The Hermit and the Wild Woman | Page 9

to a deep cut in her
foot.
At that, for all his fear, the Hermit was moved to pity, and washed the
cut and bound it up; and as he did so he bethought him that perhaps his
strange visitor had been sent to him not for his soul's undoing but for
her own salvation. And from that hour he earnestly yearned to save her.
But it was not fitting that she should remain in his cave; so, having
given her water to drink and a handful of lentils, he raised her up and
putting his staff in her hand guided her to a hollow not far off in the
face of the cliff. And while he was doing this he heard the sunset bells
ring across the valley, and set about reciting the _Angelus Domini
nuntiavit Mariae_; and she joined in very piously, with her hands
folded, not missing a word.
Nevertheless the thought of her wickedness weighed on him, and the
next day when he went to carry her food he asked her to tell him how it
came about that she had fallen into such abominable sin. And this is the
story she told.

IV

I WAS born (said she) in the north country, where the winters are long
and cold, where snow sometimes falls in the valleys, and the high
mountains for months are white with it. My father's castle is in a tall
green wood, where the winds always rustle, and a cold river runs down
from the ice-gorges. South of us was the wide plain, glowing with heat,
but above us were stony passes where the eagle nests and the storms
howl; in winter great fires roared in our chimneys, and even in summer
there was always a cool air off the gorges. But when I was a child my
mother went southward in the great Empress's train and I went with her.
We travelled many days, across plains and mountains, and saw Rome,
where the Pope lives in a golden palace, and many other cities, till we
came to the great Emperor's court. There for two years or more we
lived in pomp and merriment, for it was a wonderful court, full of
mimes, magicians, philosophers and poets; and the Empress's ladies
spent their days in mirth and music, dressed in light silken garments,

walking in gardens of roses, and bathing in a great cool marble tank,
while the Emperor's eunuchs guarded the approach to the gardens. Oh,
those baths in the marble tank, my Father! I used to lie awake through
the whole hot southern night, and think of that plunge at sunrise under
the last stars. For we were in a burning country, and I pined for the tall
green woods and the cold stream of my father's valley; and when I had
cooled my limbs in the tank I lay all day in the scant cypress shade and
dreamed of my next bath.
My mother pined for the coolness till she died; then the Empress put
me in a convent and I was forgotten. The convent was on the side of a
bare yellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme. Below
was the sea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and overhead a
blinding sky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a huge baldric of
steel. Now the convent was built on the site of an old pleasure-house
which a holy Princess had given to our Order; and a part of the house
was left standing with its court and garden. The nuns had built all about
the garden; but they left the cypresses in the middle, and the long
marble tank where the Princess and her ladies had bathed. The tank,
however, as you may conceive, was no longer used as a bath; for the
washing of the body is an indulgence forbidden to cloistered virgins;
and our Abbess, who was famed for her austerities, boasted that, like
holy Sylvia the nun, she never touched water save to bathe her
finger-tips before receiving the Sacrament. With such an example
before them, the nuns were obliged to conform to the same pious rule,
and many, having been bred in the convent from infancy, regarded all
ablutions with horror, and felt no temptation to cleanse the filth from
their flesh; but I, who had bathed daily, had the freshness of clear water
in my veins, and perished slowly for want of it, like your garden herbs
in a drought.
My cell did not look on the garden, but on the steep mule-path leading
up the cliff, where all day long the sun beat as if with flails of fire, and I
saw the sweating peasants toil up and down behind their thirsty asses,
and the