Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Never were the long-drawn intonations of the chants and prayers of the Church pervaded by a more terrible, wild fervor than the Superior that night breathed into them. They seemed to wail, to supplicate, to combat, to menace, to sink in despairing pauses of helpless anguish, and anon to rise in stormy agonies of passionate importunity; and the monks quailed and trembled, they scarce knew why, with forebodings of coming wrath and judgment.

  In the evening exhortation, which it had been the Superior’s custom to add to the prayers of the vesper-hour, he dwelt with a terrible and ghastly eloquence on the loss of the soul.

  “Brethren,” he said, “believe me, the very first hour of a damned spirit in hell will outweigh all the prosperities of the most prosperous life. If you could gain the whole world, that one hour of hell would outweigh it all; how much more such miserable, pitiful scraps and fragments of the world as they gain who for the sake of a little fleshly ease neglect the duties of a holy profession! There is a broad way to hell through a convent, my brothers, where miserable wretches go who have neither the spirit to serve the Devil wholly, nor the patience to serve God; there be many shaven crowns that gnash their teeth in hell to-night, — many a monk’s robe is burning on its owner in living fire, and the devils call him a fool for choosing to be damned in so hard a way. ‘Could you not come here by some easier road than a cloister?’ they ask. ‘If you must sell your soul, why did you not get something for it?’ Brethren, there be devils waiting for some of us; they are laughing at your paltry shifts and evasions, at your efforts to make things easy, — for they know how it will all end at last. Rouse yourselves! Awake! Salvation is no easy matter, — nothing to be got between sleeping and waking. Watch, pray, scourge the flesh, fast, weep, bow down in sackcloth, mingle your bread with ashes, if by any means ye may escape the everlasting fire!”

  “Bless me!” said Father Anselmo, when the services were over, casting a half-scared glance after the retreating figure of the Superior as he left the chapel, and drawing a long breath; “it’s enough to make one sweat to hear him go on. What has come over him? Anyhow, I’ll give myself a hundred lashes this very night: something must be done.”

  “Well,” said another, “I confess I did hide a cold wing of fowl in the sleeve of my gown last fast-day. My old aunt gave it to me, and I was forced to take it for relation’s sake; but I’ll do so no more, as I’m a living sinner I’ll do a penance this very night.”

  Father Johannes stood under one of the arches that looked into the gloomy garden, and, with his hands crossed upon his breast, and his cold, glittering eye fixed stealthily now on one and now on another, listened with an ill-disguised sneer to these hasty evidences of fear and remorse in the monks, as they thronged the corridor on the way to their cells. Suddenly turning to a young brother who had lately joined the convent, he said to him, —

  “And what of the pretty Clarice, my brother?”

  The blood flushed deep into the pale cheek of the young monk, and his frame shook with some interior emotion as he answered, —

  “She is recovering.”

  “And she sent for thee to shrive her?”

  “My God!” said the young man, with an imploring, wild expression in his dark eyes, “she did; but I would not go.”

  “Then Nature is still strong,” said Father Johannes, pitilessly eyeing the young man.

  “When will it ever die?” said the stripling, with a despairing gesture; “it heeds neither heaven nor hell.”

  “Well, patience, boy! if you have lost an earthly bride, you have gained a heavenly one. The Church is our espoused in white linen. Bless the Lord, without ceasing, for the exchange.”

  There was an inexpressible mocking irony in the tones in which this was said, that made itself felt to the finely vitalized spirit of the youth, though to all the rest it sounded like the accredited average pious talk which is more or less the current coin of religious organizations.

  Now no one knows through what wanton deviltry Father Johannes broached this painful topic with the poor youth; but he had a peculiar faculty, with his smooth tones and his sanctimonious smiles, of thrusting red-hot needles into any wounds which he either knew or suspected under the coarse woolen robes of his brethren. He appeared to do it in all coolness, in a way of psychological investigation.

  He smiled, as the youth turned away, and a moment after, started as if a thought had suddenly struck him.

  “I have it!” he said to himself. “There may be a woman at the bottom of this discomposure of our holy father; for he is wrought upon by something to the very bottom of his soul. I have not studied human nature so many years for nothing. Father Francesco hath been much in the guidance of women. His preaching hath wrought upon them, and perchance among them. Aha!” he said to himself, as he paced up and down. “I have it! I’ll try an experiment upon him!”

  CHAPTER XV. THE SERPENT’S EXPERIMENT

  Father Francesco sat leaning his head on his hand by the window of his cell, looking out upon the sea as it rose and fell, with the reflections of the fast coming stars glittering like so many jewels on its breast. The glow of evening had almost faded, but there was a wan, tremulous light from the moon, and a clearness produced by the reflection of such an expanse of water, which still rendered objects in his cell quite discernible.

