As I looked straight into her eyes, she flushed with colour that seemed almost violent contrasted with her pallor.
“'Be thou, be thou that fragrant flower which thou oughtest to be, spreading its fragrance abroad in the sweet presence of God!’ Saint Catherine wrote that for you.”
“You know Saint Catherine!” said the little novice, her eyes shining with wonder through her blushes.
“She is my favourite saint,” I added, glad to see her astonishment, and tempted by the pleasure of disturbing and dazzling her soul, which seemed to me to be eager and easily shaken. “I love her for her purple hue. In the Garden of self-knowledge she is like a rose of fire.”
The betrothed of Jesus looked at me almost incredulously; but the desire of questioning and listening was painted in her face, and the line of attention cast already a faint shadow on her brow.
“The book I had with me this morning,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice as if she were revealing some intimate confidence, “was a volume of her letters.”
“I noticed that like a good Franciscan you put a blade of grass in your page for a mark. But that book contains another mark. The grass in it burns on the edge of a furnace. The essence of her soul is all in those words of hers: 'Fire and blood united by love!’ Do you remember them?”
“Oh, Massimilla,” interrupted Oddo, laughing, “you may dismiss your spiritual father. Now you have found the true guide to the way of perfection!”
We were sitting on the edge of an empty tank which had no doubt been an ancient fish-pond; now it was almost entirely filled with soil, and taken possession of by wild plants, among which violets were hidden—in great numbers, to judge by their great fragrance. Close by was the broken-down wall of box-wood, breathing out the same aroma from its depths as had met me on my first entrance into the garden. I could see the deserted alley with its mutilated statues and widowed urns through the thin parts of the shrubs and through the arches.
“Is the day yet fixed for you to enter the convent?” I asked Massimilla.