FullReads

“Shall I get the ring?” jested the old man. “Perhaps I shall be a bishop. God deliver me!”

The Dean appeared in the door of the arbour. “Do I disturb you, brother?”

“No, not at all! I am only sitting here and playing.”

“Birds and flowers! White lilies too? I have never seen such before.”

“White? Just now they were reddish-yellow! Where do you see them?”

“There!”

The Abbot looked down on the ground where he had poured his milk, and behold! there were only white lilies, without a single yellow one. He did not venture to speak about it, for one cannot speak of such things; but he smiled to himself, and saw a token of grace in it.

“Well, Dean, how goes it in the city?”

“The Tiber is sinking.”

“God be praised; but the whole of Trastevere has been ruined by the flood. I really wish that a great flood would come and drown us all –the whole human race–and very likely it will come some day.”

“Still as hopeless as ever!”

“No, not without hope, but for that world, not for this. Christ says it Himself in the Apocalypse: here is nothing on which one can build; for the best that we have enjoyed was but trouble and misery.”

“Not so, brother.”

“You can flourish in mud, but that I have never done. And it seems as though one were compelled to wade in it with both feet. Did I not begin in my youth to preserve my soul by withdrawing from the world? Then I was compelled to go out into it, thrust into the confusion by force. They made me Prefect of the city. I wished to live in the service of the Lord, and had to distribute eatables for the poor, procure beds for the hospitals, look after drains and water-pipes. The burden of the day’s task hindered my thoughts from rising, and I sank in the swamp of material things–sank so deep that I believed I should never rise again.”

“But the people blessed you.”

“Hush! And I–I who had never worn a sword–had to collect soldiers and march to the field. When I was six years old Rome was pillaged by Totila the Goth, and so ravaged that only five hundred Romans remained. When I was seven years old, there came Belisarius–when I was twelve, Narses. Then I was sent as ambassador to Constantinople –I who hated travelling and publicity. All that I hate, I have been obliged to accept. Now I am tired, and would like to go to rest. I sit here and wait, for my grave to open.”

“Do you remember what Virgil says in the Georgics regarding the labour of the husbandman?”

“No, I hate the heathen.”

“Wait! He says these words of wisdom: ‘If Zeus sends bad weather, mice and vermin, it is to stimulate the husbandman’s energy, and call forth his inventive capacity.’ Misfortune comes to help the world forward.”

“The world goes backward towards its overthrow and its damnation. For five hundred years we have awaited the Redemption, but we have only seen one wild race come after another, to murder and pillage. Do you see any reason in all this sowing without reaping?”

“Blasphemer! Yes, I see how green harvests are ploughed up to fertilise the soil.”

“Dragon’s-seed and hell’s harvest. No–now I go into my grave, and close the door behind me; I have a right to rest after a life so full of trouble and work.”

“The bell is ringing for prime.”

“Jam moesta quiesce querela.”

* * * * *

The Tiber had overflowed Rome, and destroyed quite a quarter of it, but spared the convent of St. Andrew. The Abbot sat again one morning in his garden and wrote, but in such a position that he could see his grave when he looked up from his work. Deep in his writing, he did not hear what was happening around him. But he saw that the flowers in the beds began to shake like reeds, frogs jumped about at his feet, and there was a smell of dampness that was at the same time mouldy and poisonous.