“How astonished I was,” she added, “when you repeated St. Catherine’s exhortation to me that day! I was still full of her spirit, and you were magician enough to speak to me of her.”
There was such perfect confidence and abandonment in her voice, that she could not have signified to me more plainly: “Here am I, I am thine; I belong entirely to thee as no other living creature can, as no inanimate thing can belong to thee. I am thy slave and thy chattel.”
She really seemed to possess a supernatural quality, to abolish in herself that law in love which denies to man the privilege of being the giver and the perpetual and perfect possession of the other. She really seemed in the full sunlight to be transfigured by my imagination into some crystal fluid, to become a liquid essence for me to absorb, and bathe myself in like a perfume.
“I think,” I said, “that sometimes when you read this book you must feel your soul evaporate like a drop of water on burning iron. Do you not? 'Fire and abyss of charity dissolve for ever the cloud of my body!’ cries the Saint. And you have marked these words in the margin. You have a continual aspiration to fade away.”
Her pale face smiled at me in the sunshine, looking almost transparent against the whiteness of the marble.
“Here is another place marked: 'Soul intoxicated, tormented, and burning with love.’ And here is another: 'Be thou a tree of love, grafted into the tree of life.’ What eloquence of passion the virgin has! She fascinates all the silent, because she speaks and cries aloud for them. But that which makes the book precious to whoever loves life is the abundance of life-blood flowing through it, for ever boiling and flaming like a sacrificial altar on the day of great sacrifices. This Dominican nun seems to have had a crimson view of the world. She sees everything through a veil of burning blood. 'The memory is filled with blood,’ she says. 'I shall find the blood and the living creatures, and I shall drink their love and affection in blood.’ A kind of ruddy madness assails her at times. 'Drown yourselves in blood,’ she cries; 'bathe yourselves in blood, intoxicate yourselves in blood, clothe yourselves in blood, mourn for yourselves in blood, rejoice in blood, grow and strengthen yourselves in blood!’ She knows the full value of that sweet and terrible liquid, for she sees it not only in the chalice, but bursting from the veins of mankind, she who has been caught in the whirlwind of life, who has worn her veil in the midst of the fierce hatred and violent passions which have made her century beautiful. Here is that marvellous letter of hers to Brother Raimondo of Capua. Have you ever been able to read it without trembling to your very marrow? 'And his head lay on my breast. Then I felt a great joy within me, and the odour of his blood rose up.’ What I perceive here is not only the eucharistic ecstasy, but also real voluptuousness. I can almost see the young woman’s delicate nostrils tremble and dilate. Hers too is that sentence I admire so much: 'Arming oneself with one’s own sensuality.’ Her senses must have been very acute, for her whole writings glow with lively images, strong in colour and movement, and almost Dantesque in their vigour and audacity. Ah, sweet sister, she is not the guide to lead you peacefully to the door of the cloister! Her Dominican robe is full not only of the odour of blood, but of all the odours of the proud life through which she moved unconquered. A vast multitude clothed in sackcloth and in purple, in iron and in gold, have swept her away like a whirlwind, with 'the fire of anger and hatred,’ which burns just as fiercely as the fire of love. Friars, nuns, hermits, light women, soldiers of fortune, princes, cardinals, queens, popes, all the different temperaments of a hard and magnificent century she deals with by her indefatigable will. She is powerful in contemplation and in action. She calls Alberico of Balbiano her 'beloved brother,’ and the knights of the company of St. George her 'beloved sons.’ And she dares to write to Queen Joanna of Naples: 'Alas, one must weep over you as over one dead!’ And to Gregory XI.: 'Be a brave man and not a coward.’ And to the King of France she says: 'I will.’ That is why I admire her, Massimilla, and also because she possesses a Garden, a House, and a Cell of self-knowledge; and because this saying is hers: 'To eat and taste souls’; and lastly, because it was she who wrote, before da Vinci: 'The intellect nourishes the affections. Who knows most, loves most; and loving most, enjoys most.’ Lofty words, which are the rule of all beautiful inward life.”
As I was speaking, I could follow in Massimilla’s wide open, steady eyes the slow rhythm of a wave which seemed to have some mysterious musical relation with the sound of my voice; and this sensation was so new and strange to me, that I prolonged what I was saying for fear of interrupting it.
Indeed, hardly had I ceased speaking, when she bowed her head, and in silence let two rivers of tears flow from her limpid eyes.
I did not ask her why she wept; but I took her hands, which were like soft leaves burning with the midday heat. And under that glowing April sky, beside that dazzling marble on which the shadow of the hand of the dial seemed to have lain motionless for an indefinite time, amidst those funereal yews and wreaths of anemones, I tasted a few moments of unspeakable exultation. I saw a spirit, not my own, suddenly reach that part of life—and for a few seconds rest there—beyond which, according to Dante’s words, none can pass with intent to return.
And it seemed to me that afterwards the rest of love and life could not have any value for that spirit.