Part 144 (1/2)

[E] It requires now-a-days a strong effort of the imagination to realize the effect on poor people who had never seen them before, of such sentences as this: ”Blessed are the poor,” &c.

[F] The primitive writer was so interpreted by others besides Clement; and, in particular by Peter of Blois, a divine of the twelfth century, whose comment is noteworthy, as he himself was a forty-year hermit.

CHAPTER XCV

ONE day as he lay there sighing, and groaning, prayerless, tuneless, hopeless, a thought flashed into his mind. What he had done for the poor and the wayfarer, he would do for himself. He would fill his den of despair with the name of G.o.d and the magic words of holy writ, and the pious, prayerful, consolations of the Church.

Then, like Christian at Apollyon's feet, he reached his hand suddenly out and caught, not his sword, for he had none, but peaceful labour's humbler weapon, his chisel, and worked with it as if his soul depended on his arm.

They say that Michael Angelo in the next generation used to carve statues, not like our timid sculptors, by modelling the work in clay, and then setting a mechanic to chisel it; but would seize the block, conceive the image, and, at once, with mallet and steel make the marble chips fly like mad about him, and the ma.s.s sprout into form. Even so Clement drew no lines to guide his hand. He went to his memory for the gracious words, and then dashed at his work and eagerly graved them in the soft stone, between working and fighting.

He begged his visitors for candle ends, and rancid oil.

”Anything is good enough for _me_,” he said, ”if 'twill but burn.” So at night the cave glowed afar off like a blacksmith's forge, through the window and the gaping c.h.i.n.ks of the rude stone door, and the rustics beholding crossed themselves and suspected deviltries, and, within, the holy talismans one after another came upon the walls, and the sparks and the chips flew day and night, night and day, as the soldier of Solitude and of the Church plied, with sighs and groans, his bloodless weapon, between working and fighting.

_Kyrie Eleeison_ _Christe Eleeison_

??? Sata?a? s??t????? ?p? t??? p?da? ???.[1]

_Sursum corda_[2]

_Deus refugium nostrum et virtus_[3]

_Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere mihi._[4]

_Sancta Trinitas unus Deus, miserere n.o.bis._[5]

_Ab infestationibus Daemonum, a ventura ira, a d.a.m.natione perpetua._[6]

_Libera nos Domine Deus, qui miro ordine Angelorum ministeria, etc._ (the whole collect).[7]

_Quem quaerimus adjutorem nisi te Domine, qui pro peccatis nostris juste irascaris?_[8]

_Sancte Deus, Sancte fortis, Sancte et misericors Salvator, amarae morti ne tradas nos._

And underneath the great crucifix, which was fastened to the wall, he graved this from Augustine:--

_O anima Christiana, respice vulnera patientis, sanguinem morientis, pretium redemptionis.--Haec quanta sint cogitate, et in statera mentis vestrae appendite, ut totus vobis figatur in corde, qui pro vobis totus firus est in cruce. Nam, si pa.s.sio Christi ad memoriam revocetur, nihil est tam durum quod non aequo animo toleretur._

Which may be thus rendered:--

_O Christian soul, look on the wounds of the suffering One, the blood of the dying One, the price paid for our redemption! These things, oh think how great they be, and weigh them in the balance of thy mind: that He may be wholly nailed to thy heart, who for thee was all nailed unto the cross. For do but call to mind the sufferings of Christ, and there is nought on earth too hard to endure with composure._

Soothed a little, a very little, by the sweet and pious words he was raising all round him, and weighed down with watching and working night and day, Clement one morning sank prostrate with fatigue; and a deep sleep overpowered him for many hours.

Awaking quietly, he heard a little cheep; he opened his eyes, and, lo!

upon his breviary which was on a lone stool near his feet, ruffling all his feathers with a single pull, and smoothing them as suddenly, and c.o.c.king his bill this way and that with a vast display of cunning purely imaginary, perched a robin redbreast.