CHAPTER III

TONSURE AND THORN

The following weeks dragged along in hopeless monotony. The last night

of Francesco's novitiate had come. There would not be a loophole of

escape for him now. On the morrow, the eternal vows were to pass his

lips. This night he was to spend in the chapel of the saint on his

knees, supposedly in prayer. It was a solitary vigil, for no companion

could be granted him. A dangerous thing for a novice it was, had the

monks but realized it:--putting one for ten hours alone at the mercy

of his thoughts. And Francesco shuddered as they left him, kneeling

upon the stones before the solitary shrine.

Could he have seen himself he would have staggered! How old and

emaciated, shrunken and hopeless he looked, as he knelt there in his

ungainly garments. The face which had formerly borne an open

expression of happiness, was hard now, unreadable and impassive. His

hands, once white and well cared for, had become almost transparent.

As he held his body straight from the knees upward, it was difficult

to perceive how much weaker this body had grown. There was a

pathetically haughty poise to the head still; but the skin was

colorless.

The love for Ilaria, her witch-like face, her witch-like eyes, had

remained with him. He had hoped against hope, that by some human, or

divine interposition, the yoke about to be imposed upon him would be

shattered, that it would prove but a period of probation, a horrid

nightmare forsooth, which would be dispelled by some divine ray, give

him back to earth, to life, to love, for which his heart yearned with

a feverish longing that was fast sapping his strength. His prayers had

been in vain: the moments were fleeting fast towards the consummation

of his destiny.

It suffered him no longer in the incense-saturated gloom of the

chapel. Escaping from his solitary vigil he traversed the courtyard

and almost unconsciously reached the spot whence on the night of his

arrival at the cloisters he had looked down upon the mountain world of

Central Italy.

Above, space soared. Glancing below, he was seized as with a sudden

dizziness. All idea of limitation seemed to have ceased in this

infinity, for he looked down upon a firmament of cloud. And even as he

looked, it was vanishing dream-wise, revealing in widening rifts the

world, that gave it birth. A world,--how flat for all its serrated

mountain ranges, how insignificant for all its far horizons, compared

with that immensity of the starry vault above.

As he gazed with wide, longing eyes, slowly the consciousness of

physical existence seemed to widen, till it extended to the horizon

and in the very extension was transfigured. Francesco tried to summon

images of devotion. But the images mocked the vast concave. He only

saw the deep eyes of Ilaria Caselli. Was not the universe his prayer?

Sharp summits, glistening and far, were better cries of the soul than

he could use.

Long he stood there on the moon-steeped height and gazed to southward

where the winding road led into the plains of Apulia to Avellino, the

cradle of his destiny. And as he gazed, thoughts, or impressions

rather, began to float through his spirit Heaven, like fleecy clouds

which, having withdrawn to the horizon begin to return slowly,

wandering as it seemed at random, yet shepherded steadily by the wind

towards the central upper deeps of the sky.

Faint, clear, a melody, recalling things long left and lost, throbbed

through the silence of the night. He listened, then gazed, spellbound.

Below him the swift waters of the Liris were smitten to tawny light.

Son of the earth once more, he was once more slave of his thoughts.

Far above a world of compromise, conflict and delusion, a world that

was soon to be upheaved by mortal strife, his destiny had lifted him

into this high sphere of purity and peace. No purity save in

isolation. Yet the mass of men were never meant to climb. Should he

take his patient place with the slow, ascending throng,--would not the

old story repeat itself, the old turmoil, conflict, failure?

Turning suddenly, Francesco gave a start.

By his side stood the Prior.

He was not slow to read the distress in the face of the youth.

"This great peace of the world above and about us--does it not

reconcile your soul?" the Prior spoke with a slow sweep of his hand.

"Is there anything greater than isolation above the herd?"

A great bitterness welled up in Francesco's heart, and his eyes filled

with tears, as he turned to his interlocutor with the protest of his

soul.

"You would reject the very affirmations of existence! You cry to the

imperious demands of Nature to create, to propagate, a mere perpetual

No! Let those like-minded betake themselves to monasteries and to

cells. As for myself--"

He broke off with a sob. Had he not lost the clue to Life?

The Prior regarded him quietly.

"The Church does not discourage the actions of the individual,--as

long as they do not conflict with the eternal laws. As for

herself--who must subdue men for men's sake,--she does reject them."

