Part 4

Before the afternoon was over we cursed in our hearts the Tuscan politeness we had heretofore praised. About a mile from Buonconvento the road to Monte Oliveto divided. We turned to the right. But two peasants with ox-teams called out from below that we must not go that way. It was all bad. But to the left it was good, and _piano_, ascending but gently, and we had much better take it. In an evil moment we did. That it ill behooves a wise man to seek counsel in every word spoken to him, we found to our cost. In the first place the ascent was not gentle,--we had not then learned that an Italian calls every hill that is not as straight up and down as the side of a house, _piano_,--and in the second place the road was not good, but vilely bad. Unfortunately, for half a mile or perhaps more it was fair enough. But when we had gone just so far that we were unwilling to turn back we discovered our mistake. The road we had not taken was that built by the monks hundreds of years ago; we had chosen the new and not yet finished by-way. It was heavy with dust and dirt, and full of ruts and loose stones. Over it we could not ride or even push the tricycle without difficulty. It was in keeping, however, with the abomination of desolation lying to each side. For we were now in a veritable wilderness, a land of deserts and of pits, where few men dwell. All around us were naked, colorless chalk-hills, abrupt precipices and ravines. A few chestnut-trees, a rose-bush covered with red berries growing from the gray earth, were the only green things we passed for miles. It was weary and slow work, and the sun was low on the hill-tops before we came to the point where the two roads met. At some distance above us we saw a large red building surrounded by cypresses, and we knew this must be Monte Oliveto Maggiore. So we took heart again.

But our trouble was not over. The road was better only by comparison, and it was still impossible to ride, and hard work to push or pull the tricycle. It was built of bricks, which lay as if they had been carelessly shot out of a cart and left where and how they fell. A little farther on it divided again. A woman was walking towards us, and J. asked her which was the road to the convent (_il convento_). "You must go back," she said; "it lies miles below,--Buonconvento." "These peasants are fools," said J. in angry English to her very face; but she, all unconscious, smiled upon us. We went to the left, which fortunately was just what we ought to have done. But it was provoking that instead of getting nearer to the monastery, we seemed to be going farther from it. With one turn of the road it appeared to be above, and with the next below us. Now it was on one side and now on the other, until I began to feel as if we were the answer to the riddle I had so often been asked in my childhood, the mysterious "What is it that goes round and round the house and never gets in?" Soon the sun set behind the hills, and the sky grew soft and golden. We met several peasants bearing large bundles of twigs on their heads. There were one or two shrines, a chapel, and a farm-house in front of which a priest stood talking to a woman. But on we went without resting, J. pushing the machine and I walking behind, womanlike shirking my share of the work. The road grew worse until it became nothing but a mass of ruts and gullies washed out by the rain, and led to a hill from which even Christian would have turned and fled. But we struggled up, reaching the top to see the gate of the monastery some sixty or seventy feet below. Finally we came to the great brick gateway which in the dull light--for by this time the color had faded from the sky--rose before us a heavy black pile, beyond whose archway we saw only shadow and mystery. As we walked under it our voices, when we spoke, sounded unnatural and hollow. On the other side the road wound through a gloomy grove of cypresses, growing so close together that they hedged us about with impenetrable darkness. Once several silent figures, moving noiselessly, passed by. Had we, by mischance, wandered into a Valley of the Shadow of Death?

The cypress grove, after several windings, brought us face to face with the building at which we had already so often looked from the distance. Even in the semi-darkness we could see the outline distinctly enough to know we were standing in front of the church, and that the detached building a little to our left was a barn or stable. But not a light shone in a window, not a doorway was in sight. I recalled my convent experience of bygone years, and remembered that after eight o'clock in the evening no one was admitted within its walls. Was there a rule like this at Monte Oliveto, and was six the hour when its bolts and bars were fastened against the stranger? As we hesitated where to go or what to do next, three or four workmen came from the stable. J. spoke to them, and one offered to show him the entrance to the monastery while I waited by the tricycle. It was strange to stand in the late evening and in the wilderness alone, with men whose speech I barely understood and whose faces I could not see. For fully five minutes I waited thus while they talked together in low voices. But at last I heard one cry, _Ecco!_ here was the _padrone_; and they all took off their hats. A dog ran up and examined me, and then a man, who I could just make out in the gloom, wore a cassock and the broad-brimmed priestly hat, joined the group. "_Buona sera_," he said to me.

Could I speak to him in French, I asked. Yes, he assented, what was it I wanted? When I told him we wished to stay in the monastery, he said he had not expected us. We had not written.

"But," I exclaimed, "we thought strangers were allowed to stay here."

"Yes," he answered; "there is a _pension_ in the monastery, but it is for artists."

