The Well of Saint Clare

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The Well of Saint Clare

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Well of Saint Clare, by Anatole France This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Well of Saint Clare
Author: Anatole France
Translator: Alfred Allinson
Release Date: July 1, 2006 [EBook #18728]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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Transcribers note: The Greek passages in this text have been transliterated into Latin characters. The symbol [oe] represents an oe ligature.

THE WORKS OF ANATOLE FRANCE IN AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION EDITED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN
THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE
[Illustration]

THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE
BY ANATOLE FRANCE
A TRANSLATION BY ALFRED ALLINSON
[Illustration]
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY: MCMIX
WM. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

CONTENTS
Prologue--The Reverend Father Adone Doni 3 San Satiro 17 Messer Guido Cavalcanti 51 Lucifer 73 The Loaves of Black Bread 85 The Merry-Hearted Buffalmacco 95 i. The Cockroaches 96 ii. The Ascending up of Andria Tafi 106 iii. The Master 118 iv. The Painter 124 The Lady of Verona 133 The Human Tragedy 141 i. Fra Giovanni. 141 ii. The Lamp 150 iii. The Seraphic Doctor. 153 iv. The Loaf on the Flat Stone 156 v. The Table under the Fig-tree 159 vi. The Temptation 163 vii. The Subtle Doctor 169 viii. The Burning Coal 177 ix. The House of Innocence 179 x. The Friends of Order 187 xi. The Revolt of Gentleness 194 xii. Words of Love 200 xiii. The Truth 205 xiv. Giovanni's Dream 215 xv. The Judgment. 223 xvi. The Prince of this World 231 The Mystic Blood 243 A Sound Security 257 History of Do?a Maria d'Avalos and the Duke d'Andria 271 Bonaparte at San Miniato 289

THE WELL OF SAINT CLARE

PROLOGUE
THE REVEREND FATHER ADONE DONI

PROLOGUE
THE REVEREND FATHER ADONE DONI
[Greek: Ta gar physika, kai ta êthika, alla kai ta mathêmatika, kai tous egkyklious logous, kai peri techn?n, pasan eichen empeirian.]--Diogenes La?rtius, IX, 37.[1]
[Footnote 1: "For of physical and ethical science, no less than of mathematics and the common round of learning, as well as concerning arts, he possessed full knowledge and experience."]
I was spending the Spring at Sienna. Occupied all day long with meticulous researches among the city archives, I used after supper to take an evening walk along the wild road leading to Monte Oliveto, where I would encounter in the twilight huge white oxen under ponderous yokes dragging a rustic wain with wheels of solid timber--all unchanged since the times of old Evander. The church bells knelled the peaceful ending of the day, while the purple shades of night descended sadly and majestically on the low chain of neighbouring hills. The black squadrons of the rooks had already sought their nests about the city walls, but relieved against the opalescent sky a single sparrow-hawk still hung floating with motionless wings above a solitary ilex tree.
I moved forward to confront the silence and solitude and the mild terrors that lowered before me in the growing dusk. The tide of darkness rose by imperceptible degrees and drowned the landscape. The infinite of starry eyes winked in the sky, while in the gloom below the fireflies spangled the bushes with their trembling love-lights.
These living sparks cover all the Roman Campagna and the plains of Umbria and Tuscany, on May nights. I had watched them in former days on the Appian Way, round the tomb of C?cilia Metella--their playground for two thousand years; now I found them dancing the selfsame dance in the land of St. Catherine and of Pia de' Tolomei, at the gates of Sienna, that most melancholy and most fascinating of cities. All along my path they quivered in the bents and brushwood, chasing one another, and ever and anon, at the call of desire, tracing above the roadway the fiery arch of their darting flight.
On the white ribbon of the road, in these clear Spring nights, the only person I used to encounter was the Reverend Father Adone Doni, who at the time was, like myself, working in the old Academy degli Intronati. I had taken an instant liking for the Cordelier in question, a man who, grown grey in study, still preserved the cheerful, facile humour of a simple, unlettered countryman. He was very willing to converse; and I greatly relished his bland speech, his cultivated yet artless way of thought, his look of old Silenus purged at the baptismal font, the play of his passions at once keen and refined, the strange, alluring personality that informed the whole man. Assiduous at the library, he was also