She needed, indeed, but an infant in her arms to be a ready picture of the Holy Mother and Child in the Flight into Egypt. She had taken off her hat and laid a large veil over her head. A blue mantle hung over her shoulders and came close to her white neck. The beast she rode, the saddle, the rocky path—all were perfect. She passed under a cypress-tree that pressed her eyes down with its black shadow, and, in that downward glance, caught their looks directed to her. She smiled, clasped her hands, and glanced around in mute rapture.
To and fro, to and fro they wound up the height, every turn unwinding and enlarging the scene below. The low hills of the plain disappeared, leaving only a vast level laid out in an exquisite mosaic of varied greens, with houses here and there, single or in clusters, forests that had dwindled to groves, and groves that looked like bouquets. The shining turns of a river lay amid that verdure, like a silver chain dropped and half-hidden in the grass. All round the mountains circled close and jealous, guarding this little paradise. Now they were skirted with trees; now they rose in harsh masses of stone that looked as if not even a blade of grass could find a foothold. A picturesque castle stood on a spur sent off from the mountain they were ascending.
Above them the vast square of the monastery, with its many windows and balconies, grew every moment nearer. After an hour’s ride trees shut them into an avenue, and they found themselves close under the grand walls of the building. They alighted at the lofty open archway and saw before them a long, ascending passage that looked strong enough to support even that pile on its solid arches. The first half was dim, and part way up, at the right, was a shrine in the wall, with its floating flame burning before some saintly face only half-visible behind the wire screen. The upper half was lighted by arched windows at the left, showing a double wall there, with some sort of room or passage between, arched openings in the inner wall answering to the windows. At the upper end of this avenue of stone shut the great black valves of a double iron door, studded thickly with nails, pierced with a little cluster of holes to peep through at one side, and showing the outline of a smaller door in the right valve.
The massive walls and doors, the long, sloping ascent, the light and shade, the one little golden flame, were like nothing of the nineteenth century. The action and business of such a place were not the action and business peculiar and suitable to our times. Ecclesiastical processions might go up there; the scarlet fire of a cardinal’s robe in the midst of a group of attendants would well befit that dim and echoing passage; a cavalcade of knights and ladies, with horn and hound and nodding plumes; a company of soldiers with shield and helmet—these were the figures to animate such a scene. Or, most perfect picture of all, one might imagine there that sublime company, the very thought of which brings tears to the eyes—that long procession of ecclesiastics and people, with their banners and crucifixes and candles, chanting funeral hymns as they ascended, bearing up to the mountain-top for burial the twin saint of the glorious founder and father of the monastery—Santa Scholastica. It is but yesterday, it seems, that the brother and sister parted, having their last conference together under a little roof down the mountain-side, while the tempest stormed about them. It is but this morning that St. Benedict has sent his monks down to bring the holy relics up and lay them in his own tomb under the grand altar, where soon he will join her. So the colossal saints of all time know how to recognize the grandeur of a true woman. These men are so near the most sublime and regal of creatures—the awful, immaculate Virgin—and the very type of penitents—the thrice-purified Magdalen—that the shining veil of the one and the sacred tears of the other flow about their sisters, and woman is honored in whatever work her Creator calls her to do. It was in the times, still illuminated by the twilight of the scarcely-departed presence of the Morning Star and the Son, that St. Gregory the Great ordered his mother’s portrait painted with the mitre of a doctor on her head, and one hand raised in benediction, while with the other she taught her son from the sacred Book on her knees—the queenly St. Sylvia! It was in such days that St. Chrysostom proclaimed that women may participate, as well as men, in combats for the cause of God and the church; that St. Melania, the younger, disputed so eloquently with the Nestorians that she converted many and frightened the rest, showing herself so powerful that Pelagius, who drew away priests and bishops, strove, but in vain, to convert her into an assistant; the same Melania who converted the persecutor, Volusianus, whom all the eloquence of St. Augustine could not convert. It was in such days that saintly women inspired the Fathers of the church to write, and that St. Gregory conceived his Treatise on the Soul and on Resurrection while sitting at his dying sister’s bedside and listening to her discourse on death, as she consoled him for the death of St. Basil.
And not only such thoughts and recollections, dear to women, flowed in as they went up the path that St. Scholastica had passed before them, but other recollections, dear to scholars and precious to the church and to civilization. Here was one of the citadels of learning in times when barbarous invasions overran the land and threatened to extinguish every spark of intellectual and spiritual wealth that the race of man had accumulated. Here the monks, with a zeal kindled to passion, hoarded and preserved the remains of their devastated treasures, and spent unwearied days and nights in multiplying copies of writings that must not die. Here, with the devotion of the bridegroom who brings the most precious gems he can procure to deck his bride, or of parents who shower upon their only child every gift in their power to bestow, genius the most exquisite consecrated itself to the work of adorning the page of the text of praise and prayer with such marvellous miniature beauty of form and color as only the fairy pencil of Nature can rival.
Wrapt and exalted in such recollections, the Signora moved as one in a dream, forgetting her companions entirely. It was only when the great iron doors swung open before her, and she saw a tall gentleman in a black robe hurrying forward, with his hand extended in cordial welcome to Mr. Vane, that she came back to the nineteenth century, and made an effort to salute in a sufficiently-composed manner the prior of Monte Cassino, Father Boniface.
But it was a very beautiful nineteenth century that she recalled herself to. They were within the monastery buildings, which completely surrounded them in a massive square, broken in the middle at the left by a long portico of white travertine supporting a superb terrace called the Loggia del Paradiso, and at the right, in the centre, also, by the grand stairs that go up to the higher level of the mountain peak, around which the monastery is built. This loggia and the grand stairs are at the opposite sides of a court with a picturesque well in the centre, and colossal statues of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. The paved court is between two others, which are turned into gardens, the three separated by double colonnades and surrounded by porticos. At the head of the stairs, which are the whole width of the court, another portico opens into the upper court—that of the church—and has a door at either side leading back to the Loggia del Paradiso. The church court, also surrounded by porticos and adorned with statues, is closed on one side by the church. This is built on the very mountain-top, the confession being hewn out of the solid rock.
This plan they caught at first, though but in a glance; for, after welcoming them all, the prior conducted them through two or three dimly-lighted rooms, all of stone, unfurnished and unadorned, into a bright parlor, where a balcony window gave them a view of all the beautiful valley with its surrounding mountains. In a few minutes dinner was announced as prepared in the next chamber, and here they found a table laid out with the freshest of linen, old silver as white almost as the cloth, and a well-cooked and well-served dinner.
Weakening their wine before drinking it, they all observed the quality of the water, limpid and light as some third element half-water and half-air, and the prior explained to them that the monastery used rain-water filtered.
“We have a great cistern, ninety feet square, hollowed out in the mountain under the central court. The well you saw there is in the centre of it. The water is thoroughly filtered. Moreover, the conduits that admit it to the cistern are closed during the four hot months, so that only cold water enters.”