“You must come in and see our father. I sent word by the porter of
your arrival, and I am sure he will receive you; that will be a
pleasure for him, for he is of the great world, too. A very learnèd
man, our father; he knows the French and the English tongue. Once he
went to Rome; also he has been several times to Venice. He has been
a great traveler.”
“And you,” I asked—“have you also traveled?”
Brother Leo shook his head.
“I have sometimes looked at Venice,” he said, “across the water, and
once I went to Burano with the marketing brother; otherwise, no, I
have not traveled. But being a guest-brother, you see, I meet often
with those who have, like your Excellency, for instance, and that is
a great education.”
We reached the door of the monastery, and I felt sorry when another
brother opened to us, and Brother Leo, with the most cordial of
farewell smiles, turned back across the cloister to the chapel door.
“Even if he does not hurry, he will still find prayer there,” said a
quiet voice beside me.
I turned to look at the speaker. He was a tall old man with white
hair and eyes like small blue flowers, very bright and innocent,
with the same look of almost superb contentment in them that I had
seen in Brother Leo’s eyes.
“But what will you have?” he added with a twinkle. “The young are
always afraid of losing time; it is, perhaps, because they have so
much. But enter, Signore! If you will be so kind as to excuse the
refectory, it will give me much pleasure to bring you a little
refreshment. You will pardon that we have not much to offer?”
The father—for I found out afterward that he was the superior
himself—brought me bread and wine, made in the convent, and waited
on me with his own hands. Then he sat down on a narrow bench
opposite to watch me smoke. I offered him one of my cigarettes, but
he shook his head, smiling.
“I used to smoke once,” he said. “I was very particular about my
tobacco. I think it was similar to yours—at least the aroma, which I
enjoy very much, reminds me of it. It is curious, is it not, the
pleasure we derive from remembering what we once had? But perhaps it
is not altogether a pleasure unless one is glad that one has not got
it now. Here one is free from things. I sometimes fear one may be a
little indulgent about one’s liberty. Space, solitude, and love—it
is all very intoxicating.”
There was nothing in the refectory except the two narrow benches on
which we sat, and a long trestled board which formed the table; the
walls were white-washed and bare, the floor was stone. I found out
later that the brothers ate and drank nothing except bread and wine
and their own vegetables in season, a little macaroni sometimes in
winter, and in summer figs out of their own garden. They slept on
bare boards, with one thin blanket winter and summer alike. The fish
they caught they sold at Burano or gave to the poor. There was no
doubt that they enjoyed very great freedom from “things.”
It was a strange experience to meet a man who never had heard of a
flying-machine and who could not understand why it was important to
save time by using the telephone or the wireless-telegraphy system;
but despite the fact that the father seemed very little impressed by
our modern urgencies, I never have met a more intelligent listener
or one who seized more quickly on all that was essential in an
explanation.
“You must not think we do nothing at all, we lazy ones who follow
old paths,” he said in answer to one of my questions. “There are
only eight of us brothers, and there is the garden, fishing,
cleaning, and praying. We are sent for, too, from Burano to go and
talk a little with the people there, or from some island on the
lagoons which perhaps no priest can reach in the winter. It is easy
for us, with our little boat and no cares.”
“But Brother Leo told me he had been to Burano only once,” I said.
“That seems strange when you are so near.”
“Yes he went only once, said the father, and for a moment or two he
was silent, and I found his blue eyes on mine, as if he were
weighing me.
“Brother Leo,” said the superior at last, “is our youngest. He is
very young, younger perhaps than his years; but we have brought him
up altogether, you see. His parents died of cholera within a few
days of each other. As there were no relatives, we took him, and
when he was seventeen he decided to join our order. He has always
been happy with us, but one cannot say that he has seen much of the
world.” He paused again, and once more I felt his blue eyes
searching mine. “Who knows?” he said finally. “Perhaps you were sent
here to help me. I have prayed for two years on the subject, and
that seems very likely. The storm is increasing, and you will not be
able to return until to-morrow. This evening, if you will allow me,
we will speak more on this matter. Meanwhile I will show you our
spare room. Brother Lorenzo will see that you are made as
comfortable as we can manage. It is a great privilege for us to have
this opportunity; believe me, we are not ungrateful.”
