THE CLOISTER
THE new pope favoured the Dominican order.The convent received a message from the Vatican, requiring a capable friar to teach at the University of Basle.Now Clement was the very monk for this:
well versed in languages, and in his worldly days had attended the lectures of Guarini the younger.His visit to England was therefore postponed though not resigned; and meantime he was sent to Basle; but not being wanted there for three months, he was to preach on the road.
He passed out of the northern gate with his eyes lowered, and the whole man wrapped in pious contemplation.
Oh, if we could paint a mind and its story, what a walking fresco was this barefooted friar!
Hopeful, happy love, bereavement, despair, impiety, vice, suicide, remorse, religious despondency, penitence, death to the world, resignation.
And all in twelve short months.
And now the traveller was on foot again.But all was changed: no perilous adventures now.The very thieves and robbers bowed to the ground before him, and instead of robbing him, forced stolen money on him, and begged his prayers.
This journey therefore furnished few picturesque incidents.Ihave, however, some readers to think of, who care little for melodrama, and expect a quiet peep at what passes inside a man, To such students things undramatic are often vocal, denoting the progress of a mind.
The first Sunday of Clement's journey was marked by this.He prayed for the soul of Margaret.He had never done so before.Not that her eternal welfare was not dearer to him than anything on earth.It was his humility.The terrible impieties that burst from him on the news of her death horrified my well-disposed readers;but not as on reflection they horrified him who had uttered them.
For a long time during his novitiate he was oppressed with religious despair.He thought he must have committed that sin against the Holy Spirit which dooms the soul for ever, By degrees that dark cloud cleared away, Anselmo juvante; but deep self-abasement remained.He felt his own salvation insecure, and moreover thought it would be mocking Heaven, should he, the deeply stained, pray for a soul so innocent, comparatively, as Margaret's.So he used to coax good Anselm and another kindly monk to pray for her.They did not refuse, nor do it by halves.In general the good old monks (and there were good, bad, and indifferent in every convent) had a pure and tender affection for their younger brethren, which, in truth, was not of this world.
Clement then, having preached on Sunday morning in a small Italian town, and being mightily carried onward, was greatly encouraged;and that day a balmy sense of God's forgiveness and love descended on him.And he prayed for the welfare of Margaret's soul.And from that hour this became his daily habit, and the one purified tie, that by memory connected his heart with earth.
For his family were to him as if they had never been.
The Church would not share with earth.Nor could even the Church cure the great love without annihilating the smaller ones.
During most of this journey Clement rarely felt any spring of life within him, but when he was in the pulpit.The other exceptions were, when he happened to relieve some fellow-creature.
A young man was tarantula bitten, or perhaps, like many more, fancied it.Fancy or reality, he had been for two days without sleep, and in most extraordinary convulsions, leaping, twisting, and beating the walls.The village musicians had only excited him worse with their music.Exhaustion and death followed the disease, when it gained such a head.Clement passed by and learned what was the matter.He sent for a psaltery, and tried the patient with soothing melodies; but if the other tunes maddened him, Clement's seemed to crush him.He groaned and moaned under them, and grovelled on the floor.At last the friar observed that at intervals his lips kept going.He applied his ear, and found the patient was whispering a tune; and a very singular one, that had no existence.He learned this tune and played it.The patient's face brightened amazingly.He marched about the room on the light fantastic toe enjoying it; and when Clement's fingers ached nearly off with playing it, he had the satisfaction of seeing the young man sink complacently to sleep to this lullaby, the strange creation of his own mind; for it seems he was no musician, and never composed a tune before or after.This sleep saved his life.
And Clement, after teaching the tune to another, in case it should be wanted again, went forward with his heart a little warmer.On another occasion he found a mob haling a decently dressed man along, who struggled and vociferated, but in a strange language.