He had been brought to the monastery as a little child; was bred there; had never yet left it, busy and satisfied through youth and early manhood; was grown almost as necessary a part of the community as the stones of its material abode, as a pillar of the great tower he ascended to watch the movement of the stars. The structure of a fortified medieval town barred in those who belonged to it very effectively. High monastic walls intrenched the monk still further. From the summit of the tower you looked straight down into the deep narrow streets, upon the houses (in one of which Prior Saint-Jean was born) climbing as high as they dared for breathing space within that narrow compass. But you saw also the green breadth of Normandy and Picardy, this way and that; felt on your face the free air of a still wider realm beyond what was seen. The reviving scent of it, the mere sight of the flowers brought thence, of the country produce at the convent gate, stirred the ordinary monkish soul with desires, sometimes with efforts, to be sent on duty there. Prior [146] Saint-Jean, on the other hand, shuddered at the view, at the thoughts it suggested to him; thoughts of unhallowed wild places, where the old heathen had worshipped "stocks and stones," and where their wickedness might still survive them in something worse than mischievous tricks of nature, such as you might read of in Ovid, whose verses, however, he for his part had never so much as touched with a finger. He gave thanks rather, that his vocation to the abstract sciences had kept him far apart from the whole crew of miscreant poets—Abode of demons.
Thither nevertheless he was now to depart, sent to the Grange or Obedience of Notre-Dame De-Pratis by the aged Abbot (about to resign in his favour) for the benefit of his body's health, a little impaired at last by long intellectual effort, yet so invaluable to the community. But let him beware! whispered his dearest friend, who shared those strange misgivings, let him "take heed to his ways" when he was come to that place. "The mere contact of one's feet with its soil might change one." And that same night, disturbed perhaps by thoughts of the coming journey with which his brain was full, Prior Saint-Jean himself dreamed vividly, as he had been little used to do. He saw the very place in which he lay (he knew it! his little inner cell, the brown doors, the white breadth of wall, the black crucifix upon it) alight, alight [147] softly; and looking, as he fancied, from the window, saw also a low circlet of soundless flame, waving, licking daintily up the black sky, but harmless, beautiful, closing in upon that round dark space in the midst, which was the earth. He seemed to feel upon his shoulder just then the touch of his friend beside him. "It is hell-fire!" he said.
The Prior took with him a very youthful though devoted companion—Hyacinthus, the pet of the community. They laughed admiringly at the rebellious masses of his black hair, with blue in the depths of it, like the wings of the swallow, which refused to conform to the monkish pattern. It only grew twofold, crown upon crown, after the half-yearly shaving. And he was as neat and serviceable as he was delightful to be with. Prior Saint-Jean, then, and the boy started before daybreak for the long journey; onwards, till darkness, a soft twilight rather, was around them again. How unlike a winter night it seemed, the further they went through the endless, lonely, turf-grown tracts, and along the edge of a valley, at length—vallis monachorum, monksvale—taken aback by its sudden steepness and depth, as of an immense oval cup sunken in the grassy upland, over which a golden moon now shone broadly. Ah! there it was at last, the white Grange, the white gable of the chapel apart amid a few scattered white gravestones, the white flocks crouched about on the hoar-frost, [148] like the white clouds, packed somewhat heavily on the horizon, and nacrés as the clouds of June, with their own light and heat in them, in their hollows, you might fancy.
From the very first, the atmosphere, the light, the influence of things, seemed different from what they knew; and how distant already the dark buildings of their home! Was there the breath of surviving summer blossom on the air? Now and then came a gentle, comfortable bleating from the folds, and themselves slept soundly at last in the great open upper chamber of the Grange; were awakened by the sound of thunder. Strange, in the late November night! It had parted, however, with its torrid fierceness; modulated by distance, seemed to break away into musical notes. And the lightning lingered along with it, but glancing softly; was in truth an aurora, such as persisted month after month on the northern sky as they sojourned here. Like Prospero's enchanted island, the whole place was "full of noises." The wind it might have been, passing over metallic strings, but that they were audible even when the night was breathless.
So like veritable music, however, were they on that first night that, upon reflexion, the Prior climbed softly the winding stair down which they appeared to flow, to the great solar among the beams of the roof, where the farm produce lay stored. A flood of moonlight now fell through the unshuttered dormer-windows; and, [149] under the glow of a lamp hanging from the low rafters, Prior Saint-Jean seemed to be looking for the first time on the human form, on the old Adam fresh from his Maker's hand. A servant of the house, or farm-labourer, perhaps!—fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like golden stuff high in all the corners of the place. A serf! But what unserflike ease, how lordly, or godlike rather, in the posture! Could one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich, warm, white limbs; in the haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a mystic knot, fallen down across the inspired brow? And yet what gentle sweetness also in the natural movement of the bosom, the throat, the lips, of the sleeper! Could that be diabolical, and really spotted with unseen evil, which was so spotless to the eye? The rude sandals of the monastic serf lay beside him apart, and all around was of the roughest, excepting only two strange objects lying within reach (even in their own renowned treasury Prior Saint-Jean had not seen the like of them), a harp, or some such instrument, of silver-gilt once, but the gold had mostly passed from it, and a bow, fashioned somehow of the same precious substance. The very form of these things filled his mind with inexplicable misgivings. He repeated a befitting collect, and trod softly away.
