ing and weeping burst forth, and
tears fell upon the coffin like rain.

The monks went home. Jerome collected them in the refectory and spoke to
them thus: "We have this day laid a saint in the earth. The convent will
keep his trentals, but will feast, not fast; for our good brother is
freed from the burden of the flesh; his labours are over, and he has
entered into his joyful rest. I alone shall fast, and do penance; for to
my shame I say it, I was unjust to him, and knew not his worth till it
was too late. And you, young monks, be not curious to inquire whether a
lock he bore on his bosom was a token of pure affection or the relic of
a saint; but remember the heart he wore beneath: most of all, fix your
eyes upon his life and conversation, and follow them an ye may: for he
was a holy man."

Thus after life's fitful fever these true lovers were at peace.

The grave, kinder to them than the Church, united them for ever; and now
a man of another age and nation, touched with their fate, has laboured
to build their tombstone, and rescue them from long and unmerited
oblivion.

He asks for them your sympathy, but not your pity.

No, put this story to a wholesome use.

Fiction must often give false views of life and death. Here as it
happens, curbed by history, she gives you true ones. Let the barrier
that kept these true lovers apart prepare you for this, that here on
earth there will nearly always be some obstacle or other to your perfect
happiness; to their early death apply your Reason and your Faith, by
way of exercise and preparation. For if you cannot bear to be told that
these died young, who had they lived a hundred years would still be
dead, how shall you bear to see the gentle, the loving, and the true
glide from your own bosom to the grave, and fly from your house to
heaven?

Yet this is in store for you. In every age the Master of life and death,
who is kinder as well as wiser than we are, has transplanted to heaven,
young, earth's sweetest flowers.

I ask your sympathy, then, for their rare constancy and pure affection,
and their cruel separation by a vile heresy(2) in the bosom of the
Church; but not your pity for their early but happy end.

'Beati sunt qui in Domino moriuntur.

(1) He was citing from Clement of Rome--

{ou di eautwn dikaioumetha oude dia tys ymeteras
sophias, y eusebeias y ergwn wn kateirgasametha en
osioteeti karthias, alla dia tys pistews}.
--Epist.ad