"And my husband is an artist," I interrupted eagerly, for from his manner I feared he would refuse us admission. After all, what did he know about us except that, vagrant-like, we were wandering in the mountains at a most unseasonable hour? Indeed, when later I reflected on the situation, I realized that we must have seemed suspicious characters. At this critical moment J. returned. His guide had led him to a small side-door beyond the church. There he rang and rang again. The bell was loud and clear, and roused many echoes within, but nothing else. The guide, perplexed, then led him back. I told him with whom I was speaking, and he continued the conversation with the _padrone_. Had they talked in Italian only, or in French, they might have understood each other; but instead they used a strange mixture of the two, to their mutual bewilderment. If this kept on much longer we should undoubtedly spend the night in the open air. In despair I broke in in French: "But, my father, cannot we stay this one night?"

"Certainly," he said, fortunately dropping all Italian. "That is what I was explaining to _monsieur_. You can stay, but of course we have nothing prepared. We will do our best."

If he had said he would do his worst, provided we were rid of the tricycle for the night, and were ourselves taken indoors where we might sit down, we should have been thankful.

The bags were unstrapped and given into the care of one of the men, a place was made for the machine in the stable, and then we followed the _padrone_ or _Abate_--for this was his real title--to the door where J. had rung in vain, and which he opened with his key. Within it was so dark that we groped our way through a hall and a small cloister. Then we came to a flight of steps, where at the bidding of the _Abate_, as if to reassure us that we were not being led to secret cells or torture-chambers, the man carrying our bags struck a solitary match. By this feeble light we walked up the broad stone stairs and through many passage-ways, not a sound breaking the stillness but our foot-falls and their loud echoes, to a door where the _Abate_ left us, and at the same time the match burnt out. But the next minute he reappeared with a lighted taper, and at the end of the hall opened another door, lit a lamp on a table within, and showed us four rooms, which he said were at our disposal. The beds were not made, but they would be attended to immediately. He had now to say Office, but at nine supper would be served. Here was a very comfortable solution to the mystery into which the massive gateway seemed to lead. The Valley of the Shadow of Death had turned out to be a Delectable Land!

It was still more comfortable later, when, his Office said, the _Abate_ came back and sat and talked with us. Now he could examine us by a better light I think he concluded we were not dangerous characters, probably only harmless lunatics. However that may be, after half an hour, when the supper-bell rang and we started off for the refectory, again by the light of his taper, we were the best of friends. The long corridor, thus dimly seen, seemed interminable. We went down one stairway to find the door locked against us, then up and down another. Here the light went out, leaving us in a darkness like unto that of Egypt. The _Abate_ laughed as if it were the best of jokes. He took J.'s hand and J. took mine, and thus like three children we went laughing down the stairway and along more passages, and at last into a long refectory, at the farther end of which was a lamp, while a door to one side of that by which we entered opened, and a second monk in white robes, holding a lighted taper, came in, and when he saw us made a low bow. As there were no other visitors, we were to eat with him and his brother monk, the _Abate_ said; and then he gave me the head of the table, asking me if I were willing to be the Lady Abbess.

If we had been two prodigals he could not have been kinder than he was now he had given us shelter. If we had been starving like the hero of the parable, he could not have been more anxious to set before us a feast of plenty. Nor would any fatted calf have been more to our taste than the substantial supper prepared for us. We must eat, he said; we needed it. He had seen us coming up the hill as he talked with a peasant by the roadside; but _monsieur_ was push-pushing the velocipede and looking at nothing else, and _madame_ was panting and swinging her arms, staring straight in front of her, and before he had time, we had passed. We must drink too; the wine was good for us. We must not mix water with it; it was Christian, why then should it be baptized? The white-robed brother spoke little, but he never allowed J.'s plate to remain empty. When the meat was brought in we were joined by Pirro, a good-sized dog with no tail to speak of, and Lupo, an unusually large cat, and his numerous family, who all had to be fed at intervals. But even while Pirro jumped nimbly into the air after pieces of bread thrown to him, and Lupo scratched, and his progeny made mournful appeals to be remembered, and we talked, I looked every now and then down the long narrow table to where it was lost in deep shadow. The cloth was laid its entire length, as if in readiness for the banished brothers whenever they might return. I should not have been surprised then to see the door open to admit a procession of white-robed monks, all with tapers in their hands.

The _Abate_ must have realized that to a stranger there was something uncanny in his dark, silent, deserted monastery, and his last word as he bade us good-night was, that we were to fear nothing, and sleep in peace.

_To_

_THE ABATE DI NEGRO,_

_Of Monte Oliveto Maggiore,_

_We would say a Word of Thanks for the Golden Days passed in his House Beautiful, and for The Great Kindnesses shown us in our farther Journeying._

MONTE OLIVETO.

