The Saint by Antonio Fogazzaro

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"Let us go!"

The sun's burning rays, smiting the steaming, rocky hillside, brought
out damp odours of herbs and of stone, silvered the puffs of mist
creeping along the sides of the narrow, wild valley, as far as the
enormous mass resting there, in the background, like a cap on the
heights of Jenne, while the mighty voice of the Anio filled the
solitude. Jeanne climbed upwards in silence, without replying to Noemi's
questions. Noemi was becoming more and more alarmed by her silence, by
her pallor, by the nervous twitching of her arm, by the sight of her
lips pressed tightly together, to keep back her sobs. Why was she thus
moved? During the night and, indeed, until they had reached the entrance
to Santa Scolastica, the poor creature had wavered between fear and
hope, in a fever of expectancy. Now her fever was of a different nature;
at least it seemed so to Noemi. She thought Jeanne must have heard
something there in the garden, something of which she did not wish to
speak, something painful, frightful! What could it be? The tragic lament
of the invisible water, the silent trembling of the blades of grass on
the rocky slope, even the burning heat, made the heart shrink. A few
paces from the arch which, standing rigid there, holds in check the
black crowd of evergreen oaks, Noemi was relieved to hear human voices.
They belonged to Dane on horseback and to Marinier and the Abbot on
foot, who were coming down together from the Sacro Speco,

Dane showed great pleasure at this meeting; he stopped his horse,
presented the ladies to the Abbot, and spoke of the Sacro Speco in
enthusiastic language. Jeanne, after exchanging a few words with the
Abbot, asked him if any one had recently pronounced the solemn vows or
perhaps taken the habit. The Abbot replied that he had been at Santa
Scolastica only a few days, and was not, at that moment, in a position
to answer her question; but he did not believe any one had made the
solemn profession or assumed the habit of a novice at Santa Scolastica
for at least a year. Jeanne was radiant with joy. Now she understood;
she had been a fool to believe it possible, even for a single moment,
that in twelve hours Piero the peasant had become Piero the monk. She
longed to return at once to the garden at Santa Scolastica; but how
could she manage it? what pretext could she invent? She pressed forward,
anxious to be done with the Sacro Speco as soon as possible. Noemi
proposed resting a few minutes in the shade of the evergreen oaks,
which, there on the path of those souls agitated by Divine Love,
themselves seem twisted by an inward ascetic fury, by a frantic effort
to tear themselves from the earth, and to dart their arms into the sky.
Jeanne refused impatiently. The colour had returned to her face, and the
light to her eyes. She started rapidly up the narrow stair where the
short walk comes to an end, and in spite of the protests of Noemi (who
could not understand the cause of this change) would not stop to take
breath at the head of the stairs where, suddenly, the dark, deep
spectacle of the valley reveals itself. High up on the left looms the
terrible crag, dear to falcons and crows, bulging out above the dreary
walls, pierced by unadorned openings which are incrusted upon the bare
slope, running crosswise along its face, and form the monastery of the
Sacro Speco. In the depths below the convent hangs the rose garden of
St. Benedict, and below the rose garden hang the kitchen-garden and the
olive groves, sloping to the open bed of the roaring Anio. The mass of
cloud which had rested on the heights of Jenne was rising and invading
the sky. A wave of shadow passed over the enormous crag, over the
monastery, over the parapet upon which Noemi had rested her elbows, lost
in contemplation.

"This is magnificent!" she said. "Let us stop here a few seconds at
least, now that it is shady,"

But at that moment the little door of the monastery, not two steps from
them, opened and a party of visitors, men and women, came out. The monk
who had acted as guide, seeing Noemi and Jeanne, held the door open,
expecting them to enter. Jeanne hastened to do so, and Noemi, much
against her will, followed her,

"Thirteenth century frescoes," said the Benedictine, in the dark
entrance-hall, in an indifferent tone, as he passed on. Noemi stopped,
curiously regarding the ancient paintings. Jeanne followed the
Benedictine, looking neither to right nor left, distracted, tormented by
a doubt. What if the Abbot had been mistaken, if the beggar had told
the truth? She recalled in fancy the happy meeting in the courtyard at
Praglia, the intense pallor of his face, the "Thank you!" which had made
her tremble with joy. A shiver ran through her blood, and, as though
with a sudden pull at the reins of her imagination, she turned to Noemi:
"Come!" she said.

