"Let me feast my sad eyes on thee ere thou leavest me for thine ever-blessed abode, and my cell darkens again at thy parting, as it did at hers."
With all this the hermit disturbed the lovely visitor. He opened wide two eyes, the colour of heaven; and seeing a strange figure kneeling over him, he cried piteously: "MUM—MA! MUM—MA!" And the tears began to run down his little cheeks.
Perhaps, after all, Clement, who for more than six months had not looked on the human face divine, estimated childish beauty more justly than we can; and in truth, this fair northern child, with its long golden hair, was far more angelic than any of our imagined angels. But now the spell was broken.
Yet not unhappily. Clement, it may be remembered, was fond of children, and true monastic life fosters this sentiment. The innocent distress on the cherubic face, the tears that ran so smoothly from those transparent violets, his eyes, and his pretty, dismal cry for his only friend, his mother, went through the hermit's heart. He employed all his gentleness and all his art to sooth him, and, as the little soul was wonderfully intelligent for his age, presently succeeded so far that he ceased to cry out, and wonder took the place of fear, while in silence, broken only in little gulps, he scanned, with great tearful eyes, this strange figure that looked so wild, but spoke so kindly, and wore armour, yet did not kill little boys, but coaxed them. Clement was equally perplexed to know how this little human flower came to lie sparkling and blooming in his gloomy cave. But he remembered he had left the door wide open, and he was driven to conclude that, owing to this negligence, some unfortunate creature of high or low degree had seized this opportunity to get rid of her child for ever.[I] At this his bowels yearned so over the poor deserted cherub that the tears of pure tenderness stood in his eyes, and still, beneath the crime of the mother, he saw the divine goodness, which had so directed her heartlessness as to comfort his servant's breaking heart.
"Now bless thee, bless thee, bless thee, sweet innocent, I would not change thee for e'en a cherub in heaven."
"At's pooty," replied the infant, ignoring contemptuously, after the manner of infants, all remarks that did not interest him.
"What is pretty here, my love, beside thee?"
"Ookum-gars,"[J] said the boy, pointing to the hermit's breastplate.
"Quot liberi, tot sententiunculæ!" Hector's child screamed at his father's glittering casque and nodding crest: and here was a mediæval babe charmed with a polished cuirass, and his griefs assuaged.
"There are prettier things here than that," said Clement, "there are little birds; lovest thou birds?"