On the evening when Agnes and her grandmother returned from the Convent,
as they were standing after supper looking over the garden parapet into
the gorge, their attention was caught by a man in an ecclesiastical
habit, slowly climbing the rocky pathway towards them.
"Isn't that brother Antonio?" said Dame Elsie, leaning forward to
observe more narrowly. "Yes, to be sure it is!"
"Oh, how glad I am!" exclaimed Agnes, springing up with vivacity, and
looking eagerly down the path by which the stranger was approaching.
A few moments more of clambering, and the stranger met the two women at
the gate with a gesture of benediction.
He was apparently a little past the middle point of life, and entering
on its shady afternoon. He was tall and well proportioned, and his
features had the spare delicacy of the Italian outline. The round brow,
fully developed in all the perceptive and aesthetic regions,--the keen
eye, shadowed by long, dark lashes,--the thin, flexible lips,--the
sunken cheek, where, on the slightest emotion, there fluttered a
brilliant flush of color,--all were signs telling of the enthusiast in
whom the nervous and spiritual predominated over the animal.
At times, his eye had a dilating brightness, as if from the flickering
of some inward fire which was slowly consuming the mortal part, and its
expression was brilliant even to the verge of insanity.
His dress was the simple, coarse, white stuff-gown of the Dominican
friars, over which he wore a darker travelling-garment of coarse cloth,
with a hood, from whose deep shadows his bright mysterious eyes looked
like jewels from a cavern. At his side dangled a great rosary and cross
of black wood, and under his arm he carried a portfolio secured with a
leathern strap, which seemed stuffed to bursting with papers.
Father Antonio, whom we have thus introduced to the reader, was an
itinerant preaching monk from the Convent of San Marco in Florence, on a
pastoral and artistic tour through Italy.
Convents in the Middle Ages were the retreats of multitudes of natures
who did not wish to live in a state of perpetual warfare and offence,
and all the elegant arts flourished under their protecting shadows.
Ornamental gardening, pharmacy, drawing, painting, carving in wood,
illumination, and calligraphy were not unfrequent occupations of the
holy fathers, and the convent has given to the illustrious roll of
Italian Art some of its most brilliant names. No institution in modern
Europe had a more established reputation in all these respects than the
Convent of San Marco in Florence. In its best days, it was as near an
approach to an ideal community, associated to unite religion, beauty,
and utility, as ever has existed on earth. It was a retreat from the
commonplace prose of life into an atmosphere at once devotional and
poetic; and prayers and sacred hymns consecrated the elegant labors of
the chisel and the pencil, no less than the more homely ones of the
still and the crucible. San Marco, far from being that kind of sluggish
lagoon often imagined in conventual life, was rather a sheltered hotbed
of ideas,--fervid with intellectual and moral energy, and before the
age in every radical movement. At this period, Savonarola, the poet and
prophet of the Italian religious world of his day, was superior of this
convent, pouring through all the members of the order the fire of his
own impassioned nature, and seeking to lead them back to the fervors of
more primitive and evangelical ages, and in the reaction of a worldly
and corrupt Church was beginning to feel the power of that current which
at last drowned his eloquent voice in the cold waters of martyrdom.
Savonarola was an Italian Luther,--differing from the great Northern
Reformer as the more ethereally strung and nervous Italian differs from
the bluff and burly German; and like Luther he became in his time the
centre of every living thing in society about him. He inspired the
pencils of artists, guided the counsels of statesmen, and, a poet
himself, was an inspiration to poets. Everywhere in Italy the monks of
his order were travelling, restoring the shrines, preaching against
the voluptuous and unworthy pictures with which sensual artists
had desecrated the churches, and calling the people back by their
exhortations to the purity of primitive Christianity.
Father Antonio was a younger brother of Elsie, and had early become a
member of the San Marco, enthusiastic not less in religion than in Art.
His intercourse with his sister had few points of sympathy, Elsie being
as decided a utilitarian as any old Yankee female born in the granite
hills of New Hampshire, and pursuing with a hard and sharp energy her
narrow plan of life for Agnes. She regarded her brother as a very
properly religious person, considering his calling, but was a little
bored with his exuberant devotion, and absolutely indifferent to his
artistic enthusiasm. Agnes, on the contrary, had from a child attached
herself to her uncle with all the energy of a sympathetic nature, and
his yearly visits had been looked forward to on her part with intense
expectation. To him she could say a thousand things which she
instinctively concealed from her grandmother; and Elsie was well pleased
with the confidence, because it relieved her a little from the vigilant
guardianship that she otherwise held over the girl. When Father Antonio
was near, she had leisure now and then for a little private gossip of
her own, without the constant care of supervising Agnes.
