"It would be my duty, I suppose," said Father Johannes, with a sigh;"but, sinner that I am, I never could bring my mind to such proceedingswith the vigor of our blessed father. Had I been Superior of theconvent, as was talked of, how differently might things have proceeded!I should have erred by a sinful laxness. How fortunate that it was he,instead of such a miserable sinner as myself!"
"Well, tell me, then, Father Johannes,--for your eyes are shrewd as alynx's,--_is_ our good Superior so perfect as he seems? or does he havehis little private comforts sometimes, like the rest of us? Nobody,you know, can stand it to be always on the top round of the ladder toParadise. For my part, between you and me, I never believed all thatstory they read to us so often about Saint Simeon Stylites, who passedso many years on the top of a pillar and never came down. Trust me, theold boy found his way down sometimes, when all the world was asleep,and got somebody to do duty for him meantime, while he took a littlesomething comfortable. Is it not so?"
"I am told to believe, and I do believe," said Father Johannes, castingdown his eyes, piously; "and, dear brother, it ill befits a sinner likeme to reprove; but it seemeth to me as if you make too much use of theeyes of carnal inquiry. Touching the life of our holy father, I cannotbelieve the most scrupulous watch can detect anything in his walk orconversation other than appears in his profession. His food is next tonothing,--a little chopped spinach or some bitter herb cooked withoutsalt for ordinary days, and on fast days he mingles this with ashes,according to a saintly rule. As for sleep, I believe he does withoutit; for at no time of the night, when I have knocked at the door ofhis cell, have I found him sleeping. He is always at his prayers orbreviary. His cell hath only a rough, hard board for a bed, with a logof rough wood for a pillow; yet he complains of that as tempting toindolence."
Father Anselmo shrugged his fat shoulders, ruefully.
"It's all well enough," he said, "for those that want to take this hardroad to Paradise; but why need they drive the flock up with them?"
"True enough, Brother Anselmo," said Father Johannes; "b
ut the flockwill rejoice in it in the end, doubtless. I understand he is purposingto draw yet stricter the reins of discipline. We ought to be thankful."
"Thankful? We can't wink but six times a week now," said FatherAnselmo; "and by and by he won't let us wink at all."
"Hist! hush! here he comes," said Father Johannes. "What ails him? helooks wild, like a man distraught."
In a moment more, in fact, Father Francesco strode hastily through thecorridor, with his deep-set eyes dilated and glittering, and a vividhectic flush on his hollow cheeks. He paid no regard to the salutationof the obsequious monks; in fact, he seemed scarcely to see them, buthurried in a disordered manner through the passages and gained the roomof his cell, which he shut and locked with a violent clang.
"What has come over him now?" said Father Anselmo.
Father Johannes stealthily followed some distance, and then stoodwith his lean neck outstretched and his head turned in the directionwhere the Superior had disappeared. The whole attitude of the man,with his acute glittering eye, might remind one of a serpent making anobservation before darting after his prey.
"Something is working him," he said to himself; "what may it be?"
Meanwhile that heavy oaken door had closed on a narrow cell, bare ofeverything which could be supposed to be a matter of convenience inthe abode of a human being. A table of the rudest and most primitiveconstruction was garnished with a skull, whose empty eye-holes andgrinning teeth were the most conspicuous objects in the room. Behindthis stood a large crucifix, manifestly the work of no common master,and bearing evident traces in its workmanship of Florentine art: itwas, perhaps, one of the relics of the former wealth of the noblemanwho had buried his name and worldly possessions in this livingsepulchre. A splendid manuscript breviary, richly illuminated, lay openon the table; and the fair fancy of its flowery letters, the lustre ofgold and silver on its pages, formed a singular contrast to the squalidnakedness of everything else in the room. This book, too, had been afamily heirloom; some lingering shred of human and domestic affectionsheltered itself under the protection of religion in making it thecompanion of his self-imposed life of penance and renunciation.
