Rene—Yes, chasing him for his pay.
Basil—(Indignantly.) His crutches!
Simon— (Drolly.)
He left his sole support.
(They all laugh. Basil, who has come forward, peeps round the corner of the dormitory. Withdrawing quickly, he hurries back toward the door.)
Basil—(Excitedly, in an underbreath.) Rene!
(He points back over his shoulder with his thumb.)
Rene—(Huskily.) Simon!
(Simon leaps up, jerks away his meat, and, wiping his mouth with his sleeve, hurries after the others into the dormitory. From the right, the Abbot enters followed by a train of monks. He wears a miter and a flowing cope of scarlet, richly apparelled. From the end of a rosary about his neck dangles an ivory crucifix. The monks are all in black and wear their hoods. Upon reaching the center of the court, the Abbot raises his staff and the procession stops.)
Abbot—Saint Martin hath restored the golden dawn
And put the clouds to flight. The kingly sun
Looks on the world like our new-risen Lord
Driving the night before Him. And the fiends,
That fly with darkness from the pit of death
To conjure with the baleful midnight stars
And wreck God's holy chime of human souls,
Are scourged to Hell, and all the rebel orbs
Are thunder-stunned. Vapors and noxious fogs
That hatch contagion in rank, drizzling swamps,
Will soon beneath the lightning's flagellum
With breezes fan their fevers from the blood,
And with pure sea-dews from green ocean urns
Sprinkle the parched earth to cool the vines
Preparing clusters of our dear Lord's blood.
The serpent spawn of imps and evil dreams,
Fairies and watching wanderers of the night,
That kennel in the bowels of the earth
And taint its waters, blight the tender sprouts,
And sow infections through the flocks and herds,
Have flown like bats into the squalid caves,
And there are numb with fear. O'er Zion's towers
The virgin dawn brings forth the sun of God
And smiles upon the world. The blessed light
Spreads o'er the earth its bright, archangel wings,
Dripping with balmy dews and cassia smells.
The day will—