  In the terrible denunciations and warnings just uttered, he had been preaching to himself, striving to bring a force on his own soul by which he might reduce its interior rebellion to submission; but, alas! when was ever love cast out by fear? He knew not as yet the only remedy for such sorrow, — that there is a love celestial and divine, of which earthly love in its purest form is only the sacramental symbol and emblem, and that this divine love can by God’s power so outflood human affections as to bear the soul above all earthly idols to its only immortal rest. This great truth rises like a rock amid stormy seas, and many is the sailor struggling in salt and bitter waters who cannot yet believe it is to be found. A few saints like Saint Augustine had reached it, — but through what buffetings, what anguish!

  At this moment, however, there was in the heart of the father one of those collapses which follow the crisis of some mortal struggle. He leaned on the window-sill, exhausted and helpless.

  Suddenly, a kind of illusion of the senses came over him, such as is not infrequent to sensitive natures in severe crises of mental anguish. He thought he heard Agnes singing, as he had sometimes heard her when he had called in his pastoral ministrations at the little garden and paused awhile outside that he might hear her finish a favorite hymn, which, like a shy bird, she sung all the more sweetly for thinking herself alone.

  Quite as if they were sung in his ear, and in her very tones, he heard the words of Saint Bernard, which we have already introduced to our reader: —

  “Jesu dulcis memoria,

  Dans vera cordi gaudia:

  Sed super mel et omnia

  Ejus dulcis præsentia.

  “Jesu, spes pœnitentibus,

  Quam pius es petentibus,

  Quam bonus te quærentibus,

  Sed quis invenientibus!”

  Soft and sweet and solemn was the illusion, as if some spirit breathed them with a breath of tenderness over his soul; and he threw himself with a burst of tears before the crucifix.

  “O Jesus, where, then, art Thou? Why must I thus suffer? She is not the one altogether lovely; it is Thou, — Thou, her Creator and mine. Why, why cannot I find Thee? Oh, take from my heart all other love but Thine alone!”

  Yet even this very prayer, this very hymn, were blent with the remembrance of Agnes; for was it not she who first had taught him the lesson of heavenly love? Was not she the first one who had taught him to look upward to Jesus other than as an avenging judge? Michel Angelo has embodied in a fearful painting, which now deforms the Sistine Chapel, that image of stormy vengeance which a religion debased by force and fear had substituted for the tender, good shepherd of earlier Christianity. It was only in the heart of a lowly maiden th
at Christ had been made manifest to the eye of the monk, as of old he was revealed to the world through a virgin. And how could he, then, forget her, or cease to love her, when every prayer and hymn, every sacred round of the ladder by which he must climb, was so full of memorials of her? While crying and panting for the supreme, the divine, the invisible love, he found his heart still craving the visible one, — the one so well known, revealing itself to the senses, and bringing with it the certainty of visible companionship.

  As he was thus kneeling and wrestling with himself, a sudden knock at his door startled him. He had made it a point, never, at any hour of the day or night, to deny himself to a brother who sought him for counsel, however disagreeable the person and however unreasonable the visit. He therefore rose and unbolted the door, and saw Father Johannes standing with folded arms and downcast head, in an attitude of composed humility.

  “What would you with me, brother?” he asked, calmly.

  “My father, I have a wrestling of mind for one of our brethren whose case I would present to you.”

  “Come in, my brother,” said the Superior. At the same time he lighted a little iron lamp, of antique form, such as are still in common use in that region, and seating himself on the board which served for his couch, made a motion to Father Johannes to be seated also.

  The latter sat down, eyeing, as he did so, the whole interior of the apartment, so far as it was revealed by the glimmer of the taper.

  “Well, my son,” said Father Francesco, “what is it?”

  “I have my doubts of the spiritual safety of Brother Bernard,” said Father Johannes.

  “Wherefore?” asked the Superior, briefly.

  “Holy father, you are aware of the history of the brother,192 and of the worldly affliction that drove him to this blessed profession?”

  “I am,” replied the Superior, with the same brevity.

  “He narrated it to me fully,” said Father Johannes. “The maiden he was betrothed to was married to another in his absence on a long journey, being craftily made to suppose him dead.”

  “I tell you I know the circumstances,” said the Superior.

  “I merely recalled them, because, moved doubtless by your sermon, he dropped words to me to-night which led me to suppose that this sinful, earthly love was not yet extirpated from his soul. Of late the woman was sick and nigh unto death, and sent for him.”

  “But he did not go?” interposed Father Francesco.

  “No, he did not, — grace was given him thus far; but he dropped words to me to the effect, that in secret he still cherished the love of this woman; and the awful words your Reverence has been speaking to us to-night have moved me with fear for the youth’s soul, of the which I, as an elder brother, have had some charge, and I came to consult with you as to what help there might be for him.”

  Father Francesco turned away his head a moment and there was a pause; at last he said, in a tone that seemed like the throb of some deep, interior anguish, —

  “The Lord help him!”

  “Amen!” said Father Johannes, taking keen note of the apparent emotion.

  “You must have experience in these matters, my father,” he added, after a pause,—”so many hearts have been laid open to you. I would crave to know of you what you think is the safest and most certain cure for this love of woman, if once it hath got possession of the heart.”