Father Francesco had just returned from the scene in the confessionalwe have already described. That day had brought to him one of thosepungent and vivid inward revelations which sometimes overset in amoment some delusion that has been the cherished growth of years.Henceforth the reign of self-deception was past,--there was no moreself-concealment, no more evasion. He loved Agnes,--he knew it; hesaid it over and over again to himself with a stormy intensity ofenergy; and in this hour the whole of his nature seemed to rise inrebellion against the awful barriers which hemmed in and threatenedthis passion. He now saw clearly that all that he had been callingfatherly tenderness, pastoral zeal, Christian unity, and a thousandother evangelical names, was nothing more nor less than a passion thathad gone to the roots of existence and absorbed into itself all thatthere was of him. Where was he to look for refuge? What hymn, whatprayer, had he not blent with her image? It was this that he had givento her as a holy lesson,--it was that that she had spoken of to him asthe best expression of her feelings. This prayer he had explained toher; he remembered just the beautiful light in her eyes, which werefixed on his so trustingly. How dear to him had been that unquestioningdevotion, that tender, innocent humility!--how dear, and how dangerous!
We have read of flowing rivulets, wandering peacefully without rippleor commotion, so long as no barrier stayed their course, suddenlychafing in angry fury when an impassable dam was thrown across theirwaters. So any affection, however genial and gentle in its own nature,may become an ungovernable, ferocious passion, by the interventionof fatal obstacles in its course. In the case of Father Francesco,the sense of guilt and degradation fell like a blight over all thepast that had been so ignorantly happy. He thought he had been livingon manna, but found it poison. Satan had been fooling him, leadinghim on blindfold, and laughing at his simplicity, and now mocked athis captivity. And how nearly had he been hurried by a sudden andoverwhelming influence to the very brink of disgrace! He felt himselfshiver and grow cold to think of it. A moment more, and he had blastedthat pure ear with forbidden words of passion; and even now heremembered, with horror, the look of grave and troubled surprise inthose confiding eyes, that had always looked up to him trustingly, asto God. A moment more, and he had betrayed the faith he taught her,shattered her trust in the holy ministry, and perhaps imperiled hersalvation. He breathed a sigh of relief when he thought of it,--he hadnot betrayed himself, he had not fallen in her esteem, he still stoodon that sacred vantage-ground where his power over her was so great,and where at least he possessed her confidence and veneration. Therewas still time for recollection, for self-control, for a vehementstruggle which should set all right again: but, alas! how shall a manstruggle who finds his whole inner nature boiling in furious rebellionagainst the dictates of his conscience,--self against self?
It is true, also, that no passions are deeper in their hold, morepervading and more vital to the whole human being, than those thatmake their first entrance through the higher nature, and, beginningwith a religious and poetic ideality, gradually work their way throughthe whole fabric of the human existence. From grosser passions, whoseroots lie in the senses, there is always a refuge in man's loftiernature. He can cast them aside with contempt, and leave them as onewhose lower story is flooded can remove to a higher loft, and liveserenely with a purer air and wider prospect. But to love that is bornof ideality, of intellectual sympathy, of harmonies of the spiritualand immortal natures, of the very poetry and purity of the soul, if itbe placed where reason and religion forbid its exercise and expression,what refuge but the grave,--what hope but that wide eternity where allhuman barriers fall, all human relations end, and love ceases to be acrime? A man of the world may struggle by change of scene, place, andemployment. He may put oceans between himself and the things thatspeak of what he desires to forget. He may fill the void in his lifewith the stirring excitement of the battle-field, or the whirl oftravel from city to city, or the press of business and care. But whathelp is there for him whose life is tied down to the narrow sphere ofthe convent,--to the monotony of a bare cell, to the endless repetitionof the same prayers, the same chants, the same prostrations, especiallywhen all that ever redeemed it from monotony has been that image andthat sympathy which conscience now bids him forget?
