THE WALK TO THE CONVENT
Elsie returned from the confessional a little after sunrise, much
relieved and satisfied. Padre Francesco had shown such a deep interest
in her narrative that she was highly gratified. Then he had given her
advice which exactly accorded with her own views; and such advice is
always regarded as an eminent proof of sagacity in the giver.
On the point of the marriage he had recommended delay,--a course quite
in accordance with Elsie's desire, who, curiously enough, ever since
her treaty of marriage with Antonio had been commenced, had cherished
the most whimsical, jealous dislike of him, as if he were about to get
away her grandchild from her; and this rose at times so high that she
could scarcely speak peaceably to him,--a course of things which caused
Antonio to open wide his great soft ox-eyes, and wonder at the ways of
womankind; but he waited the event in philosophic tranquillity.
The morning sunbeams were shooting many a golden shaft among the
orange-trees when Elsie returned and found Agnes yet kneeling at her
prayers.
"Now, my little heart," said the old woman, when their morning meal was
done, "I am going to give you a holiday to-day. I will go with you to
the Convent, and you shall spend the day with the sisters, and so carry
Saint Agnes her ring."
"Oh, thank you, grandmamma! how good you are! May I stop a little on
the way, and pick some cyclamen and myrtles and daisies for her shrine?"
"Just as you like, child; but if you are going to do that, we must be
off soon, for I must be at my stand betimes to sell oranges: I had them
all picked this morning while my little darling was asleep."
"You always do everything, grandmamma, and leave me nothing to do: it
is not fair. But, grandmamma, if we are going to get flowers by the
way, let us follow down the stream, through the gorge, out upon the
sea-beach, and so walk along the sands, and go by the back path up the
rocks to the Convent: that walk is so shady and lovely at this time in
the morning, and it is so fresh along by the seaside!"
"As you please, dearie; but first fill a little basket with our best
oranges for the sisters."
"Trust me for that!" And the girl ran eagerly to the house, and drew
from her treasures a little white wicker basket, which she proceeded
to line curiously with orange-leaves, sticking sprays of blossoms in a
wreath round the border.
"Now for some of our best blood-oranges!" she said; "old Jocunda says
they put her in mind of pomegranates. And here are some of these little
ones,--see here, grandmamma!" she exclaimed as she turned and held up a
branch just broken, where five small golden balls grew together with a
pearly spray of white buds just beyond them.
The exercise of springing up for the branch had sent a vivid glow
into her clear brown cheek, and her eyes were dilated with excitement
and pleasure; and as she stood joyously holding the branch, while the
flickering shadows fell on her beautiful face, she seemed more like a
painter's dream than a reality.
Her grandmother stood a moment admiring her.
"She's too good and too pretty for Antonio or any other man: she
ought to be kept to look at," she said to herself. "If I could keep
her always, no man should have her; but death will come, and youth and
beauty go, and so somebody must care for her."
When the basket was filled and trimmed, Agnes took it on her arm. Elsie
raised and poised on her head the great square basket that contained
her merchandise, and began walking erect and straight down the narrow
rocky stairs that led into the gorge, holding her distaff with its
white flax in her hands, and stepping as easily as if she bore no
burden.
Agnes followed her with light, irregular movements, glancing aside
from time to time, as a tuft of flowers or a feathery spray of leaves
attracted her fancy. In a few moments her hands were too full, and
her woolen apron of many-colored stripes was raised over one arm to
hold her treasures, while a hymn to Saint Agnes, which she constantly
murmured to herself, came in little ripples of sound, now from behind
a rock, and now out of a tuft of bushes, to show where the wanderer
was hid. The song, like many Italian ones, would be nothing in
English,--only a musical repetition of sweet words to a very simple
and childlike idea, the _bella_, _bella_, _bella_ ringing out in every
verse with a tender joyousness that seemed in harmony with the waving
ferns and pendent flowers and long ivy-wreaths from among which its
notes issued. "Beautiful and sweet Agnes," it said, in a thousand
tender repetitions, "make me like thy little white lamb! Beautiful
Agnes, take me to the green fields where Christ's lambs are feeding!
Sweeter than the rose, fairer than the lily, take me where thou art!"
At the bottom of the ravine a little stream tinkles its way among
stones so mossy in their deep, cool shadow as to appear all verdure;
for seldom the light of the sun can reach the darkness where they lie.
A little bridge, hewn from solid rock, throws across the shrunken
stream an arch much wider than its waters seem to demand; for in spring
and autumn, when the torrents wash down from the mountains, its volume
is often suddenly increased.