She followed the monk, hearing nothing that he said, observing
nothing that he pointed out. Noemi found it difficult to hide her own
uneasiness, for she had a presentiment of evil on their return. The
dangerous point was the garden at Santa Scolastica, which, judging by
what she had said to the old gardener, Jeanne intended to revisit. She
no longer wished to see this famous Maironi; she longed only to get
Jeanne safely back to the Selvas', without any meetings, and she
intended to tarry as long as possible at the Sacro Speco, that they
might not have time to stop at Santa Scolastica. She therefore pretended
to take a lively interest in the precious interior of this monastery,
which has such a bare and dreary exterior, while all the while her
one wish was to revisit it more peacefully with her sister or her
brother-in-law.

Upon descending into that mine of holiness, neither of them understood
what road they were following, surrounded as they were by the lifeless,
cold atmosphere, the mystic shadows, the yellowish lights falling from
above, the odours of damp stone, of smoking wicks, of musty draperies;
bewildered by visions of chapels, of grottos, of crosses at the foot of
dark stairs; losing themselves in their flight down towards the lower
caverns, keeping on a level with their own pointed vaults; of marbles
the colour of blood, the colour of the night, the colour of snow; of
stiff, pious groups with Byzantine features, crowding the walls, the
drums of the arches; of little monks and little friars, standing in the
window niches, on the pinnacles of the vaults, along the line of the
entablatures, each with his venerable aureole. The visitors did not know
what path they were following, and Jeanne hardly felt the reality of it
all.

While descending the Scala Santa--the Holy Staircase--the monk leading
and Jeanne following closely, while Noemi came last, some five or six
steps behind, Jeanne, suddenly throwing out her hands, clutched
the guide's shoulder, and then, ashamed of her involuntary action,
immediately withdrew them, while the monk, who was greatly astonished,
stopped, and turned his head towards her.

"Pardon me!" she said. "Who is that father?"

Between two landings of the Scala, behind a projection of the left wall,
a figure, all black in the habit of the Benedictines, stood, erect and
still, in the dark corner, its forehead resting against the marble,
Jeanne had passed it by four or five steps without having perceived
it, then she had chanced to look round, and had seen it, while an
instinctive suspicion flashed through her trembling heart.

The monk answered:

"He is not a father, signora."

He bent down to unlock the low gate of a chapel.

"What is the matter?" Noemi inquired, drawing near. "He is not a
father?" Jeanne repeated.

Noemi trembled at the strange ring in her friend's voice. She herself
had not noticed the figure standing erect in the shadow of the wall.

"Who?" she asked.

The monk, who, in the meantime, had opened the gate, misunderstood her,
and thought she referred to something that had been said before.

"No," he answered. "The authentic portrait of St. Francis is not here.
Lower down there is a St. Francis painted by the Cavalier Manente. You
will see it presently. Please come in."

"What is it?" Noemi said softly to Jeanne. Her friend having answered
in a calmer voice, "Nothing," she passed her, entering the chapel, and
listened to the monk's explanations. Then the black figure moved away
from the wall. Jeanne saw it slowly mounting in the dim light, under the
pointed arches. On the upper landing the figure turned to the right,
and disappeared, to reappear almost immediately on an arm of the stair,
crossing the slanting background of the scene, and brilliant in the
light of an invisible window. The figure mounted slowly, almost wearily.
Before it vanished behind the enormous flank of an arch, it bent its
head and looked down. Jeanne recognised the face!

On the instant, as if in obedience to a lightning will impelling her,
as if borne along by the rush of her destiny, pale, resolute, without
knowing what she would say, what she would do, she started upwards.
Having crossed the upper landing, she was about to place her foot on the
lighter stairway, when she stumbled and fell, remaining for a moment
prostrate. Thus Noemi, on leaving the chapel, did not see her, and
concluded she had gone down in search of the portrait of St. Francis,
Jeanne rose and started forward; she was a poor creature torn by
passions, to whom the images of celestial peace, grown rigid on the
sacred walls, called in vain. All before her was silence and void. She
was following paths unknown to her, swiftly, securely, as one in an
hypnotic trance. She passed through dark and narrow places, through
light and broad places, never hesitating, never looking to right
or left, all her senses sharpened and concentrated in her hearing,
following little sounds of distant whisperings, the faint complaining
of one door, the breath of wind from another, the brushing of a robe
against the frame. Thus, through the wide-open wings of the last door
she passed rapidly, and found herself face to face with _him_.

