“God grant that I may be that one!”
“Ah, sweet sister,” I said to her, “only think what immense strength
that one must possess to revive a dead hand and to draw it so ardently
to herself!”
“I have not any strength, but I will ask it of the Lord.”
“The Lord can only give you back the strength you have given to Him,
Massimilla.”
“Be silent, please!” she implored. “I am afraid your words are impious.”
“They are not impious; you need not fear listening to them. Do you not
remember the first lines of the Commentary of St. Theresa? She speaks
there of a God imprisoned. Think what power is required to enchain
the Lord! You see, Sister Water, what unceasing acts of strength are
required of the Bride who is sung in the Antiphons and Responses.
That is why, as I have a brotherly anxiety for you, I want at least
to prepare your soul for the bitterness of disillusion. Do not lull
it too much with the promises of the Psalms! There is, I think, some
magnificent joyous promise in the verses you have learned, '_Veni,
Electa mea...._’ 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For
lo! the winter is past ... the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land ... the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.’ Ah, the
Latin of the Psalms is incomparable in producing a picture of the
intoxication of love sinking under suffocating wealth. Some of the
verses seem to drop with fragrant oil like the hair of slaves, or to
be heavy and glittering as nuggets of gold. When the bishop places the
crown of virginal merit on your head, your lips will have to pronounce
wonderful words--words in which I see and feel some mysterious weight
and splendour. '_Et immensis monilibus ornavit me._’ Wonderful words!
Are they not?”
She was looking at me now with such passion that all her little soul
trembled like a tear on her eyelashes, and by merely bending forward I
could have drunk it.
“Perhaps I may be hurting you a little,” I went on. “But I see such
dreams burning in the depths of your eyes that I am afraid for you,
sweet sister; for the life for which you are preparing yourself cannot
be in accordance with your dreams or with your nature. What is awaiting
you is a monotonous life, always the same, almost torpid, all mapped
out by the unchangeable Rule, in the old convent of Queen Sancia,
which has been the grave of more than one Montaga, and of more than
one Cantelma. There is a picture in my memory of those Poor Clares
one Ash Wednesday. When I was in Naples, the Angevin Church of Santa
Chiara had an attraction for me, not only because some of my ancestors
lie there, not only because there one may envy the Duke of Rodi his
sleep in the pagan sarcophagus of Protesilaus and Laodamia, but also
because there with closed eyes one can absorb the poetry diffused by
the beautiful names of dead women. There is Maria, Duchess of Durazzo
and Empress of Constantinople, there is the Princess Clemenza, there
is Isotta d’Altamura, and Isabella di Soleto, and Beatrice di Caserta,
and that delicious Antonia Gaudino, who is very like you, as she softly
sleeps in marble under a veil which Giovanni da Nola must have borrowed
from the youngest of the Graces. I have a picture in my memory of the
Poor Clares on Ash Wednesday. Behind the high altar there is a great
black grating, all covered with spikes, enclosing the convent choir;
and through it one can see the rows of stalls where the sisters sit,
while on this side of the barrier the bishop, served by a Capuchin,
is seated with a silver basin full of ashes in his hands. A shutter
is opened in the grating, and one by one the Clares come and kneel at
it. The bishop thrusts his feeble arm through the hole and marks their
foreheads one by one with the sign of the cross. As each has been
signed she rises and returns to her stall like a ghost, brushing the
pavement with silent feet shod in felt. It all goes on in silence, and
it is all icy like the ashes. Ah, sweet sister, when you too have been
frozen like that, who will there be to warm your little soul?”
“Who warmed the soul of St. Clara and made it glow?” objected the
novice, rousing herself to escape defeat, while the colour rose in her
cheeks.
“A man: St. Francis of Assisi. You cannot think of the Sister of St.
Damian except on her knees at the feet of Francis. A religious painter
has pictured her in the act of exchanging a kiss with the seraphic
father. And think of the long idyll woven between the hermitage of St.
Damian and the Portiuncula; think of that week of passion, sorrow, and
pity passed in the convent garden, under the shadow of the olives,
during a summer of great drought, when Clara used to drink the tears
from the almost blind eyes of Francis; think of the converse between
the two mystical lovers which preceded that ecstasy whence the Song
of the Creatures burst like a flash of light. You have the _Fioretti_
beside you. Very well, read over the chapter in which it tells 'How St.
Clara ate with St. Francis.’ Never was wedding banquet lit up by more
radiant torches of love. Here it is: 'The men of Assisi and Beltona,
and of all the country round about, saw that Santa Maria degli Angeli,
and the whole place, and the forest round about it, were burning
brightly, and it seemed as if a great fire were devouring the church
and the place and the forest together; whereupon the men of Assisi
ran thither with great haste to put out the fire, believing that in
very truth everything was burning. But when they reached the place and
found no fire at all, they entered in and found St. Francis with St.
Clara.’ You see now, sweet sister, how the patroness of your order was
able to take shelter from the frost. You must admit that between the
sunny hermitage of St. Damian and the gloom of your Angevin convent the
difference is great. There will be no fire there, only a uniform grey
shadow where humility is powerless. What sort of humility is yours,
Massimilla? I think your desire for slavery is a very lofty one.”
She sat in silence, discouraged and gasping; and she was so sweet and
so miserable in her distress, that I should like to have taken her on
my knees.
“When you appeared to me the first day on the steps, you reminded me
directly of an ermine. Well, somehow it seems as if in our imagination
the whiteness of ermine could not be separated from the pride of
the purple, so much accustomed are we to see them together on royal
mantles. Perhaps you wear your mantle inside out, Massimilla, so that
the purple is invisible underneath. That is often the way with a
Montaga.”
“I don’t know,” she answered vaguely. “It seems as if everything you
say must be true.”