"Dear uncle, how glad I am to see you once more!" was the eager
salutation with which the young girl received the monk, as he gained the
little garden. "And you have brought your pictures;--oh, I know you have
so many pretty things to show me!"
"Well, well, child," said Elsie, "don't begin upon that now. A little
talk of bread and cheese will be more in point. Come in, brother, and
wash your feet, and let me beat the dust out of your cloak, and give you
something to stay Nature; for you must be fasting."
"Thank you, sister," said the monk; "and as for you, pretty one, never
mind what she says. Uncle Antonio will show his little Agnes everything
by-and-by.--A good little thing it is, sister."
"Yes, yes,--good enough,--and too good," said Elsie, bustling
about;--"roses can't help having thorns, I suppose."
"Only our ever-blessed Rose of Sharon, the dear mystical Rose of
Paradise, can boast of having no thorns," said the monk, bowing and
crossing himself devoutly.
Agnes clasped her hands on her bosom and bowed also, while Elsie stopped
with her knife in the middle of a loaf of black bread, and crossed
herself with somewhat of impatience,--like a worldly-minded person of
our day, who is interrupted in the midst of an observation by a grace.
After the rites of hospitality had been duly observed, the old dame
seated herself contentedly in her door with her distaff, resigned Agnes
to the safe guardianship of her uncle, and had a feeling of security
in seeing them sitting together on the parapet of the garden, with
the portfolio spread out between them,--the warm twilight glow of the
evening sky lighting up their figures as they bent in ardent interest
over its contents. The portfolio showed a fluttering collection of
sketches,--fruits, flowers, animals, insects, faces, figures, shrines,
buildings, trees,--all, in short, that might strike the mind of a man
to whose eye nothing on the face of the earth is without beauty and
significance.
"Oh, how beautiful!" said the girl, taking up one sketch, in which a
bunch of rosy cyclamen was painted riding out of a bed of moss.
"Ah, that indeed, my dear!" said the artist, "Would you had seen the
place where I painted it! I stopped there to recite my prayers one
morning; 't was by the side of a beautiful cascade, and all the ground
was covered with these lovely cyclamens, and the air was musky with
their fragrance.--Ah, the bright rose-colored leaves! I can get no color
like them, unless some angel would bring me some from those sunset
clouds yonder."
"And oh, dear uncle, what lovely primroses!" pursued Agnes, taking up
another paper.
"Yes, child; but you should have seen them when I was coming down the
south side of the Apennines;--these were everywhere so pale and sweet,
they seemed like the humility of our Most Blessed Mother in her lowly
mortal state. I am minded to make a border of primroses to the leaf in
the Breviary where is the 'Hail, Mary!'--for it seems as if that flower
doth ever say, 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord!'"
"And what will you do with the cyclamen, uncle? does not that mean
something?"
"Yes, daughter," replied the monk, readily entering into that symbolical
strain which permeated all the heart and mind of the religious of his
day,--"I _can_ see a meaning in it. For you see that the cyclamen
puts forth its leaves in early spring deeply engraven with mystical
characters, and loves cool shadows, and moist, dark places, but comes
at length to wear a royal crown of crimson; and it seems to me like the
saints who dwell in convents and other prayerful places, and have the
word of God graven in their hearts in youth, till these blossom into
fervent love, and they are crowned with royal graces."
"Ah!" sighed Agnes, "how beautiful and how blessed to be among such!"
"Thou sayest well, dear child. Blessed are the flowers of God that grow
in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust
of this world!"
"I should like to be such a one," said Agnes. "I often think, when I
visit the sisters at the Convent, that I long to be one of them."
"A pretty story!" said Dame Elsie, who had heard the last words,--"go
into a convent and leave your poor grandmother all alone, when she has
toiled night and day for so many years to get a dowry for you and find
you a worthy husband!"
"I don't want any husband in this world, grandmamma," said Agnes.
"What talk is this? Not want a good husband to take care of you when
your poor old grandmother is gone? Who will provide for you?"
"He who took care of the blessed Saint Agnes, grandmamma."
"Saint Agnes, to be sure! That was a great many years ago, and times
have altered since then;--in these days girls must have husbands. Isn't
it so, brother Antonio?"
