Of which the other
brothers being told, were in the greatest melancholy because Brother
Giles had never said a word to him; and murmuring at it, they said,
'Oh, Brother Giles, wherefore hadst thou so country manners that to so
holy a king, who had come from France to see thee and hear from thee
some good word, thou hast spoken nothing?'
"Answered Brother Giles: 'Dearest brothers, wonder not ye at this, that
neither I to him, nor he to me, could speak a word; for so soon as we
had embraced, the light of the divine wisdom revealed and manifested,
to me, his heart, and to him, mine; and so by divine operation we
looked each in the other's heart on what we would have said to one
another, and knew it better far than if we had spoken with the mouth,
and with more consolation, because of the defect of the human tongue,
which cannot clearly express the secrets of God, and would have been
for discomfort rather than comfort. And know, therefore, that the King
parted from me marvellously content, and comforted in his mind.'"
Of all which story, not a word, of course, is credible by any rational
person.
Certainly not: the spirit, nevertheless, which created the story, is an
entirely indisputable fact in the history of Italy and of mankind.
Whether St. Louis and Brother Giles ever knelt together in the street
of Perugia matters not a whit. That a king and a poor monk could be
conceived to have thoughts of each other which no words could speak;
and that indeed the King's tenderness and humility made such a tale
credible to the people,--this is what you have to meditate on here.
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