2I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton's beautiful translation of this sonnet in theAtlantic Monthlyfor February, 1859:—"So gentle and so modest doth appearMy lady when she giveth her salute,That every tongue becometh trembling mute,Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.And though she hears her praises, she doth goBenignly clothèd with humility,And like a thing come down she seems to beFrom heaven to earth, a miracle to show.So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyesWhich none can understand who doth not prove.And from her lip there seems indeed to moveA spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'"
2I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton's beautiful translation of this sonnet in theAtlantic Monthlyfor February, 1859:—"So gentle and so modest doth appearMy lady when she giveth her salute,That every tongue becometh trembling mute,Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.And though she hears her praises, she doth goBenignly clothèd with humility,And like a thing come down she seems to beFrom heaven to earth, a miracle to show.So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyesWhich none can understand who doth not prove.And from her lip there seems indeed to moveA spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'"
2I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton's beautiful translation of this sonnet in theAtlantic Monthlyfor February, 1859:—
"So gentle and so modest doth appearMy lady when she giveth her salute,That every tongue becometh trembling mute,Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.And though she hears her praises, she doth goBenignly clothèd with humility,And like a thing come down she seems to beFrom heaven to earth, a miracle to show.So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyesWhich none can understand who doth not prove.And from her lip there seems indeed to moveA spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'"
"So gentle and so modest doth appearMy lady when she giveth her salute,That every tongue becometh trembling mute,Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.And though she hears her praises, she doth goBenignly clothèd with humility,And like a thing come down she seems to beFrom heaven to earth, a miracle to show.So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyesWhich none can understand who doth not prove.And from her lip there seems indeed to moveA spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'"
"So gentle and so modest doth appearMy lady when she giveth her salute,That every tongue becometh trembling mute,Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare.And though she hears her praises, she doth goBenignly clothèd with humility,And like a thing come down she seems to beFrom heaven to earth, a miracle to show.So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyesWhich none can understand who doth not prove.And from her lip there seems indeed to moveA spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,Which goeth saying to the soul, 'Aspire!'"
"I would," said Agnes, thoughtfully, "that I knew who this stranger is, and what is his great trouble and need,—his eyes are so full of sorrow. Giulietta said he was the King's brother, and was called the Lord Adrian. Whatsorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor maid like me?"
"Perhaps the Lord hath pierced him with a longing after the celestial beauty and heavenly purity of paradise, and wounded him with a divine sorrow, as happened to Saint Francis and to the blessed Saint Dominic," said the monk. "Beauty is the Lord's arrow, wherewith he pierceth to the inmost soul, with a divine longing and languishment which find rest only in him. Hence thou seest the wounds of love in saints are always painted by us with holy flames ascending from them. Have good courage, sweet child, and pray with fervor for this youth; for there be no prayers sweeter before the throne of God than those of spotless maidens. The Scripture saith, 'My beloved feedeth among the lilies.'"
At this moment the sharp, decided tramp of Elsie was heard reëntering the garden.
"Come, Agnes," she said, "it is time for you to begin your prayers, or, the saints know, I shall not get you to bed till midnight. I suppose prayers are a good thing," she added, seating herself wearily; "but if one must have so many of them, one must get about them early. There's reason in all things."
Agnes, who had been sitting abstractedly on the parapet, with her head drooped over the lily-spray, now seemed to collect herself. She rose up in a grave and thoughtful manner, and, going forward to the shrine of the Madonna, removed the flowers of the morning, and holding the vase under the spout of the fountain, all feathered with waving maiden-hair, filled it with fresh water, the drops falling from it in a thousand little silver rings in the moonlight.
"I have a thought," said the monk to himself, drawing from his girdle a pencil and hastily sketching by the moonlight. What he drew was a fragile maiden form, sitting with clasped hands on a mossy ruin, gazing on a spray ofwhite lilies which lay before her. He called it, The Blessed Virgin pondering the Lily of the Annunciation.
"Hast thou ever reflected," he said to Agnes, "what that lily might be like which the angel Gabriel brought to our Lady?—for, trust me, it was no mortal flower, but grew by the river of life. I have often meditated thereon, that it was like unto living silver with a light in itself, like the moon,—even as our Lord's garments in the Transfiguration, which glistened like the snow. I have cast about in myself by what device a painter might represent so marvelous a flower."
"Now, brother Antonio," said Elsie, "if you begin to talk to the child about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed. I am sure I'm as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there's reason in all things, and one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into heavenly matters,—as to every feather in Saint Michael's wings, and as to our Lady's girdle and shoestrings and thimble and work-basket; and when one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over about her mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever praised!). I mean no disrespect, but I am certain the saints are reasonable folk and must see that poor folk must live, and, in order to live, must think of something else now and then besidesthem. That's my mind, brother."
"Well, well, sister," said the monk, placidly, "no doubt you are right. There shall be no quarreling in the Lord's vineyard; every one hath his manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint Martha, which is holy and honorable."