This bridge was so entirely and evenly grown over with short thick moss
that it might seem cut of some strange kind of living green velvet, and
here and there it was quaintly embroidered with small blossoming tufts
of white alyssum, or feathers of ferns and maiden's-hair which shook
and trembled to every breeze. Nothing could be lovelier than this mossy
bridge, when some stray sunbeam, slanting up the gorge, took a fancy
to light it up with golden hues, and give transparent greenness to the
tremulous thin leaves that waved upon it.
On this spot Elsie paused a moment, and called back after Agnes, who
had disappeared into one of those deep grottoes with which the sides of
the gorge are perforated, and which are almost entirely veiled by the
pendent ivy-wreaths.
"Agnes! Agnes! wild girl! come quick!"
Only the sound of "_Bella, bella Agnella_" came out of the ivy-leaves
to answer her; but it sounded so happy and innocent that Elsie could
not forbear a smile, and in a moment Agnes came springing down with a
quantity of the feathery lycopodium in her hands, which grows nowhere
so well as in moist and dripping places.
Out of her apron were hanging festoons of golden broom, crimson
gladiolus, and long, trailing sprays of ivy; while she held aloft in
triumph a handful of the most superb cyclamen, whose rosy crowns rise
so beautifully above their dark quaint leaves in moist and shady places.
"See, see, grandmother, what an offering I have! Saint Agnes will be
pleased with me to-day; for I believe in her heart she loves flowers
better than gems."
"Well, well, wild one,--time flies, we must hurry." And crossing the
bridge quickly, the grandmother struck into a mossy footpath that led
them, after some walking, under the old Roman bridge at the gateway of
Sorrento. Two hundred feet above their heads rose the mighty arches,
enameled with moss and feathered with ferns all the way; and below this
bridge the gorge grew somewhat wider, its sides gradually receding
and leaving a beautiful flat tract of land, which was laid out as an
orange-orchard. The golden fruit was shut in by rocky walls on either
side which here formed a perfect hotbed, and no oranges were earlier or
finer.
Through this beautiful orchard the two at length emerged from the gorge
upon the sea-sands, where lay the blue Mediterranean swathed in bands
of morning mist, its many-colored waters shimmering with a thousand
reflected lights, and old Capri panting through sultry blue mists, and
Vesuvius with his cloud-spotted sides and smoke-wreathed top burst
into view. At a little distance a boat-load of bronzed fishermen had
just drawn in a net, from which they were throwing out a quantity of
sardines, which flapped and fluttered in the sunshine like scales of
silver. The wind blowing freshly bore thousands of little purple waves
to break one after another at the foamy line which lay on the sand.
Agnes ran gayly along the beach with her flowers and vines fluttering
from her gay striped apron, and her cheeks flushed with exercise
and pleasure,--sometimes stopping and turning with animation to
her grandmother to point out the various floral treasures that
enameled every crevice and rift of the steep wall of rock which rose
perpendicularly above their heads in that whole line of the shore which
is crowned with the old city of Sorrento: and surely never did rocky
wall show to the open sea a face more picturesque and flowery. The deep
red cliff was hollowed here and there into fanciful grottoes, draped
with every varied hue and form of vegetable beauty. Here a crevice
high in air was all abloom with purple gillyflower, and depending in
festoons above it the golden blossoms of the broom; here a cleft seemed
to be a nestling-place for a colony of gladiolus, with its crimson
flowers and blade-like leaves; here the silver-frosted foliage of
the miller-geranium, or of the wormwood, toned down the extravagant
brightness of other blooms by its cooler tints. In some places it
seemed as if a sort of floral cascade were tumbling confusedly over the
rocks, mingling all hues and all forms in a tangled mass of beauty.
"Well, well," said old Elsie, as Agnes pointed to some superb
gillyflowers which grew nearly half-way up the precipice, "is the child
possessed? You have all the gorge in your apron already. Stop looking,
and let us hurry on."
After a half-hour's walk, they came to a winding staircase cut in the
rock, which led them a zigzag course up through galleries and grottoes
looking out through curious windows and loop-holes upon the sea, till
finally they emerged at the old sculptured portal of a shady garden
which was surrounded by the cloistered arcades of the Convent of Saint
Agnes.
The Convent of Saint Agnes was one of those monuments in which the
piety of the Middle Ages delighted to commemorate the triumphs of the
new Christianity over the old Heathenism.
