The Well of Saint Clare | Page 6

thought almost to touch them and felt
their breath on his face, appeared suddenly to increase, and he watched
them coming as though from out a far-off forest. Impatient to be at him,
they began to run, threatening him with their cruel flowers, while
menaces flew from their flower-like lips. And lo! as they came nearer,
a change was wrought in them; at each step they lost something of their
grace and beauty, and the bloom of their youth faded as fast as the roses
in their hands. First their eyes grew hollow and the mouth fell in. The
neck, but now so pure and white, hung in great hideous folds, and grey
elf-locks draggled over their wrinkled brows. On they came; and their
eyes were circled with red, their lips drawn in upon the toothless gums.
On they came, carrying dead roses in their arms, which were black and
writhen as the old vine stocks the peasants of Chianti burn for firewood
in the winter nights. On they came, with shaking heads and palsied
thighs, tottering and trembling.
Arrived at the spot where Fra Mino stood rooted to the ground with
affright, they were no better than a crowd of horrid witches, bald and
bearded, nose and chin touching, and bosoms hanging loose and flabby.
They came crowding round him:
"Ah, ha! the pretty darling!" cried one. "He is as white as a sheet, and
his heart beats like a hare the dogs are snapping at. Ægle, sister mine,
say, what must be done with him?"
"Neæra mine!" Ægle replied, "why! we must open his breast, tear out
his heart and put a sponge in its place instead."
"Not so!" said Melib[oe]a. "That were making him pay too dear for his
curiosity and the pleasure he has had in surprising our frolic. Enough
for this time to inflict a light chastisement. Say, shall we give him a

good whipping?"
Straightway surrounding the Monk, the sisters dragged his gown above
his head and belaboured him with the handfuls of thorns they still held.
The blood was beginning to come, when Neæra signed to them to stop:
"Enough!" she cried! "he is my gallant, I tell you! I saw him just now
casting tender eyes at me; I would content his wishes, and grant him
my favours without more delay."
She smiled alluringly; and a long, black tooth projecting from her
mouth tickled his nostril. She murmured softly:
"Come, come, my Adonis!"
Then suddenly, wild with rage:
"Fie, fie! his senses are benumbed. His coldness offends my charms.
He scorns me; avenge me, comrades! Mnaïs, Ægle, Melib[oe]a, avenge
your sister!"
At this appeal, one and all, lifting their thorny whips, fell to scourging
him so savagely that Fra Mino's body was soon one wound from head
to toe. Now and again they would stop to cough and spit, only to begin
afresh, plying their whips more vigorously than ever. Only sheer
weariness induced them to leave off.
"I hope," Neæra then said, "next time he will not do me the undeserved
insult I still blush to remember. We will spare his life; but if he betrays
the secret of our sports and pleasures, we will surely kill him.
Good-bye to you, my pretty boy!"
So saying, the old woman suddenly squatted down over the Monk and
drowned him in a torrent of very filthy liquid. Each sister followed suit
and did the like; then one after the other they re-entered the tomb of
San Satiro, slipping in through a tiny crack in the lid, leaving their
victim lying full length in a stream of a most intolerable stench.

When the last had disappeared,--the cock crew. Then Fra Mino at last
found himself able to rise from the earth. Broken with fatigue and pain,
benumbed with cold, shuddering with fever, half stifled with the foul
exhalations of the poisonous liquor, he set his clothing straight and
dragged himself to his cell, just as day broke.
From that night on, Fra Mino never had a moment's peace. The
recollection of what he had seen in the Chapel of San Michele, above
San Satiro's tomb, disturbed him in the Church services and in all his
pious exercises. He trembled when he visited the Church along with his
fellows; and as his turn came, according to the rule, to kiss the
pavement of the Choir, his lips shuddered to encounter the traces of the
nymphs' presence, and he would murmur: "O! my Saviour, dost not
Thou hear me say what Thou didst Thyself say to Thy Father, Lead us
not, we beseech Thee, into temptation?" At first he had thought of
sending to the Lord Bishop an account of what he had witnessed. But
on riper reflexion, he became convinced it were better to meditate at
leisure