Neith Boyce

“ And the trees in the monks' garden seemed to bend and listen and to beckon while they shook all over with malicious glee.
Scurrying over the ground beyond, with bare, dusty feet, appeared a group of creatures pulling each other by extended arms, or brown garments which seemed a part of the earth, or by their braids of strong, black hair. Writhing in this rough play they flung themselves against the wall. A pale-faced girl in a scarlet blouse, like a cactus-flower bursting from its dull sheath, threw up her arms into the dense, dark foliage of an overhanging fig-tree and dragged down the bough. ”

“ The ripple of the fountain in her ears drowned the echo of slow footsteps advancing along the path.
It was Father Anselmo's custom, while digesting his supper of meat pasty and chocolate, to pace the garden, whose beauty seldom failed to inspire him with poetical images, and to add each evening some dozen lines to his panegyric ode on Saint Francis. Anselmo was, in fact, a poet,—but a poet whose strictly regulated fancy never openly strayed beyond the confines of the cloister. ”

“ For if any wandering spirit, coveting, yet not daring to enter the garden, had strayed near to the confining wall, it must have heard daily the solemn chant of the Church's exorcism directed against all powers unholy; it must daily have beheld a slow procession of monks make the circuit of the shell-strewn paths, sprinkling the ground with holy-water to purify it from the contaminating touch of a woman's foot. ”

“ For how else should his bodily eyes have beheld beneath the shadow of the acacia bushes a creature not human, surely not divine; no spiritual vision, but an apparition born of the earth and evil. It sat half-visible, buried to the chin in flowers, motionless, its face a mere pale shimmer, its great shadowy eyes fixed upon him. These eyes were terrifying.
Anselmo retreated some steps upon their discovery ”

“ Hanging to the bough with both hands, she shook it roughly, and the ripe figs fell in a shower, some flattening to pulp on the ground. The girls flung themselves down, and, chattering, gathered the unspoiled fruit into the skirts of their gowns.
"It is true; they are better than ours," cried one.
"Trust the holy fathers to have the best," added another, lowering her voice.
"They taste better," said Fiora, the tall girl in the scarlet blouse, "because we are stealing them." ”