Marjorie Bowen

“ It was very still; above the low line of the cloisters fine insects crossed each other in the blue sky; there was just breeze enough to rustle the shining leaves of the lemon trees that drooped heavy fruit against the wall.
“There is no sin,” said the monk, “too heinous to be forgiven, if one truly repents. As witness the tale of the hangman of Pisa, which is out of the book called The Rosarie of Our Lady, wherein are other examples, there being one for each bead on the rosary. ”

“ Now when Frithiof heard this it was to him as if all the little silver sledge-bells were ringing in his heart, for he was in love with a maiden named Rieke, and she loved him, and the price of the chair would be sufficient wherewith to build a house and buy a piece of ground, and perhaps even a reindeer, and so they could be married before the winter was over. ”

“ Now I might tell you many more stories of Envy—as that of the man who envied his neighbour who had the ceiling of his dining-hall covered with gold pieces, and at last did his own in like fashion; but as he was not rich, he used gilded lead, and one day as he was carving the meat, down fell a false piece of eight and killed him; or the lady who envied her brother’s wife for her small waist, and drew in her own so tightly that she died; or the man who out of malice bore witness to a forgotten crime of his neighbour’s, and so discovered one of his own for which he ended his life in prison ”

“ And I tell ye this, though there may be many a good or brave man, tinct in some way with the other sins, yet there was never one that had a spark of virtue in him who was a prey to envy; for it is properly a sin of mean, small, creeping souls who lack the courage for lustier vice.
Envy is one and the same with Malice, which it is sometimes called; it is against all virtue and all goodness, and it is like the Devil, inasmuch as it rejoices at the harm which befalls mankind. ”

“ Augustine saith, “Envy is sorrow of other men’s weal, and joy of other men’s woe”; and that is a true definition.
It is a very horrible sin (said the Father) , inasmuch as it goes secretly and is very often undiscovered, so escaping among the ignorant, such as ye, as a venial fault hardly to be noticed, when instead it is the generator of more evil in the world than three of the other sins put together. ”

“ And there is this tale to be told of Envy, though there are many others more pointed and dreadful; but this I know to be true:
It happened in a far country, where there is much snow and little sun, many clouds and few flowers.
There the hills are so high that one may walk all day through the valleys, and never see the sun, though it be never so brightly shining. There are great waterfalls and ravines and lonely stretches of rock; and the land is mostly barren, for they find there neither gold nor silver mines, nor marble quarries nor any natural riches ”

“ But in the lakes and bays are plenty of fish, and there are vast forests of pine, of which they sell the wood.
In this country is a castle, the most considerable they have, close to their largest town. They call it the Blue Tower because it is built of wood and painted blue; they use neither brick nor marble in their building, but of wood they can make anything, a delicate toy for a child or a ship that will sail over the world’s seas. ”

“ Now there was a certain neighbour of hers, named Helva, who owned a pair of shoes made of soft skin and laced with silk, and on Rieke once telling her how she envied them she pleasantly promised to lend them for the wedding. ”

“ They are a rude people, strong and fair, and still barbarous in their ways; they have no arts save those of embroidery and carving, and their sole poetry is a number of wild, fierce songs they sing in the evenings round the fire ”

“ Now there was then in Pisa a certain priest who nightly walked about every church in the city, and that night he rose up and went to the church of Our Lady.
“And as he passed through the churchyard, he saw a great many dead men gathered together in a company.
“Some of these dead men he knew, and of them he asked what was the matter.
“And one of them answered, ‘The hangman is slain, and the Devil challenges his soul from Our Lady, who says it is hers ”