He answered, somewhat angrily: "In what did you think? In the religion
which was my father's and his father's, and his father's and his
father's before him--for I am of that kind."
Then he called all the community round him, as though the monastic
simplicity had returned (so vital is the Faith, so simple its primal
energies), and as though he had been the true prior of some early and
fervent house, he told them these things which I will faithfully
translate on account of their beauty. They are printed here, I think,
for the first time in English, and must stand for the end of this essay:
He said: "That he had sinned like other men, and, perhaps, more than
most; that his senses had led him away by their charm, and that he had
not repressed or constrained them as he should; but none the less, he
had always held that Faith which the men of his line had left him, he
had always clasped close the Creed and the unity of the Catholic Church;
that, in fine, he had laid a sure foundation, but he had built thereon
with wood, with hay, with straw. As for that foundation, he was sure it
would stand; as for the light and worthless things he had built upon it
he had trust in the mercy of the Saviour that they would be burnt in the
fire of His love. And now he begged them all to believe hard, as he had
believed; but not to live as he had lived; they must understand that he
had never attempted or plotted against the life or goods of another, nor
ever against any man's honour, but, after all, there was nothing therein
wherewith to glorify one's self before God." When he had wept a little,
he continued, saying, "that the world was a ceaseless turmoil and
torment, and shipwreck after shipwreck all the while, and a whirlpool of
sins, and tears and pain, and that to all these misfortunes there was
but one port, and this port was Death. But, as for him, he carried with
him into that port no desire and no regret for life. That he had tried
every one of its pretended joys, that he had left nothing undone which
could give him the least shadow of pleasure or content, but that at the
end he had found everywhere the oracle of Wisdom, vanity of vanities."
He ended with this magnificent thing, which is, perhaps, the last his
human power conceived, and I will put it down in his own words:--
"Of all those vanities, the loveliest and most praiseworthy is
glory--fame. No one of my time has been so filled with it as I; I have
lived in it, and loved and triumphed in it through time past, and now I
leave it to my country to garner and possess it after I shall die. So do
I go away from my own place as satiated with the glory of this world as
I am hungry and all longing for that of God."