d. A flood of moonlight now fell
through the unshuttered dormer-windows; and, [149] under the glow of a
lamp hanging from the low rafters, Prior Saint-Jean seemed to be
looking for the first time on the human form, on the old Adam fresh
from his Maker's hand. A servant of the house, or farm-labourer,
perhaps!--fallen asleep there by chance on the fleeces heaped like
golden stuff high in all the corners of the place. A serf! But what
unserflike ease, how lordly, or godlike rather, in the posture! Could
one fancy a single curve bettered in the rich, warm, white limbs; in
the haughty features of the face, with the golden hair, tied in a
mystic knot, fallen down across the inspired brow? And yet what gentle
sweetness also in the natural movement of the bosom, the throat, the
lips, of the sleeper! Could that be diabolical, and really spotted
with unseen evil, which was so spotless to the eye? The rude sandals
of the monastic serf lay beside him apart, and all around was of the
roughest, excepting only two strange objects lying within reach (even
in their own renowned treasury Prior Saint-Jean had not seen the like
of them), a harp, or some such instrument, of silver-gilt once, but the
gold had mostly passed from it, and a bow, fashioned somehow of the
same precious substance. The very form of these things filled his mind
with inexplicable misgivings. He repeated a befitting collect, and
trod softly away.

It was in truth but a rude place to which they were come. But, after
life in the [150] monastery, the severe discipline of which the Prior
himself had done much to restore, there was luxury in the free,
self-chosen hours, the irregular fare, in doing pretty much as one
pleased, in the sweet novelties of the country; to the boy Hyacinth
especially, who forgot himself, or rather found his true self for the
first time. Girding up his heavy frock, which he laid aside erelong
altogether to go in his coarse linen smock only, he seemed a monastic
novice no longer; yet, in his natural gladness, was found more
companionable than ever by his senior, surprised, delighted, for his
part, at the fresh springing of his brain, the spring of his footsteps
over the close greensward, as if smoothed by the art of man. Cause of
his renewed health, or concurrent with its effects, the air here might
have been that of a veritable paradise, still unspoiled. "Could there
be unnatural magic," he asked himself again, "any secret evil, lu