But the peace that Annys had so fondly hoped for in the monastery was
farther away from him than ever. The week that followed was a daily,
hourly struggle with the devil within him. With a body scarce kept
alive by the scant portion of food which he permitted himself but once
a day, in the hopes of conquering the awful sway of the senses, in
reality he was innocently making their hold the stronger upon him.
In his wild passion for repentance his once clear vision of the follies
of Manichæism left him, and he plunged into the false notion of the
monastic world that passions can be killed by killing the body. The
faintness caused by lack of food, the cramps in his limbs from constant
kneeling, made him unable to sleep. Instead, the nights passed in a
kind of waking semi-consciousness, filled with horrible dreams of
beautiful women alluringly holding out their arms to him, and then, as
he was about to clasp them, changing into dreadful fiends, grinning
and spitting fire at him. Or else he thought that women were pressing
kisses upon his lips, and faint from the strength of his emotions, his
weak body could endure no more. Enraged by the torments, he sought to
escape them by castigating himself afresh. As others had done before
him, so he tried to forget the existence of his body by making himself
exquisitely conscious of every aching, throbbing inch of it.
The methods of monasticism were a failure in subduing the carnal nature
of man. Few monks were like St. Poemen, who, when accused of thinking
too much of his body, defended his right to wash his feet by declaring
that he had learned to kill, not his body, but his passions.
The normal man, when the pangs of hunger assail him, eats his meal and
straightway forgets all about the existence of his stomach. For a brief
space--at least until the next meal is due--he may concern himself with
ideals. The normal man sleeps his eight hours or so, and therefore the
need for sleep does not overshadow the hours that he chooses to devote
to the work of the Lord. The ascetic who spends his day with back bent
and knees pressing the hard ground of a cell, who tries to limit his
sleep to four hours and that upon a bare board, and whose diet consists
of dry bread and muddy water, is on the fair road to be conquered by
that which he fondly thinks he is conquering.
On the seventh night, while his staring, burning eyes looked into the
darkness, Annys suddenly became aware of a light of peculiar softness
and purity, which appearing particularly bright at a certain spot
opposite, filled the entire cell with its beautiful radiance.
He raised himself partially from the board on which he lay, and watched
curiously the spot where the light shone brightest. It was not long
before he made out the lines of a man robed in the impressive vestments
of a Pope, the superb jewelled tiara upon his head.
There was something in the dark, glittering eyes, the haughty mien,
the compelling magnetism of the figure that in some mysterious manner
made him certain that Gregory the Seventh, the great, indomitable
Hildebrand, stood before him.
"Art thou one Robert Annys, poor priest, who departed from Holy Church
and went about among the poor stirring up sedition and insurrection?"
he asked.
"Nay, Most Holy Father, I am that one Robert Annys who went about
from village to village teaching of 'Christ and him crucified.' If I
sinned, I sinned only in following too closely the example of Christ,
which is the one unpardonable sin of the Church Hierarchical."
The Pope's face darkened, and then a slight smile crept into it.
"Hot-headed, and fearless e'en as they told me," he exclaimed. Then he
regarded him severely. "Blaspheme not! Art thou he who would boldly
proclaim that the marriage of the clergy is not an unholy thing?"