The balmy climate and paradisiacal charms of Sorrento and the adjacent
shores of Naples had made them favorite resorts during the latter
period of the Roman Empire,--a period when the whole civilized world
seemed to human view about to be dissolved in the corruption of
universal sensuality. The shores of Baiæ were witnesses of the orgies
and cruelties of Nero and a court made in his likeness, and the
palpitating loveliness of Capri became the hotbed of the unnatural
vices of Tiberius. The whole of Southern Italy was sunk in a
debasement of animalism and ferocity which seemed irrecoverable, and
would have been so, had it not been for the handful of salt which a
Galilean peasant had about that time cast into the putrid, fermenting
mass of human society.
We must not wonder at the zeal which caused the artistic Italian nature
to love to celebrate the passing away of an era of unnatural vice and
demoniac cruelty by visible images of the purity, the tenderness, the
universal benevolence which Jesus had brought into the world.
Sometime about the middle of the thirteenth century, it had been a
favorite enterprise of a princess of a royal family in Naples to erect
a convent to Saint Agnes, the guardian of female purity, out of the
wrecks and remains of an ancient temple of Venus, whose white pillars
and graceful acanthus-leaves once crowned a portion of the precipice
on which the town was built, and were reflected from the glassy blue
of the sea at its feet. It was said that this princess was the first
lady abbess. Be that as it may, it proved to be a favorite retreat for
many ladies of rank and religious aspiration, whom ill-fortune in some
of its varying forms led to seek its quiet shades, and it was well and
richly endowed by its royal patrons.
It was built after the manner of conventual buildings generally,--in a
hollow square, with a cloistered walk around the inside looking upon a
garden.
The portal at which Agnes and her grandmother knocked, after ascending
the winding staircase cut in the precipice, opened through an arched
passage into this garden.
As the ponderous door swung open, it was pleasant to hear the lulling
sound of a fountain, which came forth with a gentle patter, like that
of soft summer rain, and to see the waving of rose-bushes and golden
jessamines, and smell the perfumes of orange-blossoms mingling with
those of a thousand other flowers.
The door was opened by an odd-looking portress. She might be
seventy-five or eighty; her cheeks were of the color of very yellow
parchment drawn in dry wrinkles; her eyes were those large, dark,
lustrous ones so common in her country, but seemed, in the general
decay and shrinking of every other part of her face, to have acquired
a wild, unnatural appearance; while the falling away of her teeth left
nothing to impede the meeting of her hooked nose with her chin. Add to
this, she was humpbacked, and twisted in her figure; and one needs all
the force of her very good-natured, kindly smile to redeem the image
of poor old Jocunda from association with that of some Thracian witch,
and cause one to see in her the appropriate portress of a Christian
institution.
Nevertheless, Agnes fell upon her neck and imprinted a very fervent
kiss upon what was left of her withered cheek, and was repaid by a
shower of those epithets of endearment which in the language of Italy
fly thick and fast as the petals of the orange blossom from her groves.
"Well, well," said old Elsie, "I'm going to leave her here to-day.
You've no objections, I suppose?"
"Bless the sweet lamb, no! She belongs here of good right. I believe
blessed Saint Agnes has adopted her; for I've seen her smile, plain as
could be, when the little one brought her flowers."
"Well, Agnes," said the old woman, "I shall come for you after the Ave
Maria." Saying which, she lifted her basket and departed.
The garden where the two were left was one of the most peaceful
retreats that the imagination of a poet could create.
Around it ran on all sides the Byzantine arches of a cloistered walk,
which, according to the quaint, rich fashion of that style, had been
painted with vermilion, blue, and gold. The vaulted roof was spangled
with gold stars on a blue ground, and along the sides was a series of
fresco pictures representing the various scenes in the life of Saint
Agnes; and as the foundress of the Convent was royal in her means,
there was no lack either of gold or gems or of gorgeous painting.
Full justice was done in the first picture to the princely wealth
and estate of the fair Agnes, who was represented as a pure-looking,
pensive child, standing in a thoughtful attitude, with long ripples of
golden hair flowing down over a simple white tunic, and her small hands
clasping a cross on her bosom, while, kneeling at her feet, obsequious
slaves and tire-women were offering the richest gems and the most
gorgeous robes to her serious and abstracted gaze.
In another, she was represented as walking modestly to school, and
winning the admiration of the son of the Roman Prætor, who fell
sick--so says the legend--for the love of her.
Then there was the demand of her hand in marriage by the princely
father of the young man, and her calm rejection of the gorgeous gifts
and splendid gems which he had brought to purchase her consent.
Then followed in order her accusation before the tribunals as a
Christian, her trial, and the various scenes of her martyrdom.
Although the drawing of the figures and the treatment of the subjects
had the quaint stiffness of the thirteenth century, their general
effect, as seen from the shady bowers of the garden, was of a solemn
brightness, a strange and fanciful richness, which was poetical and
impressive.
