"I obey no one," he said. "I am mad Ambrosio!—I walk about in my grave, and speak, and sing, while others remain silent. I would tell you if I knew of anyone greater than God,—but I do not!"
Varillo uttered an impatient groan. It was no good asking this creature anything,—his answers were all wide of the mark.
"God," went on Ambrosio, turning his head towards the light that came streaming in through the narrow window of the cell, "is in that sunbeam! He can enter where He will, and we never know when we shall meet Him face to face! He may possess with His spirit the chaste body of a woman, as in our Blessed Lady,—or He may come to us in the form of a child, speaking to the doctors in the temple and arguing with them on the questions of life and death. He is in all things; and the very beggar at our gates who makes trial of our charity, may for all we know, be our Lord disguised! Shall I tell you a strange story?"
Varillo gave a weary sign of assent, half closing his eyes. It was better this crazed fool should talk, he thought, than that he should lie there and listen, as it were, to the deadly silence which in the pauses of the conversation could be felt, like the brooding heaviness of a thick cloud hanging over the monastery walls.
"It happened long ago," said Ambrosio. "There was a powerful prince who thought that to be rich and strong was sufficient to make all the world his own. But the world belongs to God,—and He does not always give it over to the robber and spoiler. This prince I tell you of, had been the lover of a noble lady, but he was false-hearted; and the false soon grow weary of love! And so, tiring of her beauty and her goodness, he stabbed her mortally to death, and thought no one had seen him do the deed. For the only witness to it was a ray of moonlight falling through the window—just as the sunlight falls now!—see!" And he pointed to the narrow aperture which lit the cell, while Florian Varillo, shuddering in spite of himself, lay motionless. "But when the victim was dead, this very ray of moonlight turned to the shape of a great angel, and the angel wore the semblance of our Lord,—and the glory and the wonder of that vision was as the lightning to slay and utterly destroy! And from that hour for many years, the murderer was followed by a ray of light, which never left him; all day he saw it flickering in his path,—all night it flashed across his bed, driving sleep from his eyes and rest from his brain!—till at last maddened by remorse he confessed his crime to a priest, and was taken into a grave like this, a monastery,—where he died, so they say, penitent. But whether he was forgiven, the story does not say!"
"It is a stupid story!" said Varillo, opening his eyes, and smiling in the clear, candid way he always assumed when he had anything to hide. "It has neither point nor meaning."
"You think not?" said Ambrosio. "But perhaps you are not conscious of God. If you were, that sunbeam we see now should make you careful, lest an angel should be in it!"
"Careful? Why should I be careful?" Varillo half raised himself on the bed. "I have nothing to hide!"
At this Ambrosio began to laugh.
"Oh, you are happy—happy!" he exclaimed. "You are the first I ever heard say that! Nothing to hide! Oh, fortunate, fortunate man! Then indeed you should not be here—for we all have something to hide, and we are afraid even of the light,—that is why we make such narrow holes for it; we are always praying God not to look at our sins,—not to uncover them and show us what vile souls we are—we men who could be as gods in life, if we did not choose to be devils—"