He also had recognised her, at the last moment, on the Scala Santa. He
felt almost certain he himself had not been recognised, nevertheless he
had sought to avoid the path usually followed by visitors. Upon hearing
a swift rustle of woman's drapery approaching that mysterious hall, he
understood all, and, facing the entrance, he waited. She perceived him
and stopped suddenly, in the very act of entering, standing as though
turned to stone, between the wings of the door; her eyes fixed on his
eyes, which no longer wore the look of Piero Maironi.

He was transfigured. His form, owing perhaps to the black habit,
appeared slighter. His pale, fleshless face, his brow, which seemed to
have become higher, expressed a dignity, a gravity, a sad sweetness
which Jeanne had never known in him. And the eyes were totally different
eyes; in them shone a something ineffable and divine, much humility,
much power, the power of a transcendent love, springing not from his
heart, but from a mystic fount within his heart; a love reaching beyond
her heart, but seeking her in the inner, mysterious regions of the soul,
regions unknown to her. Slowly, slowly she clasped her hands and sank
upon her knees.

Benedetto carried the forefinger of his left hand to his lips, while
with his other hand he pointed to the wall facing the balcony, which
opens to the hornbeams of the Francolano hill and to the roar of the
river far below. In the centre of the wall, showing black and large, was
the word

SILENTIUM.

For centuries, ever since the word had been written there, no human
voice had been heard in this place. Jeanne did not look, did not see.
That finger at Piero's lips was enough to seal her own. But it was not
enough to check the sob in her throat. She gazed at him intently, her
lips pressed tightly together, while great, silent tears rolled down her
face. Immovable, his arms hanging close to his sides, Benedetto slightly
bent his head and closed his eyes, absorbed in prayer. The great, black,
imperious word, big with shadows and with death, triumphed over these
two human souls, while from the shining balcony the fierce souls of the
Anio and of the wind roared in protest.

Suddenly, a few seconds after Benedetto's eyes had closed to her gaze,
she was shaken and rent from shoulder to knee by a great sob, a sob
bitter with all the bitterness of her fate. He opened his eyes and
looked tenderly at her, while she drank in his look thirstily, sobbing
twice, as in sorrowful gratitude. And because this man, her beloved,
again raised his finger to his lips she bowed her head in assent. Yes,
yes, she would be silent, she would be calm! Still in obedience to his
gesture, to his look, she rose to her feet and drew back, allowing him
to pass out through the open door; then she followed him humbly, her
hope dead in her breast, so many sweet phantoms dead in her heart, her
love turned to fear and veneration.

She followed him to the chapel which they call the upper church. There,
opposite the three small pointed arches inclosing deep shadows through
which an altar looms, and where a silver cross shines against the dark
phantoms of ancient paintings, Jeanne, upon a sign from him, knelt
on the _prie-dieu_ placed on the right side of the great arch, which
follows the line of the pointed vault, while he knelt on the one placed
on the left. On the drum of the arch a fourteenth century painter had
depicted the Great Sorrow. Through a high window on the left, the light
fell upon the Mother of Sorrows--the _Dolorosa_; Benedetto was in the
shadow.

His voice murmured in a scarcely audible tone:

"Still without faith?"

Softly, as he himself had spoken, and without turning her head, she
answered:

"Yes."

He was silent for a time, then he continued, in the same tone:

"Do you long for it? Could you regulate your actions as if you believed
in God?"

"Yes, if I be not forced to lie."

"Will you promise to live for the poor and the afflicted, as if each one
of these were a part of the soul that you love?"

Jeanne did not answer. She was too far-seeing, too honest to declare
that she could.

"Will you promise this," Benedetto continued, "if I promise to call you
to my side at a certain hour in the future?"

She did not know of what solemn and not far distant hour he was
thinking, as he spoke thus. She answered, quivering:

"Yes, yes!" "In that hour I will call you," said the voice out of the
shadow, "But until I call you, you must never seek to see me again."

Jeanne pressed her hands to her eyes, and answered "No" in a smothered
tone. It seemed to her she was whirling in the vortex of such agonising
dreams as accompany a raging fever, Piero had ceased speaking. Two or
three minutes slipped by. She withdrew her hands from her tearful eyes,
and fixed her gaze upon the cross, which shone there in front of
her, beyond the pointed arches, against the dark phantoms of ancient
paintings. She murmured:

"Do you know that Don Giuseppe Flores is dead?"

Silence.

Jeanne turned her head. The church was empty.