In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white marble, which
evidently was the wreck of something that had belonged to the old Greek
temple. The statue of a nymph sat on a green mossy pedestal in the
midst of a sculptured basin, and from a partially reversed urn on which
she was leaning, a clear stream of water dashed down from one mossy
fragment to another, till it lost itself in the placid pool.
The figure and face of this nymph, in their classic finish of outline,
formed a striking contrast to the drawing of the Byzantine paintings
within the cloisters, and their juxtaposition in the same enclosure
seemed a presentation of the spirit of a past and present era: the past
so graceful in line, so perfect and airy in conception, so utterly
without spiritual aspiration or life; the present limited in artistic
power, but so earnest, so intense, seeming to struggle and burn, amid
its stiff and restricted boundaries, for the expression of some diviner
phase of humanity.
Nevertheless, the nymph of the fountain, different in style and
execution as it was, was so fair a creature, that it was thought best,
after the spirit of those days, to purge her from all heathen and
improper histories by baptizing her in the waters of her own fountain,
and bestowing on her the name of the saint to whose convent she was
devoted. The simple sisterhood, little conversant in nice points of
antiquity, regarded her as Saint Agnes dispensing the waters of purity
to her convent; and marvelous and sacred properties were ascribed to
the water, when taken fasting with a sufficient number of prayers and
other religious exercises. All around the neighborhood of this fountain
the ground was one bed of blue and white violets, whose fragrance
filled the air, and which were deemed by the nuns to have come up there
in especial token of the favor with which Saint Agnes regarded the
conversion of this heathen relic to pious and Christian uses.
This nymph had been an especial favorite of the childhood of Agnes, and
she had always had a pleasure which she could not exactly account for
in gazing upon it. It is seldom that one sees in the antique conception
of the immortals any trace of human feeling. Passionless perfection
and repose seem to be their uniform character. But now and then from
the ruins of Southern Italy fragments have been dug, not only pure in
outline, but invested with a strange pathetic charm, as if the calm,
inviolable circle of divinity had been touched by some sorrowing sense
of that unexplained anguish with which the whole lower creation groans.
One sees this mystery of expression in the face of that strange and
beautiful Psyche which still enchants the Museum of Naples. Something
of this charm of mournful pathos lingered on the beautiful features
of this nymph,--an expression so delicate and shadowy that it seemed
to address itself only to finer natures. It was as if all the silent,
patient woe and discouragement of a dumb antiquity had been congealed
into this memorial. Agnes was often conscious, when a child, of being
saddened by it, and yet drawn towards it with a mysterious attraction.
About this fountain, under the shadow of bending rose trees and yellow
jessamines, was a circle of garden seats, adopted also from the ruins
of the past. Here a graceful Corinthian capital, with every white
acanthus-leaf perfect, stood in a mat of acanthus-leaves of Nature's
own making, glossy green and sharply cut; and there was a long portion
of a frieze sculptured with graceful dancing figures; and in another
place a fragment of a fluted column, with lycopodium and colosseum vine
hanging from its fissures in graceful draping. On these seats Agnes
had dreamed away many a tranquil hour, making garlands of violets, and
listening to the marvelous legends of old Jocunda.
In order to understand anything of the true idea of conventual life in
those days, we must consider that books were as yet unknown, except
as literary rarities, and reading and writing were among the rare
accomplishments of the higher classes; and that Italy, from the time
that the great Roman Empire fell and broke into a thousand shivers,
had been subject to a continual series of conflicts and struggles,
which took from life all security. Norman, Dane, Sicilian, Spaniard,
Frenchman, and German mingled and struggled, now up and now down;
and every struggle was attended by the little ceremonies of sacking
towns, burning villages, and routing out entire populations to utter
misery and wretchedness. During these tumultuous ages, those buildings
consecrated by a religion recognized alike by all parties afforded to
misfortune the only inviolable asylum, and to feeble and discouraged
spirits the only home safe from the prospect of reverses.
If the destiny of woman is a problem that calls for grave attention
even in our enlightened times, and if she is too often a sufferer from
the inevitable movements of society, what must have been her position
and needs in those ruder ages, unless the genius of Christianity had
opened refuges for her weakness, made inviolable by the awful sanctions
of religion?