"But if the darling hath a vocation?" said the artist, mildly.
"Vocation! I'll see to that! She sha'n't have a vocation! Suppose I'm
going to delve, and toil, and spin, and wear myself to the bone, and
have her slip through my fingers at last with a vocation? No, indeed!"
"Indeed, dear grandmother, don't be angry!" said Agnes. "I will do just
as you say,--only I don't want a husband."
"Well, well, my little heart,--one thing at a time; you sha'n't have him
till you say yes willingly," said Elsie, in a mollified tone.
Agnes turned again to the portfolio and busied herself with it, her eyes
dilating as she ran over the sketches.
"Ah! what pretty, pretty bird is this?" she asked.
"Knowest thou not that bird, with his little red beak?" said the artist.
"When our dear Lord hung bleeding, and no man pitied him, this bird,
filled with tender love, tried to draw out the nails with his poor
little beak,--so much better were the birds than we hard-hearted
sinners!--hence he hath honor in many pictures. See here,--I shall put
him into the office of the Sacred Heart, in a little nest curiously
built in a running vine of passion-flower. See here, daughter,--I have
a great commission to execute a Breviary for our house, and our holy
Father was pleased to say that the spirit of the blessed Angelico had in
some little humble measure descended on me, and now I am busy day and
night; for not a twig rustles, not a bird flies, nor a flower blossoms,
but I begin to see therein some hint of holy adornment to my blessed
work."
"Oh, Uncle Antonio, how happy you must be!" said Agnes,--her large eyes
filling with tears.
"Happy!--child, am I not?" said the monk, looking up and crossing
himself. "Holy Mother, am I not? Do I not walk the earth in a dream of
bliss, and see the footsteps of my Most Blessed Lord and his dear Mother
on every rock and hill? I see the flowers rise up in clouds to adore
them. What am I, unworthy sinner, that such grace is granted me? Often
I fall on my face before the humblest flower where my dear Lord hath
written his name, and confess I am unworthy the honor of copying his
sweet handiwork."
The artist spoke these words with his hands clasped and his fervid eyes
upraised, like a man in an ecstasy; nor can our more prosaic English
give an idea of the fluent naturalness and grace with which such images
melt into that lovely tongue which seems made to be the natural language
of poetry and enthusiasm.
Agnes looked up to him with humble awe, as to some celestial being; but
there was a sympathetic glow in her face, and she put her hands on her
bosom, as her manner often was when much moved, and, drawing a deep
sigh, said,--
"Would that such gifts were mine!"
"They are thine, sweet one," said the monk. "In Christ's dear kingdom is
no mine or thine, but all that each hath is the property of the others.
I never rejoice so much in my art as when I think of the communion of
saints, and that all that our Blessed Lord will work through me is the
property of the humblest soul in his kingdom. When I see one flower
rarer than another, or a bird singing on a twig, I take note of the
same, and say, 'This lovely work of God shall be for some shrine, or the
border of a missal, or the foreground of an altar-piece, and thus shall
his saints be comforted.'"
"But," said Agnes, fervently, "how little can a poor young maiden do!
Ah, I do so long to offer myself up in some way to the dear Lord, who
gave himself for us, and for his Most Blessed Church!"
As Agnes spoke these words, her cheek, usually so clear and pale, became
suffused with a tremulous color, and her dark eyes had a deep, divine
expression;--a moment after, the color slowly faded, her head drooped,
and her long, dark lashes fell on her cheek, while her hands were folded
on her bosom. The eye of the monk was watching her with an enkindled
glance.
"Is she not the very presentment of our Blessed Lady in the
Annunciation?" said he to himself. "Surely, this grace is upon her for
this special purpose. My prayers are answered.
"Daughter," he began, in a gentle tone, "a glorious work has been done
of late in Florence under the preaching of our blessed Superior. Could
you believe it, daughter, in these times of backsliding and rebuke there
have been found painters base enough to paint the pictures of vile,
abandoned women in the character of our Blessed Lady; yea, and princes
have been found wicked enough to buy them and put them up in churches,
so that the people have had the Mother of all Purity presented to them
in the guise of a vile harlot. Is it not dreadful?"
"How horrible!" said Agnes.
