The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  And it was a queer thing, too, that with the coming of Ettarre the appearance of his cell was changed into the appearance of a quiet-colored garden. Lilies seemed to abound everywhere in this garden, and many climbing white roses, also, which were lighted by a clear and tempered radiancy like that of dawn. Moreover, a number of white rabbits were frisking about Brother Odo, and he could hear the sound of doves that called to their mates very softly.

  With such a pleasant miracle did Ettarre return to Brother Odo from out of that celestial estate which he had procured for this beautiful girl by contriving her martyrdom. She came to assure him of her gratitude in all possible ways. After that, nobody was happier, night after night, than was Brother Odo.

  And in the day time he preached everywhere what these noble ladies had descended from Paradise to teach him. He in particular denounced the impertinences of science,—“of science so called,” as Brother Odo impressively and scathingly described the snare which evil sets for human self-conceit,—and he taught that through faith and divine election lay the one way to salvation. He became the glory of the monastery. The white-robed Abbot declared that of all his children in the spirit Odo was the most worthy to be his successor.

5. OF HIS YET FURTHER INCREASE IN GRACE

  Nor, when Odo had been anointed as Abbot of St Hoprig, and went clothed in the white woolen robe of his office, did he cease from reproving evil-doers with unflinching severity. Yet so merciful was the new Abbot that no offender was permitted to die in a state of sin whensoever that could be avoided. Instead, the Abbot would prolong painstakingly the more concrete arguments of the Church so as to win for every backslider and every heretic sufficient time in which to repent and thus to be spared from suffering in the next world.

  The Abbot himself would carry humbly his own easy-chair into the torture chamber, and would watch over the torments, lest death end them too speedily, even by one instant, for his erring brother’s real and eternal good. Very often his dinner was brought to him in the torture chamber, and he would eat it there, among the most unappetizing sights and screams and odors, rather than neglect, even for an instant, his spiritual duties.

  Nor could you have found anywhere a more eloquent preacher. The Abbot’s sermons made converts right and left, because he so frightened his hearers that no one of them dared risk that Hell of which this blessed gaunt man told them very lovingly. He spoke of Hell’s perpetual and unquenchable fires, of Hell’s pitch and brimstone and toads and adders, of Hell’s horrible hot mists and of giant gray worms which fed upon the broiled damned, and he imitated quite effectively the hoarse howling of lost souls when devils toss them about on muck forks. He spoke of all these things with the particularity of one who rejoiced in these strong discouragements of laxity in well-doing. He appalled his auditors with that faithful rendering of every unpleasant detail which is the essence of realism.

  So great was the Abbot’s ardor that in his eyes awoke a red flaring, and a white foam would dribble thinly from his lips, in the while that he called sinners to repentance and spoke of the blood of the Lamb. He thus frightened many of the more impressionable into convulsions; some died of terror; but the survivors crept tremblingly into the sustaining arms of Holy Church, which alone could save them from these torments.

  Meanwhile the Abbot labored, too, to convict old Gui de Puysange of his abominable practices. The Abbot labored the more zealously because of that dim yearning and that terrible tenderness which moved in the heart of the white-robed Abbot whensoever he beheld this dark and withered sorcerer. He labored, though, because of this vile wizard’s circumspection, without any success; and blessed Odo could secure no proof that this reprobate was one of the Old Believers, until through Heaven’s grace the well-nigh despairing Abbot was accorded a revelation in this matter.

  “Good may very well come of that which merely mortal reason finds blameworthy,” Ettarre declared one night, after the Abbot of St. Hoprig had reached a state of comparative dejection, “for the divinely elect serve Heaven’s will and the true welfare of their fellow beings with every manner of tool. Do you, my darling, who are one of these peculiarly favored persons, but think, for example, of how with perjury you brought about my ascension into the delights of Paradise! By an action which many of the unsanctified might esteem contemptible you then purchased for me such joys, my dearest Odo, that I sometimes leave them half-unwillingly even to come to you.”