"Honorable! I should think it might be!" said Elsie. "I warrant me, if everything had been left to Saint Mary's doings, our Blessed Lord and the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it's Martha gets all the work, and Mary all the praise."
"Quite right, quite right," said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a fountain, he thought, our Lady might have washed the clothes of the Blessed Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her dwelling, all mossy, and with sweet waters forever singing a song of praise therein.
Elsie was heard within the house meanwhile making energetic commotion, rattling pots and pans, and producing decided movements among the simple furniture of the dwelling, probably with a view to preparing for the night's repose of the guest.
Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through with great feeling and tenderness the various manuals and movements of nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms, signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluid heart of the multitude might crystalize into habits of devout remembrance. The rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the procession, were catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds of theladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord's followers climbed heavenward.
If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes repeated the "Hail, Mary!"—in the prescribed number of times she rose or bowed or crossed herself or laid her forehead in low humility on the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervor which inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all helpful and significant, her soul was borne by them Godward,—and often, as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of all earthly things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great cloud of witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ's mystical body.
"Sweet loving hearts around her beat,Sweet helping hands are stirred,And palpitates the veil betweenWith breathings almost heard."
"Sweet loving hearts around her beat,Sweet helping hands are stirred,And palpitates the veil betweenWith breathings almost heard."
"Sweet loving hearts around her beat,Sweet helping hands are stirred,And palpitates the veil betweenWith breathings almost heard."
Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and philosophical standpoint, are utterly at a loss to account for the power which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in the councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament which in our modern days has been called the mediïstic, and which with us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual things from which grew up a whole ritual and a whole world of religious Art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers,—men and women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which made them especially apt to receive and project outward the truths of the spiritual life; theywere in that state of "divine madness" which is favorable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and something of this influence descended through all the channels of the people.
When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping, she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst, and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or shiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a providential token, which would probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being who had been so especially confided to her intercessions.
Agnes had learned of the Superior of the Convent the art of reading writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl in her times, and the moon had that dazzling clearness which revealed every letter. She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white blossoming alyssum which filled its marble crevices, while she read and seriously pondered the contents of the paper.
TO AGNES
Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soulApproach thee with an offering of love,And lay at thy dear feet a weary heartThat loves thee, as it loveth God above?If blessed Mary may without a stainReceive the love of sinners most defiled,If the fair saints that walk with her in whiteRefuse not love from earth's most guilty child,Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love denyWhich all-unworthy at thy feet is laid?Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severeThan the dear heavens unto a loving prayer!Howe'er unworthily that prayer be said,Let thine acceptance be like that on high!
Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soulApproach thee with an offering of love,And lay at thy dear feet a weary heartThat loves thee, as it loveth God above?If blessed Mary may without a stainReceive the love of sinners most defiled,If the fair saints that walk with her in whiteRefuse not love from earth's most guilty child,Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love denyWhich all-unworthy at thy feet is laid?Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severeThan the dear heavens unto a loving prayer!Howe'er unworthily that prayer be said,Let thine acceptance be like that on high!
Sweet saint, sweet lady, may a sinful soulApproach thee with an offering of love,And lay at thy dear feet a weary heartThat loves thee, as it loveth God above?If blessed Mary may without a stainReceive the love of sinners most defiled,If the fair saints that walk with her in whiteRefuse not love from earth's most guilty child,Shouldst thou, sweet lady, then that love denyWhich all-unworthy at thy feet is laid?Ah, gentlest angel, be not more severeThan the dear heavens unto a loving prayer!Howe'er unworthily that prayer be said,Let thine acceptance be like that on high!
There might have been times in Agnes's life when the reception of this note would have astonished and perplexed her; but the whole strain of thought and conversation this evening had been in exalted and poetical regions, and the soft stillness of the hour, the wonderful calmness and clearness of the moonlight, all seemed in unison with the strange incident that had occurred, and with the still stranger tenor of the paper. The soft melancholy, half-religious tone of it was in accordance with the whole undercurrent of her life, and prevented that start of alarm which any homage of a more worldly form might have excited. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that she read it many times with pauses and intervals of deep thought, and then with a movement of natural and girlish curiosity examined the rich jewel which had enclosed it. At last, seeming to collect her thoughts, she folded the paper and replaced it in its sparkling casket, and, unlocking the door of the shrine, laid the gem with its enclosure beneath the lily-spray, as another offering to the Madonna. "Dear Mother," she said, "if indeed it be so, may he rise from loving me to loving thee and thy dear Son, who is Lord of all! Amen!" Thus praying, she locked the door and turned thoughtfully to her repose, leaving the monk pacing up and down in the moonlit garden.
Meanwhile the cavalier was standing on the velvet mossy bridge which spanned the stream at the bottom of the gorge, watching the play of moonbeams on layer after layer of tremulous silver foliage in the clefts of the black, rocky walls on either side. The moon rode so high in the deep violet-colored sky, that her beams came down almost vertically, making green and translucent the leaves through which they passed, and throwing strongly marked shadows here and there on the flower-embroidered moss of the oldbridge. There was that solemn, plaintive stillness in the air which makes the least sound—the hum of an insect's wing, the cracking of a twig, the patter of falling water—so distinct and impressive.
