If it had been a
moment of self-revelation the young friar was again protected by that
baffling calm as he glanced about him, turning affectionately to his old
friend. "It pleaseth me that thou art pleased," he said.
Fra Giulio had answered with a sigh. It was hard for one who loved so
truly to get so near, yet be no nearer. "I could wish that thou also
shouldst take pleasure in this beauty, my Paolo, for thou art missing a
joy that God permits."
Then the youthful scholar had turned his eyes upon him silently; and it
had seemed to the old man, in his great love, that a sudden glory had
transfigured the grave young face like a consecration. He still
remembered the tones of that clear voice saying serenely: "My Father,
when God speaketh a message in our souls, the peace and beauty which
come to us as we follow its call, are in the measure which He hath
decreed for us."
Now that the convent rang with his triumphs, and Fra Paolo was often
absent from his cell on missions of honor, the old friar sometimes
wondered how many of those philosophic and scientific truths which had
made him famous as an original thinker had come to the lad in
glimmerings on that first night among the hills, when, turning to his
old friend and stretching out his hands with a solemn, imploring motion
which seemed to confess a desperate need of isolation, he had said only,
"Let me think!"
Had his seeming nearness to the stars in the convent _loggia_ brought
him a premonition of the later message which had made him the "friend
and master" of Galileo?
Did he develop his "Laws of Sound" in that voiceful silence; or was it
in that solitude he had first watched the gentle ebb and flow of his own
life-current and learned the secret which Harvey, later, uttered to the
world?
Or had he been wholly absorbed in those philosophical questions which he
so brilliantly disputed at the learned Court of Mantua?
But to be near him was only to wonder more at the mystery which
enveloped him; and Fra Giulio, now that the lad had reached his prime,
often went reverently back to that night under the stars, when the
gifted youth had first stood, distanced as it were from men, remote from
human habitations and alone with the One whom only he acknowledged as
Master--then, perhaps, he had first been conscious of his latent power;
surely then the manifold message of his life must have whispered within
him many premonitions!
The time was long past when a question could arise as to the right of
the Augustinians to rich possessions in church and convent; and the
priceless treasures of art, flung sometimes in atonement upon their
quiet walls by a world-worn artist, or sent in propitiation for some
unconfessed sin by a prince of Church or State, were found side by side
with the gifts and legacies of the faithful, which, in sincere devotion,
they often impoverished their families to bestow.
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