The Saint

by Antonio Fogazzaro

“Piero, but when he came here he wished to part with that name, and begged me to give him another. I chose ‘Benedetto’—it seemed the most appropriate.” At this point the Abbot expressed a wish to see Signor Benedetto, and desired Don Clemente to send him to him on the following morning after the office in the choir. At this Don Clemente was somewhat embarrassed, and had to confess that he could not promise to do so, because, as it happened, the young man had gone out among the hills to pass the night in prayer, and he did not know precisely at what hour he would return. The Abbot was greatly annoyed, and mumbled a series of reproaches and caustic remarks. Don Clemente therefore decided to tell him of the meeting with Signora Dessalle, the former mistress; of what had followed on the way home, of his determination to send Benedetto to Jenne, and to oblige him to remain there until the woman had gone. The Father Superior kept up a continuous, low grumbling, and heard him with knitted brows.

“Here,” he exclaimed at last, “you are going back to the days of St. Benedict! to the wiles of shameless women! Let your Benedetto go, let him go, let him go! To Jenne and farther still! And you were not going to tell me this? Did it seem a matter of slight consequence? Was it of no consequence that intrigues of this sort should be carried on round the monastery? Now go; go, I say!”

Don Clemente was about to answer that he had not known of any intrigue, nor if the woman had recognised his disciple; that at any rate he had already informed Benedetto of his intention of sending him away; but he silenced this useless self-justification and, kneeling, took leave of the Abbot.

Don Clemente took up again the tiny lantern, which he had left in the corridor, but did not go to his cell. Slowly, very slowly, he walked to the end of the corridor; slowly, very slowly, and not without frequent pauses, he descended by a little winding stair to the other passage leading to the chapter-hall. The thought of his beloved disciple wandering amidst the darkness on the mountains; the anticipation of the resolutions he might form, after communing with his God; the covert hostility of his brother monks; the Abbot’s frowns and doubts; the fear that he would oblige Benedetto to choose between leaving the convent and taking the monastic vows, all weighed heavily upon his heart. Benedetto’s mystic fervour, his great and unconscious humility, his progress in comprehending the Faith according to the ideas originating with Signor Giovanni, a new lucidity of thought which flashed from him in conversation, the growing strength of their mutual affection, had awakened in him hopes of a revelation of Divine Grace, of Divine Truth, of Divine Power for the saving of souls, to be made, at no distant period, through this outcast of the world. They had said at the meeting at Signor Selva’s house, “A saint is needed.” The first to affirm this had been the Swiss Abbé. Others had said that the saint should be a layman. This was moreover his own opinion, and Benedetto’s repugnance to a monastic life seemed to him providential. The coming of the woman seemed almost providential also, forcing him as it did to leave the convent. But what was happening out on the hills? What words was God uttering in his heart? And if—

This unexpected, formidable if flashing into his mind stopped the ponderer in his slow walk. “Magister adest et vocat te!” Perhaps the Divine Master Himself was even now calling Benedetto to serve Him in the habit of a monk.

He ceased thinking, terrified, and, having set the tiny lantern down, passed from the chapter-hall into the church, directing his steps towards the chapel of the Sacrament. With that dignity of which no internal storm could rob his refined bearing and the lofty beauty of his face, he sank upon his knees at the desk which stands in the centre of the chapel, between the four columns, under the lamp, raising his eyes to the tabernacle.

The Teacher of the Way, of Truth, of Life, the Beloved of the soul, was there, and sleeping, as He had slept on that stormy night on the Lake of Gennesaret, between Gadara and Galilee, in the bark which other wave-tossed barks followed through the roaring darkness. He was there, praying as on that other night, alone, on the hillside. He was there, saying with His sweet eternal voice: “Come unto Me all ye who suffer, all ye who are heavy laden, come unto Me.” He was there and speaking, the living Christ: “Believe in Me, for I am with you; I am your strength, and I am peace. I the Humble, son of the Almighty; I the Meek, son of the Terrible; I who prepare hearts for the kingdom of justice, for the future union of all with Me in My Father.” He, the Merciful, was there in the tabernacle, breathing the ineffable invitation: “Come, open thy heart; give thyself up to Me!”

And Clemente gave himself up, confiding to Him what he had never confessed even to himself. He felt that everything in the ancient monastery was dying, save Christ in the tabernacle. As the germ-cell of ecclesiastical organism, the centre from which Christian warmth irradiates upon the world, the monastery was becoming ossified by the action of inexorable age. Within its walls noble fires of faith and piety, enclosed—like the flames of the candles burning on the altars—in traditional forms, were consuming their human envelope, their invisible vapours rising towards heaven, but sending no wave of heat or of light to vibrate beyond the ancient walls. Currents of living air no longer swept through the monastery, and the monks no longer, as in the first centuries, went out in search of them, labouring in the woods and in the fields, co-operating with the vital energies of nature while they praised God in song. His talks with Giovanni Selva had brought him indirectly, and little by little, to feel thus regarding the monastic life in its present form, although he was convinced that it has indestructible roots in the human soul. But now, perhaps for the first time, he looked his belief squarely in the face. For a long time his wish and his hope had been that Benedetto might become a great gospel labourer; not an ordinary labourer, a preacher, a confessor, but an extraordinary labourer; not a soldier of the regular army, hampered by uniform and discipline, but a free champion of the Holy Spirit. The monastic laws had never before appeared to him in such fierce antagonism with his ideal of a modern saint. And now, what if the Divine Will concerning Benedetto should reveal itself contrary to his desires?

Ah! was he not already almost on the verge of committing mortal sin? Had he not been about to judge the ways of God, he presumptuous dust? Prostrate upon the kneeling-stool, he sought to merge himself in the Almighty, praying silently for forgiveness, for a revelation to Benedetto of the Divine Will, and ready to worship it, whatever it might be, from this time forth. As he rose, with a natural ebbing of the mystic wave from his heart, his eyes still turned towards the altar, but no longer fixed upon the tabernacle, he could not refrain from thinking of Jeanne Dessalle and of what Benedetto had said. The very indifferent picture above the altar represented the martyr Anatolia offering, from Paradise, the symbolical palms to Audax, the young pagan who had attempted to seduce her, but whom, instead, she had led to Christ. Jeanne Dessalle had seduced Benedetto; of this Don Clemente had no doubts, notwithstanding Benedetto’s attempt to exonerate her and accuse himself. What if she should now be converted through him? Was it perhaps right that he should try? Was Benedetto’s impulse really more Christian than his own fears and the Abbot’s scruples? As he crossed the church with bowed head, Don Clemente’s mind was struggling with these questions. Anatolia and Audax! He remembered that a sceptical foreigner, upon hearing the explanation of the picture from him, had said: “Yes, but what if neither of them had been put to death? And what if Audax had been a married man?”

These jesting words had seemed to him an unworthy profanation. He thought of them again now, and, sighing, took up the little lantern he had left on the floor in the chapter-hall.