It needs not to be explained how the cavalier, following the steps of Agnes and her grandmother at a distance, had threaded the path by which they ascended to their little sheltered nook,—how he had lingered within hearing of Agnes's voice, and, moving among the surrounding rocks and trees, and drawing nearer and nearer as evening shadows drew on, had listened to the conversation, hoping that some unexpected chance might gain him a moment's speech with his enchantress.
The reader will have gathered from the preceding chapter that the conception which Agnes had formed as to the real position of her admirer from the reports of Giulietta was false, and that in reality he was not Lord Adrian, the brother of the King, but an outcast and landless representative of one branch of an ancient and noble Roman family, whose estates had been confiscated and whose relations had been murdered, to satisfy the boundless rapacity of Cæsar Borgia, the infamous favorite of the notorious Alexander VI.
The natural temperament of Agostino Sarelli had been rather that of the poet and artist than of the warrior. In the beautiful gardens of his ancestral home it had been his delight to muse over the pages of Dante; to sing to the lute, and to write, in the facile flowing rhyme of his native Italian, the fancies of the dreamland of his youth.
He was the younger brother of the family,—the favorite son and companion of his mother, who, being of a tender and religious nature, had brought him up in habits of the most implicit reverence and devotion for the institutions of his fathers.
The storm which swept over his house, and blasted allhis worldly prospects, blasted, too, and withered all those religious hopes and beliefs by which alone sensitive and affectionate natures can be healed of the wounds of adversity without leaving distortion or scar. For his house had been overthrown, his elder brother cruelly and treacherously murdered, himself and his retainers robbed and cast out, by a man who had the entire sanction and support of the Head of the Christian Church, the Vicar of Christ on Earth. So said the current belief of his times,—the faith in which his sainted mother died; and the difficulty with which a man breaks away from such ties is in exact proportion to the refinement and elevation of his nature.
In the mind of our young nobleman there was a double current. He was a Roman, and the traditions of his house went back to the time of Mutius Scævola; and his old nurse had often told him that grand story of how the young hero stood with his right hand in the fire rather than betray his honor. If the legends of Rome's ancient heroes cause the pulses of colder climes and alien races to throb with sympathetic heroism, what must their power be to one who says, "These were my fathers"? Agostino read Plutarch, and thought, "I, too, am a Roman!" and then he looked on the power that held sway over the Tarpeian Rock and the halls of the old "Sanctus Senatus," and asked himself, "By what right does it hold these?" He knew full well that in the popular belief all those hardy and virtuous old Romans whose deeds of heroism so transported him were burning in hell for the crime of having been born before Christ; and he asked himself, as he looked on the horrible and unnatural luxury and vice which defiled the Papal chair and ran riot through every ecclesiastical order, whether such men, without faith, without conscience, and without even decency, were indeed the only authorized successors of Christ and his Apostles?
To us, of course, from our modern standpoint, the questionhas an easy solution,—but not so in those days, when the Christianity of the known world was in the Romish church, and when the choice seemed to be between that and infidelity. Not yet had Luther flared aloft the bold, cheery torch which showed the faithful how to disentangle Christianity from Ecclesiasticism. Luther in those days was a star lying low in the gray horizon of a yet unawakened dawn.
All through Italy at this time there was the restless throbbing and pulsating, the aimless outreach of the popular heart, which marks the decline of one cycle of religious faith and calls for some great awakening and renewal. Savonarola, the priest and prophet of this dumb desire, was beginning to heave a great heart of conflict towards that mighty struggle with the vices and immoralities of his time in which he was yet to sink a martyr; and even now his course was beginning to be obstructed by the full energy of the whole aroused serpent brood which hissed and knotted in the holy places of Rome.
Here, then, was our Agostino, with a nature intensely fervent and poetic, every fibre of whose soul and nervous system had been from childhood skillfully woven and intertwined with the ritual and faith of his fathers, yearning towards the grave of his mother, yearning towards the legends of saints and angels with which she had lulled his cradle slumbers and sanctified his childhood's pillow, and yet burning with the indignation of a whole line of old Roman ancestors against an injustice and oppression wrought under the full approbation of the head of that religion. Half his nature was all the while battling the other half. Would he be Roman, or would he be Christian? All the Roman in him said "No!" when he thought of submission to the patent and open injustice and fiendish tyranny which had disinherited him, slain his kindred, and held its impure reign by torture and by blood. He looked onthe splendid snow-crowned mountains whose old silver senate engirdles Rome with an eternal and silent majesty of presence, and he thought how often in ancient times they had been a shelter to free blood that would not endure oppression; and so gathering to his banner the crushed and scattered retainers of his father's house, and offering refuge and protection to multitudes of others whom the crimes and rapacities of the Borgias had stripped of possessions and means of support, he fled to a fastness in the mountains between Rome and Naples, and became an independent chieftain, living by his sword.
