“No, not at all! I am only sitting here and playing.”
“Birds and flowers! White lilies too? I have never seen such before.”
“White? Just now they were reddish-yellow! Where do you see them?”
“There!”
The Abbot looked down on the ground where he had poured his milk, and behold! there were only white lilies, without a single yellow one. He did not venture to speak about it, for one cannot speak of such things; but he smiled to himself, and saw a token of grace in it.
“Well, Dean, how goes it in the city?”
“The Tiber is sinking.”
“God be praised; but the whole of Trastevere has been ruined by the flood. I really wish that a great flood would come and drown us all—the whole human race—and very likely it will come some day.”
“Still as hopeless as ever!”
“No, not without hope, but for that world, not for this. Christ says it Himself in the Apocalypse: here is nothing on which one can build; for the best that we have enjoyed was but trouble and misery.”