“‘Non fu dal vel del cuor giawmai disciolto’”[*1*];
and pressed the hand of him who in his awkward garments still appeared august to him.
“But you must not wear these things!” exclaimed Maria, less mystic than her husband.
Benedetto made a gesture which said, “Let us not speak of that,” and looked at the master of his master with eyes full of longing and reverence.
“Are you aware,” said he, “how much truth and how much good have come to me from you?”
Giovanni did not know how strongly he had influenced this man through Don Clemente. He supposed he had read his books. He was moved, and in his heart thanked God, who was thus gently showing him that he had worked some real good in a soul.
“How happy I should have been,” Benedetto continued, “to have worked in your garden,
[FN 1: “Of the heart’s veil she never was divested.”DANTE’SParadiso, Canto iii.(Longfellow’s translation) ] have sometimes seen you, tohave heard you speak!”
A stifled exclamation escaped Noemi when reminded of that evening full of memories she could not express. Giovanni took this opportunity of offering hospitality to Benedetto, Don Clemente having told him he intended leaving Jenne that night. They could leave together, if he wished, after the interview which he was going to grant Giovanni’s sister-in-law. Noemi, very pale, looked fixedly at Benedetto for the first time, awaiting his answer.
“I thank you,” said he. “If I knock at your door, you will throw it open to me. I can say no more at present.”
Giovanni and his wife prepared to leave. Benedetto begged them to remain. Surely theSignorinahad no secrets from them; at least not from her sister, if perhaps from her brother-in-law. Even this indirect appeal to Maria was of no avail, for Noemi remarked, with much embarrassment, that these secrets were not her own. The Selvas withdrew.
Benedetto remained standing, and did not invite Noemi to be seated. He was aware that a friend of Jeanne’s stood before him, and he foresaw what was coming—a message from Jeanne.
“Signorina?” said he.
His manner was not discourteous, but signified clearly, “The quicker the better.”
Noemi understood. She would have been offended had another person acted thus; but with Benedetto she was not offended. With him she felt humble.
“I have been requested to ask you,” she began, “whether you know anything about a person with whom you must have been intimately acquainted, whom, I believe, you also loved very dearly? I am not sure I pronounce the name correctly, I am not an Italian. It is Don Giuseppe Flores.”
Benedetto started. He had not expected this.
“No!” he exclaimed anxiously, “I know nothing.”
Nomei gazed at him a moment in silence. Before continuing she would have liked to ask his forgiveness for the pain she was about to cause him. She said sadly and in a low tone:
“Some one has written to me to tell you that he is no longer of this world.”
Benedetto bowed his head, and hid his face in his hands. Don Giuseppe, dear Don Giuseppe; dear, great, pure soul; dear luminous brow, dear eyes, full of God, dear, kind voice! Softly came two tears, which Noemi did not see; then he heard Don Giuseppe’s voice saying within him, “Do you not feel that I am here, that I am with you, that I am in your heart?”
After a long silence Noemi said softly:
“Forgive me! I am sorry I was obliged to cause you so much pain.”
Benedetto raised his head.
“Pain, and still not pain,” said he. Noemi maintained a reverent silence. Benedetto asked if she knew when this person had passed away.
Towards the end of April, she believed. She was absent from Italy at the time. She was in Belgium, at Bruges, with a friend to whom the news had been sent. She had understood from her friend that that person—a sense of delicacy prevented Noemi from pronouncing the name—had died a very holy death. She had also been asked to say that his papers had been entrusted to the bishop of the city. Benedetto made a gesture of approval which might also serve to close the interview. Noemi did not move.
“I have not yet finished,” she said, and hastened to add:
“I have a Catholic friend—I myself am not a Catholic, I am a Protestant—who has lost her faith in God. She has been advised to devote herself to deeds of charity. She lives with her brother, who is very hostile to all religions. This innovation, the fact that his sister interests herself in charities, that she associates with people who promote good works from religious principles, is most displeasing to him. At present he is ill; he becomes irritated, excited, protests against these virtuous bigots, does not wish his sister to visit the poor, to protect young girls, or to provide for abandoned children. He says all these things are clericalism, are utopianism, that the world wags in its own way, and that it must be allowed to wag in its own way, that all this associating with the lower classes only serves to put false and dangerous ideas into their heads. Now, my friend has been told that she must either leave her brother, or lie to him, by doing secretly what she has hitherto done openly. She is in sore need of sound advice! She writes to me to ask you for it. She has read in the newspapers that you are helping so many here in these hills, and she hopes you will not refuse.”
