“May I be allowed not to answer? May I pray a moment?”
“Yes, caro, yes!”
Beside the monk’s narrow bed, and high above the kneeling-desk, a great bare cross proclaimed: “Christ is risen; now nail thy soul to me!” In fact some one, perhaps Don Clemente, perhaps one of his predecessors, had written, below it: “Omnes superbiae motus ligno crucis affigat.” Benedetto prostrated himself on the floor, and placed his forehead where the knees should rest. Through the open window of the cell, the pale light of the rainy sky fell obliquely upon the backs of the prostrate man and of the man standing erect, his face raised towards the great cross. The murmur of the rain, the rumble of the deep Anio, would have meant to Jeanne the distressed lament of all that lives and loves in the world; to Don Clemente they meant the pious union of inferior creatures with the creature supplicating the common Father. Benedetto himself did not notice them.
He rose, his face composed, and, in obedience to his master’s gesture, put on the robe of a lay-brother, which was spread out upon the bed, and fastened the leathern girdle. When he was dressed he opened wide his arms and displayed himself, smiling to his master, who was gratified to see how dignified, how spiritually beautiful he was in that habit.
“You did not understand?” said Benedetto. “You were not reminded of something?”
No, Don Clemente had thought that Benedetto’s intense emotion had been caused by his humility. Now he understood that he should have recalled something; but what?
“Ah!” he suddenly exclaimed. “Was it perhaps your vision?”
Yes, surely. Benedetto had seen himself dying on the bare ground, in the shade of a great tree, and wearing the habit of the Benedictines; and one argument against believing in the vision—in accordance with the advice of Don Giuseppe Flores and of Don Clemente—had been the seeming contradiction between this detail and his repugnance to the monastic vows, which had been ever increasing since his withdrawal from the world. Now this contradiction seemed to be vanishing, and therefore the credibility of the prophetic nature of the vision was reappearing. Don Clemente was aware of this part of the vision, and should have been able to read in Benedetto’s heart, his awe at being once more confronted with a mysterious, divine purpose concerning him, and his fear of falling into the sin of pride. Of this, he had not thought.
“Do not you think of it, either,” said he, and he hastened to change the subject. He gave Benedetto some books and a letter for the parish-priest at Jenne, whose guest he would be for the present. Whether or no he should remain at Jenne, and in case he did not, whether he should return to Subiaco or go elsewhere, that Divine Providence must point out to him.
“Padre mio,” Benedetto said, “truly I do not think of what may happen to me to-morrow. I think only of the words: ‘Magister adest et vocat me!’’ but not as being spoken by a supernatural voice. I was wrong not to understand that the Master is always present, and always calling me, you, every one! If only our soul be hushed, we may hear His voice!”