The
priest sat down and waited.
He had enough to occupy his mind; for not only had he the thought of the
character he was to sustain presently under the scrutiny of a suspicious
man; but he had the prospect, as he hoped, of coming into the presence
of the most-talked-of woman in Europe, and of ministering to her as a
priest alone could do, in her sorest need. His hand went to his breast
as he considered it, and remembered What he bore ... and he felt the
tiny flat circular case press upon his heart....
For his imagination was all aflame at the thought of Mary. Not only had
he been kindled again and again in the old days by poor Anthony's talk,
until the woman seemed to him half-deified already; but man after man
had repeated the same tale, that she was, in truth, that which her lean
cousin of England desired to be thought--a very paragon of women,
innocent, holy, undefiled, yet of charm to drive men to their knees
before her presence. It was said that she was as one of those strange
moths which, confined behind glass, will draw their mates out of the
darkness to beat themselves to death against her prison; she was
exquisite, they said, in her pale beauty, and yet more exquisite in her
pain; she exuded a faint and intoxicating perfume of womanliness, like a
crushed herb. Yet she was to be worshipped, rather than loved--a
sacrament to be approached kneeling, an incarnate breath of heaven, the
more lovely from the vileness into which her life had been cast and the
slanders that were about her name.
Pages:
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329