When Father Francesco precipitated himself into his cell and lockedthe door, it was with the desperation of a man who flies from a mortalenemy. It seemed to him that all eyes saw just what was boiling withinhim,--that the wild thoughts that seemed to scream their turbulentimportunities in his ears were speaking so loud that all the worldwould hear. He should disgrace himself before the brethren whom he hadso long been striving to bring to order and to teach the lessons ofholy self-control. He saw himself pointed at, hissed at, degraded, bythe very men who had quailed before his own reproofs; and scarcely,when he had bolted the door behind him, did he feel himself safe.Panting and breathless, he fell on his knees before the crucifix, and,bowing his head in his hands, fell forward upon the floor. As a spentwave melts at the foot of a rock, so all his strength passed away, andhe lay awhile in a kind of insensibility,--a state in which, thoughconsciously existing, he had no further control over his thoughts andfeelings. In that state of dreamy exhaustion his mind seemed like amirror, which, without vitality or will of its own, simply lies stilland reflects the objects that may pass over it. As clouds sailing inthe heavens cast their images, one after another, on the glassy floorof a waveless sea, so the scenes of his former life drifted in vividpictures athwart his memory. He saw his father's palace,--the wide,cool, marble halls,--the gardens resounding with the voices of fallingwaters. He saw the fair face of his mother, and played with the jewelsupon her hands. He saw again the picture of himself, in all the flushof youth and health, clattering on horseback through the streets ofFlorence with troops of gay young friends, now dead to him as he tothe
m. He saw himself in the bowers of gay ladies, whose golden hair,lustrous eyes, and siren wiles came back shivering and trembling inthe waters of memory in a thousand undulating reflections. There werewild revels,--orgies such as Florence remembers with shame to this day.There was intermingled the turbulent din of arms,--the haughty passion,the sudden provocation, the swift revenge. And then came the awfulhour of conviction, the face of that wonderful man whose preachinghad stirred all souls; and then those fearful days of penance,--thatdarkness of the tomb,--that dying to the world,--those solemn vows, andthe fearful struggles by which they had been followed.
"Oh, my God!" he cried, "is it all in vain?--so many prayers? so manystruggles?--and shall I fail of salvation at last?"
He seemed to himself as a swimmer, who, having exhausted his last gaspof strength in reaching the shore, is suddenly lifted up on a cruelwave and drawn back into the deep. There seemed nothing for him but tofold his arms and sink.
For he felt no strength now to resist, he felt no wish to conquer;he only prayed that he might lie there and die. It seemed to himthat the love which possessed him and tyrannized over his very beingwas a doom,--a curse sent upon him by some malignant fate with whosepower it was vain to struggle. He detested his work,--he detested hisduties,--he loathed his vows; and there was not a thing in his wholefuture to which he looked forward otherwise than with the extremeof aversion, except one, to which he clung with a bitter and defianttenacity,--the spiritual guidance of Agnes. Guidance!--he laughedaloud, in the bitterness of his soul, as he thought of this. He washer guide, her confessor; to him she was bound to reveal every changeof feeling; and this love that he too well perceived rising in herheart for another,--he would wring from her own confessions the meansto repress and circumvent it. If she could not be his, he might atleast prevent her from belonging to any other,--he might at least keepher always within the sphere of his spiritual authority. Had he not aright to do this? had he not a right to cherish an evident vocation,--aright to reclaim her from the embrace of an excommunicated infidel, andpresent her as a chaste bride at the altar of the Lord? Perhaps, whenthat was done, when an irrevocable barrier should separate her fromall possibility of earthly love, when the awful marriage-vow shouldhave been spoken which should seal her heart for heaven alone, he mightrecover some of the blessed calm which her influence once brought overhim, and these wild desires might cease, and these feverish pulses bestill.
