“But if a body doth not fear nor love God?” asked Kristin, affrighted.
The monk took her yellow hair in his hand, bent Kristin’s head back gently and looked down into her face; his eyes were wide open and blue.
“There is no man nor woman, Kristin, who does not love and fear God, but ’tis because our hearts are divided twixt love of God and fear of the devil and fondness for the world and the flesh, that we are unhappy in life and death. For if a man had not any yearning after God and God’s being, then should he thrive in hell, and ’twould be we alone who would not understand that there he had gotten what his heart desired. For there the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, nor would he feel the torment of the serpents’ bite, if he knew not the yearning after peace.”
Kristin looked up in his face; she understood none of all this. Brother Edwin went on:
“’Twas God’s loving-kindness towards us that, seeing how our hearts are drawn asunder, He came down and dwelt among us, that He might taste in the flesh the lures of the devil when he decoys us with power and splendour, as well as the menace of the world when it offers us blows and scorn and sharp nails in hands and feet. In such wise did He show us the way and make manifest His love—”
He looked down upon the child’s grave, set face—then he laughed a little and said with quite another voice:
“Do you know who ’twas that first knew our Lord had caused himself to be born? ’Twas the cock; he saw the star and so he said—all the beasts could talk Latin in those days; he cried: ‘Christus natus est!’”
He crowed these last words so like a cock that Kristin fell to laughing heartily. And it did her good to laugh, for all the strange things Brother Edwin had just been saying had laid a burden of awe on her heart.
The monk laughed himself:
“Aye, and when the ox heard that, he began to low: ‘Ubi, ubi, ubi.’