rally
marks the _lune de miel_. She, too, went to meet him half-way--and they
disappeared out of our lives.

As we looked at the Norman doorway it was suddenly filled with the
figure of a monk. Nothing could have been more appropriately romantic
and picturesque. He was clothed not as a Jesuit, but in the far more
becoming dress of a Franciscan. His cowl was thrown back, revealing a
pale, refined face and well-formed head, on which the hair seemed to be
arranged almost like a circlet of leaves--the crown of the poet. He
stood still and motionless as though carved in stone. In his hand he
held a breviary. A girdle was round his waist confining the long brown
robe. As far as we could see, he appeared unmindful of his surroundings,
lost in a dreamy gaze which penetrated beyond the skies. It was the
attitude and expression of a visionary or mystic.

What was this monk in the strange garb? Who was he? What brought him
apparently at home amidst the Jesuits, he who evidently belonged to
another order? Had he thrown in his lot amongst them? Or did he live, a
solitary being, in one of the surrounding hermitages?

Whilst we looked he slowly turned, and, with bent head and lingering
steps, as though in deep contemplation, passed out of sight. Nothing
remained but the empty doorway with a vision of arches beyond; a few
ruined walls stained with the marks of centuries, to which patches of
moss and drooping creepers and hardy ferns added grace and charm. We
were alone, surrounded by intense quiet and repose. Sunshine was over
all, casting deep shadows. No sound disturbed the stillness, not even
the echo of the monk's receding footsteps. So silent and motionless had
been his coming and going, we asked ourselves whether he was in truth
flesh and blood or a mid-day visitor from the land of shadows. How
remote, how out of the world it all was!

Suddenly, as we looked upwards, an eagle took majestic flight from one
of the mountain peaks, and, hovering in the blue ether, seemed seeking
for prey. But it was not the time of the lambs, and with a long,
sweeping wing, it passed across the valley to an opposite range of
hills.

The great church was before us with its dome, of Roman design and
sufficiently common-place. But, after all, what mattered? Its effects
and those of the hideous Hospederia were lost in their wonderful
surroundings, just as a drop of water is lost in the ocean.

On entering the church this comparison disappeared. Th