“As her brother is ill, both bodily and mentally,” Benedetto answered, “does she not find deeds of charity to perform in her own house? Will she arrive at a knowledge of God by becoming a bad sister? Let her give up her works of charity and devote herself to her brother; let her attend to his bodily ills, and to his moral ills, with all the affection”—he was going to say “which she bears him,” but he corrected himself, that he might not thus clearly admit a knowledge of the person—“with all the affection of which she is capable; let her make herself precious to him; let her win him by degrees, without sermons, by her goodness alone. It will do her much good also, this striving to incarnate in herself true goodness, active, untiring, patient, prudent goodness. And she will win him, little by little, without words; she will persuade him that all she does is well done. Then she can take up her works of charity again, take them up alone, and she will succeed better. Now she performs them because she has been advised to do so, and perhaps she does not succeed very well. Then she will be prompted by the habit of goodness, acquired with her brother, and she will have better success.”
“I thank you!” said Noemi. “I thank you for my friend, and also for myself, for I am much pleased with what you have said. And may I repeat your advice, your words of encouragement, in your name?”
The question seemed superfluous, because the words of encouragement and advice had been spoken by Benedetto in direct answer to the friend. But Benedetto was troubled. It was an explicit message which Noemi asked of him for Jeanne.
“Who am I?” he said. “What authority do I possess? Tell her I will pray!”
Noemi was trembling inwardly. It would have been so easy now to speak to him of religion! And she did not dare. Ah! but to lose such an opportunity! No, she must speak; but she could not reflect a quarter of an hour upon what she should say. She said the first thing that came into her head.
“I beg your pardon, but as you speak of praying, I should like to ask you if you really approve of all my brother-in-law’s religious views?”
As soon as she had uttered the question, it seemed to her so impertinent, so awkward, that she was ashamed. She hastened to add, conscious she was saying something still more foolish, but, nevertheless, feeling impelled to say it. “Because my brother-in-law is a Catholic, and I am a Protestant, and I should like to know what to believe.”
“Signorina,” Benedetto answered, “the day will come when all shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, upon the hilltops; to-day it is best to worship Him in the shadows, in figures, from deep Valleys. Many there are who can rise, some higher than others, towards the spirit and the truth; but many cannot. There are plants which bear no fruit above a certain altitude, and if carried still higher, they die. It would be folly to remove them from the climate which suits them. I do not know you, and I cannot say if your brother-in-law’s religious views, planted without preparation in you, would bear good fruit. But I advise you to study Catholicism carefully, with Signor Selva’s help; for there is not one conscientious Protestant who knows it well.”
“You will not come to Subiaco?” Noemi inquired timidly.
A note of hidden melancholy rang in her voice, and aroused in Benedetto’s heart a sense of sweet pain, which at once turned to fear, so new was it.
“No,” said he, “I think not.”
Noemi wished, and still did not wish to say she was sorry. She pronounced some confused words.
They heard some one in the ante-room. Noemi bowed, and Benedetto doing the same, the interview came to an end, without any further leave taking.
The Duchess also was anxious to speak with Benedetto. She brought her companions, both male and female, with her. No longer young, but still frivolous, half superstitious, half sceptical, egotistical but not heartless, she was devoted to the consumptive daughter of her old coachman, Having heard of the Saint of Jenne and his miracles, she had arranged this excursion, partly for amusement, partly to satisfy her curiosity, and she wished to ascertain if it would be wiser to have the Saint come to Rome, or to send the girl to him. At the house of a cardinal, her cousin, she had become acquainted with one of the priests now staying at Jenne, This man, having met her, had given her his own opinion of the Saint, announcing the downfall of his reputation. But, as the Duchess had little confidence in any priest, and was curious to know a man to whom such a romantic past was attributed, and as her companions—one woman in particular—shared her curiosity she resolved, at any cost, to find a means of approaching him.
