The question came in his daily life.
Did he love the Prior? He feared him; and his voice was for Hilarius as the voice of God Himself. Brother John? He feared him too; Brother John’s tongue was a thing to fear. Brother Richard, old, half-blind? Surely he loved Brother Richard?—sad, helpless, and lonely, by reason of his infirmities—or was it only pity he felt for him?
Nay, let be; he loved them all. The Monastery was his home, the Prior his father, the monks his brethren; why heed the wild words of the witch in the forest? And yet what was it she had said? “For me the wide world, hunger, and love—love—love!”
He wandered in the Monastery garden and was troubled by its beauties. Two sulphur butterflies sported around the tall white lilies at the farmery door. Did they love?
He watched the sparrows at their second nesting, full of business and cheerful bickerings. Did they love?
She had said the answer was writ large for him to see: he wandered staring, wide-eyed but sightless.
At last in his sore distress he turned to the Prior, as the ship-wrecked mariner turns to the sea-girt rock that towers serene and unhurt above the devouring waves.
The Prior heard him patiently, with here and there a shrewd question. When the halting tale was told he mused awhile, his stern blue eyes grew tender, and a little smile troubled the firm line of his mouth.
“My son,” he said at length, “thou art in the wrong school; nursery, was it the maid said? A shrewd lass and welcome to the hen. Thou art a limner at heart—Brother Bernard tells of thy wondrous skill with the brush—and to be limner thou must learn to hunger and to love as the maid said. Ay, boy, and to be monk too, though alack, men gainsay it.”
“Father,” said Hilarius, waxing bold from excessive need, “did’st thou ever love as the maid meant?”