[CHAPTER XV]
THE SERPENT'S EXPERIMENT
Father Francesco sat leaning his head on his hand by the window of his cell, looking out upon the sea as it rose and fell, with the reflections of the fast coming stars glittering like so many jewels on its breast. The glow of evening had almost faded, but there was a wan, tremulous light from the moon, and a clearness produced by the reflection of such an expanse of water, which still rendered objects in his cell quite discernible.
In the terrible denunciations and warnings just uttered, he had been preaching to himself, striving to bring a force on his own soul by which he might reduce its interior rebellion to submission; but, alas! when was ever love cast out by fear? He knew not as yet the only remedy for such sorrow,—that there is a love celestial and divine, of which earthly love in its purest form is only the sacramental symbol and emblem, and that this divine love can by God's power so outflood human affections as to bear the soul above all earthly idols to its only immortal rest. This great truth rises like a rock amid stormy seas, and many is the sailor struggling in salt and bitter waters who cannot yet believe it is to be found. A few saints like Saint Augustine had reached it,—but through what buffetings, what anguish!
At this moment, however, there was in the heart of the father one of those collapses which follow the crisis of some mortal struggle. He leaned on the window-sill, exhausted and helpless.
Suddenly, a kind of illusion of the senses came over him, such as is not infrequent to sensitive natures in severe crises of mental anguish. He thought he heard Agnes singing, as he had sometimes heard her when he had called in his pastoral ministrations at the little garden and paused awhile outside that he might hear her finish a favorite hymn, which, like a shy bird, she sung all the more sweetly for thinking herself alone.
Quite as if they were sung in his ear, and in her very tones, he heard the words of Saint Bernard, which we have already introduced to our reader:—
"Jesu dulcis memoria,
Dans vera cordi gaudia:
Sed super mel et omnia
Ejus dulcis præsentia.
"Jesu, spes pœnitentibus,
Quam pius es petentibus,
Quam bonus te quærentibus,
Sed quis invenientibus!"
Soft and sweet and solemn was the illusion, as if some spirit breathed them with a breath of tenderness over his soul; and he threw himself with a burst of tears before the crucifix.
"O Jesus, where, then, art Thou? Why must I thus suffer? She is not the one altogether lovely; it is Thou,—Thou, her Creator and mine. Why, why cannot I find Thee? Oh, take from my heart all other love but Thine alone!"