It was in truth but a rude place to which they were come. But, after life in the [150] monastery, the severe discipline of which the Prior himself had done much to restore, there was luxury in the free, self-chosen hours, the irregular fare, in doing pretty much as one pleased, in the sweet novelties of the country; to the boy Hyacinth especially, who forgot himself, or rather found his true self for the first time. Girding up his heavy frock, which he laid aside erelong altogether to go in his coarse linen smock only, he seemed a monastic novice no longer; yet, in his natural gladness, was found more companionable than ever by his senior, surprised, delighted, for his part, at the fresh springing of his brain, the spring of his footsteps over the close greensward, as if smoothed by the art of man. Cause of his renewed health, or concurrent with its effects, the air here might have been that of a veritable paradise, still unspoiled. "Could there be unnatural magic," he asked himself again, "any secret evil, lurking in these tranquil vale-sides, in their sweet low pastures, in the belt of scattered woodland above them, in the rills of pure water which lisped from the open down beyond?" Making what was really a boy's experience, he had a wholly boyish delight in his holiday, and certainly did not reflect how much we beget for ourselves in what we see and feel, nor how far a certain diffused music in the very breath of the place was the creation of his own ear or brain.
[151] That strange enigmatic owner of the harp and the bow, whom he had found sleeping so divinely, actually waited on them the next morning with all obsequiousness, stirred the great fire of peat, adjusted duly their monkish attire, laid their meal. It seemed an odd thing to be served thus, like St. Jerome by the lion, as if by some imperiously beautiful wild animal tamed. You hesitated to permit, were a little afraid of, his services. Their silent tonsured porter himself, contrast grim enough to any creature of that kind, had been so far seduced as to permit him to sleep there in the Grange, as he loved to do, instead of in ruder, rougher quarters; and, coaxed into odd garrulity on this one matter, told the new-comers the little he knew, with much also that he only suspected, about him; among other things, as to the origin of those precious objects, which might have belonged to some sanctuary or noble house, found thus in the possession of a mere labourer, who is no Frenchman, but a pagan, or gipsy, white as he looks, from far south or east, and who works or plays furtively, by night for the most part, returning to sleep awhile before daybreak. The other herdsmen of the valley are bond-servants, but he a hireling at will, though coming regularly at a certain season. He has come thus for any number of years past, though seemingly never grown older (as the speaker reflects), singing his way meagrely from farm to farm, to the sound of [152] his harp. His name?—It was scarcely a name at all, in the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question, on first coming there; but of names known to them it came nearest to a malignant one in Scripture, Apollyon. Apollyon had a just discernible tonsure, but probably no right to it.
Well skilled in architecture, Prior Saint-Jean was set, by way of a holiday task, to superintend the completion of the great monastic barn then in building. The visitor admires it still; perhaps supposes it, with its noble aisle, though set north and south, to be a desecrated church. If he be an expert in such matters, he will remark a sort of classical harmony in its broad, very simple proportions, with a certain suppression of Gothic emphasis, more especially in that peculiarly Gothic feature, the buttresses, scarcely marking the unbroken, windowless walls, which rise very straight, taking the sun placidly. The silver-grey stone, cut, if it came from this neighbourhood at all, from some now forgotten quarry, has the fine, close-grained texture of antique marble. The great northern gable is almost a classic pediment. The horizontal lines of plinth and ridge and cornice are kept unbroken, the roof of sea-grey slates being pitched less angularly than is usual in this rainy clime. A welcome contrast, the Prior thought it, to the sort of architectural nightmare he came from. He found the structure already more than half- [153] way up, the low squat pillars ready for their capitals.
Yes! it must have so happened often in the Middle Age, as you feel convinced, in looking sometimes at medieval building. Style must have changed under the very hands of men who were no wilful innovators. Thus it was here, in the later work of Prior Saint-Jean, all unconsciously. The mysterious harper sat there always, at the topmost point achieved; played, idly enough it might seem, on his precious instrument, but kept in fact the hard taxed workmen literally in tune, working for once with a ready will, and, so to speak, with really inventive hands—working expeditiously, in this favourable weather, till far into the night, as they joined unbidden in a chorus, which hushed, or rather turned to music, the noise of their chipping. It was hardly noise at all, even in the night-time. Now and again Brother Apollyon descended nimbly to surprise them, at an opportune moment, by the display of an immense strength. A great cheer exploded suddenly, as single-handed he heaved a massive stone into its place. He seemed to have no sense of weight: "Put there by the devil!" the modern villager assures you.
With a change then, not so much of style as of temper, of management, in the application of acknowledged rules, Prior Saint-Jean shaping only, adapting, simplifying, partly with a view [154] to economy, not the heavy stones only, but the heavy manner of using them, turned light. With no pronounced ornamentation, it is as if in the upper story ponderous root and stem blossomed gracefully, blossomed in cornice and capital and pliant arch-line, as vigorous as they were graceful, and rose on high quickly. Almost suddenly tie-beam and rafter knit themselves together into the stone, and the dark, dry, roomy place was closed in securely to this day. Mere audible music, certainly, had counted for something in the operations of an art, held at its best (as we know) to be a sort of music made visible. That idle singer, one might fancy, by an art beyond art, had attracted beams and stones into their fit places. And there, sure enough, he still sits, as a final decorative touch, by way of apex on the gable which looks northward, though much weather-worn, and with an ugly gap between the shoulder and the fingers on the harp,* as if, literally, he had cut off his right hand and put it from him:—King David, or an angel? guesses the careless tourist. The space below has been lettered. After a little puzzling you recognise there the relics of a familiar verse from a Latin psalm Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum,+ and the rest: inscribed as well as may be in Greek characters. Prior Saint-Jean caused it to be so inscribed, absurdly, during his last days there.