An elderly, English gentlewoman was of her party; a lady famous for her wealth and her peculiartoilettes, for her theosophic and Christian mysticism, metaphysically in love with the Pope and also with the Duchess who laughed at her friends. These friends, on beholding Benedetto in that strange outfit, exchanged glances and smiles which very nearly became giggles; but the elderly Englishwoman forestalling them all constituted herself their spokeswoman. She said, in bad French, that she was aware she was speaking to a man of culture, that she, with her friends, of both sexes and of all nationalities, was working to unite all Christian Churches under the Pope, reforming Catholicism in certain particulars which were really too absurd, and which no one honestly believed were of any further use, such particulars as ecclesiastical celibacy and the dogma of hell. She needed a saint to accomplish these reforms. Benedetto would be that saint, because a spirit (she herself was not a spiritualist, but a friend of hers was), the Spirit of the Countess Blavatzky herself, had revealed this fact. It was therefore necessary that he should come to Rome, and there his saintly gifts would also enable him to render a service to the Duchess di Civitella, here present. She ended her discourse thus:
“Nous vous attendons absolument, monsieur! Quittez ce vilain trou! Quittez-le bientôt! Bientôt!”
Having let his stern gaze wander rapidly round the circle of mocking or stolid faces, from the Duchess’slorgnonto the journalist’s eye-glass, Benedetto replied:
“À l’instant, madame!”
And he left the room.
He left the room and the house, crossed the square, walking awkwardly in his ill-fitting clothes, and, without looking to right or left, took the road leading down the slope, impelled by his spirit rather than by the weakened powers of his body. He intended to pass the night under some tree, and, on the morrow, go to Subiaco; from there, with Don Clemente’s aid, he would go to Tivoli, where he knew a good old priest, who was in the habit of coming to Santa Scolastica from time to time. He no longer thought of accepting the Selvas’ hospitality, which would have been precious to him. His heart was pure and at peace, but he could not forget that the young foreign girl’s sweet voice, and the tone of sadness in which she had said “You will not come to Subiaco?” had awakened strange echoes within him, and that in that one second the thought had flashed across his mind: “Had Jeanne been like this, I should not have left her!” The mystics were right; penance and fasting were of no avail. But it had all disappeared now. Only the humiliating sense of a frailty essentially human remained, which, though it may have come forth triumphant from hard trials, may also reappear unexpectedly, and be overthrown by a breath. The little town was deserted. The storm over, the people from Trevi, Filettino, and Vallepietra had started homeward, discussing the events of the morning, the case of doubtful healing, and that in which the healing had not been effected, the warnings which had been swiftly sown by hidden hands against the corrupter of the people, the false Catholic. On leaving the town Benedetto was seen by two or three women of Jenne. The secular garments filled them with amazement; they concluded he had been excommunicated and allowed him to pass in silence.
A few steps beyond, some one who was running overtook him. It was a slender, fair lad, with blue eyes full of intelligence.
“Are you going to Rome, Signor Maironi?” he said.
“I beg you not to call me by that name!” Benedetto answered, ill-pleased to find that his name, who knows by what means, had been revealed. “I do not yet know whether I go to Rome.”
“I shall follow you,” the young man said, impulsively.
“You will follow me? But why should you follow me?”
In reply the young man took his hand, and, in spite of Benedetto’s resistance and protests, raised it to his lips.
“Why?” said he. “Because I am sick of the world, and could not find God, and to-day it Seems to me that, through you, I have been born to happiness! Please, please, let me follow you!
“Caro[dear one];” Benedetto replied, greatly moved, “I myself do not know whither I shall go!”
The young man entreated him to say, at least, when he should see him again, and exclaimed, seeing Benedetto really did not know what to answer:
“Oh! I shall see you in Rome! You will surely go to Rome!”
Benedetto smiled:
“In Rome? And how will you find me there?”
The lad answered that he would certainly be talked of in Rome, that every one would know where to find him.
“If it be God’s will!” said Benedetto, with an affectionate gesture of farewell.
The lad detained him a moment, holding his hand.
“I am a Lombard also,” said he. “I am Alberti, from Milan. Do not forget me!”
And his intense gaze followed Benedetto until he disappeared at a bend of the mule-path.
At sight of the cross with its great arms, rising on the brow of the hill, Benedetto suddenly shuddered with emotion, and was obliged to stop. When he once more started forward he was seized with giddiness. Swaying, he stepped aside a few yards, leaving the way free for passers-by, and sank upon the grass, In a hollow of the field. Then, closing his eyes, he realised that this was no passing disturbance, but something far more serious. He did not become entirely unconscious, but he lost the sense of hearing and of touch, his memory, and all account of time. When he first recovered his senses, the feeling on the backs of his hands, of the coarse cloth, different from that of his usual habit, filled him with a curiosity, rather amused than troubled, concerning his own identity. He felt his breast, the buttons, the button-holes, without understanding. He thought. A boy from Jenne, who passed near him in the field, ran to the town and reported excitedly that the Saint was lying dead on the grass, near the cross.
