 CHAPTER 91 OF THE CLOISTER AND THE HAARTH by Charles Reed. Not many days after this came the news that Margaret van Eyck was dead and buried. By a will she had made a year before she left all her property, after her funeral expenses and certain presents to Reichthainus to her dear daughter Margaret Brandt, requesting her to keep Reichth as long as unmarried. By this will Margaret inherited a furnished house and pictures and sketches that in the present day would be a fortune. Among the pictures was one she valued more than a gallery of others. It represented a betrothal. The solemnity of the ceremony was marked in the grave face of the man and the demure complacency of the woman. She was painted almost entirely by Margaret van Eyck but the rest of the picture by Jan. The accessories were exquisitely finished and remain a marvel of skill to this day. Margaret Brandt sent word to Reichth to stay in the house till such time as she could find the heart to put foot in it, and miss the face and voice that used to meet her there, and to take special care of the picture in the little cupboard, meaning the diptych. The next thing was, Luke Peterson came home and heard that Gerard was a monk. He was like to go mad with joy. He came to Margaret and said, Heed, mistress, if he cannot marry you, I can. You said, Margaret, why I have seen him, but he is a friar. He was my husband, and my boy's father long there he was a friar, and I have seen him, I've seen him. Luke was thoroughly puzzled. I'll tell you what, said he, I have got a cousin, a lawyer. I'll go and ask him whether you are married or single. Nay, I shall ask my own heart not a lawyer. So that is your regard for me, to go making me the town-talk, oh, fi! That is done already without a word from me, but not by such as seek my respect, and if you do it, never come nigh me again. I said, look with a sigh, you are like a dove to all the rest. But you are a hard-hearted tyrant to me. Tis your own fault, dear Luke, for wooing me. That is what lets me from being as kind to you as I desire. Look, my bonny lad, listen to me. I am rich now. I can make my friends happy, though not myself. Look round the street, look round the parish. There is many a queen in it fairer than I, twice told, and not spoiled with weeping. Look high, and take your choice. Speak you to the lass herself, and I'll speak to the mother. They shall not say thee nay. Take my word for it. I see what you mean, said Luke, turning very red. But if I can't have your liking, I will none of your money. I was your servant when you were poorer as I, and poorer. No, if you would leave her be a friar's Lehman than an honest man's wife, you are not the woman I took you for. So part we without malice. Seek you your comfort on your own road, where never as she did find it yet. And for me I live and die a bachelor. Good even, mistress. Farewell, dear Luke, and God forgive you for saying that to me. For some days Margaret dreaded almost as much as she desired the coming interview with Gerard. She said to herself, I wonder not he keeps away awhile, for so should I. However, he would hear he was a father, and the desire to see their boy would overcome everything. And, said the poor girl to herself, if so be that meeting does not kill me, I feel I shall be better after it than I am now. But when day after day went by, and he was not heard of, a freezing suspicion began to crawl and creep towards her mind. What if his absence was intentional? What if he had gone to some cold-blooded monks, his fellows, and they had told him never to see her more? The convent had ere this shown itself as merciless to true lovers as the grave itself. At this thought the very life seemed to die out of her. And now for the first time deep indignation mingled at times with her grief and apprehension. Can he have ever loved me? To run from me and his boy without a word? Why this poor look thinks more of me than he does? While her mind was in this state, Giles came roaring, I've hit the clout, our Gerard is vicar of Gouda. A very brief sketch of the dwarf's court life will suffice to prepare the reader for his own account of this feat. Some months before he went to court his intelligence had budded. He himself dated the change from a certain eighth of June, when, swinging by one hand along with the week's washing on a tight rope in the drying-ground, something went crack inside his head, and low, intellectual powers unchained. At court his shrewdness and toplantness of speech, coupled with his gigantic voice and his small stature, made him a power. Without the last item I fear they would have conducted him to that unpopular gymnasium, the gallows. The young Duchess of Burgundy and Marie the heiress apparent both petted him, as great ladies have petted dwarfs in all ages, and the court-poet melted butter by the six-foot rule and poured enough of it down his back to stew Goliath in. He even amplified, versified and enfeebled certain rough-and-ready sentences dictated by Giles. The centripetal prolixity that resulted went to Eli by letter, thus entitled, The hei and Poisson, Princess Marie of Burgundy, her little gentleman, his complaint of ye court, and praise of a rustical life, versificated and empire-pired by me the little gentleman's right loving and obsequious servitor, et cetera. But the dwarf reached his climax by a happy mixture of mind and muscle, thus. The day before a grand court joust he challenged the Duke's giant to a trial of strength. This challenge made the gravest grin and aroused expectation. Giles had a lofty pole planted ready, and at the appointed hour went up it like a squiddle, and by strength of arm made a right angle with his body, and so remained, then slid down so quickly that the hei and Poisson Princess squeaked and hid her face in her hands, not to see the demise of her pocket-hercules. The giant effected only about ten feet, then looked ruefully up and ruefully down, and descended, bathed in perspiration, to argue the matter. It was not the dwarf's greater strength but his smaller body. The spectators received this excuse with loud derision. There was the fact that the dwarf was great at mounting a pole, the giant only great at excuses. In short, Giles had gauged their intellects, with his own body no doubt. Come, said he, and ye go to that, I wrestle ye, my lord, if so be you will let me blindfold your eye. The giant, smarting under defeat and thinking he could surely recover it by this means readily consented. Madam, said Giles, see you on blind Samson, at a signal from me he shall make me a low obeisance and unbonnet to me. How may that be, being blinded, inquired a maid of honour. I wager on Giles for one, said the Princess. That is my affair. When several wagers were laid pro and con, Giles hit the giant in the bread-basket. He went double, the obeisance, and his bonnet fell off. The company yelled with delight at this delicate stroke of wit, and Giles took to his heels. The giant followed as soon as he could recover his breath and tear off his bandage. But it was too late. Giles had prepared a little door in the wall, through which he could pass but not a giant, and had coloured it so artfully it looked like a wall. This door he tore open and went headlong through, leaving no vestige but this posy, written very large upon the reverse of his trick door. Long limb's big body panting wit, by we and wise is bet and bit. After this Giles became a force. He shall now speak for himself. Finding Margaret unable to believe the good news, and sceptical as to the affairs of Holy Church being administered by dwarves, he narrated as follows. When the princess sent for me to her bedroom as of custom to keep her out of langa, I came not mirthful nor full of country-dicts, as is my won't, but dull as lead. Why, what alithy, quo she, art sick? At heart, quo I, alas he is in love, quo she, where art five brazen huzzies, which they call the maids of honour did giggle aloud. What so mad as that, said I, seeing what I see at court of women folk? There, ladies, quo the princess, best let him be. Tis a liberal mannequin, and still giveth more than he taketh of saucy words. In all sadness, quo she, what is the matter? I told her I was meditating, and what perplexed me was that other folk could now and then keep their word but princess never. Hey, day, says she, thy shafts fly high this morn. I told her I, for they hid the truth. She said I was as keen as keen, but it became not me to put riddles to her, nor her to answer them. Stand aloof a bit, madame, said she, and thou speak without in fear. For she saw I was in sad earnest. I began to quake a bit, for mind ye, she can doth freedom and don dignity quicker than she can slip out of her dressing-gown into kirtle of state. But I made my voice so soft as honey, wherefore smilest, and I said, madame, one evening, a matter of five years ago, as ye sat with your mother, the countess of Charallois, who is now in heaven. Worse luck you were your loot, and she were your tapestry, or the like to your mind there came thee into ye, a fair youth with a letter from a painter-body, one Margaret van Eyck. She said she thought she did. Was it not a tall youth exceeding comely? I, madame, said I, he was my brother. Your brother, said she, and did I me like all over? What doth smilest? So I told her all that passed between her and Geron, and how she was forgiving him a bishopric, but the good countess said, gently, Marie, ye is too young, and with that they did both promise him a living. Yet, said I, he hath been a priest a long while, and no living, hence my bile. Alas! said she, tis not by my good will, for all this thou hast said is sooth and more. I do remember my dear mother said to me, See thou to it, if I be not here. So then she cried out, I, dear mother, no word of thine shall ever fall to the ground. I, seeing