The rapacity, cruelty, and misgovernment of the various regular authorities of Italy at this time made brigandage a respectable and honored institution in the eyes of the people, though it was ostensibly banned both by Pope and Prince. Besides, in the multitude of contending factions which were every day wrangling for supremacy, it soon became apparent, even to the ruling authorities, that a band of fighting men under a gallant leader, advantageously posted in the mountains and understanding all their passes, was a power of no small importance to be employed on one side or the other; and therefore it happened, that, though nominally outlawed or excommunicated, they were secretly protected on both sides, with a view to securing their assistance in critical turns of affairs.
Among the common people of the towns and villages their relations were of the most comfortable kind, their depredations being chiefly confined to the rich and prosperous, who, as they wrung their wealth out of the people, were not considered particular objects of compassion when the same kind of high-handed treatment was extended toward themselves.
The most spirited and brave of the young peasantry, if they wished to secure the smiles of the girls of their neighborhood, and win hearts past redemption, found no sureravenue to favor than in joining the brigands. The leaders of these bands sometimes piqued themselves on elegant tastes and accomplishments; and one of them is said to have sent to the poet Tasso, in his misfortunes and exile, an offer of honorable asylum and protection in his mountain fortress.
Agostino Sarelli saw himself, in fact, a powerful chief, and there were times when the splendid scenery of his mountain fastness, its inspiring air, its wild eagle-like grandeur, independence, and security, gave him a proud contentment, and he looked at his sword and loved it as a bride. But then again there were moods in which he felt all that yearning and disquiet of soul which the man of wide and tender moral organization must feel who has had his faith shaken in the religion of his fathers. To such a man the quarrel with his childhood's faith is a never-ending anguish; especially is it so with a religion so objective, so pictorial, and so interwoven with the whole physical and nervous nature of man, as that which grew up and flowered in modern Italy.
Agostino was like a man who lives in an eternal struggle of self-justification,—his reason forever going over and over with its plea before his regretful and never-satisfied heart, which was drawn every hour of the day by some chain of memory towards the faith whose visible administrators he detested with the whole force of his moral being. When the vesper-bell, with its plaintive call, rose amid the purple shadows of the olive-silvered mountains,—when the distant voices of chanting priest and choir reached him solemnly from afar,—when he looked into a church with its cloudy pictures of angels, and its window-panes flaming with venerable forms of saints and martyrs,—it roused a yearning anguish, a pain and conflict, which all the efforts of his reason could not subdue. How to be a Christian and yet defy the authorized Head of the Christian Church,or how to be a Christian and recognize foul men of obscene and rapacious deeds as Christ's representatives, was the inextricable Gordian knot, which his sword could not divide. He dared not approach the Sacrament, he dared not pray, and sometimes he felt wild impulses to tread down in riotous despair every fragment of a religious belief which seemed to live in his heart only to torture him. He had heard priests scoff over the wafer they consecrated,—he had known them to mingle poison for rivals in the sacramental wine,—and yet God had kept silence and not struck them dead; and like the Psalmist of old he said, "Verily, I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency. Is there a God that judgeth in the earth?"
The first time he saw Agnes bending like a flower in the slanting evening sunbeams by the old gate of Sorrento, while he stood looking down the kneeling street and striving to hold his own soul in the sarcastic calm of utter indifference, he felt himself struck to the heart by an influence he could not define. The sight of that young face, with its clear, beautiful lines, and its tender fervor, recalled a thousand influences of the happiest and purest hours of his life, and drew him with an attraction he vainly strove to hide under an air of mocking gallantry.
When she looked him in the face with such grave, surprised eyes of innocent confidence, and promised to pray for him, he felt a remorseful tenderness as if he had profaned a shrine. All that was passionate, poetic, and romantic in his nature was awakened to blend itself in a strange mingling of despairing sadness and of tender veneration about this sweet image of perfect purity and faith. Never does love strike so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature; there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its interlacing fibres.
In this case it was not merely Agnes that he sighed for,but she stood to him as the fair symbol of that life-peace, that rest of soul which he had lost, it seemed to him, forever.
"Behold this pure, believing child," he said to himself,—"a true member of that blessed Church to which thou art a rebel! How peacefully this lamb walketh the old ways trodden by saints and martyrs, while thou art an infidel and unbeliever!" And then a stern voice within him answered, "What then? Is the Holy Ghost indeed alone dispensed through the medium of Alexander and his scarlet crew of cardinals? Hath the power to bind and loose in Christ's Church been indeed given to whoever can buy it with the wages of robbery and oppression? Why does every prayer and pious word of the faithful reproach me? Why is God silent? Or is there any God? Oh, Agnes, Agnes! dear lily! fair lamb! lead a sinner into the green pastures where thou restest!"
So wrestled the strong nature, tempest-tossed in its strength,—so slept the trustful, blessed in its trust,—then in Italy, as now in all lands.
The dreams of Agnes, on the night after her conversation with the monk and her singular momentary interview with the cavalier, were a strange mixture of images, indicating the peculiarities of her education and habits of daily thought.