Benedetto reflected, with that shade of cloudy reason which governs us when we sleep and when we first awake. These were not his clothes. They were Piero Maironi’s clothes. He was still Piero Maironi. This thought terrified him, and he recovered his senses completely. He rose to a sitting posture, looked at himself, looked about him at the field and the hills, veiled in the shades of evening. At sight of the great cross, his mind regained its composure. He felt ill, very ill. He tried to rise to his feet, but found it difficult to do so. Directing his steps towards the mulepath, he asked himself what he should do in that condition. Some one coming swiftly down the path from Jenne stopped before him; he heard the exclamation: “Oh! my God! it is you!” He recognised the voice of the woman who had spoken so passionately to him while the storm was raging. She alone of all those at Jenne who had heard the boy’s story had come to him. The others had either not believed or not wished to believe. She had come running, and mad with grief. Now she had stopped suddenly, and stood speechless, not two steps from him. He, not suspecting she had come on his account, wished her good-night and passed on. She did not return his salutation, for, after the first moment of joy, she was distressed to see him walk with such difficulty, and she did not dare to follow him. She saw him stop and speak to a man riding a mule, who was coming up. She rushed forward to hear what was said. The man was a muleteer, sent by the Selvas to look for Benedetto. The Selvas, with two mules for the ladies, had left Jenne soon after him, thinking to overtake him on the hillside. Reaching the Anio without having seen him, they questioned a passer-by coming from Sublaco. He could give them no news of Benedetto. Noemi, who was to take the last train for Tivoli, went on with Giovanni, hiding her disappointment. The muleteer had been sent back to Jenne to look for Benedetto, and to fetch a parasol which had been forgotten at the inn. Maria was awaiting his return among the rocks of the Infernillo. The young school-mistress heard Benedetto ask the muleteer to bring him a little water from Jenne, for the sake of charity. The two men were still talking, but she sped away, without waiting to hear more.
After a brief consultation with the muleteer, Benedetto had consented to ride down to where Signora Selva was waiting. Left alone, he seated himself near the cross, and waited for the man to return with the water and the parasol. The crescent moon was rising, gilding the bright sky, above the hills of Arcinazzo; the evening was warm and breathless. Benedetto felt his temples throb and burn; his breath came quick and short, but he suffered no pain. The sweet-scented grass of the field, the scattered trees, the great shadowy hills, all, to him, was alive, was filled with religion; all was sweet with a mystery of adoring love which bent even the crescent moon towards the heights in the opalescent sky. Don Giuseppe Flores whispered in his heart that it would be sweet to die thus with the day, praying in unison with the innocent things.
Hurried steps were heard in the direction of Jenne. They stopped a short distance from him. A little girl came towards Benedetto, timidly offered him a bottle of water and a glass, and then turned and fled. Benedetto, astonished, called her to him. She came slowly, shyly, and did not answer when he asked her name, her parents’ name. A voice said:
“She is the innkeeper’s child.”
Benedetto recognised the voice and the person also, though the moonlight was pale; she had remained at a distance, prompted by the same sense of delicacy which had moved her to bring the child with her.
“I thank you,” said he. She came a little nearer, holding the child by the hand, and asked softly:
“Do you know the priests have been talking to the dead man’s mother? Do you know the woman now accuses you of killing her son?”
Benedetto replied with some severity in his tone:
“Why do you tell me this?”
She saw she had displeased him by repeating this accusation, and exclaimed in distress;
“Oh! forgive me!”
Presently she added:
“May I ask you a question?”
“Speak.”
“Shall you never return to Jenne?”
“Never.”
The woman was silent. They could hear steps approaching in the distance; it was the muleteer and his mule. She said in a lower tone:
“For pity’s sake, one word more! How do you picture to yourself the future life? Do you believe we shall meet those we have known in this life?”
If the moonlight had not been so pale, Benedetto would have seen two great tears rolling down the young girl’s face.
“I believe,” he replied, “that until the death of our planet, our future life will be one of labour upon it, and that all those minds which aspire to truth, to unity, will meet there, and labour together.” The muleteer’s hobnailed shoes, which grated among the pebbles, could be heard very near them. The woman said:
“Addio! Farewell!”
