As they rise, the veil is riven!
They are rising! I am rising—
Rising with them into Heaven!—
Rising with those shining legions
Into life’s eternal regions!
XXVIII.—THE MONK OF ST. FRANCIS.
STERNE.
1. A poor monk, of the Order of St. Francis, came into the room to beg something for his convent. The moment I cast my eyes upon him, I was determined not to give him a single sous; and accordingly I put my purse into my pocket—buttoned it up—set myself a little more upon my center, and advanced up gravely to him: there was something, I fear, forbidding[235] in my look: I have his figure[236] this moment before my eyes, and think there was that in it which deserved better.
2. The monk, as I judged from the break in his tonsure, a few scattered white hairs upon his temples being all that remained of it, might be about seventy; but from his eyes and that sort of fire which was in them, which seemed more tempered[237] by courtesy than years, he could be no more than sixty—truth might lie between—he was certainly sixty-five; and the general air of his countenance, notwithstanding something seemed to have been planting wrinkles in it before their time, agreed to the account.
3. It was one of those heads which Guido has often painted—mild, pale, penetrating; free from all commonplace ideas of fat contented ignorance, looking downwards upon the earth. It looked forwards; but looked as if it looked at something beyond this world.... It would have suited a Brahmin;[238] and had I met it upon the plains of Hindostan, I had reverenced it.