It would have been of no use to try to explain to him that it was
for us to feel gratitude. It was apparent that none of the brothers
had ever learned that important lesson of the worldly
respectable—that duty is what other people ought to do. They were so
busy thinking of their own obligations as to overlook entirely the
obligations of others. It was not that they did not think of others.
I think they thought only of one another, but they thought without a
shadow of judgment, with that bright, spontaneous love of little
children, too interested to point a moral. Indeed, they seemed to me
very like a family of happy children listening to a fairy-story and
knowing that the tale is true.
After supper the superior took me to his office. The rain had
ceased, but the wind howled and shrieked across the lagoons, and I
could hear the waves breaking heavily against the island. There was
a candle on the desk, and the tiny, shadowy cell looked like a
picture by Rembrandt.
“The rain has ceased now,” the father said quietly, “and to-morrow
the waves will have gone down, and you, Signore, will have left us.
It is in your power to do us all a great favor. I have thought much
whether I shall ask it of you, and even now I hesitate; but
Scripture nowhere tells us that the kingdom of heaven was taken by
precaution, nor do I imagine that in this world things come oftenest
to those who refrain from asking.
“All of us,” he continued, “have come here after seeing something of
the outside world; some of us even had great possessions. Leo alone
knows nothing of it, and has possessed nothing, nor did he ever wish
to; he has been willing that nothing should be his own, not a flower
in the garden, not anything but his prayers, and even these I think
he has oftenest shared. But the visit to Burano put an idea in his
head. It is, perhaps you know, a factory town where they make lace,
and the people live there with good wages, many of them, but also
much poverty. There is a poverty which is a grace, but there is also
a poverty which is a great misery, and this Leo never had seen
before. He did not know that poverty could be a pain. It filled him
with a great horror, and in his heart there was a certain rebellion.
It seemed to him that in a world with so much money no one should
suffer for the lack of it.
“It was useless for me to point out to him that in a world where
there is so much health God has permitted sickness; where there is
so much beauty, ugliness; where there is so much holiness, sin. It
is not that there is any lack in the gifts of God; all are there,
and in abundance, but He has left their distribution to the soul of
man. It is easy for me to believe this. I have known what money can
buy and what it cannot buy; but Brother Leo, who never has owned a
penny, how should he know anything of the ways of pennies?
“I saw that he could not be contented with my answer; and then this
other idea came to him—the idea that is, I think, the blessèd hope
of youth: that this thing being wrong, he, Leo, must protest against
it, must resist it! Surely, if money can do wonders, we who set
ourselves to work the will of God should have more control of this
wonder-working power? He fretted against his rule. He did not permit
himself to believe that our blessèd father, Saint Francis, was
wrong, but it was a hardship for him to refuse alms from our kindly
visitors. He thought the beggars’ rags would be made whole by gold;
he wanted to give them more than bread, he wanted, _poverino!_ to
buy happiness for the whole world.”
The father paused, and his dark, thought-lined face lighted up with
a sudden, beautiful smile till every feature seemed as young as his
eyes.
“I do not think the human being ever has lived who has not thought
that he ought to have happiness,” he said. “We begin at once to get
ready for heaven; but heaven is a long way off. We make haste
slowly. It takes us all our lives, and perhaps purgatory, to get to
the bottom of our own hearts. That is the last place in which we
look for heaven, but I think it is the first in which we shall find
it.”
“But it seems to me extraordinary that, if Brother Leo has this
thing so much on his mind, he should look so happy,” I exclaimed.
“That is the first thing I noticed about him.”
“Yes, it is not for himself that he is searching,” said the
superior. “If it were, I should not wish him to go out into the
world, because I should not expect him to find anything there. His
heart is utterly at rest; but though he is personally happy, this
thing troubles him. His prayers are eating into his soul like flame,
and in time this fire of pity and sorrow will become a serious
menace to his peace. Besides, I see in Leo a great power of sympathy
and understanding. He has in him the gift of ruling other souls. He
is very young to rule his own soul, and yet he rules it. When I die,
it is probable that he will be called to take my place, and for that
it is necessary he should have seen clearly that our rule is right.