The tears sounded in her voice now. Benedetto answered:
“A Dio! God be with you!”
Mounted on the mule, he goes down into the shadows of the valley. He is burning with fever. He is going to Casa Selva, after all. He knows, for the muleteer has told him, that he will not see Noemi there; but that is indifferent to him, he does not fear her, does not even remember the moment of gentle emotion. Another feverish thought is stirring in his soul. There is a whirl of words spoken by Don Clemente, by the lad Alberti, by the elderly Englishwoman, while fragments of the Vision flash like pictures before his mind’s eye. Yes, he will go to Casa Selva, but only for a short time. As he ascends, the mighty voice of the Anio roars louder, ever louder, out of the depths:
“Rome! Rome! Rome!”
JEANNE TO NOEMI. VENA DI FONTE ALTA, July 4,——
Forgive me if I write to you in pencil. I have just reread your letter here, at a point half an hour distant from the hotel, seated on the edge of a stone basin where the flocks come to drink. The tiny stream of water which trickles into the basin from a small wooden pipe reminds me, with its gentle voice, of something which makes my heart ache; a walk with him across fields and through woods in the mist; a halt by this very spring, painful words, a few tears, something written in the water, a moment of happiness—the last. I made a great sacrifice for Carlino’s sake when I returned to Vena after an absence of three years. I have always loved him, but the message from Jenne would make me face far greater sacrifices than this for him, make me face them willingly, though conscious of having lost all merit in them.
I am not satisfied with your letters; I will tell you why sometime, but not now. It is too difficult to write here. The mist is rolling down from the uplands high above the spring, and a cold west wind is blowing. I must be careful of my health on Carlino’s account, and this is another sacrifice, for I hate my health!
Later.
Noemi, could you not contrive to let the enclosed half-sheet of paper, upon which I have written in pencil, fall intohishands? You hesitate to tell him how obedient I am; could you not, at least, help me to let him know it in this way?
I am not satisfied with your letters, first of all because they are too short. You know how eager I am to hear all about him. He is a guest in the same house with you; at Subiaco he can surely not know how to employ his time, and you sum up everything in two or three words!—He is better. He reads a great deal. He has been working in the kitchen-garden. Perhaps he will spend the summer with us. He writes.—And you have never yet told me what malady he is really suffering from, what he reads, where he will go if he does not spend the summer with you, whether he writes letters or books, and what you talk about together, for it is not possible that you never talk together. Do not repeat your excuse that the less you speak of him, the better it is for me. That is a convenient excuse you have invented, but it is foolish, because, whether you talk to me of him or not, it is all the same. My hopes are quite dead; they will not revive. Then write me long letters, I am sure he wishes to convert you, that you have very serious talks together, and that is why you tell me so little about him. It would not be a very glorious achievement to convertyou, for you are sentimental in matters of religion; you do not possess that clear, cold, and positive insight which is, unfortunately, natural to me, and which I wishIdid not possess.
When do you intend to return to Belgium? Do not your affairs there need your attention? You once mentioned an agent in whom you had little confidence. We shall probably travel in August. At least, that is what Carlino says at present, but he changes his mind very easily. I should like to visit Holland with you, in September. Good-bye! Please write. If he reads much you might get him to lend you a book, and leave the half-sheet of paper in it as a book-mark, At any rate, find some way. That or something else; you are a woman! Contrive some means, if you love me! But I really believe you no longer love me at all! You would confess it if you told the truth! However, there is a lady at this hotel who is in love with me! Laugh, if you like, but it is true. She lives in Rome. Her husband is Under-Secretary of State. She is determined that I shall spend next winter in Rome. It will depend upon Carlino. This lady lays siege to him; he lets himself be besieged, and neither resists nor capitulates. Good-bye. Write, write, and again write!
NOEMI TO JEANNE (from the French)
I did still better! In my presence, my brother-in-law cited from memory a Latin passage which impressedhim, concerning certain monks of ancient times, before Christ. He begged Giovanni to write it down for him. We were in the olive-grove above the villetta, seated on the grass. I immediately passed a pencil to Giovanni, and the half-sheet of paper, with the blank side uppermost. He wrote, and Maironi took the paper, read the Latin passage, and put the sheet into his pocket, without looking at the other side. It was an act of treason, and I have been guilty of treason for love of you. Will you ever doubt me again?