her so right, said quickly, Madame, the vicar of Gouda died last week, for when ye seek favoured of the great, behoves ye know the very thing ye aim at. Then thy brother is vicar of Gouda, quos she, so sure as I am heiress of Burgundy in the Netherlands. Nay, thank me not, good giles, quos she, but my good mother, and I do thank thee for giving of me somewhat to do for her memory. And doesn't she fall a weeping for her mother, and doesn't that set me off a snivelling for my good brother that I love so dear, and to think that a poor little elf like me could yet speak in the ear of princes, and make my beautiful brother vicar of Gouda. Alas! it is a bonny place, and a bonny mans, and hawthorn in every bush at springtide, and dog-roses and eglentine in every summer hedge. I know what the poor fool effects leave that to me. The dwarf began his narrative strutting to and fro before Margaret, but he ended it in her arms, for she could not contain herself, but caught him and embraced him warmly. Oh, giants, she said, blushing and kissing him, I cannot keep my hands off thee, thy body, it is so little, and thy heart so great. Thou art his true friend. Bless thee, bless thee, bless thee. Now we shall see him again. We have not set eyes on him since that terrible day. Gramercy, but that is strange, said Giles. Maybe he is ashamed of having cursed those two vagabonds, being our own flesh and blood worse luck. Think you, that is why he hides, said Margaret eagerly. Ah, if he is hiding at all, however, I'll cry him by bell-man. Nay, that might much offend him. What care I is Gouda to go vicarless, and the mans in nettles? And to Margaret's secret satisfaction, Giles had the new vicar cried in Rotterdam and the neighbouring towns. He easily persuaded Margaret that in a day or two Gerard would be sure to hear and come to his benefice. She went to look at his mans, and thought how comfortable it might be made for him, and how dearly she should love to do it. But the days rolled on, and Gerard came neither to Rotterdam nor Gouda. Giles was mortified, Margaret indignant and very wretched. She said to herself, thinking me dead, he comes home, and now, because I am alive, he goes back to Italy? For that is where he is gone. Joan advised her to consult the hermit of Gouda. Why, sure, he is dead by this time. John won, be like, but the cave is never long void. Gouda ne'er wants a hermit. But Margaret declined to go again to Gouda on such an errand. What can he know shut up in a cave less than I, be like? Gerard hath gone back to Italy. He hates me for not being dead. Presently a Turgovian came in with a word from Catherine that Gisbrecht van Svieten had seen Gerard later than anyone else. On this Margaret determined to go and see the house and goods that had been left her, and take Reichtenis home to Rotterdam. And as may be supposed, her steps took her first to Gisbrecht's house. She found him in his garden, seated in a chair with wheels. He greeted her with a feeble voice, but cordially, and when she asked him whether it was true he had seen Gerard since the fifth of August, he replied, Gerard no more, but Father Clement. I saw him, and blessed be the day he entered my house. He then related, in his own words, his interview with Clement. He told her, moreover, that the friar had afterwards acknowledged he came to Targu with the missing deed in his Bouzoumont purpose to make him disgorge her land, but that finding him disposed towards penitence he had gone to work the other way. Was not this a saint who came to write thee, but must need save his enemy's soul in the doing it? To her question whether he had recognized him, he said, I ne'er suspected such a thing, to as only when he had been three days with me that he revealed himself. Listen while I speak my shame and his praise. I said to him, The land is gone home, and my stomach feels lighter, but there is another fault that clingeth to me still. Then I told him of the letter I had written at request of his brethren, I whose place it was to check them. Said I, your letter was written to part two lovers, and the devil aiding it, it hath done the foul work. Land and houses I can give back, but your mischief is done forever. Nay, quote he, not forever, but for life, repent it then while thou livest. I shall, said I, but how can God forgive it? I would not, said I, were I he? Yet will he certainly forgive it, quote he, for he is ten times more forgiving than I am, and I forgive thee. I stared at him, and then he said softly, but quavering like, Gisbrecht, look at me closer. I am Gerard, the son of Eli, and I looked, and looked, and at last, lo, it was Gerard. Verily I had fallen at his feet with shame and contrition, but he would not suffer me. That became not mine yours and his for a particular fault. I say not I forgive thee without a struggle, said he. Not being a saint, but these three days thou hast spent in penitence. I have worn under thy roof in prayer, and I do forgive thee. Those were his very words. Margaret's tears began to flow, for it was in a broken and contrite voice the old man told her this unexpected trait in her Gerard. He continued, and even with that he bad me farewell. My work here is done now, said he. I had not the heart to stay him, for let him forgive me ever so, the sight of me must be wormwood to him. He left me in peace, and may a dying man's blessing wait on him, go where he will. O girl, when I think of his wrongs and thine and how he hath avenged himself by saving this stained soul of mine, my heart is broken with remorse, and these old eyes shed tears by night and day. Giesbrecht, said Margaret, weeping. Since he hath forgiven thee, I forgive thee too. What is done is done, and thou hast let me know this day, that which I had walked the world to hear. But, O burgamaster, thou art an understanding man, now help a poor woman which hath forgiven thee her misery. She then told him all that had befallen, and, said she, they will not keep the living for him forever. He bids fair to lose that as well as break all our hearts. Call my servant! cried the burgamaster with sudden vigor. He sent him for a table and writing materials, and dictated letters to the burgamasters in all the principal towns in Holland, and one to a Prussian authority, his friend. His clerk and Margaret wrote them, and he signed them. There, said he, the matter shall be dispatched throughout Holland by trusty couriers, and as far as Barl in Switzerland, and fear not, but we will soon have the vicar of Gouda to his village. She went home animated with fresh hopes, and accusing herself of ingratitude to Gerard. I value my wealth now, said she. She also made a resolution, never to blame his conduct, till she should hear from his own lips his reason. Not long after her return from Tergu, a fresh disaster befell. Catherine, I must premise, had secret interviews with the black sheep, the very day after they were expelled, and Cornelis followed her to Tergu, and lived there on secret contributions, but Cybrandt chose to remain in Rotterdam. Air Catherine left. She asked Margaret to lend her two gold angels. Four, said she, all mine are spent. Margaret was delighted to lend them, or give them, but the words were scarce out of her mouth, ere she caught a look of regret and distress on Kate's face, and she saw directly whether her money was going. She gave Catherine the money, and went and shut herself up with her boy. Now this money was to last Cybrandt, till his mother could make some good excuse for visiting Rotterdam again, and then she would bring the idle dog some of her own industrious savings. But Cybrandt, having gold in his pocket, thought it inexhaustible, and, being now under no shadow of restraint, led the life of a complete sot. Until one afternoon in a drunken frolic, he climbed on the roof of the stable at the inn he was carousing in, and proceeded to walk along it. Her feet he had performed many times when sober, but now his unsteady brain made his legs unsteady, and he rolled down the roof and fell with a loud quack onto an horizontal pailing, where he hung a moment in a semi-circle, then toppled over, and lay silent on the ground, amidst rows of laughter from his boon companions. But when they came to pick him up he could not stand, but fell down giggling at each attempt. On this they went staggering and roaring down the street with him, and carried him at great risk of another fall to the shop in the Hooke's Thread. For he had babbled his own shame all over the place. As soon as he saw Margaret he hiccuped out, Here is the doctor that cures all hurts, Bonnie Lass. He also bad her observe he bore her no malice, for he was paying her a visit sore against his will. Wherefore prithee send away these drunkards, and let you and me have other glass to drown all unkindness. All this time Margaret was pale and red by turns at sight of her enemy and at his insolence, but one of the men whispered what had happened, and a streaky something in Cybrand's face arrested her attention. And he cannot stand up, say you. I couldn't just now. Try, comrade, be a man now. I'm a better man than thou, roared Cybrand, I'll stand up and fight ye all for a crown. He started to his feet, and instantly rolled into his attendant's arms with a piteous groan. He then began to curse his boon-companyons, and declare they had stolen away his legs. He could feel nothing below the waist. Alas, poor wretch! said Margaret. She turned very gravely to the men and said, Leave him here, and if you have brought him to this, go on your knees, for you have spoiled him for life. He will never walk again. His back is broken. The drunken man caught these words, and the foolish look of intoxication fled, and a glare of anguish took its place. The curse! he groaned. The curse! Margaret, a right heinous, carried him carefully, and laid him on the