The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary

by Robert Hugh Benson

The sun had quite gone down before he came out again, and the shadows were like a veil over the land; only the yellow flowers burned hot like candle flames before me.

He had four books in his hand and a little bottle, his hat on his shoulders, and the wooden sandals on his feet that he had worn to walk in four years before when he came to us. His little linen picture of the five wounds was fastened over his breast with thorns. He carried across his arm the second white-sleeved kirtle that he had, and his burse was on his girdle. He held out two of the books to me.

"These are for you, my father," he said; "the book of hours and the Regula Heremitarum I shall take with me, and all the rest of the mobills and the two other books I shall leave at our Lord's disposal, except the bottle of Quintessence."

I took the two books and looked at them.

There was Master Hoveden's Philomela, and a little book he had made on
Quinte Essence.

"But you will need them!" I cried.

"I carry Philomela in my heart," he said, "and as for the Quinte Essence I shall have enough if I need it, and here is the bottle that holds that that has been made of blood.—The fifth—being of gold and silver I have not. Argentum et aurum non est mihi." ["Silver and gold I have none." (Acts iii. 6.)]

(That was the little bottle that I have told you of before. It was distilled of his own blood, according to the method of Hermes Trismegistus.)

"If I do not return," he said, "I bequeath all to you; and I wish six masses to be said; the first to be sung, of Requiem; the second of the five wounds; the third of the assumption; the fourth of all martyrs with a special memory of saint Christopher; the fifth of all confessors with a special memory of saint Anthony, hermit, and saint Giles, abbot; the sixth of all virgins with a special memory of saint Agnes."

You understand, my children, that he knew what would come to him, and that he had foreseen all; he spoke as simply as one who was going to another village only, looking away from me upon the ground. (I was glad of that.)