THERE have been visions, dark in the minds of men, death and
corruption dancing across the secular abyss that separates eternity from
time to where sits the ineluctable judge, waiting, waiting through the
ages, and ponders all his predestinated decrees. There will be judgment,
and each, in an agony of shame, reluctant yet compelled, will turn his
own accuser. For
Tunc tua gesta noxia
Secreta quoque turpia
Videbunt mille millia
Virorum circumstantia.
There under the unwinking gaze of all the legions of just men made
perfect, the poor prisoner will uncover each dirty secret of his heart,
will act over again each shameful scene of his life. And those eyes of
saints and angels will shine impassively down upon his beastliness, and
to him, as he looks at their steady brilliance, they will seem a million
of little blazing loopholes slotted in the walls of hell.
Hildebert, this was your vision as you brooded over death and judgment,
hell and heaven, in your cloister, a thousand years ago. Do you not envy
us our peace of mind who know not four ultimates, but only one? For whom
the first of the Last Things is also the last—us, whom death
annihilates with all our shame and all our folly, leaving no trace
behind.