softest bed. I must do as he would do. He was kind to Giesbrecht. Her opinion was verified. Cybrand's spine was fatally injured, and he lay groaning and helpless. Fared and tendered by her, he had so deeply injured. The news was sent to Targu, and Catherine came over. It was a terrible blow to her. Moreover, she accused herself as the cause. Oh, false wife! Oh, weak mother! she cried. I am rightly punished for my treason to my poor Eli. She sat for hours at a time by his bedside, rocking herself in silence, and was never quite herself again, and the first gray hairs began to come in her poor head from that hour. As for Cybrandt, all his cry was now for Gerard. He used to whine to Margaret like a suffering hound. Oh, sweet Margaret, oh, bonnie Margaret, for our lady's sake, find Gerard and bid him take his curse off me. Thou are gentle, thou are good, thou wilt entreat for me, and he will refuse thee not. Catherine shared his belief that Gerard could cure him, and joined her entreaties to his. Margaret hardly needed this. The burgamaster at his agents having failed, she employed her own, and spent money like water. Among these agents poor Luke enrolled himself. She met him one day looking very thin and spoke to him compassionately. On this he began to blubber, and say he was more miserable than ever. He would like to be good friends again upon almost any terms. Dear heart, said Margaret sorrowfully, why can you not say to yourself, now I am her little brother, and she is my old married sister, worn down with care, say so and I will indulge thee and pet thee and make thee happier than a prince. Well, I will, said Luke savagely, sooner than keep away from you all together, but above all give me something to do, perchance I may have better luck this time. Get me my marriage-lines, said Margaret, turning sad and gloomy in a moment. That is as much as to say, get me him, for where they are, he is. Not so. He may refuse to come nigh me, but certies he will not deny a poor woman who loved him once, her lines of betrothal. How can she go without them into any honest man's house? I'll get them you if they are in Holland, said Luke. They are as light to be in Rome, replied Margaret. Let us begin with Holland, observed Luke prudently. The slave of love was furnished with money by his soft tyrant, and wandered hither and thither, coopering and carpenter-ing, and looking for Gerard. I can't be worse if I find the vagabond, said he, and I may be a handle better. The months rolled on, and Cybrandt improved in spirit, but not in body. He was Margaret's pensioner for life, and a long-expected sorrow fell upon poor Catherine, and left her still more bowed down, and she lost her fine hearty bustling way, and never went about the house singing now, and her nerves were shaken and she lived in dread of some terrible misfortune falling on Cornelis. The curse was laid on him as well as Cybrandt. She prayed Eli if she had been a faithful partner all these years to take Cornelis into his house again, and let her live a while at Rotterdam. I have good daughters here, said she, but Margaret is so tender and thoughtful, and the little Gerard he is my joy. He grows like a his father every day, and his prattle cheers my heavy heart, and I do love children. And Eli, sturdy but kindly, consented sorrowfully. And the people of Gouda petitioned the duke for a vicar, a real vicar. Ours cometh never nigh us, said they. This six months passed. Our children they die uncristened, and our folk unburied except by some chance-commer. Giles influenced baffle this just complaint once, but a second petition was prepared, and he gave Margaret little hope that the present position could be maintained a single day. So then Margaret went sorrowfully to the pretty man's to see it for the last time ere it should pass forever into strangers' hands. I think he would have been happy here, she said, and turned heart-sick away. On their return Reichthainus proposed to her to go and consult the hermit. What, said Margaret, Joan has been at you. She is the one for hermits. I'll go if tis but to show thee they know no more than we do. And they went to the cave. It was an excavation, partly natural, partly artificial, in a bank of rock overgrown by brambles. There was a rough stone door on hinges, and a little window high up, and two apertures, through one of which the people announced their gifts to the hermit and put questions of all sorts to him. And when he chose to answer his voice came dissonant and monstrous out at another small aperture. On the face of the rock this line was cut. Félix qui indomino nixus ab orbe fugit. Margaret observed to her companion that this was new since she was here last. I, said Reichth, like enough, and looked up at it with awe. Writing, even on paper, she thought no trifle but on rock. She whispered, tis a far holier hermit than the last. He used to come in the town now and then, but this one there shows his face to mortal man. And that is holiness? I sure. Then what a sainted door-mouse must be. Out fine, mistress! Would ye even a beast to a man? Come, Reichth, said Margaret, my poor father taught me over much. So I will in sit here and look at the manse once more. Go thou forward and question thy solitary, and tell me whether ye get nought or nonsense out of him, for twill be won. As Reichth drew near the cave a number of birds flew out of it. She gave a little scream and pointed to the cave to show Margaret they had come thence. On this, Margaret felt sure there was no human being in the cave and gave the mutter no further attention. She fell into a deep reverie while looking at the little manse. She was startled from it by Reichth's hand upon her shoulder and a faint voice saying, Let us go home. You got no answer at all, Reichth, said Margaret calmly. No, Margaret, said Reichth despondently, and they returned home. Perhaps, after all, Margaret had nourished some faint secret hope in her heart, though her reason had rejected it, for she certainly went home more dejectedly. Just as they entered Rotterdam, Reichth said, Stay. Oh, Margaret, I am ill at deceit, but his death to utter ill news to thee, I love thee so dear. Speak out, sweetheart, said Margaret. I have gone through so much I am almost past feeling any fresh trouble. Margaret, the hermit did speak to me. What a hermit there among all those birds! I, and doth not that show him a holy man. If God's name, what said he to thee, Reichth? Alas, Margaret, I told him thy story, and I prayed him for our lady's sake. Tell me where thy Gerard is. And I waited long for an answer, and presently a voice came like a trumpet. Pray for the soul of Gerard, the son of Eli. Ah! Oh, woe is me that I have this to tell thee, sweet Margaret. Be think thee thou hast thy boy to live for yet. Let me get home, said Margaret faintly. Passing down the Breda-Kirk Street, they saw Joan at the door. Reichth said to her, Hey, woman, she has been to your hermit and heard no good news. Come in, said Joan eager for a gossip. Margaret would not go in. But she sat down disconsolate on the lowest step but one of the little external staircase that led into Joan's house, and led the other two gossip their fill at the top of it. Oh, said Joan, what yarn hermit says is sure to be sooth. He is that holy, I'm told, that the very birds consort with him. What does that prove, said Margaret deprecatingly, I have seen my Gerard tame the birds in winter till they would eat from his hand. A look of pity at this parallel passed between the other two, but they were both too fond of her to say what they thought. Joan proceeded to relate all the marvellous tales she had heard of this hermit's sanctity, how he never came out but at night, and prayed among the wolves, and they never molested him, and now he bade the people not bring him so much food to pamper his body, but to bring him candles. The candles ought to burn before his saint, whispered Reich solemnly. I las, and to read his holy books we. A neighbour of mine saw his hand come out, and the birds sat there on and pecked crumbs. She went for to kiss it, but the holy man whippeted away in a trice. They can't abide a woman to touch him, or even look at him, saints can't. What like was his hand, wife, did you ask her? What is my tongue for else, why, dear heart? All one as Joan, by the same token, had a thumb and four fingers. Look ye there now, but a deal whiter, nor yarn and mine. Aye, aye, and main skinny. Alas! What could ye expect, why, a live upon air, and prayer, and candles? Ah, well, continued Joan, poor thing, I whilst think'd his best for her to know the worst, and now she hath gotten a voice from heaven, or almost as good, and behoves her pray for his soul. One thing, she is not so poor now as she was, and never fell riches to a better hand, and she is only come into her own for that matter, so she can pay the priest to say masses for him, and that is a great comfort. In the midst of their gossip, Margaret, in whose ears it was all buzzing, though she seemed lost in thought, got up softly, and crept away with her eyes on the ground, and her brows bent. She hath forgotten I am with her, said right heinous, ruefully. She had her gossip out with Joan, and then went home. She found Margaret seated, cutting out a police of gray cloth, and a cape to match. Little Gerard was standing at her side, inside her left arm, eyeing the work, and making it more difficult by wriggling about, and fingering the arm, with which she held the cloth steady, to all which she submitted with imperturbable patience and complacency. Fancy a male workman so entangled, impeded, worried. What's that, Mammy? A police, my pet. What's a police? A great frock, and this is the cape to it. What's it for? To keep his body from the cold, and the cape is for his shoulders, or to go over his head like the country folk. It is