Such were the vague images and dreams of the past and future thatfloated over his mind, as he lay in a heavy sort of lethargy onthe floor of his cell, and hour after hour passed away. It grewafternoon, and the radiance of evening came on. The window of the celloverlooked the broad Mediterranean, all one blue glitter of smiles andsparkles. The white-winged boats were flitting lightly to and fro,like gauzy-winged insects in the summer air; the song of the fishermendrawing their nets on the beach floated cheerily upward. Capri laylike a half-dissolved opal in shimmering clouds of mist, and Naplesgleamed out pearly clear in the purple distance. Vesuvius, with itscloud-spotted sides, its garlanded villas and villages, its silverycrown of vapor, seemed a warm-hearted and genial old giant lying downin his gorgeous repose, and holding all things on his heaving bosom ina kindly embrace.
So was the earth flooded with light and glory, that the tide pouredinto the cell, giving the richness of an old Venetian paintingto its bare and squalid furniture. The crucifix glowed along allits sculptured lines with rich golden hues. The breviary, whosemany-colored leaves fluttered as the wind from the sea drew inward,was yet brighter in its gorgeous tints. It seemed a sort of devotionalbutterfly perched before the grinning skull, which was bronzed by theenchanted light into warmer tones of color, as if some remembranceof what once it saw and felt came back upon it. So, also, the bare,miserable board which served for the bed, and its rude pillow, wereglorified. A stray sunbeam, too, fluttered down on the floor likea pitying spirit, to light up that pale, thin face, whose classicoutlines had now a sharp, yellow setness, like that of swooning ordeath; it seemed to linger compassionately on the sunken, wastedcheeks, on the long black lashes that fell over the deep hollowsbeneath the eyes like a funereal veil. Poor man! lying crushed andtorn, like a piece of rockweed wrenched from its rock by a storm, andthrown up withered upon the beach!
From the leaves of the breviary there depends, by a fragment of goldbraid, a sparkling something that wavers and glitters in the eveninglight. It is a cross of the cheapest and simplest material, that oncebelonged to Agnes. She lost it from her rosary at the confessional,and Father Francesco saw it fall, yet would not warn her of the loss,for he longed to possess something that had belonged to her. He madeit a mark to one of her favorite hymns; but she never knew where ithad gone. Little could she dream, in her simplicity, what a powershe held over the man who seemed to her an object of such awfulveneration. Little did she dream that the poor little tinsel cross hadsuch a mighty charm with it, and that she herself, in her childlikesimplicity, her ignorant innocence, her peaceful tenderness and trust,was raising such a turbulent storm of passion in the heart which shesupposed to be above the reach of all human changes.
And now, through the golden air, the Ave Maria is sounding from theconvent-bells, and answered by a thousand tones and echoes fromthe churches of the old town, and all Christendom gives a moment'sadoring pause to celebrate the moment when an angel addressed to amortal maiden words that had been wept and prayed for during thousandsof years. Dimly they sounded through his ear, in that half-deadlytrance,--not with plaintive sweetness and motherly tenderness, but likenotes of doom and vengeance. He felt rebellious impulses within, whichrose up in hatred against them, and all that recalled to his mind thefaith which seemed a tyranny, and the vows which appeared to him such ahopeless and miserable failure.
But now there came other sounds nearer and more earthly. His quickenedsenses perceive a busy patter of sandaled feet outside his cell, anda whispering of consultation,--and then the silvery, snaky tones ofFather Johannes, which had that oily, penetrative quality which passesthrough all substances with such distinctness.
"Brethren," he said, "I feel bound in conscience to knock. Our blessedSuperior carries his mortifications altogether too far. His faithfulsons must beset him with filial inquiries."
The condition in which Father Francesco was lying, like many abnormalstates of extreme exhaustion, seemed to be attended with a mysteriousquickening of the magnetic forces and intuitive perceptions. He feltthe hypocrisy of those tones, and they sounded in his ear like thesuppressed hiss of a deadly serpent. He had always suspected that thisman hated him to the death; and he felt now that he was come with hisstealthy tread and his almost supernatural power of prying observation,to read the very inmost secrets of his heart. He knew that he longedfor nothing so much as the power to hurl him from his place and toreign in his stead; and the instinct of self-defense roused him. Hestarted up as one starts from a dream, waked by a whisper in the ear,and, raising himself on his elbow, looked towards the door.
