She sat, the fingers of her hands clasped together, holding within them the weary knee. Her delicate grace was a little disturbed by the trouble she felt at the ambiguity of my words, half serious and half playful, half deceptive and half sincere. And speaking in this way gave me the same pleasure as I should have felt in ruffling the smooth bands of that hair over which the silver scissors of the tonsure were hanging. “Tondeantur in rotundum....” Still clear in my memory was the fresh ring of the youthful laugh rippling from her mouth at the closing hour of that first day, and filling me with wonder. And it pleased my fancy to group the pictures of all these slight, many-coloured things around the novice, who, in that already far-away February afternoon, had showed me as a secret miracle the nightly blossoming of her white hawthorn.
I used to seek her as one seeks some good thing which one knows to be ephemeral. She attracted me like a pure figure of youth, turning to me with a tearful smile on the threshold of a gloomy door, through which she was about to pass, and be lost to sight. I should like to have said to her sisters: “Let me love her as long as she is of this world; let me pour spices over her little feet!” During my long visits it often happened that I was alone with her, and could enter into spiritual converse with her docile soul, ever anxious to obey. From time to time Anatolia would disappear, when one or other of the two grey maids came to summon her with a look. There were some days when Violante scarcely appeared at all. She seemed to avoid my society, to look upon me with indifference, to have fallen back into her usual apathy. The two brothers could not stand the full light of the open air for very long, and so I often found myself alone with the little novice, sitting on a marble seat beneath the statue of Summer in the outer court, or in the shadow of the already verdant trellises over the steps, or on the edge of the dried-up fish pond. I would say to her—
“Perhaps you may have deceived yourself in the choice of your Bridegroom, sweet sister. When you hear the bishop saying, 'Ecce sponsus venit,’ you will tremble in your secret heart, and will expect a fair, strong hand to be stretched out to you, and to gather you up entirely, like water in the hollow of a palm; for this is the sweet, powerful attitude which you expect of your conqueror, and which is best suited to your flexibility, sweet sister. But perhaps you may be deluded at the very foot of the altar. And if you dare to lift your eyes, you will see, amid the burning candles, the promised Bridegroom motionless, with His pierced hands, and His head crowned with thorns. You will feel obliged, sweet sister, to draw out those cruel nails, driven in so deep. And terrible strength will seem to be required to fulfil such an action. And then the wounds will have to be dressed with infinite patience, and with balsams made of herbs only to be gathered on certain giddy heights, where the air is too rarefied to breathe. And the wounds once closed, the blood bursting from the veins will have to be forced back into its proper channels. And after the toilsome work has been completed, perhaps the newly-healed hands will withdraw altogether. To very few brides is it granted to see them perfectly restored again; and even among the elect there is scarcely one to whom on some mystic evening is vouchsafed the supreme joy of feeling herself altogether possessed, altogether folded within the constraining clasp, as you desire to be....”
The submissive maiden murmured—
“God grant that I may be that one!”
“Ah, sweet sister,” I said to her, “only think what immense strength that one must possess to revive a dead hand and to draw it so ardently to herself!”
“I have not any strength, but I will ask it of the Lord.”
“The Lord can only give you back the strength you have given to Him, Massimilla.”
“Be silent, please!” she implored. “I am afraid your words are impious.”