In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

We passed by a long row of cells occupied by the monks, but were not permitted to look into them; nor were we allowed to see the library, which is said to be rich in illuminated manuscripts. The convent belongs to the Greek church; its monks take the usual vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and fortify themselves in their holiness by opposing walls of adamant to all womankind. There are about fifty monks here at present, and uncommonly fine-looking fellows,—not at all the gross and greasy sort of monk that is sometimes met. Their outward dress is very neat, consisting of a simple black gown and a round, high, flat-topped black cap.

Our dinner, when it was brought into our apartment, answered very well one's idea of a dessert, but it was a very good Oriental dinner. The chief articles were a piece of hard black bread, and two boiled eggs, cold, and probably brought by some pilgrim from Jerusalem; but besides, there were raisins, cheese, figs, oranges, a bottle of golden wine, and tea. The wine was worthy to be celebrated in classic verse; none so good is, I am sure, made elsewhere in Syria; it was liquid sunshine; and as it was manufactured by the monks, it gave us a new respect for their fastidious taste.

The vaulted chamber which we occupied was furnished on three sides with a low divan, which answered the double purpose of chairs and couch. On one side, however, and elevated in the wall, was a long niche, exactly like the recessed tombs in cathedrals, upon which, toes turned up, lie the bronze or wooden figures of the occupants. This was the bed of honor. It was furnished with a mattress and a thick counterpane having one sheet sewed to it. With reluctance I accepted the distinction of climbing into it, and there I slept, laid out, for all the world, like my own effigy. From the ceiling hung a dim oil-lamp, which cast a gloom rather than a light upon our sepulchral place of repose. Our windows looked out towards the west, upon the court, upon the stairs, upon the terraces, roofs, holes, caves, grottos, wooden balconies, bird-cages, steps entering the rock and leading to cells; and, towards the south, along the jagged precipice. The convent occupies the precipice from the top nearly to the bottom of the ravine; the precipice opposite is nearly perpendicular, close at hand, and permits no view in that direction. Heaven is the only object in sight from this retreat.

Before the twilight fell the chanting was still going on in the cavern, monks and pilgrims were gliding about the court, and numbers of the latter were clustered in the vestibule of the church, in which they were settling down to lodge for the night; and high above us I saw three gaudily attired Bedaween, who had accompanied some travellers from the Dead Sea, leaning over the balustrade of the stairs, and regarding the scene with Moslem complacency. The hive settled slowly to rest.

But the place was by no means still at night. There was in the court an old pilgrim who had brought a cough from the heart of Russia, who seemed to be trying to cough himself inside out. There were other noises that could not be explained. There was a good deal of clattering about in wooden shoes. Every sound was multiplied and reduplicated from the echoing rocks. The strangeness of the situation did not conduce to sleep, not even to an effigy-like repose; but after looking from the window upon the march of the quiet stars, after watching the new moon disappear between the roofs, and after seeing that the door of St. Sabas's tomb was closed, although his light was still burning, I turned in; and after a time, during which I was conscious that not even vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are respected by fleas, I fell into a light sleep.

From this I was aroused by a noise that seemed like the call to judgment, by the most clamorous jangle of discordant bells,—all the twenty were ringing at once, and each in a different key. It was not simply a din, it was an earthquake of sound. The peals were echoed from the opposite ledges, and reverberated among the rocks and caves and sharp angles of the convent, until the crash was intolerable. It was worse than the slam, bang, shriek, clang, clash, roar, dissonance, thunder, and hurricane with which all musicians think it absolutely necessary to close any overture, symphony, or musical composition whatever, however decent and quiet it may be. It was enough to rouse the deafest pilgrim, to wake the dead martyrs and set the fourteen thousand skulls hunting for their bones, to call even St. Sabas himself from his tomb. I arose. I saw in the starlight figures moving about the court, monks in their simple black gowns. It was, I comprehended then, the call to midnight prayer in the chapel, and, resolved not to be disturbed further by it, I climbed back into my tomb.

But the clamor continued; I heard such a clatter of hobnailed shoes on the pavement, besides, that I could bear it no longer, got up, slipped into some of my clothes, opened the door, and descended by our winding private stairway into the court.

The door of St. Sabas's tomb was wide open!

Were the graves opening, and the dead taking the air? Did this tomb open of its own accord? Out of its illuminated interior would the saint stalk forth and join this great procession, the reveille of the quick and the slow?

From above and from below, up stairs and down stairs, out of caves and grottos and all odd roosting-places, the monks and pilgrims were pouring and streaming into the court; and the bells incessantly called more and more importunately as the loiterers delayed.