"Ah, but you should have seen the great procession through Florence,
when all the little children were inspired by the heavenly preaching of
our dear Master. These dear little ones, carrying the blessed cross and
singing the hymns our Master had written for them, went from house to
house and church to church, demanding that everything that was vile and
base should be delivered up to the flames,--and the people, beholding,
thought that the angels had indeed come down, and brought forth all
their loose pictures and vile books, such as Boccaccio's romances and
other defilements, and the children made a splendid bonfire of them in
the Grand Piazza, and so thousands of vile things were consumed and
scattered. And then our blessed Master exhorted the artists to give
pencils to Christ and his Mother, and seek for her image among pious and
holy women living a veiled and secluded life, like that our Lady lived
before the blessed Annunciation. 'Think you,' he said, 'that the blessed
Angelico obtained the grace to set forth our Lady in such heavenly wise
by gazing about the streets on mincing women tricked out in all the
world's bravery?--or did he not find her image in holy solitudes, among
modest and prayerful saints?'"
"Ah," said Agnes, drawing in her breath with an expression of awe, "what
mortal would dare to sit for the image of our Lady!"
"Dear child, there be women whom the Lord crowns with beauty when they
know it not, and our dear Mother sheds so much of her spirit into their
hearts that it shines out in their faces; and among such must the
painter look. Dear little child, be not ignorant that our Lord hath shed
this great grace on thee. I have received a light that thou art to be
the model for the 'Hail, Mary!' in my Breviary."
"Oh, no, no, no! it cannot be!" said Agnes, covering her face with her
hands.
"My daughter, thou art very beautiful, and this beauty was given thee
not for thyself, but to be laid like a sweet flower on the altar of thy
Lord. Think how blessed, if, through thee, the faithful be reminded of
the modesty and humility of Mary, so that their prayers become more
fervent,--would it not be a great grace?"
"Dear uncle,"--said Agnes, "I am Christ's child. If it be as you
say,--which I did not know,--give me some days to pray and prepare my
soul, that I may offer myself in all humility."
During this conversation Elsie had left the garden and gone a little way
down the gorge, to have a few moments of gossip with an old crony. The
light of the evening sky had gradually faded away, and the full moon was
pouring a shower of silver upon the orange-trees. As Agnes sat on the
parapet, with the moonlight streaming down on her young, spiritual face,
now tremulous with deep suppressed emotion, the painter thought he had
never seen any human creature that looked nearer to his conception of a
celestial being.
They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between
two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion. All was so still
around them, that the drip and trickle of the little stream which fell
from the garden wall into the dark abyss of the gorge could well be
heard as it pattered from one rocky point to another, with a slender,
lulling sound.
Suddenly the reveries of the two were disturbed by the shadow of a
figure which passed into the moonlight and seemed to rise from the side
of the gorge. A man enveloped in a dark cloak with a peaked hood stepped
across the moss-grown garden parapet, stood a moment irresolute, then
the cloak dropped suddenly from him, and the Cavalier stood in the
moonlight before Agnes. He bore in his hand a tall stalk of white lily,
with open blossoms and buds and tender fluted green leaves, such as one
sees in a thousand pictures of the Annunciation. The moonlight fell full
upon his face, revealing his haughty yet beautiful features, agitated
by some profound emotion. The monk and the girl were both too much
surprised for a moment to utter a sound; and when, after an instant, the
monk made a half-movement as if to address him, the cavalier raised his
right hand with a sudden authoritative gesture which silenced him. Then
turning toward Agnes, he kneeled, and kissing the hem of her robe, and
laying the lily in her lap, "Holiest and dearest," he said, "oh, forget
not to pray for me!" He rose again in a moment, and, throwing his
cloak around him, sprang over the garden wall, and was heard rapidly
descending into the shadows of the gorge.
All this passed so quickly that it seemed to both the spectators like a
dream. The splendid man, with his jewelled weapons, his haughty bearing,
and air of easy command, bowing with such solemn humility before the
peasant girl, reminded the monk of the barbaric princes in the wonderful
legends he had read, who had been drawn by some heavenly inspiration to
come and render themselves up to the teachings of holy virgins, chosen
of the Lord, in divine solitudes. In the poetical world in which he
lived all such marvels were possible. There were a thousand precedents
for them in that devout dream-land, "The Lives of the Saints."
"My daughter," he said, after looking vainly down the dark shadows upon
the path of the stranger, "have you ever seen this man before?"
"Yes, uncle; yesterday evening I saw him for the first time, when
sitting at my stand at the gate of the city. It was at the Ave Maria; he
came up there and asked my prayers, and gave me a diamond ring for the
shrine of Saint Agnes, which I carried to the Convent to-day."