What can I tell you about his illness which I have not told you already? He was troubled with fever for about two weeks. One day the physician would pronounce it typhoid, and the next he would say it was not. At last the fever left him, but his strength has not returned completely; he is very thin; he seems to have some persistent, internal ailment; the doctor is very particular about the quality of his food; he has changed his way of living, eats meat and drinks a little wine. Yesterday a friend of Giovanni’s came from Rome to see him; the famous Professor Mayda, Giovanni begged him to examine Maironi, and to advise him. He recommended some waters, which Maironi will certainly not take. I feel I know him well enough to be sure of that. However, during the last week he has improved rapidly. In the morning and evening he works a little in the kitchen-garden. This morning he rose very early, and what should he do but take it into his head to wash down the stairs! Yesterday Maria scolded the old servant because the stairs were not clean. When the old woman, who sleeps at Subiaco, arrived at seven o’clock, she found Maironi had done the work for her. My sister and my brother-in-law reproached him; Giovanni was almost severe, perhaps because he is so different from Maironi, and would never think of touching a broom, even if he lived in a cloud of cobwebs! What does Maironi read? He has never but once spoken to me of what he reads, and then only for a moment, as I shall tell you later. I wrote you that perhaps he would spend the summer with us, for I know Maria and Giovanni wish it. I now have a presentiment that he will not stay, but will go to Rome. This, however, is only my impression; I have no positive knowledge.
As to his wishing to convert me, I do not know whether it would be an easy task or not, or whether Maironi thinks anything about it. You will notice that I call him Maironi in writing to you; in speaking to him I call him simply Benedetto, for that is his wish. I am sure Giovanni once thought of converting me. He found it so easy that he never speaks of it to me now. I should not think the same of Maironi. I believe that to him Christianity means, above all things, actions and life according to the spirit of Christ, of the risen Christ who lives for ever among us, of whom we have, as he puts it, the experience. It seems to me that the object of his religious mission is, not the placing of the creed of one Christian Church before another, although there is no doubt the holiness of the life he leads is strictly Catholic. Whenever I have heard him speak of dogmas, with Giovanni, it has never been to discuss the difference between Church and Church, but rather to expound certain formulas of faith, and to show what a strong light emanates from them when they are expounded in a certain way. Giovanni himself is past-master at this, but when Giovanni speaks you are impressed above all, by the immense store of knowledge his mind contains; when Maironi speaks you feel that the living Christ is in his heart, the risen Christ, and he fires you! In order to be perfectly, scrupulously sincere, I will tell you that although I do not think he intends to convert me, still I am not very sure of this. One day we were in the olive-grove. He and Giovanni were discussing a German book on the essence of Christianity, which, it seems, has made a stir, and was written by a Protestant theologian. Maironi observed that, when this Protestant speaks of Catholicism, he does so with a most honest intention of being impartial, but that, in reality, he does not know the Catholic religion. His opinion is that no Protestant does really know it; they are all of them full of prejudices, and believe certain external and remediable abuses in its practices to be essential to Catholicism. There was a basket of apricots standing near, and he chose one which had been very fine, but which was beginning to rot. “Here,” said he, “is an apricot, which is slightly rotten. If I offer this apricot to one who does not know, but who wishes to be amiable, he will tell me that part of it is indeed firm and good, but that, unfortunately, part of it is diseased, and therefore, though he much regrets it, he cannot accept it. Thus this illustrious Protestant speaks of Catholicism. But if I offer my apricot to one who knows, he will accept it even if it be entirely rotten; and he will plant the immortal seed in his own garden, in the hope of raising fine, healthy fruit.” These remarks he addressed to Giovanni, but his eyes sought mine continually. I must add that at Jenne also, he told me to learn to understand Catholicism. At any rate, if I remain a Protestant, it will not be because I do or do not understand, but rather in obedience to my most sacred feelings.
My dear Jeanne, there is something else I must tell you plainly. I have a suspicion that you are jealous, I believe you do not realise the inexpressible grief you would cause me, if this were really the case. I fear you do not realise the immense gravity of the offence it would be, first to him and then to me. Now I am going to open my heart to you. I should reproach myself if I did not do so, dear friend, reproach myself on your account, on his, and on my own. As to him, he is kind and gentle to all with whom he comes in contact, especially to the humble, and you might even be jealous of the old woman who comes from Subiaco to do the rough work in the house. With Maria and myself he shows his kindness and gentleness silently rather than in words. With us he is quiet, simple, and affable; he does not appear to wish to avoid us, but it has never happened that he has remained alone with either of us. In his eyes I am a soul, and souls are to him exactly what the tiniest plants in my father’s great garden were to him; he would have liked to protect them from frost with the warmth of his own heart, and make then grow and flower by communicating his own vitality to them. But I am a soul like any other soul, the only difference perhaps being, that he deems me further removed from the truth, and consequently more exposed to frost. But this is not apparent in his bearing.
