The Well of Saint Clare

The Well of Saint Clare

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Well of Saint Clare, by Anatole
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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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OF SAINT CLARE ***

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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

Doña 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 technôn, pasan eichen
empeirian.]--Diogenes Laërtius, 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 Cæcilia 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