A cautious rap was heard, and then a pause. Father Francesco smiledwith a peculiar and bitter expression. The rap became louder, moreenergetic, stormy at last, intermingled with vehement calls on his name.
Father Francesco rose at length, settled his garments, passed hishands over his brow, and then, composing himself to an expression ofdeliberate gravity, opened the door and stood before them.
"Holy father," said Father Johannes, "the hearts of your sons havebeen saddened. A whole day have you withdrawn your presence from ourdevotions. We feared you might have fainted, your pious austerities sooften transcend the powers of Nature."
"I grieve to have saddened the hearts of such affectionate sons," saidthe Superior, fixing his eye keenly on Father Johannes; "but I havebeen performing a peculiar office of prayer to-day for a soul in deadlyperil, and have been so absorbed therein that I have known nothing thatpassed. There is a soul among us, brethren," he added, "that stands atthis moment so near to damnation that even the most blessed Mother ofGod is in
doubt for its salvation, and whether it can be saved at all,God only knows."
These words, rising up from a tremendous groundswell of repressedfeeling, had a fearful, almost supernatural earnestness that made thebody of the monks tremble. Most of them were conscious of living buta shabby, shambling, dissembling life, evading in every possible waythe efforts of their Superior to bring them up to the requirements oftheir profession; and therefore, when these words were bolted out amongthem with such a glowing intensity, every one of them began mentallyfeeling for the key of his own private and interior skeleton-closet,and wondering which of their ghastly occupants was coming to light now.
Father Johannes alone was unmoved, because he had long since ceased tohave a conscience. A throb of moral pulsation had for years been animpossibility to the dried and hardened fibre of his inner nature. Hewas one of those real, genuine, thorough unbelievers in all religionand all faith and all spirituality, whose unbelief grows only morecallous by the constant handling of sacred things. Ambition was theruling motive of his life, and every faculty was sharpened into suchacuteness under its action that his penetration seemed at times almostpreternatural.
While he stood with downcast eyes and hands crossed upon his breast,listening to the burning words which remorse and despair wrung from hisSuperior, he was calmly and warily studying to see what could be madeof the evident interior conflict that convulsed him. Was there somesecret sin? Had that sanctity at last found the temptation that wasmore than a match for it? And what could it be?
To a nature with any strong combative force there is no tonic likethe presence of a secret and powerful enemy, and the stealthy glancesof Father Johannes's serpent eye did more towards restoring FatherFrancesco to self-mastery than the most conscientious struggles couldhave done. He grew calm, resolved, determined. Self-respect was dear tohim,--and dear to him no less that reflection of self-respect which aman reads in other eyes. He would not forfeit his conventual honor, orbring a stain on his order, or, least of all, expose himself to thescoffing eye of a triumphant enemy. Such were the motives that now cameto his aid, while as yet the whole of his inner nature rebelled at thethought that he must tear up by the roots and wholly extirpate thislove that seemed to have sent its fine fibres through every nerve ofhis being. "No!" he said to himself, with a fierce interior rebellion,"_that_ I will not do! Right or wrong, come heaven, come hell, I_will_ love her: and if lost I must be, lost I will be!" And whilethis determination lasted, prayer seemed to him a mockery. He darednot pray alone now, when most he needed prayer; but he moved forwardwith dignity towards the convent chapel to lead the vesper devotionsof his brethren. Outwardly he was calm and rigid as a statue; but ashe commenced the service, his utterance had a terrible meaning andearnestness that were felt even by the most drowsy and leaden of hisflock. It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within thewalls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tonesof the voice during the access of a great agony. The effect is entirelyinvoluntary and often against the most strenuous opposition of thewill, but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words withan intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguishor conflict of which the language itself gives no expression.
Never were the long-drawn intonations of the chants and prayers ofthe Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superiorthat night breathed into them. They seemed to wail, to supplicate, tocombat, to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish,and anon to rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and themonks quailed and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings ofcoming wrath and judgment.