for a hermit. What's a hermit? A holy man that lives in a cave all by himself. Into dark, eye-wiles. Oh! In the morning, Reich was sent to the hermit with the police, and a pound of thick candles. As she was going out of the door, Margaret said to her, said you who son Gerard was? Nay, not I. Think, girl, how could he call him Gerard, son of Eli, if you had not told him? Reich persisted. She had never mentioned him but as plain Gerard, but Margaret told her flatly she did not believe her, at which Reich was affronted and went out with a little toss of the head. However, she determined to question the hermit again and did not doubt he would be more liberal in his communication when he saw his nice new police, and the candles. She had not been gone long when Giles came in with ill news. The living of Gouda would be kept vacant no longer. Margaret was greatly distressed at this. Oh! Giles, said she, ask for another month. They will give thee another month, maybe. He returned in an hour to tell her he could not get a month. They have given me a week, said he. And what is a week? A week. Drowning bodies catch at strawen, was her reply. A week! A little week! Reich came back from her errand out of spirits. Her oracle had declined all further communication. So at least its obstinate silence might fairly be interpreted. The next day, Margaret put Reich in charge of the shop and disappeared all day. So the next day, and so the next. Nor would she tell anyone where she had been. Perhaps she was ashamed. The fact is, she spent all those days on one little spot of ground. When they thought her dreaming she was applying to every word that fell from Joan and Reich the whole powers of afar acute her mind than either of them possessed. She went to work on a scale that never occurred to either of them. She was determined to see the hermit and question him face to face, not through a wall. She found that by making a circuit she could get above the cave and look down without being seen by the solitary. But when she came to it she found an impenetrable mass of brambles. After tearing her clothes and her hands and feet so that she was soon covered with blood the resolute patient girl took out her scissors and steadily snipped and cut till she made a narrow path through the enemy. But so slow was the work that she had to leave it half done. The next day she had her scissors fresh ground and brought a sharp knife as well and gently silently cut her way to the roof of the cave. There she made an ambush of some of the cut brambles so that the passers-by might not see her and couched with watchful eye till the hermit should come out. She heard him move underneath her but he never left his cell. She began to think it was true that he only came out at night. The next day she came early and brought a jerkin she was making for little Jarod and there she sat all day working and watching with dogged patience. At four o'clock the birds began to feed and a great many of the smaller kinds came fluttering round the cave and one or two went in. But most of them taking a preliminary seat on the bushes suddenly discovered Margaret and went off with an agitated flirt of their little wings. And although they sailed about in the air they would not enter the cave. Presently to encourage them the hermit all unconscious of the cause of their tremors put out a thin white hand with a few crumbs in it. Margaret laid down her work softly and gliding her body forward like a snake looked down at it from above. It was but a few feet from her. It was, as the woman described it, a thin white hand. Presently the other hand came out with a piece of bread and the two hands together broke it and scattered the crumbs. But that other hand had hardly been out two seconds air the violet eyes that were watching above dilated and the gentle bosom heaved and the whole frame quivered like a leaf in the wind. What her swift eye had seen I leave the reader to guess. She suppressed the scream that rose to her lips but the effort cost her dear. Soon the left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating eyes and with a deep sigh her head drooped and she lay like a broken lily. She was in a deep swoon to which perhaps a long fast day and the agitation and sleeplessness of many preceding days contributed and there lay beauty, intelligence and constancy, pale and silent and little that hermit guessed who was so near him. The little birds hopped on her now and one nearly entangled his little feet in her rich urban hair. She came back to her troubles. The sun was set. She was very cold. She cried a little but I think it was partly from the remains of physical weakness. And then she went home praying God and the saints to enlighten her and teach her what to do for the best. When she got home she was pale and hysterical and would say nothing in answer to all their questions but her favourite word, We are wading in deep waters. The night seemed to have done wonders for her. She came to Catherine who was sitting sighing by the fireside and kissed her and said, Mother, what would you like best in the world? Hey dear, replied Catherine despondently, I know not that would make me smile now. I have parted from too many that were dear to me. Gerard lost again as soon as found Kate in heaven and Cybrandt down for life. Poor mother, mother dear, good a man's is to be furnished and cleaned and made ready all in a hurry. See, here be ten gold angels. Make them go far, good mother, for I have ten o'er many already from my boy for a set of useless loons that were I going to find him for me. Catherine and Wright stared at her a moment in silence and then outburst a flood of questions to none of which she would give a reply. Nay, said she, I have lain on my bed and thought and thought and thought whilst you were all sleeping and me thinks I have got the clue to all. I love you, dear mother, but I'll trust no woman's tongue. If I fail this time I'll have none to blame but Margaret Brandt. A resolute woman is a very resolute thing, and there was a deep dogged determination in Margaret's voice and brow that at once convinced Catherine it would be idle to put any more questions at that time. She and Wright lost themselves in conjectures, and Catherine whispered Wright, Bide quiet, then will leak out. A shrewd piece of advice founded on general observation. Within an hour Catherine was on the road to Gouda in a cart with two stout girls to help her and quite a siege artillery of mops and pales and brushes. She came back with heightened colour and something of the old sparkle in her eye and kissed Margaret with a silent warmth that spoke volumes, and at five in the morning was off again to Gouda. That night, as Wright was in her first sleep, a hand gently pressed her shoulder, and she awoke and was going to scream, whish, said Margaret, and put her finger to her lips. She then whispered, Rise softly, don thy habits, and come with me. When she came down Margaret begged her to loose dragon and bring him along. Now dragon was a great mastiff who had guarded Margaret van Eyck and Wright to lone women for some years and was devotedly attached to the latter. Margaret and Wright went out with dragon walking majestically behind them. They came back long after midnight and retired to rest. Catherine never knew. Margaret read her friends. She saw the sturdy faithful Frisian, could hold her tongue and Catherine could not. Yet I am not sure she would have trusted even Wright had her nerve equal her spirit, but with all her daring and resolution she was a tender timid woman, a little afraid of the dark, very afraid of being alone in it, and desperately afraid of wolves. Now dragon could kill a wolf in a brace of shakes, but then dragon would not go with her but only with Wright, so altogether she made one confidant. The next night they made another moonlight reconnaissance, and as I think with some result. For not the next night, it rained that night and extinguished their courage, but the next after they took with them a companion, the last in the world Wright Hainas would have thought of. Yet she gave her warm approval as soon as she was told he was to go with them. Imagine how these stealthy assailants trembled and panted when the moment of action came. Imagine if you can, the tumult in Margaret's breast, the thrilling hopes chasing and chased by sickening fears, the strange and perhaps unparalleled mixture of tender familiarity and distant awe, with which a lovely and high-spirited, but tender, adoring woman, wife in the eye of the law, and no wife in the eye of the church, trembling, blushing, pailing, glowing, shivering, stole at night, noiseless as the dew upon the hermit of Gouda, and the stars above seemed never so bright and calm. End of Chapter 91 Recording by Tom Denham Chapter 92 of The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reid This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Denham Yes, the hermit of Gouda was the vicar of Gouda and knew it not, so absolute was his seclusion. My reader is aware that the moment the frenzy of his passion passed, he was seized with remorse for having been betrayed into it. But perhaps only those who have risen as high in religious spirit as he had, and suddenly fallen, can realize the terror at himself that took possession of him. He felt like one whom self-confidence had betrayed to the very edge of a precipice. Ah, good Jerome, he cried! How much better you knew me than I knew myself! How bitter yet wholesome was your admonition! Accustomed to search his own heart, he saw at once that the true cause of his fury was Margaret. I love her then better than God, said he despairingly, better than the church, from such a love what can spring to me or to her. He shuddered at the thought. Let the strong battle-temptation tis for the weak to flee, and who is weaker than