Magdalen
would have been only a little over-cheerful, a little free, barely
what in the fourteenth century is called (the mere notion would
have horrified the house of Lazarus) _a trifle fast_; our unknown
Franciscan--for I take him to be a Franciscan--insists very much on her
having sung and whistled on the staircase, a thing no modest lady of
Bethany would then have done; but which, my dear brethren, is after
all....

This sinful Magdalen, repenting of her sins, such as they are, is living
with her sister Mary and her brother Lazarus; the whole little family
bound to Jesus by the miracle which had brought Lazarus back to life.
Jesus and his mother are their guests during Passion week; and the awful
tragedy of the world and of heaven passes, in the anonymous narrative,
across the narrow stage of that little burgher's house. As in the art of
the fifteenth century, the chief emotional interest of the Passion is
thrown not on the Apostles, scarcely on Jesus, but upon the two female
figures, facing each other as in some fresco of Perugino, the Magdalen
and the Mother of Christ. Facing one another, but how different! This
Magdalen has the terrific gesture of despair of one of those colossal
women of Signorelli's, flung down, as a town by earthquake, at the foot
of the cross. She was pardoned "because she had loved much"--_quia
multo amavit_. The unknown friar knew what _that_ meant as well as his
contemporary Dante, when Love showed him the vision of Beatrice's death.
Never was there such heart-breaking as that of his heroine: she becomes
almost the chief personage of the Passion; for she knows not merely all
the martyrdom of the Beloved, feels all the agonies of His flesh and
His spirit, but knows--how well!--that she has lost Him. Opposite this
terrible convulsive Magdalen, sobbing, tearing her hair and rolling on the
ground, is the other heart-broken woman, the mother; but how different!
She remains maternal through her grief, with motherly thoughtfulness
for others; for to the real mother (how different in this to the lover!)
there will always remain in the world some one to think of. She bridles
her sorrow; when John at last hesitatingly suggests that they must not
stay all night on Calvary, she turns quietly homeward; and, once at home,
tries to make the mourners eat, tries to eat with them, makes them take
rest that dreadful night. For such a mother there shall not be mere
bitterness in death; and here follows a mos