“Yes, life is short,” he said presently, and half-turned away. “God bless you!” he added and hastily left her.
The next morning they made their last visit to the monastery, and the prior, after showing them the tower of St. Benedict and the fine collection of pictures there, had some of the choir-books brought into the parlor for them to see. There are fifty-seven in all of these great volumes, bound in leather, with metal corners and knobs. These are all in manuscript, beautiful black scores and lettering on white parchment. Every capital letter is painted, every one different and every one beautiful, and occasionally the page has a border, and in some cases a picture in the corner, so exquisitely beautiful that one could never tire of examining it—such leaves and flowers, and birds and figures and arabesques, fine as the finest pencil and most delicate imagination could make them, and so executed that one had to touch them to be sure they are not in relief. One long, silver leaf slightly curled over to show a golden lining; Bianca stretched her finger to touch, and drew it back immediately, fearing to break.
Not a tint was faded of them all, though they had been in constant use three hundred years. They are not used every day now, however.
One page was especially rich—the first page of the Christmas service. The whole ground of this inside the border is a deep velvety crimson, the score and text being of gold. On the border imagination had exhausted itself, and in the left upper corner is a picture of the Nativity, delicate and pure, with its cool, pale mountains of Syria, and the heavenly faces of the Mother and Child.
“You should see that at the Midnight Mass of Christmas,” the prior said, “with the light of all the candles shining on it as it lies open on the desk. It is splendid then. I copied that picture in the corner of the page to send the Pope on his great anniversary,” he added, “and it took me a year.”
For the prior was an artist as well, and not only made exquisite copies from these old manuscripts, but played the organ, and had the evening before done the honors of their grand instrument for his visitors, displaying its orchestra stops.
The hours slipped away, and regretfully at length they took leave of this beautiful and sacred place, and the kind host who had made it so pleasant for them. The donkeys stood ready at the gate, and they mounted and went down into the world again. In the valley, before going to the station, they stopped a minute and gazed back with a mute farewell to Monte Cassino. The Signora thought, but did not say aloud: “I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh help.”
The road they took through the plain to the station ran along the river-side. This river—the Rapido—narrowed to a swift, yellow sluice that one could toss a penny across, to be caught by the beggar at the other side, did not look very imposing to American eyes, accustomed to the grand crystalline floods of the New World; but every drop of it moved to the tune of a memory, and farther on it meets the Carnello, and the two, the ancient Vinius and Liri, join to make the Garigliano, the river made famous by Bayard.
Then back to Rome, through crowding mountains at first. But, by dark, the mountains began to draw back, the level widened, they passed the city wall by the stars, and rolled into the Città vecchia.
“Now we must begin to look respectfully at the guide-book,” Mr. Vane said the next morning. “We have been sipping the foam of the wine as it came. We must drain the cup, if we can.”