One
Moment - One Moment My Heart, Or Some Old Pagan Demon Within Me,
Woke Up, And Fiercely Bounded; My Bosom Was Lifted, And Swung, As
Though I Had Touched Her Warm Robe.
One moment, one more, and then
the fever had left me.
I rose from my knees. I felt hopelessly
sane. The mere world reappeared. My good old monk was there,
dangling his key with listless patience, and as he guided me from
the church, and talked of the refectory and the coming repast, I
listened to his words with some attention and pleasure.
CHAPTER X - THE MONKS OF PALESTINE
Whenever you come back to me from Palestine we will find some
"golden wine" {24} of Lebanon, that we may celebrate with apt
libations the monks of the Holy Land, and though the poor fellows
be theoretically "dead to the world," we will drink to every man of
them a good long life, and a merry one! Graceless is the traveller
who forgets his obligations to these saints upon earth; little love
has he for merry Christendom if he has not rejoiced with great joy
to find in the very midst of water-drinking infidels those lowly
monasteries, in which the blessed juice of the grape is quaffed in
peace. Ay! ay! we will fill our glasses till they look like cups
of amber, and drink profoundly to our gracious hosts in Palestine.
Christianity permits, and sanctions, the drinking of wine, and of
all the holy brethren in Palestine there are none who hold fast to
this gladsome rite so strenuously as the monks of Damascus; not
that they are more zealous Christians than the rest of their
fellows in the Holy Land, but that they have better wine. Whilst I
was at Damascus I had my quarters at the Franciscan convent there,
and very soon after my arrival I asked one of the monks to let me
know something of the spots that deserved to be seen. I made my
inquiry in reference to the associations with which the city had
been hallowed by the sojourn and adventures of St. Paul. "There is
nothing in all Damascus," said the good man, "half so well worth
seeing as our cellars"; and forthwith he invited me to go, see, and
admire the long range of liquid treasure that he and his brethren
had laid up for themselves on earth. And these I soon found were
not as the treasures of the miser, that lie in unprofitable disuse,
for day by day, and hour by hour, the golden juice ascended from
the dark recesses of the cellar to the uppermost brains of the
friars. Dear old fellows! in the midst of that solemn land their
Christian laughter rang loudly and merrily, their eyes kept
flashing with joyous bonfires, and their heavy woollen petticoats
could no more weigh down the springiness of their paces, than the
filmy gauze of a danseuse can clog her bounding step.
You would be likely enough to fancy that these monastics are men
who have retired to the sacred sites of Palestine from an
enthusiastic longing to devote themselves to the exercise of
religion in the midst of the very land on which its first seeds
were cast; and this is partially, at least, the case with the monks
of the Greek Church, but it is not with enthusiasts that the
Catholic establishments are filled. The monks of the Latin
convents are chiefly persons of the peasant class from Italy and
Spain, who have been handed over to these remote asylums by order
of their ecclesiastical superiors, and can no more account for
their being in the Holy Land, than men of marching regiments can
explain why they are in "stupid quarters." I believe that these
monks are for the most part well conducted men, punctual in their
ceremonial duties, and altogether humble-minded Christians. Their
humility is not at all misplaced, for you see at a glance (poor
fellows!) that they belong to the LAG REMOVE of the human race. If
the taking of the cowl does not imply a complete renouncement of
the world, it is at least (in these days) a thorough farewell to
every kind of useful and entertaining knowledge, and accordingly
the low bestial brow and the animal caste of those almost Bourbon
features show plainly enough that all the intellectual vanities of
life have been really and truly abandoned. But it is hard to
quench altogether the spirit of inquiry that stirs in the human
breast, and accordingly these monks inquire - they are ALWAYS
inquiring inquiring for "news"! Poor fellows! they could scarcely
have yielded themselves to the sway of any passion more difficult
of gratification, for they have no means of communicating with the
busy world except through European travellers; and these, in
consequence I suppose of that restlessness and irritability that
generally haunt their wanderings, seem to have always avoided the
bore of giving any information to their hosts. As for me, I am
more patient and good-natured, and when I found that the kind monks
who gathered round me at Nazareth were longing to know the real
truth about the General Bonaparte who had recoiled from the siege
of Acre, I softened my heart down to the good humour of Herodotus,
and calmly began to "sing history," telling my eager hearers of the
French Empire and the greatness of its glory, and of Waterloo and
the fall of Napoleon! Now my story of this marvellous ignorance on
the part of the poor monks is one upon which (though depending on
my own testimony) I look "with considerable suspicion." It is
quite true (how silly it would be to INVENT anything so witless!),
and yet I think I could satisfy the mind of a "reasonable man" that
it is false. Many of the older monks must have been in Europe at
the time when the Italy and the Spain from which they came were in
act of taking their French lessons, or had parted so lately with
their teachers, that not to know of "the Emperor" was impossible,
and these men could scarcely, therefore, have failed to bring with
them some tidings of Napoleon's career.
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