Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 | Page 5

of
her communication which had awakened the severest internal recoil,
and raised a tumult of passions which the priest vainly sought either to
assuage or understand.
As soon as his morning duties were over, he repaired to his convent,
sought his cell, and, prostrate on his face before the crucifix, began his
internal reckoning with himself. The day passed in fasting and solitude.
It is now golden evening, and on the square, flat roof of the convent,
which, high-perched on a crag, overlooks the bay, one might observe a
dark figure slowly pacing backward and forward. It is Father Francesco;
and as he walks up and down, one could see by his large, bright, dilated
eye, by the vivid red spot on either sunken cheek, and by the nervous
energy of his movements, that he is in the very height of some mental
crisis,--in that state of placid extase in which the subject supposes
himself perfectly calm, because every nerve is screwed to the highest
point of tension and can vibrate no more.
What oceans had that day rolled over him and swept him, as one may
see a little boat rocked on the capricious surges of the Mediterranean!
Were, then, all his strivings and agonies in vain? Did he love this
woman with any earthly love? Was he jealous of the thought of a future
husband? Was it a tempting demon that said to him, "Lorenzo Sforza
might have shielded this treasure from the profanation of lawless
violence, from the brute grasp of an inappreciative peasant, but Father
Francesco cannot"? There was a moment when his whole being

vibrated with a perception of what a marriage bond might have been
that was indeed a sacrament, and that bound together two pure and
loyal souls who gave life and courage to each other in all holy purposes
and heroic deeds; and he almost feared that he had cursed his
vows,--those awful vows, at whose remembrance his inmost soul
shivered through every nerve.
But after hours of prayer and struggle, and wave after wave of
agonizing convulsion, he gained one of those high points in human
possibility where souls can stand a little while at a time, and where all
things seem so transfigured and pure that they fancy themselves
thenceforward forever victorious over evil.
As he walks up and down in the gold-and-purple evening twilight, his
mind seems to him calm as that glowing sea that reflects the purple
shores of Ischia, and the quaint, fantastic grottos and cliff's of Capri.
All is golden and glowing; he sees all clear; he is delivered from his
spiritual enemies; he treads them under his feet.
Yes, he says to himself, he loves Agnes,--loves her all-sacredly as her
guardian angel does, who ever beholdeth the face of her Father in
Heaven. Why, then, does he shrink from her marriage? Is it not evident?
Has that tender soul, that poetic nature, that aspiring genius, anything in
common with the vulgar, coarse details of a peasant's life? Will not her
beauty always draw the eye of the licentious, expose her artless
innocence to solicitation which will annoy her and bring upon her head
the inconsiderate jealousy of her husband? Think of Agnes made
subject to the rude authority, to the stripes and correction, which men
of the lower class, under the promptings of jealousy, do not scruple to
inflict on their wives! What career did society, as then organized,
present to such a nature, so perilously gifted in body and mind? He has
the answer. The Church has opened a career to woman which all the
world denies her.
He remembers the story of the dyer's daughter of Siena, the fair Saint
Catharine. In his youth he had often visited the convent where one of
the first artists of Italy has immortalized her conflicts and her victories,
and knelt with his mother at the altar where she now communes with
the faithful. He remembered how, by her sanctity, her humility, and her
holy inspirations of soul, she had risen to the courts of princes, whither
she had been sent as ambassadress to arrange for the interests of the

Church; and then rose before his mind's eye the gorgeous picture of
Pinturicchio, where, borne in celestial repose and purity amid all the
powers and dignitaries of the Church, she is canonized as one of those
that shall reign and intercede with Christ in heaven.
Was it wrong, therefore, in him, though severed from all womankind
by a gulf of irrevocable vows, that he should feel a kind of jealous
property in this gifted and beautiful creature? and though he might not,
even in thought, dream of possessing her himself, was there sin in the
vehement energy with which his whole nature rose up in him to say
that