"_But, oh, what a favor is this to me, that yet I am admitted entrance here!_"

"_But they are to me golden hours in which such things happen to me._"

The days we spent at Monte Oliveto were golden days. For we not only slept there one, but several nights, and the _Abate_ declared we could remain as long as we might care to. Nothing could be more melancholy and wild than the country into which we had come. It is the most desolate part of all that strange desolation which lies to the southeast of Siena. The mountain on which the monastery is built is surrounded on every side but one by deep, abrupt ravines. Behind it rise higher mountains, bare and bleak and gray, like gigantic ash-piles, and on the very highest peak is the wretched little village of Chiusure. The other hills around are lower, and from the road by the convent gateway one can see Siena, pale and blue on the horizon, and southward, over the barren hill-tops, Monte Amiata. But Monte Oliveto, with its gardens and orchards and vineyards, is a green place in the midst of the barrenness. The mountain-sides are terraced, and olives and vines grow almost to the bottom of the ravine. It was said in old times that the Bishop of Arezzo was commanded in a vision to call the monastery after the Mount in Jerusalem. Now-a-days sceptics say the trees on the terraces explain the name, forgetting that in its beginning this hill was as bare as the others. Why cannot it be believed, for the legend's sake, that the olives were planted afterwards because of the name?

The first morning, the _Abate_ took us to see the frescos representing the life of Saint Benedict, painted on the walls of the large cloister. I will be honest, and confess that they disappointed us. I doubt whether the artists were very proud of them. Luca Signorelli, before he had finished the first side of the cloister, gave up the work, as it is not likely he would have done had he cared much for it. Sodoma, when he took his place, was at first so careless that the then abbot took him to task, but the artist calmly told him more could not be expected for the price that was paid him. Certainly with neither were these frescos a labor of love, and this one feels at once. One wonders if this could have been the same Sodoma who painted the Saint Sebastian in Florence, and yet there is more charm in his pictures than in those of Signorelli. But what we cared for most were his portraits of himself, with heavy hair hanging about his face, and wearing the cloak the Milanese gentleman, turned monk, had given him, and of his wife and child; and the pictures of the raven and the other pets he brought with him to the monastery, to the wonder of the good monks. It is a pity every one cannot look at these frescos with such loving, reverential eyes as the _Abate_. He had shown them probably to hundreds of visitors; he had seen them almost every day for the many years he had been at Monte Oliveto; but his pleasure in them was as fresh as if it dated but from yesterday. He told the story of each in turn,--of how in this one the great Saint Benedict had set the devil to flight, and how in that he had by a miracle recalled an erring brother; and once he pointed to a palm-tree in a background. Sodoma, he said, had seen and admired a palm in the garden of the monastery, and so, after his realistic fashion, had painted it in just as he had his pets. That very tree was in the garden still; he would show it to us if we liked.

There never was such another garden! It is close to the large brick house or palace by the gateway, where in old times lay visitors were lodged, and beyond which no woman was ever allowed to pass. It is small, but in it the monks only raised the rarest trees and plants. Here grew the precious herbs out of which in the pharmacy, whose windows overlook the quiet green enclosure, they prepared the healing draughts for which people came from far and near. The pharmacy is closed now. There is dust in the corners and on the quaint old chairs. Cobwebs hang from the ceiling. But brass scales are still on the heavy wooden counter, and pestle and mortar behind it, and glass retorts of strange shapes in the corners and above the doors. Majolica jars all marked with the three mountains, the cross, and the olive-branch,--the _stemma_ of the monastic order,--are ranged on the brown shelves, many of the large ones carefully sealed, while from the smaller come forth strange odors of myrrh and incense and rare ointments. As in the refectory, everything here is in order for the monks when they return. But they will find more change in the garden below. The rare plants, the ebony and the hyssop, the cactuses and the palm (which made us think less of Sodoma's frescos than we had before), the pomegranates and the artichokes, are all there. But weeds grow in the paths, and by the old gray well, and in among the herbs; roses have run riot in the centre of the garden and turned it into a wild tangled growth. To us it seemed the loveliest spot in Monte Oliveto. The hours spent in it were like a beautiful idyl of Theocritus or Shelley. The sun shone and the air was filled with sweet spicy scents. To one side was the gray mountain, to the other dense cypresses, and above a blue, cloudless sky. The roses were still in bloom, and as we lingered there, the _Abate_ went from bush to bush and picked for me a large bunch of fragrant buds. I hope if the monks ever do come back that, while they throw open the windows of the pharmacy and let the light in again upon the majolica and the dark woodwork, they will leave the gates of the garden locked. It is fairer in its confusion than it ever could be with weeded paths and well-clipped bushes.