At present he accepts it in obedience, but he must have more than
obedience in order to teach it to others; he must have a personal
light.
“This, then, is the favor I have to ask of you, Signore. I should
like to have you take Brother Leo to Venice to-morrow, and, if you
have the time at your disposal, I should like you to show him the
towers, the churches, the palaces, and the poor who are still so
poor. I wish him to see how people spend money, both the good and
the bad. I wish him to see the world. Perhaps then it will come to
him as it came to me—that money is neither a curse nor a blessing in
itself, but only one of God’s mysteries, like the dust in a
sunbeam.”
“I will take him very gladly; but will one day be enough?” I
answered.
The superior arose and smiled again.
“Ah, we slow worms of earth,” he said, “are quick about some things!
You have learned to save time by flying-machines; we, too, have
certain methods of flight. Brother Leo learns all his lessons that
way. I hardly see him start before he arrives. You must not think I
am so myself. No, no. I am an old man who has lived a long life
learning nothing, but I have seen Leo grow like a flower in a tropic
night. I thank you, my friend, for this great favor. I think God
will reward you.”
Brother Lorenzo took me to my bedroom; he was a talkative old man,
very anxious for my comfort. He told me that there was an office in
the chapel at two o’clock, and one at five to begin the day, but he
hoped that I should sleep through them.
“They are all very well for us,” he explained, “but for a stranger,
what cold, what disturbance, and what a difficulty to arrange the
right thoughts in the head during chapel! Even for me it is a great
temptation. I find my mind running on coffee in the morning, a thing
we have only on great feast-days. I may say that I have fought this
thought for seven years, but though a small devil, perhaps, it is a
very strong one. Now, if you should hear our bell in the night, as a
favor pray that I may not think about coffee. Such an imperfection!
I say to myself, the sin of Esau! But he, you know, had some excuse;
he had been hunting. Now, I ask you—one has not much chance of that
on this little island; one has only one’s sins to hunt, and, alas!
they don’t run away as fast as one could wish! I am afraid they are
tame, these ones. May your Excellency sleep like the blessèd saints,
only a trifle longer!”
I did sleep a trifle longer; indeed, I was quite unable to assist
Brother Lorenzo to resist his coffee devil during chapel-time. I did
not wake till my tiny cell was flooded with sunshine and full of the
sound of St. Francis’s birds. Through my window I could see the
fishing-boats pass by. First came one with a pair of lemon-yellow
sails, like floating primroses; then a boat as scarlet as a dancing
flame, and half a dozen others painted some with jokes and some with
incidents in the lives of patron saints, all gliding out over the
blue lagoon to meet the golden day.
I rose, and from my window I saw Brother Leo in the garden. He was
standing under St. Francis’s tree—the old gnarled umbrella-pine
which hung over the convent-wall above the water by the island’s
edge. His back was toward me, and he was looking out over the blue
stretch of lagoon into the distance, where Venice lay like a moving
cloud at the horizon’s edge; but a mist hid her from his eyes, and
while I watched him he turned back to the garden-bed and began
pulling out weeds. The gondoliers were already at the tiny pier when
I came out.
“_Per Bacco, Signore!_” the elder explained. “Let us hasten back to
Venice and make up for the Lent we have had here. The brothers gave
us all they had, the holy ones—a little wine, a little bread, cheese
that couldn’t fatten one’s grandmother, and no macaroni—not so much
as would go round a baby’s tongue! For my part, I shall wait till I
get to heaven to fast, and pay some attention to my stomach while I
have one.” And he spat on his hands and looked toward Venice.
“And not an image in the chapel!” agreed the younger man. “Why,
there is nothing to pray to but the Signore Dio Himself!
_Veramente_, Signore, you are a witness that I speak nothing but the
truth.”
The father superior and Leo appeared at this moment down the path
between the cypresses. The father gave me thanks and spoke in a
friendly way to the gondoliers, who for their part expressed a very
pretty gratitude in their broad Venetian patois, one of them saying
that the hospitality of the monks had been like paradise itself, and
the other hasting to agree with him.
The two monks did not speak to each other, but as the gondolier
turned the huge prow toward Venice, a long look passed between
them—such a look as a father and son might exchange if the son were
going out to war, while his father, remembering old campaigns, was
yet bound to stay at home.