CHAPTER V

THE SAINT

I

The moon had already set, and in the wind of late evening the
Anio discoursed, now noisily, now softly, as one who in animated
conversation, from time to time, reminds his interlocutor of something
which others must not hear. Perhaps the only person who, in all the
lovely shell in which Subiaco lies, was listening to this discourse, was
Giovanni Selva. Seated on the terrace, near the parapet, on which he
rested his elbows, he was gazing silently into the sounding darkness.
Maria and Noemi, who had also come out to enjoy the freshness and
the wild odours of the night wind, stood at a little distance. Maria
whispered a word in her sister's ear, and Noemi withdrew. When she was
alone, Maria approached her husband very softly, and dropped a kiss upon
his hair.

"Giovanni," said she. How often, oppressed by the intensity of her love,
had she not given him her soul, her whole being, in that one word,
spoken under her breath, all others seeming to her inadequate, or worn
by too many lips! Giovanni answered sadly, wearily:

"Maria."

No longer feeling her face on his hair he feared he had spoken coldly to
her.

"Dearest!" he said.

She was silent for a moment, then placing both hands on his head, began,
caressing it slowly, saying:

"Blessed are they who suffer for Truth's sake."

He turned round, smiling, with a thrill of affection. Having assured
himself by a glance that Noemi was no longer present, he raised his arm
and drew the dear face down to his lips.

"I need you so much," he said. "I need your strength!"

"That is why I am yours," Maria answered. "I am strong only because you
love me."

He took her hand and kissed it reverently.

"Do you understand?" he presently exclaimed, raising his head. "Perhaps
you do not know how deep my suffering really is, for it is a dark point
even to me, who am old, and yet do not know myself. I was thinking of
this just now. I reflected that when we suffer from a wound the cause of
our suffering is visible, but when we suffer from a fever the cause is
hidden, as in this case, and we never succeed in becoming thoroughly
acquainted with it."

A month had not yet elapsed since the meeting at which a league among
progressive Catholics had been talked of. No league had sprung from
it, but to nothing else could the origin of a series of strange and
unpleasant events be attributed. Professor Dane had been recalled to
Ireland by his Archbishop. He had immediately called upon an English
Cardinal attached to the Papal Court, in order to acquaint him with the
unsatisfactory condition of his health, and to solicit his support of a
petition to the Archbishop for an extension of his leave. His Eminence
had opened Dane's eyes. The blow had come from Rome, where he was looked
upon with the greatest disapproval. Only out of consideration for the
Cardinal himself, who was known to be his friend, and above all out of
consideration for the English Government, had the authorities refrained
from satisfying those who wished to see his writings placed on the
Index, and Dane himself constrained to resign his professorship. The
Cardinal advised him to leave Rome, where the heat was beginning to be
unpleasant, and to become a little more seriously ill at Montecatini or
Salsomaggiore, where he would be left in peace. Don Clemente had not
again appeared. Giovanni had sought him out at Santa Scolastica, where
the monk had signified to him, with tears in his eyes, that their
friendship must be buried like a treasure in times of war. Upon Don
Paolo Fare, who had been giving a course of religious instruction for
adults at Pavia, silence had been enjoined. Young di Leyni had been
reached through his family. His excellent and pious mother had besought
him with tears and in the name of his dead father, to break with those
dangerous acquaintances, the Selvas; and he believed that this step had
been suggested by her confessor. He had resisted, but at the cost of
his domestic peace. Finally, a clerical periodical had published three
articles on Giovanni's complete works, summing up some partial and
grudging praise, and some equally partial and biting censure in a very
severe judgment on the character of the works themselves, which the
critic pronounced rationalistic, and on the intolerable audacity of the
author, who, equipped solely with worldly learning, had dared to publish
writings in which the lack of theological knowledge was painfully
evident. In substance these three articles were a terrible and
prohibitive condemnation of the very book Giovanni was then engaged
upon, dealing with the rational foundations of Christian morality, and,
in the opinion of the initiated, it predicted the Index for his other
works.

"Are you in doubt concerning your own views?" Maria asked.

The question was insincere. Notwithstanding her great love for him, she
had a deep and clear knowledge of her husband's soul. She believed he
was, in his heart, suffering from the presentiment of an ecclesiastical
condemnation. Giovanni might speak lightly of certain sentences passed
by the Congregation of the Index, but his conscience, more respectful
towards the authorities than he himself realised, was troubled, so Maria
thought, more deeply than he wished it to be by the threatened blow.
And Maria, fearing to wound him by the question, "Are you afraid?"
had insinuated this other doubt, in order to prepare the way for a
spontaneous confession of the truth. Giovanni's answer astonished her.