She dreamed that she was sitting alone in the moonlight, and heard some one rustling in the distant foliage of the orange groves, and from them came a young man dressed in white of a dazzling clearness like sunlight; large pearly wings fell from his shoulders and seemed to shimmer with a phosphoric radiance; his forehead was broad and grave, and above it floated a thin, tremulous tongue of flame; his eyes had that deep, mysterious gravity which is so well expressed in all the Florentine paintings of celestial beings; and yet, singularly enough, this white-robed, glorified form seemed to have the features and lineaments of the mysterious cavalier of the evening before,—the same deep, mournful dark eyes, only that in them the light of earthly pride had given place to the calm, strong gravity of an assured peace,—the same broad forehead,—the same delicately chiseled features, but elevated and etherealized, glowing with a kind of interior ecstasy. He seemed to move from the shadow of the orange trees with a backward floating of his lustrous garments, as if borne on a cloud just along the surface of the ground; and in his hand he held the lily spray, all radiant with a silvery, living light, just as the monk had suggested to her a divine flower might be.Agnes seemed to herself to hold her breath and marvel with a secret awe, and as often happens in dreams, she wondered to herself, "Was this stranger, then, indeed, not even mortal, not even a king's brother, but an angel? How strange," she said to herself, "that I should never have seen it in his eyes!" Nearer and nearer the vision drew, and touched her forehead with the lily, which seemed dewy and icy cool; and with the contact it seemed to her that a delicious tranquillity, a calm ecstasy, possessed her soul, and the words were impressed in her mind, as if spoken in her ear, "The Lord hath sealed thee for his own!"—and then, with the wild fantasy of dreams, she saw the cavalier in his wonted form and garments, just as he had kneeled to her the night before, and he said, "Oh, Agnes! Agnes! little lamb of Christ, love me and lead me!"—and in her sleep it seemed to her that her heart stirred and throbbed with a strange, new movement in answer to those sad, pleading eyes, and thereafter her dream became more troubled.
The sea was beginning now to brighten with the reflection of the coming dawn in the sky, and the flickering fire of Vesuvius was waxing sickly and pale; and while all the high points of rocks were turning of a rosy purple, in the weird depths of the gorge were yet the unbroken shadows and stillness of night. But at the earliest peep of dawn the monk had risen, and now, as he paced up and down the little garden, his morning hymn mingled with Agnes's dreams,—words strong with all the nerve of the old Latin, which, when they were written, had scarcely ceased to be the spoken tongue of Italy.
"Splendor paternæ gloriæ,De luce lucem proferens,Lux lucis et fons luminis,Dies diem illuminans!"Votis vocemus et Patrem,Patrem potentis gratiæ,Patrem perennis gloriæ:Culpam releget lubricam!"Confirmet actus strenuos,Dentes retundat invidi,Casus secundet asperos,Donet gerendi gratiam!"Christus nobis sit cibus,Potusque noster sit fides:Læti bibamus sobriamEbrietatem spiritus!"Lætus dies hic transeat,Pudor sit ut diluculum,Fides velut meridies.Crepusculum mens nesciat!"3
"Splendor paternæ gloriæ,De luce lucem proferens,Lux lucis et fons luminis,Dies diem illuminans!"Votis vocemus et Patrem,Patrem potentis gratiæ,Patrem perennis gloriæ:Culpam releget lubricam!"Confirmet actus strenuos,Dentes retundat invidi,Casus secundet asperos,Donet gerendi gratiam!"Christus nobis sit cibus,Potusque noster sit fides:Læti bibamus sobriamEbrietatem spiritus!"Lætus dies hic transeat,Pudor sit ut diluculum,Fides velut meridies.Crepusculum mens nesciat!"3
"Splendor paternæ gloriæ,De luce lucem proferens,Lux lucis et fons luminis,Dies diem illuminans!
"Votis vocemus et Patrem,Patrem potentis gratiæ,Patrem perennis gloriæ:Culpam releget lubricam!
"Confirmet actus strenuos,Dentes retundat invidi,Casus secundet asperos,Donet gerendi gratiam!
"Christus nobis sit cibus,Potusque noster sit fides:Læti bibamus sobriamEbrietatem spiritus!
"Lætus dies hic transeat,Pudor sit ut diluculum,Fides velut meridies.Crepusculum mens nesciat!"3
3Splendor of the Father's glory,Bringing light with cheering ray,Light of light and fount of brightness,Day, illuminating day!In our prayers we call thee Father,Father of eternal glory,Father of a mighty grace:Heal our errors, we implore thee!Form our struggling, vague desires;Power of spiteful spirits break;Help us in life's straits, and give usGrace to suffer for thy sake!Christ for us shall be our food;Faith in him our drink shall be;Hopeful, joyful, let us drinkSoberness of ecstasy!Joyful shall our day go by,Purity its dawning light,Faith its fervid noontide glow,And for us shall be no night!
