There were plenty of performers but no
audience; the congregation consisted of four peasant-women, two men, and
a child in arms. The town below was crowded. The service was one of the
chief ones in the year, but somehow or other the people stopped away.
When the music was over, I was shown through the convent. There were, as
usual, the stock marvels: a hole through which you looked and beheld
a--shall I call it sacred?--picture of Satan with horns and hoof
complete; a small plot of ground, where used to grow the thorns on which
St Benedict was wont to roll himself in order to quench the desires of
manhood, and where now grow the roses into which St Francis transformed
the said thorns, in honour of his brother saint. The monk who showed me
the building talked much about the misery of the surrounding poor. At
the convent's foot lies a little wood of dark green ilexes, of almost
unknown age, valued on account of some tradition about St Benedict, and
perhaps still more as forming a kind of oasis on the barren, bare
mountain-side. Armed guards have to be placed at night around this wood,
to save it from the depredations of the peasantry; every tree belonging
to the convent and not guarded was sure to be cut down. No one, so my
informant told me, would believe the sums of money the convent had spent
of late on charity, and how for this purpose even their daily supplies of
food had been curtailed; but alas! it was only like pouring water into a
sieve, for the people were poorer than ever.
Pages:
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180