As to myself, dearest, I certainly have a deep feeling for him, but it would be abominable to say that this feeling in the least resembles what men call by the familiar name. This sentiment is one of reverence, of a kind of devout fear, of awe; I feel his person is surrounded by something like a magic circle, into which I should never dare to penetrate. My heart beats no faster in his presence. I think, indeed, it beats more slowly but of this I am not sure. Dear Jeanne, I could not possibly speak more honestly than I have done, therefore I beg you, I entreat you, not to imagine anything different!
For the present I am not thinking of going to Belgium. I may possibly go there for a short time, later on. My kind regards to your brother. I should like to know if he has sent the old priest and the young woman to Formalhaut at last! I myself sometimes think of his Formalhaut! Tell him that if you and he come to Rome this winter, we will make music together. Good-bye I embrace you!
BENEDETTO TO DON CLEMENTE
(Never sent)
Padre mio, the Lord has departed from my soul, not, indeed, giving me up to sin, but He has taken from me all sense of His presence, and the despairing cry of Jesus Christ on the cross thrills, at times, through my whole being. If I strive to concentrate all my thoughts in the one thought of the Divine Presence, all my senses in an act of submission to the Divine Will, I derive only pain and discouragement from it. I feel like the beast of burden which falls under its load, and which, at the first cut of the whip, makes an effort to rise, and falls again; at a second blow, at a third, or a fourth, it only shivers, and does not attempt to rise. If I open the Gospels or theImitation, I find no flavour in them. If I recite prayers, weariness overpowers me, and I am silent. If I prostrate myself upon the ground, the ground freezes me. If I make complaint to God at being treated thus, His silence seems to grow more hostile. If, on the authority of the great mystics, I say to myself that I am wrong to feel such affection for spiritual joys, to suffer thus when deprived of them, I answer myself that the mystics err, that in the state of conscious grace one walks safely, but that in this starless night of spiritual darkness one cannot see the way; there is no other rule than to withdraw one’s foot when it touches the soft grass, and that is not sufficient, for there is also the danger of setting the foot in empty space. Father,Padre mio, open your arms to me, that I may feel the warmth of your breast, filled with God! There are a hundred reasons why I should not go to Santa Scolastica, and in any case I should prefer to write. You are here present with me more than in the body; I can become one with you, can mingle with you more easily than if you stood before me; and I need to mingle with you in thought, I need to force my soul into yours. Perhaps I shall send you this letter, but perhaps I shall not send it. Father, father! it does me more good to write to you than to speak to you! I could not speak with the fire which now rushes to my pen, and which would not rush to my lips. Writing, I speak, I cry out to the immortal in you, I divest you of all that is mortal even in your soul, and which in your presence would extinguish my fire. I divest you of the mortality of an incomplete knowledge of things, of prudence, which would prompt you to veil your thoughts. No, I will not send this letter, but nevertheless it will reach you. I will burn it, but still it will reach you; for it is not possible that my silent cry should not come to you, perhaps now, in the darkness of the night, while you sleep, perhaps in two hours’ time, still in the darkness of the night, while you pray with the brothers, in the dear church, where we worshipped so often together.
I know why I am wretched, I know why God has forsaken me. Always when God forsakes me, when all the living springs of my soul are dry, and the living germs are parched, and my heart becomes as a dead sea, I know the reason why. It is because I have heard sweet music behind me, and have looked back; or because the wind has brought me the scent of blossoming fields beside my path, and I have paused; or because the mist has risen before me, and I have been afraid; or because a thorn has pierced my foot, and I have felt vexation. Moments, flashes, but in that moment the door opens, an evil breath enters! It is always thus: an earnest glance, a word of praise enjoyed, an image lingered over, an offence recalled, any one of these suffices; the evil breath has time to enter.