It was a glorious day in early June; the last traces of the storm
had vanished from the serene, still waters; a vague curtain of heat
and mist hung and shimmered between ourselves and Venice; far away
lay the little islands in the lagoon, growing out of the water like
strange sea-flowers. Behind us stood San Francesco del Deserto, with
long reflections of its one pink tower and arrowy, straight
cypresses, soft under the blue water.
The father superior walked slowly back to the convent, his
brown-clad figure a shining shadow between the two black rows of
cypresses. Brother Leo waited till he had disappeared, then turned
his eager eyes toward Venice.
[Illustration:
He was looking out over the blue stretch of lagoon into the distance
where Venice lay
]
As we approached the city the milky sea of mist retreated, and her
towers sprang up to greet us. I saw a look in Brother Leo’s eyes
that was not fear or wholly pleasure; yet there was in it a certain
awe and a strange, tentative joy, as if something in him stretched
out to greet the world. He muttered half to himself:
“What a great world, and how many children _il Signore Dio_ has!”
When we reached the piazzetta, and he looked up at the amazing
splendor of the ducal palace, that building of soft yellow, with its
pointed arches and double loggias of white marble, he spread out
both hands in an ecstasy.
“But what a miracle!” he cried. “What a joy to God and to His
angels! How I wish my brothers could see this! Do you not imagine
that some good man was taken to paradise to see this great building
and brought back here to copy it?”
“_Chi lo sa?_” I replied guardedly, and we landed by the column of
the Lion of St. Mark’s. That noble beast, astride on his pedestal,
with wings outstretched, delighted the young monk, who walked round
and round him.
“What a tribute to the saint!” he exclaimed. “Look, they have his
wings, too. Is not that faith?”
“Come,” I said, “let us go on to Saint Mark’s. I think you would
like to go there first; it is the right way to begin our
pilgrimage.”
The piazza was not very full at that hour of the morning, and its
emptiness increased the feeling of space and size. The pigeons
wheeled and circled to and fro, a dazzle of soft plumage, and the
cluster of golden domes and sparkling minarets glittered in the
sunshine like flames. Every image and statue on St. Mark’s wavered
in great lines of light like a living pageant in a sea of gold.
Brother Leo said nothing as he stood in front of the three great
doorways that lead into the church. He stood quite still for a
while, and then his eyes fell on a beggar beside the pink and cream
of the new campanile, and I saw the wistfulness in his eyes suddenly
grow as deep as pain.
“Have you money, Signore?” he asked me. That seemed to him the only
question. I gave the man something, but I explained to Brother Leo
that he was probably not so poor as he looked.
“They live in rags,” I explained, “because they wish to arouse pity.
Many of them need not beg at all.”
“Is it possible?” asked Brother Leo, gravely; then he followed me
under the brilliant doorways of mosaic which lead into the richer
dimness of St. Mark’s.
When he found himself within that great incrusted jewel, he fell on
his knees. I think he hardly saw the golden roof, the jeweled walls,
and the five lifted domes full of sunshine and old gold, or the dark
altars, with their mysterious, rich shimmering. All these seemed to
pass away beyond the sense of sight; even I felt somehow as if those
great walls of St. Mark’s were not so great as I had fancied.
Something greater was kneeling there in an old habit and with bare
feet, half broken-hearted because a beggar had lied.
I found myself regretting the responsibility laid on my shoulders.
Why should I have been compelled to take this strangely innocent,
sheltered boy, with his fantastic third-century ideals, out into the
shoddy, decorative, unhappy world? I even felt a kind of anger at
the simplicity of his soul. I wished he were more like other people;
I suppose because he had made me wish for a moment that I was less
like them.
“What do you think of Saint Mark’s?” I asked him as we stood once
more in the hot sunshine outside, with the strutting pigeons at our
feet and wheeling over our heads.
Brother Leo did not answer for a moment, then he said:
“I think Saint Mark would feel it a little strange. You see, I do
not think he was a great man in the world, and the great in
paradise—” He stooped and lifted a pigeon with a broken foot nearer
to some corn a passer-by was throwing for the birds. “I cannot
think,” he finished gravely, “that they care very much for palaces
in paradise; I should think every one had them there or
else—nobody.”