"Behold, my dear daughter, the confirmation of what I have just said to
thee! It is evident that our Lady hath endowed thee with the great grace
of a beauty which draws the soul upward towards the angels, instead of
downward to sensual things, like the beauty of worldly women. What saith
the blessed poet Dante of the beauty of the holy Beatrice?--that it said
to every man who looked on her, '_Aspire!_'[A] Great is the grace, and
thou must give special praise therefor."
[Footnote A: I cannot forbear quoting Mr. Norton's beautiful translation
of this sonnet in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for February, 1859:--
"So gentle and so modest doth appear
My lady when she giveth her salute,
That every tongue becometh trembling mute,
Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare,
And though she hears her praises, she doth, go
Benignly clothed with humility,
And like a thing come down she seems to be
From heaven to earth, a miracle to show.
So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh her,
She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes
Which none can understand who doth not prove.
And from her lip there seems indeed to move
A spirit sweet and in Love's very guise,
Which goeth saying to the soul, '_Aspire!_'"]
"I would," said Agnes, thoughtfully, "that I knew who this stranger is,
and what is his great trouble and need,--his eyes are so full of sorrow.
Giulietta said he was the King's brother, and was called the Lord
Adrian. What sorrow can he have, or what need for the prayers of a poor
maid like me?"
"Perhaps the Lord hath pierced him with a longing after the celestial
beauty and heavenly purity of paradise, and wounded him with a divine
sorrow, as happened to Saint Francis and to the blessed Saint Dominic,"
said the monk. "Beauty is the Lord's arrow, wherewith he pierceth to the
inmost soul, with a divine longing and languishment which find rest only
in him. Hence thou seest the wounds of love in saints are always painted
by us with holy flames ascending from them. Have good courage, sweet
child, and pray with fervor for this youth; for there be no prayers
sweeter before the throne of God than those of spotless maidens. The
Scripture saith, 'My beloved feedeth among the lilies.'"
At this moment the sharp, decided tramp of Elsie was heard reëntering
the garden.
"Come, Agnes," she said, "It is time for you to begin your prayers, or,
the saints know, I shall not get you to bed till midnight. I suppose
prayers are a good thing," she added, seating herself wearily; "but if
one must have so many of them, one must get about them early. There's
reason in all things."
Agnes, who had been sitting abstractedly on the parapet, with her head
drooped over the lily-spray, now seemed to collect herself. She rose up
in a grave and thoughtful manner, and, going forward to the shrine of
the Madonna, removed the flowers of the morning, and holding the vase
under the spout of the fountain, all feathered with waving maiden-hair,
filled it with fresh water, the drops falling from it in a thousand
little silver rings in the moonlight.
"I have a thought," said the monk to himself, drawing from his girdle
a pencil and hastily sketching by the moonlight. What he drew was a
fragile maiden form, sitting with clasped hands on a mossy ruin, gazing
on a spray of white lilies which lay before her. He called it, The
Blessed Virgin pondering the Lily of the Annunciation.
"Hast thou ever reflected," he said to Agnes, "what that lily might be
like which the angel Gabriel brought to our Lady?--for, trust me, it was
no mortal flower, but grew by the river of life. I have often meditated
thereon, that it was like unto living silver with a light in itself,
like the moon,--even as our Lord's garments in the Transfiguration,
which glistened like the snow. I have cast about in myself by what
device a painter might represent so marvellous a flower."
"Now, brother Antonio," said Elsie, "if you begin to talk to the child
about such matters, our Lady alone knows when we shall get to bed. I am
sure I'm as good a Christian as anybody; but, as I said, there's reason
in all things, and one cannot always be wondering and inquiring into
heavenly matters,--as to every feather in Saint Michael's wings, and as
to our Lady's girdle and shoe-strings and thimble and work-basket; and
when one gets through with our Lady, then one has it all to go over
about her mother, the blessed Saint Anne (may her name be ever
praised!). I mean no disrespect, but I am certain the saints are
reasonable folk and must see that poor folk must live, and, in order to
live, must think of something else now and then besides _them_. That's
my mind, brother."
"Well, well, sister," said the monk, placidly, "no doubt you are right.
There shall be no quarrelling in the Lord's vineyard; every one hath his
manner and place, and you follow the lead of the blessed Saint Martha,
which is holy and honorable."