  “Death!” said Father Francesco, after a solemn pause.

  “I do not understand you,” said Father Johannes.

  “My son,” said Father Francesco, rising up with an air of authority, “you do not understand, — there is nothing in you by which you should understand. This unhappy brother hath opened his case to me, and I have counseled him all I know of prayer and fastings and watchings and mortifications. Let him persevere in the same; and if all these fail, the good Lord will send the other in His own time. There is an end to all things in this life, and that end shall certainly come at last. Bid him persevere and hope in this. And now, brother,” added the Superior, with dignity, “if you have no other query, time flies and eternity comes on, — go, watch and pray, and leave me to my prayers, also.”

  He raised his hand with a gesture of benediction, and Father Johannes, awed in spite of himself, felt impelled to leave the apartment.

  “Is it so, or is it not?” he said. “I cannot tell. He did seem to wince and turn away his head when I proposed the case; but then he made fight at last. I cannot tell whether I have got any advantage or not; but patience! we shall see!”

  CHAPTER XVI. ELSIE PUSHES HER SCHEME

  The good Father Antonio returned from his conference with the cavalier with many subjects for grave pondering. This man, as he conjectured, so far from being an enemy either of Church or State, was in fact in many respects in the same position with his revered master, — as nearly so as the position of a layman was likely to resemble that of an ecclesiastic. His denial of the Visible Church, as represented by the Pope and cardinals, sprang not from an irreverent, but from a reverent spirit. To accept them as exponents of Christ and Christianity was to blaspheme and traduce both, and therefore he only could be counted in the highest degree Christian who stood most completely opposed to them in spirit and practice.

  His kind and fatherly heart was interested in the brave young nobleman. He sympathized fully with the situation in which he stood, and he even wished success to his love; but then how was he to help him with Agnes, and above all with her old grandmother, without entering on the awful task of condemning and exposing that sacred authority which all the Church had so many years been taught to regard as infallibly inspired? Long had all the truly spiritual members of the Church who gave ear to the teachings of Savonarola felt that the nearer they followed Christ the more open was their growing antagonism to the Pope and the Cardinals; but still they hung back from the responsibility of inviting the people to an open revolt.

  Father Antonio felt his soul deeply stirred with the news of the excommunication of his saintly master; and he marveled, as he tossed on his restless bed through the night, how he was to meet the storm. He might have known, had he been able to look into a crowded assembly in Florence about this time, when the unterrified monk thus met the news of his excommunication: —

  “There have come decrees from Rome, have there? They call me a son of perdition. Well, thus may you answer: He to whom you give this name hath neither favorites nor concubines, but gives himself solely to preaching Christ. His spiritual sons and daughters, those who listen to his doctrine, do not pass their time in infamous practices. They confess, they receive the communion, they live honestly. This man gives himself up to exalt the Church of Christ: you to destroy it. The time approaches for opening the secret chamber: we will give but one turn of the key, and there will come out thence such an infection, such a stench of this city of Rome, that the odor shall spread through all Christendom, and all the world shall be sickened.”

  But Father Antonio was of himself wholly unable to come to such a courageous result, though capable of following to the death the master who should do it for him. His was the true artist nature, as unfit to deal with rough human forces as a bird that flies through the air is unfitted to a hand-to-hand grapple with the armed forces of the lower world. There is strength in these artist natures. Curious computations have been made of the immense muscular power that is brought into exercise when a swallow skims so smoothly through the blue sky; but the strength is of a kind unadapted to mundane uses, and needs the ether for its display. Father Antonio could create the beautiful; he could warm, could elevate, could comfort; and when a stronger nature went before him, he could follow with an unquestioning tenderness of devotion: but he wanted the sharp, downright power of mind that could cut and cleave its way through the rubbish of the past, when its institutions, instead of a commodious dwelling, had come to be a loathsome prison. Besides, the true artist has ever an enchanted island of his own; and when this world perplexes and wearies him, he can sail far away an
d lay his soul down to rest, as Cytherea bore the sleeping Ascanius far from the din of battle, to sleep on flowers and breathe the odor of a hundred undying altars to Beauty.

  Therefore, after a restless night, the good monk arose in the first purple of the dawn, and instinctively betook him to a review of his drawings for the shrine, as a refuge from troubled thought. He took his sketch of the Madonna and Child into the morning twilight and began meditating thereon, while the clouds that lined the horizon were glowing rosy purple and violet with the approaching day.

  “See there!” he said to himself, “yonder clouds have exactly the rosy purple of the cyclamen which my little Agnes loves so much; — yes, I am resolved that this cloud on which our Mother standeth shall be of a cyclamen color. And there is that star, like as it looked yesterday evening, when I mused upon it. Methought I could see our Lady’s clear brow, and the radiance of her face, and I prayed that some little power might be given to show forth that which transports me.”

  And as the monk plied his pencil, touching here and there, and elaborating the outlines of his drawing, he sung, —