I have shown myself? What is my penitence, my religion? A pack of cards built by degrees into a fair seeming structure, and low one breath of earthly love, and it lies in the dust. I must begin again, and on assure a foundation. He resolved to leave Holland at once, and spend years of his life in some distant convent before returning to it. By that time, the temptations of earthly passion would be doubly baffled, an older and a better monk, he should be more master of his earthly affections, and Margaret, seeing herself abandoned, would marry and love another. The very anguish this last thought cost him, showed the self-searcher and self-denier that he was on the path of religious duty. But in leaving her for his immortal good and hers, he was not to neglect her temporal wheel. Indeed, the sweet thought, he could make her comfortable for life and rich in this world's goods, which she was not bound to despise, sustained him in the bitter struggle it cost him to turn his back on her without one kind word or look. Oh, what will she think of me, he groaned. Shall I not seem to her of all creatures the most heartless in human? But so best, I bet she should hate me miserable that I am. Heaven is merciful and giveth my broken heart this comfort. I can make that villain restore her own, and she shall never lose another true lover by poverty. Another? Ah, me! Ah, me! God and the saint to my need! How he fared on this errand has been related. But first, as you may perhaps remember, he went at night to strive the hermit of Gouda. He found him dying, and never left him till he had closed his eyes and buried him beneath the floor of the little oratory attached to his cell. It was the peaceful end of a stormy life. The hermit had been a soldier, and even now carried a steel courselet next his skin, saying he was now Christ's soldier as he had been Satan's. When Clement had shriven him and prayed by him, he in his turn sought counsel of one who was dying in so pious a frame. The hermit advised him to be his successor in this peaceful retreat. His had been a hard fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and he had never thoroughly baffled them till he retired into the citadel of solitude. These words and the hermit's pious and peaceful death, which speedily followed, and set, as it were, the seal of immortal truth on them made a deep impression upon Clement. Nor in his case had they any prejudice to combat. The solitary recluse was still profoundly revered in the church, whether immured as an anchorite or anchoress in some cave or cell belonging to a monastery, or hidden in the more savage but laxer seclusion of the independent hermitage. And Clement knew more about the hermits of the church than most divines at his time of life. He had read much thereon at the monastery near Taigu, and had devoured their lives with wonder and delight in the manuscripts of the Vatican, and conversed earnestly about them with the mendicant friars of several nations. Before printing, these friars were the great circulators of those local annals and biographies which accumulated in the convents of every land. Then his teacher Jerome had been three years an anchorite on the heights of Camaldoli, where for more than four centuries the Thebaid had been revived. And Jerome called and curt on most religious themes was warm with enthusiasm on this one. He had poured over the annals of St. John Baptist Abbey round about which the hermit's caves were scattered, and told him the names of many a noble and many a famous warrior who had ended his days there, a hermit, and of many a bishop and archbishop who had passed from the sea to the hermitage, or from the hermitage to the sea. Among the former the archbishop of Ravenna, among the latter Pope Victor the Ninth. He told him too with grim delight of their multifarious austerities, and how each hermit set himself to find where he was weakest and attacked himself without mercy or remission till there, even there he was strongest, and how seven times in the twenty-four hours, in thunder, rain or snow, by daylight, twilight, moonlight, or torchlight, the solitaries flocked from distant points over rugged precipitous ways to worship in the convent church, at matins, at prime, tiers, sects, known as vespers and compline. He even, under eager questioning, described to him the persons of famous anchorites he had sung the solter and prayed with there, the only intercourse their vows allowed except with special permission. Moncata, the Duke of Moncata and Cardova, and Hidalgo of Spain, who in the flower of his youth had retired thither from the pumps, vanities, and pleasures of the world. Father John Baptist of Novara, who had led armies to battle, but was now a private soldier of Christ. Cornelius, Samuel, and Sylvanus. This last, when the great Duchess DiMidici obtained the Pope's leave, hitherto refused to visit Camaldoli, went down and met her at the first wooden cross, and there, surrounded as she was, with courtiers and flatterers, remonstrated with her, and persuaded her, and warned her not to profane that holy mountain, where no woman for so many centuries had placed her foot, and she, awed by the place and the man, retreated with all her captains, soldiers, courtiers, and pages from that one hoary hermit. At Baal, Clement found fresh materials, especially with respect to German and English anchorites, and he had even prepared a Katina Eremitarum from the year of our Lord 250, when Paul of Thebes commenced his 90 years of solitude down to the year 1470. He called them Angalorum amici et animallium, i.e. friends of angels and animals. Thus, though in those days he never thought to be a recluse, the road was paved, so to speak, and when the dying hermit of Gouda blessed the citadel of solitude, where he had fought the good fight, and won it, and invited him to take up the breastplate of faith that now fell off his own shrunken body, Clement said within himself, Heaven itself led my foot hither to this end. It struck him, too, as no small coincidence that his patron, Saint Bavon, was a hermit, and an austere one, a cuirassier of the solitary cell. As soon as he was reconciled to Giesbrecht van Thuiten, he went eagerly to his abode, praying heaven it might not have been already occupied in these three days. The fear was not vain, these famous dens never wanted a human tenant long. He found the rude stone door ajar, then he made sure he was too late. He opened the door and went softly in. No, the cell was vacant, and there were the hermit's great ivory crucifix, his pens, ink, seeds, and memento morai, a skull. His sillis of hair, and another of bristles, his well-worn sheepskin police, and hood, his hammer, chisel, and sultry, et cetera. Men and women had passed that way, but none had ventured to intrude far less to steal. Faith and simplicity had guarded that keyless door more securely than the houses of the laity were defended by their gates like a modern jail, and think iron bars at every window, and the gentry by moat, bastion, chavo de frieze, and portcullis. As soon as Clement was fairly in the cell there was a loud flap and a flutter, and down came a great brown owl from a corner and whirled out of the window, driving the air cold on Clement's face. He started and shuddered. Was this seeming owl something diabolical, trying to deter him from his soul's good? On second thought might it not be some good spirit the hermit had employed to keep the cell for him, perhaps the hermit himself? Finally he concluded that it was just an owl, and that he would try and make friends with it. He kneeled down and inaugurated his new life with prayer. Clement had not only an earthly passion to quell, the power of which made him tremble for his eternal wheel, but he had a penance to do for having given way to ire his besetting sin, and cursed his own brothers. He looked round this roomy cell furnished with so many comforts, and compared it with the pictures in his mind of the hideous place Eremus in Eremot, a desert in a desert where Holy Jerome, Hermit, and the Plutarch of Hermits, had wrestled with sickness, temptation, and despair for mortal years, and with the inaccessible and thorny niche a whole inner precipice, where the boy Hermit Benedict buried himself, and lived three years on the pittance the good monk Romanus could spare him from his scanty commons, and subdivided that mouthful with his friend a raven, and the hollow tree of his patron St. Bavon, and the earthly purgatory at Freiburg, where lived a nameless saint in a horrid cavern, his eyes chilled with perpetual gloom, and his ears stunned with an eternal waterfall, and the pillar on which St. Simeon's stylita existed forty-five years, and the destiner or stonebox of St. Dunstan, where, like Hilarion in his bulrush hive, Sir Pulcro Potious Quam Domu, he could scarce sit, stand, or lie, and the living tombs, sealed with lead of Theus, and Christina, and other recluses, and the damp dungeon of St. Alred. These, and scores more of the dismal dens in which true Hermits had worn out their wasted bodies on the rock, and the rock under their sleeping bodies, and their praying knees all came into his mind, and he said to himself, This sweet retreat is for safety of the soul, but what for penance Jesus aid me against faults to come, and for the fault I rue, face of man I will not see for a twelve-month and a day? He had famous precedents in his eye even for this last and unusual severity. In fact, the original hermit of this very cell was clearly under the same vow, hence the two apertures through which he was spoken to and replied. Adopting, in other respects, the uniform rule of Hermits and Anchorites, he divided his day into the seven offices, ignoring the petty accidents of light and dark, creations both of him to whom he prayed so unceasingly. He learned the Psalter by