3Splendor of the Father's glory,Bringing light with cheering ray,Light of light and fount of brightness,Day, illuminating day!In our prayers we call thee Father,Father of eternal glory,Father of a mighty grace:Heal our errors, we implore thee!Form our struggling, vague desires;Power of spiteful spirits break;Help us in life's straits, and give usGrace to suffer for thy sake!Christ for us shall be our food;Faith in him our drink shall be;Hopeful, joyful, let us drinkSoberness of ecstasy!Joyful shall our day go by,Purity its dawning light,Faith its fervid noontide glow,And for us shall be no night!
3Splendor of the Father's glory,Bringing light with cheering ray,Light of light and fount of brightness,Day, illuminating day!In our prayers we call thee Father,Father of eternal glory,Father of a mighty grace:Heal our errors, we implore thee!Form our struggling, vague desires;Power of spiteful spirits break;Help us in life's straits, and give usGrace to suffer for thy sake!Christ for us shall be our food;Faith in him our drink shall be;Hopeful, joyful, let us drinkSoberness of ecstasy!Joyful shall our day go by,Purity its dawning light,Faith its fervid noontide glow,And for us shall be no night!
3Splendor of the Father's glory,Bringing light with cheering ray,Light of light and fount of brightness,Day, illuminating day!In our prayers we call thee Father,Father of eternal glory,Father of a mighty grace:Heal our errors, we implore thee!Form our struggling, vague desires;Power of spiteful spirits break;Help us in life's straits, and give usGrace to suffer for thy sake!Christ for us shall be our food;Faith in him our drink shall be;Hopeful, joyful, let us drinkSoberness of ecstasy!Joyful shall our day go by,Purity its dawning light,Faith its fervid noontide glow,And for us shall be no night!
3Splendor of the Father's glory,Bringing light with cheering ray,Light of light and fount of brightness,Day, illuminating day!
In our prayers we call thee Father,Father of eternal glory,Father of a mighty grace:Heal our errors, we implore thee!
Form our struggling, vague desires;Power of spiteful spirits break;Help us in life's straits, and give usGrace to suffer for thy sake!
Christ for us shall be our food;Faith in him our drink shall be;Hopeful, joyful, let us drinkSoberness of ecstasy!
Joyful shall our day go by,Purity its dawning light,Faith its fervid noontide glow,And for us shall be no night!
The hymn in every word well expressed the character and habitual pose of mind of the singer, whose views of earthly matters were as different from the views of ordinary working mortals as those of a bird, as he flits and perches and sings, must be from those of the four-footedox who plods. The "sobriam ebrietatem spiritus" was with him first constitutional, as a child of sunny skies, and then cultivated by every employment and duty of the religious and artistic career to which from childhood he had devoted himself. If perfect, unalloyed happiness has ever existed in this weary, work-day world of ours, it has been in the bosoms of some of those old religious artists of the Middle Ages, whose thoughts grew and flowered in prayerful shadows, bursting into thousands of quaint and fanciful blossoms on the pages of missal and breviary. In them the fine life of color, form, and symmetry, which is the gift of the Italian, formed a rich stock on which to graft the true vine of religious faith, and rare and fervid were the blossoms.
For it must be remarked in justice of the Christian religion, that the Italian people never rose to the honors of originality in the beautiful arts till inspired by Christianity. The Art of ancient Rome was a second-hand copy of the original and airy Greek,—often clever, but never vivid and self-originating. It is to the religious Art of the Middle Ages, to the Umbrian and Florentine schools particularly, that we look for the peculiar and characteristic flowering of the Italian mind. When the old Greek Art revived again in modern Europe, though at first it seemed to add richness and grace to this peculiar development, it smothered and killed it at last, as some brilliant tropical parasite exhausts the life of the tree it seems at first to adorn. Raphael and Michel Angelo mark both the perfected splendor and the commenced decline of original Italian Art; and just in proportion as their ideas grew less Christian and more Greek did the peculiar vividness and intense flavor of Italian nationality pass away from them. They became again like the ancient Romans, gigantic imitators and clever copyists, instead of inspired kings and priests of a national development.
The tones of the monk's morning hymn awakened both Agnes and Elsie, and the latter was on the alert instantly.
"Bless my soul!" she said, "brother Antonio has a marvelous power of lungs; he is at it the first thing in the morning. It always used to be so; when he was a boy, he would wake me up before daylight singing."
"He is happy, like the birds," said Agnes, "because he flies near heaven."
"Like enough: he was always a pious boy; his prayers and his pencil were ever uppermost: but he was a poor hand at work: he could draw you an olive-tree on paper; but set him to dress it, and any fool would have done better."
The morning rites of devotion and the simple repast being over, Elsie prepared to go to her business. It had occurred to her that the visit of her brother was an admirable pretext for withdrawing Agnes from the scene of her daily traffic, and of course, as she fondly supposed, keeping her from the sight of the suspected admirer.
