And So As I Went I Trod Tenderly, Not Looking To The
Right Nor To The Left, But Bending My Eyes To The Ground.
The attending friar served me well; he led me down quietly and all
but silently to the Virgin's home.
The mystic air was so burnt
with the consuming flames of the altar, and so laden with incense,
that my chest laboured strongly, and heaved with luscious pain.
There - there with beating heart the Virgin knelt and listened. I
strived to grasp and hold with my riveted eyes some one of the
feigned Madonnas, but of all the heaven-lit faces imagined by men
there was none that would abide with me in this the very sanctuary.
Impatient of vacancy, I grew madly strong against Nature, and if by
some awful spell, some impious rite, I could - Oh most sweet
Religion, that bid me fear God, and be pious, and yet not cease
from loving! Religion and gracious custom commanded me that I fall
down loyally and kiss the rock that blessed Mary pressed. With a
half consciousness, with the semblance of a thrilling hope that I
was plunging deep, deep into my first knowledge of some most holy
mystery, or of some new rapturous and daring sin, I knelt, and
bowed down my face till I met the smooth rock with my lips. 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.
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