heart, and in all the intervals of devotion, not occupied by broken slumbers, he worked hard with his hands. No article of the hermit's rule was more strict or more ancient than this, and here his self-imposed penance embarrassed him for what work could he do without being seen that should benefit his neighbours. For the hermit was to labour for himself in those cases only where his subsistence depended on it. Now Clement's modest needs were amply supplied by the villagers. On moonlight nights he would steal out like a thief, and dig some poor man's garden on the outskirts of the village. He made baskets, and dropped them slyly at humble doors, and since he could do nothing for the bodies of those who passed by his cell in daytime, he went out in the dead of the night with his hammer and his chisel, and carved moral and religious sentences all down the road upon the sandstone rocks. Who knows, said he, often a chance-shaft strikes home. Oh, sore heart, comfort thou the poor and bereaved with holy words of solace in their native tongue, for he said, Well, tis clavis ad corda plebis. Also he remembered the learned Colonna had told him of the written mountains in the east, where kings had inscribed their victories. What, said Clement, are they so wise, those eastern monarchs, to engrave their warlike glory upon the rock, making a blood-bubble endure so long as earth? And shall I leave the rocks about me silent on the king of glory, at whose word they were, and at whose breath they shall be dust? Nay, but these stones shall speak to weary wayfarers of eternal peace, and of the Lamb whose frail and afflicted yet happy servant worketh them along. Now at this time the inspired words that have consoled the poor and the afflicted for so many ages were not yet printed in Dutch, so that these sentences of gold from the Holy Evangelists came like fresh oracles from heaven, or like the dew-on-parched flowers, and the poor hermit's written rock softened a heart or two, and sent the heavy laden, singing on their way, a footnote here. One. It requires nowadays a strong effort of the imagination to realize the effect on poor people who had never seen them before of such sentences as this, blessed are the poor, etc. To continue. These holy oracles that seemed to spring up around him like magic, his prudent answers through his window to such a sought-coastly council, and above all his invisibility, soon gained him a prodigious reputation. This was not diminished by the medical advice they now and then extorted from him saw against his will by tears and entreaties, for if the patients got well they gave the holy hermit the credit, and if not, they laid all the blame on the devil. I think he killed nobody, for his remedies were womanish and weak, sage and wormwood, scion, hissep, borage, spikenard, dog's tongue, our lady's mantel, fever-few, and faith, and all in small quantities, except the last. Then his abstinence, sure sign of a saint. The eggs and milk they brought him at first, he refused with horror. No ye not, the hermit's rule is bread or herbs, and water? Eggs they are birds in disguise, for when the bird dyeth, then the egg rotteth. As for milk, it is little better than white blood, and when they brought him too much bread, he refused it. Then they used to press it on him. Nay, holy father, give the over-plus to the poor. You who go among the poor can do that better. Is bread a thing to fling haphazard from an hermit's window? And to those who persisted after this, to live on charity, yet place or bountiful, is to lie with the right hand. Giving another's to the poor, I should beguile them of their thanks, and cheat thee the true-giver. Thus do thieves, whose boast it is they bleed the rich into the lap of the poor. Ocasio, avaritii, no men porperum. When nothing else would convince the good souls, this piece of Latin all was brought them round. So would a line of virgils aneared. This great reputation of sanctity was all external. Inside the cell was a man who held the hermit of Gouda as cheap as dirt. Ah, said he, I cannot deceive myself. I cannot deceive God's animals. See the little birds, how coy they be. I feed and feed them and long for their friendship. Yet will they never come within, nor take my hand by lighting on't. For why? No poor, no Benedict, no Hugh of Lincoln, no Columba, no Goothlack Bides in this cell. Hunter Doe, flyeth not hither, for there is no fructuosus. Nor Avanteen, nor Albert of Suebier, nor Ena Pretty Squirrel, cometh from the wood hard-buy for the acorns I have ordered, for here a Bides no Columban. The very owl that was here hath fled. They are not to be deceived. I have a pope's word for that. Heaven rest his soul. Clement had won advantage over her whose image in his heart he was bent on destroying. He had suffered and survived the pang of bereavement, and the mind cannot quite repeat such anguish. Then he had built up a habit of looking on her as dead. After that strange scene in the church and churchyard of St. Lawrence, that habit might be compared to a structure riven by a thunderbolt. It was shattered, but stones enough stood to found a similar habit on, to look on her as dead to him. And by severe subdivision of his time and thoughts, by unceasing prayers and manual labour, he did in about three months succeed in benumbing the earthly half of his heart. But lo, within a day or two of this first symptom of mental peace returning slowly, they descended upon his mind a horrible despondency. Words cannot utter it, for words never yet painted a likeness of despair. Voices seemed to whisper in his ear, kill myself, kill, kill, kill! And he longed to obey the voices, for life was intolerable. He wrestled with his dark enemy, with prayers and tears. He prayed God but to vary his temptation. O let my enemy have power to scourge me with red-hot whips, to tear me leagues and leagues over rugged places by the hair of my head, as he has served many a holy hermit that yet baffled him at last. To fly on me like a raging lion, to know me with the serpents fangs, any pain, any terror, but this horrible gloom of the soul that shuts me from all light of thee and of the saints. And now a freezing thought crossed him. What if the triumphs of the powers of darkness over Christian souls in desert places had been suppressed, and only their defeats recorded, or at least in full, for dark hints were scattered about antiquity, that now first began to grin at him with terrible meaning? They wandered in the desert and perished by serpents, said an ancient father of hermit that went into solitude, and was seen no more. And another, at a more recent epoch, wrote, Vertuntu ad melancholium, they turned to gloomy madness. These two statements, were they not one? For the ancient fathers never spoke with regret of the death of the body. No, the hermit's soul lost, were perished souls, and the serpents were diabolical thoughts, the natural brood of solitude. A second footnote. The primitive writer was so interpreted by others besides Clement, and in particular by Peter of Blois, a divine of the twelfth century, whose comment is noteworthy, as he himself was a forty-year hermit. To continue, Saint Jerome went into the desert with three companions. One fled in the first year, two died. How? The single one that lasted was a gigantic soul with an iron body. The contemporary who related this made no comment, and expressed no wonder. What then, if here was a glimpse of the true proportion in every age, and many souls had always been lost in solitude, for one gigantic mind, a iron body, that survived this terrible ordeal. The darkened recluse now cast his despairing eyes over antiquity, to see what weapons the Christian arsenal contained that might befriend him. The greatest of all was prayer. Alas, it was a part of his malady to be unable to pray with true fervour. The very system of mechanical supplication he had for months carried out so severely by rule had rather checked than fostered his power of originating true prayer. He prayed louder than ever, but the heart hung back, cold and gloomy, and let the words go up alone. Poor wingless prayers, he cried, you will not get half way to heaven. A fiend of this complexion had been driven out of King Saul by music. Clement took up the hermit's sultry, and with much trouble mended the strings and tuned it. No, he could not play it. His soul was so out of tune. The sounds jarred on it, and made him almost mad. Ah, wretched me, he cried. Saul had a saint to play to him. He was not alone with the spirits of darkness, but here is no sweet bard of Israel to play to me. Ah, lonely with crushed heart on which a black fiend-sitteth mountain high must make the music to uplift that heart to heaven, it may not be. And he groveled on the earth, whipping and tearing his hair. Verte batua ad melancholium End of chapter 92 Recording by Tom Denham Chapter 93 of The Cloyster and the Hearth by Charles Reid This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Tom Denham. One day, as he lay there sighing and groaning, prayerless, tuneless, hopeless, a thought flashed into his mind. What he had done for the poor and the wayfarer, he would do for himself. He would fill his den of despair with the name of God and the magic words of holy writ, and the pious, prayerful consolations of the church. Then, like Christian at Apollyon's feet, he reached his hand suddenly out and caught, not his sword, for he had none. But peaceful labour's humbler weapon, his chisel, and worked with it as if his soul depended on his arm. They say that Michael Angelo in the next generation used to carve statues not like our timid sculptors by modelling the work in clay and then setting a mechanic to chisel it, but would seize the block, conceive the image, and at once, with mallet and steel, make the marble chips fly like mad about him, and the mass sprout into form. Even so, Clement drew no lines to guide his hand. He went to his memory for the gracious words, and then dashed at his work and eagerly graved them in the soft stone between working and fighting. He begged his visitors for candle-ends and rancid oil. Anything is good enough for me, he said, if twill but burn. So at night the cave glowed afar off like a blacksmith's forge, through the window and the gaping chinks of the rude stone door, and the rustics beholding crossed themselves and suspected deviltries, and within the holy talismans one after another came upon the walls, and the sparks and the chips flew day and night, night and day, as the soldier of solitude and of the church plied with size and groans his bloodless weapon between working and fighting. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, ton satanen sun trips on upo tour's potas imwin, which means beat down Satan under our feet. Sorsum corda, up hearts, deus refugium nostrum advirtus, O God, our refuge and strength. Anyus dei kitollis pecat amundi miserari mihi, O Lamb of God that take us away the sins of the world, have mercy upon me. Sancta trinitas unus deus, miserari nobis, O holy trinity, one God, have mercy upon us. Ab infestationibus demonum, avantura ira, adam natione perpetua, libera nost domine, from the assaults of demons, from the wrath to come, from everlasting damnation, deliver us, O Lord. Deus chimiro ordine angelorum ministeria, etc. The whole collect. See the English collect, Saint Michael and all angels. Quem queremus adjutorem nisai te domine ki pro pecatis nostris juste iriscaris, of whom may we seek succor but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins are justly displeased. And that torrent of prayer, the following verse, Sancta deus sancta fortis sancta et misericos salvator amore morti ne trados nos. And underneath the great crucifix, which was fastened to the wall, he graved this from Augustine. O anima cristiana, respi che vulnara patientis, sanguinem morientis, pretium redemptionis, hech quanta sind cogitate et instaturamentis vestre appendite ut totus verbus figetur incode, ki pro verbus totus fixis est incrute, nam si passio cristi ad memoriam revocitur, nihil est tam durum quod non equo animo toleritur, which may be thus rendered. O Christian soul, look on the wounds of the suffering one, the blood of the dying one, the price paid for our redemption. These things, O think, how great they be, and weigh them in the balance of thy mind, that he may be wholly nailed to thy heart, who for thee was all nailed unto the cross. For do but call to mind the sufferings of Christ, and there is not on earth too hard to endure with composure. Soothed a little, a very little, by the sweet and pious words he was raising all round him, and weighed down with watching and working night and day, Clement one morning sank prostrate with fatigue, and a deep sleep overpowered him for many hours. Awaking quietly, he heard a little, cheap. He opened his eyes and low upon his breviary, which was on a low stool near his feet, ruffling all his feathers with a single pull, and soothing them as suddenly, and cocking his bill this way and that, with a vast display of cunning purely imaginary, perched a robin red breast. Clement held his breath. He half-closed his eyes lest they should frighten the airy guest. Down came robin on the floor. When there, he went through his pantomime of astuteness, and then, pim-pim-pim, with three stiff little hops like a ball of Worcestered on vertical wires, he was on the hermit's bare foot. On this eminence he swelled and contracted again with ebb and flow of feathers. But Clement lost this, for he quite closed his eyes, and scarce drew his breath in fear of frightening and losing his visitor. He was content to feel the minute claw on his foot. He could but just feel it, and that, by help of knowing it, was there. Presently a little flirt with two little wings, and the feathered busybody was on the breviary again. Then Clement determined to try and feed this pretty little fidget without frightening it away. But it was very difficult. He had a piece of bread within reach, but how get at it? I think he was five minutes creeping his hand up to that bread, and when there, he must not move his arm. He slyly got a crumb between a finger and thumb, and shot it as boys do marbles, keeping the hand quite still. Cock robin saw it fall near him and did sagacity, but moved not. When another followed, and then another, he popped down and caught up one of the crumbs, but not quite understanding this mystery fled with it for more security to an eminence, to it the hermit's knee. And so the game proceeded till a much larger fragment than usual rolled along. Here was a prize. Cock robin pounced on it, bore it aloft, and fled so swiftly into the world with it, the cave resounded with the buffeted air. Now bless thee, sweet bird, sighed the stricken solitary. Thy wings are music, and thou a feathered ray came to light my darkened soul. And from that to his horizons, and then to his tools with a little bit of courage, and this was his day's work. Veni creato spiritus mentes tuorum visita, Imple superna gratia que tu creasti pectora. Acende luminem sensibus mentes tuorum visita, Infirma nostri corporis virtute firman's perpetti. And so the days rolled on, and the weather got colder, and Clement's heart got warmer, and despondency was rolling away, and by and by some hour or another it was gone. He had outlived it. It had come like a cloud, and it went like one. And presently all was reversed, his cell seemed illuminated with joy, his work pleased him, his prayers were full of unction, his psalms of praise. Hosts of little birds followed their crimson leader, and flying from snow, and a parish full of canes, made friends one after another with able, fast friends. And one keen frosty night as he sang the praises of God to his tuneful sultry, and his hollow cave rang forth the holy salmody upon the night, as if that cave itself was tubeless surrounding shell or David's harp, he heard a clear whine, not unmelodious, it became louder and less in tune. He peeped through the chinks of his rude door, and there sat a great red wolf, moaning melodiously with his nose high in the air. Clement was rejoiced. My sins are going, he cried, and the creatures of God are owning me one after another, and in a burst of enthusiasm he struck up the Lord, praise him, molly creatures of his, let everything that hath breath praise the Lord, and all the time he sang the wolf bade at intervals. But above all he seemed now to be drawing nearer to that celestial intercourse, which was the sign and the bliss of the true hermit, for he had dreams about the saints and angels so vivid they were more like visions. He saw bright figures clad in woven snow, they bent on him, eyes lovelier than those of the antelopes he had seen at Rome, and fanned him with broad wings, hued like the rainbow, and their gentle voices bade him speed upon his course. He had not long enjoyed this felicity when his dreams began to take another, and a strange complexion. He wandered with frical honour over the relics of antique nations, and the friar was lame and had a staff, and this staff he waved over the mighty ruins, and were the Egyptian, Greek or Roman, straightway the temples and palaces whose wrecks they were, rose again like an exhalation, and were thronged with the famous dead. Songsters that might have eclipsed both Apollo and his rival, poured forth their lays, women godlike in form, and draped like manoeuvre, swam round the marble courts in voluptuous but easy and graceful dances. Here sculptors carved away amidst admiring pupils, and forms of supernatural beauty grew out of Parian marble in a quarter of an hour, and grave philosophers conversed on high and subtle matters, with youth listening reverently. It was a long time ago. And still, beneath all this wonderful panorama, a sort of suspicion or expectation lurked in the dreamer's mind. This is a prologue, a flourish, there is something behind, something that means me no good, something mysterious, awful. And one night, that the wizard Cologne had transcended himself, he pointed with his stick, and there was a swallowing up of many great ancient cities, and the pair stood on a vast sandy plain, with a huge crimson sun sinking to rest. There were great palm trees, and there were bulrush hives, scarce a man's height, dotted all about to the sandy horizon, and the crimson sun. These are the anchorites of the Theban desert, said Cologne calmly, followers not of Christ, and his apostles, and the great fathers, but of the Greek pupils, of the Egyptian pupils, of the Brahmans and Gymnocipists. And Clement thought that he burned to go and embrace the holy men, and tell them his troubles, and seek their advice. But he was tied by the feet somehow, and could not move, and the crimson sun sank, and it got dusk, and the hives scarce visible. And Cologne's figure became shadowy and shapeless, but his eyes glowed ten times brighter. And this thing all eyes spoke, and said, Nay, let them be, a pack of fools I see how dismal it all is. Then with a sudden sprightliness, but I hear one of them has a manuscript of Petronius on papyrus, I go to buy it, farewell, forever, forever, forever. And it was pitch dark, and a light came at Clement's back like a gentle stroke, a glorious rosate light. It warmed as well as brightened, it loosened his feet from the ground, he turned round and there, her face irradiated with sunshine, and her hair glittering like the gloriola of a saint was Margaret Brandt. She blushed and smiled, and cast a look of ineffable tenderness on him. Gerard, she murmured, Be who's thou wilt by day, but at night, be mine? Even as she spoke, the agitation of seeing her so suddenly awakened him, and he found