Brother Pacificus waxed heavier in the strong arms of his “little brother;” his breathing grew slower, and more slow.
Rex tremendæ majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis.
Brother Pacificus shuddered once with a great shudder, and his breathing ceased; then he breathed once more, opened his eyes, and smiled.
“Jhesu!” he said, “Jhesu! Jhesu! Jhesu!” Then he laughed softly and gladly, as a lover at the sight of his beloved, or as an exile when he sees again the land he loves.
The hour was midnight; a light like moonlight flickering upon blue steel flashed through the room, and Brother Pacificus died.
Then as Brother Gorlois laid him down, and slowly rubbed his cramped arms, there flew through the casement a bunch of blue flowers; they smote him on the chest, and dropped upon the dead man’s breast.
Brother Gorlois gave a cry that was like unto a human sob of pain, but liker still to the cry of an angry beast that has been hurt. He leaped through the unglazed casement; in the silent wood below there was the shriek of a woman in a swiftly stilled anguish of bodily fear.
From the chapel, when the day broke, the weeping brethren came. They found Brother Pacificus dead, and on his breast a bunch of blue sweet-smelling flowers; under the window on the dew-drenched forest turf, there lay a half-clad girl; a bunch of blossoms like those on the dead saint’s breast was in her stiffened hand; there was a wound in her throat that an arm nerved by savage rage had given; in the tangle of her rough hair was the knife that had killed her. It was the Brother Gorlois’ hunting knife; but he had fled, and the House of the Cold Strand knew him no more from the hour when the Son of Man was born in him, in the throes of a first “conviction of sin,” the passing anguish of a first remorse.