I was surprised to see the pigeons that wheeled away at my approach
allow the monk to handle them, but they seemed unaware of his touch.
“_Poverino!_” he said to the one with the broken foot. “Thank God
that He has given you wings!”
Brother Leo spoke to every child he met, and they all answered him
as if there was a secret freemasonry between them; but the grown-up
people he passed with troubled eyes.
“It seems strange to me,” he said at last, “not to speak to these
brothers and sisters of ours, and yet I see all about me that they
do not salute one another.”
“They are many, and they are all strangers,” I tried to explain.
“Yes, they are very many,” he said a little sadly. “I had not known
that there were so many people in the world, and I thought that in a
Christian country they would not be strangers.”
I took another gondola by the nearest bridge, and we rowed to the
Frari. I hardly knew what effect that great church, with its famous
Titian, would have upon him. A group of tourists surrounded the
picture. I heard a young lady exclaiming:
“My! but I’d like her veil! Ain’t she cute, looking round it that
way?”
Brother Leo did not pause; he passed as if by instinct toward the
chapel on the right which holds the softest, tenderest of Bellinis.
There, before the Madonna with her four saints and two small
attendant cherubs, he knelt again, and his eyes filled with tears. I
do not think he heard the return of the tourists, who were rather
startled at seeing him there. The elder lady remarked that he might
have some infectious disease, and the younger that she did not think
much of Bellini, anyway.
He knelt for some time, and I had not the heart to disturb him;
indeed, I had no wish to, either, for Bellini’s “Madonna” is my
favorite picture, and that morning I saw in it more than I had ever
seen before. It seemed to me as if that triumphant, mellow glow of
the great master was an eternal thing, and as if the saints and
their gracious Lady, with the stalwart, standing Child upon her
knee, were more real than flesh and blood, and would still be more
real when flesh and blood had ceased to be. I never have recaptured
the feeling; perhaps there was something infectious about Brother
Leo, after all. He made no comment on the Madonna, nor did I expect
one, for we do not need to assert that we find the object of our
worship beautiful; but I was amused at his calm refusal to look upon
the great Titian as a Madonna at all.
“No, no,” he said firmly. “This one is no doubt some good and
gracious lady, but the Madonna! Signore, you jest. Or, if the
painter thought so, he was deceived by the devil. Yes, that is very
possible. The father has often told us that artists are exposed to
great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have
reached it, and that is a great danger.”
I said no more, and we passed out into the street again. I felt
ashamed to say that I wanted my luncheon, but I did say so, and it
did not seem in the least surprising to Brother Leo; he merely drew
out a small wallet and offered me some bread, which he said the
father had given him for our needs.
I told him that he must not dream of eating that; he was to come and
dine with me at my hotel. He replied that he would go wherever I
liked, but that really he would prefer to eat his bread unless
indeed we were so fortunate as to find a beggar who would like it.
However, we were not so fortunate, and I was compelled to eat my
exceedingly substantial five-course luncheon while my companion sat
opposite me and ate his half-loaf of black bread with what appeared
to be appetite and satisfaction.
He asked me a great many questions about what everything in the room
was used for and what everything cost, and appeared very much
surprised at my answers.
“This, then,” he said, “is not like all the other houses in Venice?
Is it a special house—perhaps for the English only?”
I explained to him that most houses contained tables and chairs;
that this, being a hotel, was in some ways even less furnished than
a private house, though doubtless it was larger and was arranged
with a special eye to foreign requirements.
“But the poor—they do not live like this?” Leo asked. I had to own
that the poor did not. “But the people here are rich?” Leo
persisted.
“Well, yes, I suppose so, tolerably well off,” I admitted.
“How miserable they must be!” exclaimed Leo, compassionately. “Are
they not allowed to give away their money?”
This seemed hardly the way to approach the question of the rich and
the poor, and I do not know that I made it any better by an
after-dinner exposition upon capital and labor. I finished, of
course, by saying that if the rich gave to the poor to-day, there
would still be rich and poor to-morrow. It did not sound very
convincing to me, and it did nothing whatever to convince Brother
Leo.