Neither Agnes nor the monk had disturbed her serenity by recounting the adventure of the evening before. Agnes had been silent from the habitual reserve which a difference of nature ever placed between her and her grandmother,—a difference which made confidence on her side an utter impossibility. There are natures which ever must be silent to other natures, because there is no common language between them. In the same house, at the same board, sharing the same pillow even, are those forever strangers and foreigners, whose whole stock of intercourse is limited to a few brief phrases on the commonest material wants of life, and who, as soon as they try to go farther, have no words that are mutually understood.
"Agnes," said her grandmother, "I shall not need you at the stand to-day. There is that new flax to be spun,and you may keep company with your uncle. I'll warrant me, you'll be glad enough of that!"
"Certainly I shall," said Agnes, cheerfully. "Uncle's comings are my holidays."
"I will show you somewhat further on my Breviary," said the monk. "Praised be God, many new ideas sprang up in my mind last night, and seemed to shoot forth in blossoms. Even my dreams have often been made fruitful in this divine work."
"Many a good thought comes in dreams," said Elsie; "but, for my part, I work too hard and sleep too sound to get much that way."
"Well, brother," said Elsie, after breakfast, "you must look well after Agnes to-day; for there be plenty of wolves go round, hunting these little lambs."
"Have no fear, sister," said the monk, tranquilly; "the angels have her in charge. If our eyes were only clear-sighted, we should see that Christ's little ones are never alone."
"All that is fine talk, brother; but I never found that the angels attended to any of my affairs, unless I looked after them pretty sharp myself; and as for girls, the dear Lord knows they need a legion apiece to look after them. What with roystering fellows and smooth-tongued gallants, and with silly, empty-headed hussies like that Giulietta, one has much ado to keep the best of them straight. Agnes is one of the best, too,—a well-brought up, pious, obedient girl, and industrious as a bee. Happy is the husband who gets her. I would I knew a man good enough for her."
This conversation took place while Agnes was in the garden picking oranges and lemons, and filling the basket which her grandmother was to take to the town. The silver ripple of a hymn that she was singing came through the open door; it was part of a sacred ballad in honor of SaintAgnes:—
"Bring me no pearls to bind my hair,No sparkling jewels bring to me!Dearer by far the blood-red roseThat speaks of Him who died for me."Ah! vanish every earthly love,All earthly dreams forgotten be!My heart is gone beyond the stars,To live with Him who died for me."
"Bring me no pearls to bind my hair,No sparkling jewels bring to me!Dearer by far the blood-red roseThat speaks of Him who died for me."Ah! vanish every earthly love,All earthly dreams forgotten be!My heart is gone beyond the stars,To live with Him who died for me."
"Bring me no pearls to bind my hair,No sparkling jewels bring to me!Dearer by far the blood-red roseThat speaks of Him who died for me.
"Ah! vanish every earthly love,All earthly dreams forgotten be!My heart is gone beyond the stars,To live with Him who died for me."
"Hear you now, sister," said the monk, "how the Lord keeps the door of this maiden's heart? There is no fear of her; and I much doubt, sister, whether you would do well to interfere with the evident call this child hath to devote herself wholly to the Lord."
"Oh, you talk, brother Antonio, who never had a child in your life, and don't know how a mother's heart warms towards her children and her children's children! The saints, as I said, must be reasonable, and oughtn't to be putting vocations into the head of an old woman's only staff and stay; and if they oughtn't to, why, then, they won't. Agnes is a pious child, and loves her prayers and hymns; and so she will love her husband, one of these days, as an honest woman should."
"But you know, sister, that the highest seats in Paradise are reserved for the virgins who follow the Lamb."
"Maybe so," said Elsie, stiffly; "but the lower seats are good enough for Agnes and me. For my part, I would rather have a little comfort as I go along, and put up with less in Paradise (may our dear Lady bring us safely there!) say I."
So saying, Elsie raised the large, square basket of golden fruit to her head, and turned her stately figure towards the scene of her daily labors.
The monk seated himself on the garden wall, with his portfolio by his side, and seemed busily sketching and retouching some of his ideas. Agnes wound some silvery-white flax round her distaff, and seated herself near himunder an orange tree; and while her small fingers were twisting the flax, her large, thoughtful eyes were wandering off on the deep blue sea, pondering over and over the strange events of the day before, and the dreams of the night.
"Dear child," said the monk, "have you thought more of what I said to you?"
A deep blush suffused her cheek as sheanswered,—
"Yes, uncle; and I had a strange dream last night."
"A dream, my little heart? Come, then, and tell it to its uncle. Dreams are the hushing of the bodily senses, that the eyes of the Spirit may open."
"Well, then," said Agnes, "I dreamed that I sat pondering as I did last evening in the moonlight, and that an angel came forth from thetrees"—
"Indeed!" said the monk, looking up with interest; "what form had he?"
"He was a young man, in dazzling white raiment, and his eyes were deep as eternity; and over his forehead was a silver flame, and he bore a lily-stalk in his hand, which was like what you told of, with light in itself."
"That must have been the holy Gabriel," said the monk, "the angel that came to our blessed Mother. Did he say aught?"
"Yes, he touched my forehead with the lily, and a sort of cool rest and peace went all through me, and he said, 'The Lord hath sealed thee for his own!'"