And linking his arm in that of Francesco, the Prior drew him back into

the dusk of the deserted chapel and pointing to the form of the

crucified Christ above the high-altar said:

"Look up! Nails would not have held him on the cross, had Love not

held him there!"

And Francesco sank upon his knees in a paroxysm of grief. The Prior

watched the scalding tears that streamed down the pale, wan face;

then, when Francesco had sobbed himself into a state bordering almost

on apathy, the Prior retraced his steps and left him to himself.

The moonlight streamed through the windows, and lay in broad patches

upon the marble floor. Francesco staggered at last from his kneeling

posture. Keeping in the shadow of the pillars, he crept softly towards

the chancel and paused at the altar. There he knelt again. Deep

silence reigned. Then came deep, heavy, tearless sobs. He was wringing

his hands as one in bodily pain.

The sound of his own voice re-echoing through and dying away among the

arches of the roof filled him with fantastic terror as the phantom of

some unknown presence. For a moment he swayed and would have fallen.

It seemed to him as if he had seen Ilaria's face in the purple dusk.

His heart stood still.

He stared spellbound. But it had vanished. He was conscious of nothing

save a sickening pressure of the blood, that seemed as if it would

tear his breast asunder, then it surged back, tingling and burning,

through his body.

It was on the following day.

The ceremony had been accomplished.

Francesco stood before the high altar among the monks and acolytes and

read the Introitus aloud in steady tones. All the cathedral was a

blaze of light and color, from the holiday dresses of the peasants to

the pillars with their flaming draperies and wreaths of flowers. The

religious orders from the adjoining monasteries with their candles and

torches, the companies of the parishes, with their crosses and

pennons, lighted up the dim side-chapels; in the aisles the silken

folds of processional banners drooped their gilded staves and tassels,

glinting under the arches. The surplices of the choristers gleamed,

rainbow-tinted, beneath the colored windows; the sunlight lay on the

chancel floor in checkered stains of orange and purple and green.

Behind the altar hung a shimmering veil of silver tissue, and against

the veil and the decorations and the altar-light, the Prior's figure

stood out in its trailing white robe like a marble statue that had

come to life.

The light of a hundred candles shone in the deep still eyes about him,

eyes that had no answering gleam. At the elevation of the Host the

Prior descended from his platform and knelt before the altar. There

was a strange, even stillness in his movement. The sea of human life

and motion seemed to surge around and below him and die away in the

stillness. A censer was brought to Francesco, he raised his hand with

the action of an automaton and put the incense into the vessel,

looking neither to the right nor left. Then he too knelt, swinging the

censer slowly to and fro. He took from the Prior the sacred golden

sun, while the choristers burst into a peal of triumphal melody:

Pange linqua gloriosi

Corporis mysterium.

Sanguinisque pretiosi

Quem in mundi pretium

Fructus ventris gloriosi

Rex effudit gentium.

Francesco stood above the monks, motionless under the white canopy,

holding the Eucharist aloft with steady hands. Two by two passed the

monks, with lighted candles held left to right, with banners and

torches, with crosses and images and flags, they swept slowly down the

broad nave past the garlanded pillars, the sound of their chanting

dying into a rolling murmur, drowned in the pealing of new and newer

voices, as the unending stream flowed on and yet new footsteps echoed

down the incense-laden nave.

One by one the visiting brotherhoods passed with their white shrouds

and veiled faces, the brothers of the Misericordia, black from head to

foot, their eyes faintly gleaming through the holes in their masks;

the mendicant friars with their dusky cowls and bare brown feet, the

russet Benedictines and the white-robed grave Dominicans. They all

bore testimony to the irrevocable step the son of the Grand Master had

taken. A monk followed, holding up a great cross between two acolytes

with gleaming candles. On and on the procession passed, form

succeeding to form and color to color. Long white surplices, grave and

seemly, gave place to gorgeous vestments and embroidered pluvials. The

roses were strewn, the procession filed out.

When the chant had ceased, Francesco passed between the silent rows of

the monks, where they knelt, each man in his place, the lighted

candles uplifted. And he saw their hungry eyes fixed on the sacred

body that he bore. To right and left the white-robed acolytes knelt

with their censers, as peal after peal of song rang out, resounding

under the arches, echoing along the vaulted roof.

Wearily, mechanically, Francesco went through the remaining part of

his consecration, which had no longer any meaning for him, prayer

eluding him as a vapor. After the Benediction he covered his face. The

voice of the monk reading aloud the indulgences, swelled and sank like

a far-off murmur from a world to which he belonged no more.