In the evening exhortation, which it had been the Superior's customto add to the prayers of the vesper-hour, he dwelt with a terrible andghastly eloquence on the loss of the soul.
"Brethren," he said, "believe me, the very first hour of a damnedspirit in hell will outweigh all the prosperities of the mostprosperous life. If you could gain the whole world, that one hour ofhell would outweigh it all; how much more such miserable, pitifulscraps and fragments of the world as they gain who for the sake of alittle fleshly ease neglect the duties of a holy profession! There isa broad way to hell through a convent, my brothers, where miserablewretches go who have neither the spirit to serve the Devil wholly, northe patience to serve God; there be many shaven crowns that gnash theirteeth in hell to-night,--many a monk's robe is burning on its owner inliving fire, and the devils call him a fool for choosing to be damnedin so hard a way. 'Could you not come here by some easier road than acloister?' they ask. 'If you must sell your soul, why did you not getsomething for it?' Brethren, there be devils waiting for some of us;they are laughing at your paltry shifts and evasions, at your effortsto make things easy,--for they know how it will all end at last. Rouseyourselves! Awake! Salvation is no easy matter,--nothing to be gotbetween sleeping and waking. Watch, pray, scourge the flesh, fast,weep, bow down in sackcloth, mingle your bread with ashes, if by anymeans ye may escape the everlasting fire!"
"Bless me!" said Father Anselmo, when the services were over, castinga half-scared glance after the retreating figure of the Superior ashe left the chapel, and drawing a long breath; "it's enough to makeone sweat to hear him go on. What has come over him? Anyhow, I'll givemyself a hundred lashes this very night: something must be done."
"Well," said another, "I confess I did hide a cold wing of fowl in thesleeve of my gown last fast-day. My old aunt gave it to me, and I wasforced to take it for relation's sake; but I'll do so no more, as I'm aliving sinner I'll do a penance this very night."
Father Johannes stood under one of the arches that looked into thegloomy garden, and, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and hiscold, glittering eye fixed stealthily now on one and now on another,listened with an ill-disguised sneer to these hasty evidences of fearand remorse in the monks, as they thronged the corridor on the way totheir cells. Suddenly turning to a young brother who had lately joinedthe convent, he said to him,--
"And what of the pretty Clarice, my brother?"
The blood flushed deep into the pale cheek of the young monk, and hisframe shook with some interior emotion as he answered,--
"She is recovering."
"And she sent for thee to shrive her?"
"My God!" said the young man, with an imploring, wild expression in hisdark eyes, "she did; but I would not go."
"Then Nature is still strong," said Father Johannes, pitilessly eyeingthe young man.
"When will it ever die?" said the stripling, with a despairing gesture;"it heeds neither heaven nor hell."
"Well, patience, boy! if you have lost an earthly bride, you havegained a heavenly one. The Church is our espoused in white linen. Blessthe Lord, without ceasing, for the exchange."
There was an inexpressible mocking irony in the tones in which thiswas said, that made itself felt to the finely vitalized spirit ofthe youth, though to all the rest it sounded like the accreditedaverage pious talk which is more or less the current coin of religiousorganizations.
Now no one knows through what wanton deviltry Father Johannes broachedthis painful topic with the poor youth; but he had a peculiar faculty,with his smooth tones and his sanctimonious smiles, of thrustingred-hot needles into any wounds which he either knew or suspected underthe coarse woolen robes of his brethren. He appeared to do it in allcoolness, in a way of psychological investigation.
He smiled, as the youth turned away, and a moment after, started as ifa thought had suddenly struck him.
"I have it!" he said to himself. "There may be a woman at the bottomof this discomposure of our holy father; for he is wrought upon bysomething to the very bottom of his soul. I have not studied humannature so many years for nothing. Father Francesco hath been muchin the guidance of women. His preaching hath wrought upon them, andperchance among them. Aha!" he said to himself, as he paced up anddown. "I have it! I'll try an experiment upon him!"