Dennys: And so my tongue has betrayed my birth? Well, it is the Judas of our members. But I am not ashamed of coming from beyond the Pyrenees. And as to the life of a religious in France—what with these roving knaves that call themselves “companions” and make war on every man, and every woman, too, and the ungracious Jacquerie that roast good knights in the sight of their lady wife and children, and sack nunneries and rape the nuns, why the Hours are apt to be sung to an un-gregorian tune. And then the followers of the Regent slaying the followers of the Provost of Paris in the streets....
Sister Pilar: Oh, the hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked men! Were such as they but chained, there might be room for peace and contemplation.
Dennys: The hate of kings and dukes and desperate wicked men! But, daughter, the next best thing to love is hate. ’Tis the love and hate of dead kings and lovely dead Infantas has filled the garden-closes with lilies and roses, and set men dipping cloths in crimson dye, and broidering them in gold, and breaking spears in jousts and tourneys ... that love and hate that never dies, but is embalmed in songs and ballads, and....
Sister Pilar: Brother, you are pleading the cause of sin.
Dennys: It has no need of my pleading, lady. Why, I know most of the cots and castles between here and the good town of Paris. I have caught great, proud ladies at rere-supper in their closets, drinking and jesting and playing on the lute with clerks and valets, and one of them with his hand beneath her breast, while her lord snored an echo to the hunter’s horn that rang through the woods of his dreams; and in roadside inns I have met little, laughing nuns, who....
Sister Pilar (rising): You speak exceeding strangely for a friar, nor is it meet I should hear you out.
Dennys: Nay, daughter, pardon my wild tongue; the tongue plays ever ape to the ear, and if the ear is wont to hear more ribald jests than paters, why then the tongue betrays its company ... nay, daughter, before you go, resolve me this: what is sin? To my thinking ’tis the twin-sister of virtue, and none but their foster-mother knows one from t’other. Are horses and tourneys and battles sin? Your own St. James rides a great white charger and leads your chivalry against the Moors. (With a sly wink) I have met many an hidalgo who has seen him do it! And we are told there was once an angelic war in Heaven, and I ween the lists are ever set before God’s throne, and the twelve Champions, each with an azure scarf, break lances for a smile from Our Lady. And as to rich, strange cloths and jewels, the raiment of your painted wooden Seville virgins would make the Queen of France herself look like a beggar maid. And is love sin? The priests affirm that God is love. Tell me then, daughter, what is the birth-mark of the twin-sister sin that we may know and shun her?
Sister Pilar (in a very low voice): Death.
Dennys: Death? (half to himself). Yes, I have seen it at its work ... that flaunting, wanton page at Valladolid, taunting the old Jew doctor because ere long all his knowledge of herbs and precious stones would not keep him sweet from the worm, and ere the week was done the pretty page himself cold and blue and stiff, and all the ladies weeping. And the burgher’s young wife at Arras, a baby at each breast, and her good man, his merry blue eyes twinkling, crying, “Oh, my wife is a provident woman, Dennys, and has laid up two pairs of eyes and four hands and four strong legs and two warm hearts against her old age and mine” ... then how he laughed! And ere the babies had cut their first tooth it was violets and wind-flowers she was nourishing.... Ay, Death ... when I was a child I mind me, and still sometimes, as I grow drowsy in my bed, my fancies that have been hived all day begin to swarm—buzzing, stinging, here, there, everywhere ... then they take shape, and start marching soberly two and two, bishops and monks, and yellow-haired squires, and little pert clerks, and oh, so many lovely ladies—those ladies that we spoke of, who being dead have yet a thousand lives in the dreams of folk alive—Dame Venus, Dame Helena, the slave-girl Briseis, Queen Iseult, Queen Guinevere, the Infanta Polyzene; and, although they weep sorely and beat with their hands, a herald Moor shepherds them to the dance of the grisly King, who, having danced a round with each of them, hurls them down into a black pit ... down which I, too, shortly fall ... to come up at the other side, like figures on Flemish water-clocks, at the birds matins.
Sister Pilar (in an awed voice): Why ... ’tis strange ... but I, too, fall asleep thus!