Yet it may be that He meaneth
man to garner other blessings besides knowledge. We received him as a
child into our fold, and we are responsible for his development. But his
condition is not normal."
"Genius is abnormal," Fra Gianmaria had responded shortly.
"He hath no wish but for this ceaseless mental labor; all natural
youthful fancies, all joy in the things of beauty--for these he careth
naught."
The elder friar's troubled utterance had stirred no tremor in his
companion's stern reply. "Thou and I, my brother, have attained by
penances and years of abnegation to that mood which hath been granted
the boy as a gift to fit him for the cloister life. It were small
kindness to implant a struggle of which he knows not the beginnings."
And now, after all these years, through which the good Fra Giulio had
watched this son of his affections, whom he loved with a love "passing
the loves of earth" he pathetically told himself,--"as if God thus made
up to him for all the loves he had resigned,"--now that the name of Fra
Paolo was uttered with reverence while his own was unknown, he still
expressed his heart in many tender cares, providing the new cassock
before the scholar had noticed that the one he wore was seamed and
frayed, with such other gentle ministries as the convent rule permitted
toward one who never gave a worldly thought to the morrow.
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