The Cloister and the Hearth

by Charles Reade

  CHAPTER LXXX

  THE CLOISTER

  Brother Clement had taught and preached in Basle more than atwelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with atriumphant glance in his eye.

  "Give the glory to God, Brother Clement; thou canst now wend to Englandwith me."

  "I am ready, Brother Jerome; and expecting thee these many months, havein the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tonguesomewhat closely."

  "'Twas well thought of," said Jerome. He then told him he had butdelayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope tocollect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confessionin all the secular monasteries. "So now gird up thy loins, and let us goforth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans."

  The two friars went preaching down the Rhine for England. In the largerplaces they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and tookdifferent sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Bothwere able orators, but in different styles.

  Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religioustopics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's,though in truth not so, compared with most preachers.

  Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In itsgeneral flow, tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason andthe heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at timesClement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him.Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we hue read of inspiredprophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens,incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiaefiuctibus cuncta proruebat et perturbabat.

  I would give literal specimens, but for five objections; it isdifficult; time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitatorhas since done it better and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice inbooks.

  But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try andlearn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was topreach in.

  But Jerome, the unbending, scorned to go out of his way for any people'svices. At one great town, some leagues from the Rhine, they mountedthe same pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, afavourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the peoplelistened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.

  Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacredfrom preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infectedwith it, and popular prejudice protected it, Clement dealt it mercilessblows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it wasthe nursing mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. Hereminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in theirtown by all honest man in liquor; and also how a band of drunkards hadroasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. "Yourlast prince," said he, "is reported to have died of apoplexy, but wellyou know he died of drink; and of your aldermen one perished miserablylast month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs gobare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you theworst of beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drives yourfamilies to need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, andyour very nation, would sink to the bottom of mankind did your womendrink as you do. And how long will they be temperate, and contrary tonature, resist the example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'eryet stood still. Ye must amend yourselves, or see them come down toyour mark, Already in Bohemia they drink along with the men. How showsa drunken woman? Would you love to see your wives drunken, your mothersdrunken?" At this there was a shout of horror, for mediaeval audienceshad not learned to sit mumchance at a moving sermon. "Ah, that comeshome to you," cried the friar. "What madmen! think you it doth notmore shock the all-pure God to see a man, His noblest work, turned toa drunken beast, than it can shock you creatures of sin and unreason tosee a woman turned into a thing no better nor worse than yourselves."

  He ended with two pictures: a drunkard's house and family, and a soberman's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wivesfell all to "ohing" and "ahing," and "Eh, but that is a true word."

  This discourse caused quite all uproar. The hearers formed knots; themen were indignant; so the women flattered them and took their partopenly against the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop; heneeded it, working for all the family. And for their part they did notcare to change their men for milksops.

  The double faces! That very evening a hand of men caught near a hundredof them round Brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, andoffering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, andblessing him "for taking in hand to mend their sots."

  Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.

  "Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should bepreached against it."

  As they went on, he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sankinto his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, andsometimes even amend their ways. "He hath the art of sinking to theirpeg," thought Jerome, "Yet he can soar high enough at times."

  Upon the whole it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiorityto his tenderer brother. And after about two hundred miles of it, itgot to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check thissentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he,"and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Churchopen for God to pass in. And certes, this novice hath the key to thesenorthern souls, being himself a northern man."

  And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few milesdown the stream; but in general walking by the banks preaching, andteaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and theyreached the town of Dusseldorf.

  There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up theRhine, The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was"The Silver Lion." Nothing had changed but he, who walked through itbarefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast,and his eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and HolyChurch.