"Honorable! I should think it might be!" said Elsie. "I warrant me, if
everything had been left to Saint Mary's doings, our Blessed Lord and
the Twelve Apostles might have gone supperless. But it's Martha gets all
the work, and Mary all the praise."
"Quite right, quite right," said the monk, abstractedly, while he stood
out in the moonlight busily sketching the fountain. By just such a
fountain, he thought, our Lady might have washed the clothes of the
Blessed Babe. Doubtless there was some such in the court of her
dwelling, all mossy and with sweet waters forever singing a song of
praise therein.
Elsie was heard within the house meanwhile making energetic commotion,
rattling pots and pans, and producing decided movements among the simple
furniture of the dwelling, probably with a view to preparing for the
night's repose of the guest.
Meanwhile Agnes, kneeling before the shrine, was going through with
great feeling and tenderness the various manuals and movements of
nightly devotion which her own religious fervor and the zeal of her
spiritual advisers had enjoined upon her. Christianity, when it entered
Italy, came among a people every act of whose life was colored and
consecrated by symbolic and ritual acts of heathenism. The only possible
way to uproot this was in supplanting it by Christian ritual and
symbolism equally minute and pervading. Besides, in those ages when the
Christian preacher was utterly destitute of all the help which the press
now gives in keeping under the eye of converts the great inspiring
truths of religion, it was one of the first offices of every saint whose
preaching stirred the heart of the people, to devise symbolic forms,
signs, and observances, by which the mobile and fluid heart of the
multitude might crystallize into habits of devout remembrance. The
rosary, the crucifix, the shrine, the banner, the procession, were
catechisms and tracts invented for those who could not read, wherein
the substance of pages was condensed and gave itself to the eye and
the touch. Let us not, from the height of our day, with the better
appliances which a universal press gives us, sneer at the homely rounds
of the ladder by which the first multitudes of the Lord's followers
climbed heavenward.
If there seemed somewhat mechanical in the number of times which Agnes
repeated the "Hail, Mary!"--in the prescribed number of times she rose
or bowed or crossed herself or laid her forehead in low humility on
the flags of the pavement, it was redeemed by the earnest fervor which
inspired each action. However foreign to the habits of a Northern mind
or education such a mode of prayer may be, these forms to her were all
helpful and significant, her soul was borne by them Godward,--and often,
as she prayed, it seemed to her that she could feel the dissolving of
all earthly things, and the pressing nearer and nearer of the great
cloud of witnesses who ever surround the humblest member of Christ's
mystical body.
"Sweet loving hearts around her beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred,
And palpitates the veil between
With breathings almost heard."
Certain English writers, looking entirely from a worldly and
philosophical standpoint, are utterly at a loss to account for the power
which certain Italian women of obscure birth came to exercise in the
councils of nations merely by the force of a mystical piety; but the
Northern mind of Europe is entirely unfitted to read and appreciate the
psychological religious phenomena of Southern races. The temperament
which in our modern days has been called the mediïstic, and which with
us is only exceptional, is more or less a race-peculiarity of Southern
climates, and gives that objectiveness to the conception of spiritual
things from which grew up a whole ritual and a whole world of religious
Art. The Southern saints and religious artists were seers,--men and
women of that peculiar fineness and delicacy of temperament which made
them especially apt to receive and project outward the truths of the
spiritual life; they were in that state of "divine madness" which is
favorable to the most intense conception of the poet and artist, and
something of this influence descended through all the channels of the
people.
When Agnes rose from prayer, she had a serene, exalted expression, like
one who walks with some unseen excellence and meditates on some untold
joy. As she was crossing the court to come towards her uncle, her eye
was attracted by the sparkle of something on the ground, and, stooping,
she picked up a heart-shaped locket, curiously made of a large amethyst,
and fastened with a golden arrow. As she pressed upon this, the locket
opened and disclosed to her view a folded paper. Her mood at this moment
was so calm and elevated that she received the incident with no start or
shiver of the nerves. To her it seemed a Providential token, which would
probably bring to her some further knowledge of this mysterious being
who had been so especially confided to her intercessions.
Agnes had learned of the Superior of the Convent the art of reading
writing, which would never have been the birthright of the peasant-girl
in her times, and the moon had that dazzling clearness which revealed
every letter. She stood by the parapet, one hand lying in the white
blossoming alyssum which filled its marble crevices, while she read and
seriously pondered the contents of the paper.