And now all of these causes are joined together! Darkness descended upon my path; I set my foot in the soft grass, I felt it; I withdrew my foot, but not at once. Why do I speak in figures? Write, write the naked truth, cowardly hand! Write that this house is a nest of ease, and that, if I have enjoyed the soft bed, the fine linen, the odour of lavender, I have delighted still more in the conversation of Giovanni Selva, in the readings, which have filled me with the joys of the intellect, in the presence of two young and pure women, cultured and full of grace, in their secret admiration, in the perfume of a sentiment which I believe one of them harbours, in the vision of a life of retirement in this nest, with these beings, far from all that is vulgar, all that is low, unclean, and loathsome.
I have felt the sin of the world with the repulsion which shrinks from it, and not with the fiery sorrow which braves it and wrests souls from its clutches. Moments, flashes; I took refuge, as in times past, in the embrace of the cross; but, little by little, the cross turned to unfeeling, dead wood in my arms, and this was not as in times past! I told myself, “Spirits of evil, strong and cunning powers of the air, are conspiring against me, against my mission.” I answered myself, “Pride, be gone!” And then the first idea took possession of me once more. In this sad manner I rocked to and fro, every day, and all day long. And because I did not allow any part of all this to transpire, because I understood that Signor Giovanni and the ladies did not doubt I was inwardly as calm, as pure as I was externally; I despised myself at certain moments for a hypocrite, only to tell myself the next moment that, on the contrary, my pure and calm exterior helped me to live—I allude to the spiritual life—that by appearing strong, I was forced to be strong. I compared myself to a tree whose marrow has been destroyed by worms, whose wood is rotten, but which still lives through its bark, by means of which it produces leaves and flowers, and can spread welcome shade. Then I told myself that this was good reasoning before men; but was it good reasoning before God, before God? And again I told myself that God could heal me, for though the tree may not be healed yet a man may be made whole. Again my mind was tormented, because I was incapable of doing what God would demand of me, in order that my will might once more work in unison with His. He would order me to flee, to flee! God is in the voice of the Anio, which, since the evening of my departure from Jenne, has been saying: “Rome, Rome, Rome!” And God is also in the strength of the invisible worms, which have gnawed the vital virtues of my body. Am I then to blame? Am I then to blame? Lord, hear my groan, which asks for justice!
I have said many times that I will leave as soon as I am strong enough, but they wish to keep me here, and how can I say to them “My friends, you are my enemies?” Behold my cowardice! Why can I not say so? Why should I not say so?
One day I read in the young Protestant girl’s glance the question: “If you go, what will become of my soul? Should you not desire to lead me to your faith? I will not yet allow myself to be led.” No, I cannot, I must not write all. How can I write the meaning of a glance, the accent of a word, commonplace in itself? They are not such glances as drove St. Jerome to plunge into icy water, or at least my emotion does not resemble his. Icy water is of no avail against a glance which is all sweet purity. Only fire can prevail against it, the fire of the Supreme Love! Ah! who will free me from my mortal heart, whose faintest throb thrills all the fibres of my body? Who will set free the immortal heart which is within it, like the germ of a fruit, preparing for itself a celestial body? I cannot, I must not write all, but this, indeed, I will write: The Lord seeks to ensnare me, to entrap me! When I shall have fallen, He will deride me! Why did it happen that I wrote the Latin quotation about those who live and do penance between the Dead Sea and the desert,“Sine pecunia, sine ulla femina, omni venere abdicata socia palmarum,” on that piece of paper, which on the other side bore words from J. D., words still hot concerning my past sin and hers, words reminding me of the most terrible moments? How did a person so timid dare to force a secret communication upon me?
The wind has blown my window open. Oh! Anio, Anio! will you never tire of your commanding? I must start now, at once? Impossible, the doors are locked. Moreover, it would be shame to leave thus. I should be dishonouring God; they would say “what ungrateful, what mad servants has the Lord!” Come, spirit of my master, come, come! Speak to me; I will listen. What have you to say to me? What have you to say to me? Ah! you smile at my tempest; you tell me to leave, yes, but to leave honourably, to announce that the Lord Himself commands my departure. You tell me to obey the voice of God in the Anio. Now the wind is ceasing; as if satisfied, it seems to be growing quiet. Yes, yes, yes, with tears! To-morrow, to-morrow morning! I will announce it. And I know to whom I shall go in Rome. Oh! light, oh! peace, oh! springs burst forth again in my soul: oh! dead sea, swelling with a wave of warmth! Yes, yes, yes, with tears! I return thanks! I return thanks! Glory be to Thee, our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come: Thy will be done!