himself lying trembling from head to foot. That radiant figure and mellow voice seemed to have struck his nightly keynote. Awake, he could pray and praise and worship God. He was master of his thoughts, but if he closed his eyes in sleep, Margaret, or Satan in her shape, beset him a seeming angel of light. He might dream of a thousand different things, wide as the poles asunder, ere he woke the imperial figure, was sure to come, and extinguish all the rest in a moment. Stella's exotus, Ute Aetherius Sol, for she came glowing with two beauties never before united, an angel's radiance, and a woman's blushes. Angels cannot blush, so he knew it was a fiend. He was alarmed, but not so much surprised at the demon's last artifice. From Anthony to Nicholas of the Rock, scarce hermit that had not been thus beset. Sometimes with gave eluptuous visions, sometimes with lovely phantoms, warm, tangible, and womanly without, demons within, nor always baffled even by the saints. Witness that angel form with the devil's heart that came hanging its lovely head like a bruised flower to St. Macarius, with a feigned tail, and wept, and wept, and wept, and beguiled him first of his tears, and then of half his virtue. But with the examples of satanic power and craft had come down copious records of the hermit's triumphs, and the weapons by which they had conquered. Domando messed corpus. The body must be tamed. This had been their watchword for 1200 years. It was a tremendous war cry, for they called the earthly affections, as well as appetites, body, and crushed the whole heart through the suffering and mortified flesh. Clement then said to himself that the great enemy of man had retired but to spring with more effect, and had allowed him a few days of true purity and joy, only to put him off his guard against the soft blandishments he was pouring over the soul that had survived the buffeting of his black wings. He applied himself to tame the body. He shortened his sleep, lengthened his prayers, and increased his severe temperance to abstinence. Hitherto, following the ordinary rule, he had eaten only at sunset. Now he ate but once in 48 hours, drinking a little water every day. On this the visions became more distinct. Then he flew to a famous antidote to the grand febri-fuge of anchorites, cold water. He found the deepest part of the stream that ran by his cell. It rose not far off at a holy well, and clearing the bottom of the large stones made a hole where he could stand in water to the chin, and fortified by so many examples, he sprang from his rude bed upon the next diabolical assault and entered the icy water. It made him gasp, and almost shriek with the cold. It froze his marrow. I shall die, he cried. I shall die, but better this than fire eternal. And the next day he was so stiff in all his joints he could not move, and he seemed one great ache. And even in sleep he felt that his very bones were like so many raging teeth, till the phantom he dreaded came and gave one pitying smile, and all the pain was gone. Then, feeling that to go into the icy water again, enfeebled by fasts as he was, might perhaps carry the guilt of suicide. He scourged himself till the blood ran and so lay down smarting. And when exhaustion began to blunt the smart down to a throb, that moment the present was away, and the past came smiling back. He sat with Margaret at the Duke's feast, the minstrels played divinely, and the purple fountains gushed. Youth and love reigned in each heart, and perfumed the very air. Then the scene shifted, and they stood at the altar together, man and wife, and no interruption this time, and they wandered hand in hand, and told each other their horrible dreams. As for him, he had dreamed she was dead, and he was a monk, and really the dream had been so vivid and so full of particulars that only his eyesight could even now convince him it was only a dream, and they were really one. And this new keynote once struck every tune ran upon it. Awake he was Clement the Hermit, risen from unearthly visions of the night, as dangerous as they were sweet. Asleep he was Gerard Eliason, the happy husband of the loveliest and best, and truest girl in Holland, all the happier that he had been for some time the sport of hideous dreams in which he had lost her. His constant fasts, coupled with other austerities, and the deep mental anxiety of a man fighting with a supernatural foe, had now reduced him nearly to a skeleton. But still, on those quivering bones hung flesh unsubdued, and quivering with unearthly passion, so, however he thought, or why had ill spirits such power over him? His opinion was confirmed, when one day he detected himself sinking to sleep actually with a feeling of complacency, because now Margaret would come and he should feel no more pain, and the unreal would be real and the real unreal for an hour. On this he rose hastily with a cry of dismay, and stripping to the skin, climbed up to the brambles above his cave, and flung himself on them, and rolled on them writhing with the pain. Then he came into his den a mass of gore, and lay moaning for hours, till out of sheer exhaustion he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. He awoke to bodily pain and mental exultation. He had broken the fatal spell. Yes, it was broken, another and another day passed, and her image molested him no more. But he caught himself sighing at his victory. The birds got tamer and tamer, they perched upon his hand. Two of them let him gild their little claws. Eating but once in two days he had more to give them. His tranquility was not to last long. A woman's voice came in from the outside, told him his own story in a very few words, and asked him to tell her where Gerard was to be found. He was so astounded, he could only say, with an instinct of self-defense, pray for the soul of Gerard, the son of Eli, meaning that he was dead to the world. And he sat wondering. When the woman was gone, he determined, after an inward battle, to risk being seen, and he peeped after her to see who it could be. But he took so many precautions, and she ran so quickly back to her friend that the road was clear. Satan! said he directly. And that night back came his visions of earthly love and happiness, so vividly he could count every orburn hair in Margaret's head, and see the pupils of her eyes. Then he began to despair and said, I must leave this country, here I am bound fast in memory's chain, and began to dread his cell. He said, a breath from hell hath infected it, and robbed even these holy words of their virtue. And unconsciously imitating Saint Jerome, a victim of earthly hallucinations, as overpowering and coarser, he took his warmest covering out into the wood hard by, and there flung down under a tree that torn and wrinkled leather bag of bones, which a little ago might have served a sculptor for Apollo. Whether the fever of his imagination intermitted, as a mastermind of our day has shown that all things intermit, the opinion of Dr. Dixon, author of fallacies of the faculty, etc., or that this really broke some subtle link, I know not, but his sleep was dreamless. He awoke nearly frozen, but warm with joy within. I shall yet be a true hermit, Day Gratia, said he. The next day some good soul left on his little platform a new lambswool pellice and cape, warm, soft, and ample. He had a moment's misgiving on account of its delicious softness and warmth, but that passed. It was the right skin, and a mark that heaven approved his present course. In a footnote, it is related of a medieval hermit that being offered a garment made of cat skins. He rejected it, saying, I have heard of a lamb of God, but I have never heard of a cat of God. It restored warmth to his bones after he came in from his short rest. And now, at one moment, he saw victory before him, if he could but live to it. At another, he said to himself, Tis but another lull, beyond thy God, Clement. And this thought agitated his nerves, and kept him in continual awe. He was like a soldier within the enemy's lines. One night, a beautiful, clear, frosty night, he came back to his cell after a short rest. The stars were wonderful. Heaven seemed a thousand times larger as well as brighter than earth, and to look with a thousand eyes instead of one. Oh, wonderful, he cried, that there should be men who do crimes by night, and others scarce, less mad, who live for this little world, and not for that great and glorious one, which nightly, to all eyes not blinded by custom, reveals its glowing glories. Thank God I am a hermit! And in this mood, he came to his cell door. He paused at it. It was closed. Why, me thought, I left it open, said he. The wind! There is not a breath of wind. What means this? He stood with his hand upon the rugged door. He looked through one of the great chinks, for it was much smaller in places than the aperture it pretended to close, and saw his little oil wick burning just where he had left it. How is it with me? he sighed, when I start and tremble at nothing. Either I did shut it, or the fiend hath shut it after me to disturb my happy soul. Retro Sathanus. And he entered his cave rapidly, and began with somewhat nervous expedition to light one of his largest tapers. While he was lighting it, there was a soft sigh in the cave. He started and dropped the candle, just as it was lighting, and it went out. He stooped for it hurriedly, and lighted it, listening intently. When it was lighted, he shaded it with his hand from behind, and threw the faint light all round the cell. In the farthest corner, the outline of the wall seemed broken. He took a step towards the place, with his heart beating. The candle at the same time getting brighter, he saw it was the figure of a woman. Another step, with his knees knocking together. It was Margaret Brandt. End of chapter 93. Recording by Tom Denham