What could they do, all these girls and women together, with the
twenty-four long hours of every day, without reading or writing, and
without the care of children? Enough; with their multiplied diurnal
prayer periods, with each its chants and ritual of observances,--with
the preparation for meals, and the clearing away thereafter,--with the
care of the chapel, shrine, sacred gifts, drapery, and ornaments,--with
embroidering altar-cloths and making sacred tapers,--with preparing
conserves of rose leaves and curious spiceries,--with mixing drugs for
the sick,--with all those mutual offices and services to each other
which their relations in one family gave rise to,--and with divers
feminine gossipries and harmless chatterings and cooings, one can
conceive that these dove-cots of the Church presented often some of the
most tranquil scenes of those convulsive and disturbed periods.
Human nature probably had its varieties there as otherwhere. There were
there the domineering and the weak, the ignorant and the vulgar, and
the patrician and the princess, and though professedly all brought on
the footing of sisterly equality, we are not to suppose any Utopian
degree of perfection among them. The way of pure spirituality was
probably, in the convent as well as out, that strait and narrow one
which there be few to find. There, as elsewhere, the devotee who
sought to progress faster toward heaven than suited the paces of her
fellow-travelers was reckoned a troublesome enthusiast, till she got
far enough in advance to be worshiped as a saint.
Sister Theresa, the abbess of this convent, was the youngest daughter
in a princely Neapolitan family, who from her cradle had been destined
to the cloister, in order that her brother and sister might inherit
more splendid fortunes and form more splendid connections. She had been
sent to this place too early to have much recollection of any other
mode of life; and when the time came to take the irrevocable step, she
renounced with composure a world she had never known.
Her brother had endowed her with a _livre des heures_, illuminated
with all the wealth of blue and gold and divers colors which the art
of those times afforded,--a work executed by a pupil of the celebrated
Fra Angelico; and the possession of this treasure was regarded by her
as a far richer inheritance than that princely state of which she knew
nothing. Her neat little cell had a window that looked down on the
sea,--on Capri, with its fantastic grottoes,--on Vesuvius, with its
weird daily and nightly changes. The light that came in from the joint
reflection of sea and sky gave a golden and picturesque coloring to the
simple and bare furniture, and in sunny weather she often sat there,
just as a lizard lies upon a wall, with the simple, warm, delightful
sense of living and being amid scenes of so much beauty. Of the life
that people lived in the outer world, the struggle, the hope, the
fear, the vivid joy, the bitter sorrow, Sister Theresa knew nothing.
She could form no judgment and give no advice founded on any such
experience.
The only life she knew was a certain ideal one, drawn from the legends
of the saints; and her piety was a calm, pure enthusiasm which had
never been disturbed by a temptation or a struggle. Her rule in the
Convent was even and serene; but those who came to her flock from the
real world, from the trials and temptations of a real experience, were
always enigmas to her, and she could scarcely comprehend or aid them.
In fact, since in the cloister, as everywhere else, character will
find its level, it was old Jocunda who was the real governess of the
Convent. Jocunda was originally a peasant woman, whose husband had been
drafted to some of the wars of his betters, and she had followed his
fortunes in the camp. In the sack of a fortress, she lost her husband
and four sons, all the children she had, and herself received an injury
which distorted her form, and so she took refuge in the Convent.
Here her energy and _savoir-faire_ rendered her indispensable in
every department. She made the bargains, bought the provisions (being
allowed to sally forth for these purposes), and formed the medium
by which the timid, abstract, defenseless nuns accomplished those
material relations with the world with which the utmost saintliness
cannot afford to dispense. Besides and above all this, Jocunda's wide
experience and endless capabilities of narrative made her an invaluable
resource for enlivening any dull hours that might be upon the hands of
the sisterhood; and all these recommendations, together with a strong
mother-wit and native sense, soon made her so much the leading spirit
in the Convent that Mother Theresa herself might be said to be under
her dominion.
"So, so," she said to Agnes, when she had closed the gate after
Elsie,--"you never come empty-handed. What lovely oranges!--worth
double any that one can buy of anybody else but your grandmother."
"Yes, and these flowers I brought to dress the altar."
"Ah, yes! Saint Agnes has given you a particular grace for that," said
Jocunda.
"And I have brought a ring for her treasury," said Agnes, taking out
the gift of the Cavalier.
"Holy Mother! here is something, to be sure!" said Jocunda, catching it
eagerly. "Why, Agnes, this is a diamond,--and as pretty a one as ever
I saw. How it shines!" she added, holding it up. "That's a prince's
present. How did you get it?"
"I want to tell our mother about it," said Agnes.
"You do?" said Jocunda. "You'd better tell me. I know fifty times as
much about such things as she."
"Dear Jocunda, I will tell you, too; but I love Mother Theresa, and I
ought to give it to her first."
"As you please, then," said Jocunda. "Well, put your flowers here by
the fountain, where the spray will keep them cool, and we will go to
her."