"Yes," said he. "I doubt myself. Not, however, in the way you suppose.
I fear I am a purely intellectual being, and that I exaggerate the
importance my views may have in the sight of God. I fear I do not live
up to my views. I fear my indignation is too great against those who do
not share them, against my persecutors, against that Swiss Abbe who came
here with Dane, and probably talked of what was then said in our midst
as he should not have done, and in places where he should have kept
silent. I fear my life is one of too great inactivity, of too great
ease, of too much pleasure, for to me study is a delight. I even doubt
my love of God, because I feel too lightly the love of my neighbour. I
am often reminded that the mystic pleasures may lull my conscience on
this point. You, Maria, you live your faith; you visit the sick, work
for the poor, you comfort, you instruct. I do nothing."

"I am one with you," Maria whispered. "You made me what I am. Besides,
you distribute the alms of the intellect."

"No, no! Those words applied to me are presumptuous!" Maria knew that
the loving sense of human fraternity was not strong in Glovanni. She
felt--and she was loath to confess it even to herself--that this
deficiency incapacitated her husband for the successful fulfilment of
that great religious apostolate which should have resulted from his
intellectual powers, and that deep and enlightened faith, which in him
was more the fruit of genius, of study, of love of the divine, than of
tradition or habit. She reproached herself for having sometimes rejoiced
at Giovanni's coldness towards his fellows, for it lent a precious
flavour to the treasures of affection he lavished upon herself.
Nevertheless he was conscious of the fraternal obligations, and she had
never known him turn a deaf ear to an appeal, or seen him insensible to
the grief of others. He did not feel, and therefore did not love God in
man, which is the most sublime flame of charity; he felt and loved man
in God, which is a cold love, as would be the love of one who was kind
to his brother solely to please their father. But this last is the
temper common to even the best of human hearts. Giovanni's heart was
tempered thus; he could not give out that sublime charity of which he
humbly and sadly acknowledged himself to be void. Maria, caressing his
hair with infinite tenderness, dreamed that sweet, divine, indulgence
flowed out upon that head through her heart and her hands.

"Listen," said she. "I am going to propose to you at once an act of
charity in which there is much merit. Noemi has received a letter from
her friend Jeanne Dessalle, and says she is in need of your help."

"Call her," said he.

Noemi came. A slight cloud had gathered that day between Giovanni and
herself. As rarely happened, they had conversed on religion. Noemi clung
blindly to her own religion, and disliked discussions. Notwithstanding
her tenderness for Maria, and her affectionate respect for Giovanni,
she feared she should lean more towards the scepticism of Jeanne than
towards the liberal and progressive Catholicism of the Selvas, if she
stopped to examine the reasons and nature of her own belief. This
Catholicism appeared to her a hybrid thing, and she had perhaps learned
from Jeanne to consider it such; for Jeanne, in moments of nervous
irritability, defended her own scepticism with acrimony against that
faith which, because it shone with spirituality and truth, might prove
formidable to her. Noemi was always suspicious, not of her sister, but
of Giovanni, fearing he would attempt to convert her, and her suspicion
had that day been apparent when, discussing the confessional, she had
several times answered him very sharply. Then Giovanni had reminded her,
gently and gravely, that error harboured unconsciously, in the sincere
and pure desire of truth, is innocent in the eyes of God, but that if
a sentiment foreign to that desire have any part in the repulsion of
truth, then sin alone is the outcome. This argument wounded Noemi more
deeply still. She had been on the point of asking her brother-in-law by
what right he was acting as vice-divine judge. She controlled herself,
however, and let the discussion drop.

Upon thinking it over afterwards, she regretted her sullen silence, not
so much because Giovanni's words had affected her views, as because she
was aware of the sorrow the religious opinions he professed brought him,
and because she saw how depressed his spirits were. This was one reason
why--when she was called to him, and entreated by her sister to show him
much affection--she resolved, for once, to be unfaithful to Jeanne. Of
what Jeanne had written to her under the seal of secrecy she had told
Maria only as much as was absolutely necessary. Jeanne, still suffering
both physically and mentally, had heard of the "Saint of Jenne," who was
healing bodies and souls, and she besought Noemi to go to Jenne and see
this Saint, and then to write to her about him. Now Noemi could not
go to Jenne alone, she must ask Giovanni to accompany her. Her first
confidence had stopped here. Now she broke all the seals of secrecy her
friend had imposed, and spoke freely.

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