The _Abate_ took us everywhere,--through the empty guest-chambers of the palace to the tower, now a home for pigeons, from the top of which one has a wide view of the country, which with its squares of olives and its gray hills and fields marked by deep furrows, as if by boundary lines, looks like a large map or geological chart,--through the monastery, with its three hundred rooms with now but three monks to occupy them; its cloisters, for there are two besides the large frescoed one; its _loggie_, where geraniums and other green plants were growing; its great refectory, beyond the door of which fowl or flesh meat never passed, and which is now used no longer; and its library, at the very top of the house, where rows of white vellum volumes are ready for the students who so seldom come. Then he led us to the church, where there are more altars than monks to pray before them, and a wonderful choir with inlaid stalls; and in and out of little chapels, one of which contains the grotto where blessed Bernardo Tolomei, the founder of the order, lived for many years after he came to the wilderness, while another was the first church used by the brotherhood, and the Virgin with angels playing to her on harps and mandolins, above the altar, was painted long before Signorelli and Sodoma began their work. Then there was the lemon-grove to be seen, where the _Abate_ filled our pockets with the ripe fruit which we were to keep, he said, in case we might be thirsty on the road some day when there was no wine or water near by to drink. And after that there was still to be visited the wine-press, with its deep shadows and dark corners and long subterranean passage to the room below, where men were filling small casks from large butts, and then carrying them off on their shoulders to be weighed and stored above. We had to taste the wine, and I think it, together with the sunshine and the flowers, must have gone to our heads that morning and stayed there so long as we were at Monte Oliveto, for everything about us seemed to belong less to the actual world than to a dreamland full of wonder and beauty, and sometimes of pathos.

It was the same in the afternoon, when the _Abate_ had gone about his work,--for he is a busy man, like the centurion with many under him,--and J. and I wandered alone over the gray hills up to Chiusure. Life with its hardships must be real enough to the people of this little village, in which seeds of pestilence sown hundreds of years ago still bear the bitter fruit of wretchedness. It seems as if the brick walls which could not keep out the plague have ever since successfully barred the way to all prosperity, for generation after generation is born within them but to live and die in poverty. We saw melancholy figures there,--old hags of women, with thin white hair and bent almost double under heavy bundles of wood, toiling up steep stony streets with bare feet, and others crouching in the gloom opposite open doorways. Even the little priest, who, in his knee-breeches and long frock-coat and braided smoking-cap with tassels dangling in his eyes, was humorous enough to look at, was pathetic in his way. For after he had shown us his church with its decorations, poor as the people who worship in it, and offered us a glass of wine in his own parlor, he spread on the table before us some broken pieces of glass easily put together, on which a picture was painted. Was it of value? he asked, so eagerly that he told without further words the story of wants but ill supplied. He was willing to sell it, but he did not know what it was worth. Could we tell him? No, we could not, we said, for we really knew nothing about it, though we feared the hopes he had set upon it would never be realized. And then sadly he gathered together the pieces and put them away again in their newspaper wrapping.

It was more cheerful outside the gateway. There, in the late afternoon, the gray olives by the way were more clearly defined against the sky, and the gray ravines below more indistinct. Beyond, the hills, now all purple and soft, rolled away to the horizon and to the brilliant red sky above. One or two lights were lit in distant farm-houses, and once we heard a far-off bell. Before us the white road led by one green hill on whose top was a circle of cypresses, and in its centre a black cross, as in so many old pictures.

But the strangest part of this dream-life was the friendship that sprung up between us and the monks. I should not have been more surprised if Saint Benedict and Blessed Bernardo had come back to earth to make friends with us. It was not only that the _Abate_ acted as our guide through the monastery,--this he does for every visitor who comes, since the Government took possession of it and turned it into a public art-gallery and _pension_ for artists,--but he came to our room early in the morning to drink his coffee with us, and in the evening, after he had said his Office, for a little talk. And when we had finished our supper we sat together long over our wine, talking now in French, now in English, now in Italian, and occasionally understanding each other. Like all good fellows, we too had our jokes. But the _Abate's_ favorite was to tell how he had seen us coming up the mountain, _monsieur_ push-pushing the velocipede and _madame_ puff-puffing behind him. Even Dom Giuseppe, the other monk,--the third was away,--relaxed from the dignity with which he had first met us, and took part in the talk and the laughter. Unreal as seemed these late suppers in the long refectory in the dim light, with Pirro forever jumping after choice morsels, while Lupo and his family growled with rage and envy from under the table, we strayed even farther into Wonderland the second day after our arrival, when both monks went out for a ride on the tricycle along the mulberry walk and by Blessed Bernardo's grotto.