"Even so," said the monk, looking up, and crossing himself devoutly, "by this token I know that my prayers are answered."
"But, dear uncle," said Agnes, hesitating and blushing painfully, "there was one singular thing about my dream,—this holy angel had yet a strange likeness to the young man that came here last night, so that I could not but marvel at it."
"It may be that the holy angel took on him in part this likeness to show how glorious a redeemed soul might become, that you might be encouraged to pray. The holy Saint Monica thus saw the blessed Augustine standing clothed in white among the angels while he was yet a worldling and unbeliever, and thereby received the grace to continue her prayers for thirty years, till she saw him a holy bishop. This is a sure sign that this young man, whoever he may be, shall attain Paradise through your prayers. Tell me, dear little heart, is this the first angel thou hast seen?"
"I never dreamed of them before. I have dreamed of our Lady, and Saint Agnes, and Saint Catharine of Siena, and sometimes it seemed that they sat a long time by my bed, and sometimes it seemed that they took me with them away to some beautiful place where the air was full of music, and sometimes they filled my hands with such lovely flowers that when I waked I was ready to weep that they could no more be found. Why, dear uncle, doyousee angels often?"
"Not often, dear child, but sometimes a little glimpse. But you should see the pictures of our holy Father Angelico, to whom the angels appeared constantly; for so blessed was the life he lived, that it was more in heaven than on earth. He would never cumber his mind with the things of this world, and would not paint for money, nor for princes' favor; nor would he take places of power and trust in the Church, or else, so great was his piety, they had made a bishop of him; but he kept ever aloof and walked in the shade. He used to say, 'They that would do Christ's work must walk with Christ.' His pictures of angels are indeed wonderful, and their robes are of all dazzling colors, like the rainbow. It is most surely believed among us that he painted to show forth what he saw in heavenly visions."
"Ah!" said Agnes, "how I wish I could see some of these things!"
"You may well say so, dear child. There is one picture of Paradise painted on gold, and there you may see our Lord in the midst of the heavens crowning his blessed Mother, and all the saints and angels surrounding; and the colors are so bright that they seem like the sunset clouds,—golden, and rosy, and purple, and amethystine, and green like the new, tender leaves of spring: for, you see, the angels are the Lord's flowers and birds that shine and sing to gladden his Paradise, and there is nothing bright on earth that is comparable to them,—so said the blessed Angelico, who saw them. And what seems worthy of note about them is their marvelous lightness, that they seem to float as naturally as the clouds do, and their garments have a divine grace of motion like vapor that curls and wavers in the sun. Their faces, too, are most wonderful; for they seem so full of purity and majesty, and withal humble, with an inexpressible sweetness; for, beyond all others it was given to the holy Angelico to paint the immortal beauty of the soul."
"It must be a great blessing and favor for you, dear uncle, to see all these things," said Agnes; "I am never tired of hearing you tell of them."
"There is one little picture," said the monk, "wherein he hath painted the death of our dear Lady; and surely no mortal could ever conceive anything like her sweet dying face, so faint and weak and tender that each man sees his own mother dying there, yet so holy that one feels that it can be no other than the mother of our Lord; and around her stand the disciples mourning; but above is our blessed Lord himself, who receives the parting spirit, as a tender new-born babe, into his bosom: for so the holy painters represented the death of saints, as of a birth in which each soul became a little child of heaven."
"How great grace must come from such pictures!" said Agnes. "It seems to me that the making of such holy things is one of the most blessed of good works. Dear uncle," she said, after a pause, "they say that this deep gorge is haunted by evil spirits, who often waylay and bewilder the unwary, especially in the hours of darkness."
"I should not wonder in the least," said the monk; "for you must know, child, that our beautiful Italy was of old so completely given up and gone over to idolatry that even her very soil casts up fragments of temples and stones that have been polluted. Especially around these shores there is scarcely a spot that hath not been violated in all times by vilenesses and impurities such as the Apostle saith it is a shame even to speak of. These very waters cast up marbles and fragments of colored mosaics from the halls which were polluted with devil-worship and abominable revelings; so that, as the Gospel saith that the evil spirits cast out by Christ walk through waste places, so do they cling to these fragments of their old estate."
"Well, uncle, I have longed to consecrate the gorge to Christ by having a shrine there, where I might keep a lamp burning."
"It is a most pious thought, child."
"And so, dear uncle, I thought that you would undertake the work. There is one Pietro hereabout who is a skillful worker in stone, and was a playfellow of mine,—though of late grandmamma has forbidden me to talk with him,—and I think he would execute it under your direction."
"Indeed, my little heart, it shall be done," said the monk, cheerfully; "and I will engage to paint a fair picture of our Lady to be within; and I think it would be a good thought to have a pinnacle on the outside, where should stand a statue of Saint Michael with his sword. Saint Michael is a brave and wonderful angel, and all thedevils and vile spirits are afraid of him. I will set about the devices to-day." And cheerily the good monk began to intone a verse of an oldhymn,—